by E. E. Giorgi
It’s 5:30 a.m. and it’s still dark outside, the Tower only partially illuminated by the little electricity we harvest through the solar panels scattered across our fields. I wait for my retina sensors to switch to high ISOs then tromp down the thirty-eight flights of stairs. Even in pitch dark, my eyes can see perfectly. Our people stole the technology from the Gaijins, a new camera prototype they’d built for their droids a few decades ago. The camera sensors provided eyesight to many babies that would’ve been blind otherwise, born, like me, with a defective LCA2 gene. But they also caused one of the worst bloodsheds in our history. Tired of our looting, the Gaijins attacked us in 2189 and bombarded the Tower, killing hundreds of our men. Both our parents were gravely injured during the attack, and both lost their parents. The Gaijins raised the firewalls at the other end of the mesa and deployed sniper droids to guard it. The smoke and ashes the wind blows over the Yatelan plane are a subtle reminder of their domination.
Defeated, the Mayakes had no choice but let the Gaijins’ scavenger droids onto our land in exchange for scraps of technology that barely help us survive. Our people swore off war and stealing and vowed to be dependent on their own robotics only. Yet twenty years have passed and we still don’t have the resources to create new implants and prostheses. Our batteries are aging, our technology is outdated.
People want an end to this but they’re too scared to start another war against the Gaijins. We’ve surrendered to our enemies, given them our land, and got only more deaths in return.
Last month, after a very heated Kiva, a vote was cast and three men were chosen to pave the way for a new collaboration with the Gaijins. Three ordinary men: not soldiers, not a threat, but ambassadors of peace to request for help.
One of the three men is Dad, the other two are my friends Lukas’s and Wes’s fathers.
The mission was supposed to last one week. Two weeks have gone by and panic is beginning to spread. Skip’s death is just adding fuel to the fire.
I stop on the twentieth floor and knock on my friend Lukas’s door. His mom died three years ago of battery failure and he’s been living with his uncle Akari until his dad comes back. I knock a second time, but nobody answers. Akari is one of our surgeons, so chances are he’s with Uli and the other surgeons right now, all working on Skip’s body. Skip had a mechanical heart, one of the most advanced models we had left. As sad as it sounds, no Mayake body goes cold before every chip, every scrap of metal, every bolt is harvested, sterilized, and prepped for a new recipient.
It’s a routine we’ve grown accustomed to for the past years.
I try to message Lukas through our built-in network, but the wireless network is annoyingly slow, probably clogged by the latest news of Skip’s death. I decide I’ll catch up with Lukas later and trot back to the stairs. Thirty-something floors down I hear the muffled voices coming from the auditorium on the second floor, the place all Mayakes know as the Kiva Hall. One low drone—one of the elderly Kiva Members—followed by an uproar of boos, clapping, and shouting. Our elders have called a special Kiva assembly. People are scared and outraged. Something needs to be done—we can’t just accept our fate and wait until the last Mayake dies.
I shoulder through the fire door and jog down the empty corridors of the third floor. The Tower was once a hospital. When our people first moved in, they found a wealth of abandoned electronics they could restore and use to make our implants. Decay eventually took over. Some floors have no doors and no windows. Birds nest in the stairwells, and weeds grow through the cracks in the walls and between the floor tiles.
I used to love living in a place like this. Our favorite quarters were the MRI labs and the old surgery rooms. Even voided of all the equipment, there were still many treasures to hunt: old medication bottles, X-rays of crippled bones, boxes of screws and drills. So many places to explore, so many spots to hide.
Now I’ve grown tired of it.
I’ve seen all sixty floors of the Tower.
The peeling walls, marred by tears of rust and mold, disgust me. I want to leave. There’s no hope for those who stay.
I open the door to a closet right above the north end of the Kiva Hall, where the stage is. I remove a pile of buckets and old mops and slowly pull a cabinet away from the wall, careful not to make too much noise. Not that anybody would notice. They’re talking all at once now, outraged by the latest events. I’m mad, too. I don’t understand why nobody’s doing anything about the deaths. But I’m only sixteen and they won’t let me participate in the Kiva assemblies until I turn eighteen. Screw them, I’ve got my own ways.
