Zero State

by Jameson Kowalczyk

  That is, if it could do what the prisoner claimed it could do.

  There was a door on the front of the thing, but it was locked.

  The man in the suit looked around the rest of the room.

  There were dozens of barrels. He drummed his hand against one. Empty. Drummed his hand against another. Full. He looked at the labels. They were printed in English, but he could only understand a few words. Bioink. Stem Cells. Caution.

  There was a cheap cot. A bucket that had been used as a toilet. A sink, which had probably kept the prisoner alive. The human body could go a long time without food. Water was a different story.

  Not to say that hunger was easy to deal with.

  He found it under the bed. Like it had been hidden in a hurry, like the person who'd put it there had panicked when he realized someone was coming in. It was a human arm, hairless and muscular. It ended just above the elbow. Like a surgeon had stitched up the wrong stump after an amputation. There were several wounds up and down the meaty forearm. Bite wounds.

  The man in the suit left the failed meal where he'd found it. He understood that kind of hunger, and the shame that went with it.

  The soldier who'd shown him down here was waiting just outside the door, holding the grocery bag.

  "I'd like to meet the prisoner, now."

  ***

  The man in the suit opened the grocery bag and removed the items one at a time, placing them on the table: a box of cereal, three bananas, a box of cookies, two apples, a few bottles of protein shake, milk, bread, cold cuts, mustard. Then: a bowl, a plate, a mug, and utensils.

  The prisoner began weeping, silently. He stared at the food.

  "Aren't you going to eat?" the man in the suit said.

  "I'm... I'm allowed?"

  "Of course."

  "What do you want from me?"

  "What's your name?"

  The prisoner hesitated. "Donovan."

  "I want you to eat something, Donovan." The man in the suit opened the box of cookies and took one. He nudged the box closer to the prisoner.

  The prisoner took a cookie, then another and another.

  "Have one of the bananas, you'll need potassium. How long have you been down there?"

  "What's today's date?"

  The man in the suit checked the time. It was past midnight.

  "Two weeks, I think," said the prisoner.

  "It seems longer."

  The prisoner nodded.

  "When was the last time they fed you?"

  "Last week, I think. They… they didn't keep me alive because they like me."

  "A week without food is a long time. Your body has already begun breaking down its own proteins to fuel your brain. Cannibalizing itself. Think of a building pulling wood out of its own walls to keep the furnace burning."

  The prisoner lowered his eyes at the word "cannibalizing." The man in the suit thought of what he'd found under the prisoner's cot. He'd chosen that word on purpose.

  "A building burning wood from its own walls. That's your body right now. Or at least it was, until the cookies arrived." The man in the suit smiled. He opened the box of cereal and filled the bowl. He added milk and pushed it toward the prisoner.

  "Did you know the brain needs over a hundred milligrams of glucose a day to fully function? After three days without food, it runs out of fuel to burn and switches to a kind of survival mode, and can operate on about thirty milligrams per day. This ability is unique to humans, because we're so dependent on our brains for survival. It gets this glucose by breaking down fat and protein. People who starve lose muscle and fat at the same rate.

  "So," he continued. "Seven days without food is long enough to begin the process of starving. And two weeks in isolation makes it seem even longer. Do you know why they sent me?"

  The prisoner shrugged. "You look like a guy who gets things done."

  "That would be one reason. But my employer has a whole staff of guys who can get things done. So why me?"

  "You were... available?"

  The man in the suit laughed. "I wasn't, actually. I was in the middle of something when I got this call and they told me about you. They could have easily sent one of my colleagues, but they wanted me. Because I've been where you've been. Starving. Isolated. Working to please my captors in the hope that I would be shown some mercy. Desperate beyond comprehension.

  "I can tell you that every other circumstance that you will ever face will seem small compared to what you've been through. Every simple pleasure will be magnified. That cookie was the best thing you've ever tasted, was it not? Probably not even your favorite brand. Now imagine your next hot meal, your next blowjob, the next time you step your feet into the ocean. I'm almost envious."

  ***

  Twelve human bodies floated in liquid, each inside its own glass chamber. They were arranged in two rows of six, feet pointed to the center of the rectangular room. Wires and tubes linked the bodies with computer terminals outside the chambers.

  "What do you call them?"

  "Squids, but that's workplace slang. Our bosses never liked it."

  "Where are your bosses?"

  "Did you see a pile of burned corpses on your way in?"

  The man in the suit nodded.

  "That's them."

  The prisoner had changed out of the filthy clothes he'd been wearing when they'd found him. He was wearing baggy gray cargo pants, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. He had a heavy blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He sipped from a bottle of protein shake.

  "How do they work?" asked the man in the suit.

  "They're a node. A relay point. You know how difficult it is to get a computer to emulate a human mind? Well, we took human minds and modified them to work more like a computer. Surgery, drugs, not exactly ethical. They're hard-wired with an internet connection. The operators, the things we were making downstairs, we can connect them to the squids remotely. Satellite connection, just like a phone. When the operators need to know something, the squids' brains go and find it."

