#mtukudzi

I

             An intrusion expert might take advantage of the Thorne Tower’s labyrinthine maintenance crawlways to sneak up to the top floor.  An extraction specialist might beg, borrow, or steal a lidar-stealthed VTOL and do a roof landing, carefully negotiating the layers of electronic and physical security to reach their objective and retrieve it.  A certain breed of aggressive contractor might simply get together a group of mercs and perform a frontal assault.

           Anna, however, is a grifter.

           So she walks up to the security desk at 0900, flashes a fake ID, and says, “Olympic City Quickline Courier Service.  I have a personal delivery for Julian Thorne.”

           The rent-a-cop looks her up and down, taking note of her appropriated Quickline uniform, sealed security case, and bust size, in that order.  He says, “Mister Thorne isn’t in yet.”

           “Work started an hour ago,” Anna says.  “CEO can’t even be assed to show up?”

           Sensing a fellow proletarian spirit, the man lowers his voice.  “Thorne can’t be assed to do anything around here.  The guy’s basically retired.  When you pay your own salary, I guess you can just stop trying.”

           Anna makes a convincingly disgusted face, simultaneously flipping her long, black hair over her left shoulder.  “Of course.”  Now she leans forward with a small, conspiratorial smile.  “Listen, I can’t just leave this thing at the front desk. I’ve got to have proof that either I gave it to him myself, or I deposited it in a secure location only he could access.”

           The rent-a-cop frowns.  “That’s rough.  Although, if only he’s supposed to be able to access the spot…”

           “…how am I supposed to leave the package?” Anna finishes. “I know, it’s dumb.”  Carefully, she leans in just a bit closer, to make sure her pheromonal enhancements are reaching him.  She paid thirty grand in an illegal gene-mod parlor for them; she’s damn well not letting them to go waste.

           By themselves, they won’t do shit, but the rent-a-cop is definitely feeling a certain working-class fervor about her situation, as well as – if the heat rising to his face is any indication – a good deal of admiration for her feminine charms.  Between that, and what the gene-modder called an “inhibition subverter” pheromonal array, he’s putty in her hands.

           “Listen,” he says.  “Custodial staff has all-access passes.  I can issue you a temporary one, good for an hour, so you can go drop that in his office.  It’s gene-marked to him, right?  None of the janitors would risk their jobs trying to open it anyway.”

           Anna flashes him her most dazzling smile.  “That would be amazing!  Thank you so much, Mister –” she glances at his analog nametag – “Sorenson.”

           “You can call me Mitch,” he says, trying to play himself off as nonchalant.  He’s inputting the request for the pass now.  “All my friends do.”

           “Thanks, Mitch,” she purrs as she takes the pass. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

           Hopefully he doesn’t lose his job over this.

           Maintenance pass in hand, Anna stares out the window of the glass-walled elevator at Olympic City, and the vast Martian landscape beyond its dome.

           The city – an urban sprawl of high, austere towers, pedways, vehicle lanes, suspended parks, and other vertical features necessitated by a sharply confined space – is busy this morning.  The light of the sun, weak and cold, filters through the pressure dome. It illuminates the waters of the Olympic River, which flows lazily down the side of the mountain through the city. Built into the west slope of Olympus Mons, the city has glorious sunsets, and sunrises hidden by the mountain.

           Anna has never been outside the dome.  Growing up on the streets, clawing her way through gangs and scumlords, means going this high up and seeing this vista is always a strange experience for her.

           The elevator chimes.  She’s on the top floor.  Two minutes later she’s inside Thorne’s enormous office, a sleek, marbled space of black and gold which is twice as big as her apartment in Fangcheng Ward.  His desk is real Earth oak.  The alien smell tickles her nostrils as she enters the room; scents tend to permeate the closed air-cycling systems of the city.  The west wall of the office is one enormous pane of smartglass, affording a gorgeous view of Olympic City while filtering out excess illumination and radiation.

           And yet, Anna thinks, he sits with his back to it.

           She settles herself on the side of the desk with the nice view, places her courier case on the oak surface, and opens it.

