WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
“FELIPE, DETÉN!”
The voice was strange, metallic, almost inhuman. It came from a speaker on the other side of the living room.
“He killed Eduardo!” the man spat defiantly on the patio. Joel2 craned his head to see who was saving his life, but the shotgun barrels blocked his field of vision.
“And we kidnapped his wife,” the robotic voice calmly stated. “He does us no good dead, Felipe. Come, bring him downstairs.”
Felipe cursed in Spanish. Joel2 could tell his would-be murderer was torn between following orders and letting him live, and following his heart and blasting his head off. “Fine, okay,” he begrudgingly said.
Thank God for you, robot stranger, thought Joel2.
Felipe then kicked Joel2’s left flank so hard, he saw stars. “Turn over.”
Aching, my doppelgänger did as instructed. The wooden patio he was now facing had one or two sisal carpets featuring designs of happy people crushing grapes. He wondered where they kept the ones that depicted suicide bombers. Felipe set the shotgun down on a coffee table and tied a rough rope around Joel2’s wrists, making sure to cinch it painfully tight. He yanked upward on the knot, pulling Joel2 to his feet.
Now that the fight was over, several areas of his body were reminding him why he hated fighting. He couldn’t tell if he had broken any bones during the attack, but there would definitely be some impressive bruises. He also had red spots—blood, he assumed—in one eye, but for the moment, he could still see clearly with the other. As he limped painfully into the villa, he saw some old-fashioned framed photographs, religious paintings, and antique LED candles that gave the room a flickering amber glow.
Felipe kicked him in the ass, not hard enough to knock him down, but to indicate in the most unpleasant way that he should move forward. They walked through a kitchen with very few modern conveniences. Instead of a printer, there was a real antique sink with a water spigot, and a six-foot-tall silver container that Joel2 had seen in old pictures. Refrigerator, that was it. These guys actually had to keep uneaten food on hand before they cooked it. Crazy.
At the other end of the room was a stairwell leading downward, which another sharp ass-kick indicated was Joel2’s destination.
Once he got to the bottom of the spiral stairs, he saw the basement level was in fact more of a cavern. It was at least twice as long as the floor above it. The ceilings soared what must have been eight or nine meters overhead, and one long rough-hewn rock wall was lined with huge wooden wine casks. The pungent smell of sour grapes was everywhere. On the other wall of the cavern, several small doors were set into the rock, each with a barred window. It appeared the whole area had been carved out of the mountain.
Felipe nudged Joel2 none too gently toward one of the small wooden doors. Inside was a circular table, big enough to seat six, and several wooden chairs. In the center of the table was a square planter brimming with orchids of various colors. The wooden ceiling, where he could see it through the darkness, was overlaid with various gold-and-silver-colored tenons. The chamber was configured such that the middle was its only illuminated section, but Joel2 could see the far wall was filled floor to ceiling with dusty bottles of dark wine. Before them, in a motorized wheelchair, sat the oldest man Joel2 had ever seen.
One of the unexpected outcomes of molecular nanotechnology was people now had the opportunity to live forever—sort of. Once most of humanity’s ills were cured, the next item on the biomed agenda became undoing the effects of vice. As such, the twenty-second century was a perfectly safe place to smoke, do drugs, get cancer, or become infected by an STD. The same little magic robots that undid your genetic misfortune could also undo the previous night’s mistakes. Accidents and murder were pretty much the only causes of death left.
Not only that, you also got to choose when you wanted to stop aging. Some people liked to stay young, while others enjoyed getting old. Age became a form of self-expression akin to tattoos and piercings.
To keep population in check, we aligned the quantity of an individual’s wealth with the length of mortality. Most people chose to die at around one hundred, since every year of life past then got more and more expensive. What I hear is that it also got mind-numbingly depressing, because every year you lived afforded you another 525,600 opportunities to do something you would regret for the rest of your life. In 2147 the oldest person on record had died at 165, and they left their family in a ton of debt. Even so, there were some people so freaked out by death that they spent every last chit they had on extending their lives. But eventually everyone ran out of juice.
