by Linda Harley
Nick’s head appeared in the hole. “Oh, good, you finally made it.”
Anna clambered through the elevator door. She was back in the core. Four hallways led off the core perpendicular to each other. “Is this the observation deck?”
Nick helped her to her feet and then swiftly closed the elevator door and strolled off down the northern hallway. Anna knew it was the north hallway because a big sign above the hallway entrance arch read North.
“Come and see for yourself,” Nick said, halfway down the hall.
Anna followed without a word, nervously anticipating what may lay ahead. She had never been up here and wasn’t sure that she was allowed to be here. After all, she was only a kid, and she had just invaded Nick’s privacy. She was taken aback when she entered a living room with a breathtaking view.
Glass windows ran from the floor to the ceiling and showed a wondrous valley of lush forests leading away from the mountain. In the far distance, something sparkled. “What’s that?” Anna asked, pointing at the glimmering light.
“Come and look,” Nick waived her over to the massive telescope that stood off to one side.
Anna peered through the scope and found that the river that flowed from the mountain emptied into a gigantic lake. She could not even see the other side of the lake. “Is that the ocean? If it is, it’s in the wrong place.”
Nick smiled, “No, that’s not the ocean; it's only a freshwater lake.”
Anna stared through the scope a few more minutes, then lost interest. She saw nothing but water, trees, and rocks. No movement. No people. No robots. Not even any animals. They were alone on this planet. Everyone except her had died, and just like that, the sadness overwhelmed her again.
Nick took a seat on a couch that faced the valley and patted the space next to him. “Have a seat, Anna. How do you feel after that climb?”
Anna sat down and marveled at her own body. She was a little cold from the sweat, but other than that, she felt great. Her muscles did not even hurt, and she could not remember the last time she had done something that was supposed to be so physically taxing. Before cancer, she had enjoyed playing sports, but once she got sick, her parents had made her quit all of it. It made no sense. “I feel invigorated. I’m not even tired. Why, Nick? Why do I feel like this? This is not normal. Am I dying?”
Nick took Anna’s hands and looked into her eyes. His eyes were soft and comforting. “It means the medicine is working.”
“I don’t understand. What’s happening to me?”
“All of my past solutions for the virus failed because I was trying to kill the virus. This time is different.”
“Different, how?”
Nick looked away, half ashamed. “This time, instead of killing the virus by attacking it, I am trying to change it and make it dormant. I changed the environment in which the virus was thriving, hoping that it would eventually die because it had no way of sustaining its own life.”
“How did you do that? And why did you not try it sooner?”
“It was very risky and well rather unorthodox. Some might argue even unethical, but no other solution remained.”
“Nick, what did you do?” Anna asked, confused.
“I changed your DNA. I altered your DNA so that the virus would not be able to incorporate itself into your DNA. Thus it has no manner in which to replicate itself, or in which it can feed itself. So it eventually dies.”
Anna shook her head, not understanding what he was getting at. “But what does it mean?”
“It means you’re no longer human Anna. You’re a mutant.”
Chapter 6
A mutant? How could that be? Anna did not feel any different. Well, that was not entirely true. The pain that had plagued her bones for so long was gone. She also appeared to have unlimited strength and stamina, and it had taken her no time at all to climb that ladder. “Am I, like, a super being now?”
Nick laughed, his metallic laugh. “Yes, pumpkin. Your body has changed, but the essence of who you are, has not been altered. Don’t look so shocked; you’re still Anna. You only have a few new abilities.”
A smile played at the corner of Anna’s lips. She wanted to join in on the laughter. After all, she was cured of her cancer, and the chances of beating the virus were looking splendid. But the dead babies still haunted her, and she could not shake the feeling of dread over what they had done. She felt guilty for being alive and yet was glad of it at the same time.
“So, what kind of abilities can I expect? I hope I don’t turn green or something.”
“In truth, I don’t know what to expect. To my knowledge, this has never been done before, and the effect will be different in every person it is applied to because every person’s DNA is unique. It all depends on what DNA they begin with, and since you are the first experiment, I don’t have any frame of reference to predict what abilities you will develop. Some people may have extra sensitive senses, or unfathomable strength or who knows what else. I know it sounds spectacular, but at the same time, we must practice caution for we don’t know how dangerous these abilities may be to the individual or those around them.”
“So, am I now immune to the virus? Am I going to live?”
Nick sobered from his musings and returned his focus on her. “That remains to be seen. If the virus can mutate and adapt to this change, it could overcome the alterations that I have made. In that event, you will still die. Only time will tell what happens.”
“How much time?”
“The incubation period of the virus is 7 days. Since I only altered your DNA 4 days ago, that means we will know for sure in 3 more days, whether it was a success. I would say a week to know definitively. If you are still alive after that, then the chances of you dying from the McKlendle virus are minimal. However, honestly, it may take years or millennia before the virus mutates if it can survive that long. Since I failed to destroy it outright, it means that it can come back when it gains the knowledge of how to mutate.”
“Will there ever be a complete cure?”
