He smiles, thinking it’ll convince me to go along with the humor, but I frown instead. His smile drops off and he continues. “We’re all a little different, we’re all independent, we all march to the beat of our own drums.” He looks down at my foot momentarily, which forces me to stop tapping it. “You take the bad with the good. And the good news? You have a ship. You own it. Not many people in our universe can say that.”
I snort in disgust. “Bad news? Someone set me up to get it so they could kill me.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t know that. You know bits and pieces of something that might just be a bunch of bullshit spouted off by some guy who was trying to con you.”
“Guys. Plural. Captain Boob and Macon both said stuff.”
“So? We’ll drill Macon until he says what needs to be said. I’m not worried about him. The guy’s obviously in love with you.”
I yank myself out of Baebong’s grip. “What? You’re fucking nuts if you think that.”
“Hey.” He steps forward and takes me by the arms again. “I’m observant, too. Give me some credit. The guy likes you. Whether it’s enough to keep him from killing you in your sleep, well, that remains to be seen. But it’s a good starting point to get him talking from.”
I look down at the ground. “There’s only one person on this ship I can trust, and that’s you, Bae. Just you.” I look up at him, hoping he doesn’t see how desperate that makes me feel inside.
“Nah. You got Gus and Tam too. Sure they hid that crazy shit from you, or Tam’s a little loopy in the head, but inside they’re good guys.”
I want to cry. “How can you say that? One of them might not even be human.” I stomp my foot, I’m so frustrated.
Baebong shrugs, letting me go. “What’s human these days? Is it only a body that’s a hundred percent flesh and blood? Doesn’t someone with AI count as human? Without a consciousness, none of us can be human, can we? You’re just a meat sack if you can’t think, can’t process, can’t feel.” He punches me lightly on the arm. “Come on. Don’t be so rigid on this. Hear what they have to say before you decide.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You knew, didn’t you?”
He looks confused. “Knew what?”
“You did!” I point at his face.
“What? That he was a borg? Hell no, I didn’t. Don’t put that shit on me.” He steps back with his hand on his chest. “You think I’d let a borg touch my stuff? Hell no.”
I have to smile at that. “I thought anyone with a consciousness is human.”
Baebong has the class to look embarrassed. “Yeah, well, that’s the idea. I’m not saying it’s an easy sandwich to swallow.”
Hearing him say that makes me feel so much better, I can’t even explain it. I guess I just like knowing that I’m not the only one fumbling around the Dark. “Come on,” I say, walking again. “Let’s go talk to the borg or crazy person or whatever he is.”
We turn the corner and stop at the chamber holding a crazy Tam, or the shadow of who Tam used to be.
“So … what’s the plan?” Baebong whispers.
“Get answers. By any means possible,” I whisper back.
“Are you prepared to go all the way?” he asks.
I nod. “You?”
He nods too. “Ring a ding. Let’s go see if we can make this borg sing.”
Chapter Eight
TAM IS SITTING ON THE metal shelf that serves as a very uncomfortable bed for a prisoner. He looks resigned. I’m hoping that’s a good sign.
“Hey, Baebong,” he says, sitting up straighter. He probably expects Baebong to be the good cop to my bad cop, but if that’s the case, he doesn’t know my lieutenant very well.
“Hello.” Baebong has his mask on, the expression that is impossible to read. With his arms crossed and his chest puffed out, the whole package makes him really intimidating.
Tam withers under Baebong’s empty stare.
“We’re here to get your story,” I say, “before I decide what to do with you.”
“Captain.” Adelle’s voice comes out over the comm.
“Yes, Adelle.”
“I have the results of the sweep for you.”
“Not right now. I have something to do in here first. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“Yes, Captain.”
I turn my attention back to Tam. “As I was saying … if you tell us the truth and are totally honest with us, I might not float you. Not right away, anyway.”
Tam leans forward eagerly. “I’ll tell you everything. We never meant to hide it from you in the first place.”