           The disguised invasion deck built into the case blazes to life.  Looking very much like a twenty-first-century laptop – Anna had a girlfriend who collected such things, once – its flatscreen display shows her a map of the surrounding wireless architecture, while a haptic-input lightboard coalesces at hand level.  Anna doesn’t have any computer-interface hardware in her body, so she needs the lightboard.

           There aren’t any obvious places on the desk for a dataport, but Anna taps a key and the deck does an instant scan, popping up a wireframe of the desk with a hidden compartment in the surface highlighted in gold. Anna presses down on an innocuous-looking bare patch, uncovered by knickknacks or flatpads.  The smooth oak surface rises into the air, revealing that it caps off a solid metallic column of blinking lights, parallel quantum processors, and at least three dataports.

           She plugs the invasion deck in and waits.

           Normally, the sophisticated attack programs within the semisentient deck can break through any firewall, even a corporate one, once she’s established a hardlink.  Something is different this time, however.  The deck starts flashing messages she’s never seen, error codes and warnings.  She tenses, mentally preparing herself to run.  Even if she had any formal computer education, security systems are run by AI these days.  No human has the reaction time or processing speed to hack anything anymore.  It’s all done AI-to-AI.

           A voice suddenly emanates from the office’s sound system.  “Don’t run,” it says.  Male, deep, tired, but a security AI could choose to sound this way if it wanted to. “I’m your employer.  Julian Thorne.”

           Anna darts her gaze around the room, knowing she should leave the deck and run.  But something roots her to the spot: a mixture, she decides, of curiosity and fear. “You hired me to steal your own corporate secrets?” she asks.  “That middleman screamed Santeau Corp.”

           “He was supposed to,” Thorne says.  “I hired you because you would have refused a simple request for a meeting.”  Now there is a pause, as though he’s formulating his next words.  “May I come out?  I give you my word I am unarmed and no harm will come to you.”

           Anna pauses, considering.  Her instincts tell her he’s on the level.  Something’s not right, but she doesn’t think he’s going to hurt her.

           At least, not yet.

           “Okay,” she says, taking a step away from the desk. “I’m trusting you here.”

           To her left, a blank section of black marble wall slides open.  An elderly gentleman, European ancestry, a little stooped, wearing a modern business suit in grey and blue, walks out.  He holds his hands out to his sides in a classically nonthreatening manner. “I assure you that you won’t need to use that,” he says, indicating the knife Anna has drawn from her right boot.

           “I appreciate the assurance,” Anna says with a faint smile.  “But I’m a young woman alone in an office with a very powerful man.  Some things don’t change with the advance of time.”

           “Wise words.”  Thorne begins making his way around to the large leather chair behind his desk, every movement exaggeratedly slow, even for an old man.  Anna lets him get there, but moves to the other side of the desk with him to be sure he doesn’t reach a hand beneath its lip or try to hit a hidden foot alarm.  It’s all pointless, of course, since a man as wealthy as Thorne could easily afford a neural implant that would let him trigger alarms with half a thought.

           He sighs contentedly as he sinks into the chair. “Ah, much better.  You get to my age, you get tired of having to stand constantly.”

           “Now that we’re all comfortable,” Anna says, “maybe you’d like to tell me what’s going on?”

           Thorne nods.  “Of course.”  He reaches, with excruciating slowness, into his suit jacket, and retrieves what looks like an off-yellow flatpad.  When he puts it on the desk, though, and it thumps rather than thuds, Anna realizes that it’s not a flatpad – it’s paper.  A paper folder, with more paper inside it.  She knows she should keep her eyes on Thorne, but this fascinates her. There’s no call for paper, not anymore. Everything is digital, everything.  She’s only ever seen paper in museums.

           Makes sense.  Nobody can hack paper.

           “That is your explanation,” Thorne says.

           Making a snap decision, Anna moves back to the other side of the desk, pulling the invasion deck’s hardlink to Thorne’s system. The beleaguered deck immediately shuts down, overwhelmed by whatever cutting-edge black IC Thorne has loaded. She passes the knife to her off-hand, grabs the folder, and starts flipping through it, trying not to let the strange feel of the paper distract her.

