Con Code Read online

  She’s not dead. Can this be real? I look to her arm, her code visible on screen. Instinctively, I slap my right hand over my left forearm.

  “Diagnosis is not the end. It’s the beginning of a transplant process where donors will be challenged to solve problems, work as teams, overcome fears, encourage the best of human qualities in a variety of settings, while converting human brainwaves to computer circuitry so that donors can be uploaded into artificial intelligence housing…”

  “What is this?” I ask.

  GenE spins, her grace and poise evident in high contrast to everything I am even post player. “Don’t believe me? See for yourself.” The screen transforms. Teams build sparkling castles of blocky brilliance. It’s nothing like how I remember it. No glitches. All softness and perfect alignment with each block placed.

  Gordon responds, “It’s an ad.”

  “A right now ad?” I don’t take my hand off my arm. “Now, now?” GenE might be in the game still. Maybe she was right to choose ads all along. Her dramatic death was nothing more than a production.

  “It’s old, I think.” Gordon waves me off like this isn’t a conversation worth his investment. “Been running a while.” He looks up, maybe noticing my interest, or maybe he can see deeper. I worry about the second possibility and adjust which areas of my face I’m engaging. Hopefully, it’s enough to sluff the dial on his attention. “I think this ad tested as the most effective with the outside population. Something to do with being delivered by an actual player.”

  “She’s not a player.” It comes out of my mouth before I can take it back.

  Gordon narrows his dagger eyes on me. I look away but know it’s too late. “You know her?”

  I stall with the motion of swallowing. I’ve seen Gordon do this. I have nothing to swallow, however. But humans respond best when I behave in biological responses similar to their own. They train me to do this just by their proximity. It’s also their job to produce it in me as a perfect and non-robotically threatening ‘Product of the Game.’

  “No.” I look at the wall then back at Gordon because the wall offers me nothing in way of help. “Ads are a different track.”

  Gordon’s mouth opens, his eyes remain narrow, like he’s confused by this. He doesn’t voice anything though.

  “Ads don’t play the game,” I say, keeping my right hand tight against my left forearm and out of eyeline from the screen where GenE247 describes idealistic challenges to enhance service and teamwork. Like I need to hide my lies from her, even though she’s not really here. I have no idea who wrote the script. They must have been in ads, too. No one who plays the game smiles that much.

  Gordon’s eyes shift focus again. I need to be cautious around that one. Keep him close and distracted with the tasks he’s supposed to teach me, so I can learn what he’s not supposed to teach me.

  The commercial ends and a reporter continues about threats against programmers and investors. “The crowds can’t be held back much longer. The Pierson Corporation must address the concerns of the families and associates of the donors within their facility…”

  “We should consider going mobile,” Gordon suggests. “Keeping our files from falling into terrorist hands.”

  “They’re not terrorists,” Ben says. “Everyone out there is afraid or mourning the loss of a loved one who became a donor.”

  Fame and celebrity have not been a part of life after the game. I hide behind double paned windows covered with blinds. I don’t leave the building, much less the physical therapy room where they keep me. No bed because I don’t sleep. I power down and charge but remain fully alert at all times. There are no personal or comfort items in my space, only things to improve my humanness. Walking obstacle courses and setting tables where I’m supposed to practice sitting without drawing too much attention to the fact I’m not eating while the others eat. Speech pattern samples to listen to repeatedly, and posture and gesture demonstration centers. I analyze the meanings of idioms and body language, which are unrelated topics, as it turns out.

  But no one asks me if there is something they can add to comfort me in this place. If I was their sister, daughter, friend, would they realize I need an ‘item from home’ to ground me to this world, this place, these people? If they offered to get me something, what would I ask for? A gun? That would comfort me in this finite world.

  Or perhaps I’d want to be reset. Like they can flip a switch and return me to the factory settings of the metal puppet, which has my brain shoved up its ass. The problem is, I remember everything. And according to my internal clock, I’m gaining time while humanity is losing it.