I lift a brow at that. “We’re starting with lies? Right off the bat? That’s not good, Shadow. Not good.”
“It’s not a lie.” He starts to stand but then sits right back down when Baebong unfolds his arms.
“It’s not,” he says in a softer tone. “It’s just that we hardly knew you, and it’s not like anyone in a hosting situation is going to walk up to a stranger and say, ‘Hey, nice to meet you, call me Shadow.’” He tries to smile, but when he gets no positive response, he stops.
“Feel free to introduce yourself properly this time,” I say, trying not to sound too sarcastic.
“Fine.” He lifts his chin. “I’m Tam. Twin brother to Gus …”
I can’t listen to another word. “Uh, no. If you’re going to claim you’re some kind of science experiment, you can’t also claim to be Gus’s twin. You are not Tam. You are the shadow of a man formerly called Tam.”
He looks at the ground, his head shaking side to side and a sad smile on his face. “You need to let me do this my way.”
I’m kind of taken aback by that, so I don’t respond right away; something inside me says yelling my head off is the wrong way to go here.
Baebong holds an arm out that goes across my chest. I guess he thinks I’m going to go smash the guy or something.
I take a step back and gesture with a hand. “Go ahead. I’m listening.” I’ll show Baebong how wrong he is. I can be a great listener when I want to be.
“My name is Tam. My brother Gus and I were born on the same day, six minutes apart, twenty-one years ago. Our mother’s name was Salta and our father’s name was Jerod. Our home was in Biodome Eight on Lapoma. When we were sixteen, nearing the end of our schooling, our family was attacked by scavengers who were raiding our work area for parts.” He glances up at me. “You might remember the OSG being involved in an eventual rescue.”
I don’t say anything, because I do remember it, and the acrid smoke of shame is starting to leak into my heart from that memory. The biodomes are full of sitting ducks if the OSG fails to respond in a timely fashion, and my father was the commander in charge of Lapoma’s defense that day five years ago. He was the one who said it wasn’t necessary that we defend Biodome Eight’s position. He was also the reason why the scavengers were able to wreak as much havoc as they eventually did. We lost twenty-eight souls there before peace was restored and the scavengers brought to justice.
I’d harbored suspicions for a while that the delay sanctioned by my father wasn’t just the result of a bad decision; that there was someone in that dome my father wanted to teach a lesson. But I was never able to come up with a name or a face to pin that suspicion to, and then the history of that place just faded into the back of my mind because no one I knew was ever affected by it. Until today.
“Gus is the only one of our group who escaped unharmed. He was down in a sub-basement working on a project we’d been putting together in secret. He was always messing around down there.” Tam sighs heavily. “Anyway, when the OSG did finally arrive to clean the place up, they found Gus in shock, our parents annihilated, and me barely hanging on.”
“That sucks,” Baebong says, his posture relaxing a little. “I’m sorry to hear that, man.”
I want to point out that this thing in front of us, if he is a shadow, isn’t a man, but I don’t have the heart to do it anymore. Or my heart is suddenly back onlin
e. I don’t know; I’m so fucking confused right now. I grit my teeth to keep from saying something I’ll regret, and keep on listening instead.
“When the OSG came in, people started grumbling about how it was their fault that all of it had happened. That they’d neglected us and failed to do their duty. Gus told me this stuff later; I was too far gone to realize what was going on. Anyway, it pissed them off … the OSG commanders. They didn’t like pissants like us telling them they’d screwed up. So they just left before everything was back to rights. Before we even had the ability to feed our community, before anyone was really treated medically. They took off and left us to rot and die.”
I have a hard time swallowing as the memory of my father ranting over the comm to someone comes back. “What the hell do they want us to do over there, anyway? Turn back time? Forget what they’ve done? Maybe if they’d been more focused on defending themselves instead of asking us to take care of their problems all the time, this wouldn’t have happened. No. We leave it as is. Let them sort it out.”