           The first thing she sees is a picture of her – a dossier, really, with information about her height, weight, age, known address, associates, a full psych profile.  But all the information is wrong.  The address is on the other side of the city, she’s never heard of any of the people she supposedly associates with, and while she suspects she’s not the most unbiased advocate for her own mental health, there’s no way she can be this crazy.  Even the vital statistics about her height and weight are off.

           Then she belatedly notices the name underneath her picture.

           Margaret Hoferer.

           “What is this?” she asks.

           “Keep reading,” Thorne says.

           She flips to the next page.  It’s another dossier, with another picture of her, though with a bob rather than her long hair.  Another set of wildly incorrect information.  And below the picture –

           Elisa Vandergriff.

           She starts flipping through page after page.  There is her face, again and again.  Different haircuts, different makeup, sometimes obvious physical augmentations like mecheyes or armor-skin, but always recognizably her own face.  Each time, a different name.  Eunice King.  Gina Howard.  Sonya Powers. Jeanette Floyd.  Dora Potter.  Rochelle Klein.  Eloise Richardson.

           “What is this?” she says again, a whisper this time.

           “Three years ago,” Thorne tells her, “a certain young woman named Kathleen Harrington applied for a high-level position at this company.  When it became clear during the background check that she had fabricated most of her credentials, she was told to never try that stunt with my corporation again, and that she should be very grateful we weren’t going to report her to the authorities.

           “Four months after that, another woman named Marjorie Mitchell applied for a similar position.  Naturally, during her background check, it became clear that she was Kathleen Harrington, with a new identity and some cosmetic updates, trying to get the same bug through decon twice.”

           Anna swallows.  “Except,” she says, “that she wasn’t.”

           Thorne nods.  “Correct.  They were entirely different women, which we had confirmed when we contacted the authorities to arrest Ms. Harrington and were told that she was already in custody for unrelated charges.”

           “And this wasn’t just you doing a search for her name on the solarnet,” Anna continues.  “A proper background check would look at retinal scans, fingerprints, dental records.”  She swallows. “DNA.”

           “In point of fact, no two people have the same retinas, fingerprints, or teeth,” Thorne says.  “Not even identical twins.  But you’re correct.  We did a DNA test, too.  And DNA doesn’t lie.  Ms. Harrington and Ms. Mitchell were, according to our results, the same person – genetically speaking, of course.”

           Anna wants to ask the next question, but the word is sticking in her throat.  Her entire world – her personal history, her very identity, is suddenly suspect.

           But when she left the Strykers, she told Damian that she was tired of taking orders.  Of being owned.  And she is not going to let this thing own her, no matter how much she wants to turn and flee Thorne’s office right now.

           She takes a deep breath.

           “Clones?” she asks.

           Thorne nods.  

           “That’s impossible.  Cloning is banned under HERCA.”

           “Consider this hypothetical scenario.  You are the kind of person who engineered hundreds of clones, and then seamlessly created identities for them, weaving them into the fabric of Olympic life.”  Thorne raises an eyebrow.  “Do you give more than half a moment’s thought to the Human Evolution Restriction and Control Act?”

           Anna sighs.  “No.”

           Thorne taps the stack of dossiers.  “After our findings on Ms. Harrington and Ms. Mitchell, both of whom clearly did not know one another and did not realize they were clones – a fact I withheld from both of them, judging that making them aware of the truth might cause them serious psychological harm – I had my head of security ‘do some digging,’ as someone in your line of work might put it.  This is the result: two hundred and fifty-six women, counting you.  All clones.”

           Anna swallows.  “Considering how I’m feeling at the moment, I understand your point about psychological harm,” she says, both her throat and her tone dry.  “Why did you feel the need to tell me, out of all of them?”

           “Two months ago,” Thorne replies, “all of them disappeared. Over a three-day period, they vanished en masse.”  He raises his finger to point at her.  “Except for you.”

           Anna feels a drop of sweat work its way down the back of her neck.

           “It took five weeks for Irena – my aforementioned head of security – to confirm that all of these women except you were, in fact, gone,” Thorne continues.  “It took another two weeks to confirm your location and set up this job to ensure you would come here, so I could meet you in person.  

