Ravagers [03.00] Deviate

by Alex Albrinck

Gradually, his mind worked, grudgingly acknowledging the issue. He turned his head, which seemed to weigh more than the scooter he’d crashed into the river, looking for the lighting source.

  He found it to the southwest. The entire land glowed with an eerie luminescence, the light moving and swaying as though alive.

  Alive?

  It wasn’t alive. Wesley knew exactly what generated the light.

  Those evil bastards coded the Ravagers to change color based upon the time of day. Dark during the day, bright and glowing during the night. They wanted the survivors to know. Know what lurked, what never rested, never slept. The brightness might keep survivors from sleeping during the night, further reducing the chance they’d survive as fatigue led to mistakes.

  It wasn’t enough to kill everyone.

  They had to… well, sneer at the victims in the process.

  Wesley found the strength to stand up in the boat. He erected the middle fingers of both hands and turned slowly, directing the gesture-based epithet in every direction, ensuring that, at some point, it faced the one man he associated with this evil.

  Then he sank to the bottom of the boat and fell into a deep sleep, his adrenaline stores depleted. His last thought before consciousness escaped: survive, find Oswald Silver, and feed the man to a hungry swarm of Ravagers.

  In what seemed an instant, he woke.

  Based on the sun’s position in the sky, he realized he’d slept for at least twelve hours, and had little doubt he could use another dozen. Muscle stiffness didn’t help; he’d collapsed in a heap that hadn’t done his wounds any favors. With no one watching, he didn’t concern himself that any might think less of him for the tears and screams of pain as he forced himself back to the seat and took stock of his situation.

  He twisted around and found the nearest swath of the mainland. The Ravagers were the original dark, oily color once more, slithering like a giant flat snake over the land, moving east in search of more prey. He scowled, muttering a few of the new obscenities he’d invented in the past day. Then he moved to his primary pack, wincing the whole time, and rummaged through to find the compass. He located true north and looked in the direction Jamison’s “car” headed the day before.

  His jaw fell. He stood up, trying to ensure that he wasn’t seeing something. Then he rubbed his tired eyes and looked again.

  An island rose on the horizon, no more than five miles away.

  He stared at it for several minutes until an unusually frisky wave rocked the boat. He stumbled back into his seat, then craned his neck around to stare at the island once more.

  Hallucination, maybe?

  “Well,” he said aloud for no particular reason. “If it’s a hallucination, I’ll know in a few hours.”

  He unfastened the oars, attached them to the rowlocks, and angled the boat in the direction of the possibly illusory island. Then he started rowing again.

  With the end potentially near, he rowed faster.

  He checked his direction every five or ten minutes. His adrenaline stores seemed refilled; he didn’t feel hungry but ate a bit regardless, shoving food into his mouth and chewing while he rowed.

  Two hours later, the boat stopped moving. He’d struck land.

  Wesley nearly cried for joy. He leaped from the boat, shouting at the shock of the cool water upon his savaged, sunburned legs, and pulled the life giving craft out of the great lake and inland. He didn’t stop until the soft sand turned into rough rock and dirt. Then he moved back to the sandy beach and stared at the lake, stunned, and fell to his knees. He’d made it. He didn’t know where it was just yet. But this place was safe, far enough from the mainland that it ought to be immune from the Ravagers. If this island was Micah Jamison’s destination—and he had no reason to think anything else—then the two men could work together to survive the purge.

  And he could stop fearing sleep. He wouldn’t drown here.

  A powerful wave of fatigue swept over him. The sand, so warm, so comfortable, so soft, beckoned to his weary head. Wesley didn’t fight the urge, moving himself to a prone position, head turned to the side to avoid breathing the sand.

  His eyes flickered several times and consciousness raced away.

  The last vision he saw were the footprints. Jamison was here.

  Then he saw the second set. Jamison wasn’t alone.

  And then Wesley fell sound asleep.

  —10—

  SHEILA CLARKE

  SHEILA STARED AT Micah Jamison with her mouth agape, the silence between them eventually so pronounced that one could hear the gears in the robot’s body twitch as he moved, simulating a real human’s need to avoid perfect stillness. The thrum of the dozens of servers and monitors in the room moved more deeply into the background, all as Sheila tried to understand the jaw-dropping comment the robot just made.

