The Last Human Read online

  Her daughter sighs and rises to her feet as her mother’s blades retract from around her with eight distinct rattles. “I am Sarya the Daughter,” she says softly. “Adopted, of Shenya the Widow. My species is—” She sighs. “My species is Spaal.” With one hand, she signs the Standard symbols that she has used her entire life: I’m sorry, my tier is low. I don’t understand. She looks disgusted with herself, standing in the center of her quarters with her shoulders bowed. “Happy?” she asks.

  And that is that: another trans-species child-rearing triumph. A marginal success, perhaps, but a parent must take what a parent can get. And now that the crisis has passed, Shenya the Widow may turn to a happier subject. “Now, my daughter—” she begins.

  “I don’t even look like one,” her daughter mutters, turning away. “Anyone who thinks so is the moron.”

  “Daughter,” says Shenya the Widow. “I would like to—”

  “Did I tell you I have an interview at the arboretum?” her daughter interrupts, lifting the prosthetic off the floor with distaste. “Yeah. Even a damn Spaal is overqualified for that one, believe it or not. I think most everybody down there is actually sub-legal, so I could actually be a manager or—”

  “Daughter!” hisses Shenya the Widow.

  Her daughter turns, expectant, blinking against Shenya the Widow’s exasperated pheromones. The Network prosthetic dangles from one hand, already displaying a new error message.

  “Perhaps you should leave that here,” says Shenya the Widow, gesturing toward the unit with a gleaming blade.

  Her daughter laughs a short Widow laugh with the corners of her mouth. “I’d rather go naked,” she says, holding down a control to reset the device. “You think this is bad, try going without any unit at all. I tried that once and—”

  “Take this one instead,” says Shenya the Widow. With a smooth movement, she reveals—finally—the tiny device she has been holding behind her thorax this entire time.

  Her daughter stares, jaw dropping downward with that peculiar verticality that once so disgusted Shenya the Widow.

  “I was going to wait for your adoption anniversary,” says her mother, almost afraid to judge this reaction. “The waiting, however, proved to be—”

  The prosthetic hits the floor with a weighty thump as Sarya the Daughter leaps forward to seize the gift. “Mother!” she breathes, fingering the tiny locket and earbuds. “How can we afford this? This is—I don’t even—this is amazing. It’s perfect!”

  “I had it customized,” says Shenya the Widow, allowing her own pride to seep into the words. “I even installed your little friend on it to help you get accustomed. They say if you cannot have the surgery—” She hesitates, now feeling her way forward. Because someone might discover your species is the exact type of phrase that could ruin all her hard-won progress. “Then this is the next best thing,” she finishes.

  Her daughter says nothing in words, but her disregard for her own safety says it all. With a wild Human laugh, she flings herself into razor-sharp limbs, arms outstretched. With skill developed from long practice, mother catches daughter in a net of softened blades and flat chitin.

  “These are the good kind of tears, correct?” asks Shenya the Widow, stroking the warm face with the flat of a blade.

  “Yes,” whispers Sarya the Human. “Thank you.”

  Yesterday, Watertower Station was a blank and nearly silent orbital station. Its color scheme could have been described as industrial, at best. Its thousands of walls, floors, and ceilings were an interchangeable gray save for the painfully orange warnings marking the areas where a resident might encounter dismemberment, asphyxiation, or various other discomforts. Not that its residents ever glanced at those warnings. No, they were too busy milling through colorless corridors in equally colorless utility suits, eyes and similar sense organs focused in the middle distance. There was very little sound on Watertower yesterday, just twenty-four thousand citizens and visitors from hundreds of species, all in mutual pursuit of silence but for the unavoidable: the sound of footsteps, wheels, treads, the rustle of utility suits, the occasional uncomfortably biological noise. Gray on gray on gray, silent as the void and nearly as interesting. That was Watertower Station, yesterday.

  But this is today.

