UnSouled

“Then you’ll be left here to die,” Una says.

“Better that than this!”

There’s only one door, but the apex of the dome is in disrepair and full of holes. Carefully, quietly, Connor climbs the curving surface of the stone and mud structure until he can peer through a gap where the stones have given way.

His first impression hits a chord in him as resonant as any instrument Una could build. He sees a young man about his age with odd multitextured hair of different shades. He’s tied to a pole, struggling to pull himself free. By the smell of the place and the look of him, he’s been here for a while, in this helpless, hopeless situation, without even the freedom to relieve himself anywhere but in his clothes.

Connor’s immediate gut reaction is identification. This prisoner is me. Me being held in Argent’s basement. Me desperately trying to escape. Me struggling to hold on to hope. The sense of empathy is so strong it will flavor everything that transpires between them.

Una is not Argent, Connor must remind himself. Her motives, whatever they are, must be different. But why is she doing this? Connor waits and watches, hoping she’ll give him a clue.

“Either you have to let me go, or you have to kill me,” her captive says. “Please do one or the other, and let this end!”

To that, Una responds with a single, simple question. “What’s my name?”

“I told you, I don’t know! I didn’t know yesterday, I don’t know today, and I won’t know tomorrow!”

“Then maybe today the music will remind you.”

Then Una undoes his bonds. He doesn’t even try to run—he must know it’s no use. Instead he sobs, his arms going limp. And into those limp arms Una puts the guitar she brought.

“Do it,” Una says. Now she speaks gently, and she caresses his hands, lifting them into position on the instrument. “Give it life. It’s what you do. It’s what you’ve always done.”

“That wasn’t me,” he pleads.

Una moves away from him and sits down facing him. Taking her rifle from its case, she lays it across her lap. “I said do it.”

Her prisoner reluctantly begins to play. Sorrowful strains fill the space and echo, the entire building becoming like the tone chamber of the guitar. Connor feels it resonating in his chest.

This music is beautiful. This prisoner of Una’s is a true master of the instrument. He’s not sobbing anymore. Instead it’s Una who sobs. She holds her gut as if there’s great pain there. Her sobs grow into wails that resonate with the music like some great chanting of grief.

Then Connor shifts positions, and a pebble the size of a marble dislodges from the edge of the hole and drops to the ground inside.

In an instant Una leaps to her feet and swings her rifle into position, aiming it at him through the gap in the stones.

Connor pulls back reflexively, but loses his balance and falls over backward, tumbling down the outside shell of the building, bumping and bruising himself on the rough stone. He lands on his back, the wind knocked out of him, and when he tries to rise, Una is there with the rifle barrel just inches away from his nose.

“Don’t you dare move!”

Connor freezes, half-convinced that she really is going to blow him away if he moves. Then, her prisoner, seeing his chance, bolts into the woods.

“Hííko!” she curses, and takes off after him. Connor gets to his feet in pursuit, to see where this little psychotic drama will end.

As she closes in on her escaping prisoner, Una drops her rifle and launches herself at him, landing on his back and bringing him down. She struggles with him, her long hair like a dark shroud covering both of them as they thrash on the ground, and Connor realizes that he is suddenly the one with a distinct advantage. He picks up Una’s rifle and aims it at both of them.

“Up! Both of you! Now!”

And when they don’t listen, he fires the rifle into the air.

That gets their attention. They stop struggling, and they both rise to their feet. Only now does Connor notice that there’s something odd about this guy’s face.

“What the hell is all this about?” Connor demands.

“None of your business!” Una snaps. “Give me back my rifle!”

“How about I just give you one of the bullets?” Connor keeps the rifle trained on her but shifts his gaze to her prisoner. The odd patchwork nature of his face—a starburst of flesh tones that seem to continue into the shades and textures of his hairline—is unnatural, yet familiar.

All at once it strikes Connor who this is. He’s seen him enough in the media—imagined him enough in his nightmares. This is that abominable Rewind! The recognition must be mutual, because the Rewind’s stolen eyes register recognition as well.

“It’s you! You’re the Akron AWOL!” And then, “Where is she? Is she here? Take me to her!”

The only thing Connor knows for sure at this moment is that there’s too much flying at him to process. If he tries to sort it all out in his head right now, he’ll make a crucial mistake, one of them will get ahold of this rifle, and someone else will end up dead—maybe him.

“This is what we’re going to do,” he says, forcing calm into his voice but keeping the rifle raised. “We’re all going back to the igloo thing.”

“Sweat lodge,” snarls Una.

“Right. Whatever. We’re going back there, we’re going to sit our asses down, and we’re going to sweat this whole thing out until I’m satisfied. Got it?”

