Machine Learning

by Hugh Howey

  “Yeah,” he says. “All the time. This is a bonus mission. You barely have enough time to get here and then to the next objective. But . . . when I come here, the place is already leveled. All this stuff is scattered everywhere. You enter through a gaping hole in that wall.”

  I know what he’s describing. I’ve gotten here late, when people die or I do something wrong, and when I turn the corner at the end of the long road, a drone comes out of nowhere and blows the place up with a rocket. You can just barely see the boy standing on the sidewalk—a little gray smear—when the orange flash erupts.

  Standing in front of Hakim, I run through a series of dialogue options until I can ask to use his bathroom. He hands me what I guess are the keys—the game never says. When I go to the side door that leads out the back of the shop, it now opens. Out here is the game within a game. My little solace. A walled-off courtyard with five raised planters. And inside each one, a mix of flowers and vegetables. My flowers. My vegetables.

  Living in the city in the real world, Jamie and I don’t have room for a garden. But after hours of running around in this game, figuring out how to control my character, just trying not to die over and over, looking for something to do while feeling trapped at home with April every day, I stumbled onto this place. Really, I was guided here. Any other way you go, people die. If people don’t die, you end up here. It’s that simple.

  “This is wild,” Jamie says, his voice subdued.

  “You should have seen it when I first got here,” I tell him. “It was all weeds and brown dirt. You have to buy flowers and vegetables out front and plant them in here. And if you don’t keep them watered, they’ll go away.”

  I select the first canteen and use it in front of the nearest planter. It makes a gurgling noise, and the flowers straighten a little. They seem to brighten. Jamie is dumbfounded, and I see the garden through his eyes, with all that color coming at once, rather than gradually, as I’ve watched it unfold. All of the city is white crumbling walls, brown dirt, and the black char of fire and explosion. The only color to be found is the foul splattering of red around the bodies when something goes horribly wrong. Here, all the colors dance together. They sway in the breeze, a kaleidoscope of hues.

  “It’s crazy they would even put this in here,” Jamie says. “Maybe to make the Predator strike more meaningful, or something?”

  I water the second planter. And then the third, which is full of peppers and beans.

  “And the plants go away if you don’t water them?” Jamie asks.

  “They wilt,” I say.

  “But how does it remember? How do you save the game without getting to the exfil point?”

  “What’s the exfil point?” The word sounds familiar. I recall the loud sergeant yelling something about that once.

  “It’s where you get extracted. After the air strikes. If you die before you get there, you have to start over. And if the time runs out, the level just ends and you have to start over.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s what happens.” I water the last planter, then take out the rifle and use the knife to dig out weeds. The knife on the end of the barrel is also used to make furrows during the planting. “At some point, while I’m here in the garden, the game just ends. But I never play for more than an hour anyway.”

  “But it remembers what you did,” Jamie says, almost to himself.

  “I guess.”

  When I’m done with the weeding, I step back to admire the garden. I could pick the tomatoes now and sell them to Hakim, but if they go another day or two, I’ll get more for them. It’s so hard to wait. And just looking at them makes me want to go to the kitchen and slice the ones from the market and make a sandwich.

  “So this is all you do?” Jamie asks. He laughs to himself. “You play this game to grow flowers?”

  “Not just that,” I say. “I also scrubbed all the graffiti off the walls in here.” I turn the character around to show him. “And I picked up all the trash and took the loose rubble that was in that corner and hauled it through the shop and to another alley.”

  “You cleaned graffiti,” Jamie mumbles, like he doesn’t believe me.

  “Yeah. Every wall was covered. It comes back now and then. There’s just this one spot where it won’t come off.”

  I go to show him, when there’s a low grumble in the game. I would have thought it was his stomach or April messing her diaper if I hadn’t heard it a hundred times.

  “It always thunders,” I say, “but it never rains.”

