Retroactivity Read online

  “Thanks to all for the satisfaction of my curiosity,” said Gammalock. “I have learned much.”

  He stood from his chair, and the others rose with him. Behind them, the chairs quietly collapsed back into their default resting states. Gammalock motioned toward the door. “I will see you upstairs. Unless you have any questions of me?”

  “I’ve got one,” said Asclepius. “What did you think?”

  “You are bold and will go far,” said Gammalock. “The collective you. I am impressed by your team, and I think you will be good representatives on the council, should Director Roche implement it. I appreciate this opportunity to talk today.”

  “I think we appreciate it more,” said Asclepius. A message appeared from Keystone: Fanboy. He shooed it away.

  Exiting the elevator, Gammalock said, “Director, I would talk with you a bit longer. Can you remain behind?”

  “I—yes, can do,” said Mat. He turned to the team. “I’ll call ahead to the DAA, have someone meet you at the transport dock on your return. If you’d like to look around the facility or grounds at all, you’re welcome to. Otherwise, thank you very much for indulging me today.”

  He shook hands with each of them in turn, and pulled Mimic into a full hug. “I’m glad you’re doing well, man,” he said quietly in his ear.

  “You feel better about the team?” Mimic asked him, also quietly.

  “Yeah. You’re doing all right. I’m glad to see it.”

  They broke the hug. “Let’s see each other more often,” Mimic said.

  Mat laughed. “That’s really up to you, invisible man.”

  He watched them walk back down the path toward the transport deck, then turned back to Gammalock. “What can I do for you?”

  “Let us walk and talk,” said Gammalock. “Though I do not leave this suit, I still appreciate the concept of sun on my face.”

  They strolled across the grounds for a minute before Gammalock spoke again. “Speak to me of Foresight. Frankly. The things you tell no one because they are inane or unsupported.”

  Mat hesitated, collecting his thoughts. “He—I should like him. Everything about him is friendly. Arrogant, but with good reason. And good humor, generally.

  “But—something’s wrong.”

  He paused, and Gammalock gently prodded, “Go on.”

  “It’s just—I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I don’t like that I can’t possibly be ahead of him, or even abreast of him. It’s uncomfortable. And…I keep getting a weird reaction from my augment. Or a weird lack of reaction. I don’t quite know how to describe it. It doesn’t react to him, which is fine, it doesn’t react to most people most of the time. But somehow I feel like it should be reacting. It’s like a missing tooth. There’s a hole there that shouldn’t be. Only in this case, the tooth has always been missing, so I don’t even know why I find the gap weird.”

  Mat shook his head. “Does that make any sense?”

  “I think yes,” said Gammalock. “I cannot map him correctly. The character I have built does not respond the way he does. I think even lengthier conversations would not help. He adjusts in ways we cannot see, and I cannot make my mental model do that, so it does not line up.”

  “Is that a bad thing, do you think?” asked Mat.

  “It is an uncomfortable thing,” said Gammalock. “I have not been uncertain in many years. It is, at the least, a risk.”

  He looked thoughtful. “I will not act against a potential. He is on track to do much good, and I will not prevent that because I have a fear. But I will think on what to do if that potential manifests. His augment, like all, can be overcome.”

  Mat raised his eyebrows. “How?”

  Gammalock waved a hand. “I have only an idea right now. Not even. A germ. But I will work on it. Perhaps we are paranoid, you and I. I know that I am. And so maybe I will waste my time on prevention we never need. But if we do, it will be there.

  “Only you and I will know about it. You must tell no one.”

  Mat swallowed, feeling the barest touch of the heavy weight of responsibility Gammalock carried. “Of course.”

  IX

  “This is, of course, how things were. But let me tell you about another path. I think you’ll find it—oh, what’s a good word? Let’s go with ‘validating.’”

  Retroactivity sprawled languorously on the couch, his elegant form draped carelessly over the black leather. His white jacket was folded into a square and was being used as a pillow, its single golden eye peeking out from beneath his black hair. His eyes were closed, and he was tossing a crystal paperweight into the air over and over, catching it without looking.

