Nanonima

Day 172

10:50 am

Cold.

Aches in her bones.

Back turned to the other side of the bed, she slid her fingers over wrinkled sheets, joints stiff from dead sleep. She expected to touch a warm spot, some residual body heat and a dent in the bed, but the further she reached the colder the bed. If she lay beside an empty space, she refused to turn over and look at it. She could not get up. Her limbs were heavier now, and somehow everything constricted: her breath, her blood vessels, her skin, the stagnant air she sucked in.

The screams were close now. They gurgled between her stomach and esophagus.

She scrabbled at her nightstand. Sightless still, she wrapped her fingers, like iron weights dangling from her palm, around the pill bottle and dragged it to her mouth. She had thrown away the cap two weeks ago, but tipping just one dull, black, ladybug-sized ball of nano-enhanced chemicals down her throat took an exhausting amount of effort. She dropped the bottle, arms shaking and sweat beading around her mouth and hairline. She heard it plop when it hit the carpet; pills must have scattered everywhere. But this one was rolling past her tongue and downward, dissolving into a bitter powder that stole what little saliva she had conserved to swallow it. She managed to force the pill down by rubbing her throat, but it left an acrid trail, and her stomach, hot and roiling, almost rejected it.

But what started out as a physical object soon became a dialogue between new impulses and the old, stirring devices implanted months ago in the shallow matter of her brain. Immediately she felt-

10:53 AM. Get up.

She swung her legs around and sat up, feet pressing hard into the coarse storm-blue carpet. The pills had barely escaped their antiseptic home. She stared at the glaring red bottle by her ankle. Her eyes roamed to the dirty white socks with the toes and heels worn out practically crawling away from the refuse piles that were her clothes. When had she last cleaned them? Weeks ago, it must have been, before they had soured with body odor and hormones and dried, now-flaking fluids. The urge to scrub the dirt and blood and chemicals into nonexistence built up in her itching muscles.

Laundry.

She rose from the bed and headed to the jumble of reeking shirts, pants, and a few fraying bras. Her toenail clinked on a half-drunk bottle of Black Label Kurokuroi sake hidden under a pair of shorts. The smooth, cold glass jarred against that tiny nail; her leg jerked back.

Bending down to sift through the laundry, her bones creaked and a sour smell pushed itself into her nose and mouth. Every fiber, no matter how silky or fine-woven, grated over the thin membrane that covered her inner form. She felt each individual thread and the clumps of dandruff and musk and hair that clung to them.

The phone rang.

She froze as the harsh sound shattered the silence in her skull and set her tendons twitching.

Answer it!

Answer the phone!

Her legs marched to the nightstand and her hand brought the phone close to her ear.

"Yes?" she croaked. Using her throat hurt. The result of disuse, and the dry pills.

"Hey, Ange. Are you working today? I have a job for you."

"What is it?" Is it Tuesday? Assess.

"What else? A dead body. Are you up for it?

"Uh...yeah. Yeah, sure. I have a briefing today, so. Might as well get up."

"I'll send a temp badge to your car. Meet me at the morgue in twenty." She was already placing the phone back down when he hung up. Prodding from a slick, creeping thing in the back of her brain made her pause momentarily between her job and the hygiene-based necessity to clean everything.

Priority one established. Investigate murder.

Her limbs unlocked and she grabbed a set of relatively unsullied undergarments, a pair of stained jeans, and the leather jacket with the near-invisible nick under the breast pocket that her nano-charged brain forced her arms into even though she harbored a hazy reluctance to touch it. The cool material rubbed over her skin, soft and familiar enough to drive her heartbeat above 120 bpm and contract her lungs-

Danny in his leather jacket, so fine and cool-looking.

Danny in his leather jacket with a bullet in his chest. He looks surprised.

Angie blacked out for five seconds, and when she came to, her keys and phone had been shoved into her back pocket. After a moment she looped a belt through her jeans, vaguely understanding that if she had been eating properly she would fit into more of her clothes. As part of a mental checklist, originating three minutes and twenty seconds earlier, she put down "nutrition" as priority two, after murder and before annihilating all germs that had taken up residence here.

She slammed the door behind her, locked it, and strode down the dim halogen-lit hallways of the apartment complex to the parking garage. Her temp badge was already printed and shiny in the plastic glove compartment.

The mechanical nature of driving her car downtown allowed her mind to sink into autopilot while the nanotech steered. Smog-swallowed city darkened her windows. The steering wheel warmed her hands until they sweat and stuck to the seamed leather. She arrived at the primary city morgue with two minutes and twelve seconds to spare and flashed her badge at the silver-eyed rookie guarding his cordon of neon police tape.

A murder at the morgue? That's new.

A news reporter opened fire with rapid questions, but they slid off her and she walked into the morgue without saying a word. Blue halogens bordered the main hall and lit neo-plastic alloy gurneys, some empty and gleaming, some heavy with black sheet-covered masses. Gore smeared the otherwise antiseptic floor.

Atman was waiting for her, a smokeless-type electric cigarette between his puckered lips. He had been suspended last year for smoking near a crime scene, so he made the switch to e-cigs before being cleared for duty again.

He nodded to her. "Missed you, Ange. You good? I'm sorry...sorry I missed the funeral."

She shrugged. Her own mind had wandered off during the ceremony. She had taken maybe fifteen pills for its duration to make her body stay put.

"What happened?"

