End Program

by James Axler

  At the end of all that destruction, Progress looked like a perfect jewel, its pale towers gleaming in the last rays of the sun, the clear waters of the Klamath River rushing by with their unending rhythms, bringing with them a sense of tranquillity. Ryan had confided to his companions that the leadership of Progress had wanted to create the perfect world, to bring about perfection from the mess that had been left in the wake of the nukecaust. Looking down on that perfect-looking ville now, J.B. could well believe that they would do just that—that they might just succeed.

  “John Barrymore, I do not know if this is such a good idea,” Doc said as his engine idled. “I have been thinking about our bike-riding foes and how they had been enhanced the same way that Ryan was.”

  “Not exactly the same,” Ricky pointed out. “Some of those dudes have robot arms and legs and stuff.”

  “But technology all the same,” Doc interrupted. “Progress seems to be the source of that technology. Who is to say that we should trust them?”

  J.B. nodded, deep in thought. “My mind’s been plowing a similar furrow, Doc, and I got to wondering about the farm we came on—Trevor’s place. There was a load of tech in that barn we blew up, and from what Jak says there were robots in the house and out in the fields.”

  “Big harvester out there,” Ricky confirmed.

  “Now, where do you think all of that technology came from,” J.B. asked Doc, “if not from Progress?”

  Doc eyed the pale buildings of the ville below them as he considered that. “Could there be two villes dedicated to the development of technology? One good, one bad.” He sounded uncertain even as he spoke, conscious of how ridiculous it sounded.

  Mildred spoke up before anyone could deny Doc’s proposition. “This area was once called Silicon Valley, right?”

  “Hereabouts,” J.B. said, recalling his maps.

  “Well, then. For a while, this whole area was a hub of technological innovation,” Mildred told them. “This won’t be the first time we’ve seen the legacy of the twentieth century influencing what’s happening now.”

  “But two villes,” J.B. said doubtfully. “Both producing tech on a grand scale...? Sooner or later they’d come into competition.”

  “And then—whammo!” Mildred said.

  “Could be that the bikers are that whammo,” Krysty pointed out. “They might have been sent out by one ville to trash the tech of the other.”

  J.B. rubbed at his face, processing all of that. “We’re speculating,” he said. “The only thing we do know is that these people can help Ryan, assuming we can trust them.”

  “Which seems an assumption of huge proportions,” Doc stated.

  J.B. fixed him with a grim look. “Doc, you’ve had a hate-on for whitecoats ever since you were plucked through time and dumped here. Not that I blame you for that, I should add. But what they did for Ryan was a miracle and—well—we’re fresh out of options to fix it.”

  Doc nodded, accepting the Armorer’s point. “We shall proceed then,” he agreed, “but I must remind everyone to remain alert.”

  “Always do,” J.B. said, patting at the mini-Uzi he wore hidden beneath his jacket.

  * * *

  THE CONVOY OF bikes wove its way down to lower ground, following the snaking paths that led through the mountains and into the valley below. They came out onto flat ground close to the east gateway to the ville, with the river and the hydroelectric dam. The sound of the rushing river was loud in the valley as it echoed against the high walls.

  “Well, they’ve got power,” J.B. said, pulling the bike around toward the open gate. “The hydrodam provides near-limitless electricity if they can harness it.”

  “They have lights, building equipment, electricity,” Mildred recalled. “The ruling council told Ryan they wanted to make the perfect future. I guess that takes a lot of power.”

  “In all senses of the word,” Doc said, a note of warning clear in his voice.

  “The gates are open,” Ricky pointed out as they approached.

  Astride her patchwork motorcycle, Krysty pushed errant strands of hair from her face that the wind had caught, before addressing the others. “They said we could come back at any time,” she reminded them. “Get Ryan’s eye looked at, checked and repaired.”

  “Serviced,” Mildred recalled.

  J.B. sighed heavily. “We’ll ask,” he said, “but keep Doc’s words in mind—we ask with one finger on the trigger.”

  Together the bikes drew up before the arching gateway of the ville. As they got close, figures appeared, dressed in pale-colored, floor-length robes and strolling almost casually toward the gateway to meet the visitors. If they were sec men, then they were just about the most easygoing sec men that J.B. had ever encountered.

  In the lead, J.B. ease off the accelerator as the figures stepped across his path, and the companions followed suit. The robed men had shaved heads with unmemorable faces, a few generic lines and wrinkles, otherwise lacking distinction and portraying no emotion. At their belts they wore short, batonlike staffs slipped into sheathes that hung down to their knees.

  “Hey,” J.B. began as he switched off his engine. “Don’t know if you remember us—we were here a few days ago, spent a couple of weeks here in fact. My friend had surgery—a new eye, artificial. But, well...I guess we been getting some teething troubles. Your surgeons here said it would be okay to return, you know, if we got...troubles.”

  The bald men looked at J.B. blankly, took in the others with a sweep of their gaze, then nodded. “Enter,” the man on the left said. “Follow the green marker until you reach your destination. You will be met there, and you may leave your vehicles there also.”