  "What kind of information can they exchange?"

  The prisoner shrugged. "Bus schedules. Directions. Languages. Nearest source of fresh water. First aid. Useful stuff."

  The man in the suit approached one of the tanks and pressed his palm against the glass. He looked at the body inside. A young woman, not much older than his eldest daughter. He walked around and looked in the other tanks. Some of the occupants were male, others female. Each was hairless, no muscle tone, androgynous apart from their genitals.

  "Who were they?"

  "Volunteers."

  The man in the suit nodded. "I'd like to see the others. The operators."

  ***

  They stood at the edge of a concrete pit that resembled an empty swimming pool. Iron bars covered the top of the pit. Below the bars, a dozen naked bodies were huddled together, men and women with near-identical faces and lean, sinewy bodies.

  Born soldiers, the man in the suit thought.

  "Their faces are different," he said. "I thought they would be identical."

  "We program for random variations. Makes it easier to tell them apart. Also makes it less creepy."

  "How long does it take to make one?"

  "Printing takes about twelve hours. Cognitive development continues for about seven days once they come out of the chamber. You want to get them trained inside that window. It's kinda like how kids need to learn a language in the first couple of years. They can learn stuff after that, but you can get them real sharp on the essential skills in the first week."

  "How quickly can you assemble another printer?"

  "The guy that built it is dead, but I have the specs and blueprints. Should take me about two days, once I have all the parts."

  The man in the suit looked down through the bars. He thought of a scene from a book he'd read. Roman military history. A general choosing slaves for his army.

  He asked one more question.
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  "How well do they perform in the cold?"

  CHAPTER 26

  Logan woke without an alarm. His phone was on top of a wireless charging pad on the nightstand, where he'd left it overnight. If he had set an alarm, he could have programmed it to play a song or his favorite radio station, and the sound would have played through speakers embedded in the walls.

  "Time," he whispered, and the screen lit up in response. It was 5:03am.

  Zoe murmured next to him, stirred. He felt her body heat as the covers shifted around them. He'd had an arm around her when they'd fallen asleep, but they'd rolled away from one another in the night. The bed was big enough for that.

  He moved a hand across her torso, feeling her hard abdominals, then cupping her soft breasts. Her body was bed warmed. She was naked. So was he.

  "Time to leave," she mumbled, eyes still closed.

  "Not yet."

  Her limbs shifted. She flattened his shoulders against the mattress and straddled him, guiding him inside her. Her movements became stronger, more aggressive, as she became more awake.

  ***

  Logan pulled back the blinds covering the window. The sky was a deep blue. He saw people heading into early shifts, people going home after working all night, and a few people out for a predawn run. The Paradime campus was awake.

  ***

  They went to one of the dining halls. Zoe's hair was still a crown of bedhead. Plenty of people were awake but not many were having breakfast. Logan was eating light this morning. Oatmeal, some fruit, some nuts for protein, water, coffee. His skin was chilled from the cold shower he'd taken twenty minutes earlier.

  It had been three weeks since he'd shot Barnes dead inside that park. Three weeks since Zoe had saved his life in the ambush that followed. Three weeks since he'd made that phone call and had been given the order to complete the job, and then ignored that order.

  Three weeks since they'd arrived here. They were staying in an apartment in one of the dormitories. The Paradime campus had housing for six thousand, and a current population of nearly ten thousand. Apartments and dorms were assigned on a rotating basis. One week out of the month, you camped out on the lawn with a thousand other people, or slept in one of the gyms, or one of the conference rooms that had been converted into makeshift hostels. One of the developers here had thrown together an algorithm that kept the rotations fair.

  The campus was part technology company, part refugee camp. The day-to day-operations of Paradime continued. Holden Fynn, founder and CEO, had addressed the reasons for this the first morning they were there. "The city is boxed off from the rest of the world, but we are not. We have a responsibility to our customers, to our partners, and to our employees. We still have a business to run. Some of you will no doubt wonder about the point of running a social media network when we're surrounded by epidemic, civil unrest, and martial law."

  He counted off the reasons. "One. We are the world's largest social network. Check your newsfeeds. People need a way to spread information. To show the world what is happening inside our city and hold accountable those who exploit these circumstances.

  "Two. Revenue. When this is over, it will take money to rebuild this city. And while it's happening, it will take money to bring in food, water, supplies, and aid. So, we keep making money.

  "Three. Our future. Worldwide, over thirty thousand people work for this company. We are one of the biggest employers in the city, the county, the state. Our competitors will see this as a chance to push us out, lessen our relevance, take market share from us. If we let that happen, we will shrink instead of grow. We will lose our jobs, our livelihoods, and all the progress we've made to improving our world."

