Echoes of Our Legacy

There was no way it could be anything but a dream. 

Freyr tried to slow it down, to somehow focus on what the dream was spitting out, but it didn’t seem to help very much. He saw a thick, brown tree with gnarled roots. Old and yet vibrant. He heard a sweet voice speak.

“Our tree.”

And then, practically overlaid on top of the tree before taking that imagery over, he saw the moon through a destroyed part of a building. Thick smoke obscured most of the sky and frayed wires sparked as they swayed above him. Frantic shouts pierced through the noise of footsteps and screams.

“He’s still alive!”

There was a warm weight in his hand. He looked down and noticed someone’s hand resting in his. Its presence was somehow exhilarating.

The same sweet voice as before said, “Always.”

Warm blood seeped out from a deep gash in his hand. Bones were on full display with skin and muscle heavily dangling from them, barely hanging on by threadlike fascia.

A bored male voice said, “Scan complete.”

The smell of verdant grass filled his nostrils, and the sweet voice called his name so very softly.

“Freyr…”

He realized it was a man’s voice. Almost at the same time, an all-encompassing iron scent overpowered his sense of smell. It was smothering him while a man’s cold, disjointed voice seemed to be reading aloud.

“Overwrite failure…multiple errors…”

Ever so briefly, a smiling face appeared but he couldn’t focus on it before it was gone again in a white-hot flash.

The sweet voice screamed his name.

White, bright lights above blinded him. A haughty feminine voice said, “Wipe it all.” Another voice spoke, or perhaps it was the same one, “Blank slate.”

Freyr’s internal clock forced his eyes open into slits. The utilitarian bedroom was dark, and he remained immobile for a few seconds. Again. I’ve been having that sort of fragmented dream often lately. Could some of that have been from my past? Before the attack? He tried to recall each distinct piece of the recent dream. Trees and grass. Someone kind. Then clinical things mixed in. Blood. Lights. His internal systems jolted his right shoulder as if to urge him to get up. “I have to relieve Jett.”

Steam hissed while some far-off, metallic objects sounded a few odd clangs and chinks as they moved. Freyr made note of those, though the drone of large cooling fans escaped his notice entirely. His ears perked at occasional whooshes of coolant as well, newly flushed into one of the many closed loop liquid cooling systems. The delicate, important hardware and systems, including the interconnected Artificial Intelligences that kept the country going, were safest underground. Here, in Freyr’s workplace, the equipment was away from the fickle temperament of mother nature.

The groaning of a metal door was another noise added to the familiar cacophony of sounds as Freyr made his way on gray concrete through the labyrinthine underground installation in Nexus City. The blinking lights of various computer systems inlaid into the dark walls glinted off the young man’s white, skin-tight suit as he moved with ease down a narrow hallway off to the side of the main corridor. His black hair, falling just above his silver-white eyes, swayed along with the air currents, swishing this way and that as he walked on.

It wasn’t long before he reached his destination, a room with a simple sign displaying ‘Debug 116.’ The door slid aside with the blink of a green light as he approached.

Inside sat a man similarly clad in a white suit, his synthetic, blue eyes reflecting a cascade of neon syntax from the array of screens in front of him. He sat perfectly still, wires from his flipped-up fingertips connected directly to the terminal his hands rested on. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe; processing load hadn’t tripped his cooling threshold. “You’re late.” His voice, coming from a mechanical voice box, was dutifully replicated to match his original biological one.

“Hello, Jett. I’m only four seconds behind schedule,” Freyr replied, his own larynx vibrating with the same engineering.

Jett chuckled. “I’ve been trying not to overwork myself, so I don’t have to spend as much time in Maintenance tomorrow. I’d rather be enjoying Off Day.”

Utter dread churned inside Freyr at mention of Maintenance. The inability to move while the device worked always elicited terror in him, but he shoved the fear aside. He had work to do and Maintenance was something to worry about tomorrow. Lines of code suddenly stopped scrolling as Jett disconnected from the terminal and stood, his fingertips closing with a distinct ‘click.’

Freyr moved to immediately take the vacated seat, but Jett’s hand snapped out and grabbed his arm.

“I’m going to the Observation Deck tomorrow.” His hand slid down, fingers curling around Freyr’s wrist. “Come with me?”

Freyr looked down at the hand holding his arm. The weight of it was there. The feel of it too, as Jett slid his thumb over Freyr’s pulse-point in a scripted simulation of intimacy. Except there wasn’t any pulse there, not beneath either of their skins. No warmth, just calibrated pressure.

Jett’s other hand moved under Freyr’s chin, lifting his head. The intimate gesture was too smooth to have been spontaneous.

Freyr didn’t resist, simply letting his gaze roll upward until his silver-white irises met Jett’s blues.

“You’re so enchanting,” Jett whispered as he furrowed his brows.