  Several other people lounged around in the room, occupying their time with books, television, or in one case, cleaning guns. The furniture was spread out around the spacious penthouse apartment with no clear plan or pattern, seeming to have just been dragged to wherever was currently convenient. The furniture was all black leather, the floor was covered with a thick Oriental rug, and the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows spoke of an extremely high property value.

  Despite the clear expense, everything carried an air of vague neglect. The room and its contents were clean, but nothing appeared to be cared for beyond the minimum necessary to keep it working. It gave the impression that the owner was someone who, rather than perform regular maintenance, would instead throw things away and buy new ones.

  “I’m bored,” announced Retroactivity. His associates all looked up from their various tasks. Retroactivity, his eyes still closed, extended one hand and pointed at the black-clad woman cleaning her guns on the floor. “Lacuna. Your idea. Share it.”

  “Wait, why her?” protested Taunt, dropping her game controller. Her greenish skin darkened and her spiky hair rose up slightly, indicators that she was spoiling for a fight. She narrowed her eyes. “I’ve got an idea that’s guaranteed to liven things up.”

  Retroactivity opened his eyes halfway to stare at Taunt from under heavy lids. “Because no one survives it, Taunt.”

  “You could still do it,” Taunt muttered.

  “I did do it. Almost a hundred and sixty different ways. Which is part of why I’m bored, and we’re back here.”

  Taunt settled back into her chair, sulking, but the settling of her hair showed that she knew she’d lost the fight.

  “Just so the rest of you don’t feel left out.” Retroactivity pointed at his other associates in turn. “Halflife, yours is too straightforward, so there’s no challenge. Molt, you say the same thing every time. Replix: disgusting.”

  Replix grinned, crossing his arms across his chest. “But fun.”

  “I do not always say the same thing,” grumbled Molt from her place on the floor. Seated cross-legged, her head still rose above Replix’s, sitting next to her in the armchair.

  “You absolutely do,” said Replix.

  “Fine, then what is it?” the giantess challenged him.

  Lacuna, Taunt, Halflife and Replix all answered in a chorus: “Rob a bank.”

  Molt frowned. “Fine. But I don’t see why we can’t.”

  “It’s petty, Molt,” said Halflife, closing her book. “It’s beneath us. We run Washington, DC. Knocking over a bank—it’d destroy our credibility. We’re not thugs.”

  “What’s the point in being in charge if you can’t do what you want?” asked Molt, somehow managing to coax her rumbling voice into a petulant tone.

  “No one but you wants to rob a bank, Maria,” said Replix. “And even if all but one of us did, I’m pretty sure that this is not a democracy.” He jerked a thumb at Retroactivity.

  “Correct,” said Retroactivity. “And therefore: Lacuna, your plan.”

  Lacuna stood up from the floor and stretched, twisting her knuckles until they cracked. “Let’s shake things up,” she said.

  “How?” asked Halflife.

  Lacuna grinned. “Seed.”

  Replix let out a low whistle. Taunt grinned. Halflife looked thoughtful.


  “You want to kill him?” she asked.

  “No. Or rather, it doesn’t matter. I want to activate him. Let’s get him on the move. And then once we do…who else can stop an Aug-5 but another Aug-5?”

  “Clever,” nodded Halflife. “They may hate and fear Retroactivity—and us, by extension—but they can’t even comprehend Seed. We become their champion.”

  “Not just ‘become,’” said Lacuna. “They’ll beg us to stop him. They’ll be falling all over themselves to give us more money, power, resources. You think we have access and control now? Wait until Seed’s on the march. They might very well legitimately turn the country over to us.”

  “Sounds like I’m up, then,” said Taunt, smiling eagerly. Her skin darkened into mottled spots, green on green. Lacuna looked at her skeptically, and Taunt’s face fell.