  “That’s not thunder,” Jamie tells me. “It’s the air strikes across town. You’re so far out of position—”

  He stops as I find the place on the wall with the black paint and try scrubbing it away. My character makes the right animation, rubbing a rag over the spot, but the marks remain.

  “What is that?” Jamie asks. He cradles April and leans forward, studying the TV.

  “It’s the only spot I can’t get clean,” I say. “There were other markings over the top of this. Everywhere, really. Once you get the flowers and vegetables up and sell enough to Hakim, he gives you a bucket and a rag and asks you to clean up back here. If you do, you get squash seeds and beans. But these marks won’t go away. I keep wondering what might happen if I get all the walls perfectly clean—”

  “Those are numbers,” Jamie says.

  I make my character stop scrubbing. The marks look like Chinese to me. Little clusters of hashes.

  “You read Arabic?” I ask, even though I know—like I know where every misplaced thing of his is at any moment—that my husband does not understand an ounce of Arabic.

  “No, it’s Vollis. An alien language. After the eighth mission, the Vollis invade and you start using their plasma guns and sonic grenades to really kick some ass—”

  I shoot him a look and make sure April is still asleep. He mouths his apology for cursing around her.

  “Anyway,” he whispers, “your ammo with those weapons counts down in their language. Those marks spin like a clock. It’s easy to read. Do they ever change? Can you step back so we can see them all?”

  I make the character step back. “I don’t think they change,” I tell him.

  “What are they doing on this level? The Vollis don’t invade until you get to Kabul.”

  “Why are there aliens in this game?” I ask. Though I seem to recall seeing him fight aliens and zombies with his friends. I just assumed it was some other game.

  “It’s ten digits,” he says. “Do you think that’s a phone number? Maybe it’s a phone number.”

  I laugh. Jamie thinks every series of numbers in his games might be a secret number to call to unlock another level or an extra life or something. One of the friends he plays with is a guy named Marv that he called randomly, and when he explained why he called, it turned out Marv was a gamer. Now he’s another friend Jamie talks about like he’s known him since high school but has never actually met in the flesh.

  “The first three numbers are three, one, seven,” Jamie says. “That sounds like an area code. I’m calling it.”

  I try to talk sense into him, but Jamie passes me April. I do everything I can to keep her from waking while Jamie digs out his cell phone and moves closer to the screen, dialing the number.

  He listens to it ring. And then, without warning, he hands it over to me.

  “Here,” he says. “You found this place. You have to talk to them.”

  “I don’t want to talk to some random person,” I say. I cradle April and turn my shoulder. Jamie sits down beside me and holds the phone close to my ear, but angled so he can hear as well.

  “You talk,” he hisses.

  The phone is ringing.

  “I don’t want to—” I hiss back.

  There is a click on the other end. I don’t want to have to tell someone why we called the wrong number. April stirs and kicks in my arms, waking up. I can’t let go of her to shut off the phone. Jamie has his arm around me, his head close to mine so he can hear. And
then, before I can say hello, can apologize, can tell Jamie to hang up, a voice announces itself, low and ominous:

  “Congratulations,” the voice says. “You’ve reached the Department of Defense. Is this Donna213?”

  It takes me a moment to remember that this is my screen name.

  I nod. Then manage to say, “Yes.”

  “Good. Now listen to me very closely—”

  “What is this?” I ask. “Some kind of joke?”

  April starts crying. Jamie won’t hold the phone still. He’s covering his mouth with his other hand, his eyes wide and disbelieving.

  “Not a joke, ma’am,” the man says. “Listen to me carefully. Your country needs you.”

  Afterword

  I’m often asked if I have a favorite piece of writing, and I usually deflect the question, but there are definitely a few that mean more to me than others. “Select Character” is one of those. There are so many themes packed into this story, themes that show up time and time again in my plots, and they all came together here like a jigsaw puzzle.