  Today, Sarya understands. Today, Watertower Station is an eruption of light and color and sound like nothing she’s ever experienced. Everywhere her manic gaze falls, something leaps out at her—often literally. She forces herself to keep her mouth shut and does her best to avoid physically dodging away from every image that flits by. She touches the tiny Network unit at her hairline and taps the earbuds farther into her ear canals; she’s been wearing this thing for less than a Network Standard hour and already she’s utterly convinced. This is real, these projected images and sounds, and the gray walls that have enclosed her entire life are the illusion. She can’t even see them anymore; they’ve disappeared behind landscapes and artwork, behind hues and patterns and corporate slogans.

  Goddess. She couldn’t remove her giddy grin if she tried.

  She keeps to the tail end of her group as it threads through the labyrinth of Watertower Station, the better to gape uninterrupted. Not that she cares what a collection of strangers thinks of her. She is a transient here, a short-term transplant from a lower-tier class who was probably assigned to this particular field trip through some Network glitch somewhere. Why else would she be visiting a place where she can never work? But she’s here, and she has just as much right to be here as the rest of her temporary cohort. If they don’t like it, well—they are free to borrow one of her blades, as the Widow saying goes.

  She does know a surprising amount about these people. Her knowledge is now amplified, extended into the near-infinite space of the Network, and her access is no longer limited to a few cubic centimeters of malfunctioning display. Now she is crowded by names and public biographies that appear next to citizens as soon as her eyes land on them. They drift as delicate scripts or heavy symbols, colored and/or animated according to their owners’ preferences, each adding to the greater cloud of color and light that is the Network. Even with her new unit’s efforts in tracking her gaze and fading items in and out of focus as it guesses her intent, she is very nearly overwhelmed.

  That doesn’t seem to be a problem for the rest of the class, though, and she can’t help but wonder why. Maybe they’ve scaled back their preferences. Perhaps they’ve turned off ads or certain channels. Her old unit offered a way to do that, which was laughable because there was such a fine line between that and just turning it off altogether. But maybe she’s the only one who can see, for example, the stunning scene emerging from this row of storefronts. The swirl of miniature creatures bursts out of the advertisement, each darting through empty space like a tiny starship. She watches them circle her fellow students one after another like a single organism…and with absolutely zero effect. And then Sarya flinches as that cloud of tiny beings explodes into a brilliant ad in front of her:

  [AivvTech Network Implants: The only way to experience the Network.]

  A quick glance around shows her that no one else has reacted in the slightest, and that brings a grin to her face. So! Pure, full-strength, undiluted Network is too much for her classmates and they are forced to limit their intake. Look at her, though. Sarya the Daughter—poor, low-tier non-Networked Sarya—she can take its full brunt. She holds out a finger for the same virtual creatures to inspect, determined never to fall into the trap of apathy. She will be fascinated by the Network until the day she dies, so help her goddess. Look at this little one who’s darted over to nibble at her sharpened fingernail! This simulation of life, this frolicking little billionth of a billionth of a galaxy-spanning Network—how could you not want to see her play? Yes, she’s part of an advertisement, created for no purpose but increasing someone’s bottom line. But look at her! Look at the cloud of others that fo
llows her! They play so realistically around her hands and sleeves that she very nearly breaks the silence of the corridor by laughing aloud.

  [So anyway my father wants me to go into civil administration], says a new rush of symbols ahead of her. They are beautifully styled in silver, hovering in midair next to a student named [Rama] and then fading away as soon as Sarya has read them. So many thoughts! Everywhere! And Sarya would never have known if not for her Network unit. All her life, she’s been missing ninety-five percent of reality.

  [I thought you were thinking xenobiology?] says another student. This is [Jina], according to her Network unit. Jina’s letters flash a glittering blue, spilling into smoke as Sarya’s eyes take them in.

  [Shrug], says Rama. Sarya didn’t catch the gesture but her Network unit apparently did, and here it is, captured and translated into silver meaning. [No facility in this system], she says. [And you know how my dad feels about Network travel.]

  [Laughter], says Jina in a burst of blue. [Aren’t you a little old to worry about that?]