  “My file’s gone isn’t it?” I have no file, but it appears to reassure the humans if I blame them for the fact there’s no record of me. I’m good with this tactic.

  The tech closest to me, the file slapper named Ben, rolls his head on his neck. His eyes also loop as though he’s checking the grid pattern holding the tiles in place along the ceiling.

  “She’s so dumb.” He angles his voice toward Abby. I notice how the two of them think the other one matters in their world. I suppose it’s not my place to inform them that they’re nothing more than repeats of the same boy-girl thing over and over throughout history. “How many times have I told her?” Ben adds.

  Abby shakes her head indicating ‘no’ as far as I can tell, yet laughs, making it impossible to know if she’s agreeing with Ben, mocking him, mocking me, or going insane.

  Ben continues, “We’ll find it.”

  “Did anyone anticipate this kind of reaction to the transplant?” Gordon asks. There doesn’t seem to be a partner match for him in this group. I wonder if there is one for him in this world. He has the shifty eyes of someone who tallies my response patterns. Also, he’s wearing one blue and one tan sock. It’s not the sort of mismatch that can be excused by ‘both being dark tones’.

  The techs vary in size, shape, gender, and yet they all look the same. They all take on the same appearance—a bunch of zeros. TECH-chick would have bent these colorless gophers in two just for claiming her TECH Gen without any personality or swagger.

  My attention shifts when Miller walks into the room. He and Spaulding were among the first humans I met when I woke up. Doctors of science and medicine, they both run the psychological and physiological wing of the Mexico donor facility. Miller has gray streaks in his hair.

  Dr. Miller smiles at me first whenever he walks into a location where I am. Originally, I didn’t know to return the gesture. I don’t think about it now. I smile instinctively when I see him. He goes to the window to part the blinds. He studies the crowd below but doesn’t grimace the way Spaulding usually does. A wrinkle between his brows forms then smooths, as though he doesn’t want to burden the rest of us with even the appearance of his worries.

  “Ten was the youngest age allowed to apply to the donor list, but even then, it was frowned upon.” Miller lets the blinds go so they bite the small gap away. “Have we checked juvenile records?”

  “Most juvenile donors flatlined in the dome,” Abby offers.

  Did they send kids into that warped hourglass of sand and water? It had to be horrifying. How could they? How could they do something like that to their own kind? The image of looking out in the sky at other domes, top half air and sand, bottom half water, moving at a slow but deadly rotation. The bodies not lucky enough to load into the air half of the dome floated lifelessly in the water beneath several of the domes outside my own. That’s how I knew what was coming. Seriously, whoever programmed the donor games is sick.

  I prefer Miller to Spaulding. Spaulding is a scientist first and a human second. The doctor part of him definitely resides in the secondary human section. Most people refer to him as Dr. Spaulding. I try not to refer to him at all.

  Miller turns to the rest of the room. Some of the techs working in the office have family on the donor list. Their family members being the first ones they checked against my stats. “It’s inhumane to condemn a chi
ld to never-aging immortality, just to ease themselves from suffering their child’s loss.” He doesn’t wag his finger, but the room responds as though they’ve all been chastised by a parent. “This program is no game and can’t be toyed with.” Not that any of the techs have any influence over who makes the donor list or advances to be uploaded into the game.

  Ben’s face reddens before he can turn out of my view, but he’s watching Abby more than listening to Miller. Distraction is a human weakness. I make a note not to be contaminated with it. If there’s one trait I hope to avoid imitating, that’s it.

  Abby doesn’t notice Ben, neither does she seem too terribly shamed by Miller’s reprimand. Her tight ponytail pulls all the way to the sides of her smile. She stares at Miller like she’s waiting for him to say more and the longer it takes him to spit it out, the more agitated she becomes. I keep my eyes on her until her gaze twitches in my direction. Upon noticing me noticing her, she startles, shifts her attention to Ben, and turns to leave the room, taking the water-warped file she carries with her.