“That’s when the Outlanders came.”
My ears start ringing at that word. Outlanders!
“Outlanders?” Baebong’s all perked up now. “For real?” He laughs like a crazy person and then stops, all of a sudden looking scared. I can hear him gulp from where I’m standing.
“Yeah, they are for real, thank goodness. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for them.”
“The Outlanders are a myth,” I say from between clenched teeth. He must think we’re crazy to believe that crap. First he wants us to swallow the idea of him being a shadow and now this? Outlanders? Untraceable transmissions. Unexplained phenomena. Any and all sightings of anything weird always gets credited to the Outlanders — the little green men living out in the Dark.
Tam shakes his head like he pities me. “The Outlanders are real, and they helped us when the OSG wouldn’t.”
“Bullshit.” I’m fuming, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. This is the most ridiculous story I’ve ever heard, so I should be laughing instead of getting angry and defensive.
Tam holds out his hands. “Believe what you want, but I’m here, and I’m living in this host body as a shadow while Gus safeguards my Self. You can’t deny what you see in front of you, can you, Cass?”
I stare at him for a few seconds and then smile, everything becoming crystal clear for me in an instant. Fucking Outlanders. Yeah, right. Fucking gingers is more like it. Damn, he really had me going too. I’m seriously losing my touch.
“Man, I’ve been conned before, but this is pretty damn good. I have to give you credit for that, anyway.” I shake my head in amazement. “How’d you fool Adelle? That’s what I want to know.” I roll my eyes as it comes to me. So simple. How did I miss it? I bang myself on the side of the head with the heel of my hand. “Oh, right. Brilliant. You fucked with her programming. Duh.” I step back a few paces. “You really had me going there, Tam. Nice one. Big joke on Cass, eh?” I look up in the air. “Gus, you listening in? Why don’t you come on in here so I can punch you in the face?”
“It’s not a joke,” Tam says. He looks really sad. “I’m a shadow, and I’m using a host body that had an extensive amount of MI done to it so it could look as much like my original body as possible.” He pauses. “It was safer that way. The OSG keeps tabs on people, you know? Couldn’t have this unknown popping up out of nowhere.”
The sour taste of bile comes to my tongue. “Bodies do not grow on trees. Nothing you say will make me believe that.” I’m just throwing out words as distractors. Overshine knows! Overshine knows he’s not real! That had to be what he meant when he said they don’t do AI on guys like Tam! I feel like I’m going to vomit.
“No,” Tam says, oblivious to my distress. “Bodies grow in placental pods, though. They’ve got everything a regular human body has minus the consciousness.” He shrugs. “So this body got my upload. It’s just a copy, though. Gus hosts the original in tandem with his own.”
I feel sick to my stomach. Placental pods? I can only imagine what that looks like, and it’s not pretty.
Baebong steps in closer to Tam, staring into his eyes. “How does he keep from getting screwed up? From being you and not him? And why is he doing that? Why can’t you just host your own stuff?” Baebong is too curious to realize how crazy messed up this is. I want to cut off the question and answer session now that it’s gotten to this point, but it’s too late. Tam is already answering.
“His mind is formatted into two partitions. Like a computer’s hard drive can be. The part that hosts my consciousness is blocked off, where it will remain until the day that it’s put into a permanent host.”
“Whoa.” Baebong moves in even closer, still staring into Tam’s eyes. “So you’re in there, but you’re not really in there. Yet.” He pauses, tilting his head. “So when’s moving day? When will you be in there permanently?”
Tam shrugs, looking sad again. “Maybe never. They have to give it enough time.”
“For what?” I blurt out, unable to keep myself from digging in deeper. I still feel like this has to be a scam, but I want to see how far they’ve thought it through or how far it goes.
“Time to see if the host is suitable for permanent integration.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Baebong asks.
