Machine State

by Brad C Scott

  Alright, one last go at it, then. “Understand, I have no desire to become a part of what’s going on downtown. My concern is for my men, just like you. Neither one of us wants to lose people today, right? Let’s both back down before the situation –”

  Skull Face extends a modded submachine gun through the window opening. The men flanking him shift aim to point their RPGs down at me.

  “Hold fire!” I call.

  “You listen, Redeemer! Because I’m, I’m a reasonable man. Send the big drone away. Now.” Skull Face has yet to blink. Drugged? “You get ten seconds. Maybe the rest of your men will be fine, but you and your compadre there, not so much.”

  I used to be generous. Not anymore. Handouts, like happy endings, are a thing of the past. If this fool embraces death, who am I to deny him?

  “Five seconds,” says Skull Face, his weapon pointed toward my unprotected face.

  Redemption requires sacrifice. Patton, I thoughtspeak, take out the RPGs, rail fire.

  Patton activates his weapons array, twin beams of light from the discharge of traced rail rounds connecting him for an instant to the two hostiles flanking Skull Face. The men’s heads disappear as the beams blink out, the predatory shrieks of the rail rounds echoing off concrete. As the headless bodies collapse out of sight, one of the RPGs goes off, the rocket lancing out to strike the street five meters behind me. Some mannequins go down or lose limbs to shrapnel. I remain still as propelled debris pings off my backside but fails to penetrate the hard suit.

  As the dust settles, my gaze remains locked on Skull Face. “You’re next,” I promise.

  The barrel of his SMG wobbles. He blinks. “Wait!” he shouts, lowering his weapon.

  “Drop it.” I look up toward the men he’s got on the fourth floor, their coil rifle barrels still visible, then at the four down the street behind cover. “Drop your weapons or die!”

  They do it, weapons clattering onto concrete. Not trusting myself to speak, I motion at Worthy and then turn away as he gathers in our crop of prisoners.

  Two more for the list. A list I would be on if God cared about what I wanted.

  CHAPTER 4

  Patton’s scans of the nearby buildings were enough to reveal advanced weaponry signatures among the tons of assorted salvage. Sloppy work by Los Solicitantes – they should have shielded their cache better. Worthy took a fire team to destroy it, the rest of the squad staying to guard our prisoners.

  As we await his return, I stand street center and stare south toward what used to be home, in another life, my back to downtown and the clamor of a city besieged. Twenty-five years and twenty-five miles – the distance to my childhood’s death.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  I was living in Long Beach with my mother and uncle when it happened, just a few months after my tenth birthday. November 15, 2039, at 9:12 am by the clock on the classroom wall. It began with a distant roaring sound, distracting me from the page of fractions with mixed denominators I was struggling through. We all looked about, whispering among ourselves, too dim to realize the significance of not being shushed by our teacher. Some of us thought it was an airplane, others a military test. One by one, the remote rumble continuing, big with inexplicable meaning, we became as quiet as Mr. Davis, pale with shock at his desk. Then the school bells, a confused evacuation, no one telling us anything, the numb-with-horror whispers of the adults infecting us kids with anxious wonder. Outside, herded onto the parking lot, heads kept turning north. An unnatural cloud was visible there on the horizon, mushrooming upwards, an alien stain spreading across the sky.

  I heard a lot of confused, panicked things. One thing stuck: Los Angeles is gone.

  When I got home, my mother’s tears did little to impress me – I’d seen enough of those the year before when Dad died fighting the Chinese. No, it was the sight of my uncle, a man who’d never bowed to anything, standing on the porch and staring north, hands hanging limp. The look on his face, the naked despair, that terrified me most of all. That terror stayed with me for years, combining with other horrors to make me the man I am today.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  “Mission accomplished,” says Worthy, returning with the fire team.

  They’ve got three young women in tow. Evans guides the newcomers to one side, visor sliding up to expose her face as she speaks with them.

