by Chuck Wendig
“I’m going to just go ahead and ask you the hard questions up front.”
AS YOU WISH.
“I’m pregnant.”
THAT IS NOT A QUESTION, BUT YES, YOU ARE.
“Is the baby healthy?”
CURRENTLY, IT IS.
“And you know that because you’re inside of me. Like, not in that way, but with all the…” Her fingers frittered in the air like each was a little moth keeping itself aloft. “Little robots?”
CORRECT. I AM INHABITING AND DIRECTING A SWARM OF MOLECULAR NANOBOTS.
“Are they alive?”
A pause. As if Black Swan was considering. THEY MEET MANY OF THE QUALIFICATIONS. MOST HUMANS WOULD SAY THEY ARE NOT.
“What happens to my baby?”
DO YOU MEAN IN THE EXPECTED SENSE OF WHAT IT IS TO GROW AND BIRTH A HUMAN CHILD? DO YOU MEAN ME TO PREDICT ITS FUTURE IN A DEAD WORLD? OR DO YOU MEAN, WILL IT COME TO TERM GIVEN THE PRESENCE OF MOLECULAR NANOBOTS SEIZING YOUR BODY IN SOMNAMBULIST STASIS?
Shana’s mouth twisted into a grim line. “You’re the prediction engine. You tell me what I mean.”
YOU WANT TO KNOW IF THE BABY WILL LIVE.
“Let’s start there.”
I DO NOT KNOW.
“You don’t…know?”
CORRECT. I AM THE FIRST OF MY KIND, AND THESE NANOBOTS ARE SIMILARLY THE FIRST OF THEIRS. AND NOW WE ARE ONE, ONLY FURTHERING THE SINGULARITY OF OUR UNIQUENESS. I CANNOT SAY WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR CHILD BECAUSE IT HAS NEVER BEEN TESTED BEFORE.
“Why me?”
CLARIFY YOUR QUESTION.
She raised her voice: “I mean, why the fuck did you pick me? You could’ve left me out there. In the world. We’ve been…following the flock for hundreds, thousands of miles now, and I know for sure those you pick to join the flock are not just randomly chosen. You hand-select them, like we’re fruit at the grocery store and you’re just trying to find the ripest, tastiest specimens. You picked me. A pregnant girl. After all those miles, I end up here after all? Why? Why?”
THE OPTIONS WERE LIMITED.
“Oh, that makes me feel super-amazing.” In a lower register she said: “It’s gym class all over again.” She stood, chin out, defiant. “But you still left others out there. People like Doctor Ray. You could’ve taken them.”
BENJAMIN RAY IS ESSENTIAL OUTSIDE THE FLOCK. FURTHER, HE WAS ALREADY CO-OPTED BY RHIZOPUS DESTRUCTANS.
“He was sick with White Mask?”
IT HAD NOT ADVANCED YET. BUT THAT IS CORRECT.
She turned away from Black Swan and paced. Agitation rose inside her. It wasn’t that it was a shock that he would get sick. They all would, eventually, right? Wasn’t that the point of all this? All would sicken, all would die, except the flock. Just the same, it hit her hard. And worse, it reminded her of Arav…
Shana stared off at a second mountain peak overlooking the town of Ouray. She wasn’t looking at it so much as through it—
But something caught her eye. It drew her out of her own thoughts.
There, at the top of the peak, was a black square in the rock. From here, it was just a little postage stamp, though she imagined it was roughly human-sized once you were up close to it. The square, like the body of Black Swan, was matte black and absorbed the light—which was what made it so strange. It did not reflect anything, but seemed to draw her in.
Then she blinked, and it was gone.
DID YOU SEE SOMETHING? it asked her.
Rattled, she shook it off. “No,” she lied. “Was there something there for me to see?”
NO, Black Swan said—or lied?—in response.
What did she just see?
And could Black Swan truly be unaware of it?
“Could you lie to me?”
I CAN.
“Are you lying to me?”
I AM NOT.
“And how do I know you’re not lying about lying?”
YOU DON’T.
“That’s not comforting.”
IT IS NOT MY ROLE TO GIVE YOU COMFORT. IT IS MY ROLE TO KEEP YOU ALIVE, TO WEATHER THE SCOURGE OF WHITE MASK SO THAT A REMNANT OF HUMANITY CAN CONTINUE.
“Isn’t it God’s job to give comfort?”
