Chapter 4 – Truthful Lies
Olen sat cross legged on the floor, grinning to himself. The problem with reading minds was that, once one got past mental shields or figured out the pattern in the chaotic snarl of a human mind, it was easy. Some could manage layered defences, but unless they used technology for one and talent for another it was ridiculously east to get through. Figure out the pattern and the rest just fell into place, a giant reward for many minutes of effort half the time.
This was different. There were walls, genetically tweaked and stronger than he’d thought they could be. he wished he was a biokinetic, too, just to be able to see how Stephen had been made, but dismissed the wish and concentrated. There were fellow peep’s whose minds he’d breached easier and he wondered if the rich really did tweak genetics just enough to make psychic shields and nothing else for their children.
It would explain the shields, and maybe the darker stories Whispered where minds met, but that was only part of it. The other part was his aura, and the aura hiding in and under it. Olen only ever saw it out of the corner of his eyes, as if it was aware of him and hiding from him. Another aura, and another shield with it.
The mind under the first shields was strange, not psychic and not human. Pathways where paths shouldn’t be, empty places where thoughts should be, and snarls that Olen couldn’t seem to find a pattern for and unravel. He pushed himself in, inserting and pushing thoughts and will, looking for connections and patterns under a shield that shifting surprisingly well to try and keep him out.
The second shield came up as he looked for deeper thoughts, for Self, and it was aware, and moving. he moved to, in the mind place, frowning in the real world as he concentrated. Thoughts and images washed around him, dreams and hints and distractions, but he ignored them all. The other shield was alive, as even his own shields weren’t, and it defended and attacked simultaneously.
Olen dropped shields curiously, feeling it come in, but not like a telepath, more like a cold of some kind, or an infection. He blocked it easily and destroyed it, only to find himself thrust out of Stephen’s mind as it did the same to him.
(Learn fast, don’t you?) he sent, only to see Stephen stir from where he was sitting, puzzled, as it routed the thought to him. Olen smiled happily. Whatever shield it was, it might be nanotechnology of some kind, and it was really good. He hadn’t had this much fun in weeks.
He wondered if Stephen would be angry at his probing, and hoped not. It was hard not to walk into minds anyway, and ones that were challenges were always hard to resist. He hesitated, but a few minutes later he felt the second aura appraising him and gave him, racing into Stephen’s mind after it, playing with it and knowing it was playing with him in return.
He grinned happily, and felt the other aura do the same, saluting and being saluted.
Stephen walked through System, old commands and protocols snapping into place around him. He tweaked a few to deal with other problems, but on the whole found that incompatibility with anything modern was more asset than problem. Rooms flickered past as he moved, a wind giving vague human shape, and he danced through the data than roared around him, a wind of information he ducked into and out of with a speed that slowly increased as he poked and prodded and remembered old skills.
Time passed slowly in the real world as he danced and nabbed things, poking into news rooms and feeds and the storage spaces of the Listeners whose entire lives were placed into System. He avoided the dream places because he was busy, paused to admire a few creations of artists, and switched identities on a whim, pulling up fake trails and laying down path routes and commands to cover his tracks.
He didn’t think he was being followed, but he knew he could be and that was reason enough to be paranoid. The link was stronger from the old town than he thought it would be, liking owing to shamans, but not as strong as he was used to, so he moved carefully, knowing that none of the old shut down fail safes would be reliable since he wasn’t at home.
Doors and data opened and he poured knowledge into his mind, storing and shelving facts and information with a precision that caused a few passing AIs to admire his skill, all the while making jokes about carbon-based life and “feelings”. He broke several codes and entered his own home from the back, rifling through data his parents thought secure with a ruthlessness that surprised the part of him he allowed to be surprised.
<Jackson,> he sent over a secure line. <Red Rose here.>
<Red! It’s been ages. Literally!> the reply came moments later, from another user. At least, he thought Jackson was a user. Sometimes, Stephen wondered if Jackson was really an interface between humans and AIs, built by some parents to be a controlled version of a shaman. If so, Stephen doubted it actually worked.