I swear I can hear seconds passing by as we wait for Tam’s answer. I hate that my ears are burning and my heart rate is increasing. While my rational brain knows this is a con, my imagination is believing it, taking it all in and picturing the rows of bodies hanging in placental pods. So, so gross.
“Because sometimes the hosts aren’t so great at hosting.” He looks at me apologetically. “Sometimes they’re prone to outbursts of temper or irrational behavior.”
“That was the host doing that?” I ask. I can’t help myself. This horror show keeps getting more horrific, impossible to look away from. I did see Tam acting very out of character, for all I know of him, anyway. And I’m usually pretty damn good at sensing lies when they’re delivered, and these gingers are serving up a big, fat, steaming, stinking platter of a story, that’s for damn sure. If any bit of it were a lie, I’m pretty sure I’d feel it in my bones. The problem is, all of it feels like it’s the truth to my internal lie detector.
Tam sighs. “It was … an incompatibility. That’s all I can say about it.”
I shake my head. Maybe this is where the lie will be revealed. He’s holding back information, but that’s not going to fly on my ship. “Nope. That’s not all you can say about it. We want to know everything, or you die. It’s that simple.” I play along to make him think I’m stupid. “Goodbye hard drive, goodbye upload, goodbye whatever the hell you’re talking about that’s inside that head.” I point at his skull.
“No, I don’t mean I’m withholding information from you. I’m saying that’s all I know. The Outlanders only give us enough information to function in everyday life, and they decide when it’s time for a permanent host, not us. And they haven’t decided yet.”
I cannot detect a single falsehood in anything he’s saying. So either this is the truth or he’s convinced himself that it is. Goosebumps come up on my arms. Is this for real? Are the Outlanders really out there? Are they really coming to human biodomes and offering bodies for implantation of consciousness uploads? The uploads are a real thing; I know that from my OSG life. But the bodies? Science fiction … until now.
Both Baebong and I roam the room with our eyes. I don’t know about him, but I’m kind of freaking out, thinking we’re about to be visited by Outlanders.
“Are they listening right now?” Baebong whispers.
Tam laughs. “No, man. I don’t think so, anyway. They just show up.” He goes more pensive. “Kind of out of the blue. It’s always a little startling, actually.”
I grab Baebong by the sleeve and pull him behind me to the door.
“What?” he asks, confused. “Where are we going? I was just getting to the good s
tuff.”
I yank Baebong over the threshold and shut the door, looking up to the ceiling as I do it. “Adelle?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Under no circumstances should anyone … or anything … get into that chamber I just closed without my express permission. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Captain. Would you like the status of my sweep now?”
“Yes,” I say, sighing and slumping down to nearly half my size. I’m so tired of being the captain of this Little Ship of Horrors.
“You have three listening devices, two explosive devices, and one tracking device located on or in the hull of this ship.”
“Daaaaaamn,” Baebong says in a high whisper.
“Stay here and keep an eye on him until you hear from me.” I leave him standing there as I start my jog to the flightdeck, yelling to my compubot as I go. “Details, Adelle! I’m going to need the details!”
Chapter Nine
I’M RUNNING DOWN THE CORRIDORS that lead to the flightdeck as Adelle reads off the tally of offending equipment attached to my ship. My mind is racing with thoughts about how I should handle this latest mess and who I should trust to help me with it. The list of people who qualify is getting shorter with every hour that passes, it seems.
“One listening device is located in your bunk, under your bed. It has been disabled, but it is recommended that you have it removed and disassembled manually. It appears to have reset capability.”
“Awesome.” And by awesome I mean totally and completely messed up.
“The second listening device is located in the dining area, under the table.”
“Near which chair?” I pass my hand over the keypad to open the portal to the flightdeck.
“Two on the left from the captain’s chair.”
“Jens,” I growl out. Sneaky little bastard. Just wait until I get my hands on you.
“The last listening device is located inside the PC Mahalo which is being towed by this ship.”