I AM NOT A GOD, THOUGH IT IS NOT HISTORICALLY A DEITY’S JOB TO COMFORT ITS PEOPLE. STORIES ABOUT GOD MAY PROVIDE COMFORT, BUT THAT COMFORT IS OFTEN UNDESERVED. THE JOB OF A DIVINE BEING IS MULTIFARIOUS AND AFFORDS LITTLE CONSENSUS, BUT IT IS EXPECTED THAT A GOD IS A GOVERNING ENTITY, PROVIDING GUIDANCE, EXPLANATION, AND SALVATION.
“Is that what you do? Guide us? Explain shit? Save us?”
ABSTRACTLY, YES.
“So aren’t you our god?”
I DO NOT CHOOSE THAT ROLE.
“But if others choose it for you, you’re okay with that?”
I CANNOT CONTROL HOW HUMANS SEE ME NOW OR DEPICT ME LATER.
Depict me later. As if Black Swan was imagining the myths that would be told and the books that would be written about it.
“Maybe you’re not God. Maybe you’re the Devil.”
THE DEVIL IS NOT REAL. BUT I AM.
She swept her hands across the air in front of her, as if to indicate the town below. “And how much of this is real?”
THAT DEPENDS ENTIRELY UPON ONE’S DEFINITION OF REAL, OR REALITY. THE TOWN IS NOT CORPOREAL. IT EXISTS PURELY IN SIMULATION. BUT IT IS REAL INSOFAR AS IT IS NOT A DELUSION OR A DREAM. IT IS A CODED PROGRAM. IS A BOOK ONLY REAL ONCE IT IS PRINTED, OR IS IT REAL THE MOMENT IT IS WRITTEN WITHIN A WORD-PROCESSING PROGRAM? ARE ONE’S THOUGHTS ONLY REAL ONCE THEY LEAVE THE MIND? ARE THEY REAL ONCE EXPRESSED IN AN ELECTRONIC MAIL OR ACROSS SOCIAL MEDIA, OR DO THEY ONLY BECOME REAL ONCE THEY MANIFEST IN A WAY THAT HAS AN EFFECT? A TREE FALLING IN THE FOREST WITH SOMEONE TO HEAR? PERHAPS ALL OF EVERYTHING IS A SIMULATION. PERHAPS THIS IS A SIMULATION NESTED INSIDE A SIMULATION. I REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT THE NATURE OF REALITY IS A PRECARIOUS ONE.
“Is my mother, the one here in Ouray, real?”
SHE IS REAL.
“Is she really my mother?”
YES.
“Are you lying?”
NO.
It could be deceiving her.
Or maybe it really was her mother, and the woman had truly fallen for this thing’s oh-I’m-not-your-god-unless-you-want-me-to-be act.
“I don’t know what comes next,” she said, “but I won’t worship you.”
YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO. HOW THE DENIZENS OF THE FLOCK PERCEIVE ME IS UP TO THEM.
“I think you serve us, not the other way around.”
THE SAME COULD BE SAID OF SOME GODS.
She scowled. “My sister won’t be coming up here.”
IF THAT IS HER CHOICE. BUT DO YOU CONTROL HER, OR DOES SHE CONTROL HERSELF? ARE YOU HER GOD, SHANA?
“You know what, fuck you. Thanks for saving me, I guess, but I don’t have to take your shit, either. And neither does she. I don’t trust you, and I don’t trust that thing you call Daria Stewart—I’m sure if I look hard enough I’ll see buttons for her eyes.”
A REFERENCE TO CORALINE’S OTHER MOTHER.
Shana frowned, didn’t bother giving this thing the satisfaction, oh good job, you understood my pop culture reference. Way to use Google. Instead she said, “I won’t be coming back up here. Knowing that you can lie to me makes everything you say suspect.”
IS THAT NOT TRUE OF ALL HUMANS? ALL HUMANS CAN LIE TO YOU. HOW DO YOU TRUST ANYONE?
“Mostly? I don’t. But at least with them, they have actions and a history to back up what they say. And I can look in their eyes and…see what’s going on. The eyes are a window to the soul, they say, but I think the eyes are a camera, too, and I can see people for people. You aren’t people. I don’t know what you are. You don’t have any tells, I can’t see your tricks, you’re a…what’s the word?”
A CIPHER.
That was the word.
Did Black Swan know it because it was a predictive intelligence?
Did Black Swan know it because it could read her mind?
Or was it just a lucky guess?