  “Come on! We’re goading Seed, who hasn’t left the Everglades in two decades, into moving, and you’re not going to use me? This is tailor-made for me! This is mine.” Her voice slid into a growl, and her hair began to stand up again.

  “Relax. Relax,” said Lacuna. “This is definitely going to hinge on you. I’m just not sure how yet.”

  Taunt cocked her head and squinted at Lacuna. “I think it’s pretty clear. See, I,” pointing two fingers at her own chest, “taunt him, and then he comes after us.”

  “Right, but that’s not what we want. We want him on the move, but aimed somewhere else. If we’re seen to be the ones who provoked him, then we get the blame for the destruction he causes. That’s no good. We want to swoop in and save the day, and we can’t do that if everyone thinks that we set the problem up in the first place.”

  “Oh,” said Taunt. Her hair drooped. “So it’s subtlety again.”

  “It’s always subtlety,” said Halflife.

  “Could just rob a bank,” said Molt under her breath. This was still completely audible to everyone in the room. “Skip the games, have fun for once.”

  Retroactivity swung his legs off the side of the couch and sat up. He spun the crystal paperweight in his left hand. “I’m getting the feeling that you’re not entirely happy in my service, Molt.”

  He stared at the giantess, and she dropped her eyes. “No, it’s good. I like it.” She paused, then added, “I just don’t feel like an equal partner.”

  “You’re equal to them,” Retroactivity said, encompassing the room with a nod of his head. “And nobody’s equal to me.”

  Lacuna narrowed her eyes slightly, and Retroactivity laughed. “The total impossibility of success never stops you trying, does it, Lyssa?”

  Lacuna bared her teeth in a shark’s grin. “You keep me around, so you must not mind.”

  “Why would I? You can’t ever hurt me, not in any way that sticks. And you direct at least as much inventive mayhem away from me. So if it makes you happy to try to kill me in your spare time, have at it. I’ve made you suffer for it before, and I will again.”

  “What good does that do if she can’t remember it?” asked Replix.

  “It does me good,” said Retroactivity. “Besides, you learn so much about someone by how they break.”

  Lacuna’s smile stayed on, but it looked locked in place. Her face had paled, standing out starkly beneath her black hair. “You’ll have only yourself to blame when I finally succeed.”

  Retroactivity shrugged. “If you could, that would be true. But as you’re not going to at the moment, let’s start sketching out a basic plan of attack against Seed.”

  He patted the couch next to him, and Lacuna crossed over to it to sit down, dragging a coffee table with her. They began to talk, cutting each other off at half-sentences to advance to the next correlated thought.

  “So what was your idea?” Replix asked Taunt, ignoring the strategy session.

  “War,” said Taunt. “I want to invade Canada.”

  “Not to be cliché, but you and what army?”

  Taunt shrugged, grinned, and bristled her hair. “Any one I want.”

  “Doesn’t work, though?”

  “Apparently not, according to fearless leader here. I wonder what Canada’s hiding. Makes me want to go after them all the more, honestly.”

  Replix nodded noncommittally. “I could go for that.”

  “What was your plan?”

  “Donor body.” Replix grinned thinking about it. “There’s got to be someone out there who won’t reject the change. If I can find them, there’d be two of me.”

  “Unsettling,” said Halflife. Replix blew her a kiss.

  “So what, you just wanted to line the whole country up and try ‘em all?” asked Taunt.

  “Nah,” said Replix. “I don’t usually bother, but at full blast, I can force a full alteration. Brain and all. The augment carries. So it’d be a chain reaction. I figure each one could probably tag four or five others before rejection, so it’d spread pretty quickly, especially in cities. Bound to find someone in short order like that.”

  “And then we’re left with fifty thousand tons of rotting biomass in the streets from all of the rejections,” said Halflife.

  “Okay, yeah,” Taunt said. “Disgusting.”

  “But fun!” Replix repeated.

  “Bank heist is looking pretty good about now, huh?” asked Molt.