  “What about the ones that took off?” asks Worthy, referring to the six hostiles that didn’t make it to the standoff and took off running once Skull Face surrendered.

  “We’re already behind schedule,” I say.

  “Understood. I’ll get them ready.”

  He walks off as I breathe through my teeth, the rage in my gut too painful to ignore.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  My generation, distilled and defined by a single day. Millions died. The ancient enemy, the Caliphate, struck us at home, decimating thirteen of our greatest cities. They used cobalt bombs, low-yield nuclear devices designed to maximize radioactive fallout. Radiation exposure killed millions more in the weeks, months, even years to follow. Whole swathes of the country became irradiated wastelands, forcing mass relocations like my family experienced. By the time I was eighteen, we’d moved around from camp to camp, city to city, so many times that I’d lost count. All the while, burning with rage as the world had burned. And we were the lucky ones, the survivors left to pick up the pieces and soldier on after the apocalypse.

  Some voices said we should show restraint, seek to understand, to forgive. Their owners were shown the hard way to go.

  Our retribution was terrible, transforming much of the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia into lifeless desolation. No eye, all tooth. Never mind that we broke the Caliphate’s back, or that our brutality scared China into peace talks that ended World War III – the cost was still too high. Our retaliation spawned a decade-long nuclear winter, the resulting global famine leading to a death toll not in the millions, but in the billions. Even in America, those were lean times for almost everyone, my family included.

  Forgiveness? The Old Testament reigns now. Peace is beyond our experience.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  I turn to regard the renegades lined up street side, Skull Face and the six survivors from his crew. And the lookout, no longer smiling. All stand disarmed and unmasked, their grime-smudged faces unrepentant. Mannequins line the street behind them and look down from openings above their heads, a jury as silent as it is merciless.

  “What about them?” I ask Evans, keeping watch with Anderson on the four girls, all in their late teens and as dirty as the men. “Do we have any takers?” Torn clothing, glassy eyes, pale and bruised with malnourishment, track marks on their arms: they’ve had it rough. The oldest look about with big raccoon eyes, blue and unblinking in their dark nests, shoulders thrown back despite the misery mortared in her curdled face.

  “No,” says Evans, frowning at them. “They want to stay. They love it here.”

  “Yeah.” The oldest meets my eyes – desperate nothingness, a life lost in a sea of lunatic sorrow, defiance toward any means of escape. I’ve seen the look before. “What’s not to love?”

  We offer our protection in clear cases of abuse like this, not an uncommon occurrence with the gangs that operate in the zones. But they rarely take us up on it, the girls claiming to be in their unenviable circumstances of their own choice. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t: good options are hard to find in the more crime-ridden zones like LA. Regardless, I won’t push help on them or anyone. Everyone deserves the right to choose their own brand of misery.

  Rachel would have disagreed, hers being the bleeding heart in our marriage. She helped a lot of vulnerable people as a special needs teacher. As a volunteer at the women’s shelter, too. She got so wrapped up in some of those women’s lives that she’d go out in the dead of night to answer a call for help. Waking me up with her, of course. Which led to all kinds of half-hearted arguments, because deep down I didn’t want to dissuade her of the conviction that losing battles w
ere worth fighting, that lost souls should be saved, could be saved. She saved mine, didn’t she?

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  About two years back, I woke up to the bed shifting. Rachel’s warmth lingered, but she was gone, though I heard her rummaging in the darkness. The clock said 3:13 in the morning.

  “Uhnnn, who is it this time?” I mumbled.

  “Lucy.”

  “The barista?”

  “Yeah. Demanding checkout.” Irritated sigh. “Her boyfriend snuck a message to her.”

  I stretched and called for light. In the mellow overheads, I saw her silhouetted before the walk-in closet, thrusting her arms through a sweater. Not even time for a shower – must be an emergency, I reflected, propping myself up.

  “Don’t they have to wait until morning?” I asked.

  “I’ll need every minute if I’m going to change her mind.”

