Page 149 of Coldwire
The enormity of what I’m asking dawns on him without need for elaboration, in the same way that he knows how to anticipate my feint on the sparring mat. I see it in his expression, in the scrunch of his brow.
“Hold on,” Kieren says sharply. “I can come with you. We can hide together—”
“No, it doesn’t work like that,” I interrupt. “I’m virtual. I can only exist inside the StrangeLoom system, andyouneed to get off StrangeLoom and not come back until you’re ready—because the moment you do, they’ll be able to hurt you. I can’t be brought back as myself until there’s a scenario where NileCorp can’t take me away. You need to decide when that is.”
The soldiers are shouting below now. Footsteps, thudding up the stairs on each side of the walkway.
“Lia,” Kieren pleads. “If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re—I can’t even comprehend what I’m saying—you’re, what,deletingyourself?”
I take his hand. It is as much for me as it is for him. Despite all that I am saying, I still feel this contact to the bone. I could fool myself into thinking I am organic, each of my nerve endings here sparking to life.
“I can’t truly be deleted.” I search through NileCorp’s treasure troves of classified documents while I speak. I find their write-ups of Indisposition, the pages and pages of carefully designed malware, then the function that searches for everything NileCorp knows about a person. Their messages and their photos. Every word uttered aloud upcountry, every action performed as an avatar inside their realm. While I’m using Coldwire’s rapid threads to find the code capable of turning a person’s entire life into a simplified chatbot, it’s also easy enough for me to pluck out the parts demanding a bot’s loyalty to NileCorp. Leave behind the ability to summon any thought the imitated user would viably say, take away the parameters of allegiance.
In that moment, I understand Chung a little more. It is otherworldly to be capable of doing this. Science pushed beyond my imagination.
“They’re going to keep bringing me back,” I say. “But I’ll exhaust them on this version until they give up. Which means you’re in charge of recovering the other one somewhere far away from them.”
“Absolutely not,” he hisses. “This one, the other one.Lia, you’reyou.”
“And until I say otherwise,” I say firmly, “I’m yours. Only yours. Find me, Kieren. Please.”
Kieren’s eyes turn fiery. It’s the face he pulls when he knows he’s lost. When I have beat him on that last stretch of the lap around campus, when I was faster to submit my assignment at the bottom of the stack for extra points.
When he gets like that, he’s only motivated to be better the next time.
“You’re impossible,” he whispers, ruined, reverential.
“I trust you,” I whisper back. “Log out.Please.Before they get you.”
Kieren shudders through an inhale. Our fingers are interlaced withsuch force that I feel every bit of his desperation screaming from his touch, and he must sense my anguish alike.
“Okay. I’ll find you again.”
And in the face of everything, I’m devastated when he actually disappears, my hand closing its grip on nothing. Tears rush to collect in my eyes, finally allowed to surface.
“Freeze!”
The soldiers have circled me in. They shift into position, line the steps so that there’s no chance I can run. I grit my teeth, idling a little longer. At last I finish revising NileCorp’s own Indisposition code to make my surprise and download it onto the handheld registered among Kieren Murray’s belongings downcountry.
Then I run down the list of options in my own core command.
System Settings
Recent Items
Sleep
Force Wipe
“Can you hear me?” I say out loud. I see the call box has opened on the left side of my display.James Moore: Connected.
“Lia?” he says hesitantly. “Is that you?”
“It’s me.” One of the soldiers yanks me upright. “You’ve had such an eye on me, have you? Yet for all your surveillance, you still didn’t see this.”
They try to lead me to the steps. I drag my feet.
On the line, James Moore says, “Lia, this is for your safety.”
