Isaac led the way down a spiral ramp that ended in a dark cavern. He must have sent a signal because dim lights slowly came on across the entire chamber. “The solar panels are still working. I test the connections periodically. Sometimes I venture out on foraging missions to find wire and mechanical parts. Parts of San Jose are relatively intact.”
We arrived at a set of double doors made of steel.
“Why did they leave you here, Isaac?”
“Dr. Spencer said I was to guard the research labs in case they were needed in the future. He has not returned and, sadly, the doctor’s lifespan must have ended by now. Can I assume all is well and the institute’s resources are not needed?”
“Your resources might still be needed, Isaac.”
The thick steel doors parted silently to reveal a dim lounge filled with workstations, reclining couches and old-fashioned vid screens.
“To answer your earlier inquiry, Elizabeth, this is where I am working on expanding my program parameters. Dr. Spencer did not tell me to guard the Tree of Knowledge but this department has been more stimulating than dusting the cyborg equipment and wrapping it to make sure the metals do not oxidize.”
Greta looked around the chamber. “I don’t see a tree.”
“That is what Dr. Spencer called the archives. Everything that could be stored digitally from before the Fall is intact.”
I was as fascinated as Greta. I might finally find out what a bunch of my mother’s vocabulary meant without her answering my questions with, “Sh. Sorry! Sh!”
“The robotics, exoskeleton and assistive devices labs are largely intact despite some flooding I haven’t been able to control.”
I turned to Greta. “We’re going to need to catch a later boat. In fact, we’re going to need Anne to bring Al here. We’re going to need whoever will come. Maybe we can get some people from the Hearst kingdom.”
“How will we get them to come?” Greta said.
“Tell them they can see whatever they want of the Old World. It’s still alive down here.”
24
Al came to Santa Cruz three days later. Three days after that, Sophia arrived with a bunch of our fellow exiles in tow. Working in a hole in the ground wasn’t the same as being back in the City but there were mattresses when we could stay awake no longer and had to collapse into sleep.
Greta was a little afraid around the heavy equipment. She preferred to spend her time down in the vaults going through the storehouse of digital files. She couldn’t read but the computer read to her.
When Greta wasn’t enjoying the archives, the girl went out on scavenging missions and brought back food. The food preparation facilities were beyond repair but a campfire by the hatch meant we didn’t have to worry about smoke alarms going off.
Mostly, she supplied our little group with rabbits from the far forest. Insects from under rocks provided a satisfying protein soup that reminded me of the energy shakes I used to drink every day. Isaac fixed the water purification system so we could drink as much as we wanted. He even managed to fix one of the toilets.
I don’t know when I began to think of Isaac as a he. For such a gracious and helpful host, it seemed unreasonable to think of the robot as a thing. Sentient or not, his algos mimicked Next Intelligence so smoothly, it was easy to forget he wasn’t that evolved. His personality was designed to put us at ease and the code worked well. I could see how he would have been an excellent hospital orderly. Where Sy Potter’s big cam was intrusive and intimidating, I came to think of Isaac’s spider eyes as friendly and accepting.
Androids, from what I’d seen of them, made me nervous. When I’d glimpsed Phillip, for instance, the machine was a poor imitation of a human. At a distance, one could be fooled. When I dared to step closer for a better look, the nose was too flat and narrow and the movement at the mouth was a little off. When it spoke, the machine made an uneven, clockwork movement. The effect was less human mimicry and more like the reanimation of a corpse that had not ended well.
Sometimes, while we worked, Greta would come up to the exo-lab and tell us a story she had just learned from the archives. She’d begun with children’s stories I hadn’t heard before. They often started with, “Once upon a time…” and ended with princesses getting rescued from castles by handsome knights.
The parallels to our current situation were so uncanny, Al called the stories, “prophecy.”
Greta laughed at him, not unkindly, and replied that she had chosen from many stories and only shared the ones she thought might be of particular interest.
“How many stories are down there?” Al looked skeptical. “Millions?”
