Marija was enthusiastic. She didn’t say anything to anyone. She only messaged Tamara, hinting that she had great news. When they headed back, Isak flew to Frankfurt for a three-day artificial intelligence conference, and she returned on a direct flight to Belgrade to a new, completely altered reality.
As she drove home from the airport, her telephone rang. When she answered, she saw on the small screen the little rat face of that tiny man in the white coat — the director.
“Mrs. Vranješ?”
“Yes?”
“There have been… ah… some changes.”
“What changes? I don’t understand.”
The director avoided looking her in the eye. “Marija 2.0 didn’t return to the location. We assume there has been some kind of coding error.”
She felt a sudden rage, accompanied by fear. “And now what? Where is she?”
The little man shrugged. “We are not sure. We think she’s in the apartment. In your apartment. The GPS signal from the mobile device that you left for her indicates that she is there. But, of course, she could have left the phone and gone out without it.”
Marija tried to calm down. Where was Aleksandar now? The day before yesterday, Isak had told her offhandedly, as if it were something irrelevant, Aleksandar had asked for — and received — several days off work so he could go visit his sick father. This worked in her favor — he wouldn’t be home when she faced her replacement.
“What are you suggesting?” she asked coldly, and saw from the expression on the director’s face that his whole career was at risk.
“Hmm…” He coughed. “I… I hired an ambulance that belongs to a clinic that is part of Mr. Lero’s holdings. The vehicle will wait with the team discreetly in the side street near your building. If you find Marija 2.0 in the apartment, use the safe word and let me know. The team will get her here right away.”
“And if it’s not there?”
He shrugged again, an apologetic expression on his face. “We’ll wait till she’s back. And in the meantime, we’ll try to locate her some other way.”
Marija hung up without saying goodbye.
Ten minutes later, she unlocked the front door with a spare set of keys, entered the apartment, and put her suitcase down. It was getting dark outside, and the only light in the apartment came from the spacious living room. She paused at the door, looked inside, and saw the floor lamp turned on. And there, on the sofa, was a human form.
When she got up the courage, Marija entered the room and turned on the overhead light. Marija 2.0 turned her face toward her, smiled, and stood up.
“You got a nice tan,” she said. “Much nicer than mine. I suppose everything went well? Was Isak a chivalrous lover, a man who will take care of you?”
Marija gulped, then panicked. This was totally wrong. This shouldn’t be happening. If the programmed return of her artificial copy went wrong — what else could have gone wrong?
“You know,” continued the woman in front of her who was — and was not — her, “Aleksandar and I had a long, long talk.” She smiled, staring into Marija’s eyes. “And we agree on what is to be done.” Marija 2.0 took a step toward her.
“Mom… Mombasa!” she shouted. “Mombasa!”
“You were interested in singularity. I have something to tell you about singularity. But we don’t have time for that.” Marija 2.0’s smile was now wider but didn’t reach the woman’s eyes.
“Mombasa, motherfucker!” Marija yelled. “Momb—” She backed up against something and turned around. Her husband stood right in front of her and smiled, just like the creature she was trying to retreat from.
She felt a sting in her neck and looked at Aleksandar’s hand. She saw a plastic syringe full of clear liquid and a long glittering needle. She lifted her hand toward the spot where he’d injected her and stared at him with disbelief. Then she crashed onto the parquet floor.
The worst of it was that she was aware of everything.
Her eyes were open, she could see, she could hear what was going on, but she couldn’t move or feel anything while they removed her clothes and redressed her. She heard her phone ringing, how Marija 2.0 answered it. “Yes,” she confirmed to the director. “She is here. I used the safe word. You can come for her.”
Aleksandar looked at her for the last time before he left so the members of the director’s team wouldn’t notice him as they were coming out of the apartment. He peered at her with complete indifference, like she was an object, before he disappeared forever from her sight.
She didn’t feel someone else’s hands lifting her onto the hospital bed, but she heard voices that mumbled an apology and greeted her copy. She watched the concrete ceiling of the hallway as they pushed her toward the elevator, then a clear night sky with the reflection of the ambulance’s rotating lights, before the view was replaced by the inside roof of the ambulance. The door closed. Her companions were silent while the vehicle moved with the sound of the siren. She tried to estimate how long it would take until they reached Učiteljsko Naselje, and then she gave up. She wondered how this new her, Marija 2.0, would explain to Isak why she had changed her mind. And what would she tell Tamara and her other friends?
I will disappear and nobody will notice. Because, of course, I will still be here.
At some point, her pupils narrowed in the presence of the glaring light of the laboratory. The director’s face appeared before her.
“Perfectly faithful to the original,” he said with undisguised admiration. Marija heard his words, saw the bright light and his face, but she still couldn’t feel her own body, she couldn’t move, blink, speak.
“Are we following the plan?” someone asked outside of her field of vision, probably one of the technicians.
“Yes,” the director replied. “The object is to be recycled. We’ll look for an error in the software. There is certainly a trace somewhere, something that will indicate the moment when there was a deviation from the programmed behavior.”
“Look,” said a technician, his finger touching her right eye, then immediately removing it, shining with moisture.
“Tears,” the director said. “Unusual.”
While the technician pushed her on the stretcher toward a small room, he closed her eyelids. Now she had only hearing left — the crunch of rubber wheels on the floor, the distant buzzing of the appliances, and the quiet hum of the air conditioners — and smelclass="underline" a sweaty technician tilted over her, traces of the cigarette she had smoked on the way from the airport, and hints of the heavy, sweet smell of the expensive perfume that she had used that day, spraying it on her neck, behind her ears, on the insides of her wrists. If she could move her facial muscles, she would have smiled ironically to herself.
It was the perfume she hadn’t parted with in more than three years.
Mombasa.
The RAT
by Misha Glenny
Dorćol
Miloš calculated that on average, during a six-day week, he was completely bored roughly 61 percent of the time. Eighteen percent of the time, he was able to distract himself by playing Xenonauts 2. He was impressed by the transition from the original Xenonauts which featured 2-D sprites. Although he loved these sprites, like most Xenonauts devotees, he was surprised and genuinely impressed by the transition to 3-D graphics in the updated version.
As long as his boss wasn’t around, he could play. The assistant manager, Jovana, didn’t care, while Bane was so in awe of Miloš that he wouldn’t dare snitch.