He’d always been good at this. Not a shaman, no, but a natural. And Jackson had blown him out of the water, pretty much. <Been away.>
<Lucky you. What can I do for you, R.R.?>
<I need to get into restricted files. Asap.>
<Subject?>
<History.>
<Good luck. Most of that was purged from system.>
<You know as well as I that nothing is really purged,> Stephen sent.
<What kind?>
<Social divisions. Nanotechology development. Genedoc trades and costs. And the robot in homes issue.>
<Ouch. Planning on becoming a revolutionary?>
<No. Just curious as to how it happened.>
<Heh. Curiousity killed the cat, man.>
<Stealth cat?>
<No, real cat. Never mind. They’re mostly extinct anyway in the urban centres, and the rich prefer Harfs or nanotech to defend themselves. Regular animals are too old fashioned, as guards or as friends.>
<Oh. Right. I like stealth cats. I think I had one as a child. It was hard to be sure.>
<Perfect invisible pet. ‘We got you a stealth cat!’ ‘Where?’ ‘Over there. See?’ Anyway, it’ll be hard. Got an ID I can get you at?>
<I’ll contact you. Or dump it somewhere. I’ll find it.>
<Right. Redrose?>
<Yes?>
<Be careful. You’re treading in dangerous waters.>
<All data is in dangerous waters, Jackson.>
<I’m serious, man. There’s a shaman poking around you, and several nasty progs hunting you down. Well made, too.>
<Huh. Thanks for the warning. Off, then.>
<Be careful.>
<Always am.>
<You’re talking to me. I could have had you tracked and taken down by now.>
<You’re a friend, Jack. Please don’t do this.>
<It’s been a long time. Good bye, Stephen.>
<Jackson!>
<.... fuck.>
Stephen opened his eyes and took a deep breath, then again. “Shit. I’m going to puke.”
“Are you all right?” Olen asked, looking up from the ground.
He wiped sweat off his forehead. “Not really. I’m really, really glad I had a fail safe. That was too close for comfort.”
“You looked really funny for a moment. You almost turned purple.”
“Purple?”
“Like you weren’t you. The yellow went purple. Then it broke apart.”
“Huh. Cute..” Stephen stood slowly, rubbing his temples. “I know of people who burned out their brains exiting from System that fast. I can’t believe Jackson did that.”
Olen stood as well, stretching. “Did what?”
“Tried to kill me, pretty much.”
“I thought you couldn’t die?”
“Doesn’t mean I want to.”
“Oh.” The boy nodded.
“At least I got enough useful things to start figuring out why modern nanotechnology isn’t in the rest of the world.”
“It’s not?”
“Nanotech breaks down. You need to get it replaced, a new injection of the nanites every so often. We don’t, where I come from. Haven’t in a long time. It’s not right.”
“It’s profit.” Olen shrugged. “Anything that brings profit is right. That’s probably a Corpocracy commandment. They want money, and any source of money is acceptable. The dead bodies are just a price of doing business.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“How would you know? You’ve never even seen the real world before! The Corpocracy gets money, and lots of people die for it, or get destroyed, and no one cares!” Olen took a deep breath. “Because it works. Other things didn’t. It has, for a long time. We might not like it, but it’s better than the alternatives would be.”
“Better?”
“People are scared of freaks, Stephen. Really scared, sometimes. But we are useful, and the Corpocracy can make money out of us. So Genedocs are allowed to create us and we get to be born at all. It’s worth being weak, or forgetting things, or being born without limbs, or never being able to use System and the like.”
“What about freedom?”
“You have to be alive to be free. And if being alive means I don’t get to be as free as other people, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.” Olen grinned. “I don’t think anyone is free. People just get told they are and believe it in spite of the truth. They’re all trapped in their own minds. They’re alone, and I’m not. I can see things and know things none of the people who think they’re free ever will.”
