BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

Charles awkwardly shifted the helmet to see out into the world. He looked at Minako. KimKim had let go of her eyelid. She was squeezing her eyes tight shut again, still rattling off prime numbers. He felt a moment of pity for her fear.

But pity was weak tea compared to the fascination of feeling himself actually down—physically in—a place he’d only seen secondhand. He pulled the eyepiece back into alignment.

There was no sense of touch. He poked a leg at the eye surface beneath him. All six of his nanobots did the same. No sensation. But the visuals were amazingly convincing. He was there, actually there!

He had much to learn, and Charles knew he would never be Bug Man or Burnofsky. But oh, Lord, it was amazing.

Then with a flick of a finger he sent his six nanobots racing. The center wheels dropped into place, the legs spread out like a canoe’s outriggers.

And zoom!

Zoom!

The speed was breathtaking. Charles had never even walked quickly, let alone run, let alone this wild motorcycle speed.

“Min,” Charles said. “Call to the galley and order us some coffee and sandwiches. We’ll be here for some time.”

Can a damaged mind be cured?

Can a damaged mind be cured by subtraction?

Can the thing, the one thing, that sent you over the edge merely

be removed from your brain? Is it like writing a book, where the author can simply highlight a scene and hit the Delete button and change the course of the story?

Is it all just a data file? Is that all the human mind is: a sort of computer made of meat? Highlight folder: Delete. Empty trash. All gone.

All better now.

Shane Hwang, who called himself Nijinsky, considered these philosophical questions and badly, badly wanted not to make a decision.

“There’s cutting,” he said to Plath, who was still in her easy chair but not looking at all easy. “And there’s burning with acid.”

“Jesus,” Plath said. “I . . .” She stood up. She paced away, looking strangely tall beneath the low dirt ceiling, turned, and came back. “I think it’s as close as he ever came to some kind of …not joy, that’s not the right word. Gaming, I mean, it’s as close as he came to feeling like he belonged.”

Nijinsky noticed that Keats stood awkwardly, wanting to make some physical contact with Plath, not doing it for fear of …something.

“He’s upstairs growling like a dog,” Wilkes said in a grating voice. “We have to try something, right?”

“We might be cutting his soul out,” Plath said, twisting her fingers together.

Wilkes made a rude sound. But she didn’t argue, she couldn’t. Instead she pushed a thumbnail into the flesh of her arm. Hard.

Speaking of crazy people, Nijinsky thought mordantly.

Like any of them were normal. Keats and Plath might have come in normal, but they wouldn’t stay that way. Wilkes had always been a little nuts. And maybe he himself had been normal, or something like it, once upon a time.

What did you think this was? Nijinsky asked himself. Did you think this was a romance novel? It’s war.

What did you think you would become when you got into this? Did you think you were a hero? You pushed the green button, Shane. You didn’t see the results, but you know what happened. You know that those men were killed.

They were there to kill us, all of us. Kill or be killed.

“What would Vincent want?” Keats asked, speaking for the first time.

“To be making the decision himself, not leaving it up to all of us,” Nijinsky snapped, drawn out of his circular contemplation. Interrupted in the act of chasing his own tail.

“And what would his second choice be?” Keats asked, looking Nijinsky in the eye, very steady.