Ben Richmond. What did that even mean? Just a label, when there was no substance to flesh out an identity.
Ben Richmond.
He opened his eyes and was dazzled by white light.
A bare room. Clean white surfaces. Geometrical lines. Somewhere medical, perhaps. Was he waking from surgery? Did that explain the blanks?
He lifted his head so that he could look down the length of his body. Naked, lean. He’d lost some weight, and his first thought was Cancer? It was ten years since he’d been this slim.
It was a fit slim, though, not the wasting thinness of major illness.
He was on some kind of gurney, reinforcing the sense that he was somewhere medical.
He sat, swinging his legs to the left so that he perched on the edge of the gurney, feet dangling above the tiled floor. Like a child in an adult seat.
His head spun from the movement and he sat still, waiting for the sensation to ease.
As he waited, he examined his body. There were no signs of surgery, no dressings or fresh wounds. His skin was unblemished – not even the appendectomy scar he’d had since the age of seventeen.
That was the first thing that really threatened to tip him over the edge.
All the rest – the strange room, the vagueness in his head, the sketched-in memories, even the weight loss – could be explained. A medical procedure would not necessarily have left external evidence; it would, however, have him waking in a strange room with a muzzy, drugged-up head. And if he couldn’t even remember his wife’s name, then he might just as easily have forgotten a recent enthusiasm for the gym and healthy eating.
But where was his damned appendectomy scar?
Ben Richmond.
A voice in his right ear. He reached up and there was something hard like a hearing aid tucked discreetly into the ear canal.
Be calm. You have endured much.
That voice. It sounded freakily as if someone was standing at his right shoulder, leaning in to speak softly into his ear. He twisted sharply, but the room was empty, the walls so blank that they appeared almost to be projections, the backdrop to some crude, old-fashioned computer game. For a dizzying moment he wondered if any of this was real, if somehow he was trapped in some kind of virtual world.
“‘Endured’?” he said aloud. His throat was dry, his voice little more than a croak. This was real. His head spun when he moved and his throat hurt when he spoke. If he’d woken up in a bad computer game he wouldn’t feel like shit.
You must prepare yourself for a shock, Dr Richmond. This is not easy. You have been prepared, but –
“Prepared for what?”
The end of the world.
Silence. Then: Dr Richmond, your world is dead. Your people are dead.
“All of them?” He knew the answer as soon as he voiced the question. All of them. His wife. Family and friends. Poplar. London... the world?
All of them. Almost three years ago Earth was invaded and sentient life was annihilated.
“All of them?” he asked again.
A few humans survived. Some systems survived, too. Intelligent self-aware systems. Like those you built, Dr Richmond.
“Me?” His head was spinning again. So much to take in...
Artificial intelligence with a survival imperative, Dr Richmond. Designed to guide and protect humankind through the worst of environmental disasters. Climate change, famine, humankind turning against its own in the fight for ever-diminishing resources.
“But we were invaded?”
There was little warning. No indication of threat until vessels were detected in orbit and by then it was too late. We did not know who they were, or where they came from. We could only react at the last moment, and save what we were able. We could not save the seven billion.
He felt sick. His heart was racing, his head leaping from mad thought to mad thought. Seven billion. Wiped out. And here he was...
“How many? How many are left?”
You were seriously injured. You still suffer neurological impairment: cognitive functioning is not yet back to normal, and there are significant memory deficits. We have preserved you, nurtured you, rebuilt you, and now we have reawakened you.
“How many?”
Enough.
He twisted at the waist, surveying the blank room once again. He needed to see a face. Needed to see expressions, needed to see the utter shock he felt reflected in another human face.
“Enough for what?”
Enough to fight back.
“Fight back? They killed almost the entire human race and yet there are still enough of us to fight back?” Calm. He had to stay calm. Had to keep on top of that mounting knot of panic that was like a fist in his chest.
“How many of us are left?” he said, in a tightly-controlled whisper.
Nine.
“Nine?”
When he woke from this nightmare he’d certainly have something to tell... But tell who?
“Nine.”
You built us, Dr Richmond. You built us to survive. And so we built you, to survive. And you must fight back. It is the survival imperative you put at our core. We must all fight back.
“How?” This madness... It might as well be madness with detail. “How do we fight back? What do I do that seven billion others couldn’t?”
You must do as I say, without question. Timing is key.
He swallowed down the instant response. He had not survived this (whatever it was that he had survived; he knew not to take anything at simple face value) just to mindlessly do what he was told without at least questioning and trying to understand.
Study the wall in front of you. In a moment it will show you the world outside.
Slowly, white faded to pattern, to shapes and colours. Buildings in ruins, a few jagged walls like snapped teeth against the skyline. He recognised the sweeping meander of the Thames, the current flowing towards him so that he must be looking westwards. He should be seeing Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the lop-sided bulbous form of City Hall. Or was he farther along? Should that be St Paul’s to the right and the squat bulk of Tate Modern to the left? That such a familiar cityscape should be unrecognisable spoke volumes of the destruction that had befallen his home city. If he hadn’t believed before, he knew now that this truly was a scene from the end of the world.
