"Dissolution Days"

(a prequel to Metal Fatigue)

by Sean Williams

Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise.

O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!

For your dew is a radiant dew,

and the earth will give birth to those long dead.

Isaiah 26:19

The voice woke Phil Roads shortly before nightfall: a man's voice, little more than a whisper but loud enough to startle him.

"Hello? Can anybody hear me . . . ?"

He sat up slowly to take stock of his surroundings. The muddy ditch in which he found himself was partially sheltered by two overhanging bushes heavy with icy buds of water. The sky above loomed grey and cold, and a slight mist of rain pit-pattered into the mud around him. No-one was visible. He had no idea where he was.

He rubbed at his eyes, clearing them of grit. A thin film of ash had settled over him as he slept--which might have been for hours or days, for all he knew. Or years. Little penetrated his grey world any more. He remembered walking only--an endless march that had gradually become a controlled stagger. At some point, most likely in the last few hours, he must have fallen, failed to rise and slept where he lay.

Not that it mattered to him how long he had been lying there. He had survived thus far more by momentum than effort, without either forethought or a plan: his body had taken over where his mind had failed him. Walking helped, but the symptoms never let go. They padded behind him like a bloodhound, like guilt--like the ghosts of all his mistakes, of all the people he had killed or helped to die. And every time he faltered, they overtook him again; each time they bit, their teeth sunk a little deeper.

"Hello? Is anybody there . . . ?"

The voice startled him just as much the second time, coming as it did through his implants--via senses he had tried to forget, along with everything else. Sixty seconds later, the voice called again. Obviously some sort of loop.

He stood up, and the voice instantly became clearer. Turning on the spot, he observed that his impromptu bed lay under a moss-covered stone outcrop near the summit of a low hill. Lacking any other concrete direction, he climbed higher in order to find out what was going on.

At the summit, he stopped to study the view, squinting in the fading light. Trees stretched for kilometres in every direction. On the other side of the hill a swollen creek wound through the middle of a narrow valley. On the far bank sat a low concrete bunker, a squat construction with no windows or doors.

He opened his inner voice as he had been trained to do years ago, imagining the words bundling together and firing out of the base of his skull and into the air:

"Who are you?" he asked.

"At last!" replied the voice, ignoring the question but at least replying--proving that it wasn't an hallucination. "Someone's come. You have come, haven't you? This isn't just a stray signal?"

"Loud and clear, now that I'm in range," Roads said. The words came with surprising ease, despite his recent lack of practice. "Your radio signal is very weak. Line of sight only."

"I guessed as much. I've been transmitting for days now and never had a reply." The voice sounded hopeful but cautious. "You're using the PolNet band. That means you're a policeman, right?"

Roads frowned. "I don't know. It's hard to remember. Some things . . . aren't clear."

"No? Well listen, I'm in trouble. I need your help."

"What do you want me to do?"

"First, tell me what you see."

Roads looked around again, feeling slightly dizzy. Everything had changed, although it looked the same. "I'm standing on the ridge, overlooking a valley in some sort of forest. There's a bunker by the river."

"That must be where I am. I can hear the river, I think. And a bunker, you said? Yes, that makes sense."

"You don't know where you are?"

The voice hesitated. Then: "No. Not exactly."

"Why not?"

"It's a little hard to explain. Come down and see if you can find a way in--"

"Not until you tell me what's going on. Are you a prisoner?"

"In a sense, perhaps. I'm new to all this too. All I know is that I woke up here a week ago and couldn't see a thing. Life hasn't improved much since then. I'm still learning exactly what I can and can't do."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm alone and unable to move. I can't feel a damned thing. I guess I'm in North Carolina somewhere, maybe the Elmore National Park, but beyond that . . . " Again the voice hesitated. "Look, I'm trapped in here. Are you going to help me or not?"

The voice wanted an answer. Roads tried to speak, but found that he could not. He put a hand to his forehead and clutched the pain that suddenly burst behind his temples--a flower of agony spreading through his nerves and tissues, sending roots wriggling down his spine and along his back. Ganglia sparked and misfired as his implants, so long disused, tried to follow instructions that had once been automatic but were now horribly wrong.

Worse than the pain, however--and more frightening--were the memories.

