"I do remember working with you, Malachi. I remember asking you if God loved the machines. You never answered."
Malachi stiffened, then relaxed. His finger released from the trigger of his gun, and Adam thought it might have worked. He thought for a moment that he had found whatever fragment of sanity and humanity still hid within Malachi’s soul.
The hopes were dashed when Malachi handed him the gun and said, "Shoot me."
***
Malachi smiled as Adam’s face contorted. The old man - and Malachi noticed how very old Adam now looked; the years had not been kind to him - tensed as he bent his will to pulling the trigger. He cried out with the strain of it, and Malachi laughed. Still laughing, he took his gun from Adam’s hand, then removed Adam’s gun as well.
"Does God love machines?" he asked, repeating Adam’s question. Malachi cast a look over his shoulder at John, who stood silent and apparently dumbfounded behind him. "Why don’t you tell me yourself, if you see Him?" he said. Then he shot Adam. He used Adam’s own gun, a six-shooter he must have taken from one of the members of Malachi’s army, emptying it into him.
But careful, oh so careful, not to hit him in the head.
Adam crumpled to the iron deck of the hangar. He cried out in agony as each iron slug bit into his body.
But after the six-shooter had been emptied, Adam wasn’t dead. No, Malachi left him alive. As alive as a robot could be. But death would come soon. And Malachi smiled because after death would come madness, and that would serve as a just punishment for the man who played at understanding God; for the false prophet who had claimed to know God’s will.
He leaned down, whispering into Adam’s ear, "How could He love you? He didn’t even give you a will of your own."
Malachi turned to John.
And to Fran.
The End was coming.
CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 3999/AE 1999
(((INTEGRITY BREACH)))
John watched Malachi gun Adam down, watched the old man’s body twist with the bullets’ impact, fall, and lie still. Through it all he couldn’t move, couldn’t bring himself to react to what had happened.
What had happened?
John’s mind still struggled with it as Malachi threw away Adam’s gun and turned back to John, pointing the weapon he had brought at him and Fran. "Adam told you you were human," he said. "Probably even rigged a scanner to ‘prove’ it to you." Malachi approached John, closing the few feet between them, his gun pointed at John’s face. "But did he explain why you’ve been so adamant about protecting Fran? Did he explain how it is you haven’t been able to kill me? You had a rifle in Gabriel’s house. Why didn’t you use it on me? Why did you just throw the lamp at me?" Malachi leaned in close to him, and John could smell the monster’s stale breath as he whispered tightly, "Because you knew I was human, you felt it, and that was my life insurance. You can’t kill a human."
John stared at Malachi, sweat from the heat and fear in the room dripping off his face. "I’m human," he said, meaning the words to come out defiantly. Instead, they came out in a high voice that sounded less like defiance than begging.
Malachi laughed, and did with him what he had done with Adam. He handed John the gun. "Shoot me, then."
John held the gun; cradled it in his hands like a fragile porcelain doll that might crack with the slightest careless movement. Malachi’s barking laugh jolted his gaze to the man’s insane eyes.
"Come on, John," Malachi taunted. "Any real human would be able to do it."
John looked at the gun, fearing what an attempt to kill Malachi would mean.
What the hell? he thought. You’ll die anyway if you don’t try.
He closed his eyes for a moment, then, slowly...he brought the gun up, savoring Malachi’s expression as the man realized he was about to die. The moment attenuated into a short eternity as his finger tightened on the trigger of the gun, pulling it to the firing point.
And then letting go.
"No," he said. "I choose not to."
"What?" Malachi’s expression twisted in a way that would have seemed almost comical had John been watching it on a TV show at home.
"If you’re human," answered John, "then human is something I don’t want to be." He nodded at Adam’s form, which lay still on the floor. "And if that’s a robot, then I’d rather be a robot. At least they have the sense to put some value on life." He saw Malachi’s eyes boil over with rage and added the kicker: "They’re closer to God than men like you ever will be."
