Our Remedies Oft In Ourselves Do LIe
You’re a lot of fucking trouble.” Lusa sat, knees up against the wall of the stolen Styx van. The rear doors opened to a bare tundra, scrub brush swaying with the spring winds.
“Your sister caused all of this, not me.” Makenzie stretched and rolled her shoulders, taking stock of her surroundings before staring down at her clothes. “The latest fashion leaves a lot to be desired.” She picked at Lusa’s tank top hanging ridiculously off of her small frame.
Lusa ignored her and looked away. Makenzie sat next to her anyway. Lusa glowered. “Did consent not mean anything to you when you were alive?”
Makenzie shrugged. “We had something called Lesbian Sheep Syndrome. Consent gets sacrificed in the name of someone making the first move.”
Lusa curled her lip and turned away. “You can make the first move by asking. You’re a creep.”
“You’re all going to die, you know.” Makenzie swung her legs. “You’re not going to find any uninfected men.”
“I thought you couldn’t see what we were doing at the Lake.” Lusa picked at her fingernails, growing impatient with Makenzie’s games. “Do you actually know, or are you trying to fuck up my life again?”
“Your life is already fucked up.” Makenzie leaned in.
“You don’t fit in at the Lake. You don’t fit in here.
You’re an outcast with a violent streak.
” She looked down at her swinging feet. “The virus is airborne and everywhere. Boys are infected the moment they take their first breath. Even if I made one right now, his poor little chromosome would be infected immediately.” She scanned the sky, as if she could see the retrovirus floating about in the stratosphere.
“The balloons we launched stopped dispersing it, but it’s airborne now anyway.
Remarkably stable, causes almost no symptoms. It’s very patient. ”
Despite her disinterest in men and hostility toward the idea of children, she still hated that all of the effort her moms and the Adlets had put in to establish a last bastion of humanity would likely fail.
But given what she’d seen of it so far? Maybe they all deserved it. “Can I ask you something?”
“Is this your version of making a move?” Mackenzie pursed her lips.
“Ew, no.” Lusa recoiled. Mackenzie didn’t look offended. “Why did you do it? Why make the virus?”
“Oh, that’s easy.” Mackenzie sat up straighter.
“We could make prosthetics, like your sister’s arm, work with the body, but anything more advanced than that needed constant fluid interfacing.
It needed to be part of you. And nanites couldn’t be injected because they would be attacked by your immune system. You needed to be born with them.”
“So, your solution was to infect literally everyone without their permission?”
Mackenzie stared blankly. “What?”
Lusa repeated herself. “You infected everyone. Without their permission.”
“We had permission. There were global summits and everything.”
Lusa’s forehead hurt. None of this sounded right. “Didn’t you cause the fertility crisis? And then the Great Regression?”
“There was already a fertility crisis. Most women had no say by the time the retrovirus was released and I was already dead.” It was the first time Mackenzie looked sympathetic.
“Every country with a functional military demanded we sell it to them. No-one wanted to be last to develop it. Think.” Mackenzie tapped her temple.
“What would you do if you realised a hostile nation had implant-enhanced soldiers and then you learned it would take you at least a generation to catch up?”
Lusa hadn’t ever thought about it.
Mackenzie shrugged. “So, there was a global summit and it got rushed. They thought science would solve the fertility issue eventually.”
“Who is they?” Lusa looked sceptical.
Mackenzie counted off her fingers. “Governments. Tech companies. Trillionaires. The only they that counts.”
“And Dr. Black? What did he think?”
“His goal was to upload himself. Whether or not he solved the nanite overload problem was secondary to that. If he even wanted to solve it at all.” Mackenzie slid closer to Lusa and nudged her with her shoulder. “It’s fucked up, I know. But Karma, I guess. Men made themselves extinct.”
“Not all men. Rich men. Arrogant men.” Lusa corrected.
“If you say so.” Mackenzie ran a hand through her hair. “I forget that you know so few of them. I got to see what they became from every camera angle over hundreds of years.”
They sat together, swinging their legs off the back of the van in silence for a few moments. Stretching before them, the tundra undulated, both devoid of life and full of it.
Lusa interrupted the chorus of insects. “Why come back now?”
“Sick of me already?” Mackenzie joked. “I already told you. Being stuck in a computer with no-one to talk to is hell.”