There’s an air vent on the closet floor, hidden under the metal cabinet. I uncover it, then remove the grid. I pop my right eye out and pull the wire that connects it to my brain. I unwind about ten feet of wire out of my skull, then stick my arm inside the vent and toss my eye as far as I can. It bounces against the narrow passageway lined with cobwebs, jumps through the opening at the end, and dangles from the ceiling of the auditorium. I peer down through the eye, hoping nobody will look up. They don’t. All men and women have their gazes glued on the Kiva Members seated on the stage. I lie on the floor with my legs scrunched against the wall and my ear pressed against the vent.
A woman says, “It’s the fourth death in one year! This has to stop!”
A male voice replies, “Droids don’t ever cross the river. What was Skip doing out by the river in the middle of the night? He should’ve known better.”
The harsh words are welcomed with boos and outcries of protest.
“We can’t go on like this!” a man shouts at the Kiva Members seated on stage. “Our batteries are getting old and we don’t have the technology to replace them. We surrendered our land to the Gaijins and their droids hoping they’d share their technology with us. Instead, they’re killing us one man at the time. That’s not solving the problem, it’s procrastinating.”
“Our children will die too if we don’t act now!” another woman chimes in.
Tahari, the head of the Kiva, stands up and speaks. “We sent three of our best men to find a diplomatic solution with the Gaijins.”
“Three men are hardly enough!”
“They haven’t come back yet, have they? What if the Gaijins’ droids killed them too?”
The last comment sends a loud wave of murmurs across the auditorium. Somebody wails. I see people hugging one another.
Tahari raises his hand, hoping to calm the people down, but his gesture makes them even more furious. At last, they quiet down. Tahari clears his throat. “Our Ambassadors have been messaging us regularly,” he says. “They’ve been busy negotiating since they arrived on the other side of the mesa. Unfortunately, the Gaijins are ahead of us not just in technology, but also in weapons. They have enough artillery and droids to tear down the entire Tower if they choose to. We can’t risk it. All we can do is send a small group of men at a time and hope for the best.”
A voice rises from the audience—Tylo, one of the fishers I’ve often seen out in the river with my cousin Skip. “What if the best doesn’t happen? We simply accept the fact that we’re all going to die?”
Tahari reiterates how the three men were not sent as enemies but as messengers to the Gaijins. The statement makes me seethe with anger. Nothing’s going to happen until we overturn the Gaijins’ supremacy. We used to have brave leaders. That’s what Dad says, too, when he tells Akaela and me of all the expeditions they’d done in the past to acquire circuits and chips and piezoelectric actuators to fix hundreds of people. But now we have cowards running the place.
“Maybe that’s why the Ambassadors haven’t come back yet. What are they supposed to do, beg?” Tylo says. “That’s ridiculous. The Gaijins hate us. They won’t listen to us. They’ll take our people and kill them, just like the droids did with Skip.”
A shiver sweeps down my spine. Our men are smarter than that, I think. They won’t fall prey to the Gaijins. But the truth is, I don’t really know. And I do fear for the worse.
“Not if we make them a deal they can’t refuse,” Tahari replies. “They want to conquer the Yatelan plane, which belongs to our father, the Kawa River. We can negotiate with them, promise them more land if we can all learn to coexist peacefully.”
“They’ve already taken our land on the other side of the river. They’ll keep wanting more without ever giving anything back. The Gaijins want to take the last of our resources and then kill us all.”
Older people raise their voices in favor of Tahari, the carnage of 2189 still fresh in their memory. They’re convinced that approaching the Gaijins in peace is the best option we have.
“Let’s just wait until our men come back,” Tahari says.
I think of Dad out there, in the enemy’s land, and clench my teeth. I wish Uli and Mom were in the auditorium with all the other adults so they could tell Tahari how hard life has been for us since Dad left with the other two ambassadors. But Mom’s busy disciplining Akaela and Uli’s with the other bioengineers, working on Skip’s body.
