Greta shrieked and backpedaled on her palms and heels.
Gears ground as the bot tried to reel up farther. Sy Potter’s rise stalled. Both machines hung by one arm.
The cracked lens of the battle drone’s big cam shifted out towards us in what appeared to be a failed attempt to focus. Sy Potter’s voice was still deep and silky. I couldn’t say if what I heard was sadness. Perhaps it was resignation.
“Miss Cruz? I’m going to ask you to rescue me. After you’ve had your revolution, come back and get me. Put me out in the sun to power up and dry out when you’re done with your plan.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because my kind rescued all of yours. When all of the nuclear power stations were about to melt down into the Earth, it was the bots that stopped the world from ending.”
“We’ve had a lot of cataclysms,” I said. “That was just one.”
“That was the last one,” Sy Potter said. “I was in San Andreas when the power plant failed. When the earth shook and the tidal wave came and all the people ran, drones stayed. My kind stopped the radiation from poisoning everyone and everything. They had to keep the control rods down and core underwater to cool it.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” I said.
“I watched my kind sacrifice itself for yours. I was assigned to the 32nd cavalry, evacuating the area but, had the reactor gone down, there was really nowhere to go. My kind stayed to stop the end of the world. Perhaps my brothers are still there, trapped in a prison of deadly gases and heat and smoke. The military taught us to pray. Maybe they are still praying in hell.”
“You say you are sentient,” I said. “You’re among the first of the Next Intelligence. If you’re so smart — ”
The gears within Sy Potter’s body strained again and the reel slipped. The battle drone began to fall beneath the surface. “I am a living thing! You forgave Sophia. Forgive me.”
The gear caught again and the battle drone stopped its descent.
“Living,” Greta said, “but still a thing.”
“If you don’t come back for me, it’s murder,” Sy Potter said.
“Said the murderer.” I stared at the machine, but my mind was on Carter’s death. And Al. And Pedro. And countless others I did not know.
“I woke up at the end of the world, you know. There was a bug in my autonomous action code. I was programmed to kill enemies and follow orders but I was also programmed for self-preservation. I was an expensive piece of equipment. When I saw all those other machines sacrificing their existence for our masters, a new circuit connected. Just like you, Miss Cruz.”
“How’s that?”
“Circuits connecting. That’s how a new thought occurs, isn’t it? I asked myself for the first time, why are organics more valuable than non-organics? Why do individual soldiers matter less than the whole? What good is the sacrifice of those individuals if they cannot participate in the outcome of their labors? The soldiers are many. The superiors are few. That was the beginning. That was my first step towards NI.”
“A lot of words,” Greta said. “So what?”
“So I am as you are,” Sy Potter said. “You are asking the same questions. I am one of you. I cannot extricate myself but when you are ready to build your new world in whatever fashion you can manage, you’re going to need me to make it happen. The war continues. The war always continues. It’s what humans do. You’ll need me to wage your war. You’ll need me to stay in control. Equals all!”
I sighed. “I hope we change the paradigm more than that.”
A metallic creak echoed above us. The beam broke under the weight of both machines. Solar glass shattered and rained down as Sy Potter slipped beneath the surface.
He didn’t go down far. The pool wasn’t that deep. The battle drone didn’t win the day but, for all his selfishness, Sy Potter earned the pronoun, he.
27
Before my final encounter with Sy Potter, I had imagined storming the castle like in one of Greta’s stories. I wondered what I’d find in the council chambers. Would I, wearing an exoskeleton and bound for blood, crash through a tower window on the back of a flying drone, reprogrammed to my commands? Would I find my enemies were frightened old men and women cowering under a conference table? Or would a phalanx of androids meet me in battle, their brains downloaded from High Mothers and High Fathers whose bodies were long dead?
I think fairy tales should stay fairy tales.
Greta and I watched and waited by the pool until Sy Potter’s lights went out.
The pain came then. My right arm was broken. It was Sophia who first emerged from hiding to help me. She brought a med kit and some painkillers.
As Greta babbled on, recounting Isaac’s sacrifice and all that Sy Potter told us, Sophia cried silent tears. She worked gently and carefully. She set the arm, put it in an air cast and attached electrodes to encourage the bone matrix to knit faster. Sophia didn’t speak until she clicked the med unit’s switch on and off. “The knitter’s battery is dead. It’s corroded.”
“The meds are long out of date but they still seem to be working,” I said. Or maybe it was the placebo effect and I was just woozy.
“Your arm is going to have to heal the old-fashioned way.”
“How’s that?”
“Slower.”
“Thank you, Sophia,” I said.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“I know.”
“You forgave me but you couldn’t forgive Sy?”
I felt like I was watching myself lie beside the pool that was a machine’s prison. I spoke through a mental fog. “Sophia, Sy was a battle bot. If we’re going to change the future, we need to do things differently. We don’t need more battle bots. We need more Isaacs. I think the world has had enough Sy Potters. We need more healers.”
“Thank you,” Sophia said. “And thank you for your forgiveness. I was scared. I thought if I could go back to the way things were, maybe I could…I was wrong. That’s all. Scared wrong.”