  But it is at this point that Jina notices Sarya’s delighted stare. Rama turns as well, glaring back for a split second as if she can’t believe this audacity. There is a moment of one-sided awkwardness—Sarya’s unit helpfully overlaying the words [contempt] and [disdain] over Rama and Jina respectively—and then they turn away in synchrony. Their beautiful words disappear, replaced by a more businesslike [private conversation].

  Sarya swallows and glances downward, a familiar heat spreading over her face. After so many years of this she doesn’t normally dwell on any particular incident…but then it’s never been literally spelled out for her before. Now she’s thinking uncomfortable thoughts, and her euphoria is rapidly ebbing. How often has she received those glances without the ability to translate them? How often have the blank gazes of a thousand different species actually meant contempt and disdain and any number of similar things?

  [Sarya’s Little Helper would like to speak with you], says a notification down near the floor.

  That’s right, her mother mentioned Helper was installed on this thing. But for the moment…no. She brushes it away with a violent two-handed movement that her Network unit interprets perfectly. She doesn’t want to speak with her helper intelligence. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone, and she certainly doesn’t want to play with these tiny virtual intelligences who have followed her down the corridor from that advertisement. She is no longer entertained. Damn things, go annoy somebody else or she’ll—

  Hands still thrashing through a cloud of imaginary beings, Sarya plows into another student. A fogged face mask turns up toward her, several eyes blinking behind it, as a sweet scent fills her nostrils and stings her eyes. Her unit instantly inserts a registration beside the face: [Jobe (he family), species: Aqueous Collective, Tier: 2.05.]

  She steps back with a muttered “Beware”—the standard Widow apology—and instantly regrets it as the sound of her voice echoes in the corridor and draws gazes from up the line. It’s a painful reminder: no matter how magical her new Network prosthetic, it’s still a prosthetic. It has no direct connection to her mind, which means it’s one-way. Unlike practically everyone else on this station, she cannot send outgoing mental messages. No, she is restricted to the same process she’s always used: hunting and pecking symbols with eyes or a digit in a process long enough to be nearly useless in situations like this.

  A pair of moist hands adjusts the face mask. “Oh, it’s no problem at all,” says their owner, his voice the loudest sound anywhere in this corridor. He raises a squishy-looking arm to gaze at her through a small light display mounted to its back. “No problem at all, Sar-ya,” he repeats, this time adding a butchered pronunciation of the Widow name listed on her own registration.

  Sarya refuses to correct him. She keeps her mouth shut, more than aware of the eyes drifting toward the two of them and the emotions attached to those gazes. Just her luck to bump into another non-Networked citizen—maybe the only other one on the station, for all she knows. And now he wants to talk. Like, out-loud-style.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see your intelligence tier,” says Jobe, still peering at her through his own prosthetic. “Um,” he says, drawing out the sound. “It. Is. Okay. Sar-ya.”

  Goddess, now it’s worse. That slow speech, the simplification of sentences, the too-loud pronunciation—it’s all familiar. Common, even. But this is the second offense in less than a Standard minute. This one pricks her deep, igniting a rage just below her surface. But Sarya the Daughter doesn’t explode. No, Sarya is the adopted child of a Widow. She has been trained for this. She clamps her teeth and digs nails into palms in her Human adaptation of a Widow meditation. She focuses on the pain, just like her mother taught her. Pain distracts. Pain means you are alive. Pain keeps her from ripping that face mask right off that—

  She barely avoids ramming someone else when the group halts, her mind lost in violent fantasies that might give even her mother pause.

  “All right, students,” says the teacher out loud, the words filling the nearly silent corridor. Her name and pronouns float next to the pinched face in simple yellow, but Sarya doesn’t need them. She is the teacher—the only one on Watertower—and that’s the only name anyone uses for her. She’s also the teacher for Sarya’s normal low-tier class—probably teaching them right now. In fact, her various identical bodies have taught every class Sarya’s ever had. A younger Sarya once spent an entire Standard year trying to figure out how many bodies make a teacher, but she gave up the project when she began suspecting that her efforts were being actively but subtly foiled. That’s when she learned a fundamental truth about higher tiers: they can screw with you as much as they want and you’ll never know.