. . . a woman burning . . . a city raped and murdered . . . a world falling apart . . .

He fell to his knees in the mud, breath hissing through his teeth.

"Hello? Hello?" The voice called for him urgently. "Don't go! I'm sorry. I'll tell you everything. Don't go away!"

Roads concentrated on the voice, the plea for help. He was needed; he had to act. He couldn't black out this time.

And slowly, unexpectedly, the pain did begin to ease. The vice clutching his temples loosened, let the blood run freely through his swollen veins. "It's okay," he said, grunting the words into the air. "I, uh . . . I'm still here. I think."

"Is something wrong?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. I feel . . . strange." Half his brain was on fire, the other half frozen. "I'm not sure I'm going to be much use to you."

Two words arose from a distant memory: "Disconnection syndrome."

He didn't realise he'd spoken them aloud until the voice responded: "If that's your problem, then we have something in common. You could say that I'm suffering from a variant of the same disorder."

Blinking, still confused by the attack, Roads failed to understand what the voice was saying. "What?"

"I'm dead," said the voice matter-of-factly, as though that explained everything. "Now, are you going to help me or not?"

Dead? Phil Roads wiped a muddy hand across his face and tasted the coldness in the air. Dead was worse than crazy. He supposed he might have something to offer, after all.

"All right," he said. "I'll do my best."

"Thank you. Come on over when you're ready, and we'll see where to start."

Hitching the coat higher to cover his neck, Roads half-slid down the ridge and crossed the polluted stream.

#

"It was a war, wasn't it?"

Roads ignored the question. The bunker stood before him, its unpainted concrete looking scabrous surrounded by the verdant undergrowth of the valley. "There's a door," he said. "It's shut."

"Wait. Tell me what happened. What's the date?"

Roads sighed. "I don't know."

"A rough guess? A year, even?"

"2058."

The voice fell silent. Roads leaned against the bunker and closed his eyes. The answer had been a guess, but it felt right. And if it was, then that meant over ten years had passed since he had last used his implants.

"Christ," said the voice, finally.

"I'd rather not talk about it, if it's all the same to you."

"No, you have to. It's hard to imagine so much time . . . Anything could have happened!"

"Do you want out of this thing or not?"

"Yes, of course. But . . . "

"What now?"

"What's it like out there? Outside?"

Roads opened his eyes. He looked around. "Green."

"No, seriously."

"No nothing. It's green. I like it here. You should stay right where you are. It'd be a mistake to leave."

"I have to. I'm conserving my batteries, but they won't last forever. We need to find another power supply."

Roads choked back a snort of laughter. "You really don't know, do you?"

"Of course I don't." The voice sounded offended. "The last thing I remember is the Johannesburg Olympics, 2040. The opening ceremony. After that, a complete blank. Eighteen years of nothing." When Roads didn't respond to the pause that followed, the voice prompted: "How bad is it?"

"Bad."

"Please, for Christ's sake!"

Roads gritted his teeth. The memories were there, some of them, if he let them through. "All right. It was a war."

"Nuclear?"

"No. Well, mostly not. A couple in Pakistan and South America, I think; that might have been all. But it was messy anyway." He paused to wipe mud from his boots. "And it spread."

"Where?"

"Everywhere." The pain rose again, with only slightly less ferocity than it had before, as memories of Philadelphia returned. His breath caught at the back of his throat. "I can't talk about it. I'm sorry. I just can't."

"Okay, okay." The voice relented, despite its obvious reluctance. "Have a look at the door instead. Maybe it's unlocked."

Roads forced himself to move through hazy waves of agony until he came face-to-face with the narrow, steel hatch. It resembled a bulkhead from a submarine, with wide rivets evenly-spaced around the edge. No obvious hinges, no weak points. Set off to the right, less than a metre from the door, was a transparent plastic panel. Through it Roads could see a simple alphanumeric keyboard.

He relayed this information to the owner of the voice, not caring whether it helped or not. At the very best, the situation was just a distraction from his pain, from his empty non-life. At the worst, he was getting himself involved in something he shouldn't. Old habits died hard, especially ones that were literally hardwired into his brain.

