by Amy Johnson
“You mean the one Eden thought was a human?” Emory glances over at me.
Here it comes- my crowning moment of failure thrown back into my face. Several weeks ago, we came across a machine during one of our runs. The machine tricked us all by disguising himself as a human. It was one of the most well-built disguises I’ve ever seen.
“How did you not know the cyber was disguised as a human?” one of the Elders asks, laughing. “We all know there are some very specific differences between humans and the machines.”
“She’s not stupid, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Cyrus snaps.
“Actually, there was no sign that he was a cyber. He didn’t talk with the same robotic tone as the others. He walked normally, and his eyes weren’t mechanical irises,” I say. “He looked just as human as I do. He was even crying when we found him.”
The Elders erupt into unintelligible conversations, echoing around the cavern. I catch bits of what they are saying, snapping my neck back and forth trying to see them all as they talk.
“-changing the design?”
“This changes everything. If we can’t tell the difference-”
“-more hidden among us?”
It goes on for a few minutes, until Cyrus finally stands up, whistling. They turn to look at him and glare.
“One question at a time,” he says, sitting back down. “We think this through as a team, like always.”
I smile at his effort to control the madness.
“Why would they be changing the design of the machines?” Emory asks, ignoring Linux who groans loudly and takes a seat on the ground, inspecting the control panel in his hands.
“They’re making better machines to hunt us down,” the Elder to her direct left says, leaning forward on his knees. “Cybernetics create products for overseas companies. North America is one giant factory. It’s simple supply and demand. If the demand has gone up, so must the supply. Germany must have upped the quotas.”
“They can’t make more product without more humans to harvest,” a third and quiet Elder says. “They’re getting desperate and running out of humans.”
Emory nods, humming in agreement.
Yet, I know exactly what she’s thinking. That logic is flawed.
After my parents were killed, I threw myself into researching the origin of the machines, searching for some sort of motivation behind humanity’s greatest super-villain. I now know how the machines work, how they think and act. I imitate them with impressive precision. Yet, the secrets of the Anthros were revealed to me along with the history of the United States.
The cybernetics breed humans in the Anthros. They don’t need us for anything; that’s why we’ve survived so long. While it’s true that the machines are hunting us, it’s for a different reason than harvesting.
That new reason eludes me.
“Okay, so they’re making better machines to hunt us down.” Emory rubs her chin. “That leads to my second question: What do we do?”
“The same thing the Luddites have always done,” Cyrus whispers. “We find a way to destroy the machines, and we protect the few humans left in Druxy.”
After a few more minutes of hushed conversation, the Elders dismiss, leaving Cyrus, Linux, and me in the middle of the room. Linux sits on the floor, engrossed in a control panel with his glasses resting on the end of his nose. He squints in the dim lighting.
“You’re going to hurt your eyes,” I mumble, digging through my bag for a flashlight.
“Do you care?” he snaps, not looking up.
“Well, now that you ask, no.”
“Stop arguing,” Cyrus glances down at the computer part. “What’ve you got, Lin?”
“When you mentioned the incident from a few weeks ago, I remembered that Eden got all brave and tackled the humanoid,” Linux mumbles, smirking at me and handing the part to my brother. If we didn’t bicker at one another, we wouldn’t be best friends. “She cut his control panel out, and I forgot we had it until now.”
Cyrus inspects the green square, lifting up the red, white, and yellow wires one at a time. The green and silver reflects the overhead lights, glittering like the surface of water.
“Can this help us?”
Linux pushes his glasses up, licking his lips.
“Well, it is a computer panel, which I can wire through to one of the computers we’ve stolen from the machines. If I can hack into its system, maybe we can get an insight into how the cybers work on a programming level.”
“English, please?” I ask, smirking at him. Linux rolls his eyes, taking the panel back from Cyrus.
“I need more time to analyze it.” He puts it in his pocket.
“Request granted,” Cyrus says with a laugh. “You’ve got all time you need down here.”
