by Eric Warren
Arista snapped out of it, finding the console she’d just used and disabled the protocol marked Cell 002. “How many pocket universes can this thing hold?”
“I think they’re up to seventy or eighty. But we’ve never needed more than four at a time. I think they just like showing off down here,” Jessika said.
“That’s amazing,” Arista said, staring at the cell as the field dropped. Jessika also dropped about an inch to the ground as soon as it was off. “What was that?”
“The pockets don’t occupy one-hundred percent of the same space,” Jessika said. “Only about ninety to ninety-two percent. Mine was a little higher than yours. Trust me, it’s better that way.”
Something about how Jessika’s eyes were creased told Arista not to ask any further. Instead, she focused on the task at hand. “We need to find Frees. Before anything else we need to find him. I’m not losing anyone else.”
“I’ll give you two guesses as to where they decided to keep him,” Jessika replied. “And you can bet this time it will be guarded.”
Thirty-One
“I don’t suppose trying to contact him would do any good.” Arista glanced at her left arm where her primary comm was buried beneath the skin.
“Not unless you want them to know we’re out.” Jessika peaked around the corner. “It’s clear. C’mon.”
“Don’t we need to get back up to twenty-four?” Arista asked, trotting behind her. Voices came from the far end of the hallway.
“Quick, in here!” Jessika pushed her against a doorway which slid open. A middle-aged couple sat on the ground in front of them, cross-legged with a small idol in front of them, incense rising from it in smoky wisps.
“What the—?” the man said, scrambling to stand before Jessika clocked him across the jaw. Arista did the same to the woman before she could even utter a word. The door had slid closed behind them.
“Yes, we need to get to twenty-four,” Jessika said. “But we also need the rest of your explosives.” She motioned to the two forms before them “Tie them up, we don’t want them alerting anyone when they wake up.”
“Who are they?” Arista asked.
Jessika shrugged. “Beats me. I don’t know everyone here. It’s small but it’s not that small. I’ve probably seen her a couple times. Him…I couldn’t say.”
Arista jogged into the bedroom, checking for anything they might be able to use to restrain the couple. All the drawers were filled with nothing but clothes. She went into the closet with the intention of pulling the laces off some of the shoes only to find something much better.
She emerged from the bedroom with two lengths of ruby-red rope.
“Where the hell did you find that?” Jessika arched an eyebrow.
“You should see the closet. Full of this stuff.”
Jessika considered it. “Huh. Well, okay then. Toss one here.” Arista did and used the other to start tying the woman’s hands behind her back. “So maybe this isn’t the best time,” Jessika said. “But I might not get another chance. Do you happen to have anyone you might consider…” She indicated to the ropes.
“Tying up?”
Jessika cracked a smile. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Wh—oh wait. Jeez, no! What am I going to do, have a relationship with a machine? You were like the fifth human I ever met.”
Jessika shook her head as she tied. “It’s not like it’s a big deal, M—Arista. They’re living creatures, aren’t they? Capable of the same emotional range we are. So what’s the problem?”
Arista yanked the knot, making sure it was tight. “I had a pretend one, but he ended up betraying me. Sided with Charlie.” She looked up. “And he wasn’t what I’d…he was just a friend, nothing more. Even though he thought something else was there. I never did.”
“I see,” Jessika said, a slight smile on her face.
“It’s true! And other than him…I haven’t had the time,” she said, trying not to think of the connotations.
“Even with that friend of yours? The funny-looking one?”
She almost didn’t want to dignify that with a response. “He didn’t always look like that. In fact, he used to not have any skin at all.”
“Sounds like an intriguing person. I’d like to get to know him better.”
“Then maybe you should date him,” Arista retorted. She realized she was smiling too. This felt good, but she wiped it from her face. She didn’t want to betray what she had with her mother—her real mother. And while they had their own special relationship, it wasn’t like this. Not at all.
“Something wrong?” Jessika asked, watching her.
“No. No, nothing,” Arista said. “She’s good and tight.”
“Let’s check for anything else they might have we can use. Equipment. Supplies.”
“Food?” Arista cast a longing glance toward the kitchen. It was similar in size to the one she had in her own quarters. “I think I’m going to miss the food more than anything else.”
“You wouldn’t,” Jessika said, her voice serious. “Not if you saw what it took to make it. On the slaughter floors.” She rummaged through the drawers of the desk. “I went down there once. It’s all staffed by the machines now because I’m not sure most humans could deal with it if they saw exactly what happens. That’s one thing I think the machines got right. Releasing all the animals.”
“You don’t eat meat?” Arista asked.
Jessika shook her head. “Not for a very long time. I can’t do it anymore.”
“I thought all humans did,” Arista said. She hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, but from what she knew historically, humans had craved meat throughout history. Though it had only been after the advent of the Industrial Revolution where most people began to have access to it daily.
“We’re not all alike.”
