“All right.” Guards unstrapped her, led her back to her cell. Days passed. There was nothing to do except stare at the walls. She had always enjoyed solitude, thought of herself as an imperfect walkaway because the company of others was sometimes oppressive. But when ten days came and went with nothing but her thoughts and her desperate, self-defeating attempts to meditate, they came and got her. Found herself actually anticipating the prospect of talking to the voice.
They shaved her head of the short stubble, reapplied gel and sensors.
“Today we make a scan,” the voice said. “We will be able to simulate that scan and subject it to questioning under circumstances that transcend and obviate much of this business. Depending on the characteristics of this scan, its reliability and pliability, we may no longer need you at all. Is this clear?”
“What do you want?”
“Your pass-phrase.”
“Why?”
“Because we have walked your cohort’s social graph, and concluded you are a core node.”
“That sounds like a good reason for me to keep my mouth shut.”
“We can try to coerce the information out of you. We can even try physical coercion. You know, we can make a scan from people who are no longer technically alive.”
It was bullshit. Had to be. CC always maintained it would never work, not without blood flowing through the brain. She didn’t understand the biology, but she knew it had to be bullshit. Didn’t it?
“That would be quite a trick.”
“Once we are inside your data, we will use it to effect internal disruptions of your cell. This will complement our strategy of physical interventions.”
“But why?”
“Luiza, don’t be ridiculous. You know why.”
She refused to get angry, though the extended period of solitude made her jumpy and emotional. “Because you know it’s us or you, right?”
“No. Because you and your friends are terrorists. Luiza, be serious. This isn’t about jealousy. It’s about crime.”
“What crime?”
“Luiza.”
“What crime?”
“Be serious.”
“Squatting?”
“Trespassing. Theft. Theft of trade secrets. Piracy on an unimaginable scale. Circumvention of lawful interception facilities in fabricators. Production of scheduled narcotics. Unlicensed production of potentially lethal pharmaceuticals. Fabrication of military-grade weapons, including mechas and a variety of U.A.V.s. Unlicensed use of electromagnetic spectrum, including uses that can and do disrupt emergency, public safety, and first-responder networks. Need I continue?”
“What do you want from people? What are they supposed to do? There’s nothing for us in default. Nowhere to live. Nothing to eat. Nothing to do. We are surplus. We’ve gone away, started over, not bothering anyone.”
“You’ve taken what isn’t yours. You live by taking what isn’t yours.”
“How else are we supposed to live?”
“What is your pass-phrase?”
“When will you do this scan?”
“It’s underway now. This conversation will help to calibrate it.”
“Bullshit. I’ve had scans before.”
“The scanning techniques used by walkaways are crude and unreliable. We have better technology. It’s an advantage of not being a criminal underground.”
“I’d rather be a criminal underground than a secret police.”
“We’re not police.”
“Spooks, then.”
“Hardly a meaningful term.”
“I would like to speak to a lawyer.”
“You are an illegal immigrant, a Brazilian national with an expired passport and no visa. What makes you think you’re entitled to legal representation? How would you pay for it?”
“I would like to speak to someone from my consulate.”
“The Brazilian embassy has an official policy of cooperating with counter-terrorism efforts.”
“Why do you even need my pass-phrase if you’re so fucking godlike? Sounds like you have everything you need.”
“We have many of the things we need. There may be more inside your network traffic. Besides, we have excellent results from impersonating members of your cult to one another. It’s surprisingly effective.”
“As is telling me you’re doing it, so I spend all my time trying to figure out which people are sock-puppets?”
“You won’t need to worry about talking to those people anymore. You have a very good name, so getting even a small number of people to believe you’re a traitor will create enormous internal discord.”
“What should I call you?”
The breath whispered in her ears. “Michael will do.”
“Michael, has it occurred to you that you don’t have anything to bargain with? There’s nothing you can give me that will make me want to give you my pass-phrase, for all the reasons you’ve just set out. You and everyone you work with make it your mission to destroy any chance of the human race surviving to the end of this century. So what is it you hope to get from me today?”
“I have many things to bargain with, Luiza. I could offer to spare the lives of your friends. We know where they are—we always know where they are. We are capable of being surgical in our strikes against them. You saw how we came for you.”
In the hours she was alone with her ghosts in her cell, the one that visited her most was Etcetera. She kept seeing his face, hearing his voice. She’d had dreams where she felt he was cuddled behind her, one arm over her, hand between her breasts, his stubble raspy on her back, breath tickling her skin. Waking was like one of those nightmares-within-a-nightmare, in which you believe you are awake, but are still dreaming. Only she had been awake and imprisoned. Never to see Etcetera again. Sometimes she’d tick off his absurd names like a rosary, eyes squeezed shut, trying hard to remember the feelings from her dreams, his smell, the sound, the way he’d held her. The realization he was dead caught her over and over, making her breath catch like a blast of cold air freezing her lungs.
“I saw how you came for me. What you did.”
“You’re upset about the loss of your boyfriend, the man with the names.” He sounded faintly mocking, or maybe she was reading that in. She was distantly angry, the emotion a shooting star barely visible against the blazing light of the sun of her grief. She fancied she could hear them calibrating their model of her, placing a high value on such an exotic emotional state.
“You’re changing the subject. When you murder as you did, you do not make the case for helping you. When you take away my dearest love, you show me you shouldn’t be trusted. When you bargain with me, strapped into your chair, you make me think you’re lying about your ability to run me as a sim. The only reason I can imagine for you to have this conversation with me is because I have something you need, and you can’t get it any other way.”
There was no reply to that.
After several minutes, she said, “Hello?”
No answer came. Time passed. Being confined to her tiny cell had been awful, but at least she could move her limbs, shift her posture. Go to the toilet. Strapped in like this—