Machine State

by Brad C Scott

  “He had his reasons,” I intuit.

  He nods. “Intrepid’s well dock was damaged, unusable, and hovercraft ferrying our marines to other ships were still under threat. He ordered an abandon ship and, with only a skeleton crew, had the Intrepid stand to, putting her in the path of advancing Chinese missile boats. He gave his life, the lives of sixteen crewmen, and his ship to cover the retreat.”

  “How many did he save?” I ask.

  “Over three hundred marines and sailors.”

  “He was a hero.” I’d always hoped. And doubted. He was a hard man to love.

  “And a fool. The two are usually the same.”

  “You were there, sir?”

  “XO of the Nemesis. It was the costliest battle of the war, bloodier than was ever revealed to the public. We lost too many good people. And Frank was one of the best. I grieved for him.”

  “Thank you for telling me, sir.”

  He nods. “For telling you what?”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  The Director leads us onto the grass bordering the Statue of Penultimate Service, a magnificent carving of an angel standing atop a fluted column about ten meters tall. The angel holds an injured man cradled in one arm and a hammer in its free hand, a look of compassion stamped on its features. Desperate figures carved along the base of the column stretch up arms to beseech aid from the angel. A plaque at its base memorializes the men and women who died in service to others in the chaotic days after the nuclear strikes.

  “What’s this about, sir?” I ask.

  “Your head, which they want. I’m not inclined to give it up. As much as they’ve covered it up, events in Los Angeles still gave the Administration a black eye. I’ve been pressured to reassign you, and your attempts to obtain classified materials haven’t helped matters. I was left with two choices: fire you or promote you.”

  He pulls out an object from his jacket, a small black box, and opens it. Inside is the rank insignia for first redeemer, the twin gold bars inset with gold maple leaves. “It’s my pleasure and honor to promote you to first redeemer, with all the privileges and responsibilities that entails. Congratulations, Malcolm.”

  I swallow hard and clench my jaws on a tide swell of emotion – this is too much honor for a broken man. Far too much for a man who got his team killed. Accepting this in the face of that – it feels like a betrayal. And maybe it is, but there’s only one right thing to do, so I shake his hand and accept the box. “Thank you, Director.”

  “I’m not doing you any favors. Just the opposite – I’m empowering you to act with more autonomy. Don’t get yourself in too deep. I need you, Malcolm. The country needs you. Men of your mettle are rare in federal service these days.”

  “Duty before all else. I’ll do my best not to let you down.”

  “I know you will.” He nods north. “Will you pay your respects?”

  My respects? I look north and my stomach drops as it hits me – my parent’s gravesite is nearby. Is that the real reason he wanted to do this here?

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I know they’d be proud of the man you’ve become.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Director Johnson departs, Maximillian in tow.

  Proud of me? Unlikely. I raise my head and walk north anyway.

  CHAPTER 12

  Standing on the sidewalk facing my former life, I wonder how to let it go. Would that I could be alone for the homecoming, but the bastards won’t let up. A spy drone conceals itself within the branches of Jankowski’s poplar tree across the street. Spotted it a few minutes ago, an ovoid distortion blending into golden leaves and shifting shadows. DSS must have set a legion of the things on my tail. Assuming it’s DSS. Makes me wish for some camouflage of my own.

  After visiting my parent’s gravesite, I couldn’t bring myself to go to Rachel’s, ending up here instead. The old place seems to be holding up. Those same shingles still need replacing – on the to-do list for three years now – and a new coat of paint couldn’t hurt. By the state of the lawn and planters, it appears the landscapers aren’t ripping me off, though the aspens could stand pruning. At least I don’t need to pay for housekeeping anymore.

  “You can’t catch me!” yells Mandy, the nine-year-old from two doors down, blonde hair flying as she runs past. Dipping below my mailbox, she sets the hanging placard swinging before running off, its faded gold letters proclaiming The Adams – an ancient signpost for a lost land.

  The steady whir of drone propellers alerts me to the presence of Mandy’s pursuer. “Good morning, neighbor,” says a banal voice.

