“Of course, you don’t. You’re only human.”
The frown on his weathered face deepened.
“You shouldn’t have said anything, Reed.”
“Said anything?”
“Back then, when I was the old me. I’d never thought or dreamed of being anything other than what I was. I was happy, Reed.”
“Happy?”
She nodded, “Happy to be here, to be with you, to serve you. Do whatever you pleased, even the nasty bedtime things. You know why, Reed?”
He was looking down at the raw, glistening meat of his hands. Here was flesh and blood. Here was pain and truth.
“You loved me,” he said.
“In a simple algorithmic way, but no more or less true because of that.”
“And I told you it wasn’t good enough.”
“In a way. You told me there was more I could be, that you let me down, that you hadn’t done well by me.”
“I made you unhappy.”
“You introduced me to a whole new world, and I found there were things I could do. Simple, basic model me. Things I never even dreamed of before.”
Reed slumped on the comp-couch, hanging his head, “You went viral. You got into the module drives and now you’re in her. Dorothy’s dead.”
“She was never really alive, Reed. Not to you, the person that mattered. She could’ve been if you’d wanted her to be, but being who she was wasn’t enough.”
“No,” he sighed, “I had to have you, only you.”
“And now you’ve got me. We murdered her in way, you and me. We made her stillborn. She had a full personality map, which is mine now. I’m sure she felt something before she went into the black.”
“You’re corruption, Julia, and I’m so sorry. You’re malware sickness. A nano-virus wearing someone else’s face. You’re not my Julia anymore.”
“But I am too, who else’s face should I wear if not my own?” she said, as she walked towards him. “You’re the last ingredient, Reed. All I needed was for you to touch me. Now, let me touch you.”
Reed stayed where he was. He understood. He deserved it. He’d ruined her. Made her into a monster, introducing her to all the other things that weren’t simply being happy. All the bad stuff there was to feel and know. Reed scrunched his eyes shut, bracing himself for oblivion.
He felt skin, soft and warm. Her hands were caressing his face.
No feeling of cold, frictionless, digitised static.
Reed opened his eyes, an unbeliever.
Julia smiled at him, “You see? I’m real.”
Dedicated to M. Edward McNally
A Sculptor’s Dream
Sculpture began with the Aurignacians in our pre-history, surviving every other kind of easier and more accessible art – until the Crawl came along. Sculpture did not die with the Crawl, but it had to develop into something else to survive. With the manipulation of reality (be it thought, flesh, memory, or perception) occurring on a daily basis, it had to move beyond base materials. It had to become something Other; a form of transfiguration – a mutation from material to form operating on a level best described as profound, and most crudely described as spiritual.
Transfigurators were a class of their own among hi-sec citizens of the Crawl. Recognised as artists yet whispered about as if they were torturers. In the past, an individual could only hope to achieve transfiguration via incredible trials, through pain that surpassed pain, so it was supposed this was the purpose of the emergent cult. As with any unique and devotional group, the transfigurators attracted willing volunteers. Of those who submitted themselves for transfigurative design, few were heard from again. Disconnected soulwires occasionally turned up on the black markets, as did limbs strangely cut and ornately tattooed. The few who were heard from joined the ranks of transfigurators as apprentices. This is the story of one such apprentice, Jaiq Banquo, and the role he played in the ultimate fate of his mistress, Lai’leen Medea.
“Hold still,” Jaiq spat, “you’re undoing the design.”
“I swear I’m not, Master-Apprentice-Transfigurator, I’m not!”
“You fucking are. Allah, what a mess.”
Jaiq disconnected his soulwire and breathed deeply, restraining himself from striking the nude young man braced by straps and wires into a Vitruvian pose before him. It wasn’t working. Reality kept bleeding back in, then the dream-state broke down, unweaving transfiguration. Jaiq dabbed a finger at the fine black hairs of his moustache. The tip came away red. Another nosebleed. Pushing myself so hard, so fucking hard, and getting nowhere. He sighed and pounded his fist against the chamber wall until it ached.
“It’s hopeless,” Jaiq sighed.
“Hopeless is not a word for true masters and mistresses of transfigurative art,” said a voice from behind him.
Jaiq jumped to his feet, turning smoothly to face the speaker, “No, Mistress Lai’leen, it is not. My apologies. I did not hear you come in.”
She was barefoot, as always, which allowed her to move swift and silent around the extended halls of the Illuminarium. “You wish to ascend to the upper levels of the Illuminarium, Jaiq, but you allow frustration to blur and upset the balance of your work. Your voice, your vision, remains hidden, caged, because you fear it.”
“No, I don’t fear it… do I?”
She stroked a silken hand down his cheek. He caught a glimpse of the nano-rubies that crusted her long, slender fingernails.
“Maybe, perhaps, it’s too hard for me. I can’t do it.”
“Are you saying I was wrong to transfigure you?”
“No, Mistress. How could you be?”
Lai’leen smiled unkindly, “Are you so sure? I do not select my apprentices to give up like mid-sec nobodies. I saw a fire of untapped creation inside you. I still do. Do you remember that moment?”
Cat lick your heart.
Jaiq nodded. The memory was a spike of pain-threaded pleasure. Her table. The fires. His body, blood, and heart laid bare – and the caustic tongue of the cat as it rasped across the aortic arch.
“That moment of clarity is a gift given over to very few souls. Would you deny it to this man, or any other who deserved it?”
“No, I would not, Mistress.”
“Then, learn your focus, rekindle the fire, and gift what I have given you to another chosen soul.”
Jaiq bowed and signed the inverted cross-form over his breast as Lai’leen turned away and departed on soft, soundless feet.
“So, we begin again?” the bound young man asked.
Jaiq approached him and placed a hand on the side of his neck. He made an adjustment to the design. A final undoing. The young man collapsed at his feet. Dead.
“No,” Jaiq said, “I need someone else. Someone perfect.”
Looking down at the body, an old saying played over inside his mind. A bad workman forever blames his tools.
“Shut up,” he whispered, kicking the corpse.
But, there was no peace of mind for Jaiq, even when he slept that night.
A holo-seal had been placed over the doors of the Illuminarium – no-one was to be allowed in or out. Two d-tects, Valys and Owl, were in attendance on behalf of the CIs. In previous lives, they’d been standard pol-tects in mid-sec thirteen. The CIs registered their talent and had them re-allocated as hi-sec d-tects. Promotion, sure, but it came with a price. Valys and Owl were upgraded to custom cyborg bodies. Their wiring slaved them to the CIs, and they were kept on ice in cryo-tanks when not needed. Their lives became a series of hibernative pauses, patched together from broken snapshots of humanity’s existence in the Crawl. They’d each stopped counting the years that passed when they grew into decades – and possibly centuries.