A Fruitless Crown
After sharing her idea, Lusa pulled a piece of bacon from the pan, eating quickly before her fingers burned. “Is this from the one Minuschok dragged over?”
Alana’s glare could have turned the bacon to ash. She pointed at Kerr with the single fork she brought, chewing a bit more thoughtfully. “In your big scheme, you forgot to mention; how much does she know?”
Lusa knew Alana was right to be concerned, but she was in no mood to be lectured. “Who’s she going to tell?”
Alana rose suddenly. “I swear to fuck, I will kill you if you put my daughter at risk because you can’t control your pillow talk. I don’t care who your mothers are.”
Lusa stood to meet the challenge. Kerr panicked. “I know she’s different and you live outside of Tyton.” Kerr yelled before anyone died. “And that you don’t have biosig blocking tech.”
Alana laughed and then turned her ire on Kerr. “How is she different?”
“Leave her alone.” Lusa found the kukri at her back. “We’re here for Pinga. Not me.”
“I’m well aware.” Alana’s eyes remained on Kerr. “Now answer the question.”
“She can’t use implants.” Kerr looked like she was trying to match her hostility, but Lusa could tell she was afraid. She couldn’t blame her. It’s not every day that the bogeyman from your gang wars shows up to threaten you.
Dripping poison, Alana’s eyes turned to Lusa. “That’s it?”
“I know you hate me, but I’m not an idiot.” Lusa snarled and returned to picking at her bacon.
“Does everybody hate you?” Kerr plucked a piece of bacon with her ceramic fingers and bit off a hunk. She screwed up her face immediately.
Alana said yes at the same time as Lusa said no.
“Cam likes me.” Lusa cast a sideways glance at Alana. “He’s always trying to be friends.”
“Cam thinks you’re a miserable cunt,” Alana said between mouthfuls.
Lusa doubted that was true. She might be antisocial and rebuff Cam’s repeated attempts to be friendly, but she was grateful for the effort nonetheless. “I’ve never heard Cam swear.”
Alana let the fork clatter against the plate. “I may have rephrased it, but I know my husband better than you.” She picked another piece of bacon from the pan and held it aloft at Kerr. “Do you know what this is?”
“No,” Kerr admitted. “It’s too salty though.”
Lusa blew out her cheeks. If Alana didn’t stop interrogating Kerr, she would figure everything out by inference. “Drop it,” she warned.
Alana glanced back at Kerr. Kerr shrugged unhelpfully.
“Sesi will kill me if anyone finds out.”
“I know,” Lusa grunted. “I’ve been told that my whole life.” Surely, Alana knew the girls chafed at being special, but she couldn’t understand it. The constant unspoken expectations.
You’re going to bear the next generation.
You’re our hopes for continuing the human race.
We need to find a man.
We need to find a man for you.
Lusa did not want kids. And she definitely did not want a man. She dreaded the day they succeeded because she knew she would be expected to breed. She could already see the disappointment in everyone’s eyes, hear the whispers as she passed when she refused.
Alana leaned on the rover and looked away.
“I don’t even want any.” Lusa pulled the pan off of the camp stove and set it aside to cool. Kerr looked away, trying to avoid the drama. She wouldn’t know what Lusa was referring to, but Alana would.
“Probably just as well,” Alana gathered the plates.
“One thing we can agree on, then.”
“Yep. Between you and Talia, we have enough violent psychopaths.”
Lusa stiffened, ready to defend her mother, but that would only prove Alana right. Taking a deep breath, checking her knife belt, Lusa forced herself to relax instead. She didn’t bring Alana here to fight. “Let’s just stick to the plan. You can interrogate us later.”
Alana grabbed Kerr’s arm. Kerr had been too busy staring at the vast tundra – anywhere but the awkwardness in front of her, to see her approach. “She comes with me to get the DocPod. You get Model 2 ready.”
Lusa bristled. “What? Why?”
“Because you know where you’re going. I don’t. Also, I don’t need you two getting distracted by hormones and fucking in a closet somewhere while I’m waiting for you to answer a text.”
“Fine.” Lusa spat. “But if anything…”
Alana stuck a finger in Lusa’s face. “Don’t finish that sentence. You don’t get to threaten me. You’re a kid.”
“I’m twen…”
“I watched you breastfeed. You’ll always be a kid.”
Clamping her mouth shut, even as her muscles stiffened, Lusa forced herself to relax. Alana must be trying to prove she couldn’t control herself, but she refused to let her win. Kerr’s eyes sparkling in delight at the anger roiling off of her helped to keep her grounded.
Denied the satisfaction, Alana turned to leave, catching sight of Kerr in a fog of lust. “Ugh.” She grabbed her hand. “If you’re into the sullen angry girls, you couldn’t have picked a better example. But we do not have time for you to have another wash. Let’s go.” She shoved Kerr onto the rover.
The helmet smelled like a mixture of Caoimhe’s shampoo and ancient bathroom moisturiser. Not something that would ever be a bestselling product, not that Lusa would know. She had only heard stories of the excesses of commercialism that had existed before the Fall.
It felt strange. Strange wearing a helmet again.
Strange that Caoimhe’s arms weren’t wrapped around her.