“It’s not that simple, Olen.”
“Maybe not, but maybe people just don’t want to admit it is really that simple. There’s different kinds of freedom, and each one costs something. If it didn’t have limits it wouldn’t be worth anything at all.”
“You really believe that?”
“I have to. It keeps me from burning my mind out and screaming an entire block into catonia,” Olen said, and his eyes were dark and full of greys and blacks. “Most of us think being a freak is what is normal, right. You can’t wish for more unless you believe there is something more for you to get.”
“There should be.”
The boy shrugged. “Maybe. But why do you care? You can go home.”
“Then I won’t know what is going on, or happening to me. And I won’t remember this. I tried to upload my brain patterns for my next body and failed. if I die, I won’t remember any of this.”
“Do you forget things alot?”
“How would I know if i did?” Stephen snapped.
“I meant, because there are holes in your head.”
“Pardon?”
“Inside your head.”
“What kind of holes?”
“Empty ones. Where memories should be.” Olen shrugged. “I didn’t mean to pry, but I noticed them. It’s weird.”
“People do forget things.”
“They don’t normally self-lobotomize to do so, do they?”
“Well. No. Probably not.”
“So it’s weird. And your aura is still funny. It keeps playing with me.”
Stephen blinked. “My aura is playing with you?”
Olen nodded.
“This isn’t some kind of sexual thing, is it? Because you’re, what, ten?”
“Fifteen. And it’s not sex.”
“Oh, good. I mean, not in a good good way. Or a bad good way. But in a, well, you know?” Olen gave him a blank look. “A not sex way. Like, you’re a nice kid, but I’d never want that. And I’m glad my aura doesn’t.”
“Want what?”
“Sex.”
“But you can’t do that.”
Stephen opened his mouth, then closed it. “What?” he yelled.
Olen jumped back, eyes yellow and wide, shocked. “I thought you knew!”
“I can assure you that I can have sex,” Stephen said. “Wait. Why am I even telling you this?”
“But there won’t be any union. You can’t join with someone. You’re defective. I mean, up here. In the head?” Olen tapped the side of his head, a little too hard. “Here?”
“Yes, that’s where the head is. Where are you getting defective from?”
“You’re not psychic. You can’t join.”
“I meant physical sex, Olen. With bodies.”
Olen stared at him. “I don’t get it.”
“Look, there are bodies under auras? And they can do things. Together. That don’t involving joining telepathically, or whatever.”
“Oh! I never thought about that.”
“I thought you read minds,” Stephen said dryly. “Lots of people think about it.”
“I can’t do that. I mean, I can read minds, but not images of things a lot of the time. It’s - hard. Too confusing and alien. It never makes any sense.”
Stephen stared, then started laughing. “Okay. That was seriously weird. I’d rather you not tell Alison about it, though. She’d likely never stop laughing.”
“Oh. I think we talked about it once. I mean, when she was discussing what part of bodies were hands and feet, and there they were on me, and everyone else. She offered to show me what it was like.”
“Really? And you said no?”
“She scares me.”
Stephen snickered. Olen looked worried. “Was that wrong?”
“Ah, no. She is scary. She felt like my mother.”
“Like your mother?”
“Female.”
“Ah. Yes. Most women are female. Well. Unless they weren’t always women, but that’s another thing entirely.”
“I don’t like them.”
Stephen took a deep breath. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But I don’t like men.”
“What?”
“I mean, if you don’t like women, then you like men? Or just psychics?”
“I don’t know.” Olen thought about it. “I like nice minds. You’re a nice person. But there’s nothing inside you.”
“Nothing inside me?” Stephen said slowly. “Meaning what?”
“Nothing drives you. You’re not alive. There’s passion, in some people. What they really are, no matter how much they might not like it. It’s why I stay with Alison, even if she does scare me. She has it. And she’d kill me if I left.”
