by David Beers
Manny looked down at the boy, eyes closed and sleeping. His heart felt like it could burst looking at his little boy. He had thought for so long that he would never see Dustin again, but Manny was being given another chance, he was being given a child again.
Focus, he thought to himself. He was here for a reason and it wasn't doting over his son. There would be plenty of time for that later on. He remembered what Caesar had done to him, how he had been able to get inside Manny's head, been able to actually control him. Manny didn't understand how he did it, but he understood the power of such an ability, what it could mean for Manny when he finally looked at Jerry, at Paige, and the rest of The Eight. When he looked at that little nothing, Leon. He needed to figure it out. He needed to know how Caesar had done it and he needed to be able to do it himself.
There were plenty of people in the park today.
Manny looked across the landscape. The nearest person was probably twenty feet away, sitting with his back against a tree and reading something on his scroll.
Manny easily made judgments of his skin temperature, of his general mood, etc., but that was it. The chip in his head calculated all of the details it gathered, giving Manny a good picture of what the person in front of him was about, but he needed more. He needed to do what Caesar could. He needed to make that man stand up and dance the foxtrot.
He looked on, his eyes straining, trying to see deeper, trying to understand...more. If he could see what was making the man's eyes move up and down on the scroll, if he could just understand that mechanism, he could control it. And Manny knew that he could understand, if he could only see it. If he got a glimpse inside this man, he would understand him fully in a few seconds, and then Caesar's little trick would be Manny's too.
How long did he sit there staring? Two hours? Dustin woke up once, crying, but Manny didn't hear him. Manny didn't notice the looks as people walked by him, seeing a man staring angrily out into the world while his child sat in front of him crying. He didn't move, only blinking out of habit. All that mattered to him was that mechanism, and understanding it.
Hours into his study, Manny blinked. He did it purposefully, not fully believing he had figured it out, but thinking...maybe...maybe he had, maybe he could do it.
The man's right index finger flicked up quickly.
The man looked down at the finger, probably not completely sure why it had just moved without him telling it to. For Manny's part, the same smile he donned when he looked at Caesar now crawled across his face.
Chapter Nineteen
The Life of Caesar Wells
by Leon Bastille
Caesar didn't see all the things growing around him. He couldn't. To him, to Jerry—to all of us really—this was one side versus the other. Us against it. Caesar and The Genesis. Caesar wanted to find it and face it down, wanted to perhaps converse and then kill it. It seems like a great story really, something that would make for a great afternoon movie on an entertainment center. Good versus evil. One side trying to slay the other and both of them meeting on a field of battle.
I don't know why we were so stupid.
This wasn't a movie.
Jerry should have known, if anyone should have. Jerry had lived for a thousand years; he'd seen everything that happened under The Genesis' reign, and yet, somehow he thought things would be so simple. He thought Caesar was going to walk right into The Genesis' house, they'd have a little talk, and then Caesar would shut the whole thing down.
All the while, so much was happening around us, so many plans growing like vines, and we stood there with blinders on unable to see the strangling weeds wrapping around our legs and heading for our necks.
Caesar was going to speak with his parents and learn more about what could be done. Are you understanding that? This deep in and Caesar was going to talk with someone to try to fucking learn more. What in the hell were we doing? What in the hell were we allowing him to do?
We should have gone to Vegas. Right then. All of us, Caesar included. We should have rewired the place and shot electricity through those ancient buildings. We should have created a little society out there in the desert and not worried about the rest. But even Grace was done telling Caesar to quit. I was stubborn, and kept talking, but who was going to listen to me? Little Leon, always pleading The Genesis' case, always trying to stop the fight against the juggernaut. I never wanted to go against The Genesis, obviously, but that didn't mean it was smart to discount everything I said, regardless of the intellects above me. Little Leon, ready to scurry off to some dead city and live out his life.
Everyone listened to Caesar, even Paige—albeit reluctantly. Everyone followed his obsession, an obsession that had grown even greater than Jerry's. Those that could see, or at least see a bit, decided to follow the blind.
Because that's what Caesar was at this point. Blind. He saw nothing but an image inside his head, an idea—freedom, vengeance, his own death? I don't know which one it was for sure, only that he thought he saw it in reality, but it existed only in his head, so he chased it, but when the blind decide to run, they almost always hit something.
Chapter Twenty
Things were shaping up nicely; anyone looking at Mock's work could see that. The last ten floors would be finished in the next fourteen hours and then the plan could begin. This had all just been prep work, making sure that when Mock said "Go!" everything ran smoothly. Mock had checked each floor itself, walking the stairs and the entire distance of every hallway inside the building. It could have relied on other applications to tell it their thoughts on the job, but that wasn't Mock's style. No, it would inspect the entire building and when it felt satisfied, the plan could move forward. If this failed, it wasn't going to fall on any other application's shoulders. It would fall on Mock and Mock would have to answer for it. So best to know all the details, best to know the entire building and everything they had done, because when Mock reported to The Genesis, it would report that everything worked perfectly.