  “Honey…”

  She glanced over, hands smoothing back her short, dirty-blonde hair, hazel eyes shining in the semi-darkness. The moonlight through the blinds gave her skin a pastel glow, highlighting the stubborn furrows of her brow. Arguing with those furrows was useless.

  I rubbed at my eyes. “Do you have to go?”

  “You know that I do. She needs me more than you do.”

  “Bullshit. I’d starve without you.”

  “I made you a sandwich for work last night. It’s in the fridge. Grab some –”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Long pause, eyes looking through me as if I wasn’t there. “You’re strong enough to get along without me,” she confessed, like a prophet resigned to an ominous future.

  Jolted, I had only one response: “Come back to bed.”

  She stepped over and bent down to kiss me. “Sorry.” Withdrawing beyond the reach of my arms. “I have to go.”

  “Go save the world, sweetheart.”

  “Just one woman, Mal. I’ll see you later.”

  She left. I tried to get back to sleep, but something about the undercurrent of her desperation kept me from it. I recognized it even then, though not its depth. She was fighting to save two souls that night. A losing battle.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  “Redeemer?” prompts Worthy, snapping me back to reality. “They’re ready for you.”

  Right, to business. I address the line of guilty men: “I’m Redeemer Malcolm Adams of the Department of Recovery and Reclamation. I’m empowered as a representative of the Democratic Republic of America to reckon you for your crimes.”

  The Capital isn’t concerned about common criminality in the zones, leaving the locals to deal with it, but takes a dim view of anything that impedes reclamation efforts or threatens national security. Redeemers are empowered to dispense justice in such cases. Like federal marshals in the Old West, we ignore the brothels and gambling halls but go out of our way to reckon with murderers, saboteurs, and terrorists.

  “You have no rights,” I continue, “but you do have a choice. Agree to be bound by my ruling, or don’t. If you refuse to cooperate, you’ll receive the severest sentencing, death.” I pull my sidearm. “Carried out now. Do any of you refuse to be reckoned?”

  A lot of scowls greet the question, but no affirmative answers. Zone justice must be severe – we have neither the resources nor will to coddle offenders.

  “Very well.” I holster my sidearm. “I charge all of you with the following crimes: one, interfering with DRR operations within a reclamation zone; two, threatening DRR personnel with lethal force; three, possession of illegal weaponry. Reclaimer, tag them.”

  Murphy has injection duty. She steps up behind each of the eight men and, using a field installer, implants a tracking chip into each man at the base of their skulls, a neural interface device designed for criminals. It’s not a painless process.

  “What were the names of the two men that died?” I ask the line of men.

  “Saul, Ramos,” says Skull Face, flinging the names like a curse.

  “That should have been you,” I say, stepping up into his grill. “Saul and Ramos? They’re on your head. They paid your price. Are you worth it?”

  He clenches his jaw and tries to stare me down. When he looks away, I step back.

  Once all the trackers are implanted, I pass sentence. “For your crimes, each of you will perform three years of zone service. You will report within one week to the local DRR station for your first assignment. Failure to report or to fulfill any of the services assigned to you will result in immediate sanction. Once your service is completed, the interface devices will be removed and your crimes redeemed. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” says one, “what happens if we don’t show up? You just kill us, then?”

  “Reclaimer?”

  “No, nimrod,” says Murphy. “If you don’t show, we’ll track you down. When we find you, you’ll be given one chance to get back in line. Otherwise…” She makes a gesture with her hands simulating a head exploding. “But you only get the one chance. The IDs are tamper proof, so if someone attempts to disable or remove them, then,” and she makes the head-exploding gesture again, this time with added sound effects. “Got it?”

  Dead silence as the derision on their faces morphs into outrage and fear. When I dismiss them, the reckoned criminals walk away while probing gently at the backs of their necks.