Linux nods, taking that as his permission to leave. He scurries off, leaving his duffel bag of supplies behind. Pausing to look at the directory on the corner, he turns to the left and is gone.
“You did well.” Cyrus picks up the bag and handing it to me.
“Thank you,” I mumble and adjust the dual weights on my shoulders.
“Don’t be late to work,” he says, walking in the opposite direction of Linux, “and change out of that disguise. It’s giving me the willies.”
I laugh at him and he winks, disappearing around the corner.
In the silence of the tunnels, with no one to keep me company, I wander in my thoughts, tracing one hand along the concrete. It’s coarse, making my fingertips numb the longer I hold my hand there. I drop Linux’s bag off at the room labeled with a single square box on the directory: our own warehouse. The young male who is stationed there thanks me, moving quickly to put up the supplies.
I hurry on, carrying my bag of books with me, following the lowercase tilted ‘e’ until I get to a much larger room than the meeting place. Here, we’ve spread blankets out over the hard floor. The handmade quilts are sewn together from ragged shirts and scraps of random cloth using whatever kind of thread we find. They aren’t thick, but when fifty-two -- no, fifty -- people cram into the room, it gets pretty warm. Neatly folded clothes serve as pillows--whatever is clean at the time.
I walk along the clear path between ‘beds,’ careful not to step on anything. I’ve helped sew the quilts; the last thing I want to do is repair them. It’s tedious work by hand. Cyrus and I sleep side by side in the back, under the quilt that my mother made by hand out of an American flag she found at the dump.
Beside our bed is a tower of books, haphazardly leaning against the wall. I add the new ones to it and stow the bag away to use as a pillow later. On my way out, I grab a change of clothes from the communal pile, anxious to get out of the itchy disguise.
While we’ve wired the underground to have electricity, stealing it from the power grid above us, we haven’t managed to build a plumbing system. Luckily, Druxy is built along a river, supplying the city with all the hydroelectric power they could ever want. I follow the symbols along the wall--a circle with a raindrop in the middle--towards the spot where the tunnels used to empty out into the river.
Suddenly, I’m outside again, breathing in the fresh air of the river. Here, it is shallow because the machines have it dammed upstream. After undressing, I immerse myself in the brown water, disappearing into its murky depths.
The water washes away the makeup covering my face. It gets rid of the horrid smell of smoke from the city and the remaining bits of dirt from Cyrus’ embrace. Beyond that, it washes away the images of the two Luddites being taken for harvesting, electric blue dancing over their skin before they unwillingly succumbed to the Artificials. The water pulls away my anger, my fear of being taken, and the constant worry that tomorrow will be my last day on Earth as a free human.
There’s no time to waste washing away my past, or I would stay here all day.
Instead, I pull myself to shore, drying off with the orange dress of the cybers. I leave my black hair down, combing my fingers through it as I use the wate
r like a mirror and clean off all the excess makeup.
Above me, the city lives, breathing in the form of lights shining in apartment windows. Cars soar over magnetized bridges. Music drifts down towards me, a terrible computer generated noise. What amazes me the most about the machines is how hard they try to act like humans. Are they trying to regain what they lost when they were forced to give up their humanity for immortality?
They spend every day working meticulous production jobs in the hopes that one day they’ll truly be free from the debt left after the Final War, a debt so immeasurable and unimaginable that we, humans and machines alike, are still paying for it.
Maybe that’s why they target us. If we would just give in, they could forcefully breed us into giving them an eternal supply of new hosts. Then, that debt would be paid.
An Artificial patrol vehicle appears a few feet away from me, and I sprint back to the cover of the tunnel. His light flashes over where I was standing, where the water meets the river sand. With a harsh series of clicks, he flits off.
I breathe heavily, resting my head back on the wall.
Glancing at the barely visible sunset through the smog, I hurry back into the darkness. If I’m late for work again, the cook will hand me over to the Artificials himself.