           “And I assume this last week was you spending time getting to know my building’s security and layout.  Well done, by the way; we never once detected you, despite knowing you were coming.  If you hadn’t decided on the direct approach, bamboozling poor Mister Sorenson into giving you that pass – thus giving our security AI a clear view of your face – you might have caught me with my pants down, so to speak.”

           Taking a deep breath, Anna asks the next question. “What’s your interest?  Why do you care about these people – about us, I guess is the right word?  To be blunt, you’re a rich old man with a very successful corporation to his name.  People like you go ice-fishing on Ganymede and write memoirs.”

           Now Thorne gives her a thin smile.  “Because, miss, I’m too eccentric to be happy with ice-fishing and memoir-writing.  This situation, if I may be blunt in turn, fascinates me.  Who made you, and for what purpose? I have to know.  It’s one of two questions for which I can’t simply buy the answer.  The second question, of course, being: what makes you different, that you didn’t vanish eight weeks ago?”

           Anna takes a deep breath.  Part of her wants to leave, to forget everything she’s heard here and just get as far away as she can.  Leave Olympic City, leave Mars.

           But she will never be able to let go of what she now knows.  And she understands, in the core of her being – her soul, if she believed in such things – that she has to find out the truth.

           “Okay,” she says, placing the knife down on the desk between them.  “Let’s talk facts, then.  You didn’t just hire me to steal from your own company because I’d say no to a meet. You hired me to test me.  To see what I’m made of.  You want an agent, an investigator, someone who tells you what’s going on and does what you expect them to.  And it has to be me, because I’m the one remaining clone out of the original set of two hundred and fifty-six.  I’m the only person in the solar system, the universe, who can get you the answer you’re so curious about.  Yes?”

           “All true,” Thorne replies with a nod.

           “Then I want to make something crystal clear here.  If you want my help figuring this out, you take me on as a partner.  You give me authority, you give me freedom, you give me resources, and you let me do things my way.”  Anna leans forward, gives him a rare, chilly smile.  “Because I am never letting some entitled asshole think he owns me again.”

           Thorne leans forward in his big leather chair, never breaking eye contact.  He extends his aged, gnarled hand.

           “Deal.”

           Anna hesitates, only for a moment – and shakes his hand.

II

           Half an hour later, Anna watches Irena Matsuo Mtukudzi beat three men to death.

           They’re not real men; it’s a simulation, and Anna is watching on a flatpad, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive. Thorne’s head of security is a six-and-a-half-foot, hyper-lethal genejob, with steely whipcord muscles and brilliant green mecheyes.  Her hair is done in locs, which are pulled back and held at the crown of her skull in a practical ponytail.  Sweat beads on her deep-bronze skin as she slams the last of her artificial opponents to the ground with bone-cracking force.

           Anna and Thorne are seated in Mtukudzi’s windowless, undecorated office, across from the security chief’s physical body.  She is reclining in a comfortable-looking chair on the other side of her desk.  Her eyes are closed, and a forest of wires and leads sprout from a small grey box on the desk to snake into a port at the base of her skull.  More rest around her forehead, connected by flat plastic sensor-transmitters.  She’s wearing a black business suit which is tight on her powerful frame.

           Full-spectrum virtual immersion is not a new technology, but it is an expensive one.  Anna lacks the hardware, as well as the money to get it installed.  She wonders how authentic it actually feels.

           “She’s good,” Anna says, deciding to go for understatement.  “Where did you find her?”

           “She fled to Olympic City from a transhumanist commune on Titan,” Thorne replies, then sips at his drink – some kind of disgusting-smelling nutrimix that is probably healthier than anything Anna has ever consumed. “She’s the child of eight different people, genetically speaking.  Tailor-made. Their vision of human evolution’s future.”

           “So why is she here instead of leading a cult?  You said she ran away?”

           Thorne nods.  “For much the same reasons you are here now, I think.  She refused to let her ‘parents’ decide her destiny for her. She refused to be owned.”

           The simulation fades out on the flatpad’s screen. Anna places it back down on Mtukudzi’s desk.  She can certainly understand that.

           For a moment, the two of them sit there, Anna not sure what to say next, Thorne seemingly content to drink his disgusting health shake.  Then the other woman’s eyes begin to flutter.  It seems that Irena Matsuo Mtukudzi is coming out of it.