Una glares at him, then storms back toward the sweat lodge. The Rewind isn’t as quick to move. Connor trains the rifle on him. “Move it,” he says. “Or I’ll turn you back into the pork and beans you were made from.”

The Rewind gives him a condescending glare from his stolen eyes, then heads back toward the sweat lodge.

• • •

Connor knows his name, but calling him by a name implies too much humanity for Connor’s liking. He’d much prefer to just call him “the Rewind.” As the three of them sit in the sweat lodge, they are both reluctant to tell Connor anything—as if they resent him for cutting into this dark dance they’ve been doing.

“He has Wil’s hands,” Connor prompts, having already figured that much out. “Let’s start there.”

Una explains the details of Wil’s abduction—or at least what she was told by Lev and Pivane. The Tashi’ne family never got any answers as to what happened to their son and never expected to. Kids who are taken by parts pirates rarely turn up at harvest camps; they’re sold piece by piece on the black market. But apparently Wil Tashi’ne was a special case. Connor can’t imagine the kind of pain Una must feel, knowing this creation before them has the hands of the boy she loved and has his talent literally woven right into its brain. His talent, his musical memory, and yet no memory of her. It could drive anyone mad—but to hold him prisoner like that?

“What were you thinking, Una?”

“Una!” The Rewind smiles triumphantly. “Her name is Una!”

“Quiet, Pork-n-beans,” Connor says. “I’m not talking to you.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Una admits quietly, looking down at the dirt floor of the sweat lodge. “I’m still not.” Instead of talking about the Rewind, she talks about Wil again. How he would tune and test all of her guitars before they were sold. “He put his soul into his music. I always felt that a tiny bit of him was left resonating in the instrument after he played it. Once he was gone, the guitars never felt the same. Now when they play, it’s only music.”

“So you thought you’d make our friend here your little guitar slave.”

She raises her eyes to burn him a glare—but she doesn’t seem to have the strength for it anymore. She casts her eyes down again.

Connor turns to the Rewind, to find his eyes locked on Connor, practically drilling into him. Connor tightens the grip on the rifle in his lap.

“Why are you here?” Connor asks. “How did you even know to come here?”

“I have enough of Wil Tashi’ne’s memory to know that this is where your friend the clapper would run to hide,” he says. “And I think you know why I’m here. I’m here for Risa.”

Hearing her name coming from his mouth brings Connor’s blood toward a boil. She hates you, Connor wants to tell him. She wants nothing to do with you. Ever. But he sees and smells the Rewind’s urine-stained pants and remembers the helplessness of the Rewind’s captivity, so much like his own in Argent’s basement. Sympathy is the last thing Connor wants to feel, but it’s there all the same, undermining his hatred. Desperation just about oozes out of the Rewind’s seams, and as much as Connor wants to add to this creature’s pain, he can’t find it in himself to do it.

“So, you’re going to blackmail her into being with you, like before?”

“That wasn’t me! That was Proactive Citizenry.”

“And you want to bring her back to them.”

“No! I’m here to help her, you idiot.”

Connor finds himself mildly amused. “Careful, Pork-n-beans—I’m the one with the rifle.”

“You’re wasting your time,” pipes in Una. “You can’t reason with him. He’s not human. He’s not even alive.”

“Je pense, donc je suis,” the Rewind says.

Connor doesn’t speak French, but he knows enough to decipher it.

“Just because you think, doesn’t mean you are. Computers claim to think, but they’re just mimicking the real thing. Garbage in/garbage out—and you’re just a whole lot of garbage.”

The Rewind looks down, his eyes glistening. “You don’t know a thing.”

Connor can tell he’s struck a nerve in the Rewind—this whole subject of life. Of Existence with a capital E. Again, Connor feels that unwanted wave of sympathy.

“Of course, Unwinds aren’t legally alive either,” Connor says, making Cam’s argument for him. “Once an unwind order is signed, as far as the law is concerned, they’re nothing but a bunch of parts. Like you.”

The Rewind lifts his eyes to him. A single tear falls, absorbed by the knee of his jeans. “Your point?”

“My point is, I get it. Whether you’re a pile of parts, or a sack of garbage, or a full-fledged person has nothing to do with what I, or Una, or anyone else thinks—so do us all a favor and stop making it our problem.”

He nods and looks down again. “Blue Fairy,” he says.

“You see!” snaps Una. “He is like a computer—he spouts garbage that makes no sense.”

But Connor finds himself making an unexpected leap of insight.

“Sorry, Pinocchio, but Risa’s not your Blue Fairy. She can’t turn you into a real boy.”

Cam looks at him and grins. Connor finds the grin disarming, which makes him grip the rifle more tightly. He will not be disarmed in any way.

“How do you know she hasn’t already?”