Perfect State

7

“I’m pretty sure,” I said, puffing as I descended to the next landing, “that he was offended I wouldn’t fight him. I let him have the Border State, and he just pillaged it—stole their resources, murdered most of the people there. I had to reopen my side and send aid to recover the remaining natives.

“About ten years later, he attacked another Border State near me, and that time my conscience wouldn’t let me ignore him. We’ve been sparring off and on ever since. Twenty years now, thirty since our first meeting. Lately he’s even started to invade my State, though his robots never work properly there.”

“Huh,” Sophie said. We were nearly to the bottom of the stairs. “You realize that fighting him here is madness.”

I said nothing.

“His robots will work in this State,” she said, voice echoing in the stairwell. “Maltese has wristwatch phones and things that the real world didn’t have during the equivalent era. Those science fiction seeds will be something your friend can expand upon, fool the program into letting his machines function. I’d bet anything that that machine will be dangerous, truly dangerous. The Wode’s fail-safes won’t apply to it.”

I nodded, reaching the third floor. Only a little ways to go.

“So tell me why we’re still planning to fight?” Sophie demanded from just behind. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Look,” I said, spinning on her. “I’m doing this because I have to know, all right? If what we’ve been talking about is true, and if everything before now has been done with a safety net set up . . . then I don’t know, can’t know, who I am. Facing another Liveborn here is a way that I can.”

She paused in the stairwell, water pooling on the step at her feet. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I sure as hell am. Wait here. I’ll lead him someplace less populated.”

“Wait here?” she asked, following me as I turned back down the steps. “Wait here? I’m not one of your soft-headed fantasy maidens with the chain mail undies, Mr. Emperor. I’ve ruled a world too, I’ll have you know, and I didn’t need absolute dictatorial power to do it. I—”

“Fine. Can you fight?”

“Not well.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Hack.”

That would be useful. “What can you do?”

“I can make guns work here. Obviously.”

“We need something more,” I said. “Can you make my magic function?”

“That’s a big-time hack, kiddo,” she said. “This is a very non-magical State. Like I said, even the robot is far more natural than magic would be.”

“Yes, but can you do it?”

“I can try, I suppose. Let’s get to where the robot first entered the State.”

“Why does that matter?”

“It shouldn’t,” she said, rounding a banister behind me, our shoes snapping on the uncovered stone. “Technically, this is all code, and there’s no such thing as proximity. But the nature of the system is such that if we’re close to the entry point, we’re ‘close’ to where your friend broke through the State’s defenses. The fabric will be weak there, and odds are that he didn’t cover his tracks very well. Sloppy coding will make it easier for me to piggyback a few other hacks.”

“Okay.”

“I might as well be speaking to a caveman, eh?”

“Fantastical does not mean primitive.”

“Uh-huh. And have you ever actually seen a computer?”

I could imagine them. Glowing light, energy—like lightning—flashing as it gave power to the machine.

“I’ll keep this simple,” she said. “If I can get your magic to work, it will have to happen where the robot broke in. Then you can summon your talking horse or whatever and fly over to blast that overcompensatory machine with your magical rainbows.”

We finally reached the ground floor, and I pushed out onto the rain-slicked street. Sophie followed. I started jogging toward the robot, but she dashed to the side, heading to one of the self-driving vehicles. There were a lot of them parked and unoccupied there.

Feeling foolish, I dashed back after her. We got in, and she made the thing growl. It trembled like an animal coming awake.

“So it is alive,” I said.

“Sure, just keep thinking that, kiddo,” she said, shaking some of the rain from her hair. She made the vehicle move. Quickly.

I yelled and hung on to whatever handholds I could. We tore down the street, far faster than a horse could have galloped. But we also had—in my opinion—far less control. “Things in these States are so uncivilized!”

“Uncivilized?” she shouted.

“The handgun that destroyed the chain, now this. There’s no elegance, just brute force. Watch out for those people! Lords!”

She pushed us around a corner at a ridiculous speed. A good horse would never have let us get this far out of control, and my flying chariots were wonderfully precise. We skirted to the side of the robot, which was crunching its way through the city, still moving toward the building where we’d been dining. It didn’t see us passing.

He can’t track me directly, I thought. Something must have tipped him off to where I was.

