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  Chloe motions him and David to join her friends inside the main room, where rugged couches, patched-up bean bags and truck tires serve as seats. They sit down at the bottom of the Behemoth, surrounded by adepts using screens for all sorts of purposes – from 3D printing to retro video-games. Red drapes hang over them on the outer rim of the ceiling, the high concrete walls bear some elaborate graffiti, everywhere old movies and twenty-four hours news channels play on shattered monitors, while away from prying eyes less licit activities are carried out.

  One of Morgan’s slender drones comes by, two beer bottles in its hands for Chloe and David who welcome the refreshment gratefully. “Young friend,” Morgan addresses Jake through her telepresence device, “you must be getting hungry.”

  Jake scratches his head, out of mere habit, prompting Morgan’s amusement. “Ha, I wouldn’t know…” he admits. “But yeah it’s dinner time.”

  He looks at his father: they both let time fly. Morgan’s screen stops displaying her video call, her face replaced by a smiling icon as the drone stands, inert. Interrogative, Jake turns to Chloe, who’s observed the exchange and now pouts reassuringly. An instant later, another of Morgan’s drone rolls up to Jake with a vial of nutrients in its hand, this one controlled by her in real time, while the other one resumes idle mode and goes on to more menial tasks. “Here you go,” she presents.

  Jake is about to grab the vial when David gets it first. “Thank you!” he says, “I didn’t think to pack up dinner.”

  “It’s alright,” assures Morgan. “I’m glad you stayed with us. We all love having new guests!”

  Chloe smiles at Jake while David changes his nutrient vial. A waist-high service drone passes by, small baskets of french-fries arranged on its platter, and the young woman picks one up for David and herself. Jake looks at it, and everything else around, with pure child-like wonder. A small robot dog comes and sits next to him, wandering around on its own. Jake pets it with amusement; Chloe taps her right eye to take a picture.

  When he’s done changing the vial, David turns to Morgan: “Don’t get me wrong,” he starts, apologetically, “I’m really amazed, but… what is this place, exactly?”

  “Well,” she replies, meditative, “Cybercon only happens once a year. The rest of the time, we gather here. This is a place of exchange, and good will.”

  “The electric bill alone must be through the roof!” David exclaims. “Who pays for all this?”

  “Oh, we all pitch in. If you’ll excuse me, I’m needed elsewhere.”

  “It’s been very nice meeting you, Morgan.”

  “You too David, and Jake. Enjoy your evening.”

  Playing with the dog now rolling on its back, Jake raises his head. “Thanks!” he says, cheerfully. Morgan smiles before disconnecting from her drone.

  Sitting next to David, Chloe takes it upon herself to answer him properly. “My mum started this place as a pet project a few years back,” she starts. “Her job keeps her very busy, and she thought she could make fun friends this way.”

  “What does she do?” the father asks, stuffing french fries into his mouth.

  “She works at H+, as head of R&D.”

  “I see,” David acknowledges, “very impressive!”

  Chloe doesn’t look all that impressed: “I don’t know…” she trails off. “She makes a buttload of cash, and she throws it around… It’s kind of her own charity work.”

  David’s not inclined to see anything wrong there. “That explains where your generosity comes from,” he flatters.

  Chloe laughs. Jake looks at them bonding, a little annoyed. They both eat fries and drink beer, small pleasures of the flesh he might never again have a chance to partake in.

  “Still,” Chloe goes on, “it quickly grew, and people started bringing their own machines. Before you knew, the place was open twenty-four seven…” She looks around the room with nostalgia.

  Malcolm walks in, carrying a bundle of wires that he’s trying to untangle. He looks at the small trio from a distance, seeing the child sat down somehow lonesomely, and catches his attention: “Hey boy,” he beckons, “you wanna try something new?”

  Jake straightens up, excited, and turns to David and Chloe, who gesture him to go on with reassuring nods. In his awkward shuffle, Jake rushes to Malcolm while David and Chloe groggily follow. They walk around the Behemoth to the other side of the room, where a dozen flat screens of various sizes are set up in a semi-chaotic fashion.

