The Garden was many things. Each of them was a barrier that required its own unique key. It was an island surrounded by depth drones waiting patiently to kill whatever dared to move above. The cryptographic code that granted safe passage, and that for a single night and a single day, was thought to be impossible to fake. The Garden was also a rabidly self-protective ecosystem-organism. Everything in it carried a specific molecular signature derived from the DNA of a dead girl; everything in it — from the smallest dormant virus to the giant tactical networks of fungal predators — would kill anything that didn't carry the genetic shibolet. The man I was going to meet had sent me something to inject me with that would give me a temporary facsimile good enough to make me acceptable to the Garden for a day or two. Or so he had said.
Of course I knew I was taking a risk.
But the Garden was above everything a mausoleum built by a genius who had been broken by her daughter's death into something even more deeply bent and sharp, equal parts cognitive augmentations, wealth, and grief. Even a journalist wouldn't go into such a place without an invitation and the son of the Garden's builder, the younger brother of the world's most famous dead girl, had given me one.
It was a clear night and the gazebo-like hollow tree where he was waiting for me was illuminated further by surprisingly bright bioluminiscent fruit. There were no artificial lights in the Garden, no electronics installed or carried by hypothetical visitors. No guns, explosives, poisons, or biological weapons of any kind either. The Garden had dozens of senses evaluated by a thousand different types of mind, all of them built for ruthlessness and incapable of hesitation. I felt exposed and weightless without any of the machines we all live with as I sat in front of my interviewee. The man was even more private than his reclusive mother. I hadn't seriously attempted to research him until he sought me out and after he did all I could find were vague commonplaces about a grief-striken handsome young man lost in tragedy, his family too wealthy for reality to pluck him out.
Sitting close to him I began to update my internal profile. He was handsome, surprisingly, but you had to look for it. What you saw first was the pain. Don't get me wrong. I've seen much worse things than the death of a single child no matter how horrifying the mechanics of the bioware accident. I've talked with witnesses and survivors whose plain words gave me screaming nightmares. He was still just a rich man haunted by a single personal tragedy. But he had the familiar air of somebody who's not just grieving an event but still trapped in it. In his mind his sister was still screaming and her flesh was - I didn't want to continue that thought. Not in a place where everything, even the tree where we were sitting and the insects buzzing somewhere afar, carried in memoriam some of her DNA.
I had asked myself why he wanted to meet on the island and I had been sure seeing him would help me understand. Now that I had it made less sense than before.
The first thing he said was "I can smell her." Then he raised a hand in a gesture that offered clarification. "I remember her smell. I have eidetic memory for all senses and some interoceptive modalities. What I mean is that her genetic signature has a minor but detectable effect on the metabolic byproducts of certain species. If your senses and analytical capabilities are acute enough you can smell the difference in the patterns. I'm sure Mom used an early sample from long before her death but if you ask me it's closer to how she smelled during her last few hours."
"I see," I said. Most of the rest of our conversation went like that. I don't have his mind but I've done this all my life so I can quote it more or less verbatim — and I won't. This is all I will quote of what he told me.
Three reasons.
The first reason is that he accused his mother of horrible crimes. No, that's not the right to say it. He described brilliant and deliberate atrocities that had been the background rhythm of his life. He explained why he could do the things he said he could do and many more he wouldn't or couldn't tell me about. He told me why his sister had been in that laboratory; his story had no proof but was much more plausible than the official one and much worse than the rumors. There were things he said and things he implied, and things I don't think even he was aware of but I could sense moving inside the void of what neither one of us knew. After the first fifteen minutes I was sure he never slept a night without nightmares. After the first half hour I knew I never would. A while later I learned he did not sleep at all. So, yes, I remember everything he said. And his mother... His mother can buy any lawyer and most governments. I'm not afraid of lawsuits but that's not all she could do and I'm not the only person she could do it to.
The second reason I won't tell you what he said is because it made it obvious he wasn't quite sane and I don't want him to be judged through those words. He wasn't delusional or a sociopath; I've talked with both types and he was neither. But he wasn't normal. How could he be, being who and what he was? He was abnormal in a literal not a pejorative sense. His faculties were the opposite of damaged and his judgement not impaired at all. That was the problem. He had gone through Hell with open eyes and a mind too perceptive not to be broken by what he was seeing. No, sorry, he hadn't gone through Hell. He was still there psychologically and that night he was there physically and I was there with him. As he talked I couldn't stop myself from looking at the Garden with a new awareness of the obscenity of its symbolism and purpose. It wasn't just his experiences what had driven him at least half insane. The Garden was eating at him every day no matter where he was. It would do the same to me, I knew.
The third reason. That's personal. I wouldn't even tell you there's a third reason but the forensic analysis will make it obvious if it hadn't already that we kissed. We had to, well, fuck it, we had to exchange fluids, what a time to have an excuse to use that phrase with justification, for the two halves of the viral weapon to combine. You know it worked because he's dead and the Garden is dying and I, and I think he tried to avoid this but not as a priority, don't feel so good either. I just told you he wasn't sane and you know what I didn't know then, that he had used me to smuggle past the Garden's defense systems the other half of a weapon he could use to kill it, so you might think he did something he didn't.
Near the end he told me everything. Some of it personal and that's part of my silence. Did I pity him? Sure. I felt too a share of the anger he felt. I also think I saw parts of him he could never see. I said things too and those are really really private. That conversation I'm taking to my grave. Let's just say that at the end he was too hurt and unsure, too guilty I guess, to just kiss me. What happened later isn't your business except for the side effects — what you'll call bioterrorism but it's something else — but if anything of this story sticks I want it to be that. He tricked me into going there fully knowing he was making me complicit in a crime and that there was a good chance I would die. That was a shit move (Am I writing differently? Is that a symptom? I feel it is) but I got a killer story out of it so I'm not really mad.
But let it be clear. At the end, when I knew what had happened since her sister was on the drawing board and I knew what would happen next, I leaned in and I kissed him.