Crusade Against the Machines

by Franklyn Santana

  »The National Guard?« Volterhagen said. »That’s very clever of al-Rahman, of course. The National Guard, unlike the police and the military, is not robotic. It is comprised entirely of human soldiers and manually operated vehicles and helicopters. A good opportunity to militarize the country with troops that can be deployed in case of emergency for his de-industrialization campaign.«

  »A situation such as the one we are facing right now is in any case the responsibility of the National Guard, not the military,« General González explained. »This is not some kind of dirty scheme by the president.«

  »No, but it suits his plans very well after all. And that is precisely why he and his Neo-Luddite friends provoked this situation,« the SkyCom representative was convinced.

  »I think you are implying too much,« contradicted González.

  »Al-Rahman knows exactly what he is doing,« Mrs. Volterhagen insisted. »The U. S. is in a very dangerous situation with a Neo-Luddite sitting right in the White House. There is no telling where this may lead.«

  »Our national security has been compromised. I agree with you on that,« González admitted. »And if al-Rahman is putting our country’s interests aside because of the influence of certain foreign groups...«

  »You refer to those businessmen from the SAU, who have more and more influence in Washington?« asked Mrs. Volterhagen.

  »That’s right!« confirmed the Air Force general. »If these businessmen are now dictating American politics and the President is betraying national interests, then that means he must be stopped by all means.«

  »But it hasn’t come to that yet,« said Mrs. Volterhagen, and then turned back to Neil O’Neil: »And that’s why we are putting all our hopes on you, Mr. O’Neil. You are practically the voice of reason in the Republican faction. You have a very great responsibility now, even beyond the rejection of this Human Dignity Bill. You are one of the very few levelheaded politicians, who are extremely important at this time of increasing polarization. If you are smart now and play your position as a possible mediator and compromise candidate to the fullest, I can see you having a great political career.«

  O’Neil smiled somewhat awkwardly. He was flattered. It was amazing how corruption always paid off.

  The crisis meeting lasted about another hour or so. For O’Neil it was quite a success, because he had achieved all he wanted. For me, however, it was much less of a success. Because even an hour later I still had not gotten anything into my stomach. At some point I hadn’t even listened to what was discussed at all. This whole politics stuff was too boring for me. I had at least hoped that somebody would explain how things would go on now without dollars. Even the President’s speech had been clearer in this respect. So now I was working for O’Neil and I had no idea when or how I would ever be paid. I could not even demand money for today’s overtime. Because what was I supposed to do with the money? The whole world had suddenly been turned upside down. And apparently even those big fish here at the table did not know what to do next.

  When we were finished, I asked someone about the company canteen, hoping that I could get something to eat there. But I was out of luck. Boston Dynamics didn’t have a canteen at all. I was told that there weren’t enough human employees working at the plant to justify setting up a canteen. Actually, I should have expected nothing else from a robot company.

  Finally O’Neil and I got back in the car to drive home.

  Chapter 5

  New Detroit, 2111

  I burdensome climbed in the cab that was to take me home. If someone had told me sixty years ago that I would once use a carriage instead of a self-driving automobile, I would probably just have laughed in his face. Times had changed a lot. That’s how far we’d evolved and devolved back. And I was seriously worried that we wouldn’t even be able to maintain our current level of civilization. Outside the stockade wall and over in the ruins of Detroit, there were only savages. And without the protection of our militia, they would descend upon us like wild beasts. What had man become?

  For this reason I always tried to support the militia and their commander Colonel Lewis as much as I could. Unfortunately there was very little I could do to help them. The latest discovery the colonel’s men had made in the ruins had turned out to be the segments of the tracks of either a tank or a bulldozer. Lewis had believed that this was some kind of breastplate and wanted me to find out how it was worn. And when I tried to explain to him what a tracked vehicle was, he just stared at me with blank eyes. He only remembered vehicles with wheels and just couldn’t imagine how tracks would work and what the advantage was. Since all vehicles known to him were pulled by horses, the idea of a tracked vehicle was also rather counterintuitive.

