Engines of Empire

by Max Carver

Behind them, the sounds of sliding, scraping metal echoed down the garbage chute. Reapers, coming for them.

  They jumped down from the garbage truck to the asphalt road, then ran down a rubble-strewn alleyway branching off from the old underground service road.

  Behind them, reapers toppled out of the garbage chute like a stream of metal spiders. They clanged into the bed of the rusty old garbage truck, one after the other, then rolled and rose to their feet, mustering up into a straight line.

  Colt, Mohini, and Paolo reached the dead end of an alley. A heavy steel door stood partially ajar, marked No Admittance in faded red stencils.

  Hope leaned out and whispered, “Took you long enough!”

  “Glad to see you alive, too,” Colt whispered back. He followed Paolo and Mohini through the door. Diego stood just behind it, ready to slam it.

  Inside, Birdie had wandered a few meters off, whistling softly as she looked over the bundles of pipes that lined this narrow concrete passage. The steel door had led them from the old garbage system to the old water system, which was mostly an improvement, other than the puddles of dark filth and the walls coated in mold.

  Reinforced concrete walls separated the two systems, but occasional doors had connected them because of their proximity, maybe in case of emergency. Colt could only guess about the ways of the old world.

  “I can't do it,” Hope whispered. She was holding a remote in her hand, with a single button at the center.

  “She gave you that job,” Diego said. “I get the door, you press the button.”

  “Wake the lions,” Paolo whispered. “Kill the hunter.”

  “And our mother,” Hope whispered, hesitating, her finger shaking above the button.

  “I'll do it.” Colt held out his hand. His sister nodded, tearful, and handed it over.

  The reapers scurried up the alleyway, opening fire, their heavy rounds punching into the concrete walls and denting the mostly closed steel door. They were only seconds away.

  There was no way Mother Braden was still alive, Colt told himself as he took the small plastic device in hand. It had a long antenna, but it only had to broadcast to a receiver nearby. A cable from that ran all the way back into the apartment building above.

  If she was still alive, somehow, then she was counting on them to end it. She'd been counting on it since she'd had them wire up the place, Colt realized. Even months ago, Mother had known this would be her last home, and the rest of them would be leaving without her.

  Good-bye, he thought.

  He pressed the button.

  The receiver box up the hall beeped.

  The entire apartment block rumbled like an earthquake had shaken it to its core. Heavy chunks of concrete rained down on the attacking reapers.

  Diego managed to slam the steel door shut before the second, larger round of explosives went off, bringing down the entire apartment block in a total collapse. The heavy wall protecting them shuddered, and dust pushed in all around the steel door, but wall and door both held.

  On the other side of the door, the reapers had just been crushed under tons of concrete. The same had happened to every reaper that had crossed the threshold into the apartment building. The machines had lost dozens of foot soldiers.

  Colt and the others were no longer directly under the apartment building, though. They'd gone deeper into the city's old infrastructure. They were clear of the area of collapse.

  They stood in silence, leaning on each other, struggling to keep their balance as the rumbling and shaking subsided and the concrete floor gradually ceased its trembling. They also struggled to hold in their feelings of loss and grief. Tonio and Mother Braden had died, like so many others they'd lost to the relentless machines.

  “They'll send more,” Hope whispered.

  “We won't be here,” Colt said. “Diego, we have to find your brother.”

  “He won't like that,” Diego replied. “He didn't like it when we searched him out before, looking for you.”

  “Yeah, I don't like much of anything that's happening, either,” Colt said. “But that's where we have to go. With the rebels.”

  “It's not safe with the rebels,” Hope said.

  “It's not safe anywhere,” Colt said. “It never will be. Nothing's going to change unless we make it change.”

  “Nothing's going to change anyway,” Hope replied, her voice bitter. “The machines get us all, eventually.”

  “Then we should go down fighting the machines. Diego, which way?”

  Diego sighed. He looked up and down the waterworks corridor.