He circled the corpse that lay before them, a purpled, bloated mess that not even common sense would identify as human. "I think it's a man. Can't be sure. There's too much…." He wiggled his fingers in the direction of the corpse. "Shen is positing a drugged up perp or an autonima."

An autonima. Free-thinking robotic humanoid, dubious sense of morality, endless ability to loophole human law. But programming usually prohibited them from committing first-degree murder.

"Yeah? There a security recording?" She crouched down low, her objective brain classifying and analyzing as she scanned the foul pulp that may have been a man.

Genital mutilation. Tribal? Beating. Gang-related? Ritualistic? Not likely.

"Sure, sure. Checked it out, but whoever did this mixed up a few wires somewhere and made the chip unreadable. That's why I think autonima. A druggie wouldn't have the know-how if he was on a trip."

"But," she said.

"But?"

"Motive? Could be a rogue, but there would be more bodies at this point. An autonima mercenary, maybe." Her brain flicked through some files. "Or, someone very smart took an enhancement, gave themselves that extra something to go through with it."

"That could explain the intensity of the beating. The lab geeks got a few scans of the place; no finger prints, no heat trails, no nanites, no tracks of any kind….Hey, DNA scan is done." He checked the beeping device on his wrist. "Huh. Not in the system. That's weird."

"What?" A storm of ideas in her head cracked open.

Atman sighed, took another drag on his e-cig.

Situation assessment: inconclusive.

No shit.

Day 172

2:30 pm

TERTIARY BRIEFING WITH SUSPENDED DETECTIVE ANGELA MO. BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: CAPTAIN GARY GAIL, COMMANDER TOR JOHNSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY GRACE TENNY, JUDGE BRADLEY NGUYEN.

TIME 1430 HOURS.

AUTONIMA 33-5OPTICBRANCH RECORDING.

Tenny: Please note that it has been one hundred seventy-two days since the initial occurrence-that is to clarify, the murder of Detective Daniel Torne-, and one hundred fifty days since the first briefing. The second did not involve the detective in question, but took place fifty days ago. Now. In the primary briefing you told us that you "blacked out" for the duration of the attack. I'd like to go over that one more time.

Gail: Why? It's been months. What else is she going to remember? Maybe that it was a blacker shade of black?

Johnson: C'mon, Gary. It's procedure. We waited long enough as it is so that she could mourn….

Gail: No, this is ridiculous. Angie--Detective Mo went through a severe trauma. She should be seeing a psychiatrist, not a goddamn lawyer.

Mo: It's fine, Captain. I'll go over it again.

33-5OPTICBRANCH NOTE. MO'S VOCAL PATTERNS AND BREATH ANALYSIS DO NOT MATCH PREVIOUS RECORDS. PERHAPS PRESENT WITH SOME UNKNOWN FORM OF NANO-DRUG. PROCESSING.

Mo: I...I was following up on a call. We--my partner, Detective Clarence Atman and I--we had been investigating a series of murders, autonima and human. We teamed up with Detective Torne because he was in the Robot Crimes division. Anyway, the murders. Some of them had parts missing, so we thought it might be an illegal cyborg operation going on.

Tenny: Can you specify? The layman won't know about cyborg operations.

Mo: Ah, yeah. So, cyborgs are half-human, half-autonima. Now, a lot of the time we're okay with cyborgs because they're still mostly human. You know, a robot leg or arm or electronic heart? Those things are used for the betterment of mankind, I guess. But the operations I'm talking about, the kind we thought we might be running into, they're mostly an attempt to graft human brains into autonima bodies, or autonima computers into human skulls. The only way to do it is through murder, because you need to extract most of a human brain, and we're not really capable of doing that without brain death.

Johnson: And in any case, there aren't any projects outside of military-government collabs that would require that kind of surgery. Civilian or non-government groups don't have mandates to perform trans-cranial procedures, on humans or autonimas. Those computer systems are all government property. Illegal to take them apart.

Tenny: All right, good. So you were investigating a cyborg operation and…?

Mo: We, uh...well, I went on my own to a chu--to a warehouse that we thought might be connected, either because that was where parts were being sent or that was where the surgeries were going down.

Tenny: How did you find it?

Mo: If you'll read Atman's report, he saved all of our work….

Tenny: I'd like to hear it from you.

Mo: We suspected that this was happening in a non-residential area, with access to off-grid power sources, and the warehouse was just one of several options. We split up, so I went to this particular place alone, with Detective Torne intending to meet me there later.

Tenny: And that was usual? For you and your partner to investigate dangerous places alone?

Mo: Yes.

Tenny: In the primary briefing, you said it wasn't usual. You said, and I quote, that, "It was an unusual circumstance."

Mo: Well, I mean--

Tenny: Did you lie in your first report, or did you lie just now?

Gail: Tenny--

Tenny: Have you lied about anything else? Did you, in fact, not "black out" during the attack? Are you protecting Torne's murderer?

PROCESSING COMPLETE. NANO TECHNOLOGY PRESENT IN DETECTIVE ANGELA MO IS CONFIRMED RETROGRADE CORTEX REWRITE TECH.

33-5OpticBranch: Detective Angela Mo, your testimony is invalid due to the presence of non-sourced nanotechnology drugs.

Gail: What?

33-5OpticBranch: I repeat, the testimony is invalidated. Detective Angela Mo has tested positive for non-sourced nanotechnology drugs.

Gail: Wait, you're not arresting her, are you?