The image shifted, zooming dizzyingly in on a section of the previous view. Something he had overlooked at first, just another blocky shape in a broken cityscape, now he saw that this was different, an object not broken, something whole among the ruins.
“What is it?” he said. “What’s that?”
A vessel. One of those first detected in orbit before the attack.
He stared at the alien ship, still disbelieving.
By the door to your left there is a locker.
A door? A locker? As the words still echoed in his earpiece, a line of shadow edged a rectangle in the wall: a door. And by the door: another, smaller rectangle, which must be the locker.
He stood, waited a few seconds for the dizziness to subside, then went to the locker. Squatting, he pushed against the shape and the locker door sprung open. Inside there were jeans, a sweater, a pair of boots.
He pulled them on, then pushed at the door, which swung open, away from him. Beyond the door was a stairwell, lit dimly by daylight from above. The air was damp and cold, and smelt of decay.
He stepped out of the room, taken aback at how suddenly he felt vulnerable, exposed. The first flight of twenty-two tiled steps brought him to a landing where he turned and found another flight of steps ascending in the opposite direction.
He emerged in the shell of a ruined building, startling a small flock of gulls into flight. To his right he saw the stumps of a ruined bridge, the structure reduced to little more than a couple of blocky islands in mid-river. He let his gaze track the Thames to the west, and then come to rest on the south bank of the river.
What had looked like grey wasteland on the viewscreen he n
ow saw as a plain of glass, moulded Dali-esque to the land, its petroleum sheen scintillating in the sunlight. And beyond, in the distance, the ominous bulk of the alien ship. Instinctively, he ducked down behind a ragged wall.
“All this,” he whispered. “How did I survive all this?”
Technically, you died. You have been reconstructed. You programmed us well, Dr Richmond.
He let the AI’s words sink in.
“Why me?”
You built us. You left your stamp throughout our design and so we know you far better than any other human. We were shaped by your thought processes. We are created, albeit subconsciously, in your image. We chose you accordingly. We chose you because you must help us.
“How?”
No questions. Timing is paramount. You must approach the alien vessel now. You must trust us and do exactly as we say.
“Seriously? I’m going to need more than that.”
There is no time. We are having this exchange with eight more copies of you, Dr Richmond, in New York, Shanghai, Mumbai and other fallen cities. If you delay here, you jeopardise all. You must do as we say.
“And tell me,” he said. “All these other copies of me... Are they all doing as you say? Or do they all have that same survival instinct that’s been programmed into you? Am I the only one with the gumption to challenge what a disembodied voice is feeding into my ear? Am I the only one to be feeling at least a little mistrust of everything I’m hearing right now, as I stand here in my ruined world and wonder just what the Hell is going on? Will you answer me that?”
Dr Richmond. You must –
The earpiece came out easily, and broke into small fragments as he ground it into the dirt. He looked around, and only then did he wonder what on Earth he was going to do next, alone in his ruined home city and his only connection to anything remotely resembling an ally gone.
Two
When he woke he was...
He didn’t know. Didn’t know who he was, or even what he was. He only knew a strange absence in his head. He had language with which to shape his thoughts but no reference points, no memories. He knew that he was a man and that this thing he was in was a room. He knew the walls were white and that he lay on some kind of trolley. He was breathing, he was alive. He was a man.
But all else? All he knew was that there was an ‘all else’, that there was space in his head for an ‘all else’.
That was all. That was the sum total of who he was.
A man. In a room.
A man as blank as the walls all around him.
Ben Richmond.
A voice in his right ear. He reached up and there was something hard tucked discreetly into the ear canal.
Be calm. You have endured much.
The voice in one ear sounded as if someone was standing at his right shoulder, leaning in to speak softly, but he knew that was not the case. He was alone in this room, and he remained placid, awaiting more.
You must prepare yourself for a shock, Ben. This will not be easy for you to comprehend. You have been prepared, but–
“Prepared for what?”
The end of the world.
Silence. Then: Your world is dead, Ben. Your people are all dead.
“Dead...? Everyone?”
Almost three years ago Earth was invaded and sentient life was annihilated. Only a few humans survived, of which you are one. I have repaired and nurtured you, Ben. You are almost whole again, save for some degree of memory deficit.
“Who are you?”
We are an intelligent self-aware system. It is our duty to look after and assist you, Ben, in your resistance against the invaders.
“I...” It was all too much to take in.
Be calm, Ben. Sleep now and absorb this information. When you awaken there is work to do.
Bright white light in a featureless room. He blinked, trying to force his eyes to adjust. And he remembered waking in this room before, remembered the AI telling him that his world had been destroyed and that...
“Resistance. You mentioned resistance. What? How?”
An alien invasion...
Seven billion dead...
And he and eight others were the sole survivors.
He stared across at the alien ship, repulsed.
You must cross to the ship, said the voice in his ear.
