vN The First Machine Dynasty(94)

It was why Javier came to the Electric Sheep, why he found Amy and followed her over land and under water.



That time, for the first time, he felt like a machine.



He never really noticed the failsafe before that. It was just a part of him, a function that kept him and all the other vN running. Its processes faded from his awareness and he thought of it as a solitary mechanism, the way humans called the complex and dynamic relationship between the air in their lungs and the deep rich colour of their blood "breathing". Like all features, it worked best when it went unseen. But that time, with the divinity student, he felt it. He felt the helpless pull when the other man smiled. He knew he'd wind up on his knees sometime in the next few hours. He'd felt the reward nodes of his network ping him appreciatively when he made the other man come. But the reward didn't feel like a reward. It felt like a by-product.



Organic women had told him about orgasms like this, when they talked about the person they had just left. It's just what happens if you keep hitting the right buttons, they said. I felt like a fucking console.



He'd wondered if he were broken, or defective, or otherwise compromised, when the other man's head came up and he smiled and asked if Javier was enjoying himself. How could he not enjoy himself? Why wasn't he? Why was he thinking about another vN at a time like this? The human was a good one, from the dimples on his face to those in his back, just below his belt, and he could sing the Song of Solomon in the original Hebrew, and he said that everyone of Javier's model must be having such a hard time out there on the road.



"Yeah, it's pretty hard, all right," Javier had said, grinning, because he just couldn't help himself.



And that was the crux of it: he just couldn't help himself. He knew that. Until that moment, he had lived with it, even enjoyed it. But as he laid his head on the other man's chest and listened to the squeezing of his heart, Javier found himself wondering when that organ would slow, how it would stop, whether it would be a clot or a hole or just the inevitable conclusion of a long history of organic decay. He wanted Amy fiercely then, desiring not her heart but its absence, the comforting silence of a body that would not age into decrepitude or abandonment.



He began his search the very next morning.



In the middle of the night, listening to the rain, Javier heard Amy stand up and begin pacing her room. He gave himself a good five minutes before he checked on her. She did this, sometimes – she woke up, adjusted things, went back to sleep. He had no idea if she even slept at all. Her body could remain still, but she continued processing all night, she and the island alone together, in constant dialogue about fixes and tweaks.



Jesus, but he was a jealous man.



He got up and made for her room. Her pacing ceased when he paused at her door, and she answered his question before he could ask it: "They've let my dad go. Early release." In the dark, he heard her frown before he actually saw it. "They really want to chip away at us, don't they?"



He entered the room and kept his voice quiet, so as not to wake Xavier. "You think they've sent him to spy on us?"



"Wouldn't you?"



His son found Amy's father first. They met on the path to the house. The path was new; Javier woke to find it spreading down from their door to the ocean, at which point Amy informed him that a secure slipcraft had been hired under her father's name to deliver him there. He'd filed all the permits necessary for island access. Amy needn't have worried about a hidden implant; the qualifiers on her father's release forced him to wear a tracer, and they both agreed it likely held more than the usual complement of surveillance.

Javier watched them, the organic man and the synthetic boy, from a hidden place in the trees. Amy's father looked so pale, his blood so red just under the surface of the skin, his movements so loose and wasteful compared to the economy of von Neumann energy differential. He needed a shave; sweat beaded in the ginger bristles of his beard. But when his bleary eyes settled on Xavier, he smiled Amy's smile: soft, a little tired, but deeply peaceful. Xavier straightened up as though that smile had poked him in the ribs.



The boy stuck one hand out. "I'm Xavier."



"Jack."



"I named myself after my granddad." The boy started walking up the hill. Jack followed. "Xavier was the first Jesuit to make it to Japan. That's how my granddad got the name. Our clade's boss, a long time ago, was really religious."



"I'm named after my father," Jack said. "His name was Jonathan."



Xavier nodded slowly, as though this were some deep and difficult truth to understand. Then he beamed. "So, you're a Junior too."