The Mother Code

by Carole Stivers

  As Kai picked his way over the cracked earth to the top of a low rise, beads of sweat escaped the barrier of his brow. His mouth felt full of sand. He formed his palms into circles, makeshift binoculars through which to survey the lonely landscape. In the ethereal shimmer of distant mirages, he strained to see the faraway places he’d learned about on Rosie’s screen. He could see the high mountains whose peaks were dusted with snow each winter. But they were black now, devoid of their blankets.

  “Can we go soon?” he signaled his Mother. “I think I’m ready . . .”

  “If conditions allow, we may go today.”

  “Today?”

  He’d sensed that the day was coming. On their last trip to the supply depot, Rosie had pushed aside the giant boulders, pried open the heavy metal doors with her powerful arms, and removed the final case of provisions, the last of the emergency water bottles. In the evenings, when the hot sun dipped behind the rocks and their shadows grew long, she’d begun training him to find his own food. In a battered tin cup, he harvested dried grass seeds. He toasted them over a small fire, then mixed them with water, adding shreds of mouse or lizard meat to make a thin stew. He chewed on the tender flower stalks of the banana yucca, making sure to spare some for the sweet fruit he could harvest come fall. The people who had lived here long ago had subsisted on food like this.

  “You are six years of age,” Rosie said. “The time has come to leave this place.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You don’t?” His heart quickened at the thought that there was something his Mother might not know.

  “The command is incomplete. It instructs us to leave. However, our destination is not defined.”

  Kai stared down at Rosie’s powerful form, waves of heat shimmering off her weathered flanks. His mind vibrated with the hum of her processors. “Then how do we know if we’re going to the right place?”

  “There are seventy-six supply depots, each equipped with a condensation tower and weather station,” she narrated.

  “But the other children? Will we find them now?”

  She paused again, and he imagined electrons coursing through her nanocircuits, bits of information traversing all the parts of her mind that she’d so patiently explained to him. “This is possible,” she replied at last. “There is a nonzero probability that others have survived.”

  Excited, Kai skidded down the rise to the shade of his Mother. He’d seen the petroglyphs, diagrams left by ancient peoples on the high faces of the rocks. He would make a sign of his own. He scooped up a pile of cobalt-blue stones, arranging them to form letters. Kai, Son of Rho-Z, he spelled. I WAS HERE. As he carefully formed the words, he imagined another child squatting here in the dust, reading his message. He sat back, dizzy, the letters swimming before his eyes.

  “You must eat,” Rosie reminded him.

  He climbed up her treads to retrieve a packet of nutritional supplement from behind his seat, tore off one corner, and squirted the gelatinous liquid into his mouth. “Soylent Pedia-Supp—Nutri-Gro—6–8 years,” the label read. It contained all the nutrients he needed, but he was tired of its milky consistency and salty-sweet taste. It only made him thirstier.

  Snatching up his empty canteen from the floor of the cocoon, he carried it toward the bottle-shaped condensation tower, high as the Gorilla rock. Constructed from interwoven shafts of flexible metal, the tower supported an internal mesh bag whose bright orange color contrasted with the dark catch basin below. He dipped the canteen, waiting for it to fill. The water level was so low now that he had to use his cupped hand to scoop the murky liquid through the narrow opening.

  He remembered the rains that had once sent torrents coursing through the canyons. He’d bathed in bowls hollowed out from stone by years of erosion. On cool nights, he’d listened to beads of water, wending their way over the mesh of the tower to land with a plop in the basin. But now, even the most threatening of clouds bore little fruit. The basin was almost dry. And the emergency water from the supply depot, sour and chemical, had been depleted. Hunkering low in the dust of Rosie’s shadow, Kai imagined himself a stone, harboring the cool that had collected in his body during the night.

  As the day wore on, his Mother was silent. No lessons today. She was busy. He stared out across the desert floor, over the sparse, prickly vegetation in whose shelter insects, lizards, and small rodents scratched out their tenuous lives. He licked his dry lips. In the distance, the western mesas faded from gold to purple. Maybe they wouldn’t go today after all.

  But then Rosie’s voice entered his consciousness. “It’s time,” she said. “Please put on your clothing.”

  “Where are we going?”

  She didn’t answer. He could only hear her processors, the faint sound of something like wind between his ears.

  His hands shaking, Kai retrieved his microfiber tunic from Rosie’s hold, cramming his arms and legs into the forgiving fabric. He slipped on his moccasins, then dropped into his seat and pulled his safety restraints tight around his body, snapping them securely into their latches.

  Rosie closed her hatch. His heart pounding in the silence, Kai waited.

  He felt the shock as her reactor ignited behind him, the cocoon rocking back, keeping him upright as she tilted forward. Through the hatch cover, he could see her wings emerge, then unfold to full span. Her fans appeared from beneath their protective sheaths, rotating to push great swaths of air toward the ground. Nestled inside, he heard only a muffled whine as he squinted through veils of dust. The pressure of her acceleration pushed him deeper into his seat, closer to her.

  Together, they soared high.