Mo: Captain, I swear, it wasn't illegal. Look, what happened was--no, listen! It was Giovanni! It was Don G, I swear, he killed Danny. He killed him, and he got rid of the evidence!

Nguyen: What's this now?

Gail: Oh, Jesus.

Johnson: Calm down. Just calm down. We'll sort this out. No one's getting arrested in this room.

Tenny: Don't hold your breath on that.

Johnson: God, this is a disaster.

33-5OpticBranch: Until further notice, you are permanently suspended from police duty, with no temporary badges permitted. You are excluded as a witness to the death and disappearance of Detective Daniel Torne.

(Mo groans.)

33-5OpticBranch: Please take drug rehabilitation under advisement.

Day 172

9:30 pm

Wake up.

The light seared red spots onto her corneas. Little red ticks.

She automatically reached for the pill bottle and brought it with her to the lap-sized plastic dining table in the kitchen-slash-living room. She stared at it. Seconds later a pill was in her hand and shoveled into her mouth after a spoonful of flavorless oatmeal. More spoonfuls followed until the bowl was empty. She set it into the sink. Dishes had piled up from weeks earlier, soaking in brown water, but today she ran hot water and scoured each plate, whiskey glass, wine glass, and set of stained wooden chopsticks with her bright new sponge until the kitchen looked almost sanitary again. Exhaustion threatened to collapse her; physical activity had been at a minimum for a long time. After Daniel's death, she had spent the bulk of her days and nights either sleeping or experimenting with nano-pills. He would not have liked that.

Primary protocol: Investigate murder, reactivated.

Flicking on her phone, she pressed #2.

"Yo. How'd the briefing go?"

"Fine. Any leads?"

"Yeah. Did some legwork while you were rebooting. It is a guy. The DNA was actually polluted, that's why it wasn't in the system, but the geeks found a half-strand somewhere and we got a match: Oscar Romero. Built autonima parts for Giovanni G."

"The Autonima Archbishop?" An override protocol flashed black and red in the space between her optical nerves and the interpretive centers of her brain. Her amygdala sizzled with memory-sharpened hate and fear, then froze as nanites took control. Without that control, she would have--.

Shot him in the chest.

"Right? I think it makes sense that it was an autonima that killed him. Could've gone rogue. Or Giovanni G didn't like pobre Oscar anymore, offed him and then melted down the humanoid."

Task confirmed: Interrogate Giovanni G.

"So, interrogate Giovanni G."

"Come with me to bring him in. Might need backup."

"Meet you in half an hour."

"Okay, I guess I'll check with the Captain--"

"I'll do it." Atman needn't know the truth.

Click.

She grabbed her keys from the nightstand whose black twin stood dusty on the other side of the bed, knocking a glass frame to the floor in her haste. Her knees bent so she could pick it up, but an impulse that wasn't hers slid it under the bed instead. Her muscles burned with the force of the chemical tide that swept through her, and she hobbled out the door, sweating.

Exactly thirty-one minutes and two close encounters with a speeding sensor later (police issued automatic drone-type twenty years previous, meaning they were finicky and tended toward revenge clustering around a particular car model), she pulled up to Giovanni G's stark basilica, all old steel and dim-hued stained glass. A hologram message board on the church frontage flickered in black and neon blue letters:

Its advertisements proclaimed that the Church of Saint Contrivance welcomed all who sought God and peace, so whether one's flesh coated copper wiring and nuclear hearts or blood and marrow, Giovanni G would accept them into his fold. She and Atman, among others, had investigated Giovanni's less spiritual undertakings some years previous, finding that while he preached, he also bought politicians, assassinated police officers, and sold guns and drugs to his followers. No one called him Father Giovanni. He was Don G. And he was immune to any legal action taken against him.

Atman's tapered, gaudy green carlet blazed into the parking spot next to hers. The driver's side door rose and he slipped out, already lighting a cigarette with the electric matchstick he kept in his jeans pocket. Apparently Atman hadn't made a permanent switch, and only smoked the e-cigs at crime scenes.

"Sorry, got caught by a sensor. They don't like the Deva-Sindh cars." He bobbed his head toward the church. "Shall we?"

They drew their badges and swiped them across the door of the church. It shuddered open and they stepped inside the cool, stone-and-steel nave. Atman dipped the tips of his fingers in a font of holy water and crossed himself with perfunctory grace. They crossed through the aisles and stopped in front of the altar, bare but for one red candle and one silver candle, set opposite to each other-the red for human Catholics, the silver for autonimas.

"Anybody home?" called Atman.

"God is always in His house." The soft voice hit her in the stomach like a suckerpunch. She turned to face Giovanni G, breathing hard through her nose, blood rushing furiously in her veins. He stood as thin and stiff as the candles on his altar. His black suit, a matte neo-Parisian, clashed in high fashion with the obsidian glasses that were not quite the same shade of black. He wore white gloves.

"Mr. Giovanni!" Atman smiled. "Glad we caught you. I'm Detective Clarence Atman, and this is Detective-"

"We've met. Detective Mo." She avoided his eyes, but they bored into her anyway, gray and chilly like his house of worship. Atman squinted at her. He had never witnessed her interrogations of Giovanni, the two-hour sessions that left her drained and drowning in nightmares for days after.

"Well, my partner and I have some questions for you."

"Of course. Do you mind if we go into the sanctuary? It's more comfortable." He guided them into a room behind the altar. The temperature shot up ten degrees. Still spartan, but more particular to Giovanni G, the sanctuary was draped in red and white, and padded chairs bunched in front of a broad mahogany desk. Giovanni stood at the desk and spread his arms.