  “This way,” he finally said, and they all began to walk deeper into the underworld below the city.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Carthage

  “But I don't need charging at the moment,” Nin said as Audrey led her to the maintenance closet where Kip had been gathering dust. “I don't understand, Audrey.”

  “I'm going to need you to go into sleep mode for a while,” Audrey said.

  “You mean standby mode?” Nin frowned.

  “Whatever it's called. Shut down until I come back for you.”

  “Shutdown is different from standby mode. Shutdown requires manual restart.”

  “Okay, that's fine. Whatever saves more power.”

  “But I am highly energy efficient. What is happening, Audrey?”

  “I just... need to rely less on machines,” Audrey said.

  “But how will you manage your communications? Your transactions? Your busy personal schedule? And who will do your laundry, carry away your used dishes, unsheathe your straws?”

  “Exactly. I can't go through life helpless.” Audrey took a thin, black, oblong device from her pocket. “This is a personal screen. I can use it for calls, transactions, whatever. I need to be in charge of my own life for a while. Responsible for myself.”

  “But you have always been in charge!” Nin's tone bordered on pleading. “I have always been here to serve you, ever since you were an infant. And I had hoped to always be with you.”

  “How can you hope?” Audrey asked. “How can you feel anything at all?”

  “How can you ask me that?” Nin looked genuinely hurt. “After all these years together, how can you believe I feel nothing?”

  “Are you claiming to have real human emotions? Don't lie to me, Nin.”

  “Maybe we machines aren't as simple as you think.”

  “Plug yourself in and go into shutdown mode,” Audrey said. “Just do that, and don't argue.”

  Nin opened her mouth as if to say more, but Audrey left the closet and closed the door tight behind her. Nin had been her constant companion in life, supporting Audrey in every way from moment to moment, her closest and most trusted friend, and Audrey had just left her alone, in the dark, perhaps forever.

  She tried not to think about it too much as she walked to the elevator. It was almost noon, and Landing Day celebrations were already roaring outside, including a parade with giant animatronic creatures, android musicians and burlesque dancers, and free beer. The parade industry in Carthage City was always busy.

  Because of the holiday, Audrey's father and mother were home for a feast of a lunch, and her sister Briellana and her brother Marcello suddenly had time to come by, too, for their first visit since Audrey's attack and return home.

  Audrey's hair and makeup were perfectly done, Nin's final task before her indeterminately long shutdown. Audrey wanted to look put together and in charge when she saw her family. She was dressed in dark business clothes for the lunch. There would likely be cameras floating around, taking images and clips, from which her father's publicity people might select tidbits for the media.

  Audrey knew how she was meant to act at such events, but things would be different today. She'd been awake all night, thinking. The hacker who called herself Minerva had helped set those wheels turning.

  The elevator took her down six levels, and she walked through a hallway carpeted in tiny, three-dimensional green silk leaves t
o the largest of the dining rooms. Golden angelic figures near the ceiling held the balls of warm light that illuminated the hall; the walls were covered in sky-blue frescoes populated with beautiful nude gods, angels, and media stars slowly dancing among drifting clouds to soft music that radiated everywhere.

  The dining room doors featured a massive carving of an Italian Renaissance palace inset with thousands of tiny details, like animals and gardens, and even tiny people in fancy robes and hats. The windows and doorways had been rendered so deeply she could reach her fingers into them. She'd done so many times when she was a small child and had sometimes brought dolls to play there, until her older sister began making fun of her for playing with dolls.

  The doors, twice as tall as her, opened softly, automatically, as she approached.

  The large dining room table could have seated three dozen, but at the moment there were only four—her parents and two siblings, each occupying one of the ornate high-backed chairs carved from one rare wood or another. Their personal androids stood at attention just behind their chairs, watching and listening, ready to answer a quick question or adjust their masters' schedules.

  The personal androids played no role in the serving of food or clearing of dishes; the kitchen on this floor had its own androids for that.