His first indoctrination had been into the Sydney Metropolitan Police Force at the age of twenty. A series of complex surgeries and five years later, he had joined the Australian Armed Forces. As part of a bilateral exchange with the United States, he had travelled to Boston for a second round of implants, after which he had trained with a biomodified squadron for two years.

At about that point, recollection of his personal experience became even more vague: fighting a war he didn't believe in for an army that wasn't his own; fighting people the army was supposed to defend in a place he had never even visited before; fighting because he had been told to, because he had been rebuilt and trained that way. Just a cell in a dying muscle, twitching its death-throes as the country died around it.

As part of him died too, and kept on dying every day he remained alive.

The thought triggered yet another burst of pain, but this time he didn't fight it. Instead, he let it carry him downward, away from everything he was afraid of, and into the waiting black.

When he awoke, the night was deeper. An hour or more had obviously passed. With his implants disconnected from the Network (or the Network itself down--he'd never been able to work out which was the case), there was no way to be certain exactly how long.

He caught himself in mid-thought. The Network . . . ? It had been a decade since he had last been able to think the word without receiving an instant hammer-blow of pain.

"You must have blacked out again," said the voice. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pushed you so hard."

"It happens," Roads said softly, acknowledging the fact as much to himself as to the disembodied voice.

"Maybe you should get some help--"

"No." He climbed awkwardly to his feet. "Where were we?"

The voice hesitated, then replied: "At the panel. The keyboard behind it is a coded lock. To get in, you have to provide the right information."

Roads touched the transparent plastic with a gloved fingertip and it instantly slid aside. "Yeah, easy."

"Is there power?" asked the voice.

He pushed a key. Light flared around the keyboard and a small screen glowed into life. The screen contained barely enough room for five lines of text. As he watched, a single sentence appeared in the display:

"TYPE FULL NAME."

Roads tugged the gloves off his right hand and tapped in his name--"Philip Geoffrey Roads"--then added as an afterthought: "May he rest in peace." He pressed Enter.

"INCORRECT. PLEASE TRY AGAIN."

He did so, typing his name by itself this time. The screen produced the same response. He relayed the results of his experiment to the voice.

"Try typing 'Keith Charles Morrow'," it suggested.

"That's your name?"

"Was my name. I guess it must still be. I certainly feel like the same person."

Roads tried what Morrow had suggested, and this time the reply was different:

"CORRECT. DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED, Y/N?"

Roads pressed Y.

"DIS PATER IDENTIFICATION SEQUENCE ON-LINE. PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS: WHAT IS YOUR DATE OF BIRTH?"

"Morrow? When were you born?"

"March 18th, 1980."

"WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER'S MAIDEN NAME?"

"Kaminski."

"WHAT IS YOUR FIRST MEMORY?"

"Light."

"WHAT IS YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER?"

"Irrelevant."

"Say again?" asked Roads.

"It's a trick question. Just type it in."

Roads did so with a shrug, and the machine seemed to accept it.

"WHO WAS LUDI TARENTINI?"

"Ah." Morrow sighed in satisfaction. "This is the key."

"Do you know the answer?"

"Of course. I programmed this thing myself--or, at least, I intended to. Unless I changed my mind after 2040, the answer should be the same."

"You locked yourself in here?"

"Sort of. I'll explain later." The voice paused, then said: "Type the following: 'Proserpina knows. A century isn't long enough to keep Hades at bay.'"

"Who's Proserpina?" Roads asked, curious despite himself.

"An old joke that doesn't matter any more. Just type it in, exactly as I told you, and we'll see what happens."

Roads obeyed. The machine thought for a second, then replied:

"ACCESS DENIED. THIS SHELTER WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN SIXTY SECONDS. MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE: THREE HUNDRED METRES."

Roads automatically took a step back, then remembered to relay the brief message. "Is this thing serious?"

"Wait a minute and we'll see." Morrow sounded uncertain. "Maybe I didn't remember it right, or I changed the code. Or both. I don't know!"

"Jesus." Roads began to run, just in case, putting as much space as possible between him and the shelter. Although the grass was slippery beneath his boots, making speed risky, he had no other choice but to hurry. With every step he expected to be knocked down from behind by the force of the blast.

When he judged the distance to be sufficient, he dropped behind a rock and pressed his face into the damp grass.

"How long now?"

"A few seconds," Morrow replied. "Ten, I think. Five."