Theo sat in front of him now, at the bottom of the building. Mock got them an office because sitting outside in the lobby would have created a group of people gawking at it, some even refusing to leave as they looked into its body, trying to get closer and closer, to see every detail of the pieces inside it. Mock couldn't stand them. Wanted to throw the whole lot of them into an open grave and shovel dirt onto them until their lungs filled up with black dust.
"We'll finish on time?" Mock asked.
Theo nodded, looking Mock directly in the eyes.
There was something about this human that Mock liked. Very soon now, eleven hundred people would die, all of them connected back to The Named of course, and coincidentally, all of them having worked on this building right before. Theo was scheduled to die with them, of course. But Mock wondered if that was truly necessary. It also wondered if asking such a question meant it was losing its mind. The thing was, Mock had a lot left to do. What came next was just a pawn's opening move. It would work with a lot more humans over the next few months, and that in itself nearly exhausted Mock—just thinking about it was tiring. Their idiocy, their complacency, their inability to simply perform. And a new human to speak with every single time a job started? That was almost too much to consider. Mock knew it could leave that up to the applications that ran the operation, but again, Mock needed more control than that. It needed to understand the exact idiocy with which it was working. Theo, though, wasn't exactly an idiot. Of course, he wasn't running around doing calculations or saving the world, but he did a good job and he did it without complaint. So maybe it made sense to keep him around after this job, as long as he could keep his mouth shut. Maybe he could stay around for this entire little enterprise, if he continued being useful.
"I have something else I need you to do," Mock said.
"What's that?" The man asked.
Mock reached into the brown bag at his feet and pulled out a package wrapped in paper. It weighed about a pound, rectangular, and fairly flat. Mock pushe
d the package across the table toward Theo, who didn't reach out for it.
"In there are eleven hundred pills. I need you to give them out today, to make sure that each person under you takes one of them."
Theo didn't look down at the package, didn't break his eye contact with Mock. It couldn't read the human, couldn't figure out what the man was thinking in the silence growing between them. Mock didn't get uncomfortable, especially not around humans, but the look between them was perhaps the most uncomfortable Mock had felt in quite some time. Not enough to make it break eye contact, not nearly enough, but the fact that the man wasn't cowering or questioning, was just studying Mock, felt odd. Humans moved when Mock told them to, and this man hadn't reached out for the package, hadn't even glanced at it.
"The pills will activate around the same time you're done with the building."
Theo didn't respond.
"The men you give them to are going to take an elevator to the top of the building and then they're going to throw themselves out the windows. Nearly all at the same time, depending on how quickly the pill starts working for each individual."
Mock and Theo looked at each other for another three or four minutes, and then Theo reached forward and took the package off the table. He left the office without saying anything else.
* * *
Theo personally handed out one-thousand-and-ninety-nine pills. Mock said to make sure that every single person working on this building got one and that's exactly what Theo did. More, he made sure that each person took down the pill he gave them. He did it easily enough, telling them it was to help with their exhaustion—they had all had been working around the clock for three days.
As he worked his way through the group—the men who had followed his directions for the past seventy-two hours without hesitation (not because they respected him, they hardly knew him, but more because they saw Mock around Theo, and no one was going to challenge that son-of-a-bitch, or its minions, which Theo apparently was)—he thought about what he was doing. Had Mock not told him that these people would commit suicide in a couple of hours, Theo would have passed out the pills without any qualms. This, combined with what they wired in this building, meant a lot of people were going to die.
A lot.
Theo thought it through, sitting there staring at that clear eyed machine. Thought it through as quickly as he could, while not trying to anger the application. Theo didn't know if Mock got angry, really—he thought it probably just got rid of that which displeased it. That was the thought which made Theo take the bag and made him move through the building, handing each person a pill and giving them water to wash it down with. Mock was going to kill all of these people in this building regardless of what Theo did. For some reason, it had placed the job on Theo, though. There were eleven hundred people in this building and eleven hundred pills in that package. Now there was one pill left and only Theo who hadn't swallowed one. The pill was meant for him and had he not accepted the job, he would very soon be walking up to the top of the building and then falling back down much quicker.
No, Theo handed the goddamn things out because what choice did he have? Die or kill these people that he didn't know. He looked that cold machine in the eyes and made the decision that he was going to live. Had he liked handing out those pills? No, not a single one. Had he liked knowing what came next for all these men? No. But, he liked the idea of himself dying even less.
He didn't know if Mock was still in the same office, but Theo planned on waiting there until it returned. He wasn't going back to work, not next to the men that he just sentenced to death.
Theo knocked on the door, not forgetting who he worked for—a machine that didn't blink.