  »Take me home,« I said to the driver.

  »Yes, Magister Dexter,« he said, spurring the horse on. The horse trotted off, and the carriage slowly moved away from the wooden barracks of the militia.

  The carriage rolled slowly down the street and then turned around the corner. Suddenly I heard someone behind us shouting, »Magister, Magister!« A girl in a long fur coat and a big school bag came waving behind us.

  »Wait a minute!« I told the driver. The vehicle came to a halt.

  The girl reached us and greeted me: »Hello, Magister Dexter!«

  I recognized her. It was little Evelyne from my class. She smiled at me all over her face and said, »Can I take a ride with you?«

  I growled: »Mmm... I’m just going home. Where are you going?«

  »I want to go home too,« she replied. »Take me as far as your house. I can walk the rest.«

  I thought about it. Perhaps it would be unwise for the girl to be seen in my carriage. I didn’t want to give the impression that I had any favorite students, who then received better marks. Evelyne was a good student anyway, but some would refuse to believe it, since she was new in class. Anyhow I couldn’t think of any good excuse to tell her. So I gave up and said, »All right, get in.«

  »Thank you, Mr. Magister,« said the girl enthusiastically and climbed on the bench next to me. She placed her heavy school bag on the seat next to her.

  »Let’s move on,« I told the driver of the cab. The carriage rolled off again, driven by the loud yells of the driver.

  The girl stared at me wordlessly for a while. Finally she said, »I wanted to thank you for punishing Michael at school today.«

  »Oh, it’s all right,« I said. I remembered the incident where I had given him a formal reprimand and sent him out of the classroom.

  »Michael is getting every day more brazen with me. I think he doesn’t like me for some reason.«

  »Yeah, I think I’ll just place him at another table,« I said. »Then the constant quarreling will come to an end.«

  »It’s not my fault,« she defended herself. »He always peeks in my exercise book.«

  I should have placed him at another table much earlier. For a while we sat next to each other in silence. Then the girl said: »Maybe I should wear longer dresses, too. The others don’t like me because of the way I dress.«

  »You won’t,« I said harshly. »You’ll stay as you are. And the others will get used to it, whether they like it or not. I will see to that.«

  She smiled at me like a co-conspirator. »Thank you, Mr. Magister! I will do as you say.«

  »Our civilization is falling further and further back into the Middle Ages. It’s time we draw a line. This far and no further! Where else will it all end?« I said more to myself than to her.

  »You know, we come from the South,« she explained. »It’s not as cold there as it is here. We wear less clothes there.«

  »Yes,« I said absent-mindedly as I looked at her.

  Her face... the resemblance was striking.

  »Why are you looking at me like this?« she asked and turned her gaze away, embarrassed.

  »Sorry,« I apologized. »It’s... I knew someone once. She looked just like you. She was a little older, of course, but otherwise...«

  »Really?« she asked
.

  The carriage continued to roll cumbersomely over the uneven road, swaying back and forth. I had to hold on to my cane so that it didn’t fall out.

  »Yes,« I said to the girl. »And the funniest thing is, her name was also the same as yours.«

  »What? Her name was Evelyne too?«

  »Yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it?« I said and looked her in the eyes.

  »Tell me about this other Evelyne,« she asked.

  Washington, D. C., 2051

  It was a narrow, poorly lit corridor leading from the main room of the Ishtar Temple club into the private area. Evelyne pulled me from the corridor into a small room. The room was only lit by a few candles and an oil lamp. In the middle was an oversized bed with numerous pillows. On one wall there was a huge mirror. On the opposite side was a table with two candles, the small figure of a naked woman in an erotic posture and a bronze bowl filled with sand and containing several incense sticks. The smell of incense filled the room.

  I had become a regular customer at the club. I had purchased a VIP membership card, which gave me a discount on all drinks and some other privileges such as the use of this room.