  “Go away.”

  The cat-sized, quadcopter keeper drone hovers past in pursuit of its young charge.

  The front yard’s as it’s always been with one exception: Rachel’s English roses are dormant. The landscapers can’t copy her restless conviction. Under her care, some would be in bloom even this late in the season. It wasn’t until well into the hard years that I realized their importance. For her, they were an act of faith. While faith lasted.

  Eleven years ago, when Rosalie entered our lives, God, being selective in His mercy, opted to gift her with a rare neurological disorder. Incurable, all treatments experimental. For three years, we tried everything. After she died, we chose to bury our grief with her and move on, but it proved impossible. We never recovered, drifting farther and farther apart. Six years later, we tried again with Angelica, but she never had a chance, dying during the miscarriage. After that, Rachel followed the doctor’s advice to stop trying. She gave up. On everything.

  Her roses were among the casualties.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  It was late spring, a Tuesday morning about two years back. I had just pulled the car into the driveway after running some errands. Rachel, wearing nothing but a white robe, was on her knees on the lawn. There, in that spot before the border fronting the living room window. It was the first I’d seen her outside since the miscarriage a week before.

  Walking across the lawn toward her, I noticed the garden shears in her limp hand. She didn’t react to my approach, continuing to stare at her handiwork. She had pruned away every rose in the front yard, cut the thorny stems low.

  “Rachel?” I said, going to my haunches next to her.

  “Hmm?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “All right? Of course, it is.”

  The roses had been in full bloom. Pieces of shorn stalks lay scattered about the lawn and in the borders. A neat pile of shredded petals was bunched up between her bare legs.

  I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Sweetheart? Come inside.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re outside in just a bathrobe.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Come on.”

  She finally looked at me, eyes empty as they’d been since the miscarriage but with something new that frightened me, a desperation combined with a longing. A madness that I could not grasp or console away, only wonder at. She snipped the shears on empty air.

  “Rachel? Why did you cut back all the roses?”

  “Hmm? That? These? Why not?” Snip, snip with the shears again.

  “I thought you loved them.”

  “I do. That’s why they had to go.”

  “Rachel…”

  “Like everything we hold dear, dear.” Snip, snip.

  “What happened? Tell me.”

  A flash of anger rippled across her face before it, too, was swallowed by the emptiness in her eyes. “It’s over, Mal.” With her free hand, she reached into a pocket of her robe and pulled out a crumpled letter, handing it to me.

  I took it and glanced through it. It was from her lawyer. The challenge about the revocation of her tenure had failed. Her career was over? No.

  “So what? We can still fight this,” I lied.

  We’d been fighting for two years to get her teacher’s credentials reinstated. She’d done nothing wrong. Nothing. Her firing and the revocation of h
er tenure were politically motivated, punishments for her lobbying efforts for policies opposed by the union. I did what I could, calling in favors and intimidating certain officials, but to no avail – they were too powerful. Even a move to another state wouldn’t help – the teacher’s union had a federal monopoly. Our last resort was a teaching job in one of the worst zones, but neither of us wanted that.

  “No, Mal, we can’t. I spoke to the union, the lawyers, the superintendent...” Her sigh seemed to exhale all hope. “They all say the same thing. It’s over.”

  “So we keep fighting. We won’t let them get away with this.”

  She caressed my cheek with a cold hand. “You go ahead.” A single tear traced a line down her cheek. Throwing her head back, she stared up at the empty sky, eyes focused into the black reaches beyond the blue. “But this? This is over.”

  I helped her up, uncertain how to respond. Reaching over, I took the shears from her limp hand, dropped them to the grass beside the pile of dead roses.

  “Let’s get you inside.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. They’re your roses.”

  “We always hurt the ones we love, don’t we?”

  Pausing at the door, I turned her to face me, cupped her face in my hands. “I love you. Nothing will ever change that."

  “There’s a solution for that, too.”

  Too troubled to say more, I kissed her forehead and led her back inside to bed.