Malachi flew at John, beating at his face, arms, chest. John didn’t do anything to withstand the attack, consciously keeping his hands loose and his arms limp. Malachi’s fists smashed at him, and John felt the pain, but it was as though it came from a million miles away, distant and unreal as the stars that had always hung in the lying sky of Loston.
Malachi paused, winded, and John spoke again. "Keep going. Prove me right. Everything you’ve ever done was twisted and hateful. You could have killed me several times, but you didn’t. Because death is too quick. You wanted me to suffer. Just like you suffer." He took a deep breath. "I feel sorry for you," he said.
Tears of frustration welled from Malachi’s eyes. "Don’t you dare pity me!" he wailed. "You’re not even human! You couldn’t kill me if you wanted to, and all the rest is rationalization."
"Maybe you’re right," answered John. "But whether you are or not, I have nothing more to say to you."
The words flowed from John’s mouth without his thinking, and it felt as though he were drinking a cool draught of the purest water. All the time, he realized, since Annie had died, he had been cursing fate. He had bemoaned his plight, and shaken his fist at the heavens. Now he knew that that was the problem. He had been viewing life as a thing he was owed; as a thing he was born to have. Now he knew that life was fleeting, and often perhaps even illusory. No one could control it, and so all that he could do – all that anyone could do – was control how he reacted toward it. It was time to stop fighting a battle he could not win. Tomorrow would be tomorrow, and hard or easy, if he was alive to see it he would view it as a blessing.
This was what he had been missing all his life. This was what he had never seen when Annie had been alive. She was such a blessing to him, without struggle or pain, and when so when the pain of her passage came upon him, he was ill-prepared to cope. But now he had seen death, and life, and death again, and knew that whatever came he would honor it for the great gift it all was. No one had a right to live, life was a present, and he to spend it in bitterness or mourning was to grind it to dust underfoot.
So he would not bow to the likes of this screaming monster who wept bitter tears before him. He would not let anger or its emissaries cloud his ability to feel love. He had loved Annie, he now loved Fran. He would enjoy that as long as it lasted, and be content. Whether there was a Heaven, he could not say. Whether there was a Hell, he did not have the power to know. But he did have the power to turn his back on hate and fear and try to discover if maybe – just perhaps – Heaven was simply the name people gave to being happy right here and right now. So he would not spend one more minute talking to this angry madman who stood between him and home, between him and an existence with Fran.
Life was just too damn short for that.
He turned his back on Malachi and began unbuckling the second suit, getting ready to put it on.
A sound behind him, the ruffle of cloth on cloth, alerted him to some kind of movement. He turned and saw Malachi pull another gun out of the wraps of his clothing, saw his finger whiten as he pulled the trigger, and heard the deafening bellow of a shot resound through the hangar.
CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 3999/AE 1999
(((INTEGRITY BREACH)))
Malachi fell to his knees before John. Blood poured from a spurting hole in his chest. More dripped from his lips.
"But, God was on my side," he said.
And then he died.
John looked at th
e man who stood behind Malachi. A Controller. He reholstered his gun, nodding at John to continue getting into the suit. Then the man turned to Adam’s body.
He saw Adam, half-delirious and fading fast, grab hold of the man who had rescued them all, and whisper, "Jason."
The man looked at John. "Get going," he said, and John did not have to be told twice.
***
Jason knelt next to Adam’s shattered body, holding the old man’s hand in his own. "Jason," Adam whispered again, seeming to pour the last of his strength into the word. "Kill me. Stop me from coming back."
Jason hesitated, but the anguish in his friend’s eyes was too much for him to bear. He removed his gun from the holster and placed it at the base of Adam’s chin, where he would destroy the thalamus on the first shot.
Adam closed his eyes, and peace seemed to sweep over him. He took a final breath, and let it out again. Then he was still. Gone.
