39.
DR. BECK stood stock still, hand above the CLOSE button. His arm was beginning to shake. When had he gotten so physically weak? He should have done some weight exercises, should have kept his body strong. Instead, he’d let himself become a withered old shell. He promised himself to work out a little every day. Assuming he had many days left.
Earlier, he saw Donald jumping from rock to rock in his effort to escape the Rages and reach the doorway. Then he’d disappeared from view. Now he was waiting, hoping he could, somehow, still make it.
The low groans of the damned grew in volume, and Dr. Beck began to fear for his friend. The undead creatures shuffled and stumbled up from the winding corridors.
He would wait as long as he could but he simply could not allow those things to get inside.
And they were getting closer. Halfway to the open doorway.
He tensed the muscles in his arm, preparing to bring his hand down.
“Wait!” Donald shouted.
Dr. Beck scanned the empty pathways that hadn’t yet spewed Rages from their mouths. There were desperately few of those. Yet, the voice hadn’t come from their direction. It’d come from the one thickest with mutilated bodies. Perhaps Donald had managed to ascend to the top of the rocks. But he wasn’t there either.
The clue came from the Rages themselves. They turned inwards, looking in at their own members. They paused, clearly thinking there was an easier, closer meal to hand than the old man standing in the doorway.
A figure pushed through the crowd. A figure Dr. Beck was ecstatic to see. . . and yet confused at the same time.
Donald walked amongst the Rages. His clothes were not torn any more than usual, his eyes were bright and unmistakably of the living. He walked quickly, fast, but did not run. The Rages followed in their awkward gait.
“Shut the door!” Donald said through gritted teeth and building into a run. “Shut the door! Shut the door! Shut the door!”
Dr. Beck hit the button. The door began to slide shut. Donald threw himself through it at the last moment as the door closed home.
40.
THE HATCH opened. More electric doors. Donny still hadn’t gotten used to them. So what were the chances he would get used to everything a spaceship could do?
The spaceships had been created from the Cities’ structure themselves, so the corridors and hallways were what the scientists had used to conduct their business.
They were on another nodule, from another City and another part of the world. This one had bizarre-looking writing on the walls that none of them could read.
“Oh my God,” Fatty said. “The Bugs are here!”
“That’s not the Bug language,” Lucy said. “It’s Chinese.”
“Oh,” Fatty said, feeling a little more relieved. “It does look kinda funky though, right?”
“Can you read it, Lucy?” Jamie said.
Lucy put her hand to the stenciled letters.
“Yes,” she said. “It says, Drones. Section Three.”
“Drones?” Jamie said. “What are those? Things that keep talking all the time?”
“Robot drones,” Lucy said. “They’re what will defend and attack for us.”
“Let’s take a look,” Donny said.
“I’m not sure we should,” Jamie said. “We don’t know what’ll happen.”
“Hence why we should check it out,” Donny said.
He pressed the button to open the door and stepped inside.
“Wow,” he said. “You guys have got to see this. Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
It was the biggest room in the world. . . or now, off-world. Endless rows of shelves stretched as far as the eye could see. On each shelf were hundreds of strange little objects. Donny picked one up and began unfolding it.
“What is this thing?” he said. “Some kind of toy?”
“I’m not sure we should mess with them,” Fatty said, eyes alert and looking for danger.
“Come on,” Donny said. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
“No,” Fatty said. “It’s what’s kept me alive this long.”
“Well, I am,” Donny said.
No matter how he tried to unfold it, he couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to look like. He got frustrated and handed it to Jamie.
“It’s busted,” he said. “Dad always said stuff from China was junk.”
Jamie located a small red button on the top of one of the pebble-shaped pieces. He pressed it. The object jumped from his hands. Jamie attempted to catch it but it didn’t fall into its hands. Instead, it floated in front of him.
“Cool,” Jamie said.
He reached out to touch it. The drone pulled back and flew around him, then around Lucy and the others. They all laughed.
“Maybe we should read the manual first,” Fatty said, pulling away from the drone.
“Go back to sleep,” Lucy said. “Go on.”
The little drone deposited itself back on the shelf. Like new.
Donny turned to look at the room, at the drones on all the shelves.
“There must be millions of these things,” he said. “Billions.”
“Enough to fight a war,” Jamie said. “Right, Luce?”
“Right,” Lucy said. “Come on. We should get to the deck.”
“What’s a. . . deck?” Jamie said.
“I know!” Fatty said. “It’s the place where the controls are.”
“Pretty much,” Lucy said. “It’s this way.”
She led them across the vast expansive space where a thick white tube linked the ceiling and floor. There were four curved doors in its side. The nearest one opened as they approached.
Inside was a small room, about the same size as a prison cell. The white material on the outside was transparent. Lucy pressed the button marked DECK. The doors shut and the room immediately began to move up.
“This is an elevator, right?” Jamie said. “Like the one in the City.”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “But this one is special. It connects all the nodes so you can travel wherever you want. It goes left and right as well as up and down. It’s also much faster than the ones we took before. It has to be, otherwise, it would take hours to get from one node to the other!”