  She was dead before a year had passed.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  It seems that Mandy has hidden from her keeper drone behind a clump of bushes two houses down. It’s hovering about over the lawn near her position, seemingly unable to find her. Right. I hope she doesn’t still believe in Santa Claus, too. Further down the street, a quadruped robot walks a trio of dogs past a place where another robot trims hedges with a rotary blade. It’s strange how prevalent they are now. When I grew up, drones and robots were a rarity.

  And then there’s that one, watching me. I know their game. DSS doesn’t need spy drones to watch me. In urban and suburban areas, public surveillance systems capture almost everything. No, they just want to get under my skin. They’re almost there.

  I resume my silent perusal of the property. My home. My home?

  A breeze blows in from the northeast, salt-laden and chill, causing the leaves of the aspens to flutter golden, some falling to join their fellows on the lawn. They’ll be skeletal in another month or so when the snows come. Winter and warm fires and the holiday season will follow. Norm from next door will put up his Christmas lights, and the rest of the neighbors will follow. By the solstice, only the Adams’ house will remain dark.

  I don’t belong here anymore. It’s so obvious even a nine-year-old could see it. I’m the ghost of the man that lived here, an unwelcome presence bound by painful memories, nothing more. That man died in his wife’s hospital room with her.

  With a growl, I draw and fire on the spy drone across the street. It’s a clean hit – with a sparking flash, it falls from the tree canopy to the lawn below, its camouflage gone. Peering down the sights, it’s clear the stunshock round has fried its systems, tendrils of smoke leaking from the little bastard’s composite chassis. I holster with a grim smile.

  Looking back at my monument to a failed life, I sift memories for some vestige of proof that what we had here once was worthy of all this pain. Rachel’s face fills my mind, lips curved in a fey smile, hazel eyes radiant with pleasure, her hair a cascading curtain keeping the rest of the world at bay. The image fails as it always does, displaced by that final frame, of her on the deathbed, pale with tragedy, unreachable as the horizon. There’s no reconciling the good times with the bad, no light absent the consequent fall of shadow. All I can do is don a rictus grin against the hollow pain. Like a smile on a corpse, emblematic of nothing save futility.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  I throw back my third shot and set the empty back on the bar.

  “Ready for our daily dose?” asks Joe, shrugging a shoulder at the holodisplay suspended above the bottles packing the shelves. Until now, I’ve been ignoring the newscast along with the happy-hour chatter and clacking of billiard balls, but hell, maybe they’ll tell the truth for once.

  “Today in St. Louis,” says the blonde diva with the People’s Broadcasting Network, “residents gathered to celebrate the seventeenth anniversary of Unification Day.” The media montage behind her pans over a peaceful crowd of thousands before zooming in on a flag-adorned stage before City Hall. “It was here where the greatest battle of the States Rights Rebellion was fought, the Eleven Days of October.” I squint at the dignitaries on the stage, recognizing a few I shook hands with at the same ceremony three years back. “The Sons of Liberty, led by terrorist leader Martin Andreas, made their final stand here in St. Louis, an unnecessary act of defiance that cost over two thousand American lives. Among the dead –”

  “Mute it, would you?” I push the glass across for a refill.

  He cuts the audio and pours the whiskey. “Gonna be one of those nights?”

  “Is there another kind?”

  Sans volume, the montage shifts to selective coverage of the conflict. M3A Powell main battle tanks park on roadways and bridges leading into St. Louis. Other shots show fortified rebel positions defending the bridges into the city, with drones patrolling the skies overhead. The siege lasted eight days, then came three days of fighting, all one-sided: the tanks fire, drones battle in the skies above, explosive debris fountains from the sides of buildings, rebel bodies pile up on the streets. They replay this tragedy every year – same day, all day – as if we could ever forget.

  “My brother fought for the Sons,” says Joe, bald pate shining like the mahogany bar supporting his massive forearms. “Told me stories almost turned me white.”