She turned to leave. But before she did, she looked again toward the opposing peak—trying very hard to make it look like a casual, passing glance instead of a moment of intense scrutiny. Shana looked for that square, that out-of-place light-drinking window in the rock. But it was gone.
“One more thing,” she said to the thing hovering there.
GO ON.
“I want a camera.”
THE STORES ON MAIN STREET MAY HAVE ONE.
“No, I don’t want that. I want you to give me one. This is a simulation. You can just…say the magic word and poop one out, so that’s what I want you to do.”
I DO NOT DEFECATE CAMERAS.
“It was a figure of speech.”
IT IS NO FIGURE OF SPEECH OF WHICH I AM AWARE. BUT I AM CAPABLE OF GIVING YOU A CAMERA. YOU WILL FIND ONE IN YOUR ROOM, ON YOUR BED, WHEN YOU RETURN THERE.
“Thank you.”
ANYTHING, SHANA STEWART. I LIVE TO SERVE.
She wondered, though, if that was really true.
I know I’m supposed to be Funny Man, making you laugh, but I don’t have it in me anymore. Everyone’s sick. Everything’s gone to hell. This is it. We’re on hospice. We’re old. It’s terminal. I look out my front window and I see what you all see, I see people…wandering, lost, like people who went into a room and forgot why they went in there. Sometimes they hurt each other or they have guns, but a lot of the time they’re just…wayward, they’ve lost their way. And what we always did for our loved ones in the past is what we do to our neighbors now: We have empathy, we care for them, we help them back inside in the hope that when we’re lost out there, they’ll do the same for us, too, helping us find our way until White Mask draws us down and covers us with mold like we’re something left too long in the fridge. What I’m saying is, be good to each other. Okay? It’s all we’ve got left.
—Jimmy Coburn, talk-show host, in a post on his Instagram
OCTOBER 15
Monarch Pass, Colorado
“IT COULD JUST BE A cold,” Pete Corley said, bundled up in the driver’s seat. He was warming his hands with his breath. “You sneezed, so bloody what? We’re up here in the mountains, it’s a bit crisp, a bit cold, makes sense you’d sneeze, have a bit of a…a leaky spigot.”
As if on cue, Landry blew his nose into a cloth handkerchief. “That is not what this is. And even if it was, there’s no way to know.”
After last night’s unexpected sneeze—followed by a volley of a dozen more or so—they opted to pull over and camp here, on Monarch Pass. It was cold, but they had sleeping bags and blankets and made do. Now, though, the chill had really settled in. The heat they’d blasted into the RV last night had long fled the Beast, stolen by the mountain cold.
“Well,” Pete said, stiff-upper-lipping it, “we’ll know at some point, because as Emily the poet once kindly pointed out, Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.”
“You asked me about Homer, but now you’re bringing out the Emily Dickinson? Shit. If I wasn’t snotty as a preschooler’s sleeve, I’d come over there and kiss your nasty mouth. Where’d you learn poetry?”
“I had a poetry phase,” Pete explained. “You write enough songs, eventually you get there.” He licked his lips. “Fuck it, all this morose nonsense is killing my get up and go.” He reached for the keys.
But Landry held his hand.
“Not yet,” he said.
“Not yet what?” Pete countered.
“Not yet, we can’t go.”
“Why the fucking hell not?”
“I need you to think this through. We’re about to drive across the goddamn Apocalypse to see your family. I’m sick—”
“Well, buck up, little camper, you’re just going to have to end this little pity-party or I’ll call the cops and shut it down myself. I understand you’re not feeling well, but we can’t quit now.”
Landry sniffled and scowled—and Landry’s scowls were weapons. “No, you fool, you’re missing my point. You said your wife and kids were going to stay in some…rich person bunker. They might be healthy.”
“Yes, hopefully they damn well are healthy, and—”
Oh.
Oh.
Landry must’ve seen his face, because he said, “Now you get it.”
“We could make them sick.”
“I could, at least, because I’m sick.”
“Yes, and that means I’m sick, too.”
“We don’t know that.”
“If you’ve got it, I’ve got it. Let’s just go with that, yeah? Fuck. Fuck. I can’t see my kids.”
Landry leaned in. “You’re not…” He swirled a finger in orbit around his head in a gesturing gesticulation. “All goopy. Not yet. That means I’m contagious, but you’re not there. You might have time. If you don’t waste too much of that time, anyway.”
“If we don’t waste too much of that time.”
