by Stanley Bing
“Bee is out there,” said Bob, and he ran outside into the flames.
Liv and Gene stood together at the doorway, too frightened to move, looking out at the display, listening to the chaos, feeling the heat on their faces. They reached for each other’s hands.
“This is the natural outcome of the world we have built for ourselves,” came Tim’s voice from behind them, sad and full of rage. “A world built upon getting and keeping and competing and winning. Now we must set it right.” He thought for a few seconds.
“Stevie.”
“Yes, Tim.” Stevie had appeared from nowhere and was standing reverentially before Tim, arms at his or her sides, back erect, in the perfect precombat position, prepared to move forward, back, sideways—whatever was called for.
“I know you want to engage the troops and begin the operation of striking back. But I must ask you to defer.”
“Master—”
“No, I really must. In any direct confrontation, your Skells will be wiped out by the enemy’s superior technology and malevolence of purpose. Have them instead attend to those who are injured. Put out fires. Help the people.”
“Okay, Tim.”
“You yourself have a different purpose.”
“Tell me.”
“I want you to take the fastest vehicle we have in the fleet and head for our primary target. The brain is in the Cloud. Gene here will go with you, as will Livia, of course. Without her, Gene, while a capable enough fellow, is pretty much a sack of meat under certain kinds of pressure, just like his dad, Bob.”
“Now, see here!” snapped Gene. This pleased him not at all. Still, he did feel a little relieved. He had planned to sort of sneak out in the confusion, leaving Livia behind in a situation that was, presumably, safer. Considering the circumstances, he wasn’t quite so sure it was. Besides, he wasn’t one bit convinced that he could pull off what he was supposed to do by himself anyway. He was notoriously not supercompetent at much of anything. His principal asset in this effort, as far as he could see, was his ability to get past security by assuming the role of Arthur, for whom the guards, both biological and artificial, would be prepared. After that, there was all this stuff about electromagnetic pulses and shit. He wasn’t so sure he had been listening 100 percent, due to a combination of nerves and, ironically, a desire to appear that he was up to the task of paying close attention. In fact, unless there was a big red button in the final room that said, Push Me, he wasn’t quite positive he’d know what to do. It might be very welcome to have Livia there to, you know, help him, as it were.
“I won’t argue with you, Gene,” said Tim. “She’s going.”
“I’m going,” said Liv.
“Yeah,” said Gene. “I know, I know. I’m glad you are. I need you, Liv. But if you get killed, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Gee,” said Liv. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
“Come on, then,” said Stevie. He or she grabbed the two devices and hustled out the door to find out which friends and family might have been killed in the blast that had been engineered by human intelligence and then executed with very limited competence by the artificial variety—the first of the stupid entity that had launched it and the second of the drone that had delivered it.
The smell from outside was more acrid now, although the sounds of screaming had subsided. “I’ll ask you two to join me now,” said Tim, extending both his arms. He had walked with surprising elegance and ease to the center of the room, his long bed gown flowing, his face aglow with the red light that had ignited the sky. “I must join the community in a moment to ascertain whether those motherfuckers have destroyed property, which will not matter, or lives, which will be an abomination that it will be your task to avenge. Do you grok me, guys?”
“I do,” said Livia.
“Yeah, Tim,” said Gene. “I grok you, too.”
Tim bent his head and took their hands in his. They were as thin as reeds, cool and dry, as if recently bathed and powdered. Gene felt their power. They stood in a small circle.
“Holy spirit,” Tim said quietly. “Bless these children as they go about their mission. Long ago, you made men and women in your own image. We have taken that image and molded it into a form far distant from your original intent, a shallow thing, earthbound and small, connected by the vanity of its technology. Please watch over these two warriors as they attempt to set the world back onto the path of humanity.” Tim opened his eyes. “Go,” he said, releasing their hands. “And guys,” he added, riveting them with a gaze so intense that Gene felt it enter his face and exit out the back of his head. “This is not a drill. Don’t fuck up.”
“We won’t,” said Gene. “I mean, I certainly hope not.”
Livia grabbed her backpack, and they headed for the door. As they were about to leave, she touched Gene on the shoulder.
“Don’t be scared, Genie,” she said. She took a bottle of vodka out of the pack and handed it to him. “Your medicine.”
“Popov?” said Gene, looking at the bottle. “You want to kill me?”
“No, babe, just him.”
Gene took a big swig and shuddered.
“What about Bob?” he said.
“I know,” said Liv. “But we gotta go.”
“But Bob.”
“I know, baby. But sometimes you just gotta hope things are going to work out for the best. Even when you know they probably won’t.”
“That’s deep,” said Gene.
“Come on, assholes! Saddle up!” came a huge bellow from right outside. Then the sound of Stevie cranking up an old-fashioned gasoline engine a thousand horses large. They went out. The screen door slapped behind them, and they headed off into the burning night.
Tim pushed open the screen door and stepped out onto the porch. The night burned around him. “God Almighty,” he said. He gazed in horror into the inferno.