Not this guy, though. There was a soft whir as the wheelchair moved forward, bringing the old man more into the light. He wore an off-white suit, or perhaps it was just dusty, like the wine bottles. Its lapels were frayed and the joints were thin, almost see-through. It definitely hadn’t been washed in quite some time. He was skeletal and almost entirely hairless, apart from a thin curtain of white hair that encircled the base of his skull. His tan, crinkled skin was covered in endless constellations of moles and liver spots. His eyes seemed closed, but his head followed Joel2’s movements, indicating he was awake and at least somewhat alert.
Felipe shoved Joel2 into one of the chairs, tied his wrists to the back, and bent to whisper in his ear, “Life is short, hermano. Make the most of what joo have left.” He then walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The old man smiled. His teeth were white and perfect, a shocking contrast to the rest of his crumbling decrepitude. He hacked a big throaty cough and then spoke. His voice was strange and metallic, the same voice that had kept Felipe from pulling the trigger of his shotgun. It was also barely audible. “So good to see you, Mr. Byram.”
“Huh?” said Joel2.
The old man tsk-tsked, then bent to adjust a dial somewhere on one arm of his wheelchair. “I SAID, SO GOOD TO SEE YOU.”
The volume of his voice rattled the bottles in the wine rack. Joel2 tried to clap his hands over his ears, but as they were bound together behind him, the best he could do was tuck one ear into his shoulder. His head rang with the metallic bellow.
The dial was adjusted again. “How is that? Better?” the old man said in a more normal, though still very synthesized, register.
“Yeah, thanks. I think you only popped one of my eardrums.”
His host coughed again, aluminum foil scraping on a cheese grater. “You’ll have to excuse me; my implants have not kept up with the deterioration of my vocal cords. Or it may be that they are deteriorating, too. Such is life, I’m afraid.” He smiled again. “I’ve often prayed that I would live long enough to meet the likes of you. My name is Roberto. Roberto Shila.”
The fucking leader of the Gehinnomites! Joel2 got to his feet, nearly bent over forward with the chair dangling behind him like a jagged wooden tail. His face darkened. He was about to charge. Joel2 didn’t care if he didn’t have use of his hands, he was going to take that leather fossil apart bit by bit until he brought Sylvia to him, and guaranteed that they both—
The old man held up a small egg-sized device. “This is a weapon. I would prefer not to use it on you, Mr. Byram. This archaic blunt-force suppression device—like me—is a relic of the Last War. I fear if we cannot speak civilly for a few moments, I shall be forced to enlist its aid.”
His wrists going numb from their tight bindings, Joel2 slowly slunk his chair back onto the floor. “Where is Sylvia?”
“Nearby. And I assure you, she is unharmed. I am sorry for any unfortunate circumstances that you may have been party to thus far, but frankly, I didn’t think you would talk to us if we had simply asked. You should know, I hold you in the highest regard and intend on engendering your trust with nothing but the truth.”
Joel2 raised an eyebrow but said nothing. How could this man expect him to sit there and have a civilized conversation while his wife was being held hostage somewhere, going through God knew what? Before he could argue the point, though, a painful seizure overtook his body. His comms crackled and went dark. Joel2 looked around in surprise, but the old man held up another device. It was round and made of black plastic, again roughly the size of an egg. “Another relic,” he said. “So I may ensure our conversation is private and without distraction.”
Joel2 tried to comm Julie, then out of desperation he even attempted to ping Adina at the Mine, but Roberto was right. My other had been pulled off the grid, his comms temporarily as useless as mine.
“Now, where to start?” Roberto’s voice crackled. “Introductions, I think. Yes. You know us as Gehinnomites, but we call ourselves the Friends of Fair Hope, an embellishment of the Fairhope Meeting of Friends, our forefolk.”
Joel2 glared at him silently.