  There’s the concept of free will, as the protagonist attempts to have her character do the opposite of what is intended. And again the pacifism theme, as a world made for violence is turned to nurturance. There are gender identity questions, and a female protagonist who does not find her strength by emulating what we think of as “maleness.” All of these themes pop up over and over again in my works, as I try to work through them for myself.

  What I really enjoy about this story is my own personal development. When I was a kid, I used to play video games hoping to unlock some secret or some high score so that I was contacted by the programmer. I remember having this feeling before I saw the film The Last Starfighter, which means it was an experience I shared with others.

  But as an adult, I now dream of a world where nonviolent solutions are applauded. There’s a line in my story “Peace in Amber” that goes something like: I dream of a world in which pacifists board planes first. And the climax of my novel Beacon 23 is the strongest declaration of this. Maybe it all changed for me on 9/11 and our response to that attack. Or at least, that’s where my conversion began.

  Lost and Found

  Promises of London

  Hands, gentle and rough. The last time I stood on this bridge, it was a fairer hand on my arm, light as a sparrow, young and full of love and warmth. Full of promises. But that was a long time ago. This more recent hand lands like a hawk, talon fingers squeezing, a British bark unintelligible, but I can guess the meaning. The officer wants to know what I’m doing there.

  It’s the bolt cutters, I’m sure. The business end pokes out the top of my backpack, the zippers hugging the jaws on either side. There are a scattering of tourists on the bridge. It’s just after dark and warm in London, much like it had been on our honeymoon. The officer in the bobby hat with the baton at his side isn’t harassing anyone else. Just me. With my bolt cutters and my scraggly beard. With my slept-in clothes. With the smell of a hostel on me, the wild red eyes that might be from bawling, might be from drugs. That senseless stagger of a drunk, of a man lost, of a man without that light sparrow on his arm, guiding him through the world.

  I watch as the backpack is searched. The cop procures a flashlight. The dark bowel of the bag swallows every ounce of light. Nothing to see here. A great void. A hollow. Keep looking.

  “And what’re these, then?”

  He knows what they are. But I tell him. “Bolt cutters,” I say. The numb put up no resistance.

  “This looks a fair bit suspicious,” he says. And now people are watching. A young couple train their phones on me in case this is worth sharing. “Empty bag,” he says. “Bolt cutters.”

  “Just taking back what’s mine,” I tell him. My eyes drift to the ornate rail. Both sides of the bridge are studded with locks, like some paranoid chain mail. Links in gold and silver. Tarnished and new. Etched and anonymous. The officer moves his beam of light to my chest, the cone spilling across my face. He is reading me. Proper now. The stagger and the absence of fear. The red eyes. All those locks. And the cutters in my bag.

  The light clicks off. He hands me my things. “I’ll be right over here,” he says, pointing to a spot along the rail. Even the police in England are achingly polite. Disappointment flashes across the faces of the young couple, illuminated by the pale glow of their phones. Nothing to see here. Keep looking. I wonder if one of these locks is theirs. I wonder how long it’ll last.

  My hand coasts down the rail as I move to the center of the bridge. The Thames glides silently below. A glass dinner boat trudges away, pushing against the ebbing tide. The buildings along the bank glow, the glass new ones and the crumbling monuments alike. The London Eye spins lazily. It and the river are unceasing. Some things are.

  All the worries about finding the lock have been misplaced. My hand falls straight to it. Part of me had worried the entire rail might be gone. In Paris, the Pont de l’Archevêché across the Seine gets so overburdened with padlocks—locks looped upon locks—that the entire rail is chopped away and replaced every few months. Rail and locks go to a scrapyard. The permanence is illusory. The nearby lock vendors know this, but they don’t warn anyone. The greeting card people and the florists and the jewelers and the writers of fiction are all in on the ruse. Forever holding their peace. Nobody says to watch out, that rail can go, and you’ll be swept away. They just keep selling little promises with their twin keys. And the locks get melted down at the scrapyard, and the keys tumble in the swift current and are pulled out to sea.

