Page 60 of His Bride

“You came to destroy our greatest achievement, the thing that keeps us safe, and we decided to take pity on you because we know you’re being blackmailed, and because you have served us all your life without question. Don’t worry about your wife. She’s fine. We dispatched a contingent of tried and tested loyalists to retrieve her,” Ari says. He has a soothing tone to his voice, and I am glad to hear that Mila is unharmed.

“Did you know? That Lance was a traitor?”

“Come with us,” Shinji says. “You need tea.”

I follow, because that is an order, and I know how to follow orders. I go back into the room beyond the counter, which is a kitchen. It has not been used in generations. A portal in the floor is open, and stairs lead down into a basement. There’s another basement beneath that. The second basement contains a room full of screens and very old tech. Keyboards. There haven’t been keyboards in the world for decades. There are stacks of them down here, along with a great many devices I do not recognize.

There are screens everywhere, displaying what I suppose must be old computer code. I don’t recognize the symbols, but they stream through one screen into another.

“What is that?”

“Oh, that?” Wallace grins. “That’s all the people in the world. I know it doesn’t look like much to you, but we look at thosescreens and we see blondes, brunettes, the occasional redhead. That is the world as we know it.”

I look again, trying to imagine how it must be to see all of the world reduced in such a way, entire lives reduced to simple symbols. No wonder everything is easy for the Artifice. Things are easy when they’re nothing but a squiggly line or half a box.

This could appear to be a great haven for and repository of old technology, but the overall ambiance is somewhat tempered by the fact that it otherwise looks and smells like the quarters of a fresh batch of untrained recruits. There are bags of food open everywhere, old unwashed plates stacked high, and more cups than I can count containing endless unfinished beverages.

I feel my eye twitch, and I repress the urge to order them to clean up immediately. The words are stuck in my throat, begging to come out like a pack of ferocious hounds straining at their leashes. But these improbably alive men just spared my life and destroyed my enemies. So I hold my tongue.

“Are there any clean cups?”

“It’s Shinji’s turn to clean,” Wallace says.

“You haven’t done any dishes in twenty years,” Ari replies, rolling his eyes. “We had a robot, but she broke. Fortunately, I think we have a solution, indirectly provided by you, as it happens.” He presses a button. “Please bring us tea.”

I wait to see what technological wonder is going to come. The last thing I expect is to see Lydia come through a door, carrying a tray of tea, and smiling at me, very much alive. I feel a rush of joy, along with an uncanny sensation. I am glad she is standing in front of me, but I also feel that she should not be standingin front of me. Something deeply unnatural is happening right now.

“Lydia!”

She smiles at me. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I was sent for, and I was saved. The Artifice knows all.”

She sets the tray down, and I stride over to her, wrapping my arms around her in the tightest of embraces. I feel her breathe, her chest expanding against mine, the sound of her exhalation and inhalation so completely normal.

I held her in my arms as she died only hours ago. Her blood still stains my clothes. I am wearing her death, and yet she is standing in front of me, impossibly here.

“You were dead.” I turn to the others. “She died.”

“Only barely. Hardly at all,” Shinji says. “You’d have to be a lot more dead than she was to stay dead if we want you alive. Look at your scars, Arthur. You’ve been through several un-survivable encounters. We make sure we take care of our own.”

This is too easy.

I held her as she died. I heard her shuddering final moments. I saw her soul leave. I have been injured in battle before, and yes, I have been mended. But I never died. I never left my body the way she left hers.

There’s something wrong about her, I realize.

I noticed it right away, subconsciously.

She is smiling.

Lydia does not smile. She is also holding a tray of food. Lydia does not serve snacks, not even to those who designed the Artifice. Most of all, Lydia does not hug. Whatever I hugged just now is not Lydia. It might bear a strong resemblance to her, but it’s not her.

Grief surges back in twice as bitterly for having experienced a brief respite of hope. The men in this room believe they can fix everything with sufficient technology. But they can’t. They couldn’t fix my eyes properly, and they can’t bring Lydia back.

The creature who is wearing Lydia like a suit serves us while I try not to be visibly repulsed by it. I am disgusted to my core. It is hard not to come to the conclusion that everything I have ever believed in and fought for is a lie. It is even harder not to come to the conclusion that Lance was right. I have been so blinded by my belief in the Artifice.

The Artifice is supposed to be an intellect unaffected by any human influence. But with the engineers still alive, it is clear that the Artifice is strongly impacted by their thoughts and desires. That means there is no Artifice, not really. What I have called the Artifice is actually an oligarchy.

I have lost a lot today. I have lost Lydia, my most loyal soldier. I have lost Lance, my best friend. And now I have lost the very thing I have believed in and fought for my entire life. My moral compass lies shattered as surely as the lives of those I loved.

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