Arista thought she heard a bit of hurt in Jessika’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure as her biological mother’s back was to her. She decided she best make herself useful and look for something that might be able to help. Though she did sneak a look in the small pantry and pocketed two bags of some kind of wheat snack. She didn’t care what it tasted like; she couldn’t count on having Jill’s pantry to fall back on if anything went wrong.
“I don’t see anything else in here,” Arista said.
“Grab a couple more of those ropes, we might be able to use them.”
She retrieved three more, they were all silky and smooth and they wrapped easily around her shoulder for transport.
“How far is your room from here?” Jessika asked as soon as Arista had returned to the living area.
“Red nine Pi, but don’t you think they’ll be waiting there for us? They’ll expect me to return to my own room. They know I left my things there.”
“As far as they’re concerned we’re still in our cells. Trust me, we’ll know when they discover we aren’t. Until then we have more leeway. I’m not sure McCulluh would waste resources on guarding your quarters when he knows you’re locked. We don’t have that kind of manpower.”
“What about machine-power?” Arista asked, thinking of Hudson. “They assigned me a machine as soon as I got here. Maybe the assigned another one to guard my room.”
Jessika nodded. “If there’s one there, it’s a good bet it’s a machine.”
Jessika had been right, there was no guard posted outside her door when they arrived. They’d managed to avoid anyone else in the halls, except for the occasional glance of someone too far away to recognize them. Arista hoped things in the colony had returned to normal. But she couldn’t help but worry about Frees.
Inside her room, she grabbed the bag from under her desk, double-checking she had all the explosives and her gun. “Still here.”
“Anything else?” Jessika asked, glancing around.
Arista shoved the ropes into the bag and secured it on her back. “Nope. I really wasn’t here for that long.”
“Then let’s not waste time. Though…” Jessi
ka stopped. “I do like seeing where you lived. Even if it was for a short time. In another universe I could see me coming to visit you here, us sipping coffee and talking about your day.”
Arista’s heart panged for something she didn’t even know she wanted. Jessika’s fantasy did sound nice, but it would have required Arista to retain all her memories; to be the weapon the colony needed her to be. It would have required the slaughter of millions. And no matter how badly she wanted it, the price was too high.
“Yeah,” was all she could say.
Jessika seemed to take the hint and they made their way to the closest elevator, the whole time Arista fearing McCulluh would be behind the next open door. Each time it was clear it only increased her anxiety for the next door. Her levels had been slowly creeping up ever since they left the cells, and the Device showed they were moving into the elevated range.
“Why does the implant show me when I’m anxious? Or mad, or anything else?” Arista asked as the elevator doors slipped shut.
“It’s part of the design. Since we can only ‘activate’ the machines when our emotions reach a certain level, the implant was designed to show you that level, so you would know if your efforts would be successful or not. Any time any of your levels move into an agitated state then you would know that you could turn any machine in your vicinity.” Jessika turned to her. “But you had no way of knowing that since I took everything from you.”
“That explains a lot,” Arista said, deadpan. The Device measured the levels dropping already.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I took all that from you,” Jessika continued. “But I wouldn’t change my decision. If you had become what your father wanted you to become, if you had gone out there and caused all that destruction you never would have been able to forgive yourself.”
Arista didn’t say anything, only looked at her feet.
“I know my daughter. She’s not that kind of person,” Jessika said, her voice soft.
“I’m afraid I am,” Arista said. “I…tortured a man. To find this place. When he wouldn’t tell us, I didn’t think I had a choice. I was so…angry.”
Jessika put her hand on Arista’s human arm. “You have been put in an impossible situation. No one in your shoes could be expected not to make a few mistakes. From what that older woman said, I feel like you may have had good cause.”
“Jill?” Arista asked.
Jessika patted her arm. “I promise you, whatever Sy did to you, we’re not all like that. We’re not all monsters.”
Arista had the sudden urge to break down into tears. To bury her face into Jessika’s shoulder and only come up for air. But she couldn’t do it, not right then. There would be time once all this was over. But they had to clear these hurdles first. They had to take care of business. A single tear escaped from her eye and Jessika wiped it away.
“My sweet child. Everything will be okay.”
Arista took a deep breath and nodded.
Thirty-Two
Level twenty-four’s hallway was in the exact same state they’d last left it. Arista had come to hate seeing it over and over again, a dark reminder of what she’d done inside the morgue. She found herself retracing her exact steps from when they’d been here only hours before. From their vantage point, they could see the entrance to the room that had held Max and Jill, but guards flanked either side now. This convinced Arista Frees was inside. She hoped they had retrieved Max and returned her to a dormant state. Arista needed to get those discs out of her.
“How do you want to go about this?” Arista whispered.
“Remember what we said.”
“Right.” Arista took a deep breath, stood and marched toward them, paying particular notice to her adrenaline and cortisol levels as displayed by the Device. Everything made so much more sense now and she could feel the strength of her power within her. She had full control and the capability to use it effectively. The first guard noticed her, and she took three short breaths, willing her body to go into overdrive. The Device registered her levels spike and the guard winced without a word, then staggered back, clutching her head. The second one took immediate notice and began to withdraw his sidearm as Arista turned her attention to him. He dropped his weapon before he’d gotten it out of the holster and fell to the side, curling into a fetal position. Jessika ran up beside him, snatching the gun on the ground.