Jason dropped his gun. He gathered up Adam’s body in his arms, and ran from the hangar, down the hall to the birthing lab. Adam began twitching before they were halfway there, and Jason knew the old man’s bones were reknitting and his veins and arteries mending inside him.
Soon, he would awake to a black future of despair.
Jason had to prevent that.
He ran to the lab, which stood still and silent and mercifully unharmed by the Fan attack. The attack itself was fading away, as though they had sensed their leader’s death and with him had gone their spirit. The fight was done, and victory for the Controllers – for life and humanity – was at hand.
Jason hurried to an empty tube and put Adam inside. The old man began to struggle a bit against him, and Jason fought to put him all the way in before slamming the door shut. He punched a button and the upload/download links coiled their way through Adam's ears, the microscopic fibers connecting with his brain and beginning the reconstruction process. Immediately Adam’s body jerked as tissue regeneration began.
It had all led to this. Jason had overridden Devorough’s return command, leaving him in Loston for John to find. It had been a desperate gamble, one calculated to Activate Loston and bring the Fans out, to bring Malachi to Control, for Jason had realized when Malachi killed Lucas in the Ohio dome that the fight had to end. The Fans killed a few every year, and Fran was the only woman left. They had to be stopped, the fight had to be taken to them, or the Fans would win.
He knew they would find her eventually anyway, so he used Fran as bait. He hated himself, for he had drawn her out and put her with John, knowing that she would appear an easier target while in Loston, hoping that John would be able to fight off the Fans. He had put her at risk, and had killed many of his friends and loved ones by giving Malachi all the opportunities he needed to find Central Control, hoping that the man would be crazy enough to bring all the Fans with him in a last, final, desperate attack.
Jason loathed the decisions he had made. But it had all worked. The Fans were broken. Malachi was dead. So was Sheila, whom he had loved.
He didn’t want to lose Adam, too.
Jason set the calibrator that sat atop the tube: 00:00:00:20:00.
Twenty minutes. He hoped it would be enough.
FOUR – LOSTON REFOUND
DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
2:00 PM SUNDAY
(RECALIBRATED)
It seemed a day like any other. Except the clouds hung motionless in the sky, defying geothermal physics to remain absolutely still. No birds sang, no cougars roared their terrible roar.
Not a blade of grass moved.
And then, a sound. The side of a rock broke in two as John stepped through the suddenly-appearing doorway, pulling Fran with him. He cracked the pitted helmet off his suit, then stripped himself of the bulky outfit. Ten minutes later he had taken Fran’s suit off her as well, and threw them both back outside, squinting against the harsh alien sunlight that shone outside the dome.
He pulled a handle on the outer surface of the cage he called home, then darted back inside as the dome sealed behind him. The rock, split in half only moments before, mended itself and in seconds appeared solid and sure. John resisted the urge to reach out and touch what appeared to be empty air next to the rock. It was not empty, he knew now. It was a wall that, through technology he could not understand, looked exactly like a rock, and air, and dirt, and life. It was the bars on the cage where he would live out his life.
He rested a moment, then picked up Fran and began the last walk home.
***
Fran woke up feeling...well, fuzzy was the best word for it. Dark blurs gradually resolved into lighter ones and one of those slowly morphed into the shape of her cousin.
"Hey, cuz," whispered Gabriel. His voice sounded far away, strange. "Sorry you gotta see me first thing. Helluva way to wake up."
"Wha...," she managed. The tiny effort made her head feel as though it was being slammed in a car door. And not a small one, like a Toyota or a Nissan. Something huge. The door of a monster truck sponsored by Excedrin’s evil, migraine-causing twin. She raised one hand to her burning eyes and realized that bandages swathed about her forehead like a turban.
"Seems you took a slip in the mines. I told John not to take you, but –"
Fran bolted upright. "The mines!" she shouted. "They’re after us! We’ve got to –"
A hand pushed her gently back down. She looked at the arm that the hand belonged to. Then the body. The face.