“Hours?” Fatty said, turning pale. “In here?”
“By the way, you guys,” Lucy said. “If you ever got lost—”
“A distinct possibility for Fatty,” Donny said.
“Hey!” Fatty said.
“—just keep going down any major corridor,” Lucy continued. “They have multiple elevator entry points like this one. From there, you can go anywhere you want. These elevators make up the spine of the entire ship.”
They passed through the ceiling of the largest room they’d ever seen to find an identical room stuffed full of even more drones. The elevator zipped up faster and faster. The biggest warehouse in the world was just one such room, and every few seconds they were passing through another just like it, and another, and another.
“This is incredible,” Jamie said. “These guys weren’t messing around, were they?”
“They gave it everything they’ve got,” Lucy said. “When your life and the life of every human being is on the line, you try your hardest. The whole world thought that way and this was what they built.”
“It’s amazing,” Donny said.
He began to feel a little more optimistic.
“We must have a real chance against these Bug characters, don’t you think?” he said. “We must do with this at our fingertips. Just one of these drones could take down a whole commune. Hell, one drone could take down every commune in the whole world. Maybe the Cities too! And we’ve got millions of the things!”
“We’re not fighting communes,” Jamie said. “We’re fighting Bugs and who knows what kind of technology they have.”
“We backward engineered from them, right?” Fatty said. “So, we must have similar abilities now.”
“Except the technology we backward engineered was from nearly a hundred years ago,” Jamie said. “Who knows how far they developed in that time. Maybe too far for us to do anything.”
It was a sombre thought. Press a single button and the Bugs might be able to freeze time. Or go back in time. Who knew what they could do.
The elevator passed through another ceiling and came to the next nodule. This one didn’t have rows and rows of small drones. Instead, it consisted of a single huge machine. At its core was a revolving object in some kind of thick green liquid.
“What is that thing?” Fatty said.
“The engine,” Lucy said.
It was the single biggest machine—notwithstanding the mothership itself—anyone had ever built.
“Made in Germany,” Lucy said. “It’s capable of pushing us into lightspeed velocities.”
None of them had words for what they were looking at. There were no words. Just shut up and gawp. And still, the elevator was going even faster. Finally, the elevator began to slow. It came to a stop at a single small room that didn’t look as awesome as the others they’d seen.
“This is the control room,” Lucy said. “Also known as the deck. This is what Dr. Beck’s City built. The brain of the entire operation.”
It had broad windows across the front and four terminals around the edges. In the centre of the room was a round platform, no more than two yards across. A small suspended glass tank hung above it.
“What’s that?” Jamie said.
“That’s where I go,” Lucy said. “That’s where Mother belongs.”
41.
JAMIE WAS afraid. Lucy wouldn’t pretend she wasn’t. She was terrified. She’d only ever partially connected herself to a machine. This thing, this mothership, was something on a different level entirely. She couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like.
The other computer systems had made her feel powerful, strong like she could do anything. To plug herself into a monster machine like this with all the tools and information flowing through her, into her, burrowing deep into her mind and subconscious. . . Who wouldn’t be afraid of that? Would she even cope with that much pressure? She didn’t know. But she would try. For her friends.
“There’s something I need to give you guys,” Lucy said. “Before I forget.”
She moved to a wall on the right and pressed her hand to it. A door folded back and a shelf extended out. One hundred small devices similar in appearance to watches sat on wire shelves. Lucy took three and handed them to the others.
“What are these things?” Jamie said.
“I heard about these,” Fatty said. “They’re called watches, right? They tell the time?”
He started pressing randomly at the buttons.
“I want a cool alarm tone,” he said.
“They’re much more than watches,” Lucy said. “We can use them to talk to each other, wherever we are on the ship. They have a tracker installed too, so I can know where you are at all times.”
“Cool,” Fatty said. He spoke into his watch. “Hello!”
He frowned. The others couldn’t hear him. He pressed a button.
“Hello?” he said.
It worked this time. His voice came out on all three watches.
“Three Fatties for the price of one,” Donny said. “Heaven help us.”
“Everything in here is state-of-the-art,” Lucy said. “In fact, much of it is beyond anything we developed even before the Fall. It takes some time to get used to, that’s all. It’s derived from Bug tech. We mixed it with our own developments so it works better for us.”
“I don’t feel so excited about it now,” Fatty said, looking like he wanted to remove the watch.
“What about you?” Jamie said to Lucy. “You don’t need a watch?”
“No,” Lucy said. “I can hear and see everything when I’m plugged in. There are cameras built into these devices. Don’t worry, I won’t spy on you when you go to the toilet or anything. And you can turn them off any time you want to be alone.”
“It’s okay,” Jamie said. “We trust you.”
He might, but Donny and Fatty looked a little less certain.
“Where’s the off switch, again?” Donny said.
Lucy showed him.