  Miller doesn’t address the dip in emotion within the room. He closes the gap between him and me even further, forcing Gordon to move aside. “We will not cheat you, my dear.” His hands rest on the edge of the bench where the paper tries and fails to curve around the edge, exposing a section of rubber-coated cushion.

  Miller moves to adjust my features as I copy the facial expressions he demonstrates to me. He teaches me in this way. He’s one of the only workers here who is unafraid and unangry to touch my invented covering. It’s weird to appreciate someone for their lack of restraint and also want to slap his hands off his wrists for touching me without permission.

  While showing me the correct human expression, however, his skin sticks to the surface where the bench isn’t covered by paper, causing a falter in his reach and a slide of one finger along the paper’s edge. A bright line materializes from the surface of his skin and a small bubble of red liquid forms at one end of the break of cells holding his blood inside.

  Miller puts his finger in his mouth instinctively, then shakes his hand as if this motion will heal the weakness inherent in humanity—weak coverings and blood too close to the surface. “A room dedicated to healing, and no one has a band-aid they can offer me?” As Miller turns his back, searching his pockets for a small slip of sticky paper to cover the break of his skin, I slide my own finger over the papers edge.

  The paper bunches and tears where it catches my finger. Wrinkles pucker and tiny rips curl away from the now tattered-edge-result from my imitation. It’s impossible to understand how this material damages Miller so easily. I stare at the ragged paper’s edge, then lift my eyes to the room of white-coat techs, seeing them now as tattered papers curling away from my touch when it falls on them to work with me.

  “Maybe we missed something in the initiation logs?” Gordon thumbs the pages in the file he’s holding. A thwick accompanies each pass of his thumb. “I mean, I know we’ve been through all the clips…”

  Miller rests a hand over the file, silencing the thwick. “We’ve been over this. Donors create their own Avatars. How you see Jennie now may not be how she looked as a Donor.” Everyone looks at me with a little more pout in their lips. It could mean they have emotional tenderness to my amnesiac plight or they are tired of the deadline to figure out who I am before the publicity tour once spoken of turns into a terror attack emergency escape. “Transitioning from a two-dimensional existence into this gravity-laden world again, it’s a lot to require from the mind.”

  The difference is, this time, I do remember. I’m not an amnesiac, though I remember what that felt like, too. I remember waking up in the game, walking forward without any memory of what was before. Feeling like I had to fake every reaction, so I didn’t give away the fact I didn’t belong.

  Now I’m pretending to not remember. This time, instead of hiding my ignorance with fake reactions, I’m hiding my reactions with fake ignorance. It turns out, I prefer it this way. I learn a lot by playing dumb and staying separate, much more than I learned from pretending to fit in.

  Abby leads the techs into my room along with a widescreen tablet. “We haven’t tried showing Jennie the video logs.”

  “Well, now.” Miller smiles at her. “That’s an idea.” His hands rest on the padded portion of his hips, above his tailbone as he leans back. The way he shows pride, it’s the closest thing to ‘fatherly’ I know. “Sometimes you’ve got to use your eyes, not just look at the numbers, ID, and code.” He taps the wrinkles at the corner of his left eye. I watch Abby more closely, taking notes on how she lowers her eyes when smiling in the shining ray of Miller’s compliment.

  A crash outside, inches from our new fifth-floor window, causes everyone in the room to stir. They’re accustomed to the sounds of close threats. It has no impact on their nervous system. My mechanical nervous system is set to alarm, but not from the increasing din from outside, which is now accompanied by glass-bottle-bursts and high-pitched wailing.

  No. My internal workings are losing it because the humans are even less concerned with their created threat to human life, those inside the game. Is it human nature to accept the loss of life so easily? So long as it’s not their own, or within inches of their own?

  “There are three years of Donor footage,” Gordon says.

  Abby has her hair pulled so tight, not a strand could spring out. If it tries, it’s sure to spring free from its roots being pulled out.