“Right.” Stephen walked over to the generator, getting two meals and taking them to the table. “Food’s ready.” There no reply. He looked over at Olen and waited a few moments. “Food?”
He shrugged and started eating. Two minutes later Olen stirred, blinking.
“Stephen?”
“Here with food. In someone’s mind?”
“No. I just - went away. I do it sometimes.”
“Went away?”
“In my head. I just go somewhere. Somewhere bright, and strange. And I lose time. Sorry.”
“Not your fault. I just thought it was odd.”
He sat down, getting a fork and frowning, then slowly bringing the food to his mouth, missing the first time, then getting it and shifted position slightly. “I pushed too hard, sometimes, trying to get away from people when tired. It damaged things.”
“Oh.” Stephen finished, putting his plate and cutlery on the table to be recycled. “Things like that make me wonder how the world can be this way.”
Olen didn’t look up from eating. “How could it be any other way?”
“Lots of ways.”
“But then we wouldn’t be ourselves. If the world was different we would be different. Or maybe not even real.”
“That’s no reason to not try and change it.”
“Maybe not. But the world is the world. The grey remains grey. Changing people is hard, no matter how it’s done. People don’t like change.”
“How would you know? You can’t even see people,” Stephen snapped.
“But I see what people are in their minds,” Olen said, not looking up. “And if your idea of how the world worked could be destroyed within two days, maybe it’s just your world view that needs to change. The world in people’s heads seldom maps to the same terrain as the world as it really is.”
“I think it’s more complicated than that. It’s more than not wanting to know; it’s being made to not want to know.”
“Okay.” Olen took another bite. “But there’s nothing unusual about that, I think.”
“I’m wondering if it’s a conspiracy,” Stephen said. “To hide the world from us.”
“No one can lie to you except you,” Olen said softly, eating. “People just pretend it’s otherwise, that they were tricked without letting themselves get tricked. Everyone is lied to, anyway. Even the CEO himself, I bet, since no one would tell the most powerful person in the world what they don’t want to hear.” Olen grinned and looked up. “That could explain why the world sucks.”
Stephen laughed. “Okay. Point made. But there’s still more to it than that. People are getting used just for profit the Corpocracy doesn’t need. Lives are ruined for no reason beside profit.”
“What other reason is there?” Olen asked, poking at his food.
“There should be some. And you’re about to put that in your ear.”
“Oh! It felt odd.”
Stephen walked over, guiding his hand to his mouth. “There. How did you eat normally?”
“Someone helped me. We helped each other, when we could, as freaks. When there is no one lower than you, you look after each other as best you can. Thanks.”
“No problem. I’m just going to go for a walk. Think about things.”
Olen (nodded) and Stephen jumped. “What was that?”
“Sorry. Didn’t want to move my head to nod.”
“Ah. Right. Okay. If you need anything, just yell or something. Or listen in case I do.”
“It might be hard to hear you.”
“I’ll yell really loudly,” Stephen assured him, and went to the door and outside.
The city had not changed. Stephen walked slowly, taking in the lost and the defeated, trying to avoiding meeting dead eyes as much as he could, and thinking. Their lives seemed horrible, but they were they own. He wondered if he had any right to help them, or if he even could. The desire to was odd, as well.
Olen was confused about some things, but the comment about passion wasn’t false. He knew he’d never found anything to really believe, any cause to devote his life to. He’d never found something worth dying for, since he couldn’t properly die, and thus nothing worth living for as well. He’d just done whatever he felt like, save for learning things he had to learn, like System and self-defence. And he’d been good at this, but he’d given them up for nothing else, just because they were too - too real? Too demanding? He didn’t know.
A trio of cyborgs drunk on archaic fuel stumbled by. He stepped aside. The comment about lost memories was disturbing as well. He wondered why his defences were so strong, why his parents had drilled them into him, and wondered, too, why he’d never wondered this before. He felt like a sleeper awakening from a long sleep he’d had while thinking he was awake, and he didn’t much like the feeling.