Roads put his hands over his ears.

"One. That's it!"

Roads tensed, but nothing happened. The bunker failed to explode.

"Well . . . " he said after a moment, raising his head to look. "That was decisive."

Morrow's puzzlement was plain. "Maybe I programmed the warning to scare off anyone lucky enough to make it this far."

"That's paranoid."

"Yes, well," said the voice. "I think I heard a click. Come back and check the door."

Roads climbed to his feet and dusted himself off, then approached the bunker warily. When he was close enough, he could see that the door was indeed slightly ajar. Before entering, he glanced at the screen. It said:

"DIS PATER IDENTIFICATION SEQUENCE DEACTIVATED."

Roads breathed a sigh of relief--then wondered what he had to be relieved about.

"The door's open," he said.

"Come on in, then. Let's see what I look like."

Roads pushed the door with one hand, wary of further traps. The steel panel swung inward as smoothly as if it had been built yesterday. The chamber beyond was dark and cramped, barely high enough for him to stand upright and less than four metres in diameter. He stepped inside, wishing for a flashlight or some other source of light. Even in infra-red, the scene was obscured.

"What do you see?" asked Morrow.

Roads looked around. "Nothing much: boxes, some sort of backpack, a security camera . . . " He looked again. Apart from these few things, the room was empty. "Where are you? Can you see me?"

The voice chuckled. "Oh, I can see you all right. Now that you're in here."

Roads' skin crawled. The glassy lens of the camera winked, silently malevolent, casting his reflection back at him like a spell. He took a step forward and something to his right, only half-seen in the darkness, swivelled to track his movement. The small of his back itched.

"Don't do anything rash," warned the voice, all trace of friendliness gone. "Like touch anything unless I tell you to."

"Why not?"

"Because I say so. To your right is a small dart gun. Make any sudden moves and I'll drop you where you stand."

Roads glanced to his right, and froze. The tiny weapon, mounted on a universal joint, hung from the ceiling barely a metre from his neck. Judging by its size, he guessed that the magazine's capacity was small; maybe a half-dozen darts, no more--but enough. At Morrow's signal, it would send a stream of poisoned pin-pricks hurtling into his flesh.

"The backpack," said Morrow. "Put it on."

"Why?"

"I want to get out of here. You'll have to carry me."

He shook his head. "You're crazy."

"If you don't, I'll shoot you."

Roads sized up the situation--the camera, the backpack and the gun. He started to say, "Okay, I'll do whatever you say," and on the word whatever, he moved.

In one swift motion, he dropped to a crouch, lashed at the camera with his left foot and reached out with his gloved right hand for the barrel of the gun. The tiny machine twisted under his grip, discharged with muted cracks as he wrenched it from the wall. Sparks danced down the concrete and across his coat. A pinprick of pain burned in the ball of his thumb as he threw the tangled device into a corner.

"What--?" Morrow shouted furiously at him, blinded by Roads' kick. "What have you done?"

Roads leaned against a wall and slid slowly to the ground. He tugged off the glove to inspect the wound. A red patch was already swelling where the dart had entered his flesh. Despite this, he felt little alarm. His body would take care of the poison, if it could. And he didn't care much if it couldn't. Survival was out of his conscious control, which was enough.

Blackness crept across his vision as the toxin spread.

"Are you still there?" The voice had an edge of panic to it. Blinded, alone, desperate--Roads felt perversely sorry for it.

"I'm here . . . "

"What's happening?"

"You didn't have to . . . to threaten me," he said. His head spun, and the words came with difficulty. "I don't . . . take orders from anyone . . . any more . . . "

With a sigh, he collapsed onto his side. His head struck the base of the backpack, and darkness fell for the second time that day.

#

When he awoke an unknown time later, it was to a nagging sense of deja vu.

"Hello? Can anyone hear me . . . ?"

The words surfaced like ancient, barnacled beasts, rising from watery graves to explode under the sunlight. Roads opened his eyes and saw a crowded room with concrete walls and an iron door. Something scrabbled in the darkness; a blur of red heat darted across the doorway--a rabbit, looking for food. He remembered . . . something about the Olympics?

He sat up groggily, feeling like he'd been hit by a sledge-hammer. Every muscle ached, and his left hand burned where the dart had stung him.