"Come in," the voice said through the door.
Theo opened it and walked in, holding the brown package in his right hand, the package with only a single pill left in it.
"It's finished?" Mock asked.
Theo placed the package on the desk and resumed his seat from earlier. "All but one," he said.
"Don't feel like joining your friends?"
"No," Theo said. There wasn't anything else he could say. This creature may have been trying to make a joke out of it, but it wasn't funny, not to Theo. He held no delusions about what he had just done, and he wasn't going to sit here and make light of it. If the thing wanted to kill him, fine, and if it wanted him to live, fine. But he'd do both with at least some shred of dignity.
"I don't blame you," Mock said. "Come though; we're going to watch."
Theo saw Mock stand up and walk to the door. It wasn't serious, was it? Theo was going to go watch these men throw themselves to their deaths? That's what this thing wanted from him?
Mock opened the door and gestured its hand for Theo to lead the way.
How far would this go? How much would Theo need to bear? And what if he said no, even once?
Theo stood up and walked out the door, not testing his question. He fed them the pills; shouldn't he witness what his actions brought? He heard Mock close the door behind him but Theo didn't turn around, he walked straight forward, through the lobby and out the door to the street. He turned around and looked up to the top of the building, seeing Mock following him for the first time. Both human and application stood, their heads tilted upward, waiting for the pills to kick in.
"I take it you understand our arrangement?" Mock asked.
Theo didn't look over at him. "Had I not handed those pills out, I would have been eating one, right?"
"Right."
"Then, yes, I think I understand the arrangement."
"Good," Mock said. "There's a lot more to be done here, and there's no reason for you to have their fate if you can keep following directions."
Theo didn't say anything else, just stood next to the application in silence. What else could he say to the thing? What else did he want to say? He knew he had made his bed and now he was going to lay in it, but he supposed lying in this bed was better than jumping out of a window.
When the jumpers began, Theo couldn't see them—not at first. It wasn't until they broke through cloud cover, that Theo could see their bodies falling from the sky.
"Back up," Mock said quietly, already taking large steps away so that he was in the street and not next to the building. Theo hurried to follow, understanding what the machine meant. He had time though. It was a long fall.
They looked like dummies as they fell from that high up, Theo unable to decipher any human features. One fell alone first, then more, until there was a whole flock of men falling like skydivers without parachutes. Large shapes, a hundred of them, and more coming each second, falling through the clouds.
Theo watched as the first one hit thirty feet in front of him. The man's body crushing in on itself, his bones cracking, his eyes smashing against the concrete, his brains exploding from his broken skull. Blood splattered up in a fine mist into the air, and Theo thought the man's body sounded like a bag of oranges had just been dropped from the building—a wet, gushy sound rather than something made of bone. Theo took in the sight with both a horror and an eye for detail that would never let him forget.
He still stared at that man, the first one to hit the ground, as others landed all around him, their own bodies sounding like new bags of oranges and their blood looking like red dew hanging over the street.
Chapter Twenty-One
Manny reached out to Jerry, not completely sure he would be able to make the connection. He didn't think his chip worked exactly like Caesar's, didn't think it could attach as easily as his did. He calculated it was something to do with the proximity of Jerry and Caesar's chip when it was implanted, but he still thought he might be able to talk to Jerry.
And he really, really wanted to.
It occurred to him that The Genesis could always reach out and find Jerry whenever it wanted, since it had the device from the compound, but it seemed The Genesis wanted him to deal with Jerry. Wanted him to deal with everything out there in that cavern. Which was m
ore than fine. He would be the blunt tool it used, as long as he could keep Dustin around, he would be whatever helped bring Caesar down. Manny had a child now, but Caesar still needed to pay for what he did. Dustin was alive but Manny's wife was dead.
Manny was looking of course, for someone that could be her. Looking for someone that might replace her. He just hadn't found the right woman yet.
And until then, he had things to do. If he went ahead and dispatched Jerry and a few others, there would be all the time in the world to find the right woman for Dustin's mother.
Manny searched outward, looking for a transmission that would resemble a human, looking for a transmission that might be Jerry. It took him a long time, even knowing the general direction to look in. Dustin slept on the couch with a blanket over him. Again though, Manny wasn't thinking about him. More important things were afoot now.
He finally found who he was looking for. Jerry, out there in that desert, with a signal much weaker than Manny's own, but there all the same.
Hi, Manny said.
A few seconds passed before Jerry responded, Manny certain that Jerry was trying to figure out if he was being tracked or only communicated with. Certain that Jerry was wondering how in the hell Manny's voice was transmitting into his head. How Manny was even alive.
Manny? Jerry finally said.
That's me, he answered, glee filling him. Manny couldn't remember feeling this happy. Not even when he was staring at the new Dustin. There had been happiness, of course, but not this overwhelming joy.