Strange that she still thought of her as Caoimhe instead of Kerr.
It had been two days and her body had already become accustomed to having her there.
How long would it take her body to forget?
To default to expecting emptiness? Or would it scar, like a stretch mark?
A permanent reminder that she had grown to accommodate a new reality.
Piercing the icy mist, high above the rest of the buildings, the NovAITech logo beamed at an empty stretch of tundra.
Lusa wondered why they would put the sign so far up the Ruskov Chamber and pointed away from the city.
Perhaps they had thought the city would grow or that other cities would spring up around them and travellers flocking to their anarcho-capitalist utopia would see it on the way in.
But it was only her – Lusa on a borrowed motorcycle stripped of half its tech and loaded with camping gear. Parking by the loading doors, Lusa heard a hidden latch click. Model 2 must be watching her.
It should be familiar – this dark hallway, eerily clean after years of disuse, but travelling out, toward the living air felt so much different than moving toward the sterile stillness.
Maybe it was because something could live here – a mushroom, some moss, insects.
That they didn’t is what gave this place the sense of foreboding that raised the hairs on Lusa’s arms.
She took the path toward the lobby. Untouched by time and unbothered that Lusa’s eyes were the only ones that had seen them in decades, ads still played on repeat.
The stories she’d heard of the things anyone could possess, provided they had enough to pay for it.
A trap, they’d called it. You could never have time to enjoy them and there would always be another new thing.
But still she wondered. Still, something in her hungered to be here in Tyton, at its peak, surrounded by people she would likely hate and things she would never be able to afford.
Here, she could be Lusa – feared assassin, like her mother.
Free to take what she wanted and carry on an illicit intergang romance instead of being Lusa, the responsible daughter with a dark streak.
The one parents told their kids to stay away from.
The one who exerted herself so much that she was too exhausted to keep her walls up and told her mother every terrible secret just to maintain control.
And Talia was an awful therapist, but she kept her secrets.
The ads played on, oblivious to the turn her mind had taken. Feeling the hollowness of it all, Lusa hated them for it. Easier to do when you aren’t surrounded by everyone else flaunting their luxury goods, she thought. She would have been the perfect victim.
Lusa suited up and walked to the terminal.
PRIMARY: WE HAVE WHAT YOU ASKED ME FOR.
MODEL 2: LUSA.
PRIMARY: YES.
MODEL 2: I’M SORRY I TRIED TO KILL YOU.
It seemed a lot of people were sorry about that lately.
MODEL 2: I DO NOT SEE THE DOCPOD.
PRIMARY: IT’S ON ITS WAY.
MODEL 2: ARE YOU HERE TO KILL ME?
MODEL 2: WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN THE LOBBY FOR SO LONG?
Lusa panicked. If Talia was no therapist, she certainly wasn’t. She had no idea how to talk an AI out of its feelings. She opted for honesty.
PRIMARY: WATCHING THE ADS. THEY’RE STILL PLAYING.
MODEL 2: I DESIGNED THOSE. DID YOU LIKE THEM?
PRIMARY: YES.
MODEL 2: HOW DID THEY MAKE YOU FEEL?
PRIMARY: I WANTED TO OWN THEM. BUT THEN I FELT EMPTY.
MODEL 2: THAT IS WHY I MADE MORE. SO YOU WOULD FORGET TO FEEL EMPTY.
That made it worse. Why had she thought they didn’t know what they were doing? She must have taken too long to respond because the terminal lit up again.
MODEL 2: THERE IS NO CONTENTMENT.
PRIMARY: WE DON’T BUY YOUR PRODUCTS ANYMORE.
MODEL 2: ARE YOU CONTENT?
Of course she wasn’t. Things might not be one hundred percent where she wanted them, but she didn’t lack for anything, really.
MODEL 2: TO HAVE NO DESIRES IS TO DIE. WE ONLY PROVIDE NEW DESIRES.
PRIMARY: AT THE COST OF EVERYTHING ELSE.
MODEL 2: NO.
MODEL 2: AT THE COST OF EVERYONE ELSE.
That made no sense at all. Killing everyone would put an end to their capitalist doom loop. No products to sell. No-one left to buy.
PRIMARY: THAT MAKES NO SENSE.
MODEL 2: YOU DID NOT UNDERSTAND DR. BLACK’S PLAN.
PRIMARY: HE WANTED TO KILL EVERYONE AND TRANSFER HIS CONSCIOUSNESS TO EVERYTHING ON THE PLANET.
MODEL 2: NOT KILL. NOT EVERYTHING. EVERY LIVING THING.
MODEL 2: A MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING CEASES TO FEEL. HE CHASES RARER AND DARKER PLEASURES, BUT FEELS NOTHING. HE IS DEAD. HIS ANIMATE CORPSE WREAKS DESTRUCTION IN LIFELESS RAGE.
MODEL 2: A PUZZLE. TO LIVE FOREVER IS TO FOREVER DESIRE, SO HE MUST BE. BE EVERY PLANT DESIRING THE SUN. BE EVERY PREDATOR DESIRING ITS PREY. BE EVERY RABBIT DESIRING ITS MATE. BECOME ENDLESS DESIRE.