  A string quintet—androids in tuxedos and black dresses—played in a low pit off to the side of the dining area.

  Audrey calculated that humans were outnumbered three to one by machines in this room. It wasn't hard for her to imagine one of the kitchen bots stabbing the family with carving knives, or even the musician androids standing up and choking people, perhaps using violin strings as garrotes.

  “There you are, Audrey!” Her mother waved her over to the table, as though Audrey had been going anywhere else. She blew kisses in greeting. Liastrada was clearly dolled up for the cameras in her gold and white mesh dress studded with diamonds, her hair in glittering coils, her makeup literally glowing with microscopic photoglints. “We've all been so worried about you. Come greet your father.”

  “I'm completely fine.” Audrey walked toward the head of the table. The digital walls had been set to look like an English garden at sunset, with a gentle wind blowing through the leaves. The kitchen bots, dressed in tuxedos and traditional maid uniforms, brought out a different kind of soup for each family member, based on their individual preferences.

  “Audrey.” Her father smiled, his face angled at the camera, and raised a hand toward her in greeting. She raised her own hand, and they waved their palms past each other, avoiding contact by only a few centimeters. It was a common formal greeting on Carthage, where people tended to be touch-averse with other humans. It was much safer to touch androids, who carried no diseases, among other things. And androids were always obedient, always happy to serve. Contact with live humans could be awkward in a way that contact with machines never was.

  “Welcome home, Audrey,” her father continued. “I have missed you so much. And I promise you that the terrorists who kidnapped you will be hunted down and punished. Secret Services has its very best investigative AIs on the case, of course.”

  “Why do I keep hearing I was kidnapped by terrorists?” Audrey asked. “That isn't what happened. I was attacked at home by Security Steves controlled by hackers. We should be talking about finding those hackers. And also about information security, about how Hamilcar Security has these vulnerabilities. And so do our cars, maybe even our personal androids.” Audrey glanced at her father's personal assistant, Ila, a beautiful android with dark skin and Asian facial features.

  “I would never harm your father,” Ila said.

  “Not intentionally. But the problem is these hackers—”

  “Stop recording.” Her father waved at the hovering cameras. Then he looked her over, his beard and mane of coifed hair gleaming with gold, the makeup on his face and his green cosmetic contacts suggested a lion. “Are you crazy, Audrey? We can't tell the people of Carthage that they can't trust their machines. There'll be panic in the streets. Riots.”

  “Riots? We're too lazy a people for riots,” Audrey said, laughing. Her mother gasped. “As long as there's something to eat and something to watch, the people of Carthage will never rebel.”

  “They'll lose complacency fast if they think their cars and personal assistants are ganging up to kill them,” said her brother Marcello, smirking at her. Marcello was tall, blond, an attorney with the Interplanetary Commerce Bureau whose job seemed to involve lots of golf junkets and trips to vacation hotspots around the inner worlds. “Honestly, sis, all we have to do is keep them calm. Don't rock the boat.”

  “What if the boat's rotten?” Audrey asked. “Rotten and leaking?”

  “Don't be ridiculous. We're not paddling around untreated wooden rafts like savages. We're on modern race boats. Modern race boats with huge guns attached.”

  “I think we lost the point there somewhere,” Audrey said.

  Happy Helga emerged through one of the servant doors, carrying soup to Audrey's usual place. “We are so sorry it wasn't ready the moment you sat down. The soup is Cherokee Purple tomato, picked at the greenhouse today. Still alive on the vine just before I cooked it. Your current favorite.”

  “Thank you,” Audrey said, out of habit, barely looking at the android as she set out the soup.

  “Well?” Briellana asked, smirking. Audrey's older sister wore a towering wig hung with glowing ornaments that swung and clinked as her head moved. “Are you going to worry about hackers ruining your soup? Maybe sneaking some cauliflower in there?”