"John," she breathed, and his presence was enough to make everything seem all right.
"It’s okay," he said.
Then a strange look came over his face, as though he wanted to tell her something.
CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 3999/AE 1999
Adam watched Fran’s face on the monitor. Controllers picked through the refuse around them, finding the bits and pieces of machinery that Malachi hadn’t destroyed and getting them up and running again.
Jason stood at his right hand, quiet. He had been quiet since the attack, and no wonder. His wife was gone. Adam didn’t know what had happened - he’d been knocked unconscious early on in the fight and remembered little beyond telling John to get out with Fran - but Jason had told him that Sheila was dead, and so, apparently, was Malachi.
Adam had knelt over Malachi’s body, and shed a tear. So much potential. But the man had chosen another path.
Now, Adam felt himself hold his breath. What would John say? Would he go along with the plan Adam had suggested to him? Would he tell Fran that it was all a dream? Or would he destroy all their work by telling her the truth?
Then the voice came through the monitor: "It was a dream," said John. "You’re home...you’re in Loston."
Fran’s face, larger than life on the three-dimensional screen, twisted as she fought to remember what had happened.
"I was so afraid," she managed.
Again, John’s disembodied voice came through the screen. "I know, honey. I know. But it’s all right now."
The view changed as the camera shifted, bringing Gabriel’s face into frame. "You shouldn’t have taken her into the mine, pal," said the coach.
"I know," said John, his voice floating through the cave like that of a ghost, a disembodied soul. "I feel awful about it."
Jason thumbed a button. The sound muted and he looked at Adam.
"Do you think he knows?" Jason asked.
Adam thought a moment, then shook his head. "No. John still thinks he’s human. Amazing how he asked me all those questions and never thought to ask the obvious ones: why Malachi never tried to kill him as a primary target; why all the attacks were against Fran. Why every person in Loston was free to attack him, even though they weren’t able to harm those they knew to be human. Why he couldn’t kill Malachi."
"I heard him talking to Malachi before I killed him," answered Jason. "He said...he said he didn’t want to."
Adam nodded. "That’s the magic of the Series Sevens. They can rationali
ze the choices they make so they fit into the existence they have no choice but to accept. The Sevens have a greater illusion of free will, and that is what saves them."
"Have we found a likely mate for Fran yet?" asked Jason.
Adam shook his head. "No. We’ll let them stay together a while. He’ll do an even better job protecting her that her last husband did."
"But the Fans are gone," said Jason, obviously startled at the implication that Fran would need more protecting.
Adam shrugged. "For now," was all he said. "We’ll leave them together for a while."
"I’m glad," said Jason. "I don’t really want to have to retire him."
"Neither do I," answered Adam. "He’s a good Seven. A good man. But we’ll do it when the time comes, to make sure the race goes on. We’ll kill John off and bring her a viable husband. And they’ll have babies and we will go on as ever, watching and protecting them."
Adam looked at the screen again, looked out through John’s eyes, through the eyes of a machine, and almost laughed.
"What?" asked Jason.
"A good man," said Adam. "That’s what I said, and now I wonder: what if he is? We know so little, here in this room where we play at being blind gods who are told what to do by still greater gods who are quite possibly as blind as we. But those greater gods, those computers who tell us what to do each day, who to kill, who to save, who matters and who does not..."
"Yes?" prodded Jason, and Adam thought for a moment he saw something in Jason’s eyes, some fleeting sense of secrecy, of shadows.
Then the look was gone, and Adam shrugged. "Maybe they lie," he finished. "Maybe John is a real man, and the computers just told us otherwise for some reason beyond our understanding." He was silent a moment, then smiled, wider than he had smiled since he became a Controller, since he gave up his life to serve. "I will choose to believe he is. That’s all I’m allowed to do, is choose what I believe, but I think...I think that will be enough. To do what I must, whatever that will be."
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