"Morrow?" The word, spoken aloud, emerged as little more than a grunt.

The voice stopped abruptly in mid-call. "You're alive? I thought . . . That is, you must be stronger than you looked."

"My liver . . . " He stopped to swallow phlegm. "My liver broke down the poison. It's supposed to do that, although I've never tested it before. Not since remod camp."

"Ah. So you're biomodified." Morrow seemed unrepentant, or perhaps hoped Roads had forgotten who'd fired the dart. "That explains that, then. And why you moved so fast."

Roads rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled to the backpack.

"How long have I been out?"

"Eighteen hours. Wait--I felt that. What are you doing?"

"Having a look." He opened the leather hood covering the pack and peered inside. The space within was full of black, densely-packed modules, ranging in size from a fingertip to a hand-width across. Roads didn't recognise any of the components, not that he'd expected to, but knew hi-tech when he saw it. Molecular interfaces, multiplexing memory lattices, organic chips built from plastic--these things and more had been breaking the market shortly before the war. He himself contained about a kilo of such material at the base of his skull and down his back.

"You're one complex sonofabitch, you know that?" Even through his anger, he felt curiosity regarding Morrow's artificial semblance of life. "For an AI."

"A psymplate, actually; the best that money could buy. No expense spared when my life was at stake."

Roads poked at an inspection panel, and an electric current crackled through the casing. "Ouch," he said, and hastily withdrew his hand.

"I'm not completely helpless, you know."

"Sensible." He sat back on his haunches. "A pretty extreme form of life insurance, though, wouldn't you say?"

"I'd been planning this for years, back when I was alive. Not for immortality or insurance, but because I was sick and only had a few years left to live. My guess is I took the treatment after the Olympics, in one of the smaller African homelands. Later I probably saw the war coming and hid the model here, in a safe place, to collect later. When I failed to turn up by a designated time, the model's maintenance system must have assumed that the real me was dead, and brought me online." Roads sensed the mental equivalent of a shrug. "Anyway, here I am. Missing a few years, but still me."

"Your old self didn't leave any messages?"

"None that I've found. Must have been a rush job, dumping me here. Or maybe I was already dead at that point. I would have left instructions with certain people to be carried out if worse came to worst."

Roads shook his head. The pain was nagging again. "Who were you, Morrow?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

"Should it be?"

"Think about it. This technology was new and expensive, still in the development stages--so I must have been rich. And I obviously didn't give a damn about anyone else, or I wouldn't be alone. Does that tell you anything?"

"You're a politician?"

"Close." Morrow laughed. "I was involved in organised crime."

"A murderer?"

"No."

"But you tried to kill me."

"I threatened you only to get you to do what I wanted." The voice paused, obviously trying to judge Roads' state of mind. "That's the way I used to operate. Blackmail, coercion, leverage--call it what you want, the threat is usually enough. I would never have carried it out."

"No?" Roads rubbed the ball of his thumb.

"I fired out of reflex, okay? You jumped me, and I tried to defend myself. I'll admit that it was a stupid thing to do, but I only did it because I need you, whoever you are, and I don't like to need anyone. Can't you see that? Without you to carry me, I'll never get out of here before my batteries run out. And I don't want to die again."

"Why shouldn't I let you?"

"Because you were a policeman before you joined the army. You have a duty, if not a moral obligation, to help me. Or to arrest me. Take your pick."

Roads raised his head and stared at the pile of old components in the backpack before him, getting dusty in the stillness of the bunker. What was morality when confronted by a man who'd cheated death once and wanted to do it again? What was duty when your family and friends lay dead ten thousands kilometres away, killed by Indonesians while you were off fighting someone else's war?

"I betrayed them," he said, his voice thickening again along with his thoughts. "They ordered us to fire on the crowd, and I said no. I ordered my men not to. I told them to retreat. There was a fight. Someone tried to arrest me. Then the crowd attacked us." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "They slaughtered us. The Network crashed. I should be dead."

"Are you okay?"

"Do you think I'm okay?" He rose unsteadily to his feet. "Don't talk to me about duty . . . "

"What are you doing? You're not about to have another attack, are you?"