“Wait,” Jamie said. “I just thought of something. Rages are all over the world. It’s possible some might have gotten inside a City. Lucy, can you do a scan of ship? Just to make sure?”
“Sure,” Lucy said. “Good idea. I’ll do a scan for any living or dead creatures. Some of these nodes might have been up here a while. They could have picked up anything. Or gotten damaged. I’ll do a full scan when I plug in.”
Plug in. It was an odd thing to say and yet already sounded natural to their ears now.
“I need you to help me manage this place,” Lucy said to them.
“Sure, of course we will,” Jamie said.
“Speak for yourself,” Fatty said. “I have no intention of being anywhere near—”
“Fatty,” Lucy said. “I want you to be the pilot.”
“Pilot?” Fatty said, grinning. “Me? Of this thing?”
“The mothership will be operated by the supercomputer,” Lucy said. “There won’t be much piloting needed on it. It’s too big to move quickly. The drones, however, are another thing entirely.”
“The drones?” Fatty said. “Cool.”
“Donny, you should be in control of weapons,” Lucy said.
“Why don’t you get the supercomputer to control everything?” Donny said. “It won’t make mistakes like us.”
“The top minds in the world decided to go with human control,” Lucy said. “It’s the human element that will make or break us. We need people in charge. Jamie, you’re in charge of defense. You need to ensure we have protection at all times.”
“Got it,” Jamie said.
“What about the empty terminal?” Fatty said. “Who sits there?”
“No one,” Lucy said. “We appear to be one short.”
“What’s that terminal in charge of anyway?” Jamie said.
“Engineering,” Lucy said.
“What about you?” Donny said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to plug into the mainframe,” Lucy said. “I’ll be overlooking everything.”
Jamie glanced at the glass jar that hung suspended above the platform.
“You don’t have to do this, Lucy,” Jamie said.
“No,” Lucy said. “I do. It’s the only chance we have. The only chance you all have of a normal life. I guess I should get into my new suit.”
She took off her clothes. Her nudity didn’t bother her. Fatty’s cheeks burned red. He didn’t know where to look.
“Whatever happens, stay calm,” Lucy said.
Easy for you to say, Jamie thought.
Lucy stepped up to the platform. Hesitated. Turned to look at Jamie. A small smile on her lips. Then she took the final step.
42.
THE GLASS jar immediately began to lower, locking into place. Jamie’s palms were sweaty, not that he noticed. Both hands gripped his pants. His eyes were focused on Lucy.
She had closed her eyes, calming her mind.
“Welcome, Mother,” the computer said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Something moved at her feet. It flexed metal muscles like a hypnotized snake, rising to Lucy’s full height. It stood upright behind her.
Jamie’s mouth was dry. He didn’t want to watch what would happen next but was unable to tear his eyes away.
The snake’s body divided, at the same height as Lucy’s hips and shoulder blades, stretching out and elongating. It was fluid, quite beautiful. Then, slowly, long needles slid out from the snake bodies. Some were very long, others short. They moved forward as one and sank into Lucy’s soft skin.
Her eyes bolted open and she screamed. The needles drove deeper into her. Into her bones.
“No!” Jamie said. “No!”
He ran to the glass jar and banged on it with his fist. It was thick, much stronger than it looked. Lucy opened her eyes, filled with pain and fear. Tears streamed down her face.
“Jamie. . .” she said, her words were inaudible through the glass.
“Stop it!” Jamie said, shouting at the room. “Computer! Stop this now!”
“The linking process cannot be stopped,” the computer said in its disinterested tone.
“You’re hurting her!” Jamie said.
“Pain is within normal parameters,” the computer said.
The snakes, buried deep under her skin now, pulled her up off her feet. Her body was limp. Probably too scared to move.
“Filling chamber now,” the computer voice said.
A thick blue liquid spilled into the glass jar, filling from the bottom up. It was thick and milky. As it rose, Jamie pressed his hand to the glass. Lucy put her own palm to his on the other side of the glass.
A memory flared in Lucy’s mind. This was how she’d been born, she thought. Now, this was how she would serve.
The liquid became thicker and covered Lucy’s features. Jamie couldn’t make out her face. Probably best not to think of her as human. That was how a scientist thought. Best to ignore the human aspect.
Lucy was now a small dark shadow in the thick blue pool, only her robotic umbilical cord was visible, where it bent and coiled close to the glass.
Once the procedure was over, the room was filled with a terrible silence. None of them uttered a single word. They didn’t know what to say.
“Connecting Mother now,” the computer said.
The lights flickered, then cut out.
43.
“UM. . .” Fatty said.
“Now what?” Donny said.
“I don’t know,” Jamie said. “Maybe there was a problem with the computer, with the mainframe or whatever she called it.”
“I’m sorry to tell you but none of us have any experience working with computers,” Donny said. “Zippo. Unless you’re a secret computer genius this whole time and you never told anyone?”
After the Fall- The Complete series Box Set Page 50