           “You are a flatterer, Julian,” she says, opening those neon-green eyes.  The irises luminesce slightly in the dimly-lit office, and Anna can see Mtukudzi’s pupils expand, impossibly tiny servomotors widening the aperture to compensate for the low light.  Her voice is crisp, deep, and laced with a faint Xhosa accent.  “I ‘refused to be owned?’  I was a twelve-year-old who ran away from home to spite her parents.”

           “Children often do mature things for immature reasons,” Thorne says.  “Maturity is simply immaturity, better articulated.”

           “You are full of so much shit, you know.” Mtukudzi rises to her full, extremely impressive height.  The wires and leads snake away from her head and out of the back of her neck of their own accord, retreating into the small grey box.  

           She extends a hand to Anna.  “You must be Anna.  A pleasure.”

           Anna rises in turn, which still means she is a full fifteen inches shorter than Mtukudzi.  She shakes the proffered hand, craning her neck to make eye contact. Her instincts tell her that a woman like this – a professional, a self-made person, admittedly a bit of a walking spectacle – probably responds best to direct, but polite.  “Sorry to have come into your office while you were under.  Mr. Thorne claimed it was okay.  You could still hear us in there?”

           Mtukudzi gives her a thin, easy smile.  “It is indeed okay.  To answer your question, my brain is capable of toggling at will between different sensory input streams, whether they are coming from a computer or my own body.  I can choose which signals to select, and which to filter out.  Sims are only as effective as I wish them to be.”

           “Frankly put, Irena is my single most valuable employee,” Thorne says.  “Genius-level intellect, eidetic memory, only needs two hours of sleep a night, enhanced strength and reflexive capacity –”

           “Essentially,” Mtukudzi cuts him off, still addressing herself to Anna, “I am everything HERCA was passed to prevent.  It seems we may be alike, in that way.”

           “I’m sure we’d be a hit at Purity Balls,” Anna says. “So, I guess we’re going to be working together on this… quest.” It feels strange to say, but it is a quest.  Thorne’s question – who made you, and for what purpose? – keeps echoing in her head.  “Before we get down to it, do you mind if I ask –”

           “Why I beat simulated people to death for fun?” Mtukudzi finishes for her.  She sits back down, then executes a little full-body shiver.  Anna recognizes that shiver: it’s something that contractors with machine-wired nervous systems do after they’ve been sitting still for an extended period, to keep their capacitors from overcharging.  She wonders how much other hardware Mtukudzi has tucked away in that genengineered body of hers.

           “Pretty much that,” Anna says, returning to her own seat.

           Mtukudzi raises a single, elegantly sculpted eyebrow. “I have many anger issues.  From my childhood.  It helps me relax.”

           Anna flashes her a weak smile.  “Whatever works, right?”

           “Indeed.  Now, if you will forgive the presumption, I already have a possible avenue of inquiry.”

           “Please,” Anna says.  “I’m a freelance grifter, not a detective.  Having somewhere to start would be great.”

           Mtukudzi taps a long finger against the surface of the desk.  The gesture pops up a haptic lightboard and holodisplay.  She ignores the lightboard, instead turning her head slightly to the right to let the wire snaking out of the grey box slide into her skull port. Windows start flashing across the holodisplay, summoned by Mtukudzi’s thoughts.  After only a few seconds, the flashing stops, and the display rotates toward Anna.

           She finds herself looking at a picture of a middle-aged man, captured in mid-stride on a busy public pedway.  His features suggest an East Asian ancestry, and his black hair is cropped close.

           “Doctor Zhao Bifang,” Mtukudzi says.  “Foremost living expert on cloning.  Obviously not a popular man, thanks to HERCA; he is wanted on every world in the system, for crimes against evolutionary unity.”

           Anna glances at Thorne, but the old man is just sitting back, drinking his nutrimix.  It doesn’t surprise her that he’s not bothered by blatant illegality on the part of his employees – he runs a megacorporation, after all – but it’s good to have it confirmed.  “You think he can help?”

           Mtukudzi shrugs.  “I did what research I could into the cloning process when Julian first asked me to investigate this phenomenon.  But I am far from an expert.  I believe Dr. Zhao represents our best chance to find out, frankly, how you were made.”