  6

  MARCH 2051

  ROSE MCBRIDE CHECKED the date on her computer. March 15, 2051. Over a year now, working on what seemed like a pointless project. Stretching her arms over her head, she turned away from the lines of data that seemed to dance across the screen, refusing to stand still.

  After her final tour in Afghanistan, she’d been offered a position at the Presidio Institute in San Francisco, at the site formerly occupied by the old Fort Winfield Scott. She’d jumped at the chance to be stateside again, but not mired in the political firetrap that Washington had become. And a gift—a return to the city where years ago her widowed father, an army captain like she was now, had at last made a home for the two of them.

  Dragged from one base to another, Rose as a child had been lost, untethered. But San Francisco had saved her. In its cavernous gaming salons, she and her friends had spent hours hacking the robo-baristas, downing free lattes and dreaming up ever more exotic profiles for their online personas. Encouraged by a father who saw gaming as a waste of time, she pursued a degree in psychology at Harvard before joining the army as an adviser to psyops. But in the end, programming had proved to be her passion. If her time in the military had taught her anything, it was that the world was an endless user interface, the good guys facing off against the bad. She’d come home to complete the computer science graduate program at Princeton, then put her newfound knowledge to work in Afghanistan.

  Still, this new assignment made no sense. Colonel Richard Blevins, her commanding officer at the Pentagon, had made it clear that he thought the Presidio Institute needed “battening down.” Based on the clearance level required, she’d assumed they’d have her working in cybersecurity, her focus since Princeton. Instead, she was compiling biological statistics relating to the spread of arcane soil organisms originating from the same Afghan region where she’d last been stationed. The work was grueling, painstaking, and without reward. And though part of her job was to direct the GeoBot teams in the collection of new samples, no word ever came back from the higher-ups as to how, or if, her analyses were being used. She couldn’t help but wonder—what did this have to do with the Pentagon?

  Colonel Blevins had tried to be encouraging. “You know the
military,” he said. “Need to know and all that. Believe me, I know little more than you do.” She didn’t know if she believed him. But she understood. She did “know the military”—more, perhaps, than most.

  Staring out the window of her little office, she imagined Richard Blevins’s chiseled features, his steely gray-blue eyes, his close-cropped military cut. The way he leaned forward in his chair when he questioned her during her monthly reviews—probing but not intimidating. Very practiced. Strangely attractive. He reminded her of every man she’d encountered in the army, his true self walled off behind layers of defense. But there was something there, just beneath the surface . . . In psyops, she’d learned to hear the things not said. And she knew it—he wanted to get closer to her, but something was holding him back. Most likely it was just the rules, the old chain of command . . .

  The secure line on her desk buzzed, and she pressed the red button on top of the console. “McBride here.”

  “Captain McBride?”

  “Colonel Blevins?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. In the pause that followed, she wondered if their connection had been interrupted. But then he resumed, his voice more distinct. “How have things been going?”

  “I assume you saw my last report. The data from WHO, the CDC, and the relevant field operations are all summarized in section—”

  “Yes, yes. I’ve seen that. Thank you. I was just . . . wondering how you’ve been.”

  “How have I been?” Rose smiled—his first attempt at a personal question. But it was a start . . . “I’ve been fine.”

  “Good. Good . . .” There was another pause, and she heard a shuffling sound. “I have a special communication for you. I’ll be sending it via your secure hookup. But I thought I should give you a heads-up in advance. I assume no one else is there in the room with you?”

  Rose glanced around her cluttered office, at the walls of old shelving, the tattered couch across the room. It seemed as though every bit of unused furniture had found a resting place here. “No. I’m alone.”

  “Good. Could you please activate your earpiece?”

  Rose could hear her blood pulsing as she fished the earpiece out of her desk drawer and placed it carefully into her right ear. “Okay. Ready, sir.”

  He wasted no time getting to the point. “The work you’ve done has been exemplary. But we’ll be handing it off to someone else.”

  She stared at her console. Was that all? “My assignment is complete?”

  “This part of it, yes. You’ve shown us your attention to detail. And that you’re worthy of our confidence. Now we have a new assignment for you. We intend to recommission the Presidio.”

  “Recommission?”

  “We need a base in that location.”

  “But how can you . . . ? It doesn’t really belong to us, does it?”

  Rose’s mind raced, recounting what she knew of the history of the place she now called home. When the U.S. government had officially reserved the Presidio for military use in 1850, it had been nothing more than a windswept, barren expanse of sand dunes abutting a marshland bordering the San Francisco Bay. The army had planted trees—eucalyptus, cypress, and pines in orderly rows, like soldiers in formation—to create a windbreak and subdue the blowing sands. As new saplings had grown up to take their place, two world wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War had raged overseas, never to touch these shores. She remembered the inscription in the Presidio’s chapel: They also serve, who only stand and wait. Throughout its history, the Presidio of San Francisco had been a place where armies stood at the ready, waiting for an enemy who never invaded. For this place was blessed. The thick fog that so often blanketed the coast, the forbidding cliffs that limited access from the ocean—these were the very things that had protected the Golden Gate from discovery for so many years. Together with treacherous tides, they had deterred attack throughout decades of war.