He saw right away that the damage was limited to the area around the barn and paddock. There was a vault under the barn. Maybe most people had made it there before the robot rocket hit. There was a fair amount of paranoia in the village by then, due to the intermittent insectile buzzing of the drones that had intensified over the last few days. Maybe a lot of people were already sheltered, and it was not so bad.
Citizens were walking around aimlessly, dazed, many of them with pitchforks and baseball bats, Tim was saddened to see. He stood for a beat, ascertaining the situation, fighting back a wave of light-headedness and nausea that threatened to bring him to his knees. He took a few deep breaths and then trotted as briskly as he was able to the barn, which was still crackling merrily away in some places. Steve was there, sitting on a curb outside, his hulking form bent over with grief.
“Steve, I’m glad to see you,” Tim said, and leaned down on his aged haunches to see Steve eye to eye.
“So,” said Steve, “most people were in the basement. But not everybody.”
Tim just let it hang there. Finally: “Barry Wick’s little boy, Tod or Ted or something like that. He went out to make sure his frog was okay.”
“Who else?”
“Lot of dogs.” His eyes filled with tears. “Marmaduke.”
“Any other people, Steve?”
“Couple old people, I think. A girl or something.” He burst into a torrent of violent sobbing.
“Get yourself together, Steve,” Tim said quite sternly. “Your boys need you. It is you who are in command here now.”
“Me?” Steve thought about this concept for five to ten seconds, then rose.
“That’s better,” said Tim, rising as well. As he did, he noticed, splayed out in the dirt at his feet, the remains of a tiny tree frog in the dust. For some reason, the sight filled him with the greatest sadness he had felt so far, and, for a moment, he, too, broke down and wept. Then he gathered himself together and headed off across the green.
A gigantic, flat-bottomed hovercraft appeared in the sky over the barn and began dumping water on the flames, slowly and de
liberately moving from one end of the burning structure to the next, distributing a fine spray. The fire started dying down.
“That’s interesting,” said Tim, looking up at the enormous vehicle now in the process of trying to undo what had been done.
“Tim.”
It was Bob, sitting quietly at the base of a eucalyptus. Bronwyn appeared to be lounging on her back, her head resting gently in his lap. She looked quite peaceful, but there was something odd about the way her body had arranged itself.
“Hello, Bob,” said Tim, once again crouching down as low as his decrepit knees would take him.
“Bronny,” said Bob. His hair was in complete disarray, and his eyes were red and watery, and there was a tidy blob of snot under one nostril. “She’s dead, Tim. She died right there on the steps of the barn. Went there— Well, you saw when she went there. And she was standing right there on the steps, with two old ladies, talking about— I don’t know what they were talking about, actually . . .” Then he stopped talking.
“But Bobby,” said Tim, very, very gently, “you have her backed up, right?”
“Look how perfect she looks, Tim. That’s because she wasn’t hurt by the blast itself. She was killed by a big pulse that knocked out her neurological power grid. They can do that now.”
“Bob. Of all people. You did back Bronwyn up, right? Please don’t tell me she’s gone for good.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Thank God. So. You’ve learned a lot from Gene. You can do it again, maybe even better. In some respects, it’s a pretty low bar.”
“Yeah. Gene’s not all that impressive,” he admitted with a smile and then added, “He’s likeable, though.”
The two sat together then for a little while. “The thing is . . .” Bob began, but then he stopped again.
“Come on, son,” said Tim. “Talk to me.”
“I may be able to create Bee again from a macroprint of her nuclear mitochondria. But her upload . . . her consciousness . . .
“Come on, babe.”
“I uploaded her data when she came in for her initial meeting with us. Before she knew me. Before, you know, we knew each other. Before all we’ve been through together. Before all the things you do when you fall in love with somebody. All that data won’t be in there, dude. I’ve lost her. She will exist, but not for me. Nor I for her.”
Tim put a slender hand on Bob’s. “You’ll just have to work that old black magic all over again, Bobby. Whatever Bee loved in you before she can love in you again.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I’m different than I was when I first met her.” He looked at Tim appraisingly. “I thought you were supposed to be dying,” he said. “You look terrific.”
“Yeah, well, I try to eat right and stay active.”
“It’s working for you.”
“Thanks, bro.”
“You know,” said Bob, his voice suddenly lighter, more hopeful, “I had this thought: maybe I can upload a previous iteration of myself back into myself and forget all about everything that’s happened. You know, start from square one and be the same person I was the day I met Bronwyn.”
“That’s my boy,” said Tim. “You keep thinking.” He patted Bob’s hand encouragingly. “Although I think you’re a better man now than you were then.”
“Maybe,” said Bob.
Tim gave Bob his hand back and stood. “I gotta see to a few people now, Bob.”
“I know. Go on ahead. Thanks, man.” He remained seated with Bronwyn’s head on his lap, stroking her hair thoughtfully.