Well, with the dinner reservation—and my face on the approved list to get in—I probably hadn’t been difficult to track. I pulled the handgun from its pocket inside my coat. “Can you make this work?”

“I don’t know that I want to be anywhere near you firing one of those,” she said.

“I’m not going to point it at your head, Sophie,” I said dryly. “Make it work.”

She reached over, touching it with her finger. I had a chance to regret distracting her as we almost plowed through a group of people fleeing the robot, but she turned the vehicle just in time.

“Done,” she said, removing her finger. “It is reloaded and fires real bullets now. A simple hack.”

“Yeah, well, someone noticed anyway,” I said.

The robot had turned its massive, red-eyed head our direction. This was by far the largest one Melhi had ever sent after me.

“Damn,” she said. “Your friend is probably monitoring this State for irregularities. Anything I do will alert him.”

I pushed my hand against the glass window on my side of the metal carriage. “Can I . . .”

“Lever on the door,” she said. “Turn it.”

The glass moved down as I turned the lever. Ingenious. I leaned out and pointed the handgun toward the robot, then took three shots in quick succession, my mental boosts kicking in on the first, slowing time for me.

Sure enough, the creature started to trudge after us, its eyes tracking our movements. Firing my weapon let it locate me; the weapons weren’t supposed to fire real bullets in this State, so shooting made a mark on the State’s fabric.

“What was that for?” Sophie demanded.

“I want it following us.”

“What the hell for?”

“Because if it’s coming back this way, it’s moving through the region it already passed, doing less damage,” I said. “Besides, I’ll need it close if I’m going to defeat it.”

I fired a few more times, making certain the robot was going to keep following. Indeed, it picked up its pace. I gulped, ducking back into the vehicle. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this . . . but do these vehicles go any faster?”

They did, apparently. Sophie grinned. I held on for dear life.

“There,” Sophie said.

Ahead of us—hanging about ten feet above the road and surrounded by city debris—was a shimmering to the air, a mother-of-pearl incandescence that obviously didn’t fit. It reminded me of the Grand Aurora, though it was shaped like a very large version of the portal I’d come through to get here.

Sophie stopped the vehicle. Or, well, she stopped driving it—but the vehicle didn’t totally stop. It slid across the ground sideways and slammed into a building. The jerking halt almost made me throw up.

“You are insane,” I said.

“I thought we’d established that,” she replied, crawling woozily from the metal carriage, but still grinning.

I followed her out on shaking feet. The robot was approaching faster than I’d anticipated, and unfortunately this area wasn’t evacuating as quickly as I’d hoped. There were families here, cowering in the wreckage of buildings, despite the rain and the dangers. A weeping girl, no more than four, asked her mother again and again why the ground was shaking.

They have to live in a world that knows only darkness, I thought. So that Liveborn can have a place to come play.

I stumbled away from them, following Sophie toward the rift.

“Give me your hand,” she said as we reached the shimmering.

I gave it to her, and she held on tightly as she went down on one knee, eyes closed.

I felt a tingling.

“I can’t change your code directly,” she said. “I don’t dare.”

“I have code?”

“Worried? I thought you felt Simulated Entities were equal to Liveborn.”

“I didn’t say that. I said Machineborn were people, and that killing them was wrong. Liveborn are absolutely more important.”

“Nice you have your own place in things straight.”

“Well, I am a God-Emperor. Why did you say I have code?”

“Relax. We all have code notations around our core selves; like footnotes added to a textbook by someone studying for exams.”

“What’s a textbook?” I said. Then, after a moment, “What’s an exam?”

“Don’t distract me. Hmm . . . yes. I can’t rewrite your magic without risking frying your mind entirely.”

“Don’t change the magic. Just make it work here.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible; I’d have to change the laws of the entire State. But maybe . . .”

“What?”

The machine’s steps rattled my teeth; I could make out its head over the top of a nearby building, those red eyes glowing in the rain.

“Well,” Sophie said, “all of the code notations that explain how you make your magic work are still there, attached to you. It’s all tied to your State. There’s some kind of intrinsic power source, I assume?”

“Yes,” I said. “You can’t change the magic . . . but can you rewrite the source of its power? Make something in this world capable of fueling my Lancing?”