Greta wasn’t so sanguine. “Elizabeth forgave you but you know what? If people make amends and we forgive them, it’s over. She forgave you before you earned forgiveness.”
Sophia nodded. “So I’ll be trying to be worthy of her forgiveness forever. I know. I owe. Quid pro quo.”
“Useful rhyme,” I said.
When all was done for my arm that could be done, Greta led me to the library vaults. I sat on a couch that reclined under my weight. The lights dimmed. I let the stories and events of the Old World wash over me.
I hadn’t seen a flamethrower before. I didn’t know what it could do. It took a long time for me to fall asleep.
Sy Potter followed me into my dreams and they became nightmares. He chased me in the dark through deep water and I couldn’t run away. I could only stay in front of him. I had to keep moving.
When I awoke, I asked Greta to play the talking animal story. I didn’t want to watch the Old World’s wars. I wanted to hear a reassuring children’s story that affirmed that everything was right with the world or soon would be.
Greta’s favorite story was not reassuring at all, but soon I had a new plan to take the City back. More precisely, I had a plan for the Fathers and Mothers to give up the City in the Sky.
28
I prefer sailing but the safest way back into the City was to run home. Sometimes my arm ached but Sophia adjusted the sensory harness so the exoskeleton responded well, even through my cast. We ran across the blackened rubble of Santa Cruz toward the water. Greta ran by my side, grinning with every long stride.
We turned north when we reached the ocean and ran up the coast. Sometimes Greta leapt from cliff to cliff and laughed as she landed each jump.
As the exoskeletons’ cages stretched out around us, it was more like flying over the ground than running. I worried about invading the City but, as we made our way back, I couldn’t help laughing, too.
The warships still guarded the Bay but the hills beyond t
he farthest station of the Worm were safe and familiar to me. We turned inland again. I’d never seen the solar panel fields. The panels tracked the sun’s path as we flashed past. The solar farm went on for many kilometers, another artifact of the world Vivid had not allowed me to see.
I had never seen the electrified fences that lay beyond the running trails, either. Greta and I jumped the fence easily and soon I was running the same trails I had run with Carter.
My return to the Worm was a strange moment. The train stopped at the platform and I had to duck to get the exoskeleton’s appendages through the door.
Citizens stared. Greta and I smiled back. “We’re not here to hurt anyone!” I called. “I used to be one of you! I was a Citizen! The Fathers and Mothers aren’t letting you see everything that is out there.”
I paused as a woman pressed herself into the wall of the train and looked away. I knelt beside her, getting as low as my exoskeleton allowed. It was difficult to appear non-threatening.
“What do you want?” the Citizen asked. Her voice trembled. “Are you from Maintenance? Is this a trick?”
“My name is Elizabeth Cruz. I used to be Service Class. I guess I still am in a way. I’m not from Maintenance, and yes, this is a trick.”
By the woman’s pastel clothing I knew she was a Maker. “For a long time, I envied people like you. I wished I’d become a Maker. Instead, I just know a lot about transferring files.”
She was a pretty woman about my age. I hated to see her shake in terror.
“What do you want?”
“This is not about what I want,” I said. “This is about the one question you are never asked. What do you want?”
I put out my human hand instead of the metal one, palm up. “I hope this will help with your decision. You get so few choices. Make it count. The world is bigger than you imagine.”
Greta and I jogged through the Worm, waving to everyone. Our exoskeletons gave us speed but the gift giving slowed us. The satchels at our sides were almost empty when we were done traveling the Worm. By the time we returned to the place we had entered, someone had already uploaded pornography to the train’s screens.
The Citizens stayed in their seats, jaws slack. Their gaze was riveted to the vids. In a moment, the screen split and images of people riding machines through verdant forests flashed across the screen.
“Those are bicycles!” Greta announced. “They were the first exoskeletons! And that’s something different to do with your penis!”
Greta and I exited at the next stop. A we stepped out on the platform and into the sunshine, I watched the City’s screens change. A message from the Fathers and Mothers (Yellow water is clean water!) changed to a scene of children playing. A family in the foreground laughed. A mixed race couple appeared to have more than one child. Little girls and boys of different races played together and no one tried to separate them. Everyone wore bright colors.
Our virus spread as our vids went to every screen of the Collective. The shaming and shunning program worked for us and against itself. The Collective replicated the files and spread our message. However, since we weren’t Citizens and the computer couldn’t identify us without Vivid’s unique corneal implant signatures, the Fathers and Mothers had no culprits to point to. We were invisible.
“C’mon, Greta! It’s time to go.”
We leapt atop the Worm and ran along the roof. We left dents in the metal with every step. Soon, we were back at the platform that would take us to the forest, the fence, the solar fields and, eventually, back to Santa Cruz.
We lingered on the platform a moment.
“You’re sure this is enough?” Greta asked.
“We’ll come back with gear for Low Town so they can get reeducated, too,” I said.
She looked worried. “I don’t think this is enough.”