"Welcome. Might I offer you a drink? I recall Detective Mo being quite avid about her cocktails-in-a-can after an hour into our...conversations."

"Oh? What do you have?" Atman grunted as his partner elbowed him in the side.

"No drinking. We're here on business," she told him. Atman eased into the chair, holding his ribs. He grumbled something.

"You won't mind if I pour myself some whisky, I'm sure. Bad habit. How can I help, Detective?" She focused on the glove of his left hand, and how its thumb slowly rubbed the edge of the desk.

"One of your employees was murdered yesterday."

"Really." The thumb continued, slower. "Who?"

"Oscar Romero."

Atman added, "He made autonima parts for you."

"How unfortunate. He had such subtle work. Very beautiful eyes."

"Well, he doesn't have eyes now. Or much else," said Atman.

"I mean the eyes that he made. Optically unique, each one. I pride myself on the individuality of my autonimas. We will miss his skill. How was he killed?"

"Beaten to a stringy pulp. Detective, anything to add?"

"That about sums it up." She still watched the glove. A memory, in one explosive flash before her nanites wrapped a dulling shroud around it: gloved hands, those gloved hands, around her throat, and a gunshot. How could she have forgotten, even for an instant?

Focus.

Focus on the case.

Focus on his answers.

Move yourself.

Involuntarily, she glanced at him. He was examining her, ignoring Atman. One quick pain, under her left breast, before she shut it down.

"Where were you yesterday evening?" she asked.

"Chicagotown," he answered quickly. "You can check with the congregation there. I have fifty-seven witnesses and timestamps on my visa."

"That's convenient," muttered Atman.

She frowned.

"Do you know anyone who might have disliked Romero? Would have wanted to kill him?"

"His work was unparalleled, beautiful creations. Very human-like, his autonimas. I'm sure many competitors wanted him to stop working for me. But he was too valuable to kill."

"Was he doing anything illegal? Maybe human-robot hybrids?" Atman asked.

"Oh no. I wouldn't know anything about that."

"Fine then. But make sure you tell us if you remember anything strange about his behavior or work. We'll need a list of those competitors, your visa, and Romero's family should be informed." She tossed a lightning glass polymer chip onto the desk. "Here's the only uncorrupted DNA left from Romero's body. Give it to his...does he have a wife?"

"His husband." Giovanni stroked the chip. "Is this really all that's left?"

"Yes."

"I see. Thank you for returning him to me. I will make sure he is consecrated and given to his family."

"Yeah sure." Atman stood without warning. "We might need to call you in, so don't leave the city."

"Of course. I wish you luck, detectives." Giovanni G's eyes never left her. She felt them as two sharp itches on her shoulderblades, even after she shoved her car key into the ignition and rubbed her back against the sun-bleached leather seat.

Day 173

8:10 am

Cold.

Air stuck in her lungs. She lay on her back, limbs awkward, a needle of pain wedged between the ribs of her left side. A muffled voice drew her attention.

…….

A slow, heavy roar filled her ears and pushed down on her eyes. The bullet ripped through her skull and she screamed until her throat shredded, long after fiberglass and fire liquefied her brain.

She thrashed in bed and woke, tangled, sweating, heart bursting, head pounding, and struggled with the sheet as she clawed at her chest. She extricated one hand, snatched her pill bottle and downed three black beads. Her mind and body calmed with the distribution of electrical signals that reordered pain and past and everything else. She tugged off the sheets and dragged herself to her dresser. Freshly laundered clothing, faintly smelling of jasmine-flower fabric softener, was folded, neat and color-coordinated, in the drawers. She dressed in beige slacks, black button-down, and flexible reinforced polyprene vest with two red stripes across the breast. The pill bottle went into her pocket.

She met Atman at Café Vicente (after a moment of crisis with her positioning system because she kept pronouncing the name "VEE-sent" instead of "Bee-SENT-ey"). He was huddled in a booth with a pair of goggles sheathing his eyes and forehead and a styrofoam cup of coffee negro. One hand propped up his head, and he groaned when she snapped her fingers in front of his face.

"You know how I know I have a drinking problem?"

"No."

"I wish this coffee were motor oil."

She shook her head.

"C'mon, that's funny! You're no fun."

"Did you order yet?"

"Yeah, got you some bacon. You look like a goddamned veganoid."

"Thanks? What else?" She waved a waiter over and asked for another of the coffee Atman was having. He nodded and brought her a steaming cup.

"Went to visit Romero's husband. Totally clean, doesn't know anything. Also, the mortician was released from decontamination this morning. We need to talk to it. Unh." His goggles fogged over as he lowered his face into his cup of coffee. A different waiter, dark and clean-shaven, placed a platter of Mexi-spiced bacon on their table, followed by a burrito dripping with grease and the sharp stink of habanero. Atman seized it and chomped down on one end. Stringy onions stuck to his chin. Angie, nose wrinkled, plucked a piece of bacon from the platter and nibbled on it, then took a sip of coffee.

"What was that with Giovanni G?"

"What do you mean."

"Since when do you turn down free drinks? And you froze up. I remember the last time we were in a room with scum together--he didn't leave standing."

A distraction protocol was running in her mind's eye. She could see its origin point and the sharp intent that it speared into her brain.