           It isn’t a pleasant thought, Anna reflects, but it’s a good one.  She’s never known who her parents were; her earliest memories are of being on the streets of Olympic City, stealing food and picking pockets at eight years old.  

           Did she come out of a tank?  A tube?

           “Do we know where he is?” she asks.

           Now the security chief smiles, revealing perfectly even, sparkling white teeth.  “In prison.”

           Anna feels her heart sink.  “If he’s in Diyu, or Tartaros –”

           “He was arrested for operating an aircar while intoxicated,” Mtukudzi says, a mischievous twinkle in her artificial eyes. “Under a false name.  On Luna.”

           Suddenly, Anna understands why the other woman seems so amused.  “So they wouldn’t have run his biometrics.  The Coalition cut Luna’s solarnet access in revenge for their independence referendum.”

           “Precisely.  Which, in turn, made Luna the perfect place for a fugitive to hide.”  Mtukudzi snorts.  “The local authorities processed him and tossed him into Lunar Penitentiary Housing and Rehabilitation.”

           Even Anna, who has never left Olympic City, knows about that place.  “Known affectionately as Shitville, right?”

           “For the sort of people inhabiting it, as well as its notorious plumbing difficulties.”

           Thorne makes his first noise in the last five minutes, which is a braying, old-man laugh.  “It’s not too late to decide you’d rather stay on Mars, Anna.”

           Anna gives him a crooked grin.  “It absolutely is too late, and you know it.  How are we getting there?  You might be shocked to hear this, but I don’t own a space-capable vehicle.”  She pauses. “Or any vehicle, actually.  Mostly I just steal them.”

           “We can take my ship,” Mtukudzi says.  “It is an OmniDynamic Ashfell-Kruger Multi-Modal Personal Assault Transport.”

           Anna gives her a slow nod, complete with a cool smile. “Excellent.”

           Mtukudzi returns the cool smile.  “You have no idea what that is.”

           “We’ve known one another less than ten minutes and you can already tell when I’m lying.  Should I be worried?”

           “Only if you intend to lie to me.”  Mtukudzi rises with another telltale shiver.  “It is small, fast, and capable of fighting much larger craft if necessary.  Its name is the Izanami.”  She looks at Thorne.  “Anything else, Julian?”

           He shakes his head.  “Keep me informed, but you and Anna are in charge.  As per my agreement with her, you will have whatever resources I can supply, but I am not in command.  I just want to be told the answer, when you find it.”

           “Very good.”  Mtukudzi nods at Anna.  “Shall we?”

           Anna gets to her feet.  “Yes.  Let’s.”

           This, she reflects, is not how she expected this job to go.

           Sword of the Penitent Juliana Invidia opens her eyes.

           She is alone in the dark, as she always is when she is called.  She hangs, suspended from her cross, the restraints biting into her wrists, ankles, and the skin below her ribs.

           YOU ARE CALLED.

           The voice does not come from any one location.  It emanates from all around her, from within her. It vibrates her teeth.

           YOU WILL SERVE AGAIN.

           The restraints snap open.  She drops to the floor, landing in a heap.  Muscles which have not been used in years scream in protest.

           “Who,” she rasps, her voice dry and hoarse, “is my target?”

           The face filters into her mind, like cool water flowing in to fill an empty cistern.

           ANNA.

           “I obey,” she says.  The words hurt her throat in a way that has nothing to do with the dehydration or the tautness of her vocal chords.

           SHE IS ABOARD THE IZANAMI.  IT WILL ARRIVE ON LUNA IN THREE DAYS.

           Light floods the room as a door opens.  Heavy footfalls sound as the Brothers come to collect her, to make her whole and ready once again.

           YOU WILL FIND HER.  SHE WILL NOT LEAVE LUNA ALIVE.

           “I obey,” she says again.

           The Brothers take her out into the light, into the harsh cold space of needles and fluids.  Clear crystal tones fill her mind, purging weakness, restoring clarity.

           “Anna,” she whispers as the neural helm is slowly lowered onto her face.  “We are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth we shall return.  For so did God ordain when he created us, saying, ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’  All of us go down to dust, yet even at the grave we make our song –”