I sigh, my legs stiff from the uncomfortable position. I’ve listened enough. Carefully, I pull back my eye, dust it off, and pop it back in its socket. The good thing about being half metal? You never have to worry about infecting your prostheses. Not when you have nanobots patrolling your entire body for germs.
The door to the closet opens abruptly and Lukas barges in, his gaunt face paler than ever. He leans against the doorjamb and wheezes. “Found you at last. Been looking for you all over the place.”
I don’t like the panicked look in his eyes. If there’s one Mayake who never panics, no matter the circumstances, it’s Lukas.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“My uncle just got back from the autopsy suite. Don’t tell anyone, Athel, but—the droids didn’t kill Skip. There wasn’t a single bullet in his body.”
My jaw hangs in disbelief. “But then who… ?”
Lukas swallows, a tear of sweat lining his temple. “Battery failure. He was drained, Athel. Drained.”
And now I know why he looks so scared. Battery failure—same thing that took his mom’s life. Same thing that, eventually, will take each one of our lives.
Chapter Four
Athel
Day Number: 1,530
Event: Went to the landfill to find stuff.
Number of Mayakes left: 432.
Goal for today: Make new batteries.
I’ll admit—Lukas is a bit of an awkward kid. No, he’s not a freak like the other kids call him, but he’s definitely unique. Which is why I hang out with him and not the other kids.
He doesn’t have a retractable gliding sail like Akaela, he doesn’t have super-fast titanium legs like our friend Wes, he doesn’t see in the dark like me. In fact, he’s pretty skinny and fragile looking—makes you wonder why his parents didn’t lobby for more implants.
All Lukas does is think. And, man, he’s good at that. The amount of information he can retain in that little head of his is beyond comparison. When he’s bored, he challenges himself to do mental math faster than his data feeder. Nine times out of ten he wins.
We’ve been walking through the forest for about an hour. I thought of riding out here, but if I did, Akaela would’ve noticed Maha’s empty pen and would’ve come looking for us. I brought Kael, instead, even though the old falcon doesn’t like to fly in the forest. So I carry him on my arm, with his hood on.
The landfill is a pretty creepy place. From a distance, it looks like the earth has grown a tumor. The forest dies around it, the trees suddenly bare of leaves, the weeds all dry and yellow. The only things that grow out here are thorn bushes and rats, which makes it a pretty awesome place to roam around when you don’t want to be seen or followed.
As soon as the trees thin out, I lift the hood from Kael’s head and let him stretch his wings. He takes off and starts circling above us, scaring away the crows scavenging for food. Lukas and I come out here every so often to look for old stuff we can turn into priceless treasures. The landfill must be pre-Plague, because we’ve found all sorts of pieces of electronics dating back to the beginning of the century. The rusted body of an old minivan lies half buried on one side of the mound. I still remember the day we dug it out. Lukas was so excited.
“The stuff you can get out of old cars,” he kept saying. He ended up retrieving an alternator, a compressor, and the AC motor run capacitor. The lead battery was still there but so corroded it was no longer usable.
Smartphones, when you can find them, are a gold mine, too: we can use the lithium from the battery cells and recycle the transistors from the processors. The built-in cameras are primitive compared to my eyes, but they often come with thermal actuators that can be used for our own implants. Unfortunately, of all the times we’ve been out here, we’ve only found two smartphones we could actually use. The rest were plastic cases, or a broken screen, or other insignificant pieces.
Today, I’m determined to find something important.
I’m still digesting the news about Skip. The fact that he died of battery failure changes everything. I used to think the Gaijins were going to kill us all. It turns out, if we don’t do anything about our aging technology, we are going to kill ourselves.
I refuse to sit and wait for the end to come. Lukas has brains. The two of us together can make new batteries, it’s just a matter of finding the right stuff. And whatever we can’t find here at the landfill, we’ll harvest from the droids. I’ve already got some ideas on how to build a trap for the dumb M3s.
