CHAPTER 42
The Spacies needed a small amount of time to properly plot fake killing them all without truly killing them. Since unconsciousness was delayed, Talinn sought out Jeena for some intervention against the overpowering headache that hadn’t left since her defense array conversation.
After running scans and tests and everything short of load-in, the tech dug her hands into the hair piled on her scalp and scrubbed, then dropped her arms and met Talinn’s eyes. “I can’t find any cause for your headaches.” She paused, then blurted, “The lesions in your head are shrinking.”
“That’s . . . good. Isn’t it good?” Talinn studied Jeena’s expression. She thought she’d gotten better at reading the unadapted woman, but maybe that hadn’t been the case given how solemn Jeena appeared at the moment.
“It’s good, yes.” She didn’t sound convinced either, and Bee hummed in the back of Talinn’s head. “It means you could take an emergency load-in, as long as we keep it short. The problem is I still have no idea what caused them.”
“We were doing an awful lot of load-in around Deep End—”
“Talinn, there’s nothing in your records, or any other Talinns, that indicates any history of lesions or load-in complications.”
“That’s only, what, three Talinns’ worth of—”
Stop interrupting her.
“There’s also no evidence of a B-series fully taking over a human form, for the record.”
We didn’t tell Jeena that. A chill slithered over all the nerves in Talinn’s back, but Jeena shrugged and waved off whatever she saw in Talinn’s face.
“Caytil didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re worried about. I figured it out. You should have told me, but there was a lot happening at the time.” Her voice was so genuine there Talinn unwillingly believed her. “I’m guessing repeated load-in, and whatever Bee had to do to take over, caused the damage.”
“But we were better.” The words burst out of Talinn. She hadn’t had time to talk to anyone about it, not with the defense array and their need to get out of system and her need to go talk to the machinists. She hadn’t meant to stop thinking about it, or hide it, but things had kept happening. Pressing things. End-of-their-lives things. “It got worse for a second, but then I was functional—more functional than I’ve ever been during load-in.”
“Y . . . ess.” Jeena drew out the word on a breath, neither arguing nor convinced. “And then you glitched like nothing I’ve seen an Eight recover from before.”
“You said no B-series had ever fully taken over a body.” Talinn ignored that last point of the tech’s in favor of one that skirted less closely to death. “Are there some series that have?” Talinn rocked back on her heels, eyes briefly unfocused. “An X-series?”
“That is a capability they have, though not one that is considered standard.” Jeena turned away abruptly, gathering up more loose equipment and dropping it into different crates. “I plan to talk to Falix further, if he’ll share with me. Nya might know more as well, she’s fully tech trained, it turns out, so thankfully there will be at least two of us now. Though I suppose you all know about load-in at this point, and I bet together we could know more—”
“Jeena.”
The tech stiffened, her fingers curling tightly over whatever piece of technology was in her hand.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“There’s unfamiliar code in the other Talinn’s Bee. It doesn’t seem to be doing anything, and that Bee has it isolated, but . . .”
“Do you think it’s a part of an X-series? Or something that would allow her to take over her Talinn? Or—”
“No, no. No.” Jeena put down and picked up the dark rectangle in her hand until Talinn wanted to take the three steps required to reach it and knock it out of the other woman’s grasp. “No, it’s not . . . I think whatever the older Bee inserted into your Bee left . . . a vacancy, of sorts, in her own code. Space for something else to be inserted. And it’s possible that transferred over to your Bee, when they were both load-in together, but I can’t be sure.”
She is being weird. Not entirely empty-meat-suit weird, but not not that, either. There’s no strange code in me. Only whatever Other Bee sent.
“I know we’re on limited time here, so I’m asking once more, and then I’m going to go tell Sammer to pry whatever it is out of you if you don’t tell me.” Talinn stepped back toward the door, her eyes fixed on Jeena’s, and after a moment the tech met her gaze again. They both smiled faintly, and Talinn hoped it was enough. “What are you worried about telling me?”
“Back on Deep End . . . I heard Other Talinn—tell you about the potential for a merge. Some kind of higher-level blending of the AI and organic components.”
“And?”
“It’s not possible. You’re not designed to work that way. It’s the other end of the spectrum from splintering, you’d just . . .” She spread her arms, dropped the equipment in her hand, and didn’t flinch when it hit the floor with a definitive crack.
“Bee and I don’t have some sort of secret dream to merge into a superbeing, Jeena, so—”
Speak for yourself. I could be good at arms.
“It’s degeneration.”
“What?”
Jeena studied the broken component at her feet, then resumed picking up unblemished pieces and slotting them into crates. She glanced up at Talinn but her eyes were in constant motion across the room. “Clone degeneration. I don’t think you and Bee almost merged, I think your brain started to erode in favor of her programming. And her programming wouldn’t have outlasted it for long. The material used to make each of you has been copied too much, or been used too hard, and . . .”
Talinn laughed, the sound spilling out of her without her decision or control. “That’s all?”
“That’s . . . all?” Jeena echoed her, locking in place and staring up at her. “What do you mean, that’s all?”
“Who knows what’s going on in my brain? Bee is super dense, Other Bee is two Bees, Otie held three Bees in her head, sometimes I’m a puppet for an AI, the defense arrays are bonzo . . . who knows what’s actually going on? I’m not trying to give the UCF my body back to make new clones from, so . . . who cares?”
I mean, if we’re counting, I care that your brain might collapse out from under us both.
“Is it something that might happen soon?” Talinn spoke aloud, meant for both Jeena and Bee, and the tech replied.
“Probably not, unless there’s another—”
“There it is then. Thank you for telling me, Jeena, really. But on the list of things that we have to worry about right now . . .”
“It’s further down the list?” Jeena’s lips quirked upward again, a warmer expression than their attempts at smiling earlier.
“To say the least. It’s well below this headache, and half a system away from the defense arrays.” Talinn crossed her arms and took in the chaos of the tech’s space for the first time. “Do you want help putting all this away before the Spacies send us to bed?”
“I . . . I’d like that, yes. Thank you.”
The answering warmth was almost enough to make her forget the crushing of her brain. Almost.