  Despite the crisis and the collapse of the currency, I personally did not feel bad. O’Neil got special allocation of food vouchers, since he was a senator. Because he had no family and didn’t need them himself, he gave them to me. And I traded them on the black market for gold jewelry, pesos or phone cards. Phone credit had almost become something like a second currency, but it only worked on the black market. I now had accounts in several currencies: UNASUR Pesos, Union State Rubles and USEAN Yuan. There were rumors that the government wanted to ban transactions in foreign currencies too, but O’Neil said that it was simply not possible for the government to do that at the moment. Also, too many members of Congress had their own money in foreign currency accounts. And O’Neil would certainly know that best. As long as I stuck with him, I would always be on the winning side.

  So now I had enough money to spend every night at the club. Today I had learned for the first time that the Ishtar Temple also had private rooms where customers could take a girl with them. I would have liked to invite Natasha to join me, but she had left the club some weeks ago and did not live in my apartment block anymore. Allegedly she had moved to the West Coast. Somehow the job as an exotic dancer hadn’t been her thing.

  So it was Evelyne who had led me into the small private room. She still wore her dancer’s outfit: a short skirt consisting only of shiny gold chains and a gold embroidered bikini. Her slender, dark-skinned body looked stunning in it. She moved around the room like a graceful cat. Then she sat down on the bed on all fours. I followed her. She sat up on the bed and looked into my eyes. There was something predatory about her eyes. She grabbed my shirt with both hands and pulled me towards her. Then she ripped it apart with one quick movement in front of her. Some torn off buttons were flung across the room. She pulled the upper part of the shirt halfway over my arms so that I could no longer move my upper arms freely. While she held me like a captive, she gave me a pretentious smile. I freed myself from her grip and pushed her back onto the bed. Then I took my shirt off.

  Evelyne also stripped her top off. Then she suddenly rose up from the bed, grabbed me by the shoulders with both hands and pushed me back onto the soft mattress. She sat on top of me, bent down and pressed her lips onto my mouth in a passionate kiss. Her right hand reached for my left nipple and squeezed it between her fingers. I wanted to cry out in pain, but her kiss closed my mouth.

  Finally she released me. She unbuckled my belt and pulled down my pants. I helped her to free me from the rest of my clothes. Then we kissed again. I put my tongue in her mouth, but then I felt her bite. I tried to pull my tongue back, but she held it between her teeth and increased the pressure. And this really hurt. When she finally let go of me again and stood up above me I could see her lips covered with blood. I touched my tongue. There was blood on my fingers. She smiled at me, dominant. This was going to be a little bit too rough for my taste. It was time for me to turn the tables. I pushed her off me and climbed on top of her. Since I was physically stronger, she could fight back any way she wanted. She couldn’t stop me from sitting on top of her now. With my left hand I held both her arms above her head. My right hand reached down to her panties. I ripped the fabric apart and then I penetrated her. She moaned. Her resistance eased. Then we made wild and passionate love.

  I had turned her on her stomach and took her from behind. She moaned uncontrollably and bit her own hand in the excitement as she lay under me. Finally we came together.

  I was covered in sweat and exhausted. I dropped on the bed next to her, exhausted. We lay still for a while. Then we looked each other in the eyes. There was something fascinating about the way she looked at me. Her eyes expressed strength and willpower, and there was something animalistic and dangerous about them. Evelyne was an unusual young woman.

  »Come, I want to show you something!« she finally said and stood up. She put on a kind of night-black kimono, whose length reached down to her legs.

  I touched the tip of my tongue. It had stopped bleeding, but still hurt. Then I gathered my clothes, too. But I only put on my pants. The shirt was torn. I looked at it and thought of a makeshift way to fix it.

  But Evelyne took it out of my hand and threw it on the bed. »Come!« she told me.

