The Immortality Game

“Why’s he having such trouble? I thought he could break anything electronic?”

“Depends on who designed the firewall code,” Marcus said. “He can break anything given enough time.”

Zoya watched the last turn in the corridor, expecting to see the sky cycle hove into view any second.

The door hissed open revealing a long, narrow room lined with metal shelving. Repair bots worked at two long tables, paying no attention to the intruders. The door slid shut behind them, and Zoya looked for another exit. There didn’t appear to be one.

“We’re trapped in here!” she said.

“Father locked the door. Even if the guy stops here, he’ll have trouble getting in.”

“What good will that do us?”

The gunning engine roared past the door.

“Maybe we can hide out here for a while,” Marcus said. “My father can look over the building plans and perhaps find some way to help us.”

Zoya walked to the back of the room. The bots continued their work uninterrupted. A pile of grungy canvas bags filled one corner, so Zoya pulled a couple onto the tiled floor and sat down on one. “I’m tired.”

Marcus sat on the other bag. “Me, too.”

“I’m glad I’m exhausted,” Zoya said. “It’s the only thing keeping me sane right now. I don’t have to think about everything that’s happened.”

Marcus nodded. His eyelids drooped and he rubbed his eyes with his fists.

“Why are you doing this?” Zoya said. “You should be at your embassy or in some hotel room getting some sleep. They aren’t after you, so why put yourself in danger?”

“My father—”

“No, don’t tell me it’s whatever your father is after. Would you really go through all this just because he tells you to?”

Marcus sagged against the pile of bags at his back and shrugged. “I don’t know. What have I done with my life? What am I going to do with it? I don’t know anything. My country…‌Papa says it’s all but dead. And he’s right, I think. I used to be able to look outside the windows of our apartment at night and see a galaxy of lights blinking and moving around Phoenix. These days you can usually count the moving lights on two hands.

“It’s funny how much I hate Meshing. It sucked me in for two years before Papa pulled me back out. I was so angry with him, but of course he was right. Now I can’t even go on the Web on my own. Papa has to feed me whatever I need.”

“How does he do all this?” Zoya said. “You make him sound like…‌I don’t know…‌some super being.”

Marcus laughed a sad and hysterical laugh. “Who knows what he is?” Since she’d met Marcus, he had averted his gaze any time she had looked at him, but now he stared right back into her eyes. She noticed the deep, liquid brown for the first time, like the coffee her mother had always had each morning. “He’s dead…‌been dead for seven years now. A stroke.”

“But he…‌talks to you?”

“You ever heard of Javier Saenz?”

Zoya shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Marcus wiped sweat from his brow and smiled. “And I thought everyone knew of him. He was a legend even before I was born. Greatest coder in history. He’s the man who made the Web viable again; developed the sentry code that killed off all the viruses and spam; prevents new ones from getting in and wrecking everything.” He laughed again. “Of course, that’s exactly what enabled Meshing to happen…‌a safe Web for everyone.”

“So it’s this sentry code that talks to you?”

“No. My father worked on all kinds of projects. The big one, the one he pulled off just before he died, was the creation of a code cradle that could mimic the functionality of a human mind. Well, not exactly, of course, but close enough. It’s ironic that he had his stroke just after copying his own mind data to his AI model. So that’s what talks to me, a bunch of computer code that I call Papa, because it’s convenient and maybe because sometimes it’s comforting, but it’s not truly him.”

A bot rolled toward them and halted near a large smartwaiter. The door slid open, revealing a cleaning bot. Zoya assumed it must be broken. The repair bot lifted its smaller brother and rolled back toward the front of the room.

Zoya felt an urge to apologize for Marcus’s loss, but stifled it when she realized the absurdity—she had lost everything in her life today. Forcefully she pushed the thoughts of her mother and brother and the rest back into the murk of her clouded mind. With her heart settled, the combat card had faded into the background. “An AI. I guess it makes sense that he can do all these things. He’s sort of like the Meshers, right? Only he lives there permanently.”