  “We have arrived at Watertower Station’s central observation deck,” continues the teacher. “Here, for the first time, you will see the entire reason for this station’s existence. I suspect one or two of you will be seeing this room again, come Career Day.”

  Sarya realizes, from the [shocked] reactions of her classmates, that she is probably the only one in this group who has ever heard the teacher’s voice. Like any other Networked citizen of civilized space, the teacher seldom speaks. There is very rarely need. Unless, say, the teacher’s current class contains a supposed low-tier individual with no Network implant.

  On the other side of the group, Sarya watches Jina nudge Rama and send a significant glance Sarya’s way. They know why the teacher is speaking aloud. Sarya receives the force of that glance like a slap; she can hear her own teeth grinding through her skull. Widow mantras begin running through her head again, an automatic response drilled into her over a long and painful childhood. I am Widow. My rage is my weapon. I am Widow. My life is my own. I am Widow. Better a scar from a sister than a—

  And then she is startled by an unpleasantly biological sound beside her. “I’ll be here!” says Jobe, waving a glistening arm. “They said they’d even wait until I’m Networked!”

  Sarya’s ears pop before she realizes exactly how hard she’s compressing her jaw. She expects to feel blood dripping from her clenched fists any second. She didn’t particularly plan on hating this Jobe kid, but the universe is really leaving her no choice here. He gets to be Networked. He doesn’t have to pretend he’s low-tier. This bladeless weakling, this—

  And then with the hiss of a safety door and the familiar flourish of the teacher, her group is ushered into one of the many places where low-tier non-Networked Sarya the Daughter will never be allowed again. Her interest, which has been overshadowed by recent events, stages a tentative return. It’s dark in here, but it doesn’t seem dark because her Network unit instantly begins analyzing the space and adding glowing grid lines where it finds walls and floors. Her nose is ambushed by that relentless non-scent of Watertower’s industrial odor neutralizers, which means this is one of those spaces designed for many species to work in close prox
imity. She can hear those intelligences now: a soft biological tumult constructed of membrane friction, the squeaking of chitin, the compression of lungs and other modes of respiration—these sounds and more, built into a wall of gentle noise and mortared with general moistness.

  [Analysis complete], says her Network unit, but by now Sarya’s eyes have adjusted sufficiently to see the general shape of the room. She stands at the highest point of a dark and gleaming chamber. Before her, several tiers of black seats step down to a blank wall that must be ten meters high. Individuals of various biologies stare into space, limbs twitching as they manipulate data invisible to her. Several more teacher bodies are here, making small talk with several of the workers. That makes sense; the teacher probably taught all of them as well. Everyone on Watertower probably knows the teacher. She could be centuries old, as far as Sarya knows.

  “This,” says a moist voice at her elbow. “Is the oldest. Part. Of the station.”

  Sarya stares down at the face mask, unbelieving. Jobe is a half meter shorter than her, rounder than her, his skin slicker than hers, and he stares back with wide and innocent eyes. Oh goddess—he’s adopted her. He’s playing the higher-tier mentor role.

  “One. Of my dads. Used to work here,” he continues, oblivious to the blistering glare he’s receiving. “He says. It’s the best view. On the station.”

  I am Widow. My rage is my weapon. I am Widow. There are no secrets between Mother and Daughter. I am—

  “I’m Jobe,” says Jobe. “In case. You can’t. Read it.”

  A Widow might have been able to keep herself under control. A Widow might have been able to avoid this entire conversation simply by virtue of her terrifying appearance. But Sarya the Daughter is not a Widow. She is a Human pretending to be a Spaal who wishes it was a Widow, and she can almost feel the heat radiating through cracks in her carefully nested façades. She doesn’t remember seizing the face mask, but now she feels its warm greasiness in her hands. “Listen,” she hisses through her teeth. “I am perfectly capable of understanding Standard. I am not an idiot. I am a—”