Somewhere inside him he could feel anger building, though it too lacked a cause. he was being hunted, because of something impossible, and his parents either did not know or did not care even if they knew. “I want to know why,” he said softly, angrily, the words coming from somewhere far inside.
“Why what, mister?” a bored woman asked, her eyes having the unfocused look of a resurrectionist.
“Why all this is happening.”
“Life? Hah. Because it’s a joke, see? A cosmic game. We exist,” the woman slurred, “to kill the universe. It’s all life is good for, increasing entropy.”
“I mean, this world. The things done to the people. What we do to each other.”
“We all hurt each other, mister. It’s how things work.”
“Imagine what this world would be like if this was the best of all possible worlds. Imagine if it was perfect,” Stephen said.
“That’s nothing,” the woman said, her voice surprisingly clear. “You want to be scared, mister? Imagine it is already.”
“It’s not.”
“Not here, no. But the rich. They have perfection. They live forever. And what does it get them? I die, and come back. They die, and come back as their own damned clones. They just fake it, and without death nothing is real. Death gives life meaning. Without it, we’d all be useless. We need to die, to age, to get old. We need to be hurt in order to be alive.”
“Some of u - them can be hurt,” Stephen said quietly.
“Hah! You ever died? I mean, really died? Some see a light, but that’s just an old joke. It’s cold, and very lonely, and darker than the night between the stars. That’s death, and we can’t avoid it no matter what we do.”
“And if we could?” Stephen said. “What then?”
“Then we’d be gods.” The woman laughed. “And we’re piss-poor as humans go, so we’d be even worse gods. Give people everything they want and they forget what they need.” She reached into a pocket and popped a pill. “We need the ugly things to be real, to remember this isn’t all a dream.”
She dropped to the ground, convulsing, eyes searching for something. Someone shoved her into a wall and Stephen stared, then continued to walk slowly. The sky was painfully blue with a bright sun and people walked under it like the living dead. And Stephen walked, unsure if he was any different from them all, and if this helpless, undirected anger could ever find a focus behind survival.
“Life was simple, before the cyborg died,” he said quietly, to himself, but hesitated, as if expecting someone to reply. “Now I’m living with a bounty hunter who probably saved my life, seems to hate me, and may well bring me in for a reward herself, and a telepath who could very well worm out terrible secrets from my head and I’d never know.
“And I don’t care. I should, but it doesn’t seen important. Nothing seems to be important. I don’t want to die, but I won’t really die, even if I do. That’s several kinds of gorched, and fucked up to boot. A friend betrayed me to whoever is hunting me, and I don’t why people want me dead. I didn’t do anything, it was -.”
He stopped, the thought unvoiced, his fists clenching. “It was nothing real,” he said very quietly and evenly and several people made space for him without even realizing why they did so.
But something had happened. He could feel himself being watched, could feel tension in the air, as if something was waiting to be born. He shuddered and walked back quickly, forcing his memories into a deep place inside and trying to calm himself. It worked once he shoved his hands into his jacket and pretended they weren’t shaking.
Lance Christensen walked around the site carefully, his badge visible to any passerby, and studied the ground. “Memo: Find out who was here before me, and what they looked for. Two of them, one professional. Other a child, judging from prints and body imaging. Hunter, most likely, after the same prey. Two hunters dead; will need specs on them. System, give me Satellite imaging for the area as well, focused on anomalies.”
Lance stood, waiting.
“Anomaly detected,” System whispered in his ear. “Classified.”
“I have clearance.”
“Sorry, this information is above your clearance. Secondary anomaly detected, stealth field. Imaging could not breach it.”
“Fine. Is the second field active. Scan.”
“Negative. Field changed twice during scan as well.”
“So follow the pattern.”
“No pattern,” System said quietly.
Lance blinked. “How can there be no pattern? There always is, stealth technology works on the same principle as mental shielding in that respect. Everyone knows that.”
