by Eric Warren
“Aris—”
“I’m fine!” she yelled.
“Honey, I’m so sorry this has happened to you. It was never my intention.” Her voice was full of love and concern and all of it only made Arista hurt more.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Arista said. “It’s already happened. It isn’t like you can use David’s Gate to change it.”
“Ah, so she told you then,” David said, stepping out from around the corner. How long had he been there?
“David, you sonofabitch. I swear to every god humanity has ever worshiped if I get my hands on you—” Jessika snarled.
“Save your threats, Jess. I’m not here to fight. I just wanted to check and make sure you two were okay. They weren’t being unnecessarily cruel.”
“What would constitute unnecessary?” Arista asked. “Locking someone with claustrophobia in a small box?”
“It could be a lot smaller,” David snapped. “Just be glad you’re here. They wanted to put bullets in you. Both of you. I managed to convince Echo that wasn’t the best idea.”
“Yeah? Why is that?” Arista asked.
“Public morale. If they saw you killed they would think everyone who went out among the machines might end up “infected” by their ideals. They’d rather see you reformed.”
“I’d rather you put the bullet in my head yourself,” Arista said.
“Arista!” Jessika called, her voice full of shock.
David only gave her a terse smile. “About that. I never meant…I didn’t want…” He seemed at a loss for words.
“Just go, David. You’re not helping anything,” Jessika said.
He looked up, over Arista’s shoulder. “Me? What about you? How could you betray us like that? Helping the machines escape and plant explosives to destroy the Gate? Don’t you want us to succeed?”
Arista turned, who was he looking at?
“I want to live the rest of my life,” Jessika said. “And no, I don’t want you to succeed. Humans had their chance. They lost out to a superior being. You do this, and I guarantee it happens again anyway. Even though none of us will be around to see it.”
“You think I haven’t thought of that?” David asked. “I have studied all the literature on temporal mechanics. That’s why we’re sending the squad with proof, as well as instructions on exactly how to avoid any kind of AI uprising. And do you know why it will work? Because I’m going with them. I’m going to fix this.”
Jessika sighed loudly.
“I know you don’t believe me, but I am. After all this time I am finally going to make this right.”
“Like you did before?” Jessika asked.
David’s eyes briefly fell on Arista. Then he turned away. “This time is different. If I’d been with her everything would have been fine.”
“You didn’t want to be with her! You said she could do it all by herself!” Jessika yelled.
“I realize that,” David retorted. “But now I know better!”
This was a surreal moment for Arista. Her parents—her biological parents—arguing over her. She’d imagined a similar scenario ever since she was eight years old, though, she’d never thought it would come to pass. She had to stifle a smile in spite of herself. Which felt like another betrayal. There wouldn’t be much time to smile down here, she had to make the best of as many opportunities as she could.
He turned back to Arista. “I really am sorry. About what happened at the Gate.”
“I don’t care,” she replied. It wouldn’t matter anyway. As soon as they activated the Gate everything would be gone.
David seemed to accept he wasn’t getting anywhere and shoved his hands in his pockets. He turned and crossed out of Arista’s line of sight.
“What was he talking about?” Arista asked when she hoped he was out of earshot. “When you said he should have been with me?”
Jessika exhaled long and hard. “To hear this, you have to understand you weren’t the person you are now. Can you accept that fact?”
Arista shrugged. “Sure. But what—?”
“When you were born, or more accurately, shortly before you were born, the colony instituted a program they called Depth Charge. It was the latest in a failed series of initiatives designed to destroy the machine culture from the inside out. I was seven months pregnant when the program was announced.”
“And?” Arista asked.
“Because of your father’s heritage—and with little discussion before he went ahead and made the decision—he put you on the list of potential volunteers. It was designed to be a long-term program, but it required some sacrifices upfront.”
“What kind of program was this?” Arista sat back against the one bench in the room which doubled as a bed.
“I’m getting to that. But the point at the time was, your father was so sure you would want to be part of the program he signed you up. You remember what I told you about his father and his grandfather?”
Arista nodded, then realized Jessika couldn’t see her. “Yes.”
“David was driven to right the past wrongs of his family. It was endearing at first, because he was out to prove himself. It was part of what attracted me to him. But over the years that drive turned into a full-blown obsession. He would do anything to fix the failings that followed him around. Or at least, that’s how he perceived it. No one thought he was responsible for the actions of his family, except for perhaps a few outliers. A few bullies who thought he should pay for something he didn’t do.”
“He couldn’t let go of his past,” Arista said.
“Exactly. By then you’d been born. And part of the program required some surgeries on you as a baby. Which would be used in the future for your implant.”
“Oh,” Arista said, thinking of how useful the Device had become to her over the years.