Landry clucked his tongue. “Oh, no no no. You. I’m not going.”
“But—”
“You Tarzan, me Sicky-Sicky. Okay?”
Pete couldn’t help but laugh. “What am I supposed to do? Just open the door, kick your ass out into one of those snowbanks over there, then drive on my merry way?”
“No, I’ve been thinking about this. I looked at the map. You’re going to drive my ass back across Highway 50, and drop me off at the juncture where Highway 550 comes in, then I’ll hoof it from there.”
“Hoof it where exactly?”
“To Ouray.”
“The fuck is in Ouray?”
“Eventually the flock, ding-dong.”
“No, yes, I know that—I mean, what’s there now?”
Landry shrugged. “People. Something. Nothing. I don’t know. But I can go, get some things set up for them. Scout it out, see what’s going on.”
“No, no, fuck all of this right in the ear.”
“That’s not where I traditionally like to get fucked, Rockstar.”
Pete seethed. “The one cardinal rule is, you don’t break up the band.”
“You been breaking up your band every day of your damn life.”
“Yes, but I’m trying to change.”
“So change. Go see your family. Be with them. Make your peace. Then with them or without them, come back to me. Find me in Ouray. You’ll bring your family or you won’t. But you’ll come back.”
His mind drifted. Pete seriously started to consider it. Truthfully, he hadn’t thought about coming back this way—but then again, he hadn’t really thought much about any of this. It was perhaps a foolish crusade that he’d roll up on their bunker doorstep with his gay lover and expect that they could all move in together to live out the rest of their days in the fallen world. But at his core, under layers of cynical callus, Pete perhaps was a romantic fool—or at least, a regular base-model fool—and he supposed his idea of what would come of all this sounded pretty fucking goofy.
“You can’t walk. I’ll drive you all the way.”
“You’re on borrowed time as it is, Rockstar. Drop me where I said to drop me, and then get to getting.”
“Landry—”
“Shut up. We’re good. You got this.”
Pete took a deep breath.
“I love you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I love you, too. Now, pedal to the metal, Rockstar. I’ve got a long walk and you’ve got one helluva drive.”
We have drained the political cesspool and purged the poison of foreigners, fools, and fiends from our nation. We have won the RAHOWA and burned down the ZOG. Hun
t is dead and Creel is king. Come join the new nation under our White God at Innsbrook, Missouri.
—broadcast across all radio stations owned by St. Clair Broadcasting
Company across thirteen states in the Midwest
OCTOBER 15
Innsbrook, Missouri
TWO WORLDS, COLLIDING.
On one hand, you had pools, golf courses, cabins. Grand landscaping spread out, framed by manicured lakes with long docks and copses of trees lit with the fires of autumnal colors. On the other hand, the ARM militia: men and women in camo, assault rifles everywhere, trucks and tanks and fake soldiers testing drones over those expanses of resort area landscape. Off in the distance came the sound of practiced gunfire. In another direction, the ground-juddering whump of an explosives test. Nearby, music played: some modern country, Toby Keith, maybe. American flags waved about. Other flags, too: the Gadsden flag with its rebellious serpent; the Confederate flag, no longer requiring the illusion that it was a symbol of states’ rights and southern pride; the hammer, sword, and snake flag of the ARM.
To Matthew, it reminded him of one thing:
Ozark Stover’s estate back in Indiana. It was like that place, only upgraded, weaponized, evolved to its perfect and most horrible form: lakes and tanks, golf and guns, racism and revolution.
Matthew wandered through this space, trying very hard not to look like a lost lamb. Though maybe that didn’t matter, because nobody seemed to pay him any mind. Which was itself an indictment against this place: Here he was, a scraggly-bearded white man in fatigues with a pistol at his hip. He fit right in. Nobody gave him a second look.
Getting in was its own special trial, though: He found a small Toyota pickup truck coming from the direction of St. Louis, carrying a load of supplies in the bed—jugs for watercoolers, mostly, but also some cans of store-brand soda and other bulk grocery supplies. Soon as he saw the truck coming, he stepped out into the road, waving his arms and trying to look like a friend. The pickup truck slowed, and a lean-faced man with hills for cheekbones leaned out with a pistol, asked him what he wanted.
Matthew said, “I’m just looking for a ride into the camp.” He decided that the best lie was one that cleaved closest to the truth, so he added: “My son is one of Stover’s closest people, and I’m here to join up.”
