vN The First Machine Dynasty(16)

Javier curled his lip under his top teeth. He shook his head. "No, Amy." He stretched his hand out into the sun. "Photosynthesis is something only my clade can do."





She and the baby lay in the grass while Javier planned her first pregnancy.



"First you should find a nice human," he said, pacing back and forth before a little fire of twigs he'd built. "Someone who'll take care of you. Lots of vN chicks do that. Your mom, for one. Anyway, you settle down, and then iterate like there's no tomorrow."



Amy looked down at Junior. Already he seemed capable of focusing on her. His huge, dark eyes regarded her calmly. Amy wondered if maybe he saw Granny waiting, like a spider at the centre of her web, behind her eyes.



All your children will be stained with me. And your children's children. I will live forever in their bones.



"I'm not sure I want to iterate."



"Why not?" Javier asked. He flopped down beside her, picked up a foil pouch of vN juice, and sucked it back. "You're tough. You can take it."



Amy curled further into herself. The sun still felt good, and the grass, and the presence of life all around them, organic and synthetic both. They were in a place meant for families. She smelled smoke and heard laughter. High up in the trees sat a lost Frisbee the colour of cheap nail polish. Somewhere, someone was missing it. Maybe they were even thinking about it right now, like she was. If she concentrated on this possibility, she could almost forget the presence dwelling at the edges of her mind.



"What if something's wrong with me?" Amy asked slowly. "What if I'm… messed up?"



Javier sucked bubbles from the pouch. "Messed up how? You're perfect." He frowned. "Well, aside from being a whiner, and a bad driver, and–"



"You're not helping." She rolled over onto her stomach. "I mean, shouldn't my repair mods have rejected your stemware? I just adopted photosynthesis like… like a virus, or something."



"It is a virus. My pigment cells are programmed to simulate the activity of cyanophages in ocean algae. Maybe that includes turning hostiles to friendlies." Javier crumpled up the foil in his fist. "Who cares how it happened? The important thing is, you should iterate ASAP. Spread my seed around."



See? He agrees with me.



Amy scowled. "You don't even know I'll pass on your trait. This might just be a phase, or something."



It's not. He's inside you, now. Just like me. Forever.



"Does this mean I'm part of your clade, now?"



Javier blinked suddenly, like he'd been thinking about something very far away. "Uh… I don't know." He rolled over onto his stomach. "Our skin was only a prototype when our clade started working in Costa Rica. That's why my uncles made sure my dad could leave; they wanted to preserve the trait. So you're the first female model that I know of who carries it. That probably makes you a whole new clade."



Amy liked the sound of that. "Do you think I could start sampling other vN? Mixing them all up inside myself until I came up with something… awesome?"



"More awesome than what you've got, now?" Javier asked. He pulled a blade of grass between his fingers and began peeling it into shreds.



"Look, I know your trait is really special, but–"



"I meant the total disaster you caused back there," Javier said. "You annihilated your clademates. I've never seen anything like it. How did you do it?"



Tell him. You're a born killer. A top predator. He's not safe with you.



Amy pillowed her head on her arms. "I don't remember." She eyed him. "Why'd you come back for me?"



Javier visibly suppressed his laughter. "For you?" He reached into his back pocket and took out two folds of bills – the ones the ranger had given them last night. "Come on. Give me some credit."



"You rolled me for cash?"



"I thought you'd be dead! You weren't gonna need it!"



"Oh, so you're a graverobber. That's so much better."



"It's not graverobbing if you didn't die. Which you didn't." Javier made a show of counting on his fingers. "That's twice I've saved your ass, now. You're racking up a pretty huge tab."



Amy sat up and folded her arms. "Well, it's a good thing you stole my money, then!" She pushed herself up off the ground and started walking.





The campground featured constantly forking paths that liked to hide themselves behind trees, the likes of which Amy had never seen before. This was good – she needed the time alone. While looking for some sort of interface tucked in amid the trees, she had rehearsed telling her mom and dad what had happened, but there was too much to tell: her new body and its new traits, Granny, Javier. She had no idea why she'd gotten so angry with him, earlier. It wasn't like she could really complain. She rolled bodies for cash all the time in games. It was part of good scavenging, and Javier had already proved himself a great scavenger. It just stung a little bit, to be on the other side of the equation. It meant he thought of her as a thing and not a person, like she was just some stupid little in-game AI with no thoughts or feelings. She'd come to expect that from certain humans, but not her fellow vN.