Every Luddite works. Someone established that rule long before Emory took over as Head Elder. We have guards who patrol the tunnels on a rotation, keepers of the warehouses who monitor our supply levels, a cook who prepares food for everyone, runners who risk their lives going above ground with me to find those supplies and food, and even a single doctor who works with whatever he can get his hands on to try to protect us from viruses. One of the Elders works as a teacher for the younger children, making sure they know how to read and can understand our history.
Everyone has a role, a job they picked for themselves based on their strengths. I picked being a runner, because I was trained to fight the machines above ground. I did not choose to be a helper to the cook. Instead, my mother bequeathed the job to me when she taught me about the various vegetables and herbs that grow best in our cold, dark world.
The yelling begins as soon as I step into the cavern that we use as a kitchen and cafeteria. I cringe at the sound.
“Eden! Why are you always late?”
“I’m sorry,” I answer, cringing as I steer myself towards the rows of vegetable plants along one wall. This is one of the most amazing rooms in the underground. Built under a series of grates, the sun beams down in slants through the bars. The rather open ceiling also allows for the sounds of the city to fill the space. Here, we can all talk comfortably without having to worry about being overheard, because the biotic city above is so loud.
“You’re not special, you know,” Charlie, the cook, booms, throwing his meaty hands in the air. “Being an Elder’s sister doesn’t give you special privileges. One more time, and I’m firing you.”
I chuckle at that, picking a ripe tomato off the sad, droopy plant. They might get all the water and sunlight they need, but our makeshift garden just ends up looking depressing. The tomatoes are my favorite, because even when the plant reaches towards the concrete floor in moroseness, the vegetables are still bright, ruby red. Beside them, the snap peas spiral towards the ceiling, carefully detouring to stay away from the grates.
“Come on,” I pick up the metal bucket filled with muddy river water. “You can’t fire me. You’d miss me.”
“Like a cold sore,” he mumbles under his breath.
In the corner, a small fire burns with a large metal pot dangling over it. To be honest, it reminds me of a witch’s cauldron from one of the books beside my bed. The soup inside could pass as some sort of disgusting potion. It is mostly water and chunks of whatever we can grow down here.
The soup lacks meat because animals avoid Druxy. We sometimes see raccoons and wild dogs above ground, but only the rats visit us down here. Regardless of how hungry we get, no one desires to eat the disease-ridden, foot-long rats. Above ground, the animals are too rare to count on. So, we live off of vegetables and boiled water.
I finish watering the plants, picking the snap peas that weigh down the vines, checking the lettuce heads for beetles, harvesting the tiny, pink radishes, and sizing up the summer squash. The cook clucks at me occasionally as I work, smirking when I drop the bucket and dowse my shoes in cold water.
“How’s dinner coming along?”
I look up to see Cyrus leaning on the entryway, his arms crossed over his chest. He has washed up and lacks all traces of the dirt from before.
“It would be ready if someone could show up on time,” Charlie snaps from where he sits by the fire. By now, I’m using a dull knife to peel and chop squash. My fingers rejoice for the break that Cyrus provides.
“You aren’t talking about me, are you?” he coos, smirking.
“‘Course not. The problem is your good-for-very-little sister,” Charlie replies, melting under Cyrus’s charm. “If she wasn’t so knowledgeable about the plants, I would get rid of her.”
Cyrus laughs, taking the knife from me and sitting beside us. I watch him work for a minute, hypnotized by the quick and effortless motion that he cuts with.
“She learned that from Mom,” Cyrus says, dropping the last of the squash into the boiling water. He sticks his hand out and I plop a tomato into his palm. Without even looking at it, he goes back to cutting and smiles at me.
“Yes, and your mother was irreplaceable,” the man agrees, stirring a pot with a metal rod he’s recycled as a ladle.