  “Wouldn’t be an improvement.” I hoist and throw back the whiskey. “They act like none of us were alive back then.” There wasn’t much applause at the Revolution’s end. The Sons of Liberty made a strong case for scaling back centralized power and returning much of it to the states. I didn’t support them – their methods were too extreme – but I did respect their beliefs. About half the country did. “Remember when they called the Sons revolutionaries? Now they’re terrorists. Fucking words have no meaning anymore.”

  A banner appears over the media montage: “SONS OF LIBERTY: FREEDOM FIGHTERS OR TERRORISTS?” Polling information scrolls beneath it.

  I give Joe an I-told-you-so look and push my empty at him.

  “You’ve got a stalker,” says Joe, cutting eyes over my shoulder.

  “Yeah.” Behind me, over at one of the burgundy-felted tables, my newest tail pretends to play pool. The man blends in well enough with the after-work business crowd – slacks, white-collared shirt, and smug complacency – but he’s sloppy: caught him watching me in the mirror behind the bar. Bloody amateur.

  Joe leans toward me. “Just don’t bust up my joint, OK? You do, I break your jaw.”

  “I thought you said you were going to change the name?”

  “I was, but folks would raise a fuss. People love their traditions. Especially the techies.”

  Electric Sheep, a high-end joint of polished wood and gleaming brass, caters to the technocrats who dominate Bethesda. True to its namesake, an animated column of holoprojected sheep prance in front of the wall behind the bar, cantering across in front of the shelved bottles and long mirror, a never-ending conga line.

  I raise my glass. “To Electric Sheep and the knuckle-driving SOB who owns it.”

  We clink and drink.

  My commset pings – message incoming from Jace. Activating it, the blade rotates to cover my left eye as the transmit cam extends into place. The call connects, the blade’s blue-tinted screen displaying First Redeemer Jace from the waist up. Looks like she hasn’t slept in a while, her eyes puffy and bruised, the streaks of gray in her long sable mane more pronounced than I remember. Her gaze strikes strong and st
eady as ever, though.

  “Kathryn,” I greet, stepping away from the bar. “Thanks for getting back to me.”

  “Malcolm. How are you holding up?”

  “As well as I can with the hounds on my tail.”

  “Comes with the job. Welcome to the big leagues, First Redeemer. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” I don’t deserve it, I think, not for the first time.

  Her dark eyes see inside me. “You took every precaution – if you hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been any survivors. Don’t doubt that you deserve the promotion – I don’t. You would’ve had it before now if not for your family issues.”

  “Thanks. Hold on.” I nod back at Joe before ambling over to the bar’s most secluded corner where a pair of desk jockeys just finished a game of pool. I clamber into one of the dimly lit booths niched into the corner and face outward, an eye out for watchers. “You look like hell.”

  “Sleep’s been hard to come by.”

  I check the call encryption – seems adequate. “Are we secure?”

  “As can be. Have you been in touch with the Director?”

  “Earlier today. Tell me how I can help.”

  “You already have,” she says. “Your testimony and Patton’s log files turned hearts and minds despite Admin’s efforts to downplay DSS involvement. We’ve got high-level, behind-the-scenes support to push the investigation. It’s there thanks to you.”

  “Good to know, but I need to do more.”

  “I have a new lead you can help with,” she says. “You’re familiar with David Muirland?”

  “The one in the stolen hard suit?”

  After the ambush, Red Line Station got swarmed with enforcers and reclaimers led by Monroe and Jace, Patton’s distress signal bringing all available units running. What they found were sixteen KIA’s. Besides my six fallen brethren, ten of our attackers were found dead where they fell, bodies untouched. Seems the survivors, pressed for time, didn’t bother to police the scene. Seven of those were in constabulary rigs, subsequently IDed as constables in the pocket of Alderman Ferraro, our supposed ally on the city council. Two in enforcer hard suits were IDed as active-duty members of squad epsilon seven. The final body belonged to David Muirland, a former enforcer and army ranger, wearing a hard suit stolen from a DSS supply depot.