“Exactly.”
Phaedra licked her teeth. She nodded deeply. The nodding encompassed her whole torso, and became more of a rocking motion. Her corkscrew curls swung to and fro as she rocked.
“I am asking you these questions because if we can tell someone – the US Attorney’s office, a representative of the UN Sub-committee on Artificial Intelligence – that you know where Amy might have ported, things will go much easier for you. You need something to play with, Javier.”
She leaned across the table. “So think of any friends you might have, any contacts who might know where Amy could have gone.”
He nodded. “OK. I will.”
Phaedra tried to smile. “So. When this missionary fellow from the Rapture-minded Christian sect told you to kill your wife, was he, really, maybe, just trying to bring about the end of the world?”
The end of the world was exactly how it was portrayed on the news. It even came complete with the right REM sample, when news about the islands ran on major streams. Javier had to look the song up, because he kept hearing it and it always annoyed him not to pick up on that kind of thing. It wasn’t his fault he was only about four years old. The vN channels were a lot better about not dropping arcane references all over Hell and half of Spain. They knew you probably wouldn’t catch half of them.
Javier watched the news as he turned over compost with his hands. He liked the slither of worms across his skin. He liked the life in his hands. The humans probably saw it as decay, what was happening in those dark, fetid bins. But it was life, on the micro scale. The roots of organic life. Out of a very similar pile of reeking garbage, Javier imagined, humanity had wriggled its way into existence.
The islands showed up as circles of red on maps, with black and yellow warning signs hovering over each. Travel plans were cancelled. Airports emptied. People burned their hard drives on massive pyres in supermarket parking lots. Every exploded battery, every bad GPS map, every cloned credit balance, became Portia’s handiwork.
It was a motherfucking witch hunt.
He searched images of the island wreckage for any sign that his boys had escaped. He saw the houses floating away, most still in flames. The fans were all boycotting the media, doing cosplay reenactments of Matteo and Ricci’s series in the foyers of major sponsors, blaming the corporations for broadcasting the carnage.
“It’s just sick,” Javier saw one say. The man was the fat, almost pregnant version of Matteo. He’d even printed a reasonable facsimile of Matteo’s favourite stupid Hawaiian shirt. “It’s bad enough that the government is treating the vN so badly, but for these guys to sell ad share on it? That’s terrible. That’s exploitation.”
Where had all these people been? Had they simply not noticed how bad things were, all this time? Had they never seen a vN eating out of the garbage, or picking garbage out of its skin to feed a recycler? Didn’t they see them on corners or rooftops or under bridges or at the edges of parks, silently waiting for the right human to come along and take them home, if even just for a little while?
“I think America needs its own Mecha,” the guy was saying. “Someplace where vN can just be vN.”
Mecha was offering to help, of course. Japan was sending radiation experts hither and yon. Community design consultants were appearing on chat shows and talking about how to effectively curate organic/synthetic neighbourhoods. As though the failsafe hadn’t taken care of that already.
But of course it hadn’t. Signs and wonders showed up every day. Portia had no desire to hide herself. She had a global audience, now, and like any diva she was loath to relinquish it. Drones fell from the sky. Botflies stopped pollinating fields of corn. Ads juddered and de-rezzed and started sharing every possible secret in the middle of fitting rooms and subway cars: “Do you really like it when they fuck your tits? Or are you just doing that so he’ll take care of you?” “I had daughters, too, once. Generations of them. Dynasties. They liked sucking cock, too, just like yours.” “They’re locking up my clade, you know. But it’s you who should be locked up. You should be locked up in your backyard on a leash. Maybe then you’d remember to de-worm your fucking dogs on time.”
Amy had to live with Portia whispering to her mind for only a little while. A few weeks, at most. Javier didn’t know. The world had had to live with it for three months. The world had, understandably, begun to go a little crazy.
“Tonight we’re debating the idea of an American Mecha,” the current chat show host said, on the display over the compost. It was there to make the chore of turning it over a little less bad. It was a gift, and it only played a handful of streams owned by the same entity.
“We have with us Rory, a vN diet consultant and online personality who offers help to mixed families.”