"When are we leaving?" She fiddled with the pill bottle. The café had shrunk in the last minute. Smoked chili flavor permeated the oxygen she took in. The dark waiter's eyes, green, like burning copper, so familiar that her heart skipped a beat-

Danny in his leather jacket with his green eyes, so surprised, and a bullet in his chest.

She pawed at the bottle. She had covered it in saran and wrapped a rubber band around its neck, but it was too tight and she had to snap it so she could shake a tiny black ball into her mouth.

Atman ripped off his goggles, pale.

"What is that."

"I-"

"What are you doing?" His hand leapt out, but she fumbled the bottle back into her pocket before he could touch it. "I thought you were taking White Grade," he hissed. "That's…fuck my tits, what are you doing to yourself?"

"White Grade wasn't working, Ren." She slurped her coffee, loudly. The caffeine interfered with chemical absorption, but with familiar smells and sights came old habits.

"Yeah but…" He raised himself slightly out of the booth and scrutinized the room, then slouched over his half-devoured burrito. "That can't be legal. That's not even-goddammit, how much of you is even left? I know these past few months have been hard, but you know I'm here for you. Why didn't you come to me? What grade are those fucking things?"

She breathed out hard through her nose. "Red?"

"That's really a question? You're not sure? You've got a handle on everything else because you're sunk but you don't remember if you bought your robo-pills at a Depo or not?"

"Why are you lecturing me, Atman? It's not like I'm tripping on virt-real pornos every night. I don't smoke. I don't drink anymore."

The muscles in his jaw tightened.

"Does the Captain know?"

Yes. "No."

"Fine. We'll talk later about this. You got me? We're talking. But right now, we've got to get this got."

"I can work."

"Oh, I know you can. In your state I expect you to solve this in a week. La cuenta, por favor." He called over a waiter, who charged his identification number. Then Atman pushed himself out of the booth and practically jogged out the door.

In his wake, a moment of listening to snatches of Spanish conversations, rattling dishes, and sizzling plates, and then her phone rang.

"Yes?"

"Detective Mo, how good to hear your voice."

"Father Giovanni?" So soft-spoken. That voice, it prickled her.

"Yes. I...wanted to ask you a question, if you don't mind. And give you some information."

"Okay."

"Did you forget, or is your guilt so strong that you choose not to remember?"

I remember. The nanites want me to forget, but I remember. "What are you talking about?"

"I'll get to that, but first: You asked me about human-robot hybrids. I believe that may, in fact, have been what Oscar was working on. His work rose up against him, and I'm very much afraid it will come after me next. But I have my own protection, so no need to worry."

"Why didn't you tell us this at your church?"

"Well, I was expecting you to arrest me, of course, after what happened with Detective Torne."

"I don't understand."

"I think what you're doing to yourself--an admirable experiment, by the way-- is similar to what Oscar was doing, and it makes sense. Why would you want to live with what you've done?"

Wait, what have I done? "Specify."

"The real question is why you just haven't killed yourself. It would be much easier for you."

What have I done? "Specify."

"Just reminding you of your sins. I'm a holy man, after all. It's my job."

He hung up.

Day 173

10:15 am

"Recharged?" Atman twirled his pen as he sat across from a translucent-skinned autonima, its lean, twisted cable forearms resting on the silver desk that separated them.

"Yes, thank you." The synthetic sacs that created its voice crackled.

"All right, good. I'm Detective Atman, and this is my partner." He did not look at her, her arms crossed over her stomach, leaning against the wall behind him. "We have some questions for you about the afternoon and evening, approximately between 1500 hours and 2200 hours of Tuesday, May 2."

"I am prepared for your questions." The autonima stayed perfectly still. The only detectable movement in its body was the lightning flash of its nerves.

"Did you witness anything unusual during the time mentioned?"

"No."

"What did you witness?"

"Five bodies were delivered. The first at 18:46:23, a black male named Colt Bresson, suicide by one .22 caliber Flyrise bullet to the right temple. The second at 20:05:14, a Gamma transitioning female named Ash, heart failure while undergoing her third and final surgery. The third at 20:31:37, an unknown white male, slightly decomposed, one unidentifiable bullet to the left ventricle, two lethal high-voltage Snapper rounds to the upper intestines, facial mutilation. The fourth at 20:59:12, a white female named Amy Ace, murder by strangulation. Perpetrator was identified as Richard Ace, her husband, and detained with violent force. The fifth, and final body within your timeframe, at 21:17:20, a Chinese national named Zhen Lin, female, dead from an allergic reaction to transit sleep chemicals. Her remains were shipped to the Sino government this morning at 07:00:00."

The autonima went silent. Atman rubbed his forehead.

"So no one unexpected or unusual came into the morgue? At all? How did you miss the pulp of a dead man getting deposited in the building? Were you screened for tampering?"

"I was. Systems reports are normal. I apologize for my lack of diligence. I often remain in the laboratory unless I have an appointment. I was unaware of the body until the police arrived." The autonima never blinked. Its ocular orbs processed information in a similar way to humans, but it could not perceive the spiritual significance of a ray of light bursting through storm clouds, or the magnetism of a woman in red. It analyzed data and performed within the parameters of that data and programming.

"Who brought in the third body?" The autonima's head rotated on black flexicables to survey her when she asked the question. Atman peered at Angie over his shoulder.

"One Latino male. He did not identify himself."

Atman pounced on that.

"You didn't think to mention that? He didn't get scanned?"

"It is not standard procedure in public facilities to collect information for later identification, as we do not anticipate crime."

"What if he were dangerous?" he pressed.