“I mean now. Why come back now?” Lusa glanced at her from the corner of her eye, but didn’t turn to face her. Surely you could have done this,” Lusa gestured at Mackenzie’s body, “at any time.”
“Because I was only confident that I could recently.” Mackenzie looked at her hand, curling her fingers. “That’s the difference between me and them. I wait until I’m sure.”
“But now you’re stuck here, where Tyton fell and we’re still without a way to reproduce naturally.” Lusa blew out her cheeks. “When the girls at the Lake find out, they’ll all run off with the first traders they can find. At least they’ll be happy for what’s left of their lives.”
“You don’t seem happy about it.” Mackenzie said.
Lusa shook it off. “Most women want men. That doesn’t bother me.”
Mackenzie scoffed. “That’s a lie.”
“No, it’s not.” The wind picked up and blew Lusa’s hair in her face. She swiped it away. “It used to bother me, being a placeholder, but I’m not safe to be around anyone I really care about.”
“Until Kerr, you mean.”
Lusa stared angrily. “That’s your fault.
” Something tugged at the corner of her lips before a rush of tears threatened to overwhelm her.
For a brief moment she had deluded herself into believing that she could have a taste of happiness.
And it had come from the most unlikely place.
Even now, Alana chasing after her seemed like a cruel ray of hope.
“Look, I’m sorry.” Makenzie put a hand on Lusa’s outstretched leg. “I’m not used to not having anything. Dad’s money. No useful skills. I waited for a world with a single city and no gay bars, for fuck’s sake.”
Lusa flicked her eyes to Makenzie’s hand, but didn’t move.
“I thought we had things in common,” Makenzie continued. “When really, you’re the only person I’ve talked to in decades.”
“You’re trying to manipulate me into feeling sorry for you.” Lusa didn’t look at her.
“Yeah. Is it working?” Makenzie tried her most charming smile.
Lusa snorted dismissively.
Makenzie smiled wider. “That’s a no, then?”
“You tried to kill my…” Lusa stopped herself. She wanted to say girlfriend, but Kerr wasn’t. Not really.
Makenzie left the unfinished sentence alone.
Lusa didn’t want to continue hoping. What’s done was done and she needed to distract herself until she could fall apart in private. She pointed to the ridges on her arm. “Why make yourself with those?”
Mackenzie raised her wrist, examining the parallel lines running from her knuckles to her shoulder. “They’re electrocytes. Like you, I don’t have a biosig. Or nanites. I modified my body to function in Tyton without them.”
Lusa nodded like she might have the faintest idea what Makenzie was talking about. “That’s how you killed all of those Styx?”
“It wasn’t mine.” Makenzie flexed her fingers. “It’s enough to transmit commands, code, that sort of thing. Not enough to shock people. I don’t have superpowers.”
“Then how…”
Makenzie cut her off. “I told all of the energy stored in the Hexaline bricks to release at once. I designed them, after all. I also gave myself conscious control over a lot of autonomous functions.” Makenzie grabbed one of Lusa’s knives and stabbed her hand without flinching. “See?”
Lusa grabbed her knife back angrily. “Consent. Remember?”
“Sorry.” Makenzie concentrated, wound on her hand healing over. “We have more rapid discharge canisters of glucose, right?” Her voice wobbled. “It takes a lot to do that.”
Lusa rolled her eyes and grabbed an RDC from the front of the van. “Organic cyberware, then?”
“I guess.” Makenzie took the cylinder and jabbed it into her leg. She shivered for a moment before stabilising. “But I’ve been a computer for the last century or so. Processing that much data at once isn’t something most brains would be able to handle.”
“I’m quite happy with my body, thank you very much.” Lusa retook her position leaning against the wall of the van.
“It’s very nice.” Makenzie’s eyes raked across Lusa.
Lusa glowered.
“Sorry.” Makenzie looked away. “It’s a habit.” She leaned in close, forcing Lusa to meet her eyes. “I promise, I’ll make it up to you.”
Lusa’s forehead wrinkled. “Is this another come-on?”
“No. I have ideas.” Mackenzie ran her fingernails over her teeth. “There are limitations; I can only work with what I’ve got, but I think you’ll be happy. Everyone will be. I just need a test subject.”