The conversation between the two of them continues on for what seems like hours as people come in, grabbing metal cups full of steaming soup and going right back to guarding the tunnels or working wherever they’ve been assigned. I serve the liquid until the sun begins to die overhead, giving in to the artificial light. Strangled mechanical music settles down around us.
“What’s the count?” Charlie stirs his concoction as he talks.
“Forty-seven.” I take the spoon from him and ladle out some stew for the three of us. Cyrus sips at it, looking up at the pseudo-daylight overhead. The only difference between the night and day is how bright the lights are at night. It seems unnatural. At least during the day the sunlight balances out the city lights.
I chew lazily on the chunks of squash, crushing the tomato squares between my tongue and the roof of my mouth before I swallow them. Charlie hands me a stack of cups when I finish, and I dump them in the water bucket.
“Head to bed, Eden,” he says as I recede back to normal form, yawning. “You’ve had a tough day, I hear.”
“You sure? I haven’t washed the dishes up yet.”
“Yeah, go on. Just be back for your shift tomorrow.”
I pat him on the shoulder and give Cyrus a hug before I head back to the beds.
Leaning against the cold wall, covered up by our refurbished American flag, I read in the flickering yellow light for a few hours until my eyelids begin to slip closed. The book is ragged, with edges worn and pages falling out of the binding. I can barely read the words on the back, but I am able to decipher the title. It reads A People’s History of the United States of America, Volume Two, 2024 - Present. The author’s name faded off long before I salvaged it.
I’ve read many different history books, gotten lost in sprawling fantasies, tumbled down rabbit holes, sailed from shore to shore, and found joy in the destruction of worlds. Yet, I return to this book every single time to reread the minuscule print and search for anything that hints to the machines’ weak points. I can quote the author’s opinion word for word, and Cyrus claims I rattle off dates in my sleep.
The author blames our current state on our defeat during the Third War, after nuclear fallout flattened our allies. If the Americans back then are anything like the Luddites now, I understand the feeling of helplessness and defeat. Here, nothing improves. Life became stagnate a long time ago. That’s why I’m so desperate for Linux to find our outlet.
Just
like the Americans were desperate for a way out of their post-war debt. They needed help and turned to the wrong country--Germany.
From there, the author drops off; water stains blur the font and streak down the remaining ruined pages, making it unreadable. I string together words and phrases. It talks about a man named Luca Fischer, nanotechnology, and service machines.
I do everything I can to piece it back together, but the results aren’t promising.
I can’t fit in the last puzzle piece.
Maybe the Artificials are biding their time, allocating the limited resource that is human life. Whatever the reason, the appearance of new modifications bode ill for us. They’re hunting us like animals now, and we don’t stand a chance.
Somewhere between the string of natural disasters in the early 2000’s and the start of The Final War, I fall asleep, chin slipping forward onto my chest. The book slides out of my hand.
Some time later, someone lays me down flat, pulling the blanket up and over my neck.
“Cyrus?” I mutter, unable to pry my eyes open.
“Just me,” Cyrus whispers, his mouth inches from my ear. I smile and nod, curling my body towards his voice.
“What should I dream about tonight?” I mumble, letting myself relax.
“The multi-colored tulip fields of Holland,” he replies, touching my cheek. “Anything but machines.”
I smile, drifting off into a heavy, dreamless sleep, listening to the never-ending rattle of the city overhead as my lullaby.
✽✽✽
“Eden! Wake up!”
Someone’s screaming at me again. After a second, I recognize Linux’s voice, and my heart stops pumping against my ribs. I clench my eyes closed, stretching my toes under the flag.
“I’m serious, old woman. It’s important.”
Linux shakes me with both hands on my shoulders. I pry my eyes open and glare at him.
“I’m two years older than you,” I mutter, shoving him away. “Why do you insist on calling me old?”
Sitting up, I stretch my arms behind my back. Linux managed to get dressed, but he failed to brush his hair, leaving in strewn in a thousand directions. His glasses sit crooked on his nose, and he looks like a mad scientist.