  J.B. tipped his fingers to his hat. “Mighty kind of you.” Then he switched on the engine and rode slowly under the arch and into the ville, looking around for the marker he had been asked to follow.

  “Green, green...” J.B. muttered, looking left and right. And then he spotted it, a glowing green line that seemed to materialize on the road at his feet, a foot wide and pulsing lightly as it trailed off down the street and into the body of the ville. “Green!”

  Progress was just as they had left it. Clean streets and towering buildings, with people going silently about their business, walking or employing simple vehicles that gave off no visible pollution and traveled noiselessly along the streets. All the people were dressed in floor-length robes, just like the men at the gates, and many of the men were bald. They seemed disinterested in the incursion by J.B. and the noisy, patched-together bikes—disinterested or oblivious.

  As he rode, J.B. looked around him, trying to discern from where the marker had appeared. He was certain it had not been there the last time he was in the ville, and he was also pretty sure that it had not been there when they entered. It had just appeared, projected somehow onto the road in light of his conversation with the men on the gate.

  * * *

  THE GLOWING GREEN line led J.B. and the group into the heart of the ville, past the low structure that housed the mat-trans and the military base that had surrounded it and around until they were at the back of the building where Ryan had stayed while he recovered from surgery in the nutrient bath.

  The green glow ended in a square pen, a little like a horse corral, with white walls from the building towering on three sides to leave the area itself in shadow. There was a double door in the building, slightly raised with a gentle ramp leading up to it. As the companions pulled up, the green glow faded, leaving no evidence of the way they had come.

  The companions came to a halt, drawing their bikes up against the walls, leaving enough space for everyone. As they turned off their engines, the doors swept silently open and Roma appeared—the woman who had helped Ryan get his bearings when he had first awoken from surgery, a woman well-known to all of the companions from their stay her
e. It was reassuring to see a familiar face given the urgency of their circumstances now.

  “Welcome, friends,” Roma said, her arms wide-open. “Or should that be ‘welcome back’? Whichever it is, it’s always good to see visitors in our midst.”

  J.B. eased himself out of the saddle. He would be glad to get off the bike. The day’s ride had been uncomfortable and exhausting. Around him, his companions were also dismounting, stretching arms and backs as they tried to loosen the kinks that the long ride had formed.

  As they did so, more figures filed through the doors—a dozen robed men, each one armed with wide-barreled blasters cast from a mirrored metal. J.B. looked up and swore.

  “Now, if you’d be so kind as to come with us,” Roma began, “and not try anything stupid.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The companions were disarmed while the semiconscious Ryan walked on unsteady legs from the rear of Mildred’s bike. While the others were being disarmed and their weapons were stored in a closet in the large, white building, Mildred made a successful argument to keep hold on her bag of medical supplies.

  “Our friend is in a lot of pain right now,” she told Roma, “and I’m his designated caregiver. If he begins to deteriorate, I want to be able to administer the right help right away.”

  While the guards watched, Roma checked Mildred’s satchel before she agreed. “We can care for his needs, but carry on.”

  Then, disarmed, the companions were led into the towering structure that dominated the skyline of Progress where they were shuttled by elevator to the room where Ryan had met the mysterious ruling council. Despite being sedated, Ryan was brought along, held up by Doc and J.B., his head lolling on his shoulders, mumbling incoherently.

  Tiny lights twinkled behind the glass panels that lined every wall, including the raised area where the council itself appeared. The companions waited while the council filed in high above them, seven shadowy figures in hoods and robes that disguised their physiques.

  “Welcome,” their leader, Emil, said in his rich, resonant tones.

  “You call this a welcome?” Ricky spit, outraged.

  Mildred held her hand up to calm him. “Ricky, no...”

  “This is your second visit to Progress,” Emil observed. “Please explain why.”

  Handing Ryan off to Doc, J.B. stepped forward and spoke on the team’s behalf. “Your doctors did a repair job on my friend Ryan there, fixed him with a new robot eye that was full of tricks.”

  “I recall,” Emil said from the shadows above. “I designed that device.”

  “Thing is, it isn’t working right,” J.B. said, scratching at the back of his neck self-consciously. “Ryan got himself into a confused state about what he was looking at during a little altercation out west of here. Started attacking his friends as well as his foes. Came at me with a blaster and his fists.”

  A woman spoke from the high wall, another member of Progress’s ruling elite. “You believe the device to be responsible?” she asked.

  “I do,” J.B. said. “Mebbe some kind of glitch. Or could be it’s overheated. We ran into a fire when we left here. Mebbe smoke got into the workings and gummed something up.”

  In response, the council remained silently in darkness. J.B. waited a half minute but, when they didn’t respond, he decided to elaborate.

  “We’ve seen some things out there,” J.B. said, “that may interest you. Farm machinery that’s well in advance of anything I’ve ever seen before. Robot gangs running rampage over the land. I figured someone’s been taking your tech and corrupting it.”

  “No,” Emil said, but the word was emotionless, just a statement.

  J.B. waited while the other companions shuffled uncomfortably. “If you’re trying to tell me it isn’t happening, friend, well, it is,” J.B. said. “Me and my friends have all got the bruises to prove it.”