  Malcolm finishes untangling a long wire from the bundle, and walks to a computer connected to the TVs where he connects one end. He walks back to Jake, standing very close to him at an angle where the boy can see both the screens and the rastafari’s temple. Picking fries with the curious demeanor of two passers by, Chloe and David observe the scene from a few feet away.

  “You ready?” Malcolm asks, playfully.

  Jake is unsure what he means. “Err, yeah?” he replies, in doubt.

  Malcolm plugs the other end of the wire in one of the multiple outlets set in his skull. Each screen starts broadcasting his point of view, oddly deformed to fit a rectangular frame. Jake can see himself in each and everyone of them, his new face expressing utter puzzlement as he’s still not used to his own appearance, and certainly confused by the filming equipment. He bursts into laughter, prompting smiles on everyone’s face.

  Malcolm moves back and forth around him, looking at the Behemoth, the robot dog and everyone around, while Jake is hypnotized by the spectacle of the dozen flat screens.

  Amused and astonished, like by some magic trick, the boy asks: “How does that even work? You’ve got… you’ve got real eyes.”

  Malcolm taps his temple, not far from where the wire goes in his skull. “I had my visual cortex replaced,” he says. “All the images, they go in through here.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because I was born blind,” the rasta replies, as if it were nothing. “Hey, Jake, you wanna try? You know you can.”

  “Yeah, that looks fun,” the boy consents.

  Chloe interjects: “Hold on, Mal. He hasn’t got the setup.”

  “So?” The Brazilian shrugs. “It takes like one minute.”

  David has very little idea what’s going on: “What are you talking about?” he asks.

  Chloe explains: “If he wants to do that, we need to go into his settings first.”

  “His what?” Quite legitimately, David intrudes on the conversation. Being surrounded by people who are more familiar than him with his son’s body makes him really uncomfortable, and that much is obvious to everyone here except Jake.

  “Dad! Can we do it, please?” the boy asks, excited.

  “Look, it’s safe,” assures Chloe, “and we can revert it. I just need to plug into him for a second.”

  David eases up, curious to learn more anyway. “How do you do that?” he asks.

  Chloe motions Jake to sit on a nearby stool. Behind his ear, a discreet rubber panel comes off under her fingernails, revealing a small port. Malcolm hands her a tablet, which she connects to this port before reaching into Jake’s operating system. He doesn’t seem bothered, instead looking at Chloe’s tablet with great interest.

  While she goes through the sub-menus of his BIOS, she gives a crash-course to both David and Jake: “Your body is a downgraded version of a stock model,” she explains. “They actually lock away some of the functions reserved for more expensive ones. I’m just going to unlock your HUD.”

  She taps her tablet and Jake is jump-scared with a laugh. Malcolm disconnects himself from the TVs, turning their screens black, and hands the wire over to Chloe. She disconnects the tablet and places the other wire in the same port. When she’s done, she tells Jake: “Now you can move your cursor by looking around, and pretend that you blink to click.”

  “OK,” the boy replies, confident.

  “Bring up the settings,” Chloe goes on, “it’s the icon in the…”

  Before she’s done explaining Jake
raises a thumb. “Yeah I got them,” he says.

  Chloe smiles to David who looks confused and worried. Staring at the floor, Jake is slightly bobbing his head: it is a strange sight indeed. Chloe keeps giving him indications: “OK now, video, output, EXT 1.” Jake nods a few times, and suddenly the screens light up, showing the concrete ground overlaid with a translucent unfolding menu.

  Jake looks up to Chloe and David, who can now see themselves in the screens behind him. This seemingly benign use of his features astounds David. Chloe turns to him, smiling with confidence: “You ever wondered what you looked like through your son’s eyes?” she asks.

  A little overwhelmed, David starts to tear up before laughing with relief. Jake is already walking around, toward the screen; as he looks at the TVs from a straighter angle, the HUD menu reflects a thousand times in the multiplied frames.

