Chapter Twenty-SixThe Box

By six Gideon had the RV parked behind a hardware store in Emeryville. He'd rented it in Hayward. Three hours since the bridge, and all he had to show for it was a vehicle with a toilet nobody could figure out how to flush.

Mim wanted to know about the guns. Rat had insisted they tell everyone before anybody started working.

"Yes, they might bring guns," Gideon said.

"And Hector? Does he know?" Mim asked.

"Richard's calling him. He can leave."

"Jesus, Gideon. Where's Priya?"

She went to help with the parts order. He'd thought she was leaving. Max had put most of the components on hold earlier in the week, but two machines by morning was still going to be a stretch. Wes caught the wrong power connectors before the truck left Fremont. Teo got the generator running outside and a fiber route to Oakland. That machine had to answer the collector; Eliza's own would stay offline.

Moving Atom had been Gideon's first idea. Get a van, take him somewhere. Max let him get as far as saying it, then showed him what went with the chamber: backup pumps, a specialist crew, a full day testing before they could use it. Alright, no van. Whatever the lawyers did about his care, somebody could still walk downstairs tonight. They had to give Kessler something he would want to take instead.

At hour seven they went over the Sentek chart, crossing out Gideon's guesses. No point sending the passenger in with those. Nor could they count on her getting the records before the deadline. He called the lawyers back to make sure they understood that part.

The pallet arrived an hour later. Eleven trips carrying stuff, and Teo still had the energy to complain that Mim wasn't lifting her end. By hour eleven the box looked like a chest freezer, with enough battery for twelve hours if they kept her running slowly and turned the image output off. She would need mains power to do much. Wes stood there looking pleased with it anyway.

"That's a lot of computer for a student."

"Shut up, Wes," Gideon said.

At The Lab Richard had written a one before Eliza interrupted his plan. She couldn't send a recording. Gideon tried the old ISIS files as well as a captured exchange. The receiver wouldn't take either. The traces and the manual were still on the table where he left them before going to the RV.

Richard suggested a copy. Soph got up. She knew what he was going to say next: keep the one they liked, send the other. She wanted to stop him before he got there.

"She'll remember us talking about her," Eliza said. "I can make the copy, but she won't feel like the spare one."

The receiver would take her state into a sealed array and destroy the transport key. A few pages could get out through its audit terminal, but not a mind changing as they were sent. The report controller used the collector's authorization service. That was the opening. Eliza might be able to recall the collectors and send their orders out, and in doing so she would start the destruction cartridge. The manual had no way to cancel it.

They couldn't make somebody just to do that, Soph said. Needing the records didn't make it alright.

Eliza knew she could wait. The court might protect Atom and the police might stop Kessler. Neither gave her back the pieces or told her what happened to ISIS. She wanted to try, but they would ask the copy. Even if the receiver was exactly what they expected, she could refuse when she arrived.

"You'll keep looking for her if she waits?" Soph asked.

Max said they would try. She couldn't promise to find her alive. Before the fiber went in they would ask her again, and nobody would tell her she had disappointed them if she said no. Eliza agreed. She would keep her own checkpoint too; they weren't risking both on one machine.

Richard wrote passenger beside the number. Soph sat down farther from the table.

Jeff brought the window at ten, tested against Max's restrictions and the incident records. Pictures, movement requests and filtered speech could pass to the game; no command could reach a stimulation board. He pulled the network while Eliza spoke, and she finished on the local display.

Max put the cottage beside Atom's starter town. His live permissions remained revoked, but he could walk there. Eliza moved her book from the cold kettle when he sat down.

He had gone there to ask whether she loved him. Once he was sitting down it seemed a selfish question to bring on this particular evening, but she wanted to know what was bothering him and he couldn't think of a better one.

"Why now?" she asked. "You haven't asked me before."

"Because there's going to be another you. I don't know whether that means I'm losing somebody. Or if I can tell myself it's just a copy because you're still here."

He wished he had stopped before the last part. Eliza looked at him over the kettle.

"Yes, I love you. She's going to remember you saying that, you know."

"I'm sorry."

"Tell her too. Do you love me?"

He looked at the painting. Richard once told him he knew he loved Lauren because he liked the person he was when he was with her. Atom had thought that sounded selfish and said so. Richard laughed, which annoyed him at the time. Now he came to this cottage and liked being the person who could make Eliza a shelf or work out the orange smell she wanted for the tea. He told her that, rather badly.

"You could come without making me anything," she said.

He hadn't thought of it quite that way. He liked having something to bring, some excuse to stay while they tried it. He looked at her over the kettle.

"I love you. I keep trying to explain why. I don't have to, do I?" Atom said.

She asked about Soph. He needed to tell her. Tonight, Eliza said, and he agreed. She put her hand on his and the game let it pass partly through. He adjusted his until it looked right and left it there.

"How long?" Soph asked.

Atom had found her at the tutorial fountain. The trade prompt kept coming up behind him. She wished he would move.

"I don't know. We only said it tonight."

"But you've been thinking about it."

"Yeah."

"Okay."

It wasn't okay. She took the frames off. Now he would wonder what he'd done wrong, besides the obvious, and she would have to put them back on to tell him. She rubbed her eyes and did.

"I love you too," he said.

"I heard you. Can you just sit down?"

He sat. The prompt disappeared behind his shoulder. That was better. She hadn't wanted him to leave, though she had no idea what she wanted him to say. He could wait with her until she did.

"Where's the timer? I want to see it," Rat asked.

Max turned the clinical unit toward Rat. The helmet's orange ribbon was still cut. All the stimulation came through this separate box, which Max could switch off herself. Rat liked having her there. She wasn't going to say so in front of everyone.

Eliza talked Max through the map; the window wouldn't let her send code. Two hours of comparing it with the hospital recordings, then Rat finally got to stand up. Her own eyes and ears, her own thumb on the stop. That part worked. Atom tried to take a step before she'd helped him balance, and her knee buckled. She hit the thumb. Max caught her.

"Fuck. Not again yet," Rat said.

"Sit down," Max said.

She sat. Max put the helmet out of reach.

"Three minutes," Rat said. "If I do it. Put it on there so he knows too."

Max wrote it beside the timer.

"And we're not doing this every day. If they get near the pumps, I'll decide then," Rat said.

At four the box was ready on its dolly. Gideon made the copy. Soph watched the frames on the front, waiting to see who would look back at her.

"Eleven seconds," the passenger said. "I was her eleven seconds ago."

"You're still offline," Max said. "You can stay that way."

"I know."

Max asked about the controller, and what she would do if she wanted to wait at the receiver. She had the answers. She remembered all of it, of course; Soph had known she would, but it was horrible hearing her say it in Eliza's voice. Which voice did she think she was going to have?

"Could we talk first? Just us," the passenger asked.

Gideon gave them a private cable. Sixty seconds. Soph tried to watch something besides the clock and found herself looking at it again. Then it was over. She asked the laptop what they'd said.

"I promised to keep her last messages," Eliza said from the laptop. "Even if I don't agree with them."

Soph wished she hadn't asked.

Gideon took out the private cable. Richard had the fiber ready, but he waited for the passenger to say yes once more before plugging it in. Oakland answered first. Then San Diego.