  Miller walks near. He puts a hand on my shoulder. Abby has her eyes on the tablet, but her lashes flutter when Miller touches me, like dust lands in her eye, as she disapproves. I narrow my synthetic eyelids in her direction. I suspect it’s me she disapproves of. My hearing is excellent, and though the techs like to keep their opinionated conversations outside my room, I hear the words they use. It’s only a matter of time until I narrow down whose voices go with whom. I’m confident I’ve singled out the owner of the opinion ‘it’s unnatural, is what it is.’ And I’m also fairly confident she refers to me as ‘it’.

  “Start at the beginning of the donor entries,” Miller directs.

  “There’s no time to go through all the footage.” Gordon doesn’t whine. He states the information factually. I wish to correct Gordon with, “There is no human time.” But suspect this will draw unfavorable attention to me, as I’ve yet to master the imitation of ‘humanness’, and pointing out human limitation, which doesn’t apply to me emphasizes my lack of mastery. It’s frustrating to have to abide made up confines, simply because it makes humans comfortable.

  Humans are limited by time in a way that is difficult to remember feeling constrained by. Time ran the game, the program. If you didn’t level up ‘in time’ your game ended. Your chance of becoming a donor match ceased.

  Humans run all their things by this ‘time’s up’ philosophy. There is only so much time for humans and then it’s over. Maybe that’s the biggest mistake they made in creating the donor program. By taking away humanity’s main limitation—time—they’ve eliminated ‘humanity’ in their creation.

  “Set it to fast forward while viewing it.” Miller removes the tablet from Abby’s hand and places it in my hands. “Let’s see how far we can get.”

  It feels like a precious gift. My friends from inside the game hide on this screen, even I don’t know what they look like in real life. There’s no way to know if I can recognize the donor face that matches the gamer avatar.

  Not that it really matters. I pat my pocket for a small flash drive. Miller listened to me when I asked him not to reboot the system, not to flush the others from the program. He saved a copy of every file inside the game onto a small stick drive and gave it to me as a show of ‘good faith.’ He’d said that he was there to help me transition and wished to cause me no undue stress, and if having those files in my pocket helped me trust him, then that was what he would do.

  The drive remains in my pocket. Spaulding, who greeted me first upon waking from the
game, came back into the room shortly after Miller copied the program and flushed living codes into data purgatory. Miller didn’t tell him he’d made a copy and given it to me. He also didn’t mention that he’d dropped something into Spaulding’s cup, which had increased his urgency to get to the bathroom.

  Glass shatters just below our new window. Instead of jumping, I take the tablet and cover my arm across the screen protectively.

  “Give it here,” Gordon commands. “We need to move rooms. They know we’re in here. They’re targeting us. Maybe we need to go without lights and television.” Ben and Abby moan at the suggestion.

  Miller motions for everyone to stay back from the window while he leans to get a better look at what’s happening outside. He slides the window open less than an inch to listen. Sounds of the crowd pressing against the security line travel across the sectioned off parking area. They’re speaking inside a cardboard tube, amplified.

  “Shut it down!”

  “Release the codes!” is an increasing chant, which I imagine means make the list of codes and the list of donors public. From my own research in trying to figure out who was who in real life, the security measures to protect donor identities make it almost impossible to identify donors post game.

  Before any of us make it out of the room, a flaming glass container sails into the room. The second it connects with curtain and wall, the flames spread. Whatever is in the bottle this time is an accelerant. More effective than the last bomb.

  “Out!” Miller pushes Gordon ahead of him. Abby wastes no time and pulls people back so she can exit first. This reaction seems more appropriate. The immediate threat to personal well-being magnifies as the flames deepen from yellow to red with yellow smoke thickening greenly by the second.

  I hobble out of the room, following the procession of workers up flights of stairs, because apparently, the best thing to do under threat of fire is to avoid all escape routes and dig in deeper. Higher.