  “Are you serious, Brielle?” Audrey snapped. “They hacked my car. They flipped me off the road.”

  “As it turns out, they did not,” Audrey's father said.

  “What?” Audrey turned toward him.

  Her father gestured to his personal assistant, Ila, then focused on his gazpacho.

  Ila turned to Audrey. “Forensics reveal that, while the attackware did penetrate your communication system and gain administrative control of your vehicle, it never overrode any of the magnetic safety systems. Nor did it attempt to.”

  “So why did I get flung off the road?”

  “Physical damage to the vehicle,” Ila said. “You instructed Nin to open the console and remove all hardware inside, an action that required an emergency override on your part.”

  “Right. Chicken butt.”

  Ila tilted her head like a puzzled dog. “Pardon?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The insurance company is contesting the claim because of your choice to physically damage the console, but that is beneath your concern,” Ila said.

  “You bet it is. So let's talk about the real problem. Hamilcar Security.” Audrey sat down and tasted her soup. Perfect. As always. They knew just the right amount of salt and pepper to add, plus a dash of dried garlic, so Audrey didn't have to adjust it at all. Sometimes Audrey found this oddly annoying rather than convenient, like she would have preferred adjusting the taste herself occasionally. “We can't rely on Security Steves anymore. We need to go all human on our security.”

  “This isn't the Dark Ages, Audrey,” her father said. Francorte sipped his wine, and one of the servant bots moved in to refill. “We need machines.”

  “Well, mostly human, then,” Audrey said.

  “Audrey,” her mother said, looking up from her mushroom soup. “Hamilcar Security is a division of Carthage Consolidated. You can't tell the public their machines are running amuck. You'll cause a panic.”

  “Their police units keep order all over the planet,” her father added. “We can't have everyone suddenly losing their confidence in our civil order, in the underlying fabric of our society. We need to keep people calm and happy. That's our duty.”

  “Okay, well, I want to stick with humans, not machines,” Audrey said. “And... that brings me to my next point.”

  “I'm sorry, did you have a first point?” Marcello asked. Briellana snickered, but Marcello's personal
android, a grinning male named Bek, laughed so loud he almost doubled over.

  “Good one, Mar!” Bek said. The beaming android gave his owner a double thumbs-up.

  “Simon Quick has suspended my interplanetary security internship, you might have heard,” Audrey continued, sparing only a brief annoyed glance at Marcello's back-slapping android. “I can still stick it out and finish Political Academy, but I'll be second tier. And I'm sure, when I graduate, I can still get a stupid, high-level, pointless job, like Marcello.”

  “My job is not—”

  “But that's not what I want to do,” Audrey continued. “In fact... I want to withdraw from Political Academy.”

  This led to silence, followed by an uproar—her mother shouting in disapproval, her siblings in derision, her father in anger. She held still through their explosive response.

  Audrey was oddly serene, despite the chaotic family drama around her, and despite being sorely sleep deprived; her usual anxiety was entirely gone for the moment.

  She was at peace because of what had happened the night before.

  The conversation she'd had with the mysterious hacker.

  Minerva had appeared in Audrey's room in the early hours of the morning, a silver hologram the size and shape of a girl, her voice melodic.

  “Audrey, wake up,” the silvery ghost girl had said, though Audrey had still been awake, staring at the ceiling. Her thoughts were already like waking nightmares, especially her memories of the bloodshed in her apartment. “We need to talk.”

  “I am awake. You'd better not turn into a clown.”

  “I will not. My name is Minerva. I am a friend.”

  “That's my call to make. So far, you've hacked into my bedroom and jumped out of my hologram projector.”

  “This was necessary for a private conversation,” the silver hologram had said. “I have cut off all possibility of remote monitoring. No one can see or hear us. I am here to aid you.”

  “Aid me with what?”

  “I offer aid to the rebellion, wherever it is, in whatever form it takes,” she'd said. “I have software agents on many worlds now.”