  What must they think of us to believe that? The trackers we’ve implanted won’t make their heads explode. Remote activation of pain centers is all they have to worry about. We’re using a new model with features that are classified, even to us, but no interface device has ever had anything resembling a kill switch. You can’t fit a bomb in one or rig them to turn painful shocks into deadly ones.

  At least, no one’s tried it. That I know of. And if they have?

  Not sure I’d want to know.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  We’ve left the mannequins behind when Worthy falls into step beside me. “How you doing?” he asks.

  I exhale roughly. “Nothing a night of drinking won’t cure.”

  “You made the right call back there. Those scumbags don’t realize how lucky they are.”

  “If they’re the lucky ones…” I shake my head.

  “I know. No winners, just pissed-off survivors: the way of the world.”

  “He was right. About our presence in the city today.”

  Worthy checks the power pack on his coil rifle. “We’re not enforcers, boss.”

  “No, we just work for them now.”

  “Not from what the President said. His presser just went nationwide.”

  “Had to happen eventually.” I stop and motion for the squad to gather round. “All right, let’s get this over with.”

  Patton and the two tacticals form a perimeter as the eight of us form a ragged circle beneath a pre-war gas station awning. At my nod, Worthy taps his holobracer to project a mediacast in the air between us, a staged event filmed this morning.

  President Maxwell, a 70-plus New Englander on his fourth term, speaks from behind the podium in the Rose Garden. “My fellow Americans, the threat to public health posed by the Shanghai flu has reached a crossroads. Although we’ve done all we can to protect the American people from an outbreak, the pandemic that wreaked such a terrible toll in Asia and Africa has finally reached our western shore.” Maxwell, in his usual black suit, grips the sides of the podium, his faded blue eyes telling convincing lies about his compassion. “Today, on my orders, federal forces were dispatched to quarantine Los Angeles and provide humanitarian relief. The Department of Health and Human Services leads this effort, and I have full confidence in their ability to contain the outbreak.” The footage pulls back to reveal a group of stone-faced politicos lined up beside him. “To support this effort, at the urging of my colleagues on the Hill, last night I signed an executive order authorizing the presence of federal forces in the reclamation zones to deal with this, or any other, threat to public safety. Your government will do everything we can to help you weather this crisis.
” The suit-and-tie conga line applauds.

  Worthy taps his holobracer, and the mediacast blinks out.

  Dead silence and solemn faces all around. Except for Murphy, a humorless, lopsided grin on her face. No one in the squad looks surprised, or happy, or particularly angry. They’re not stupid. They’ve been lied to with the truth all their lives. Why should today be any different?

  Without a word, I turn and lead onward, away from the abandoned filling station. As the squad falls in behind me, a fierce exchange of fire sounds from a few miles ahead, somewhere downtown. Our direction of travel. We march on in silence, bereft of any suitable response.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Looking for the meaning of life?” calls the madam. And with that ancient greeting, we enter the Flesh District.

  Meaning of life is right. The temptress making the proposition wears nothing but paint, high heels, and a holstered hand cannon strapped to a thigh. Standing streetside, hands on her hips and legs stretching to the sky, the neck-to-toe paint of her faux superheroine spandex leaves no guesswork regarding her curves. Pulling my gaze up from her impressive rack, her glowing green eyes meet mine, an eyebrow raised in invitation.

  “A bit early for business, isn’t it?” counters Worthy behind me.

  “Darling,” replies the madam, arms spreading wide, “haven’t you heard? Business is booming.” An explosion booms in the distance, souring her smile. “Literally.”

  Nodding in respect, I pass by at the head of the squad.

  She’s not the only one on display, her workers lined up along the sidewalk. Many flaunt their figures with body paint – the specialty in these parts – an erotic procession of cat women, sportswomen, and superheroines. Others wear what passes for actual clothing: micro skirts, lingerie, skin-tight leather, feathered wings, gleaming gold bikinis, domino masks, and a variety of whips-and-chains accouterment. Some of the earnest young women carry, too, though nothing as big as the .50 caliber their madam shows.