  We didn’t leave a lock on any of the rails that are known to get replaced. We asked around. Avoided the tourist traps. Planned ahead.

  The bolt-cutter teeth clamp down on that little bent finger of stainless steel. I have to move the handles so far to get the jaws to travel so little. It’s the leverage. This is how people move, like these handles. So much to get so little. But the violence when it does happen—the violence.

  And now after the long flight, after the weeks before of feeling lost, of not being able to sleep at night because of this damn lock, this pebble in the shoe of my dark thoughts, the nagging hypocrisy on the other side of the world, that lock cinched tight around my throat, bobbing heavy with every swallow, obstructing every breath, the lack of closure from unanswered texts and calls and emails, and the plan to set myself free—after all of that, I hesitate. And by the light of half a moon, I see our initials, the little scratches turned to rust, a crude heart between us.

  My pulse pounds. I can hear it, can feel the throb in my temples as I squeeze the handles. A soft give. More. The expectation of nothing. A quiet eternity. And then what went together with a gentle click pops with a metallic bang, and the unbreakable shatters. The cutters nearly slip from my sweaty palms, but the lock still dangles on that crowded rail. I caress it with my fingers for a brief moment, remembering. And then a twist sets it free.

  A couple somewhere hurls a pair of small keys out into the void. They laugh and hug while a lock lands with a splash.

  I feel lighter when I stand. But only a little. There is a notebook in my back pocket, the stiff covers of which are bent from riding there so long, so many years ago. It is an old notebook. One I took on our travels. Like a partner in life, it has taken some of its shape from its proximity to me. And I walk with a hitch because of my time with it. I fish the notebook out and turn the pages, though I already know. By the light of half a moon, I find my next stop. Amsterdam. Images from that vacation strobe unbidden. And bolt cutters slip into an otherwise empty bag.

  Afterword

  This is a very different sort of piece for me, a work that doesn’t really fit a genre, more like something I might’ve written in a creative writing class (had I ever taken one). The inspiration came from my travels while promoting translated works in various countries. I saw these lock bridges everywhere. I think they started in Paris, then spread to London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Budapest, and so on.

  When I t
ry to think of something to write, I often start with an idea and then flip it on its head. Maybe reading Philip K. Dick as a kid got to me. Or perhaps it’s an extension of my contradictory nature. Or it could be me wanting to only write what I hope has never been written before, otherwise why do it? So when I imagined a couple traveling around the world leaving locks on bridges, my mind immediately inverted this to a single man on a mission to cut free all the locks he and his ex had fastened together. It is a rejection of the supposed permanence of love and the things we leave behind. It’s a story I wrote about a year before my longest relationship ended.

  Whenever I write a short story, I always have in mind the way that I would continue it if I had to. This is likely a result of Wool’s success. In that case, I didn’t have any more story in mind beyond the original novelette. So even if I don’t plan on getting around to writing more in any of these worlds, it’s impossible to not at least think about it. In this case, I had the idea of writing several accounts of different bridges this character traveled to, with flashbacks to his past relationship. And I toyed with the idea of him arriving at the last bridge to find his ex standing there, seemingly a mirage at first, but very much real. She is as beautiful as he remembers. She is smiling that familiar smile of hers. And holding her own pair of bolt cutters . . .

  Peace in Amber

  For the Billy Pilgrims of the world—those who have seen things they cannot discuss.

  And for the Montana Wildhacks—those with the wisdom in their breasts to know what they cannot change.

  1

  All this happened, more or less:

  One morning I stood beneath a bright blue sky and watched it blossom orange and black as jet fuel went suddenly alight. I saw men and women jump and plummet like flightless birds, the howling wind sucking suit jackets from backs and whipping skirts in a frenzy. I heard the sharp cry of bending steel as it screeched downward, and I smelled that awful char of office furniture and asbestos as it burned and burned for days and days.