  Anger boiled once more to the surface, her temper taking charge as her mind failed to rationalize the comment. She spoke through gritted teeth. “Are you suggesting that I’m the one who told you to stand by and let that”—she waved her arms in the general direction of the mainland, where the Ravager swarm destroyed the cityplex she loved—“happen? Because I most certainly did no such thing!”

  Micah had started moving the moment her outrage became apparent. He pushed the container of what he’d suggested were “friendly” Ravagers along on the cart holding the storage container down one of the aisles created by the tables populating the interior of the room, nearly running her over in the process. There were other supplies on the cart, though she couldn’t see them clearly as she jumped aside. “Micah! Answer me!”

  He didn’t stop moving. “You made no such order because you weren’t in the position to know that you could, and if you’d known you’d certainly have chosen differently. Remember the sentiment I asked you to remember when you spoke it earlier?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Never mind. It’s not important right now. We have to get moving, Sheila. We have to move to our next stop on the journey toward defeating the machines we call Ravagers and bringing those who perpetrated this horrific crime to justice.”

  “But—” She paused, taking a deep breath. What sentiment had he asked her to remember earlier? Nothing came to mind. She took several additional steadying breaths, wondering why he was changing the subject. “I need to understand what you’re talking about, Micah.”

  “I know, and I apologize at the implication of my statement. Without the necessary context, it certainly sounds like I suggested what you said. I’ll give you the context to understand. For now, understand that the longer we remain here, the greater the danger we face.” He stopped the cart and Sheila glanced at the door, only now realizing the room swarmed with freestanding door frames, all with the doors closed. Like the others spread around the floor, this frame boasted a digital readout atop the frame—the numbers on this door read 3336. A battalion of cables snaked out from the top, the tributary of wiring from each door joining the larger river running along the ceiling toward a large machine on the far wall. Given the cabling and the reverberating thrum from the machine, she suspected it to be an electrical generator, one no doubt used to power this laboratory and the surrounding home.

  Micah moved toward the largest screen, one displaying a map of the world. He pointed. “You know what this is, correct?”

  “It’s a map.” Why the basics?

  “Correct. Notice anything about the door I’ve just ambushed with supplies in relation to the map?” Micah didn’t wait; he’d no sooner asked the question than he moved to grab another cart of supplies, rolling it toward the same door.

  Sheila studied the map in more detail. A dozen or more pinpricks of light glowed in various locales throughout the world. She noted that each of those glowing lights had a sequence of digits nearby.

  Her eyes roamed over a light glowing well off the eastern coast of Western Alliance territory. She read the nearby label: 3336.

  She blinked. “The numbers on the map ma
tch the numbers on the doors? Why?”

  “This is a technology that predates the Time Capsule, and one that wasn’t included. It’s a portal.”

  “A what?”

  “A portal. A door.”

  “Perhaps they didn’t include a door in the Capsule because doors aren’t terribly complicated bits of technology?” She tried to avoid any hint of sarcasm, and failed miserably.

  Micah shook his head. “This door is different. You don’t use it to step through a wall between adjacent rooms. It transports you much, much further.”

  She glanced at the door, then at Micah, then at the map. Matching numbers. Transporting you in a manner she wouldn’t associate with a regular door.

  Was it possible? “Are you telling me that we’ll walk through that door and come out in the middle of the ocean?”

  “Not literally. Our endpoint exists on dry ground. We’ll be fine.”

  “How is it that you, and only you, have this technology?”

  He sighed. “The answer to that question is part of the same story I need to tell in explaining why you have authority over me. It’s a story I can best tell at our destination, and not just because of the risk we face staying here.”

  She felt her pulse race. Destination? “Is that island where the Phoenix Group is based?”

  He chuckled. “Thankfully, no. They know nothing about the land we’ll next visit. That spot will still serve as our staging area, where we’ll make the final step to their headquarters.”

  Micah moved a few more supplies to the door as Sheila studied the map. “Why are the glowing dots different sizes? And which one is Phoenix?”

