They’re waiting. Laughing. Even Litvinov.
They seem happy.
The sun is growing brighter. Much, much brighter.
It’s over, Vinnie.
Their end is quick.
I wake up. The curtains have been drawn, but the morning is upon us, and I don’t feel anybody or anything out there. No voices. No presences. My head is really and truly empty, except for my own memories, my own thoughts, which will take me a long while to deal with. But…
I’m still human. I’m still here.
And Gurus lie.
All except one.
PUTTING ON FLESH
I take walks around Seattle every day, building up my muscles, my strength, airing out my head and my thoughts, just watching people go on about living. For the first few weeks, I felt both deeply sad and somehow superior, for all the amazing and terrifying and deadly things I’ve seen and the brave and insanely dedicated people I’ve known and faraway places I’ve been. Here, people just walk, just drive, just talk, sitting in coffee shops, some staring at nothing as their implants guide them around the world…
Not every second could be their last.
These people I understand and envy and pity at the same time.
Mostly at the ends of my hikes I find a place that’s new and peaceful and observe the play of light and shadow on trees, or the sheen and sparkle of rain and grayness, on buildings, on faces, on gardens and flowers and clouds and birds and squirrels, and slowly get back to realizing that the simplest pleasures are the most important, the biggest reasons we’re here—if there is ever an explanation for being alive, for observing, for taking up space and eating food.
For not being a War Dog much longer.
Assuming true physical form, true emotion.
Putting on flesh.
One evening at dusk I make my way back to the condominium, where Alice and her husband are setting out dinner in front of that fabulous view of Puget Sound. They put a whiskey-and-soda in my hand—I can drink again, after a week or two when anything of the sort made me queasy, just as if I were still sweating out Cosmoline.
And Alice tells me, setting out a fourth place at the table, that she’s invited a guest to join us.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says, with a cat-on-mouse expression that dares me to object, to get all pissy and closed down and neurotic. I don’t dare do that, so I smile and ask who it is. I know it isn’t Joe or DJ. I’d feel them, somehow.
But then I do feel who it is.
“It’s a young woman,” Alice says, more cat than ever, playing with me, playing with me for what she thinks is my own good. “She’s in town finishing medical treatments and she asked if we were open to a visit.”
“Sure,” I say.
“She says you were very sweet out there”—Alice waves her hand at the sky—“when you weren’t being a complete bastard—but you were pretty sweet to her when it counted. She says don’t expect anything, but she’d like to see you again. I answered for you.”
Someone else putting on flesh.
Stu brings in a freshly opened bottle of wine. The deep green bottle glints in the setting sun. His golden smile is big enough to show teeth. He wants me out of here as soon as possible. “We’re having pinot noir with the salmon,” he says. “Special occasion.”
God save me.
UPGRADES
We’ve been home three years, and I won’t go into our life after war, except to add that Joe has sent me a package from Mars, possible now that relations are reestablished—but no doubt incredibly expensive.
Chihiro and I open the box with a sense of strong doubt. In the box is a vial of beige powder—Ice Moon Tea, I suspect—and a note scrawled with a shaky hand in pencil on rough paper.
The note reads, “Heard the good news! Don’t want to upset the domestic applecart, but you’ve had enough peace and quiet. You and Ishida should both return to Mars. We’ve found Teal’s daughter. She’s much more than we could have expected. Major upgrade. She says big changes are coming—good changes. I can’t deal with her all by myself, old friends!
“Come back and see.”
EXTRAS
MEET THE AUTHOR
GREG BEAR is the author of more than thirty books of science fiction and fantasy, including Forerunner: Cryptum, Mariposa, Darwin’s Radio, Eon, and Quantico. He is married to Astrid Anderson Bear and is the father of Erik and Alexandra. His works have been published internationally in over twenty languages. Bear has been called the “best working writer of hard science fiction” by The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
A PREVIEW OF THE CORPORATION WARS: DISSIDENCE
Sentient machines work, fight, and die in interstellar exploration and conflict for the benefit of their owners—the competing mining corporations of Earth. But sent over hundreds of light-years, commands are late to arrive and often hard to enforce. The machines must make their own decisions, and make them stick.
With this new found autonomy come new questions about their masters. The robots want answers. The companies would rather see them dead.
They’ve died for the companies more times than they can remember. Now they must fight to live for themselves.
CHAPTER ONE
Back in the Day
Carlos the Terrorist did not expect to die that day. The bombing was heavy now, and close, but he thought his location safe. Leaky pipework dripping with obscure post-industrial feedstock products riddled the ruined nanofacturing plant at Tilbury. Watchdog machines roved its basement corridors, pouncing on anything that moved—a fallen polystyrene tile, a draught-blown paper cone from a dried-out water-cooler—with the mindless malice of kittens chasing flies. Ten metres of rock, steel and concrete lay between the ceiling above his head and the sunlight where the rubble bounced.
He lolled on a reclining chair and with closed eyes watched the battle. His viewpoint was a thousand metres above where he lay. With empty hands he marshalled his forces and struck his blows.
Incoming—
Something he glimpsed as a black stone hurtled towards him. With a fist-clench faster than reflex he hurled a handful of smart munitions at it.
The tiny missiles missed.
Carlos twisted, and threw again. On target this time. The black incoming object became a flare of white that faded as his camera drones stepped down their inputs, correcting for the flash like irises contracting. The small missiles that had missed a moment earlier now showered mid-air sparks and puffs of smoke a kilometre away.
From his virtual vantage Carlos felt and saw like a monster in a Japanese disaster movie, straddling the Thames and punching out. Smoke rose from a score of points on the London skyline. Drone swarms darkened the day. Carlos’s combat drones engaged the enemy’s in buzzing dogfights. Ionised air crackled around his imagined monstrous body in sudden searing beams along which, milliseconds later, lightning bolts fizzed and struck. Tactical updates flickered across his sight.