“The Fairhope Meeting of Friends,” Shila said, picking up the pace of his speech as if he were remembering the spoken word on the fly. “A group of Quakers from Fairhope, Alabama. They left the US for Costa Rica after members of their community were jailed for refusing to fight in World War II. As you may be aware, taking another human life is forbidden for Quakers. Only God can make such a decision. So our founders came to Costa Rica. Not only because of its farming potential and pleasant climate, but also because the national government openly invited foreigners to come and help develop the country. Most attractive for the Friends at the time was the fact that Costa Rica had just abolished its own army and—as pacifists—they felt this was a place where they could live in peace. They settled here in Monteverde, eventually integrating with the local community, the Ticos.”
Joel2 made an I don’t care, cut to the fucking chase gesture with his head.
Roberto sighed, a sound his vocal cord implants manifested as a clatter of tin filings. “Patience is not a virtue the youth possess,” he said mournfully, glancing toward the room’s empty corner. “If only my daughter had known patience. But she took after her mother, I suppose. And now she is gone.”
“What does any of this have to do with me and my wife?”
Shila clasped his bone-thin fingers together. “Do you know what an ayah is, Mr. Byram?”
“No,” Joel2 said.
“Very well, I shall explain. But I think the importance of its definition would be edified if you knew my age. Would you care to guess?”
Joel2 shrugged. “I don’t know. Eighty?”
“Eighty? Ha!” Roberto bellowed out a metallic laugh, like a pile of aluminum cans toppling over. “You are too kind.” He cleared his throat. “No, I have counted my first centennial but a short seventy-one years ago.”
“You’re a hundred and seventy-one years old?” Joel2 asked, impressed in spite of the situation. If that was true, Roberto Shila was literally the oldest man in the world. “For someone who talks so big about not interfering in God’s will, I don’t get how you can justify using man-made technology to artificially extend your own life.”
The grizzled Gehinnomite paused for a moment to lick his dry, cracked lips and fix his posture. “In the Book of Genesis there is mention of a man named Methuselah who lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine years old. Noah, his son, was said to have lived nine hundred and fifty years. It was only after Noah that the average biblical human life-span dropped closer to what is now called ‘normal.’ God never prescribed the length of a human life, just that it should not be infinite. I am not resisting God’s will. I am usurping man’s materialistic inventions for a higher purpose than self-preservation.”
“It certainly looks like you’re living it up,” said Joel2 bluntly.
The old man nodded. “Yes, we have managed to achieve a modicum of comfort over the decades. Buying this land before nanocultivation came into vogue was particularly prescient. You know, many believe—erroneously—that we Gehinnomites abstain from all technology because we oppose teleportation. Were they to inquire, they would find that we embrace all industrialization, automation, computerization, and new technologies. What we reject is heathenism, blasphemy, and heresy. Teleportation is not a mode of transport; it is systemic, compounded, commercialized murder. The most violent sin of all, repeated thousands of times a day!” Raising his broken voice, he said, “Do you not understand, Joel Byram? We are saviors, not destroyers! We seek to save the living and their children! Our children…” Roberto’s semisynthesized voice trailed off like a clockwork of grinding gears. There was a hissing crackle of static as he sighed again. “Unfortunately, my daughter lost sight of our most basic tenet. Joanna. Though now I fear she will be forever known by her nom de guerre, Joan Anglicus. Only twenty years younger than I, she was.”
“Joan Anglicus?” Her name rang a discordant bell. “The one who blew up the TC?”
Shila looked incredibly sad. “Centuries of principled pacifism, undone by a moment of impatience and a quantum trigger.”
“A moment?” said Joel2 incredulously. “Fuck your pacifism. I got killed by your daughter’s suicide bomb, asshole!”
He expected the statement to give the old man at least a moment’s pause, but he seemed unfazed. In fact, he nodded as if expecting this turn of events. “Exactly, Mr. Byram. This is why you are the ayah we’ve been waiting for. Our miracle.”
“I’m not your miracle.” Joel2 shook his head. “What happened to me was an accident. Coincidence, the dumb luck of the universe. I happened to go through the TC right after your daughter. So what?”