“Hmm . . . clever. Yes, maybe. Give me a moment.”

The wind started to pick up, the rain turning from a mist to a light shower. My shirt was already plastered to my body, my hair and beard sodden.

The thing emerged upon us, rounding the building nearby, shaving stone from its side.

“Just a moment . . .” Sophie repeated.

“We’re running out of moments, Sophie!”

“Working . . . working quickly as I can . . .” she said. “Oh, this is going to be a patchwork job. Electricity. Maybe I can use electricity as a substitute for your aurora thing. . . .”

“Sophie!” I said. The machine stepped onto our abandoned vehicle with one large foot, crushing it. The rain grew stronger, pelting us.

“There!” Sophie said.

The tingling washed through me, colder than the rain. It left me awake, excited, changed. It had worked. I could feel that it had worked.

Sophie groaned, and her hand slipped from mine. She slumped toward the ground, but I grabbed her and heaved her onto my shoulder, then ran down the street through the increasingly terrible rain, trying to get some distance between us and the robot.

“Unhand me,” Sophie muttered, dazed. “I’m not some damsel from your barbarian lands. . . .”

I reached a sheltered alleyway out of the robot’s sight, and set her down inside. She was limp, her eyes drooping. “I’m not . . .” she said. “I don’t need to be saved, I . . .”

“Think of it this way,” I said. “Your inner feminist must be going insane at the idea of being rescued.”

“You’re not rescuing me. I rescued you . . . with the magic . . . and . . .” She took a deep breath. “I’ll wait here.”

“Wise choice,” I said, glancing back out toward the street. I could hear the robot’s crunching steps, feel it rattling the windows nearby. I took a deep breath, then strode out onto the street again.

The robot had stooped down and was picking up a vehicle in one enormous hand. It looked back toward me, its red eyes blazing in the rainy night, then hefted the vehicle as if to throw it.

I smiled, heart racing like it hadn’t in centuries, and entered Lancesight.

Energy hung all around me. The ground was alive with it; it pulsed in buildings and from lights. I drew it in, which caused an odd crackling sound. Flooded with strength, I rewove the air to lift me into the sky and form a barrier to protect me.

Nothing happened.

“Aw, hell,” Sophie said from behind.

The robot threw the vehicle—I could see everything outlined in power within Lancesight—and I cursed, throwing myself to the side. I rolled on the wet ground as the vehicle smashed to the street nearby, skidding on the stones.

That left me alive, but dazed on the ground. I shook my head, still in Lancesight, and glanced toward Sophie in the alleyway nearby. She crouched there, one hand on the wall, and to my eyes she was a blazing source of energy.

Wait, that wasn’t right. Why was she glowing?

“The hack slipped, emperor man!” she shouted over the sound of the pelting rain. “I accidentally rewired you to draw upon heat rather than electricity.”

Lords! I shook my head and found my feet. Ahead, the robot approached me, not far away now. I could hear the rain smacking against its metal. I drew in more energy, and I could see that Sophie was right. In Lancesight, I could sense the individual atoms in everything around me. As I drew in strength, they slowed, then stilled. Taking a step caused ice to crack at my foot.

The hack hadn’t worked, and not just in the way she indicated. Every time I tried to use the energy, nothing happened. I could draw it in, but then it just evaporated from me—not even heating the air—and vanished.

The fabric of the State rebelled against me using these powers. That meant no rewriting the air to protect me. No creating lightning to strike down the robot. No magic at all.

The robot was close now, looming overhead, a cold—almost invisible—form to my eyes. As it stepped, it casually slammed a hand to the side, smashing a wall and the people hiding inside.

“It didn’t work!” Sophie called. “We need to go, now.”

People. I could see them easily now, even hidden in rooms, as they were pockets of severe heat in this frigid, rain-slicked land. People huddled on the street. The woman with her daughter had run from the robot, but had fallen to the ground nearby. The child was tugging on her mother’s arm, screaming in terror.

Real people, with emotions, families, loves. And now me. With no safety net. I felt helpless. For the first time in decades, I felt helpless.

It was incredible.

I walked through the rain toward the robot.

“Kai!” Sophie screamed at me.

I raised my hands and drew in energy. It evaporated.

The rain started falling harder.