  Halflife laughed. “We’ll figure it out at some point, Maria. We’ll make it happen.”

  “Strategy sessions make me hungry,” said Replix. “Anyone up for lunch?”

  “I’m still thinking about an entire city rotting in the streets,” said Taunt, making a face.

  “I mean, you can eat what you like,” Replix told her, “but I was thinking more like Indian.”

  Taunt hissed at him, and Replix turned his grin up another notch. “This is a fight you don’t want, Anna.”

  Taunt bristled, and Halflife took Replix by the shoulders and steered him away. “Lunch it is. Separate restaurants, I think.”

  X

  “Soon, subtle stirring started in a swamp to the south.”

  The Everglades was once a place of serene, primal beauty. With ancient, twisted trees standing silent sentinel among its spreading wetlands, it had long served as a reminder of the untamed wilderness that humanity had slowly driven back. Despite the powerful predators it housed, it was tranquil and still, someplace to take a break from life and appreciate nature.

  Now, most of what had once been a national park was ringed by signs warning trespassers to stay away. They marked the area as government property and labeled it a restricted zone. Various legal penalties were threatened on the sign, but the real threat was left unsaid: those who ventured inside often never came back out at all.

  The media had begun to refer to it as the Neverglades, and the name stuck. It was a name that conjured up vague ideas of fantasy realms, and that seemed appropriate with the towering spires that now rose high above the swamp. These strange structures looked crystalline, but swayed and bent in the breeze like tremendous trees. Aerial views revealed that these were not anomalies, but true to the new nature of the swamp. Things within it were different, altered. A constant miasma sat upon the waters, obscuring any good view of what was beneath it, but everything that rose above that mist bore similar characteristics.

  The plants glinted purple and blue in the sun, the threatening bruise of a Portuguese man o' war. They grew bushier and denser than they ever had before, and skittering things moved half-seen within their canopy. The mists themselves roiled on occasion, stirred into swooping coils by something enormous passing through.

  Initially, people had been sent to take samples. They never returned.

  Later, drones were used to snip small pieces for analysis. Most of those, too, were destroyed, but the ones that made it back brought samples that generated more questions than answers. The leaves still shared the general cellular makeup of plants, with the central vacuole and thick cell wall. They still appeared to provide a form of photosynthesis, despite their new colors.

  But the differences far out
stripped the similarities. Their DNA was fundamentally altered, resembling nothing else on Earth. They contained as much silicon as carbon. And although there was contention on this point, several of the scientists studying the samples claimed that they saw structures resembling neural pathways. There was nothing indicating a brain, but with only clippings to work from, it was impossible to make a certain judgment either way.

  Early efforts were made to capture an animal from the Neverglades, living or dead. But the animals lurked deep inside, never venturing to the outskirts. And those who pushed their way in found that the environment rapidly changed from passively hostile to active. The survivors swore that the mists grew thicker around them, that they were pursued with intelligence through the swamp and picked off one at a time, that even the plants slowly twisted and knotted to prevent their passage or escape.

  After a few abortive efforts, a powerful Reader named Amygdala made an attempt to determine the cause. Many derided the effort, labeling her “the ballunatic” for her hot-air balloon flyover of the park, but deep within the park she made contact with a being which she called Seed.

  Seed described himself as the land. According to Amygdala, he did not seem able to perceive himself as a separate entity anymore, instead believing that he was the entire park. The plants, animals and land within in it: all were his, and all were him. When those who had ventured inside thought themselves hunted, they were correct. Seed had felt them as a parasitic intrusion upon himself, and had responded just as anyone would on discovering a parasite: by extracting it and crushing it underfoot.

  Conversations with Seed were not in anything resembling English, instead consisting of a series of exchanges of emotional states which Amygdala then did her best to interpret for the rest of the world. Progress was therefore slow, but eventually Amygdala was able to broker an accord wherein Seed would not attempt to expand any further than he already had, and in exchange no people would be allowed within his borders to disrupt his balance.