Nick stared off into the distance as if he was looking at a movie that was playing out in front of his eyes. “It’s said that before the uprising a cure had been found. Many were saved, but the cure did not make it to us. How true the rumors were, I have no way of telling.”
“What happened during the uprising, Nick? James told me about the rebellious bots who set up camp here in the crow’s nest, but that was all he talked about.”
“Follow me,” Nick said as he led her back through the tunnel they had come, from the Northern observatory to the Southern Observatory. The view was just as breathtaking at the Southern Observatory, rolling hills and forest as far as the eye could see, with the snowcapped mountain range off to the west. “Come look at this.” Nick headed over to a similar telescope to the one that was in the northern observatory. He looked through the scope and made a few adjustments. Satisfied, he nodded and backed up to allow Anna access. “Try not to bump the scope; they are many miles away.”
Anna looked curious from Nick to the scope, “They? What will I see?” Could it be that she wasn’t the only human alive?
“Look,” was all the encouragement Nick was willing to offer.
Anna looked through the scope. It took a moment for the image to come into focus as the scope calibrated to her eyes. But it took her even longer to recognize what she was seeing. Houses with backyards, dogs were running around, people were walking about with packages spilling out of their arms, boats were drifting lazily in and out of the harbor town, and kids. Kids were running about kicking a ball. They looked happy. A big castle stood at the top of a hill with the city sprawled to one side, and a lake on the other side, with farmlands to the south.
Anna stepped back from the scope looking in that direction, but she could not see the city. “This is some crazy technology,” Anna commented as she looked through the scope again.
“Are they alive?” Anna asked as she noticed the scope adjusted depending on what o
bject she looked at. She had no idea how it worked, but it was fascinating.
“We don’t know for sure. But we suspect that they are all bots, based on our last contact with Pearl. That’s what the city is called.”
Anna lingered and took in what to her looked like a lovely town. “Then why do they act like normal people?”
“It’s… complicated.”
Anna backed away from the telescope and crossed her arms. “Explain.”
“Their bodies are 100% mechanical and thereby, robotic. However, their minds are not. Soon after the outbreak of the McKlendle virus, a man named Hogarth invented a manner in which the brain could be transferred to a robot. He was the first to do so when he was denied access to cryo. Others followed him. During the uprising, they raided some of the bases to free their families, or so they claimed, and in the process transferred thousands of minds to these contraptions. However, what Hogarth did not foresee was that by doing this, civilization would no longer be able to procreate. Oh, he tried to create bots by combining the essence of people’s minds and fusing them, but it never worked. He could never create the essence of a being, merely transfer it.”
Anna’s mind was spinning. This was a lot to take in, but she would not admit it in fear that Nick would stop telling her about what was going on in the world. “So, these things down there are bots with human minds pretending to live human lives? How is that even possible?”
Nick nodded. “Their minds are forever captured in whatever age they were when they were transferred to the robotic hosts. The host does not contain the ability for them to learn and grow by forming new neural connections. Instead, whatever connections existed when they were transferred is what they have. Thus, not only are they stuck in the physical robotic bodies, but they are also mentally stuck as they are living as symbiotes to the bots. The human mind can only function as far as the bot programming will allow. The regular robots without human minds we call nuts, but those with human minds are called bots.”
“What happened here during the uprising?”
Nick stared into the distance again, his face going blank as he cocked his head to the side in concentration. “I was still a young man at the time that happened. My children had gone into cryo, and my wife and I were left to work on the cure to save their lives. Then the Cryoplex was attacked by the rebels. The clean containment area broke, and those still alive were infected by the virus. Hundreds of nuts fought to protect the Cryoplex and were lost in wasteful destruction.
The rebels managed to overpower our forces, and they infiltrated the flight deck. From there, they headed down to the nearest charging stations and started to transfer the consciousness of people into the robots to make new bots. Hogarth was with them, as he was the only one who knew what to do and how to do it. Those who successfully transferred took up arms and barricaded themselves here in the crow’s nest.
By then, we were running low on everything; food, water, and power. We had to start rationing everything. The rebel bots were waiting till the humans all died so that they could take over the Cryoplex. But they had neglected to account for the fact that we controlled the power to the crow’s nest. So, we gave them an option, they could leave with the mechbirds, or they could die.
See if a bot does not have access to a docking station when it powers down, it risks losing all its start-up protocols and thus permanently dies. There were no docking stations in the crow’s nest at that time. Many left and those that remained died.
Those that fled with Hogarth went South and started what is now known as the city of Pearl. But what was by far the worst, was that our hope was lost since we all knew we’d die in a few days from being infected by the virus. We had to do something to preserve our lives so that we could figure out a way to save the thousands who had been entrusted to us and were in cryo.
It was then that I contacted Hogarth and asked him for his research. He gladly provided it, even gloating that we had finally come around to his way of seeing things and saying that we’d never have it done in time to save any lives without his help. I made a few alternations to his program, to allow the nuts to retain the personality as well as the mental capacity of the people that were transferred into them. Hogarth’s code was nothing more than a storage facility and made the human mind subservient to the bot, probably for more natural control. With my additional code, it was more of a symbiotic relationship.”