“See, the implant can only work if a brain is properly…configured. And by the time a person is more than six months old it is too late. So we had to make the decision early. I was hesitant, but the surgery wouldn’t hurt you, just prepare you for the implant if you still wanted it when you were old enough.”
“What was the point of the implant?” Arista asked. “Why did I need it?”
“That’s the important part,” Jessika said. “Because the crux of the plan was that you leave the colony and interact with the machines on a regular basis. To do that, in order to blend in, you needed something that would correct a human’s natural…deficiencies. Things like how we can’t make calculations as fast as they can. Or the ability to scan something before you used it, so you already knew how it worked. The machines have an innate knowledge of things like that. How things work; so the implant was designed to bring you up to their level. But it also provided a tactical advantage too. You would always know where you were, and you could access the Net at any given second, downloading and learning information as you needed it. And when you returned it would provide us a backup of your memories, so we could adjust your mission and send you back out.”
“What mission?” Arista asked, exasperated.
“Sweetie, don’t you see? You were designed to be a weapon. A weapon to take down the machines.”
Thirty
A weapon?
“I’m not sure I understand,” Arista said. Her mind raced, searched for answers but nothing came to her.
“The idea—and this was proposed by Echo—was if we could send humans out into the machine world to infiltrate and change the machines one by one, eventually the autonomous machines would rise up and destroy the Cadre on their own. Then in the confusion, we would come in and wipe everyone else out. All you needed to do was change three percent of the population. Three percent over the course of five to ten years would have done it. At least according to our projections.”
Arista rubbed her head. “And I was supposed to do this all by myself?” While three percent didn’t sound like a lot, it was exactly 186,220 machines based on the current population estimates. The Device calculated the speci
fics. She would have to change fifty-two machines every single day for ten years for that to be effective.
“Not exactly. Originally there were eighteen of you. Two of the…children didn’t survive—there was a fire a couple of years after they were born. But the other sixteen of you were supposed to work in concert with each other. You would be released on a certain date, staggered according to the variables of where your drop was scheduled. You were all either seven or eight years old at the time of release.”
“There are more out there like me? Other kids who were dropped?” Arista’s heart picked up. True kindred spirits; people who might have similar experiences. People she could relate to easily. They would know what it’s like. Much more than these other humans did. They were the people she needed to find.
“Not exactly. The program didn’t go according to plan.” Jessika’s voice had become heavier. “Most of the kids died in the first year. The rest were either captured or we’ve lost contact.”
Arista’s mind flashed back to the people in those tanks. The ones Charlie kept in stasis. Had one or more of them potentially been operatives? Just unlucky ones?
“I guess…” Arista said. “I guess I was luckier than I realized.” She’d encountered Carver and Emily and they had taken her in. Taken care of her after she accidentally changed them. She only now realized how much worse it could have been. She could have been dropped without anyone around and starved to death before she figured out what she was supposed to do. “Why would you send kids out like that, without any training?”
“We didn’t.” Jessika paused. “You all had proper training. Proper survival skills. Mission objectives, all of that. You just don’t remember any of it.”
“Oh,” Arista said, thinking back. “The accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Jessika said softly.
“What do you mean?”
“You father—you were so keen on impressing your father.” Arista could visualize Jessika shaking her head. “You grew up in his shadow, wanting so badly to impress him. To want to make him proud, and he didn’t do anything to discourage that. He loved it. You were going to be his key to repairing the family’s tarnished image. He gently prodded you along your entire childhood and you wanted nothing more to volunteer for the program.”
Arista didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine wanting to impress such an odious man. Someone who was clearly only interested in himself and no one else. She’d been his golden girl? It was hard to believe.
“But,” Jessika added. “I could see that wasn’t what you wanted. Not really. You were a gentle soul, much like you are now. And so I tried getting you interested in other things. To get your mind off the program. But you were so single-minded. Even if you didn’t really want it, you needed it. Does that make sense? You were willing to make whatever sacrifices you needed to in order to be part of that program. David loved every minute of it. We fought about it a lot. That was the real reason we separated.”
“Oh,” Arista said, unsure how to take all this.
“So, knowing you were going out there and put your life on the line, I made a decision. I modified your implant. I set the charges on your ship. I knew it wouldn’t kill you, but I also knew you’d be free from your obligation. I only hoped you’d manage to survive long enough to find—”
“You? Caused my accident?” Arista asked. It was as if she’d become numb. A numb receptacle taking in all the information. How was she supposed to deal with this?
“And your memory loss. Because only then I knew you would be free to be who you wanted to be, free from the pressures of being your father’s daughter. You could live out there, in the open that you craved, and you’d never have to come back. I knew you’d be confused when you woke up. I made sure the ship ejected you somewhere you could find help. I didn’t want to leave you to fend for yourself.”
Dizziness consumed her. The whole reason for all of this, for her entire life from the first moment she could remember in that field had all been orchestrated by Jessika?
