Read Interzone 251 for Free Online Page A

than a hollow, empty shell. “It looks like they finished this place,” she said, her voice trembling. “I bet it’s completed. I bet it’s functional, if we can just figure out how to turn it on.”
    “It can’t be that simple,” I said. “The fact that it’s here must mean that it depends on the particle accelerator being active, and we can’t turn that on just by flipping the right switch. There isn’t even any electricity for it.”
    “We don’t know that. We don’t know if it needs external power and we don’t know that it’s dependent on the accelerator. It might have just needed that for preliminary research, or to…I don’t know, set it up, get it going the first time. It might be self-sufficient now.”
    It might have been, but if it was we never found the secret of turning it on. Chances were that this place, whatever it was, wasn’t finished. Like every other grandiose project of the transhumans, it was unfinished because the minds who had started it had winked out before it was completed.
    It was three days before Lucia finally gave up and let us go home.

    ***

    I put the box in my pocket, looking out across the room. There were about fifteen people, probably more people than I’d ever seen in one place before. Lucia was good at making friends. I was thinking about leaving when Anders waylaid me. “You weren’t still seeing her, were you?” he asked. “I mean when…”
    “No. We kind of drifted apart.” The weight in my pocket got heavier.
    “Have you heard the latest? About the president?” he asked. “They say he’s winked out. He got himself fitted with Cambridge-class augmentations. Said it was his duty to try. That it was the only way to come to an understanding of the world situation. And then—” He held a hand up with the fingers together in a point and then flicked them open. “Psh! Gone, just like that. Flatline. Didn’t last even a day. Stupid, huh?”
    He shut up long enough for me to stare at him blankly. “President?” I said. “I didn’t know there still
was
a president.”
    Mrs Charyn’s enclave had once been a high-priced condominium complex; four elegant brick buildings on the edge of a Frederick Olmstead park. Back in the days when there were a lot of people in the world, it was probably considered a choice place to live; something reserved for the moderately wealthy. Passing a french door I saw a small balcony, and down at the foot of the railing of the balcony there was a cat, looking out at the view of trees, grass, a pond. I went out, looked at the view myself for a bit and then crouched down to pet the cat. It leaned into my hand for a few pets and then said, “I’m very sorry for your loss, Neil.”
    I jolted a bit, started to pull my hand back, then relaxed. “Thanks Domino. I was wondering where you were. I didn’t know you were in a cat these days.” My hand was still hovering over the cat; now that I knew it was Domino, I wasn’t sure if it would be rude to stop petting it or presumptuous to continue. Then the silliness of the conundrum made me smile, and I gave it another pet.
    “Yes,” Domino said. “It was Lucia’s idea. She liked having me as a physical presence; something that could sleep on her bed with her after she got sick.” The cat opened its mouth when it spoke, but like a puppet, its lips didn’t move to articulate the words that came out. The voice apparently came from some biomechanical equivalent of a speaker, no articulations of lips or tongue required.
    “I’m sorry we didn’t contact you while she was ill,” Domino said. “It was Lucia’s wish, but I wonder if I should have gotten in touch with you anyway.”
    “What are you going to do now?” I asked. “Find a new person, or…?” I trailed off. Domino was fully Cambridge-Standards, so it wasn’t a piece of property like a housekeeping robot. Or a cat. It could do whatever it wanted.
    “I don’t have any plans,” Domino said, the cat looking out at