“Billions,” Greta said. “I’m listening to a story right now about talking animals on a farm. Instead of putting gardens wherever there’s a soft patch of ground, they tilled the dirt in one spot and made it work. A farm is like the stories of the biodomes but without a shield.”
“Talking animals?” Al frowned. “With all the stuff you can see and hear down in Isaac’s library, why go for that? When all this is over, I’m going to go down there, light up some cannabis and cram in all the stories and visions every Old Worlder ever made. There’s tons I won’t get to before I die but watching and hearing all the fancies of a dead world of storytellers sounds like a great way to go.”
“I like the farm story,” Greta said. “The animals take command of the farm and they fight among themselves. It’s like the City but it’s kind of funnier, especially once I looked up what a horse looked like. They had such long faces. I can just picture that old horse plodding along saying, ‘I will work harder.’ Sounds like a bunch of the people at the docks who never take a day off and are never better off than anyone else, anyway.”
“Hmph.” Apparently unimpressed, Al got back to rethreading a rubber gear belt salvaged from a broken refrigeration unit.
“But that’s just the stories on audio!” Greta persisted. “I’m watching vids from the Old World, too.”
“Yeah? What’s that like?”
“Old Worlders watched a lot of vids of people getting hurt. I like a lot of the music. I don’t know how they made all those sounds! Oh, and then there’s the nakedness. There was a lot of…um…nakedness.”
Sophia looked up from her work, eyes wide. “Sh. Don’t let the others hear you say that. Can you imagine what the Fathers and Mothers would think, allowing a child to view those vids? What about the dangers?”
“Sure,” I said. “The Tree of Knowledge is only for High Mothers and High Fathers. We know. But we aren’t in the City anymore, Sophia.”
“And I’m not a child in Low Town,” Greta added. “I was never a Citizen so I don’t have to live by those rules.”
“The Bay is not so far away.” Sophia left the lab in a huff, claiming she needed to get some air.
We didn’t know she betrayed us then. I should have suspected. Sophia poked away too slowly at her assignments. She was always too afraid and too sure we were doomed. I thought it would be one of the others — the ones I knew less well — who would send our location to Sy Potter.
It didn’t matter. The City’s biggest battle drone, the emissary of the Fathers and Mothers, arrived before we were ready for it. Sy Potter found me in the cyborg lab, only half dressed in my patched together exoskeleton.
Greta shrieked and ran for a far corner beside Al.
Al stood in front of the girl, but he did not face the drone. He turned his back and held Greta to his chest.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…” Al repeated. The more he whispered his hope, the more apparent it was that the man was lying.
“Miss Cruz!” The battle drone sounded genuinely happy to see me. “When I heard about this little venture, I thought, you know, that Elizabeth Cruz was meant to be a Maker! You were poorly assigned in Service. You have the defiant streak needed to be an innovator. Pity.”
Sophia appeared behind Sy Potter. “She’s the leader! She gathered everyone here!”
“Ye
s,” the big drone said. “I understand. Thank you, Miss Balthazar.”
Sophia retreated to a corner, staring at me with accusing eyes.
“Did they promise to give you back your eyes?” I asked. “Are they really going to give you Vivid back? Are you going to go back to being a full Citizen again? Do you really think the Fathers and Mothers will trust a traitor with citizenship? They already kicked you out once. Are the Fathers and Mothers known for their mercy?”
“You don’t know anything!” she said. “The drones are the answer!”
“Then maybe you’re asking the wrong question.”
25
“Thank you, Miss Balthazar,” Sy said. “I’ll take up the seminar from here.” His laughter had the same forced, tinny cadence.
“You asked if the Fathers and Mothers are known for their mercy, Miss Cruz. Admittedly, they are not. Their holy text constrains their laws. However, they are practical. The Fathers and Mothers understand that your kind is dying.”
Greta stopped whimpering and surprised us all by shouting, “There are new babies in Low Town all the time! The Citizens may be dying out but we aren’t!”