The autonima's shoulder plates rose in a false shrug. "He passed through security."

"Do you have a saved image file of him?" Atman was leaning forward, eyes wide.

"Yes." The autonima's eyelids lowered, and then projected a 2D holographic representation of the man's face and torso. Atman slapped a hand onto the table.

"Dammit, that's Romero."

"So he came into the morgue at eight thirty. I'm guessing he never left." Angie approached the autonima, whose projectors flickered out. Its irises rolled back into place.

"Did this man exit the morgue?"

"I am unable to answer. I was not present for his presumed departure."

"Well, he didn't depart," growled Atman. "He was killed while you were there, probably in earshot, and you were too focused on your fucking priority one that you never even thought about it. No intuition. God damn." Atman was inspecting her, the corner of his mouth curled downward.

She followed a thread of thought that tickled at the back of her mind. A corpse with three bullet wounds, one in the chest and two Snappers in the stomach. Giovanni G and Oscar Romero, constructors and distributors of autonimas and weapons. Months of listlessness in the aftermath of an assault wherein Don G and those particular bullets intersected.

Priority one established: find identity of corpse #3.

"I'm leaving to interrogate Giovanni G again." She walked out and tossed back a pill before she remembered to ask the autonima about human-robot hybrids.

Day 174

11:03 am

Awareness slammed back into her body.

One moment, lights strobed under her eyelids as nanites were activating along the gullies and nerve threads of her cerebral cortex, and the next, she was...here. Where was here?

She twisted her head to the left. Parking lot. She was lying on the ground next to her car. To the right? Her neck stopped turning at forty-five degrees from 180 and her whole head throbbed in pain. Her right side tingled, as if in the aftermath of a nasty electric shock.

Her watch read 11:04. AM?

A day had disappeared since she had got into her car with the intent to find Giovanni G and make him talk. She checked her phone. 22 missed calls.

An electric jolt crisped the nerves at the base of her spine, and when she looked at the clock again, ten minutes had passed and her hand was fumbling for the phone blaring a digital ring tone.

"Yes?" Her voice sounded strangled and hoarse to her ears, metal splinters caught in her throat.

"Ange? What the hell? Where have you been? I called you like a billion times."

Recognition dawned with a flutter of her tired eyelids.

"...Atman?"

"Yeah, who else? Dammit, Ange. They found your blood and prints at the scene."

"What...scene?"

Blood? She felt for wet spots, and knocked her teeth together to stifle a scream when her finger punched into a hole in her thigh. She had been shot, but couldn't feel it.

"--dammit!" he was shouting. "Dammit, why did you do that? You were too unstable. For days now, I should've known. You told me the Captain cleared you! When did you start lying to me? I know when, I know it's those things you're taking."

"What happened?" Dread, in a quiet wave, flooded her bloodstream and plucked greedily at her heartstrings.

"He's dead. Giovanni G. You killed him. Don't you remember? No, of course you don't." She thought the spittle that must be flying from his lips would come through the phone receiver and splatter her.

"I'm...I think something's wrong." Her mouth, dry and sticky, formed words while her brain raced. She needed to find the man who had killed Oscar Romero. She was sure it was a man, and she was sure that he had also killed Giovanni G and shot her. Her priority was not murder. No amount of tinkering in her mind could bleed the prime directive from her heart. Single priority programming, my ass.

"Damn right something's wrong. Look, they're coming to arrest you now. I don't want to get hurt, no matter what you've been into, so please, please don't fight back. Just...go with them. Get some help."

He hung up.

In an electro-chemical haze, she took stock of her parts and their sum: the wound on her leg, the curious absence of pain, the cloudy, fuzzy overture that played when she attempted to access any memories of the last 24 hours.

Sirens in the distance. She heard them through a brick wall of confused sensory input.

A pill appeared in her hand. Her subconscious self had reached into her pocket and removed it, sans her conscious-self's awareness. Her Angela anima ghosted briefly behind a black wall covering memory and time, and then disappeared. The anger was a brief tickle behind her eyes, a shortness of her breath. If she hadn't started taking those things...oh, but the pain would have roared back and flattened her under its armored bulk.

The pill went into her mouth, the powder casing dissolving, allowing the electrical signals to the nanobot cluster in her brain to quiver with anticipation, to crack open with potential. The metal tribe woke and pushed lightly onto her nervous system, riding the waves of intent, re-directing them.

Priority one: find the murderer. She knew who it was, who it had to be. The empty time had been filled with something these pills worked hard to erase, and there was only one thing for which they were meant to erase her mind.

Danny. Oh, Danny. Green eyes, flaming copper, punched holes in her chest and stomach. Nanites filled them up and faded the vision to a dim blur, streaks of color, and then absence.

She ran to the nearest metro station.

Day 174

11:56 am

The Church of Saint Contrivance, built for a false god created for worship by man's own creations. It was Man that autonimas should worship, or Allah or Buddha by proxy, but some misfiring wires later and New Catholicism, with its directives and strict protocols, was more familiar and comforting to the machines than the spiritually loose religions to which most humans pertained.

Angie's skin crawled while she stood in the parking lot. Her gun hand ached, muscles spasming from replaying memory after memory of pulling the trigger.

Grip, raise, pull, bang.