There was a wave of rain when the robot first appeared, I thought. This storm is a reaction to the hacks. Besk said that this State never has more than a drizzle.

I drew in more heat. The storm grew even worse. Lightning crackled above. Thunder boomed, louder than the robot’s footsteps. The machine was only yards away now.

The atoms in the ground beneath me stilled, and I had to rip my way out of shoes that had frozen solid. The cold didn’t affect my skin much. That was part of the magic that, apparently, stayed with me. I had an insulation against most of the effects of my Lancing.

The robot slammed its hand down to crush me.

My mental boosts kicked in. I was able to judge where the hand was going to fall, then stepped out of the way. The hand smashed ice and the stone beneath, then it swept toward me.

I let the hand seize me in a cold steel grip.

“I have you!” a voice boomed above. The same voice I’d heard in that Border State all those years ago, buzzing, metallic. “I finally have you! I can crush you with my fingers, child! You will know what it is to insult Melhi.”

The rain grew harder, and I drew in more strength.

“You can’t draw this robot’s heat away, foolish man,” Melhi said with a laugh.

Indeed, I could see its core—hidden far within layers of insulated metal, and I wasn’t able to draw that heat, despite trying. I didn’t care. I drove the storm to greater strength. Rain fell like knives, freezing before it hit me, lashing my skin.

My healing boosts kicked in, and stayed just barely ahead of the ice flaying my skin. I drew in so much that the atoms in the air itself stilled, and the gasses liquefied. The air became a strange steam, hissing as it boiled back into gas almost immediately.

“. . . part of me that rebels against . . . will go forward . . . not . . . their puppet . . .”

I couldn’t hear Melhi’s words. The storm had grown too loud, the beating of ice and rain on the robot’s body like stones on pieces of tin. Rain like an ocean wave crashing upon us. Thunder, lightning, the sky ripping, the fabric of this State crumbling.

I drew it in, feasted upon it. This was a music I’d never known. The robot squeezed, but something was wrong with the hand, and the pressure wasn’t as great as it should have been. I smiled, then reached to the hand holding me. Then I drew the heat from the robot’s outer layer. The metal was an excellent conductor; I pulled the heat into me like sipping water from a straw.

For a moment, all I knew was the increasing power of the storm. Like God’s own rage, screaming at me for breaking the rules of reality.

The robot began to crack. It wasn’t the cold, it was the water. Water that seeped into joints, then froze. More water followed, which also froze, expanding. The joints strained, then splintered.

The entire robot came crumbling apart, dropping in a thunderous crash.

I hit hard. Pain shook me, and my Lancesight evaporated.

I opened my eyes to find myself lying amid the wreckage of the machine. The rain started to slow, and I let go of any energy I’d held. The landscape nearby—broken buildings, fractured street—was covered in a thick layer of ice. I breathed in gasps of too-cold air. My clothing was in tatters. The cloth had frozen to me, then shattered like glass.

I pulled myself free of the wreckage, and left a disturbing amount of skin frozen to the robot’s hand. Fortunately, my healing boosts were working well enough to grow my skin back.

I turned on the broken beast, smiling broadly. I had won. Won where a victory hadn’t been set out for me, won on a battlefield the Wode hadn’t created. Here, no algorithm was pushing me along.

I felt more alive than I ever had. I’d found something real. It was like . . . like I’d just come awake for the first time.

Sophie stood at the edge of the frozen ground. Lords, she was beautiful. I’d never realized how much I’d wanted to know someone real, someone truly alive. Someone who hadn’t been created just for me, someone who had a life outside of mine. It was sexy as hell.

Sophie smiled deeply at me, then took the small gun from her handbag, placed it to her head, and pulled the trigger.

My mental boosts triggered at the explosion. I could see with perfect clarity as the blood sprayed out the side of her head, ribbons of scarlet like her dress. I watched it happen in slowed time, the pieces of my new life dying as her eyes faded.

The boost ended. Sophie’s corpse collapsed.

I stumbled toward her and there, written in the ice, I found words. Imprinted, as if chiseled by a workman.

I TOLD YOU MY NEW ROBOT WOULD BE WONDERFUL. I WORKED LONG TO PERFECT SOPHIE. I AM PLEASED THAT SHE CAPTURED YOUR HEART. YOUR DEBT IS PAID.