Freyr noticed something else in his work partner’s eyes. A flash of light that shouldn’t have been there. “Jett—”

Jett kissed him, artificial lips upon artificial lips.

The sensation was precise and even soft, but it was muted. This was different from what Freyr expected to feel. There should be…heat. A rush of blood. Instead, the experience felt more like a routine system notification, one of many he ignored throughout his days, so Freyr didn’t push nor lean in. He waited for the process to end.

When Jett pulled away, his voice had dropped to a whisper, “Join me on the Observation Deck tomorrow.”

Freyr continued to stare into Jett’s eyes. Perfect blue with perfect vision. And so perfectly fake. Even if they copied our bodies exactly, it’s all still just an imitation. Jett’s flirtations the last few months felt like another idiosyncrasy in his new life, something that might make sense at some point in the future. Now that I think about it, didn’t he start acting this way when I became friends with Maxene? Freyr pulled his arm away. “I’m busy.”

Jett’s demeanor shifted and a sudden grin thinned out his lips. “That so? Are you meeting Maxene? Gonna finally flirt with her? Well, remember what I said. If you play your cards right, she could get us both out of Worker Class. Do whatever you have to do to get that Elite in bed, Freyr.”

“That again?” The eeriness of the grin on Jett’s face made Freyr look away. “I don’t even have the correct equipment to please an Elite woman.” He recalled the surprising facts his care doctor had told him. Bioengineers left breasts for the female form, but neither gender has genitalia. They said sex was a recreational distraction and Worker Class citizens didn’t need that.

“You’ve still got hands and a tongue! You’re one of the few Workers I’ve met who even has access to an Elite! If others have managed it, you can too!”

“I was planning to go to the nature area at night and walk along the beach. Maxene doesn’t factor into that.”

“Do you even know what life is like up there?” Jett laughed. “I’d flirt my way up myself, if I caught their attention!”

Freyr sat down. “Since you haven’t, you want me to use her so you can use me.”

The grin remained on Jett’s face.

Freyr scoffed to himself and turned to the workstation. As he rested his hands on the beveled terminal surface, his fingers opened on their own, recognizing a near-field request. The wires inside hungrily swooped out and connected with the waiting slots after which an electric current shot through Freyr’s fingers and made their way to his brain in less than a second. He quietly gasped as the spark met the interface between his mechanical body and biological brain, a sensation he still wasn’t quite used to. That felt more real than Jett’s kiss. Almost immediately, he was engrossed in the many different codes to examine and correct.

Jett, however, hadn’t left.

A fact Freyr was aware of out of the periphery of his vision. Now he’s pacing?

There wasn’t much extra space in the room to pace about, but it appeared that Jett was making do. “Seriously, Freyr. Wouldn’t you rather be living in the lap of luxury? We could just relax all day and enjoy the happenings around us! Speaking of, did you hear the latest?”

“I was asleep.”

“You missed out! QUANTA mobilized the Soldier Class to hit the Avani borders. ECHO has already broadcast retaliation chances—about ten percent, it says. Nothing to worry about.”

Jett’s rambling was background noise, though the names of the two AIs briefly held Freyr’s attention. The one for military and the other for assessments. And something else he said caused a flicker of recognition. Avani. The screens began to scroll once more as Freyr looked up at them.

Jett continued speaking, now about how amazing the Soldier Class was.

Freyr instead caught himself thinking about where all these lines of code were coming from as he worked. Programmers working under the AI tasked with innovations, NOVA. Through the mind-machine interface, Freyr corrected a simple error with a mere thought before his mind wandered again. The Elites don’t completely trust the AIs. Something terrible happened in the past. What was it again? He noticed another error on screen two. Syntax error. He deleted the broken string without a second thought.

“I know we’ll flatten them, but I don’t wanna be stuck working while we could be enjoying victory, you know?” Jett asked, his usually calm voice rising with excitement.

Screen four. Overlap error. Freyr isolated the rogue variable and forced himself to focus deeper on the scrolling code. Something Jett had said earlier, however, boomeranged back and threatened to break his concentration. We’re attacking that city.

“Are you even listening to me?” Jett asked.

Freyr blinked and fully turned to him, causing the lines of code to stop moving on the screens. “I hear you.”

“But are you listening?” Jett pressed just as an audible melody played from somewhere on him. “Shit, I have to get going.”

“See you next time,” Freyr said, his voice remaining a level tone.

“Do a good job tonight,” Jett said as he turned to leave.

“I always do.” The gentle sliding sound of the door accompanied Jett’s departure, finally leaving Freyr alone in the silent room. But he couldn’t immediately resume working.

Avani.

What he knew of his history filled three lines in a database. He had asked ORION, the information AI, about his death so many times that he could recall each word from memory.

Perpetrators: Three males. Four females.

Origin: Avani, Umbra.

Cause of death: Complications from explosive destruction of building NC3690.

That was six months ago. I was only nineteen.