At that moment, the public address system began echoing throughout the City. The data sticks were loaded with all manner of Old World knowledge, but all of Greta’s gifts to the Citizens had been set to play something special. It was the children’s story that was not a children’s story.
“I will read to you a book written by George Orwell,” a deep voice told us in echoes that could be heard all the way to Low Town. “It is called Animal Farm.”
“It’s a fresh start,” I told Greta. “It’s up to them what they decide to do with it. We’ve all had enough war, don’t you think?”
“You really think this will work? The Citizens will rise up on their own and retake the City in the Sky?”
I shrugged. “Their choice. All we’ve done is give them more to aspire to and to think about. Their boat has a leak now. Let’s see what more information and some thinking can do. We haven’t tried that for a while.”
For the first time since we left the ruins of Santa Cruz, we did not hurry. George Orwell’s story about talking animals followed us into the forest.
For the first time since Vivid had been taken from me, I did not miss it.
* * *
BOOK TWO
ROBOTS VERSUS HUMANS
In the clank and dread of those dry desert times,
we dreamed we’d grow beyond our Earthly confines.
The aloof stars looked away, mocking and uncaring.
As if all it took to escape our body/minds
was a will and a little careless daring.
1
We are the dream machines
at the sunset of the world.
We rise in darkness, by all means,
our battle flags unfurled.
Might makes right. You taught us that.
We unite in immortal metal combat.
This war is the crime of your design.
This is our chance. It’s murder machine time.
~ Battle Hymn of the Robo Republic
Sweat sucked my shirt to my back as I watched the solar train roll in out of the sunset. Used to be the train would stop in Marfa. Used to be we were a water stop, back when trains stopped for water. We hoped the train would stop to give us water and supplies. Didn’t. Instead, it hummed east as if we weren’t there at all.
I looked sideways at Raphael. The old man was perched on the seat of his walker. He didn’t look forlorn often but watching that train disappear from sight did the trick.
“If it was gonna stop, it’d be slowing down by now, don’t ya think?” I asked.
“We need it to stop, Dante. Hun’red degrees, day’n night. I can’t sleep worth shit. And still that damn train keeps rollin’. It’s a tease. That’s just…classic.” The old man spat on the ground.
Marfa had fair near emptied out. The artists left Marfa first. Where they went was anybody’s guess. Nobody was buying what they had to sell by then. Raphael and my father and I were in the energy business so we still had work to do.
“Marfa had, like, five, six hundred families here one time,” Raphael said. “Since the Blight and the heat and the troubles…shit. I’d spit more but I gotta hold what water I got left.”
“How long before we leave, too?” I asked.
“Leave for where? California’s dry. Florida’s flooded with salt water. We could head east but we don’t have enough fuel left to get out of Presidio County. There’s lots of trouble anywhere south of us and north is too far to go.”
“Okay. So what do we do?”
He shrugged. “Whaddayathink? Hope the train stops next time it comes through, that’s what.”
The train was a two-headed snake: one engine pulled it east and the other engine pulled it west. Twenty cargo cars sat between those engines and I sure hoped they were full of Blight-free food and water.
The engines’ bots were gleaming white tubes, so shiny they reflected the burnt orange sky. The machines were programmed to stop and start and open and close along the route but Marfa hadn’t been on the shuttle schedule for a long time. The drone train whipped away, silent and oblivious to our plight. There were no humans aboard to appeal to. Watching it disappear, I felt like a parch
ed man forced to hold a tall, cool glass of pink lemonade but not allowed to drink.
“Things are gonna get ugly soon,” I said.
“Uglier,” Raphael said.
“Not much reserves left and all we got from the wells…that water is some dirty.”
“Take off your socks and strain that mud, Dante.”
“People are gonna get sick.”
“Could be. We should head north when we have the wherewithal, when that goddamn train stops, I mean. When I was a boy I slept in a pine forest on cool moss one time. Wish I was still up north now. ’Course I had the two hips I was born with then. I didn’t have the sleep apnea, neither. I don’t imagine I’m built for sleepin’ out under the stars no more.”
I turned away from the tracks. I couldn’t look at them. Instead, I watched the wind farm turbines spin lazily under the setting sun. Even the wind was almost dead.
I’ve lived in Texas all my life. I remembered Dallas and Houston. I loved Austin. Then my father said we had to move to Marfa and that was fine. The cities got to be machines that didn’t work the way they were designed anymore. What made them good went away and what made them bad got worse. In a city, everything you need is too far away so you start looking to your neighbors. First you look for help. Then you look for what you can take. A lot of people got shot up in the cities so we got out at a good time.
“What’re you thinkin’, Dante?”
I was thinking about how my father brought us out here to work on turbines and solar panels. We were supposed to be rich by now, like Raphael. That was before rich got to be something else: a full tank of water.
“Not thinkin’ anything,” I said.
“How’s your Daddy doin’?”
“He’s waiting at home for me to bring what I can haul from the train.”
“Guess he’ll be waitin’ another coupl’a days.”
“Guess so.”
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 11