  Chloe tries to help: “You can minimize your HUD if you…”

  Jake has closed the menu before she’s done talking. He moves back and forth in front of the multiple screens, greatly amused by the psychedelic effect.

  Chapter 4

  The following three months, Angelo spends his days training with the troopers. The military routine quickly comes back to him: waking up at dawn in their five stars barracks, entire mornings of physical exercise, followed by afternoons spent honing their tactical combat skills. In the hangar, he would change the configuration of the maze on a daily basis, for the troops to deploy in mock-up facilities were cardboard gangsters would hold cardboard hostages.

  Assemble, breach, rinse and repeat would be their daily bread. Strategic scenarios would vary only in theme, the exercises always revolving around taking down humanoid targets, with laser pointers, then paintballs, then live ammunition. By the time the targets would get paintball guns of their own, the troops would take them down in less than a second. Avoiding fire would prove to be a greater challenge however, the shielding units offering limited protection against heavy resistance. At the end of each day, technicians would bring out high pressure cleaners to remove the many paintball splashes on the suits. The Major would always close the day off with a lecture, sometimes demeaning enough to make them bring their A game the next day, sometimes purely strategy-driven. And soon enough, they would become a unit.

  All the while, David would arrange for Jake to stay out of school and spend his days at the Workshop, dropping him with Chloe in the morning and picking him up after work. From his office, he would sometimes receive videos of Jake shot from a drone, that Chloe would send him just to stay in touch. She would send videos of Jake learning tricks, often challenged at first in replicating them, but always overcoming any difficulty he would face. Together, they would tweak and upgrade his body, helping him recover a child’s flexibility. In a matter of months, Jake would be able to ride a motorized unicycle around the room, filming himself with the drone by remote control, with the robotic dog chasing after him.

  Once, after a long day, David would get to the Workshop and find everybody partying without a clear occasion. They would’ve booted up the Behemoth in the center of the room, controlling it to shoot bubbles and foam from the guns attached to its wrists and shoulders. The robot dog would bark. David would hardly believe what his life had become. Later they would let his son control the giant robot and he would remember, as a kid, dreaming of toys like these. Jake would suggest to add a confetti gun, and by their welcoming reaction David could easily tell that this lovable band of misfits considered them both a part of their improbable family.

  It’s a warm night in early December and the six troopers, along with their technical team, are enjoying the rooftop lounge of their classy barracks. A large TV is playing music videos, and they’re having drinks on black leather couches, arguing about policy making. No one remembers what really prompted the topic, and no one really cares.

  “No,” contradicts Yuwono, the Indonesian ex-policeman, “I’m saying that the minute you make something illegal, criminals will try and make a profit.”

  “So what?” objects one of them.

  “He wants to legalize everything,” jokes the Bravo team leader.

  The squad leader cuts out the banter: “Then we’d be out of a job, wouldn’t we?”

  All laugh except Yuwono. “I’m no lawmaker,” he says, frowning. “I was just making a point.” His expression quickly turns to surprise when he sees the Major walk in, and everybody mirrors his attitude as he straightens up.

  “Relax, we’re all off duty here,” says the Major, approaching. Angelo and the technicians gather close by. The squad leader grabs a beer from the cooler and offers it to the Major, who accepts it with a nod. His presence here is highly unusual, and everyone is quietly waiting for him to give it a justification, which he eventually does: “I was just on the phone with the head of Public Safety,” he says, affecting a dramatic pause. “Your last performance review was judged ‘satisfactory’,” he adds, finally.

  The troopers seem confused, Angelo walks in closer. Seeing nobody’s sure of what the Major means, the squad leader leans in: “We’re a go, sir?”

  The grim Japanese nods with a stern expression: “We’re a go.” They all cheer. Bottles are opened, glasses are emptied. The Major and the troops raise their beers. “That’s not all,” adds the commanding officer, “our last piece of equipment is on its way and should arrive right about… now.”

