Against Gravity

"Your heart…"

Kendrick sat up abruptly, the electronic map of his body on the screen changing in response, shifting, twisting and blurring as he shifted onto the edge of the examination couch.

Hardenbrooke picked up another spray 'derm, one on which Kendrick noticed a sticky label with fine, tiny cursive handwriting. But the label was angled away from him, making it impossible to decipher the words.

Hardenbrooke held it up. "How much did I tell you about this stuff?"

"Last time I was here, you said it was something new from the States."

"Do you remember our other little chat, when we first met, about the current legal status of what's inside this?"

Kendrick took a deep breath. "Yes, I do."

"Remember what I said then, how this is strictly experimental? You know how tight the guidelines are regarding biotechnologies like these."

"But you're sure it's safe?"

Hardenbrooke sighed. "It's probably no worse than what you've already got inside you. I'm not going to give you any guarantees or false promises, but there's every chance you'll keep getting better. This stuff has already successfully stabilized much of the augmentation activity inside you."

"But it is working," Kendrick insisted. "I'm getting better. I know I am."

"And you say you've suffered two seizures in rapid order. Perhaps that's a sign of change – perhaps even positive change."

"But what about my heart? What's happened to it? I need to know," Kendrick demanded, his mind going numb.

Hardenbrooke pinched his nose between two fingers and closed his eyes, pondering. "I'd need to analyse the information downloaded from the nanites and try to get some grip on exactly what's happened to you but, from what I've seen, it's clear your heart's been bypassed in some way. There are new structures inside you. My guess is – and I stress the word guess – is that the new structures are now controlling the flow of your blood."

Kendrick absorbed this information without comment. Hardenbrooke had only told him what he'd already suspected, yet hearing it confirmed in this way stirred up a darkness deep inside him, something shrill and insane that was fighting to get loose. He pushed it back down.

"I urge you to remember that this is no reason to start worrying," Hardenbrooke reminded him.

Kendrick laughed, hearing the edge of hysteria there. "Not worry? I'm not to worry about it? Are you crazy?"

"Mr Gallmon, I never had reason to ask this before, but is there any history of heart problems in your family?"

"What does that have to do with anything? I…" Then he remembered an aunt who'd died of a coronary. His mother had also suffered a mild heart attack in her early forties. "Some, yes, I have to admit. But why do you ask now?"

"Your augments integrate with your nervous system and major organs, changing them as they do so, like soldiers building a fort out of whatever material they can find. They respond strongly to perceived threats and, to a very great degree, they come up with their own definitions of what they regard as a threat. That could include medical conditions."

Kendrick was thunderstruck. "Wait a minute, are you saying I… you mean I had a heart attack? That's what this is all about?"

"I'm saying just imagine, if you will, that your augmentations reacted to a heart attack, or some kind of coronary event, by taking over your heart's functions. I'm not saying that's what it is. I'm only saying that's my best guess for now. If I were you, I'd thank my lucky stars."

"My heart-?"

"Has been bypassed, but you're very much alive. Focus on that: it means your augments are working for you, instead of against you." Hardenbrooke held up the 'derm again. "So let's make sure things stay that way." He leaned over and injected its contents into Kendrick's arm while Kendrick glanced over the medic's shoulder at the pixellated views of his own internal organs.

Hardenbrooke stood up straight again and smiled. "Remind me, then: have we had this conversation?"

Kendrick sighed. "No, we haven't."

"Have I ever set eyes on you before?"

"No, you've never seen me before in your life. To suggest otherwise would mark me as a scoundrel and a lunatic."

"Just so we know where we stand, I've introduced new nanites into your body, which will implant their own override algorithms in your augments."

"So that'll at least delay things for a while?"

"To be honest, it might even cure you."

"That's impossible. You can't be 'cured' of augmentations. They don't just go away."

"What can be made can be unmade," Hardenbrooke replied. "Remember, experimental tech, but so far, so good. Right?"

Kendrick gazed soberly back at the medic. If Hardenbrooke was in any way lying, it was the cruellest kind of lie: an offering of hope where hope had not previously existed. It occurred to Kendrick that he wasn't really prepared to believe what Hardenbrooke was telling him now, simply because he couldn't cope with any more disappointment.

"You are aware," Kendrick framed his words carefully, "that if this really works like you suggest, it would be the biggest news of the century."

"I never said it was a definite cure. It's a possible cure, using experimental technology that doesn't even officially exist. Apart from getting me deported and jailed, if the authorities found out that your augments had turned rogue and that you had been taking these treatments they'd throw you straight into a secure nanohazard ward, and you'd disappear as far as the rest of the world is concerned."

Kendrick felt his face flush red. Yet, for the first time in a very great while, he dared to hope. The simple reality of it was that, without Hardenbrooke, and without the possibility that Hardenbrooke was extending to him… without that, he had nothing.

12 October 2096 Edinburgh

Once, when Marlin Smeby had still been young, his maternal grandmother had taken him on a kind of Grand Tour of Europe. At that time, back home in Florida, his parents had been busy yelling and screaming their way towards a grisly divorce. By that stage the family was already rich from his father's lucrative engineering contracts with the governments of various minor Asian nations looking to rebuild after their nuclear squabbles of the 2080s.

The jaunt had given him a taste for travelling, which had led to a spell serving in the old US Army. This in turn had led on to intelligence work, which had led to Marlin's discovery that he had himself inherited every bit of his father's ingrained cruelty and utter disregard for his fellow human beings. To him, Edinburgh had felt like it belonged in some other time, with its ancient brooding castle and those grey stone tenements squatting on steep hillsides.

Still, much had changed since then, and it was no longer the city he remembered from his previous visit. Even as a child he'd been able to see how much bankruptcy had affected Europe. The old EU had almost given up the ghost, but hadn't yet been replaced by the monolithic European Legislate that had risen from its ashes. He remembered people in their thousands sleeping in the parks and streets because there was nowhere else for them to go.

Smeby looked out of the taxi window and realized he could quickly tell which of the city's inhabitants were American. It was something in the way they dressed, the way they carried themselves. He wondered if they still considered themselves to be American. Did they all talk of going back home once things got better, or would they finally give up and decide they were now Europeans?

A smear of graffiti strobed across a wall, its hue flickering from green to red to yellow; Fuck off back to the US, someone had scrawled. Another read Europe for the Europeans.