"You tried to kill me . . . "

He staggered for the doorway and the cold, fresh air of the night. The stream trickled noisily to his left and he resisted the urge to plunge into its icy embrace, to let himself fall away from everything. Instead, he stumbled across the grass, studying the ground intently, looking for a rock about the right size and weight for what he had in mind.

By the time he returned, the voice had started calling for him to come back. He ignored it. With the rock cradled heavily in his arms and the pulse thudding in his neck, he took one step forward. Stars flashed in his eyes, making it difficult to see. When he judged that he was in position, with the backpack lying at his feet, he raised the rock as high as he could.

"Moralise on this," he gritted through clenched teeth, and let go.

#

This time, the pain was worse than it had ever been. No words, no sense-memories, no associations from his past to torment him: just pain. The inflamed tissues of his cortex writhed under the onslaught; fire burned in every neuron. A terrible black pit tried to suck his mind out the back of his neck, down through the antenna running along his spine. At the bottom of the pit lay madness and death, he knew, but he was powerless to resist. Death was overdue, anyway. For his implants, and therefore his mind, life without the Network wasn't worth living.

The eager, thought-thirsty blackness reached up to enfold him, and he let himself fall . . .

Then the light brought him back.

Light! So bright it felt like his skull had been sawn open and a thousand-watt bulb stuck inside. It burned--but the pain was different than usual. It possessed a structure that was at the same both alien and familiar: a self-contained logic that transcended matter. It seemed almost a living thing in its own right. Pathways, empty for the moment but ready for traffic, wriggled like lightning bolts through his mind. Where they struck, the light burned even brighter.

And with the light came the memories that he had suppressed for so long.

The attacks had begun after the riots, after the decimation of his battalion by the mob in Philadelphia and his subsequent escape. Cut off from the Military Network and datapool that had maintained his implanted senses, he had experienced withdrawal symptoms worse than those from any mere drug addiction. He had hallucinated solidly for three days, then slept for two more. He had woken feeling rejuvenated and clean, as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Free at last, he had begun walking--putting as much distance as possible between himself and the horror behind.

Gradually, however, his unnatural euphoria had faded. Headaches had plagued him, mild at first but growing stronger and more frequent with every passing month, followed by erratic muscle-spasms and brief moments of catatonia. Concentrating on the act of placing one foot in front of the other, he had avoided people when he came across them and did his best to survive in the wild. How far he travelled, he had no idea. And he didn't care. All that mattered was keeping the pain at bay.

And waiting for the light to return.

The light . . .

With the mental equivalent of an electric shock, his mind cleared. All of it. Not just the meat, but the metal and carbon that had been added to it piecemeal throughout his life as well.

He opened his eyes, and realised that he was crying.

#

"How . . . ?"

"You passed out again," said Morrow, the voice coming not over the radio but in a soft whisper in his ear. "Classic disconnection syndrome. Without a parent datapool, your implants are going haywire. Three attacks in one day! Face it, Roads, you're a mess."

Roads wiped his eyes and raised himself off the ground. For all his care in aiming it, the rock had missed the backpack by an easy metre.

"Luckily for me," commented Morrow dryly. "It would have made quite a dent."

"You can see?" Roads rubbed at his skull. The fire still burned, but less strongly now. "What have you done?"

"Meshed our software. Every time you had an attack you emitted digital signals in the forty megahertz band, short bursts of data from your processing core. Pleas for help, if you like. All I had to do was answer. Your real-time interface did the rest."

"I don't understand."

"We're linked, Roads. Exchanging data like you used to with your old Network. Your implants are broadcasting raw information to my datapool from your modified senses, including your eyes and ears, and I'm supplying your core with the instructions it needs to operate efficiently. There's nothing sinister involved. If you're worried about me taking over or reading your mind, forget it."

"You know my name."

"And your serial number, but that's all." Morrow opened a window in Roads' field-of-view and scrolled a document file: Roads' personal record, from which he had expunged all but the basic details years ago. "How does it feel?"

Roads hesitantly tried a few commands, calling up menus and running subroutines. The exchange was mutual; just as Morrow could access his own records, so too could he explore the psymplate's much larger store of knowledge. Morrow's datapool wasn't exactly the same as the old Network, but similar enough to give his implants something to work with--a framework on which he could hang his thoughts.

