Original Syn. Beth Kander
the sights viewable from the water, and now they were heading home. She taps so hard the metal finger begins leaving a dent in the wood, and then it occurs to her that her mother is probably napping, plugged in and shut down, unable to be assailed by her daughter’s malicious finger-thumping. Napping is Marilyn Hess’ favorite activity; that’s how boring she is. Ever pictures her slack-faced mother, dozing dreamlessly as she uploads her day’s drab experiences and downloads the collective day’s updates from Heaven.
Heaven replaced dreaming so long ago that for Syns, dreaming is only a murky original memory, a definition in the dictionary: a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep; the sleeping state in which this occurs; an object seen in a dream; an involuntary vision occurring to a person when awake; a vision voluntarily indulged in while awake; daydream; reverie.
The last few definitions, of course, are second nature for Ever. Voluntarily visioning herself elsewhere is basically how she gets through the day. But real dreaming, closing your eyes and drifting away to some unplanned, unpredictable, un-shared journey… oh, Heaven and Hell, wouldn’t that be incredible!
She wishes she could dream again. She remembers dreaming, as a child—but only barely. She’s haunted by one specific dream. Though foggy and remote, she clings to its organic delights, holds fast to its terror. In some ways it feels more real to her than almost anything else she’s felt or experienced in the past several decades.
This is the original nightmare her five-year-old mind created:
Dark, swampy muck. Something primordial.
Wet and threatening.
A motion—a floating, silent log moving through the water—
A dinosaur! No! Not a dinosaur! A dragon.
No no no, wrong word, wrong word, what is it, big scary scaly—
ALLIGATOR! An alligator!
Alligators all around, coming at her
Slowly but steadily, with glowing eyes
Can’t move can’t move can’t move,
Cold water, so cold cold cold,
Alligators approaching
Unable to move away
From the evil eyes and dinosaur-skin
The hunger-snapping jaws,
coming coming coming for her…
The nightmare once terrified her, but now it comforts her. Recalling a time when stories could be privately manufactured by her own internal cinema gives her a sense of power. The idea of her own sleeping mind shaping something just for her is sweet and strange. And so night after night, she replays the one dream she remembers, sometimes watching it on a loop three or four times, before finally sticking her finger into her bedside outlet, closing her eyes, and slipping into the black pool of nothingness as she links with Heaven.
She can’t bring herself to plug in the port tonight. She’ll have to, eventually; a grounded connection is required once every forty-eight hours. Heaven provides a system recharge along with the data transfer. Connecting to Heaven is the law. It’s vital for the trans-human ideal of data-sharing. And it’s imperative for the Syn Council’s commitment to citizen monitoring.
Heaven is invasive. But it’s also so damn convenient. Resent it or not, Ever can’t imagine giving it up. The shared images and ideas, bits of news, snippets of story, insights into everyone else in the world—it’s addictive. Constant connectivity is not merely necessary for upgrades and maintenance, or even for sharing society-wide information; they need it for reasons that run deeper than regulation. There’s a fear of missing something if you go too long without logging in; a sense of purpose to participating in the process.
Nevertheless, Ever delays her connection. After replaying the nightmare over and over, she’s still awake and hungry for something more interesting than the rote routine, the shared system. Her appetite is for something hers alone, and she has been starving for too long.
Pulling on a pair of soft black shoes, she makes her way up to the deck of the boat.
The night air is pleasantly cool on her skin. Ever savors the silent starry world. The sleek vessel barely makes a ripple as it glides mildly through the darkened Gulf waters. They are still several hundred miles from home. Soon, the boat will dock for the night, re-fuel and service itself automatically, and then while its passengers slumber, the boat will continue homeward.
Ever’s family lives on the small island just off the central mainland, the most populated borough in the heart of Sector 11. Previously called Manhattan, the center of the Syn world is now known, accurately if not creatively, as Central City. When Central City was restored to its vintage splendor, everyone wanted to live there, just as people had clamored to live there in the years before the Singularity and the uprisings. But Ever’s family didn’t contend with the regular real estate market. They lived in the center of it all, within the walls of the Synt itself.
The Synthetic Neuroscience Institute of Technology, more often called simply the Synt, is where Ever’s father works, where Heaven’s mainframe is housed, where the entire Syn world is headquartered. No other families have residences there, though there are people in the building twenty-four hours a day. The Hess’ address trumpets their place in society. Her father runs the Synt, the central agency of the Syn world; his security clearance exceeds even the Syn Council members themselves. With the dissolution of old governments and the establishment of the Syn Council as the sole governing body, connections and power are of greater worth than the old wealth—though old wealth still has its place. And back when money mattered more than it did these days, Ever’s mother was the fourteenth richest heiress of her generation. By any measure, the Hesses are the power family of the Syn world. The envy of all.
But Ever would rather be part of some other family.
She can see Dock 27 now, the lights twinkling from the shore. Looking at the soft glow, a lightbulb clicks on within her. The idea swells in her mind like a small revolution, the rebellious notion lifting like the raised fist of a resistance leader: I can get off the boat.
She begins testing the idea for weakness, building armor around it: She’ll shift into private mode so she’ll be a little harder to track. If she steels herself and does it right now, she won’t be noticed before morning, which will give her hours away from this floating little prison barge.
Decision made, she crawls over the port side of the ship. She lowers herself slowly from the rail. The cold water sends a delicious tingle through her entire body for a moment, before her temperature regulation kicks in. But even with a normal temperature restored, the soft sensation of water lapping at her body assures her she’s really doing this.
Keeping her head just above the surface, she kicks gently, swimming forward until, stretching her toes down, she finds that she can touch the bottom. She is not a particularly experienced swimmer, and is relieved to be able to half-step,-half kick; the water is shallow, and mucky-bottomed, which encourages her to hop along quickly to keep her feet from getting stuck. The water level drops from her chin, to her chest, to her navel.
And then something cold, scaly, and very much alive brushes heavily against her right leg.
Stifling a scream, Ever jerks to her left, nearly toppling over, but managing to right herself just in time to keep from splashing and falling underwater.
What in Heaven and Hell was that?
She cannot see anything, even as her eyes dart from side to side. For a moment, she holds perfectly still, not even breathing, willing whatever had moved against her to keep right on moving. She notes that her breathing is erratic, and commands an override to even it out, to halt the panic. Even as her synthetic system