A litany of gunfire, ratatat sounds, echoed through the black nanite wall that blocked her oozing memories. Her brain swelled with the noise, like it were a sonic tumor, pressing sound and fury against her sensitive cerebral cortex. Her skull seemed to shrink. Nanites--she could feel them now, individually, hyper-aware of their workings inside her body--pulsed and multiplied, racing her electrical impulses, trying to rewrite her as she rewrote herself to defy their intentions for her not to remember.

Giovanni had reminded her of her sins. She needed to remember like she needed to breathe.

Her body stalled, but with an effort that crackled through her stiff muscles and bones and gummed joints she forced her hips and legs and unbending knees to bring her into the church.

He would be here. Danny would be here. It was here he had died, after all.

She remembered with the force of a bullet firing. The warehouse was a lie she had built for herself. She had been dragged there and dumped after the failed assault on Giovanni G's operation.

"It's in the church, Dan. It's gotta be."

"We can't know for sure. That warehouse seems like a pretty good bet."

"I've just got this feeling. Everything's in that church."

"Thought it was a pretty good bet I'd find you here," she croaked to the shadows and the empty pews. There were no windows in the church, and with Giovanni gone, no parishioners.

Darkness moved behind the pulpit. It was no surprise.

"I was waiting for you. The police will be here soon and I needed to talk." His voice buzzed a little, as if he were speaking through a radio and feedback were piggy-backing on his sound waves.

"Danny," she breathed. The nanites, sluggishly replicating in an attempt to still her memories, to keep her brain single-priority programmed, failed. Weak, aching nausea pinioned a hole in her stomach. She wobbled as a light flickered on overhead and Danny--what was left of him--stepped into the aisle.

Her eyes swam, and it was still quite dark with only the small, pale lamp, but she knew it was him. Ratty clothes swaddled his body. What she could see of it was mostly metal, albeit with his fleshy right arm flexing its hand into a fist. He had one eye remaining, bright green, but most of his face was a metal mask welded poorly onto taut flesh. The border between skin and not-skin leaked pus, red with infection.

One unidentified corpse, slightly decomposed, facial mutilation.

"Oh, Danny…" she groaned. "Oh, Danny, what did they do to you? I"m so sorry." She opened her arms to embrace him, but he stayed back.

He worked whatever mouth-parts he had from behind a speaker. "They wanted an evil Robocop, I'm pretty sure. Stupid, yeah? I would've thought that was pretty cool before, but, nah.

We were right, about Giovanni and Romero. Giovanni wanted…he wanted immortality." He spasmed, from the metal encasing his feet to the infected flesh on his twisted face. "By means of physical upgrades and transformations into machine form. Romero was building human-robot hybrids, first killing them and trying to reanimate the brain tissue, then capturing live humans and welding them, piece by piece-piece by piece by piece by piece by piece-

-into machines."

Throbbing in her brain, behind her eyes, in her chest, in her throat--all her organs revolted. Her body wanted to eviscerate itself and leave only scraps behind.

"How did...what happened? How did you escape?"

"Romero failed. He thought I was dead, so he decided to dispose of the body in the morgue." A cough, and a twist of his facial muscles. Was he laughing? "But I wasn't dead. I beat him to death-precise application of force to vulnerable areas-and then I killed Giovanni."

"Why didn't you come to us?" She had put her arms down, and now wrapped them around her body. His machine body was too still now next to the flexing arm and sweating brow.

"The police? You? After what you did? After what you did? After what you did?"

She licked her lips. The nanites still held some sway over her, enough where she did not want this question answered.

"What did I do, Danny."

"Don't you remember shooting me to death?" Death echoed out of his voice-box.

"Oh," she said softly. "That's right."

Danny in his cool leather jacket, with his bright green eyes, looking surprised as she fired two Snappers into his stomach.

"Danny!" she shrieks.

"I was just...looking for you. Why'd you shoot me, huh?" He looks so surprised.

"I thought you were Giovanni! I thought you were someone else!"

She runs to him, but the force of a bullet breaking through her ribcage stops her short. She looks up, and this time it is Giovanni, his gun raised. He looks over at Danny and then turns away, starts running, but she's already fading into unconsciousness and doesn't see it completely.

The screams and sobs that threatened to drive her through a tenth-story window clawed at her throat after 173 days of near total suppression. An earthquake in her bones.

Danny roared, and a high-pitched squeal of feedback followed.

"What would you have done besides kill me again? Huh? I'm immortal now--he said so--he said I would be immortal. Perfect. Perfect human immortality. I'm a god now! There's no limit to my time and now that you're the only one left, well. Once I get rid of you, I'll be free. FREE." Freefreefreefreefreefree came from his voice-box.

"You never…." She had to force herself to draw breath. "You never wanted that, Danny. We never wanted to live forever. We wanted to...to get old, and make our kids wash the dishes, and lie in bed all day. I miss you, Danny. All the time, all the time. I can't…"

Giovanni's question came back to her. Why don't you just…

"I can't live without you."

"Then why'd you kill me?" Metallic hands clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched. "Why-por qué-weishenme-pour quoi-language reset."

She shuddered. His humanity had been carved out of him.

"You know that was a mistake. If Giovanni hadn't been there, we'd have gotten to a hospital in time--"

"But he was there! If we had just gone to the warehouse like I'd said, if you hadn't gone off on your own hunch, none of this would have happened! Why can't you just follow orders, Ange? Why do you always have to go and do things on your own?"

"I can't take it back. I'm so sorry."

Without pretense, just pure, systemically-intensified rage, Danny charged her. The nanites did not push against her this time. She gripped her gun, raised it, and pulled the trigger.