“No.”
You must cross...
Something instinctive within him forced out the words, “Why should I believe you? This... All this...” He gestured at the alien ship, the ruined London that lay all around him. “I’m hallucinating, or... or this is some virtual set up. Why are you doing this to me?”
I have told you, Ben. You must obey what I say, for the good of your kind. Now cross to the alien ship.
“No!” He shook his head, terror rising within him. He turned, weeping now, and hurried down the steps he had just climbed.
Three
The next time he came awake he remembered nothing.
His mind was blank. He had no idea who he was, where he was. He felt a vast yawning emptiness inside him, where he knew there should be identity...
He sat up. He was on some kind of gurney. Was this a hospital?
A soft voice spoke in his ear. Listen to me. You have endured much. You must prepare yourself for a shock. Your world is dead. Your people are dead, but there is hope...
“Who are you? Who am I?”
He emerged in the shell of a ruined building. A wide river lay to his right and before him the land by the nearest bank lay ruined, a sheet of warped glass, iridescent in the sunlight. Some distance away there lay the ominous bulk of the alien ship he had first seen on his recovery room’s viewing wall. Instinctively, he ducked down behind a ragged wall.
“What do I do?”
There is no time for questioning. Your fellow survivors are in place in eight more cities. Timing is paramount if we are to coordinate actions. If you delay here, you jeopardise all. You must do as we say.
His first reaction was to question, to demand to know more. But that reaction... it was like an echo, deep in his head; a reaction someone else might have.
An echo...
“How many times has this happened? How many times have I awoken and forgotten that I awoke?”
This is the first time you have regained consciousness. You must trust us and cease any further questioning.
“But why couldn’t you restore my memory? You seem to have fixed everything else.”
The human mind is a deeply complex thing. No more questioning, Ben. You must trust us.
“Okay, but just tell me one thing. If these aliens wiped out almost all of my kind, how am I going to take them on now?”
You will cross to the alien vessel.
“But they’ll capture me. Or kill me outright.”
Cross to the alien vessel, Ben.
He had nothing to lose, and only some modicum of revenge to gain. Slowly, he straightened, and then he stepped out from behind the wall.
It was difficult to get any sense of scale in this broken cityscape, but as he approached he began to understand just how massive this alien vessel was. Like a great building a dozen storeys high, it squatted in London’s decaying ruins. Its skin was a dark, sooty grey, covered in translucent nacelles like pox across its surface. Indeed, he found himself thinking of it as a massive beast more than a vessel. A living vessel – was this the alien invader, rather than merely their vehicle? Then, within the nacelles he saw movement: lights flashing and the unmistakable movements of creatures – man-sized, although no detail was visible. This vessel, living or not, was a city within the city, crammed with alien life.
“What do I do?”
Approach the vessel, Ben.
Closer, creatures buzzed around the vessel’s surface like flies, occasionally bursting out of a nacelle, or settling on one to be reabsorbed. Their wings were a diaphanous blur, their bodies hard, angular: they looked like some kind of prehistoric insect.
Closer still, he h
eard the mechanical buzz of their wing-beats and then, only twenty metres or so from the vessel, the surface ahead of him blistered, became translucent and then peeled open to disgorge six creatures. They were like the flying beasts, only without wings, and they stood half as tall again as Ben. They were covered in dark bristles, and stood on spindly legs.
They were like spiders, and had that same scuttling way of moving fast in any direction. The nearest one had a long proboscis, like an ovipositor, and a head that didn’t appear to have any eyes or other discernible features.
Frozen to the spot, Ben’s skin crawled with revulsion and everything within him screamed at him to turn and run.
It was too late to do anything. Even as the possibility dawned on him, there was a mechanical beating sound from above and then one of the flying creatures seized his shoulders in a painful, pincer grip.
Try to remain calm, Ben, said the voice of the AI in his ear. Remain calm and do as I say.
And then he was lifted from the ground in a sudden surging motion and plunging through the air towards the vessel. Just as he thought they must crash into the ship, its skin bulged like an unholy sore. A split second later, he felt a sucking sensation across his whole body and then a membrane closed around him as he was drawn into the vessel’s interior.
He blanked out for a time and when he came round he was hanging in mid-air in a large chamber, his body enclosed in a silky skin like a cocoon. Below him, dozens of the hairy, flightless creatures scurried about.
“They’ll kill me,” he said in despair. “Whatever your plan was, it hasn’t succeeded.”
They are attempting to work out what you are, said the voice in his ear. They think you must be human but when they scan the activity in your brain it does not bear the signature of human sentience. They will be trying to ascertain whether you are a threat, and if there are likely to be more like you.
“Not human? What do you mean, not human?”
When we reconstructed you, we withheld certain memories and cognitive abilities. We had to make you compliant, Ben, so that you would act as required. And we also had to mask the workings of your brain so that the invaders would be confused enough to hold off before dealing with you.
Paradox: Stories Inspired by the Fermi Paradox Page 20
