Gabriel wagged his tail and while the Major said nothing, she smiled down at the dog.
Later, the rain came down harder. Batou and the Major were in his car on one of the many downtown highways, where a holo billboard above touted, “With Digital Pharmacies, you can erase painful memories.” The vehicle was a modified Lotus that would have been at home on any racetrack in Europe. It was sleek, black with silver accents, low to the ground, with a roof that slanted downward over the front seat. Batou told everyone he’d bought the car for its speed and precise handling, but everyone knew as well as he did that its appearance had been a powerful factor in his purchase decision.
The Major had been silent since the alley. Batou thought she might talk about the investigation, or why she had been so troubled, but when she finally spoke, she said, “We used to have a dog.”
Batou looked over at her. “Seriously?” He chuckled, surprised. “I had you down as more of a cat person.”
Now the Major chuckled as well.
“You don’t talk about that stuff, huh?” Batou observed.
The Major frowned slightly, not sure what he meant. “What?”
“Your past.” He hoped the question wouldn’t cause her to shut him out again.
Her answer was honest. “Well, I don’t remember much. Just fragments. Bits and pieces.”
“What about family?” Batou asked.
The Major still couldn’t even find a sense of genuine sorrow, only regret that she could access neither the memories nor the feelings they ought to have caused. “My parents,” she told Batou, “they died bringing us to this country.” She remembered there had been a dissident crackdown in their homeland, that the authorities had been after her father, that it seemed too dangerous to stay. But she couldn’t remember their home clearly, or exactly what her father had done that put him at so much risk that they had to leave. She could not even remember whether she had seen her parents go into the water when the boat sank, or if they’d been somewhere else on the deck. She barely even remembered what they looked like. Ouelet had said that the memories would gradually come back, that she was still suffering psychologically from what had happened and that her mind was distancing itself from the events until she could emotionally deal with the trauma. The Major hoped that was true. She clearly remembered everything since waking up in the Hanka operating room well enough, but of course she had cybernetic memory upgrades to help with that. “Our boat sank in the harbor. I almost drowned. And it feels like…” The Major found that she wanted Batou to understand how things were for her, why she wasn’t better at being a friend to him, to anyone. “There’s always this thick fog over my memory and I can’t see through it.”
“You’re lucky,” Batou replied. “Every single day I get screwed by my memories.” That was putting it mildly. Batou inhaled. He wished he could forget what had happened, what had been done to him and, worst of all, what he had done. He thought it was a miracle he hadn’t lost his mind. “It’s better to be pure.” He exhaled. “Like you.”
The Major smiled in response and chuckled again, mostly at the suggestion that she was pure. She couldn’t recall her life before Section Nine, but she doubted what she’d done since joining the task force fit anyone’s definition of “pure,” even Batou’s.
She looked out the window, and for a moment saw something very strange. There, in the middle of the intersection, with vehicles driving all around it, was a small pagoda made of brown wood. She stared at it. And then it flashed, de-resolved and vanished. Just like the cat in her apartment this morning. Another glitch.
They made good time along the expressway and into the corporate sector, before Batou brought his car into a parking bay in the shadow of a huge glass office tower. The Major snapped off her seatbelt and climbed out, taking a breath of cool air.
Up here, in the sector of the city where wealth flowed freely, it was a world away from the habitat levels choked with people. Around them, elegantly-manicured lawns and abstract pieces of sculpture dotted a vast plaza of clean lines and steel arches. The headquarters of the big mega-corps rose out of the white stone and reached high into the sky, each of them like glassy fortresses emblazoned with company logos.
The Hanka Robotics tower was a place the Major was as familiar with as her own apartment. The building bore the company logo and had its own entrance plaza, decorated with early robotic prototypes. One silver replica of an antique robot loomed almost two stories high. Hanka was also famous for its weapons systems, and replicas of these were on display as well, including a small multilegged tank that looked like a giant artificial spider. A female voice wafted over the plaza’s public address system: “Welcome to Hanka Robotics.”
It felt odd to be here on public security business instead of for more personal reasons, but the Major pushed that thought away and followed Batou through the entry grid. The voice over the PA continued: “All visitors must display appropriate credentials at all times.”
In Ouelet’s operating room, the Major sat while delicate-looking instruments, attached to a semicircular arc, repaired the robotics within her injured left arm. The skin had been removed from her hand, leaving the metal fingers bare for easier access. The epidermis would be replaced when the work was completed. Her quik-port was attached to Ouelet’s small, flat computer so that the doctor could read the Major’s data, which scrolled down in cascading lines of gold text through the air, like rain on a windowpane.
“Open and close, please,” Ouelet directed.
The Major obediently flexed her skinless left hand.
“You have damaged internal systems,” Ouelet noted. With only minor surgery going on, the doctor still wore sterile slippers, but the red scrubs were gone. Instead, the doctor was clad in a translucent aqua lab coat over pale hospital garb.
The look suited Genevieve’s gentle nature, the Major thought. She grinned. “Maybe next time you can design me better.”
Ouelet replied with a soft chuckle as she smiled back. There was genuine warmth in her expression, and in her words as she asked, “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” the Major replied. It was true—it was annoying that the circuitry in her hand had been impacted by the bullet, but her wrist didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. “I can’t feel anything.”
“No,” Ouelet persisted, “you. In there.” The doctor never let an opportunity pass to remind the Major that she still possessed a human brain and, therefore, according to Ouelet, a human soul.
“I’ve been having glitches.” The Major’s confession was reluctant. “But they’ll pass.”
Ouelet registered concern. “Have you been taking your medication?”
“Yeah. But these ones are still cycling.” Remembering both the cat and the pagoda, the Major added, “I had two this morning.”
“Sound or image?”
“Both.”
Ouelet picked up the portable computer terminal that was still plugged into the Major. A waterfall of complex data tumbled down the screen, the dense lines of neural patterning code that were Mira Killian’s higher brain functions. The doctor peered at the strings of information and nodded, indicating that the glitches were revealed in what she was reading. “I see it. Have you made any unencrypted downloads?”
The Major frowned slightly. “No.” Taking action when circumstances demanded, as she had in the banquet room, was one thing. Risky behavior for its own sake was something else entirely. Some people loved the thrill and the danger, but the Major would sooner drink from a sewer line than make an unencrypted download; the sewage wouldn’t do much harm to her synthetic organs, whereas the download could leave her vulnerable to hacks or even destroy her internal network. And Genevieve Ouelet, of all people, knew this. “Just delete them for me.”