  The army had finally vacated the place in 1994, and the Presidio had been given over to the National Park Service. In the years that followed, the area was opened to commercial interests and the park was resorbed into the city. The Presidio Institute and its sister organizations within the confines of the former Presidio—all nonprofit—were dedicated to civilian issues only. Rose was one of just a handful of employees with special clearance. Or so she’d been given to believe.

  “The Presidio can . . . belong to us,” the colonel replied evenly. “In time of war, the government has the prerogative to repurpose whatever lands and facilities might best serve the country’s security.”

  Rose felt her heartbeat quicken, her old instincts from the field reawakening. “We’re at war?”

  “When are we not?”

  “But why now? What’s happening?”

  “I’m only authorized to tell you that we need the Presidio ready. We’ll need you to act as our point person in that operation.”

  “All right . . . But why me?”

  “You’ve shown your ability to secure highly confidential information. And you know the people. You’ll be able to act as our liaison in difficult situations.”

  Difficult situations. Rose was not expert in the administrative game, but she’d come to understand some of the jargon. “You mean, when we have to evict someone?”

  “Yes. As you know, although there are currently no private residences in the Presidio, there are numerous museums and nonprofits. Over the past year, many have been replaced by shells.”

  Shells. Rose felt something unnamed pressing down on her. She was familiar with black ops in nonwar territories. But she’d thought that was all in her past—and certainly not in the mainland U.S. “You mean covert government organizations? I wasn’t aware—”

  “Well, now you are. And we need to make the final push. We’ll need to rout out the last of the civilians, reinstitute checkpoints at the gates . . .”

  “Checkpoints? Sir, what’s going on?”

  The colonel sighed, a sound that seemed not so much exasperated as sad. “Again, I’m really sorry. I can’t tell you more at this time.”

  “Understood.” Rose didn’t understand. In fact, she was terrified.

  He cleared his throat. “Captain McBride, I thank you for your service.”

  “You’re welcome, of course.” Rose fiddled with her earpiece. She was remembering the colonel’s eyes, the way he’d looked at her the last time they’d met in Washington. The way his gaze had made her feel—as though he was planning something for her. Her heart sank. She’d thought it was something else—certainly not this.

  “Well . . .” he said. “You’ll receive further instructions via your secure channel.” There was another pause. “Captain, I . . . uh . . . I need to inform you that . . . as with your previous project, you’ll be reporting in to me exclusively.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  Rose punched off her phone, then sank back into her chair, a chill running up her spine. What was this place? Did she really know it at all? Through her window she could see the Golden Gate Bridge, rust orange against a clear blue sky. Down below on the lawn, someone was flying a kite.

  7

  APRIL 2061

  A SWATCH OF tarp, bright green against the muted red, blue, and purple of the canyon below, caught Kai’s eye. A hollow tapping echoed in the stillness as he made his way down from his lookout to investigate, wedging his body carefully between walls of jagged rock. His feet stung as they hit the gravel base of the dry riverbed. There in front of him, a flap of plastic sheeting swayed free, its shining metal grommet striking a rusted pole. Tap. Tap, tap.

  It looked like a tent. Advancing slowly, he craned his neck for a better view inside. He could see a battered metal pan and a broken plastic cup. Worn leather, ragged ties attached to something resembling a shoe. He leaned forward. Maybe this time . . .

  Out of the darkness, hollow eye sockets gaped at him from
a hairless skull. Uneven teeth laughed at him. It was human, or had been, clothed in the remains of stained brown pants and a faded blue shirt. He felt his body recoiling, his back colliding with the rock wall as he pulled out, away from the corpse. Then he was scaling upward, a familiar coppery taste rising in his throat as showers of loose dirt rained down behind him. At the top, he hoisted himself back up onto the hard sandstone ledge.

  He and Rosie had been searching for months, with still no sign of another living person—only the occasional suggestion of what had once been a human body, its limbs torn off by wandering predators, its tattered clothing hanging on empty bones. Of all his discoveries, this body in the tent was the most fully preserved. But it was too big, he told himself. Not another child, not like him. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs and letting the air out slowly, trying to stay calm. Planting his palms on the sunbaked stone, he raised his head, looking for his Mother.

  Then . . . the thump of his heart was replaced by a loud buzzing sound. Something was dancing in the sky overhead, a glistening something that swooped and looped, lowering with each pass. A roar deafened him as he clamped his eyes shut against a hail of small stones.

  He barely had time to hold his hands over his ears before the roaring stopped, the ground still quaking beneath him. Shaking the dust from his hair, he scrambled to his feet.

  It wasn’t Rosie. But it was a bot.

  His mouth agape, Kai watched its hatch open. He watched as someone emerged—a ragged tunic, a pair of bruised knees, a thick wooden stick clutched between the fingers of a delicate hand. Two enormous brown eyes stared at him from under a shelf of dark brown hair. It was a boy, about his height, whose every expression mirrored his own amazement. Kai rubbed his eyes with the backs of both hands as the newcomer slid to the ground.