"I can break the link any time you want me to," Morrow said.

"No." Roads tasted panic at the thought. To be reduced to half a brain again, locked forever in the suffocating darkness of his skull . . . He hadn't realised until now how badly it had hurt. "Why did you do it?"

"Because you're no use to me brain-dead, Roads. I need transport, not a vegetable. And only a fool would deny that you need me. I checked your internal log. You haven't slept naturally for ten years; without the blackouts you wouldn't be getting any rest at all. Your core processor is driving you crazy looking for the Network, or a fair substitute--and it's not going to ease off until you do." Morrow's voice softened. "We can swap: my mind for your body. We'll ride each other."

Roads didn't answer immediately. With the restoration of normal thought, other aspects of his life came crowding in, things he hadn't considered consciously for years. "I'm hungry," he said. "I can't remember the last time I ate properly."

"There's food in the boxes, according to my inventory," said Morrow. "Tins, dehydrated concentrates, vitamins. There are solar panels, too, and maps, and a pistol. Even a cart to carry it all on. Everything we'll need for our journey."

That stopped him a second time. He hadn't thought that far ahead for years. Even before, when he had tried to convince Morrow to stay in the bunker, he had only been expressing a blind urge to remain in the now, to not think about the past or the future in any way. To not think at all, if it could be avoided.

"Where are we going?"

"To a city, my boy. I don't care which."

"There aren't any left. The country's fallen apart, dissolved."

"There must be one somewhere, surely?"

Roads shook his head. He wasn't sure of anything any more. "I need to think."

"I understand. I'll leave you alone for a while, if you want."

Roads nodded once through his reluctance. "Please."

The light behind his eyes went out, and he sagged back to the ground. Darkness returned like the tide on a starless night, and depression came with it. Not as piercing as before, but still life-sapping. Without the light of information burning in his mind, he felt like a corpse.

He forced himself to his feet and out of the bunker. The sun was dawning over the valley, back-lighting the clouds. A gentle rain rolled down the ridge, dusting the grass with mist and making branches droop low to the ground. He stepped into its gossamer-thin embrace, and let the bustle and business of nature enfold him in all its myriad ways.

Sounds, sights, textures, smells. So many things he had experienced a thousand times before, but never really noticed. He felt as though he had woken from a half-sleep that had lasted most of his life. Ten years spent going nowhere, trying to outrun himself. It couldn't go on like that. He couldn't.

The rain ceased falling with a sigh of wind, one last spatter making him blink. He leaned against the bunker to watch nature changing shifts, feeling if not peaceful, then at least filled with possibility.

And that was enough, he reasoned. If not all.

#

The leather pack, equipped with carbon-fibre straps and bulky magnetic locks, weighed nearly twenty-five kilos. Roads shrugged it over his overcoat, onto his shoulders, and adjusted the straps. They locked tight with a definite click. Without Morrow's permission, they would never unlock.

"No funny business," Roads said, "or we go for a swim in the river."

"I swear. Besides, I'm waterproof."

"Then I'll find a convenient cliff and take a leap instead."

"I said I was sorry for shooting you, didn't I? And I cured you. What more do you want?"

Roads didn't answer. The pack was heavy and screwed up his balance, but he'd carried worse. "Okay. Which way do I go?"

"Head east, along the river. There's a freeway less than ten kilometres from here. We can follow it to Charlotte then head south for Kennedy Polis. I have contacts there--or, at least, I did. God only knows if they've survived."

"Okay." Roads shifted the pack into a more comfortable position and grasped the handle of the cart. The load of supplies and equipment shifted slightly as he leaned it back onto his wheels, but nothing fell out.

He smiled. With a full belly, a whole mind and, at last, a destination, he felt better than he had for years. Physically and mentally, part of him would always belong in the past--until he had his implants removed, or subdued--but at least he could now say he was going somewhere, rather than walking in ever-shrinking circles.

Roads' smile widened as he wheeled the cart a metre across the dew-spattered grass. An ex-soldier, ex-cop, and an ex-felon, ex-man--a Network junkie and a psychogenic template--but survivors, both of them. Somehow it made sense to disregard their differences and work together.

For a while.

"Let's get started," he said.

"East, don't forget. Along the river."

"No worries," he said, and started to walk.