Page 158 of Coldwire
Kieren rolls his eyes, then extends his right arm. The pale strip of skin on his wrist has faded more now, but I noted it early on when we were first setting out. I suspected that he’d consistently worn a watch and then removed it for Medaluo, or else the tan line wouldn’t have been that prominent.
“It does belong to you,” he says. “Even when I wasn’t talking to your little bot, I wore it around with me. Always.”
Ah. But the moment I was there, he couldn’t risk me noticing the bot of myself hanging out on his watch. He switched back to the handheld.
He really must have panicked when I started teasing him about an AI girlfriend installed on it. I suppose it wasn’t too far from the truth.
“I hope it was useful.” I lift my hand, smoothing my thumb over his wrist. He’s warm. Solid. “I have no clue what it was telling you in the time I was offline.”
“Do you want to see?”
When he pulls his handheld out from his pocket, he hands it to me with the most relaxed manner I’ve seen from him downcountry. Of course he was tense with it during our entire mission. That day in Kunlun, I had downloaded a chatbot of me built using pieces of NileCorp’s ownIndisposition code and sent it to Kieren’s handheld, armed with all the information he’d need to find my memory files. Because it was local to the handheld, NileCorp couldn’t spy on it. But that also meant if Kieren lost the handheld, he lost the bot, too.
“I’m not sure if you know this,” he says, swiping up the chat log for me, “but even though your bot wasn’t connected to the internet, it could ping your main network. I could ask for updates about you. Which iteration you were on while NileCorp rebooted you.”
I wince immediately. Kieren nods.
“It was painful, Lia. I didn’t know if they were hurting you. Torturing you. I could only keep checking and checking to receive your status. So the day the bot stopped being able to ping something, that was when my suspicion took root. Either NileCorp had given up. Or they’d taken you offline.”
“That was when they downloaded me as Eirale,” I finish softly.
He nods. Gestures down to the handheld.
“So many versions of you. Scattered where I couldn’t reach.”
I start to scroll through the chat log, stopping periodically on each date that marked a data center breach downcountry.
KIEREN:We’re in Upsie’s data center. Where to?
BOT!LIA:first coordinate is the score you initially got in the Medan History midterm before you kicked up a fuss about the bonus points
KIEREN:Wow…
KIEREN:sory for the typing there’s a time limit here
BOT!LIA:you’re in threto?? also this is how i type too what r you apologizing for
KIEREN:yea it’s not very eloquent…
BOT!LIA:don’t think you can talk smack because I don’thave a corporeal form right now I’ll beat you up later
KIEREN:In Threto! Coordinates?
BOT!LIA:what’s the jersey number of the nile academy lacrosse player we both hate…
“I didn’t realize my own bot was using riddles,” I say.
“It’s a great method. Even if it fell into NileCorp hands and they talked to it pretending to be me, they wouldn’t be able to work out where the file locations were.”
I go to pass the handheld back to him. The screen moves at my motion, scrolls a bit farther down. I catch a glimpse ofI miss you, it’s not the same without you around properlyand in reply, time-stamped three seconds later at two in the morning,you’ll get me back!!!!! i trust you. wholly and completely.
It almost feels like I’ve glimpsed something illicit, which is comical when he was talking to a bot trained to speak exactly likeme. Without questioning it for a moment, I’d given him something that would answer his every message with my innermost thoughts. Every instinct of mine that my functioning mind might prefer to hide.
“As you see, it was very useful,” Kieren says, setting the handheld down on the counter. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little attached to it.”
I can’t help my smile. A soft sensation spreads between my ribs.
“Thank you,” I say. “For not leaving any of me behind.”