“I managed to convince them not to go after you,” Jessika said. “I said that your confusion at losing your memory had the chance to sew even more discord. You would be like a cruise missile moving through machine society, changing people at random. That went over pretty well even though I knew my daughter. Even without her memory, she wasn’t a destructive person.”
Wasn’t she, though? Arista looked down at her hand. Remembered the blood from where she’d beaten the man in the medical area. Some of it still crusted at the joints. She looked at her other hand, the one that had threatened Byron.
“Anyway. It ended up not mattering. We started losing kids after the first week. It seems we had again underestimated the machines. Some of the ones that changed turned on the kids, others ratted them out to the Peacekeepers. We hadn’t considered the individual nature of each machine. We’d assumed all machines would want freedom from the Cadre. It turned out that wasn’t the case. David was devastated. Not because he lost you, but because he lost yet another chance to redeem his family name. That’s when I left him.”
“And he started on the time gate.”
“Exactly. Which is what he’s been working on for the past fifteen years. One more coping mechanism.”
“Why use children?” Arista asked. She felt numb; almost like it was someone else speaking. “Why not wait until we were older?”
“It was a matter of time. We already knew the project would take up to a decade and honestly we couldn’t afford to wait. It had already been established by then we wouldn’t survive another thirty years down here. Things had to be put into motion immediately.”
“Are my memories stored in the implant?”
Jessika hesitated. “Yes. But only two years, maybe less. The implant wasn’t installed until you were six. When you officially volunteered.”
Arista didn’t know how to react. On one hand she wanted to throttle Jessika for putting all of this into motion. All the hardship she’d faced over the years, all the brushes with death, the times when she couldn’t find anything to eat. Needing to find a way into the machine culture, burning off her hand, all of it. But on the other hand, she wanted to wrap her in a giant hug, because she had saved her from this place. Saved her from a life of death, destruction, and becoming one of these people, selfish and uncaring and cruel. Suddenly the whole situation struck her as funny and she began laughing out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Jessika asked.
“This. All of this. It’s just so unexpected. I feel like a paradox.”
“In many ways, you are. A woman with two names, two sets of parents. A woman of two different worlds.” She wiped her eyes. “He’s never going to stop, is he?” She couldn’t decide if they were tears of joy or sorrow.
“No. He’s only getting more erratic as time goes on. The incident this afternoon proves that much. That he’s willing to shoot his own daughter…if it had been anyone but you I would have taken another step and clocked him across the jaw.”
Her words struck Arista as genuine. “I believe you would have. You hate that man.”
“I really do,” Jessika agreed.
“We need to find a way to stop him. He can’t be allowed to finish that Gate. It can’t exist.” Arista stood again, approaching the field in front of her.
“I know,” Jessika said. “Which means we need to get out of here. Are you standing in front of the field?”
“Yes. Can you see me? I can’t see you anywhere.”
“No, we’re too far apart. But if you can reach the field then you can use your arm to breach it.”
Arista furrowed her brow. “How?” She reached out to touch the field with her new fingers but pulled back as soon as sparks reached out toward her.
“Remember the bio-field back in the lab? This is a modified version of that. How do I know? Because I helped design it. The field uses very strong magnets to hold an electrical current in motion across the opening so any attempt t
o breach the current results in a shock. You hit it too hard it will hit back. Remember the soldier I knocked on his ass?”
A smile spread across Arista’s face.
“But your arm can generate a frequency like the one produced by the field. As soon as it does that, you can reach it through. But only to where your elbow is, it won’t protect the rest of you.”
“What am I supposed to do with just my elbow?” Arista asked.
“I’m hoping you have some experience with activating and de-activating gates,” Jessika said.
“It just so happens,” Arista began. “I do.”
Three-hundred and six frequencies later they had found the right one. The arm worked as Jessika had said it would, pushing right through the barrier without a problem. Arista had to fumble for the control panel but once she got her hand on it, she repeated the sequence she’d used to start up and shut down a Gate. Both of which were identical.
The field in front of her shut off.
“I got it!” Arista said and stepped forward. “Now, where are you?”
“Turn around,” Jessika said.
When Arista did, she didn’t understand what she was looking at. There stood Jessika in almost the exact same spot Arista had been standing in. The field in front of the door was still up, but some of the details of the room were slightly different. The shelf/bed was three inches higher. The paint in the upper left-hand corner of the suite had begun to peel. “What on—?”
“Pocket universe,” Jessika said. “I told you we’ve created some amazing things down here. All prisoners stay in the same cell. We only have the one.”
“But…but how…?”
“How could David talk to me?” she asked. “He could see and talk to both of us at the same time. We just couldn’t see each other. Because we technically weren’t in the same space.”
“That’s not possible,” Arista said. “The amount of energy it would take—”
“Amount of energy, yada yada. You want to help me out of this thing please?”