“No, Mr. Byram. You were selected. We have known the truth of teleportation since its inception. That it was nothing more than the unholy copying and destruction of human beings. That the Punch Escrow is a lie.”
“What do you mean, a lie?”
“Teleportation is murder.” Shila closed his eyes, as if the emotional impact of these revelations was affecting him, too. “The Punch Escrow is an execution chamber. You were killed and printed every time you entered a TC. I’m afraid there is no such thing as teleportation.”
The old man probably couldn’t have lifted a feather, but Joel2 felt as if Shila had hit him with a sledgehammer. He’d heard of the Gehinnomites’ ramblings before, but now that he was there, hearing it for himself from the source, it felt visceral. Real. The Punch Escrow was a lie? People were being copied and destroyed? Even him?
While his thoughts whirled, the old man kept speaking. “We identified all the members of IT’s inner circle who also knew these truths. Among them was your wife. A woman who could prove to the world that teleportation was unnatural, a sin, the technological perversion of God’s gifts. Joanna knew she only needed the proper motivation. One person to suffer so that many others may live.”
He opened his eyes, fixing Joel2 with an intense, sympathetic stare. “Thus my daughter found you, Mr. Byram.”
Shock and anger duked it out in Joel2’s brain. As per usual, anger won. “You’re saying this whole thing was a fucking setup? That I was a target?”
The old man nodded. “However, you were never meant to be killed. Our aim was to disable your foyer in New York so that you wouldn’t be cleared. But my daughter had other plans.” Tears formed in his eyes. “She did not trust that you could become our ayah. That you could stand before the world and proclaim the truth. She wished to make herself an example instead.”
He passed a hand over his eyes. “What she didn’t know, what none of us knew, was that IT had another, more devilish trick up its sleeve. One your wife used to return you from Gehinnom.”
“She told me, and she wouldn’t have done it if weren’t for your daughter,” Joel2 said defiantly. “I mean, if you knew what your daughter was doing, why didn’t you stop her?”
Shila smiled sadly, his eerily perfect teeth gleaming. “You’re not a father yet, my boy. I can’t expect you to understand the implications of your question. However, I will say that most of the Friends held your position. I acted selfishly when I prevented them from imprisoning her then. And for that I am sorry.”
“Enough with the religious psychobabble history lesson. So you’re sorry your daughter fucked up my life. Great. Tell you what: let me and my wife go free and consider us even.”
“Don’t be glib, child. All I want is to set you free. To set your wife free. To set the entire world free from this evil. I want to show everyone that you are not the only Joel Byram! That just as you sit here, another you, the real you, sits in New York.”
The roiling sea of questions in Joel2’s mind went flat. His stomach began to slowly fill with a cold, heavy dread. “What do you mean, ‘another me’?”
“Did your wife not confess the full truth to you?” The Gehinnomite’s eyes were sad. He took no joy in relating this. “The original you, the one from New York, was never destroyed. He is alive at this moment. You, my boy, are but a copy, a replicant hastily cobbled together by your wife in her desire to play God.”
Joel2 shook his head. It was too much to absorb. He was a ship taking on water, the holes and questions too numerous to plug. He had already begun to sink when Shila explained how teleportation worked, but learning there was another version of him, the original version, one who hadn’t died and been resurrected by computer, that sent him straight to the ocean floor. He sagged in the chair.
The wheelchair whirred as it came around the table to him. The old man reached out with a trembling hand, placing it on Joel2’s shoulder. It weighed no more than a few dry twigs. “It may be small comfort, but the fact is, the real Joel Byram died the first time he stepped into that place you call the Punch Escrow.” He patted Joel2 lightly. “That elevator to Gehinnom. An elevator your wife helped build. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Byram?”
Joel2 whipped his head around. In the doorway stood Sylvia, her hands bound and held by Felipe. Her mouth was gagged and there were fresh tears streaking down her cheeks. She had heard everything.