Nick paused and took a deep breath. “He was right. In the end, half of the station’s human population died while the others looked on. My wife was one of the first who died. It took all I had to finish Hogarth’s research in time to save some lives. After the transfer, we all decided that to prevent the rebels from coming back and possibly destroying everything that we had worked so hard to protect; we would have to make it look as if the station was no longer functional. We cut ourselves off entirely from the world and lost any chance of gaining the cure from the other stations.
At first, we would wake 50 people at a time to test our solution to the virus. If it failed, we would transfer their minds to the bots. But as time went on, and the power started to fail, fewer and fewer people were woken up. Until there was you.”
Anna had remained silent through the entire history lesson, but one question was burning in her mind. Had she been part of killing Nick’s kids? Was that why he had locked himself away in this crow’s nest. She had to know the truth. “Nick, are your children still alive, or did we just kill them?”
Nick glanced at her a soft smile on his lips. “Yes, pumpkin, they still live.”
Tears trickled down Anna’s cheek, as realization dawned on her. How had she possibly missed it? There was only one man in her life who called her pumpkin, the way that Nick said it. And there was only one man she knew who had the mannerism of cocking his head to the side when he was thinking. Anna rushed over to Nick, arms stretched out and barreled into him.
Nick picked her up and whirled her around in a fierce hug.
“Is it you?” Anna asked as Nick put her down.
“Yes, Anna, it’s me.”
“I missed you, Daddy.”
“I missed you too, pumpkin.”
Chapter 7
“I’m sorry, Anna. I did everything I could to save mommy, but in the end, I was too late. Perhaps if I had not been so stubborn and had reached out to Hogarth earlier, the entire uprising could have been prevented. But oh well, hindsight is always golden sight.”
Anna stood silently absorbing the news. She wiped at the tears streaming down her face. Nick produced a handkerchief out of nowhere and she blew her nose. Anna’s mind reeled at the fact that her dad was a bot, her mom dead, and her brother on the verge of dying unless she did something. She had to pull it together, for Dave. He was depending on her to save him. Life would never be normal again, but she needed her brother.
Anna cleared her throat, “Why didn’t you tell me who you were when I woke up?”
“Would you have believed me? Seeing that I’m not quite myself.” Nick said, smiling and striking a pose.
Anna giggled at the ridiculous model pose, but then considered the square robotic face and lifeless eyes staring back at her. She shook her head, all laughter gone. “No, I guess not.”
Anna turned away from Nick and walked towards the glass windows to stare out at the green rolling hills by her feet. She needed a moment to think. Yes, technically he was her father, and she could recognize him as such, but at the same time, he was now Nick. He had changed a lot from when he had lifted her into that cryo pod. She guessed that 158 years of first fighting a viral disease in a broken human body and then having to be stuck in a robotic body could do that to a person. “Are the others also…”
“Yes, they are. Their minds were transferred, right before I did my transfer.”
“What happened to the other bots who were given new minds?”
“Eventually we had to shut everyone down and run this skeleton crew to try and preserve as much as we could. Too much power w
as being used, and we wanted to preserve those in cryo. Transferring minds to bots also became impossible due to our dwindling resources, and the fact that no new nuts were available for the transfer.”
Anna swirled around hands on hips. She was tired of hearing about people dying. It was more than she could bear. “You just killed them?”
Nick shook his head. “They are not dead, pumpkin. When a bot is shut down, it doesn’t lose its memory; it just stops functioning. We placed them all in their docking stations in the Cryoplex. Until a source can be found to power up the Cryoplex once more, they will all remain dormant. The mind is preserved within the bot, but without a power source, the bot cannot start up or continue running, so it shuts down.”
“Oh.” Anna scratched her head, trying to understand it all. “How many of these bots are there.”
“Thousands.”
“This is a lot to take in, Nick. Why are you telling me everything now?” Anna still had her back to Nick. She tried to focus on the landscape in front of her, but her tears were making it hard for her to see. So many people had lost their humanity and traded in for becoming bots, in the hope of continuing to live. But now that the Cryoplex was dying, they would all be lost.
“I don’t know how much time we have left, Anna. When the Cryoplex finally does go, I and the others will have to shut down to preserve our essence. Do you understand?” Nick said, stepping up beside her.
Anna sighed and placed her head on Nick’s shoulder. “I will lose you again.”
“Perhaps.”
Anna thought about everything that had happened to her since she had awoken from cryo. Nothing had gone the way she had envisioned it would happen when she had entered cryo. The world was a dark lonely place, and it would soon be lonelier than ever before if she lost Nick. James had been kind to her, and she would miss him as well, but as for Betty and Robert? Well, she did not know where she stood with those two.
“Why do others hate me?” Anna asked, standing straight and facing Nick. Her thoughts turned to the cold looks that Robert had given her, and the crassness of Betty’s personality, and she knew there had to be more to the story than what Nick was telling her.