  She pulled me outside into the corridor. She led me by the hand to the end of the narrow hallway and opened a door. Behind it was a staircase leading down. So the building had a second basement, because we were already underground here. That seemed to me very unusual. It was a kind of spiral staircase. It was not lit, but I saw a weak light shining up from below. Evelyne went ahead. I followed her down. Where did she take me? Actually I trusted her, but her behavior and everything here was somehow unusual. All of a sudden I was not quite sure anymore. Unfortunately, I didn’t even have my weapon with me in case of trouble. I had to leave it with the doorman as usual. Carefully I walked down the dark stairs, although I could not see them at all and only guess where they were.

  We reached the lower basement. It was a low but large room with thick pillars that supported the ceiling and the floors above. The light came from a row of lamps in a similar style to the one above in the club. They looked like bronze bowls in which an artificial fire was blazing. They were lined up along the walls. The walls were covered with lengths of fabric. The club’s logo was embroidered on them, the eight-pointed star in a circle. Opposite the spiral staircase was an arched entrance to another room. But the opening was covered by heavy, dark curtains. Seven feet in front of it was a stone pedestal into which a kind of basin with water was embedded in the top.

  »What is this place? « I asked Evelyne and looked around in wonder. Something was very wrong here. The club above us suddenly seemed to be a cover for something else. I had a bad feeling. I felt naked without my gun.

  Evelyne went to the stone pedestal and dipped her hands in the pool. Then she ran her wet hands through her hair. She gestured me to come closer. Hesitantly, I walked towards the pedestal. I saw strange signs carved into the pedestal around the basin. It seemed to be writing, but not one that I knew. Nor did it bear any resemblance to any other foreign letters. I let my fingers slide over the indentations of the characters.

  »Cuneiform,« Evelyne explained succinctly. She dipped her hands back into the water. Then she formed a hollow with them, scooped out a handful of water and poured it over my head. She closed her eyes and said something that I didn’t understand. Then she took my hand and we stepped through the curtain into the room behind.

  It was about half the size of the first room. The back part was about two feet higher. Three steps extending over the entire length led up to this elevation. On it stood the life-size statue of a naked woman. Two oil lamps were burning to her left and right. They were the only light sources in the room. A pungent smell of incense filled everything. Here, too, the walls were covered with lengths o
f fabric bearing the club’s logo. On the left wall was a pedestal with a bronze bust of some strange man with a long, curly beard. I had never seen such a man before. In front of the left wall was a kind of fountain, not very big, at most five feet in diameter. Quietly, I could hear the water splashing.

  At the top of the raised floor at the back of the room, directly in front of the statue of the naked woman, sat something that looked like a life-size puppet in a black robe. The puppet had inclined its head forward. Long black hair fell down its face and across its chest. It was sitting in a kind of yoga position or something like that. Later I learned that it was the so-called lotus position. The figure’s hands rested on its knees.

  Evelyne walked towards the puppet. I followed her. She stopped about seven feet before the beginning of the steps. Then she crossed her arms in front of her chest and said something I didn’t understand. She bowed her head.

  Suddenly the puppet came to life. It raised its head. I saw that it was a living woman. She was emaciated with an ascetic face, her cheeks sunken, her age impossible to guess. She might have been over sixty, but somehow could also have been at least twenty years younger. Modern medicine, plastic surgery and cosmetics could produce amazing results. I now saw that the black robe was transparent at least at the front and her naked body could be seen underneath. I was irritated, because although she was an older woman, she had an unusual erotic charisma. Her body was trained and firm like that of a ballet dancer. And that was exactly the image that suddenly formed in my mind, an aged Russian ballet dancer, whose former beauty had still not quite faded. She opened her eyes and stared at me, that a cold shiver was running down my back.

  »This is Sarenna, the owner of the Ishtar Temple,« Evelyne introduced me to the woman. »Sarenna, this is the man I told you about.«

  The woman still looked at me without a word. If this was the owner of the strip club, she was obviously quite eccentric. I wanted to know what was going on here. »What... what is all this?« I asked and gestured at the surroundings.