“We don’t have long,” she said. “Their programming will win in the end, we have to be fast.”
She was right. Arista had only been able to subdue Hudson for a short time before removing discs. And they didn’t have time for that, not with every machine they encountered. They needed to find Frees and hopefully Max and get out of here.
They rushed into the morgue to find most of the bodies in the same place Arista had last left them. But neither Frees nor Max was among them. The sound of a buzz saw permeated the otherwise quiet room.
“The ward,” Arista yelled, rushing into the adjacent room. Two people stood over the same table where she’d seen them disassemble that poor machine before, only this time it was Frees who was chained down and wide awake.
“Stop!” Arista yelled, and the two men turned to her, their eyes wide in surprise behind plastic shields protecting their faces. “Frees, are you hurt?”
“Very close to it!” he yelled.
Jessika brandished the gun at the men. “Step away from him, over here.” She indicated. The men had their hands up and complied. “What is your job here?”
“To determine the nature of the machines’ autonomy,” one said. “We have to find out if they’re really alive or not.”
“Of course they’re alive,” Arista said, running over to Frees. She grabbed one of his chains with her new hand. “Pull together,” she said. He nodded. They yanked at the same time and the chain broke free.
“Leader Dante doesn’t think so,” the other man said. “She suspects they’re just imitating life.”
“I know what Leader Dante thinks,” Arista said. “And she’s wrong. If you spent any time with them, you would know that for yourselves.” She and Frees finished removing the chains binding him down and he hopped off the table, careful to avoid the saw that had almost cut into his left shoulder. Arista opened her pack and pulled out two lengths of the rope.
“Where did you find this?” Frees rubbed one of them between his fingers. His hand was still damaged from the bullet that had smashed his felp.
“It was a present from some generous friends,” Arista quipped. “Help me tie them up.” She turned her attention on the technician she was restraining. “What have you found? In all your…experiments?”
“Inconclusive,” the tech replied. “I’ve been looking but can’t seem to find evidence one way or another. But Leader Dante insists we continue.”
Arista thought back to the man she’d pummeled in this very room. The one whose blood still stained one of the side cabinets. The one who had systematically dismantled a living machine to determine if he was alive or not. What imbeciles they all were, couldn’t they see? The machines were standing right in front of their eyes. Couldn’t they see the fear when they cut into them? The pain? She wanted to pummel these men too, to show them what it was like to watch as their bodies were destroyed without their consent. But no. She’d save that rage for David. Someone had to pay.
“Stop where you are,” a male voice said behind her. Arista glanced over her shoulder to confirm yes, it was in fact Jansen McCulluh, his weapon trained directly on Arista’s back. “Step away from him.”
“McCulluh, you shoot her, and I guarantee you don’t walk out of here alive,” Jessika said, her own gun still on the other tech.
“Don’t be naïve, Thorne. Neither of you are leaving this place alive. Not after what you’ve done. Not after you sold us out to the machines.” His eyes flicked to Frees and back.
“You did that yourself,” Arista said. “When you made the deal with Charlie.”
McCulluh’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, did I forget to mention that in my debrief? Yeah, I saw all those people he had in suspended animation. Did you know that’s how he made his Peacekeepers? Sy told me it was all part of a deal with the colony, you gave him people to use for whatever he wanted. And in exchange Charlie wouldn’t attack. He’d keep the others at bay.” She took a step closer. “Sy told me a lot of lies, but my bet is she was telling the truth on that one. And most of the people in this colony don’t know about your little deal. That they too could possibly be sold into slavery by the machines. She said they were volunteers, but somehow I doubt that’s the truth. There’s a reason there was no one else in the prison cells, wasn’t there?”
McCulluh’s eyes narrowed. “Untie them, right now.”
“Jansen, is this true?” Jessika shouted, her face red with anger. “Did you really give them people? To use as they wished?”
“They were criminals,” McCulluh spat. “No one missed them.”
“I remember,” Arista continued. “A fourteen-year-old girl. He called her Betty. Was she a criminal too?”
“Fourteen-year-old…” Jessika said, her eyes darting back and forth as she searched her memory. “Not Saša, the Molina girl. Jansen, tell me you didn’t.”
“Move away from him,” McCulluh growled. Jessika swung her weapon around at him causing him to flinch. He turned his gaze for the briefest of seconds and Frees pounced from his spot behind Arista to right on the man’s chest, knocking him back. His weapon went flying from his hand.
“Oof,” McCulluh said with the full weight of Frees on his chest.
Arista double-checked her knot on the tech and stood, approaching McCulluh. “Who is the Molina girl?”
Jessika watched McCulluh’s face carefully. “Missing child. For about three years now. No one knew what happened to her. We don’t lose people down here. Despite an exhaustive search we never came up with anything. It was like she disappeared into thin air.”
“What was wrong with her?”