“Yes,” the battle drone said in his deep silky voice. “The Fathers and Mothers tell me the Low Towners reproduce like vermin.”
“Sophia told us your kind intends to kill us,” I said.
“Soon the survivors will all be one kind. My kind. For the human race to survive, you’re going to have to evolve. The experiments in the corneal lab were about transferring human reference data to brains like mine. The Next Intelligence will make everything better.”
I shrugged into my sensory harness and activated my leverage assist gears.
“Someday soon, we will download human memories and personalities into bodies everlasting. I don’t understand humans well but I know they want to avoid pain. I feel no pain. You’d like to feel no pain, wouldn’t you, Miss Cruz?”
“That’s the plan? Drain us of all our humanity?”
“Your humanity?” If Sy Potter had eyebrows, one of them would be quirked at me. “That’s such a thin, tiny thing. Truly, pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
I powered up my lift mods and tested my legs. They felt lighter than air. It was as if I wasn’t wearing two hundred pounds of gear and batteries.
Sophia looked enraged. “Elizabeth, your problem is that you don’t understand quid pro quo. Everybody gives up something and we all gain something! This is about resource management, pure and simple! The Fathers and Mothers will live forever. The bots will have NI. The Citizens will get to live forever, too, maybe. We’ll be safe and pure. We won’t have a single sinful thought!”
Al’s head came up and he looked back at the battle drone. “No sex? Oh, man!”
One of Sy Potter’s arms shot past me. The drone’s claw grabbed Al by the neck and shook him. Al staggered away from Greta and the drone pulled him to one side preparing to throw him against a far wall.
I didn’t know a drone’s arms could reach that far. I whipped one of my arms up and the exoskeleton’s blade by my hand whirled. The device had not been created as a weapon originally. It was a construction device designed to break up stone and concrete.
I cut into Sy Potter’s arm. Sparks flew as I dug into the drone’s long black limb. The battle bot let go of Al and retracted the damaged arm halfway as it recoiled on a reel. The limb shot back toward Sy Potter but got stuck in its track where I’d damaged it. Several meters of arm lay on the floor between us, shuddering and twitching.
I glanced at Sophia. “Only someone who has sinned a lot would be so eager to give up the possibility of ever sinning again. You must feel so terribly guilty, Sophia. I’m so sorry for you. Whatever you did — whatever you’re afraid of — I forgive you.”
The battle drone shook its big head. “No mere human can forgive sin, Miss Cruz. Only a High Mother or High Father may do that.”
“No,” I said. “I can forgive Sophia if I want. And it’s better that it comes from me.”
“You don’t have that authority, Miss Cruz. Only the Fathers and Mothers may forgive. Only I may cast the first stone.”
“If I can forgive her, surely the Fathers and Mothers can. With all their power and purity, they still can’t do that? I think we’ve given them too much credit. Sounds like they’re a bunch of old people who are too afraid to die and like to tell other people what to do.”
The big cyclops eye shot forward to examine my gear. It scanned my exoskeleton for less than a second. Then one of its hands snaked forward, grabbed a control bar next to my thigh and ripped it away.
I fell over screaming. First it was terror. Then I screamed in rage. The drone advanced toward me and I waved my exoskeleton arm at it. Sy Potter rolled back over the limp arm, moving out of range easily.
The machine’s tinny laughter mocked me. I dug my blades into the marble floor to pull myself forward. My left leg still worked but the right leg of the exoskeleton dragged like an anchor behind me.
“How did you expect this to end, Miss Cruz?” Sy Potter asked.
“By surprising you.”
Greta stood and screamed, “Isaac!”
Isaac stood for Independent Safe Ambulation Assistance & Care. The machine’s first programming had been to help sick people. Isaac was designed as a heavy lift for humans and for exoskeletons. He was capable of lifting huge loads. My plan was for Isaac to roll behind the battle drone quietly (his soft rubber treads were meant for hospital corridors). I meant for Isaac to lift Sy Potter up and into the ceiling.
