Prime--Author's Edition by Nate Kenyon

Author:Nate Kenyon [Kenyon, Nate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-09-28T23:00:00+00:00

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Bellow’s memories came flooding back in a great gathering rush of sight and sound. It was almost like experiencing them all over again. His job just before Mexico City had been with a pornographic imaging company on the outskirts of Daas Ban. They wanted someone to go inside and find out why a certain popular sim star was refusing to service her most frequent clients. It was only through blind luck that he stumbled upon the answer: an archaic bit of code was causing her to refuse any client she believed had contracted a venereal disease.

During that time he met Kara, or a clone of her, anyway—and against his better judgment they fell in love. Before he went inside for the last time, she told him she was pregnant.

Maybe that was why he’d missed a step. Or maybe he had just lost his edge. Or maybe Crowther had set him up. Whatever the reason, he’d been hired by a Mexico City conglomerate to solve a problem with a worm that had been targeting the futures market for soybean oil and had ended up floating endlessly inside, his mind burned to a crisp by a self-defense mechanism the worm had deployed.

The recovery process might have been real. He didn’t really know the truth about whether he was an original or a clone complete with bits of implanted memory, and he didn’t really know if it mattered anymore.

He felt real, and that was enough for him.

When it was over, he removed the waveform reader and found Chin-Hae and Charlie watching him intently. “That was interesting,” Bellow said.

Chin-Hae hesitated. “This process—I can also take some of them away. If some memories, of some people and experiences, are too painful—you understand?”

Bellow hesitated for a moment. The idea of having Kara erased from his consciousness was tempting, if only for the potential absence of pain. But he shook his head.

“Some things are important to remember,” he said.

He was halfway to the door of the switching chamber when he heard a shout. He turned to see Chin-Hae weaving his way through the debris on the floor in his motorized chair, the gears whining as if protesting what they were being asked to do.

Chin-Hae carried something in his lap. When he reached Bellow, he held up an object draped in a soft Korean silk. “I thought you might like to keep her,” he said. “I’ll be on the move for a while, and it will be difficult to take care of her. She might be useful to you.”

Bellow took the cage by its handle and slipped the silk to one side. The canary cocked its head and peered at him with beady black eyes, and then hopped a step or two closer on its perch.

“She wants a seed,” Chin-Hae said. “I left a packet in the little drawer underneath for you.”

“I’ll take good care of her,” Bellow said. “And when we see each other again, you can have her back.”

When he reached the door to the chamber and looked over his shoulder, Chin-Hae was still sitting there motionless, watching them leave.

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