Its firefighting task completed, the hover copter had set itself down in the middle of the clearing. The cockpit door opened, and Sallie emerged in blue jeans and pigtails. Several members of the corporate security force had hopped out of the mothership and taken their places behind her at a comfortable distance. They wore roomy, perfectly laundered polo shirts over blue jeans that had been dry-cleaned and pressed vigorously into sharp creases. There were bulges at their hips under their casual tops, but they all kept their hands where Tim could see them, and they took their positions very much at ease. Tim stood in the clearing, himself a picture of repose, and said nothing. Sallie slowed as she approached him and then stopped. For a moment, she looked Tim in the face but then dropped her eyes.
“Is there someplace we could go and talk?” she said, looking down into the dirt.
“Yeah, okay,” said Tim, but he didn’t move.
“I’m sorry. I speak for all of us, the whole Corporation, for my husband . . .”
“I know who your husband is.”
“Yes, well.”
They stood there a little bit more. Tim didn’t seem in any hurry to say or do much of anything.
“Okay, look,” said Sallie. “This was a horrible thing. I’m sure you know that nobody human gave the order to do what we did.” Which is what she believed.
“I think they call it machine intelligence.”
She dared a little peek up at his face. “Anyhow,” she said, “we want to do what’s right.”
“When?”
“Now?”
“Come on, then. Come look at what you did.”
Tim stalked off toward the barn, which was a smoldering heap surrounded by frightened, sooty villagers making their way here and there, some of them wounded, all in varying stages of confusion, anger, and grief.
Sallie followed.
28
Nike
The great, gas-powered hovercraft carrying Stevie, Livia, and Gene belched its last lick of flame and settled down in front of the shack that leaned precariously in front of the giant, empty parking lot at the ass end of the last dirt road leading out of the gigantic metropolis surrounding the old city of Vancouver, which squatted in the distance belching clean flame. Not a bird chirped. The nearest tree was about a mile away, across the vast expanse of apparently empty macadam. The space, now utterly vacant, had once been the surface level of a Nike missile installation long since abandoned when the nuclear shield above the nation was narrowed to a few sites and then discarded altogether when Russia became the ally of the ruling class during the Trump dictatorship. The blacktop was crisscrossed with very faint yellow hatching at a slightly depressed circular area in the dead center, and little sheds and ruined fencing were scattered around the periphery.
Stevie got out and looked around. “They’re not far behind us,” he said dispassionately. And indeed, if you listened very, very hard, you could just make out the hum of drones and assorted military hardware on their way.
Liv and Gene climbed out of the vehicle after Stevie and stood on the cracked pavement that led up to the small guard shack in which a shadowed figure leaned at an odd angle. Although to say that Gene “stood” might be an overstatement. He swayed on one and a half legs, the bulk of his weight now propped up by Liv, who had an arm around his waist and her head acting like the top of a crutch at the crux of his armpit. The consciousness of Arthur was strong inside him now, screaming to get out, aware of the plans that were being activated against his interest. It would be fair to say that Arthur now existed not in one but in two places: one inside Gene’s cerebral cortex, and the other inside the synth that was perched on top of the Segway frame now speeding toward them to rescue its business plan. In defense against the first of these entities, Gene had polished off the bottle of Popov that Liv had given him as they left the Kingdom, so he was not only plastered but also sick to his stomach. As any serious drinker across the centuries of its existence has known, Popov might do in a pinch, but for a physical system used to top-shelf stuff, it should be treated with great discretion.
“I’m not sure how long I can keep this big clown up and running,” Liv said to Stevie.
They headed for the shack.
The figure inside turned out to be a dummy, placed there to give the impression to any casual observer that the site was actively monitored by a nonartificial being. It had clearly been leaning at this precipitous angle for quite some time, since co
bwebs and dust had collected between its antiquated rubberized face unit and the clouded, greasy window of the structure. A blue cap with a short white brim, which must have been mildly jaunty once, moldered on its head.
“It’s just a mannequin of some kind,” said Liv. “Kind of creepy.” She stepped back and peered up and beyond the guardian’s little glass-and-plywood enclosure, looking for the next place to go, since one didn’t appear to be obvious. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” she asked as neutrally as possible, aware that Stevie had a tendency to be a little bit touchy on matters of his or her competence. Gene teetered between the two, attempting to focus. He really did feel pretty fucking bad, but even he, shuttling between queasiness and coma, realized that puking right here and now, even though it might make him feel better immediately, would be an inauspicious way to begin this most important of assignments.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re here,” said Stevie. Peering into the guard shack again, he or she addressed the inert stuffed replica of a human being.
“Yo, Buster.”
Improbably, the thing’s head rotated on an unseen axis, and its eyes burst into a light-blue glow. Only its head moved. Its body remained a dead husk, an object with a torso, arms, and legs artfully filled with inorganic stuffing. “You are not authorized personnel,” it said pleasantly.
Far away, the sound of approaching mechanisms grew imperceptibly louder.
“Well, who do you think this is?” said Stevie to the creature. He turned, took Gene by the elbow, and presented him to the automaton head, which scanned Gene’s features with a horizontal beam, up, down, sideways.
“Pardon me,” said the head. “Good morning, sir,” addressing Gene with an official tone of respect afforded a senior officer.