  “No,” Emil repeated with that same lack of emotion, “no one is corrupting our technology. It is working perfectly, including the item placed in your companion’s eye socket.”

  Krysty shook her head, her fists bunched in frustration. “Ryan complained to me that the eye had fed him confused information when we were out in the field.”

  “And he mistook me for an enemy,” Mildred added.

  “Because you are,” Emil replied. “All of you.”

  The already icy room seemed to get colder.

  “What did you say?” Doc asked from where he stood propping Ryan up. “How can we possibly—?”

  “Humankind tried to destroy the world on January 20, 2001,” Emil interrupted. “Nuclear weapons were launched by many parties in an attempt at mutual destruction.”

  “I hardly think—” Doc began, but another of the ruling council took up the discussion.

  “At that time, the United States of America was the most powerful nation on Earth,” the man called Turing stated. “Safeguards were put in place should the United States of America become compromised, including plans to defend home soil from enemy invaders. What you have seen is the result of that plan.”

  The companions were dumbfounded.

  “Are you trying to tell us,” J.B. said, “that you’ve been following a hundred-year-old plan to safeguard a nation nobody even remembers?”

  “We are not following the plan,” Emil corrected.

  “We are the plan,” Una stated.

  “We are the safeguard,” Turing elaborated.

  “We are the future,” the seven figures in the council said as one.

  J.B. and the others suddenly felt even more unprepared than they had when they had been disarmed on arrival in the ville.

  “So the bikers are—what?—your own personal army?” J.B. asked.

  “They follow their base instructions,” Una said. “To destroy enemies wherever they find them.”

  “And whoever they are,” Mildred muttered, shaking her head. “Even kids.”

  “What about the farm machinery?” J.B. said. “If you wanted those farmers dead, then why help them to grow crops?”

  There was silence for almost a minute, until finally another member of the ruling council spoke up. “The first plan proved too slow, and so we refined it into the form you have observed.”

  “First plan?” J.B. asked.

  “To create small pockets of abundance that would instill jealousy and resentment in the rest of the population,” the shadowy figure explained. “From this, conflict should have arisen.”

  “But the farmers surprised you when they began to trade their surplus produce,” J.B. said in realization.

  “Employing neither cruelty nor using it to dominate or control others,” Mildred added.

  “So the plan was revised,” Turing said. “We recreated humans who would bring nihilism and so wipe out the plague of the invaders.”

  “The invaders being humans,” Ricky stated.

  “All humans,” J.B. added.

  “And now we have revised that plan again,” Emil stated. “You will be upgraded shortly, as your colleague Ryan is in the process of being.”

  “Upgraded?” Doc asked.

  “Your thoughts will be replaced,” Una told them emotionlessly. “You will feel no pain during the process and, once complete, your lives will have new purpose. You will be tasked to wipe out the last humans to ensure no further invaders can step on U.S. soil, as per the plan.”

  “You’re going to turn us into robots?” Ricky gasped.

  “And all because we told you Ryan’s eye was faulty,” J.B. said, turning his back to the council on the raised platform. “Boy, you guys sure don’t take criticism well, do you?” As he spoke he caught Mildred’s eye and winked. She saw the move, knew just what it meant. It was almost time to bust out of there.

  Casually, not making any sudden
movements, Mildred’s hand reached into the satchel she held on a strap over her shoulder and fixed around the handle of a scalpel she had slipped into the lining for just such an occasion.

  In front of the group, J.B. was still holding audience with the council. “Well,” he said, “I’m sorry we have wasted your time, but none of us are planning on being ‘upgraded’ anytime soon.”

  “You have no choice,” Emil told him with grave certainty. “Guards.”

  From the shadows surrounding the elevator, a half dozen guards marched forth to escort the prisoners from the room. Led by Roma, the guards were dressed in pale, floor-length robes with sleek blasters holstered at their hips. Mildred reversed her grip on the scalpel as she removed it from the bag, slipping it up against her wrist where she could hide it from view.

  J.B. was ushered back from the room of circuit board walls and together the companions were herded back into the elevator. The curved door sealed closed around the group, and the elevator began its descent.

  As soon as the door had closed, Mildred moved, lashing out with the hidden scalpel and drawing it across the wrist of the closest of the guards. J.B. worked in conjunction with her, reaching for the man’s blaster even as he reared back from the assault.

  Beside them both, Jak dropped two knives into his hands from their hiding places, twirling in place before drawing the two blades across the throats of two more sec men.

  The other companions were reacting too, even as the sec men began to respond. With a twist of his sword stick’s handle, Doc had his sword free and he drove it through the chest of the sec man guarding Ricky. Beside him, Krysty reached back and flipped her own guard over her shoulder, slamming him to the floor in a swirl of flowing robes.

  By then, J.B. had his hands on the blaster’s trigger and he began firing, chilling them all before they even realized what was happening.

  * * *

  WHEN THE ELEVATOR reached street level and the door opened, it revealed a scene of carnage where the companions had dispatched their captors. Each of the companions had taken one of the silver bands that their enemies wore like wedding rings, the bands that could be used to open the doors of Progress.