Bang bang bang.

She emptied a clip into Danny's half-human head. His corpse fell back with a thud and a clatter.

Hands shaking, she replaced the clip. Finality loomed overhead in the inadequate light of the autonima church, weighing down on her shoulders. She drooped, and screamed, and put the gun into her mouth, and took it out, and screamed again.

It really was all her fault, wasn't it?

It should never have happened.

Wouldn't it just be easier if she loosed her brains into the still, incensed air?

Maybe it was time to atone for her sins.

She slid the muzzle into her mouth, aiming for the widest area of destruction. A bullet exploding inside the skull--maximum effect?

She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the trigger one last time.

Faintly, there came the sound of sirens.

Day 174

12:30 pm

Cold.

Aches in her bones.

She woke on the concrete, head pounding. Someone was leaning over her.

"Oh, thank God. She's alive."

Atman's face, brow worried, concerned, delineated from the rest of the dim church. A flurry of police officers, autonima technicians, forensics officials, and portable digital recorders crowded her peripheral vision.

"How did…." She coughed. It was harsh, and blood flecked the hand she raised to cover her mouth.

"Get me some water!" Atman shouted to the rabble. He lifted her head with one hand. A bottle appeared into the other and he squeezed a lukewarm stream into her mouth. She swallowed.

"How did you find me?"

"There was some medic-bot that called in near the metro stop for a potential drug overdose, Asian female. This church isn't too far from there. I put two and two together."

Her limbs itched, each fiber of muscle slathering the bone and twist of hair in every pore as independent entities, electrified. Her skull ached, as if it had been dismantled and rebuilt in the span of an hour. But it had been, hadn't it? Hadn't she…

"We need to get you to a hospital, Ange. You hit your head. There's blood."

There was blood…but she wasn't dead. She had pulled the trigger and felt the bullet rip through her mouth and her brain-

A low murmur inside her head made her eyesight swim. Influence pressed on her to hold back her screams, her warnings to Atman that something was wrong with her, against her own instincts, influence that flowered from some mechanical creature nested at the base of her brain. Tentacles of thought that felt alien, unnatural, slick with her blood crept through her nervous system and came out through her esophagus.

"Ren, it was Danny."

"I know. I...how?" In any regular case, he would have whipped out his mini-microphone pen from his pocket and pressed the record button, but his left hand stayed on her head, his right holding the bottle of water.

"It was Giovanni, like we thought. Romero was doing those experiments, and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and they got him. But...Giovanni killed him. Killed him and turned him into some kind of sick, single-priority programmed robot. He told me before I...before he died that he killed Romero and Giovanni for revenge."

"Why was he here, with you?"

"I guess...he was just on a rampage. He wasn't making any sense, talking about immortality and killing everyone." The lie slipped out, bypassing every wall and lock and trap in her brain that she tried to set up to prevent them-yes, them, the pills, the damned nanites, whatever they had done to her was chilling her bones-from speaking through her.

"I'm so sorry you had to shoot him. Think we'll be able to pull any data from his...from the computer part to prove that he killed Romero and Giovanni?"

"I don't know. I doubt it."

Atman gave her a long, hard look, the veins in his temples jumping with extra effort as he evaluated, and in the evaluation struggled to differentiate the lies and truth. A slimy ball in the back of her skull coiled and uncoiled, releasing and pressing on her gray matter. She wanted to rip it out, but her hands clenched down at her sides. Blood dripped in slick threads, like saliva, from her tongue and the corners of her mouth. She lifted the tip of her tongue to the roof of her mouth and traced a soggy, pocked hole. She pressed lightly and felt it give, delicate like a spiderweb. The flesh was new, barely woven in between the crisped and frayed and cracked matter from before.

"Ange, let's get you out of here, okay? We'll deal with the briefings later."

"I'm stopping the pills, Ren." Where had that come from? It was her voice, wasn't it? But something in her raged against it. It was not her voice. She needed to say something, tell him something else. Take it out of my brain! Shoot me! No no no no no no-

Situation assessment: Nonviable host. Rewrite.

"Yeah?"

"It's time to move on."

He nodded and helped her stand with the assistance of a medic-bot, who half-carried her to the entryway of the church. The baptismal font, still water reflecting only dark ceiling, silvery central nozzle dribbling, jutted from the floor in front of her. The medic-bot patted her down, fizzed and popped for a moment, and cleared her for self-locomotion. Inside, somewhere deep and sinking fast, her hope that it would find an irregularity-anything in her brain or her body that would make it take hold of her, keep her from leaving-died. Atman tapped out a cig from a metal pack and pushed it between his lips.

"All right then, let's go. We'll take a little detour to that bar the next sector over. Cheers to you being alive and cutting that drug shit out. Happy ending, I guess."

"Sure."

Rewriting.

He ambled outside to his Deva-Sindh, but she paused at the threshold. Her fingers caught a small object rolling around in her jacket pocket. She pulled it out.

She stared at the pill in her hand, a little tick whose electric output she now felt with inhuman acuity. Matching signals pulsed from the back of her head. Her mouth opened, tried to talk to Atman-

Rewriting.

What had she been doing, now? Oh yes.

Smiling, she flicked the pill away and followed Atman out of the church.

THE END

Bio: Cat Struss lives in Minnesota, and must therefor have substantial experience with snow. Name notwithstanding, she is probably also a human being.

E-mail: Cat Struss

Comment on this story in the Aphelion Forum

Return to Aphelion's Index page.