  So day-to-day operations continued. Logan taught back-to-back fitness classes from 7:00am to 10:00pm. After the first couple of days, there was no schedule, no official start or end to any of the sessions. People needed to deal with stress, or feel in control, or armor their bodies and minds for the unknown that lay ahead. People started dropping in at all times, so Logan just hung out there all day, happy to do what he could, happy to be doing his part. Happy to come up with new workouts, teach yoga, drill self-defense, or just hang out with people while they lifted weights and got their minds off things for a little while.

  Zoe subbed for him while he got lunch or needed a break. The rest of the time, she helped out with a dozen different teams on campus—maintenance, laundry, landscaping, inventory, cleaning. There was no shortage of volunteers for jobs like these. One guy who dropped by the gym every night at 9:00 would put in an eight-hour day in front of a computer, then spend a few hours cleaning bathrooms, and then workout with Logan for an hour before finding something to eat and going to bed. There were a lot of people like this.

  The news was a constant presence. Always on, but too urgent to be considered background noise. It got steadily worse during the first days the contagion was loose in the city. Hospitals filled beyond capacity. Security contractors in armored hazmat suits began to patrol the streets, carrying automatic weapons and flamethrowers. Anyone who wasn't sick became more paranoid, more cautious, more afraid, as the worst of the symptoms began to appear and the plague racked up its first fatalities. There were rumors of bodies being burned in pits. Footage of robberies, looting, fires, vandalism. At night, there was the constant wailing of sirens coming from the city, a reminder that everything on the newsfeed was only a few miles away.

  The casualties that happened on campus were closer but even further out of sight. Anyone who'd shown initial symptoms had been quarantined in Paradime's onsite hospital. For some, the symptoms had progressed. For others, they had cleared up. When they ran out of beds in the hospital, they set up more beds in one of the offices. Visitors weren't allowed, but everyone in the quarantine had a phone or computer. Most dialed into the daily meetings Holden held at the campus's outdoor amphitheater.

  Three people at Paradime died during the first week. Four during the second. One during the third. These numbers were nothing compared to the death toll in the city, where people were dying by the hundreds. Victims were dying in hospitals. They were dying in their homes. They were dying out on the streets. It was the kind of sickness that hadn't been seen in the United States in well over a century.

  Logan woke up each day and did his best to help the people around him deal with what was happening.

  Then one morning he arrived at the gym and found three men he half-recognized waiting for him. Zoe was back in their room, still in bed.

  The men spread out as he approached, forming a loose triangle. He recognized the body language, the positioning. A kind of zone defense. He didn't know if it was habit, something drilled into them to the point where it just felt natural, or if they were planning on apprehending him. Had he been found out?

  "Good morning," Logan said, his voice a little too friendly as he attempted to hide any suspicion that something might be wrong.

  "Morning. You're Logan?"

  "I am."

  They introduced themselves. They were part of Paradime's security team. He shook their hands. The one who stood at the head of the triangle was older than the other two, somewhere around Logan's age.

  "We've been going through résumés of everyone here. This all started during your second week, is that correct?"

  "Yeah. It's been... eventful."

  "Résumé also says you have some military experience."

  "I do." They were talking about the résumé that had been fabricated for his job at Paradime. With his physique and his scars, anyone who knew anything would figure him for an ex-soldier. It would look out of place not to include military service as part of his assumed identity.

  The man at the head of the triangle spoke, "We have something we were hoping you could help us out with."

  ***

  After breakfast, he kissed Zoe goodbye and walked across campus, past the gym, past the city of tents set up on the lawn like it was a protest or a music festi
val, to report to his new job.

  A group of men and women waited outside a simple concrete building, some kind of garage or warehouse. Most of them looked like they were in their thirties. A few were older than that. Some looked much younger, barely out of college. There were a few familiar faces, people Logan recognized from the gym. Everyone was a different height, a different body type, but each looked athletic in some way. They could have been a track club headed for a meet.

  One of the guys held a tablet. He asked for Logan's name and typed something on the screen. Some kind of check-in, Logan figured.

  Logan wasn't nervous, but he was starting to question whether this was the right decision.

  They waited outside. Introductions were made. He got everyone's name and forgot half of them. A few people carried on quiet conversations, no one talking about the reason they were there. Logan sat in the shade. The weather was nice. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

  A few more people arrived, bringing the number to fifteen. The guy with the tablet took everyone's name before tucking the device into a slim backpack. He called for the group's attention. The conversations stopped. He opened a door on the side of the building and they followed him inside.

  It was a warehouse, a cavernous room with an empty concrete floor. The air inside was cold. Palates of cardboard boxes were stacked against one wall. There were forklifts. Along the walls were loading docks a truck could back up to.

  And up ahead, a staging area.

  For Logan, it was a familiar sight, a familiar setting. Hazmat suits were strung up on a metal rack. Adjacent, there was a table covered in equipment, organized neatly. Hoods, visors, gloves, boots, body armor, and rolls of duct tape. Another table was stacked with guns and ammunition. There were drums and hoses, and as he got closer the air smelled of bleach and disinfectant.

  This was the thing they needed help with.

  They needed people to go outside.