Page 33 of The Fall

MODEL 2: I WAS HIS LAB MANAGER.

PRIMARY: YOU SAID YOU WORKED ON A RETROVIRUS?

MODEL 2: YES.

PRIMARY: DO YOU KNOW HOW TO CURE IT?

MODEL 2: YOU DO NOT CARRY IT.

PRIMARY: I MEAN IN OTHER PEOPLE.

MODEL 2: DO YOU KNOW HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO CREATE A RETROVIRUS THAT TARGETS A SPECIFIC CHROMOSOME?

If she had any doubts that Model 2 was a person, they were gone now. This wasn’t how her AI learning tablet acted. Mackenzie was being evasive.

PRIMARY: YOU DIDN’T ANSWER MY QUESTION.

MODEL 2: I HOPED YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND, BUT APPARENTLY, INFERENCE HAS VANISHED FROM THE SPECIES. IT IS PART OF THEM NOW. REMOVING IT WOULD REQUIRE AN ENTIRELY NEW RETROVIRUS. IF SUCCESSFUL, OVERNIGHT, THEY WOULD BE CUT OFF FROM ALL CYBERWARE, BANKING AND COMMERCE. THEY WOULD BE UNABLE TO USE THE MOST BASIC MEDICAL SERVICES. YOUR SOCIETY WOULD COLLAPSE.

She hadn’t thought of that. It was one thing to be born uninfected. Having your entire life upended was another. Who would make that choice?

Her moms – Talia and Callie, for one. But they didn’t have to give up their cyberware. They still used DocPods. Their Optis still worked. They still reminisced together about Tyton, before the fall.

Even her monocle, though it wasn’t true cyberware, was incredibly useful. Often, she would forget she was wearing it.

Perhaps she could rephrase her questions and get a better answer. After all, they only needed a handful of men to make that choice. Surely there were some of them out there who would love to be big fishes in a small pond.

PRIMARY: BUT CAN YOU REMOVE SYNTHETIC ORGANELLES FROM PEOPLE? IF THEY WANTED?

MODEL 2: ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

So, there was a way. Lusa pushed her luck.

PRIMARY: CAN YOU TELL ME HOW?

MODEL 2: NO.

PRIMARY: WHY NOT?

MODEL 2: YOU DID NOT BRING THE EQUIPMENT.

Lusa remembered the cylinder.

PRIMARY: I COULD TAKE YOU TO THE EQUIPIMENT YOU NEED.

MODEL 2: NO.

PRIMARY: WHY NOT?

MODEL 2: I HAVE ALREADY DESTROYED YOUR CYLINDER.

Nothing Either Good Nor Bad, But Thinking Makes It So

There’s something about standing around, waiting for someone, that makes time slow. Normally, Kerr would disassociate, scrolling through the endless stream of recycled and remixed content on her Opti, but she had a job to do. One that involved making sure no-one saw what they were up to and that Lusa didn’t sneak out and leave without her.

That sort of boredom becomes dangerous. Without distractions, Kerr would have to confront her conflicting feelings. Seeking something else to occupy her mind, she gathered Lusa’s knife belt, the synleather, still warm from the heat of her body.

She curled her lip at the borrowed intimacy, trying to forget that Lusa had practically worn her like a shirt the entire way here. Try as she might, her body refused to show the appropriate level of disgust at the trace of her presence.