“I told you they would be, dear,” Betsy said to her husband. “Gauge told us he was taking Tera to meet Ethan an hour ago. My goodness, can an I.I. go senile?”
“If I go senile, it’ll be because of your brain, woman!”
Betsy looked at Tera.
“You see the way he talks to me?” she said.
The female I.I. smiled.
“How can we help you?” Ethan asked, almost like he was the host.
“We might have a job for you, actually,” Marvin said through his wife’s skull. “A mission of diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy?” Tera repeated. “Don’t you think we’re a little under-qualified?”
“Yeah; I’m not a negotiator,” Ethan said.
“I think you two would be perfect diplomats, actually,” Betsy said. “Both of you.”
“Why?” Tera asked.
“Because we need allies and you’re all sympathetic characters,” Martin said. “The more people we can bring into our cause, the better chance we have against the Council. You interested?”
“Who are we meeting with?” Ethan asked.
Betsy turned to him. “As you’ve learned in your time here, there are groups of unimplanted humans who live out in the ‘wild’ areas between the cities,” she started. “We figure, if anyone would have both the disposition and resources to help us, it might be one of them. That’s why we want to establish relationships with them and try to persuade them to join our cause.”
A look of distrust crossed Tera’s face. “I was attacked by ferals from the wastes,” she said. “I don’t think I want to talk to them again.”
“I understand what you went through, which was terrible,” Betsy started. “These ‘ferals’, as you call them, are from an entirely different group than the one you encountered, though. In fact, there are a great number of these unimplanted tribes out in the world. We want to be friends with as many of them as we can — within reason, of course.”
“Where are you sending them?” Gauge asked. Even though he wasn’t going, it was clear he was interested.
“The Holy Kingdom of Opes,” Martin replied matter-of-factly. “At least, that’s what they call it.”
Everyone looked at the Clevingers with skeptical expressions, as if they weren’t sure they heard things quite right.
“That’s right,” Martin continued. “They are a small nation of religious people who coped with the fall of mankind by turning to spiritual mysticism. We don’t know much about their worship, but we know a lot of their culture revolves around the ‘human spirit’, so to speak. We imagine they would find what was done to Ethan atrocious, which might help our cause.”
“They’re just supposed to trust the story of a stranger?” Ethan asked.
“If we succeed, you won’t be strangers to them,” Betsy explained. “But you’re right; we’ll need evidence to back up our claims. That’s one reason we’ve been scanning your brain as much as we have during the last month or so, Ethan. On top of the tactical advantage it gives us, it also provides us all the evidence we need. They’ll have no reason to doubt you.”
Tera and Ethan looked at each other. Neither could divine what the other was thinking, but there was an uncertainty present in both of them.
“When do we go?” Tera asked. She was thinking of all the preparation she felt she needed.
“Today,” Betsy replied. “We have a discreet autocar available for you two that no one should see leaving the city. It’s about an eight-hundred-mile journey, so it should take a couple hours to arrive.”
Both Tera and Ethan’s faces fell. Neither said anything as they tried to wrap their minds around the task before them.
“You better get going, then,” Gauge said, a smirk on his robotic lips.
Reception
The long flight to the Holy Kingdom of Opes was an uncomfortable one, to say the least. Not in a physical sense — there was ample room and a sofa for each person to sprawl out on — but conversation was difficult and felt forced.
For the first half hour or so, Ethan managed to ignore the I.I. by staring out the window, pretending to be fascinated with every bit of abandoned land that zipped by below them. The autocar kept a low altitude in order to avoid being detected by any Council authorities, so everything moved by in a blur. After a while of staring out at it, Ethan got dizzy.
“First autocar flight?” Tera asked. She was desperate to relieve the tension between them.
“Second, actually,” Ethan replied. “But I figure it’ll take a few more before I’m used to it.”
There was another stretch of silence while Tera stared at the human and he tried to ignore her. When the silence built up to the point that Tera feared the autocar would rupture, she spoke up.
“What was it like in there?” she asked.
“In the simulation?” Ethan said.
She nodded.
“It was perfect,” he replied. “A hell of a lot better than out here. But it was all a lie — and I don’t even know if that matters.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if I was happy with the lie and I’m miserable with the truth, what’s so bad about the lie?” he said.
“Ethan, they were going to lobotomize you,” Tera said.
“No, you were going to lobotomize me,” Ethan corrected her, his tone sour. “Don’t forget that you were working with the Council. Did they have you forcing human babies into those pods often?”
If her rudimentary bodyshell was capable of it, Tera would have blushed bright red with indignation.
“I had no idea what they were doing to you, Ethan,” she replied. “You weren’t the only one they lied to. And they didn’t even get the chance to use you yet, like they used me.”
Ethan thought for a moment. There was a small look of shame on his face.
“I guess it’s not easy having your whole world upended around you,” he said.
“No,” Tera said. “It’s not.”
The rest of the