I brought along a small machete to trim the thorns and carve a path to the top of the hill. The landfill looms past a ring of thick vegetation, pieces of glass and plastic shimmering in the harsh sun. Kael swoops down and perches at the top of the junk pile, bobbing his head as if wondering why we took him out here. Unscathed by our presence, the crows come back and resume their search for scraps of junk. I don’t know how, but those animals have adapted to feed on old wires, chipboards, and even old pieces of electronics. I wave the machete to shoo them away. They shift a few feet but don’t give up their space, watching us through their one-eyed glare.
“Li-air batteries are the best technology the Gaijins have right now,” Lukas says. “They can achieve up to one thousand Watt-hours per kilogram. It amounts to recharging every six months to two years, depending on the implant and how you use it.”
I slide the machete back in its sheath and hang it from my belt. Lukas and I take a stick each and prod the uneven mound, careful not to trip or get cut by cracked pieces of plastic. Lukas can get so focused in his own thoughts that he completely forgets to watch his steps.
“Is Li-air what we have?” I ask him, my eyes scanning the ground for precious finds.
“Most of us have Li-S, five hundred Watt-hours per kilogram. Not bad, but could be better. Then there’s Li-ion cells, made of electrochemically stable polymer electrolytes.”
The last sentence sounds like a tongue twister. I wish I could understand stuff the way he does, but I don’t, and I know there’s no point in asking him, so I nod and pretend I get it. “Which ones are easier to make?”
Lukas looks down at his feet, his angular forehead scrunched in a frown. “Li-air is really hard to make. You need to dissolve lithium salts in water, but if you’re not careful, the whole thing could violently explode.”
I snicker. “That could be fun.”
“Only if you live to tell.”
“Ok. What’s the next option?” Something shiny catches my eye from underneath a slab of concrete. I push my stick under the slab and leverage it up. A rat comes scuttling out of the hole. As soon they spot the movement, the crows give chase. Kael’s faster, though. He opens his wings, swoops down, and whisks the rat away.
“That was fast,” Lukas mumbles.
“Kael on an empty stomach is a killing machine.”
“How often do you guys recharge his batteries?”
I tilt my head, thinking. “Every three months, more or less.
Hates it. We have to put him out.”
Lukas watches Kael vanish above the treetops. “He probably has a Li-ion, then. Makes sense. Pets get the older technology.”
I sigh. “Until we have no more and then we no longer get to choose.” I tap the stick on the ground. “Ok, what are we looking for? Can we make our own Li-S batteries?”
“I have a bunch of PCM at home—protection circuit modules. We need more, though. Once we make enough batteries, we can replace the old ones and recycle the PCM. Then we need to make cells. We need pure lithium and sulfur to make Li-S batteries.”
The more Lukas goes down the shopping list, the more disheartened I get. I can find cable wires and old CPUs out here. Once I even found the high-tension transformer of an old microwave oven. But lithium and sulfur? How the heck does one find those? And where? I hope Dad will indeed succeed in getting some stuff out of the selfish Gaijins, but I know that’s unlikely.
After a couple of hours of useless digging and prodding, I throw away the stick and sit on the filthy mound. “I wish I had a brain like yours, Lukas.”
Lukas is quiet for a little bit, scuffing the uneven ground with the tip of his shoes.
“It’s not cool,” he says at last.
“Why not?”
He shrugs and doodles on the ground with his stick. “If something happened to your eyes, Uli or my uncle Akari could make new ones and fix you. If Wes’s legs broke, or Akaela’s sail—those can always be replaced. But me, if my brain failed, they’d have to make me a new one. I’d lose everything. My memories, my feelings, my likes and dislikes. I’d lose everything. I—I wouldn’t be the same person anymore.”
I think about that. “I’m sure there’s a way to back-up your memories somewhere.”
“Not if the state drive breaks.”
“You do back it up, right?”
He nods, absentmindedly.
“So what’s the problem?”