“Protected unit did not know that, evidently.” It could have been Lance’s imagination, but he thought he detected a hint of rebuke. “Subject was only followed by overlapping area scans and the assumption that both humanoid scans were really one person. Other anomaly remains unknown.”
“Damn it. We don’t need complications in this. Scan for Stephen Inc. Area scan, centred on here.”
“Scan was performed earlier for other individuals.”
“Deep scan. Now.”
Pause. “Scan complete. As noted with previous scan, subject is not visible on array.”
“Great. He must be holed up underground. Deep, most likely.” Lance frowned. “Seal this area, priority clearance. I’m going home.”
Alison dropped the body on the desk with a thud. Acid oozed out of several wounds and the bureaucrat looked up, unimpressed.
“Bounty for Davidson,” Alison said briskly.
“So I noticed.” The man sniffed. “Are you looking for another besides Warwick?”
Alison shrugged. “Who and pay?”
“Rich, and a million.”
“Credits?”
The man smirked, then caught her gaze. “Ah. Yes. One million. Wanted alive. Killed several officers, a cyborg, and the situation is to be dealt with quietly.”
Alison considered that. “Have them call it when it reaches ten,” she said cheerfully, and walked outside.
Olen walked into the room slowly, looking around, then at where a bed was, then around the room slowly in surprise, his gaze stopping at a couch in the corner.
(Maris.)
“Olen,” the aura on the couch said, a large deep purple glow with another on top, filed with white where the eyes were. “I’m glad you came.”
(Someone has to.) Olen shrugged. (Someone should. Lunch?)
The aura flickered, a silence. Then: “Sorry. Yes. I nodded. I keep forgetting --”
“It’s no problem,” Olen said, aloud, because it was a bit of one. He didn’t forget Maris didn’t have arms or legs, after all. He shrugged and walked over to the generator as a bowl appeared on it and brought it over to the couch, walking through the room easily. He sat down on the couch carefully, and Maris had him move towards him until they were close.
“I don’t like being in your aura,” Olen said. “It feels wrong.”
“I don’t mind,” Maris said. “But I can feed myself.”
“I know.”
“It’s just so tiring, and my head aches after, and I can’t do anything about that.” Maris laughed, his aura bright and shining around both of them. Olen resisted the urge to squirm away. “I tried, once. Almost broke the generator, since I didn’t grab just the bowl.”
Olen nodded, finding the spoon and getting some of the food out. Maris guided him carefully and Olen fed him, both of them silent until he was done. Olen took the food bowl away quickly, only to have it move from his hands to the generator.
“Saves some time,” Maris said, a smile in his aura. “You didn’t have to run away like that.”
(Sorry. It’s just ... hard.)
“Hard?”
(To be in you, that close. I can’t see you anymore. It’s weird.)
“Oh! I’ll have mom put me on the bed again next time, then. Sorry.”
(It’s no problem.)
A quiet silence fell between them. “I don’t want to ask you again --”
“Then don’t,” Olen said, and there was unaccustomed steel in his voice.
“Olen, we need more telepaths.”
“I said no! I work for one person, and no more than one.”
“One person? She isn’t even one of us, Olen. Think about it.”
(She was nice to me. She helped me, when no one else could or would.) The thoughts were hard and strong, anger under them. (I’m not betraying her.)
“Even if you are afraid of her?”
Olen froze. (Who -) “Who told you that?” he demanded, his body rigid.
“People hear, Olen. And I watch you. You aren’t any good at hiding your expressions. I’d have guessed anyway.”
(I’m not important.)
“Maybe not, but there is one who is. There is something new, the dragon says. And you might cross paths with it. Nothing is certain, yet.”
“I’m sorry.” Olen walked towards the door. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”
The door remained locked as he stood before it. “Maris. Please let me leave.”
The door opened slowly and Olen walked out, slowly relaxing as he walked down the stairs. though he kept gnawing on his lower lip without meaning to.
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