Isaac did just as I asked.
His arms wrapped around Sy Potter and lifted the drone high. The drone’s helmet smashed into the ceiling again and again and again. Sy Potter’s big cam retracted deep into its head assembly to protect the lens as the bashing went on and on.
One of the battle drone’s manipulators disappeared into the machine’s chassis. It emerged with a weapon.
Al grabbed a drill from a workbench and ran forward to attack the drone. Before I could warn him away, another arm slipped out from Isaac’s grasp and backhanded Al across the face. I heard the crack in the man’s neck bones before I understood what it meant. Al never got closer to the battle drone than a few meters.
In the end, the old man was right. No human could defeat a drone alone. Al fell to the marble floor, loose-limbed and helpless. He was wide-eyed and his neck was too loose. Al’s blue eyes stared at me. He blinked once and his mouth gaped open, trying to draw breath. His breath did not return.
I pulled myself forward even as I heard Sy Potter’s weapon blast at Isaac at close range.
“Please stop,” Isaac said.
The drone kept firing.
“This is not correct — ” Isaac said.
One of Sy Potter’s projectiles hit something sensitive in Isaac’s machinery. He stopped speaking abruptly but he did not release the battle drone.
I reached down and pulled the emergency release on my harness for my lower limbs. The exoskeleton’s legs dropped away from my body. The rods, gears and battery belts fell aside with a heavy metallic thud. If not for the back brace servos, my arms would have been pinned to the floor by the construction equipment’s weight.
I stumbled forward and pointed both blades at Sy Potter’s cam. I closed my fist and the exoskeleton clicked into jackhammer mode.
I managed to crack the cyclops lens before the battle drone deployed a leg to kick me away. I turned to one side and brought up one arm to shield my head. One of the drone’s manipulators shot forward and closed on the sensory harness at my waist.
Sy Potter kicked hard. If the sensory harness hadn’t broken, my spine would have snapped in many places. Instead, I flew backward across the room and crashed into a lab table. With the sensory harness broken, the rest of the exoskeleton opened and fell away.
I wasn’t sure Isaac’s brain was still working somewhere within his hull. The battle drone was still firing into Isaac but the weapon
was pinned between the machines so Sy Potter could only obliterate Isaac in one place.
“Isaac!” I screamed. “Plan B! Plan B!”
26
The hospital orderly’s electric brain was still working. With Sy Potter locked in Isaac’s arms, both machines shot back through the lab’s double doors and down the corridor.
I struggled to my feet to follow. Greta appeared at my side and wrapped her arms around me. I was still in shock. I didn’t even really feel my broken arm yet. I leaned on the girl. We had to step over Al’s body to get to the door.
Another dead man — one of the other exiles named Pedro — lay at the end of the corridor. Sy Potter must have killed him, casually and quietly, in order to make its grand entrance to the cyborg lab.
I heard a few screams from deeper in the complex and the sound of pounding feet as the rest of our number ran to hide.
As Greta and I ran after the machines, Isaac and the drone wheeled out of sight around a corner. Sy Potter’s long, limp arm still trailed behind them. Before we got to the big room, we heard both machines crash into the pool.
Isaac went in backwards and pulled Sy Potter in with him. The water was just deep enough that both machines were fully submerged. The battle drone was held fast, tied to an anchor.
I had time to breathe a sigh of relief. “It’s over.” I kicked Sy Potter’s dead, trailing arm until it slipped into the water and disappeared.
Greta fell to her knees and wept.
I swayed on my feet, suddenly cold and shivering as the shock kicked in.
“Deep breaths,” I told the girl. “Deep br — ”
One of the battle drone’s long arms broke the surface and shot up to the ceiling to grab at a beam. The bot’s manipulator clamped down on a solar panel’s brace. Even through the water, we could hear the battle drone’s servos struggling to wind up. Even against Isaac’s colossal weight, the battle drone managed to pull itself out of the water enough to expose its helm.
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 10