  He looks up at the sky above the precinct, but only dark clouds made crimson by the light pollution are visible. Everybody’s frowning in an effort to spot whatever he means, when a large helicopter bursts out the clouds, four rotors carrying this obsidian brick like some magic bus, its flight utterly silent. Heading for the precinct, it lands effortlessly on the rooftop of the training hangar, next to the barracks.

  “Say hello to our automated stealth dropship,” points the Commander. The transport is resting on the opposing rooftop, its sleek curves reflecting the shining city. Just looking at it is enough to let the troopers feel imbued with its obvious raw power.

  A few minutes later, the Major gives Angelo a first look at the dropship from up close. “The troopers are ready,” he confides, “but there is one last task you need to familiarize yourself with.”

  Angelo gets curious: “What is it, sir?” he asks.

  There is no cockpit or window on the dropship, only two large lateral doors that pull up under the turbines. The Major uses a remote to open the vehicle, revealing large racks designed to load in the whole strike team along with their escort of drones. At one extremity of the vehicle, Angelo sees what he assumes is his console. A few steps away, a bare-bone version of a combat exoskeleton is hanging from the ceiling.

  “During assignments, I want you on board, working this console to minimize latency,” explains the Major. “The link with the strike team is heavily encrypted and this vehicle can withstand rocket fire, so there’s no real downfall compared to working from the base.”

  “Alright,” Angelo approves, inspecting the layout of this new console.

  The Major steps to the hanging exoskeleton. “Do you know what this is?” he asks, gauging Angelo’s reply.

  “That’s a remote control frame, isn’t it?” attempts the young overseer. “They’re used to evacuate incapacitated troops.”

  “Very good,” deems the Major. “While you monitor the whole of the squad, I’ll be here, behind you, ready to override any of the exosuits on the ground, should the necessity arise.”

  “You mean…” Angelo pauses, unsure of the implication, “we’ll be using this all the time?”

  The Major looks at the device. “I understand your concern,” he assures. “This was designed for emergencies only. Soldiers need to be accountable for their actions.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly…” Angelo mumbles.

  “In our engagements,” the Major interrupts, “we’ll be facing emergencies all the time, Mr. Saldana. You’d be surprised how much the troops welcomed the idea of this system.”

  “R
eally?” It does come as a shock, and Angelo’s not quite sure what he should make of it.

  “I know I was,” admits the soldier of fortune. “They all said something about having an experienced veteran watching your back all the time,” he adds, somehow sarcastically humble.

  “Of course, when you put it that way…”

  Angelo drops the subject. After all, he’s not the one who signed up to get his ass into gunfights. Still, looking at the interior of the dropship, he’s amazed by the meeting point between drone and soldier that has been achieved here. The loading racks leave very little room for the troopers to get out of their suits. Calling this a transport is a stretch, he thinks: this is a flying tin can made to deliver heavy ordinance.

  The Behemoth has found stillness again. It’s now wearing Christmas decorations, presiding over the holiday like a giant robotic Santa Claus. Malcolm has grown tired of getting beaten by the ten year old boy at video games, and he’s pulled out an old version of a fighting game that he played as a kid. Both of them have connected their controllers to outlets in their heads, for a faster and more responsive duel, as Jake has learned to do with many appliances. He is standing close to the screen, trying to replicate his character’s movements, more out of childish amusement than of necessity. All around them, friends are betting on the outcome of the fight.

  “You think you’re good but you’re not old school,” throws the rasta as he gets on the offensive.

  “It’s just slower, and ugly,” Jake teases, skeptical. “You’re still gonna lose!”

  A few feet away, David is watching the scene unfold with a serene smile. Not too far, lost in her own bubble, Chloe is checking on her phone a string of messages from Angelo to which she hasn’t replied. Since that fateful day when she pushed him away, she’s only felt resentment at the thought of him, and now that he insists they remain in touch, resentment makes room for contempt. With resolve, she deletes his contact info. She is still bitter when she pockets her phone but, soon, her eyes falling on David’s expression, she eases down.