  “None of the dots you see are Phoenix. There’s no connection between here and there. As to the dots: the intensity of the glowing dot reflects the strength of the portal connection between here and the remote site.” He paused, and she detected sadness in his voice. “There used to be a lot more dots on that map a few days ago.”

  She felt the chill in his words. He’d set up portals between this island and sites through the West. Sites now destroyed by Ravagers, sites where the portal would never again operate. She swallowed. “Why not go straight to their site? Why not connect their site to this?”

  “Without getting too detailed, the distance between sites determines the amount of electrical power required to make the connection. There’s insufficient power generating capacity here to reach Phoenix headquarters. I have nearly enough at our intermediate destination, and the last few generators I’m bringing with us will get us there.” He nodded at the metal boxes packed on the carts. She understood; each of those boxes served as a miniature electrical generator. “That space will also help me answer more of the questions you undoubtedly have.”

  “I have plenty of questions. For instance, how are one woman and one robot going to walk into Phoenix headquarters, into the sanctuary of the most powerful people on the planet, and take over? Do you honestly think we can kill them all, Micah? I’m not a great shot.”

  “We’re not going to kill them. Not yet.”

  She felt more confused. “But why are we going to their headquarters, then? Why go to so much trouble if we aren’t actually going to make things better?”

  He shook his head as he seized another small generator and added it to the final cart in the train he’d lined up near the door. No, not a door. A portal. “We won’t kill them directly, Sheila. As you correctly note, we’re woefully outnumbered and at present lack the necessary firepower to win such a battle. No, we’re going there so that we can take the code from the good robots and use it to override the code of the bad robots. We’re going to transform the Ravagers.”

  She paused for a moment. He’d shown her the batch of machines without the Ravager code, showing her that the machines themselves weren’t evil; the coding made them so. In many ways, she decided, it wasn’t the machines who deserved the Ravager title, it was the people controlling those devices. And Micah proposed to disrupt and change that code. “I presume, then, that you’ve figured out how to do this?”

  “I have.” He paused. “I’ll save you the trouble of asking whether it will be dangerous. Yes, it will be dangerous. Very, very dangerous.”

  She offered a mock cheer. “How can that be possible? And how can we do this? I get that it’s dangerous, but I confess I’m partial to surviving the ordeal if possible. Just want to get that out of the way up front.”

  Micah chuckled. She found it oddly endearing that the robot caught the sarcastic humor uttered during a stressful time. She’d tried programming before, enough that she found the computing and coding wizardry required for that simple human reaction incredible. “It’s possible because the Phoenix don’t want the Ravagers destroying everything in sight forever. Just long enough to purge the world of what they don’t like. Once they’re confident that all the undesirable elements are gone, they need an off switch. The individual robots comprising the swarms operate using code embedded into the circuitry, which we call firmware. That firmware covers the basics, telling the machines how to move, how to operate sensors, how to interpret and communicate the collected data. That’s common regardless of the purpose designated for the machines. What must change is what the machines do in response to that sensory information. The Phoenix need to turn off that whole part about destroying everything they see; they can’t return to the land if the Ravagers run unchecked for all eternity. That means they need to have the ability to change the firmware code of every single Ravager robot at the same time.”

  “They’re designed to allow updates like that?”

  Micah nodded. “They maintain a computer server which holds the current firmware image as well as the updated version they’ll need once they’ve accomplished their mission. When a new Ravager emerges from the ashes of destruction, it focuses on a precise signal, a radio broadcast if you will, that has the code needed to tell it how to operate. If you were able to watch carefully, you’d see that newly formed Ravagers don’t move right away because they’re getting their marching orders via those firmware downloads. Once Ravagers are active, there’s a separate signal they monitor for code updates. What that all means is that the Phoenix can turn the Ravagers off by sending new code via that update signal to all active Ravagers, and change the code for new Ravagers to the modified code as well. All of the existing machines will change to their friendly counterparts over a period of time.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Sheila shrugged. “I don’t dig into the innards of computers much, so I’ll take your word for it. What are you planning to do, then? Overpower their signal with one of your own?”

  Micah shook his head. “The robots know, somehow, from which server and what location they’re supposed to get that data. Something in the signal tells them. If I try hijacking that signal, they’ll know and ignore my updates. New Ravagers might not get their code, but that’s not really helping us at this point. The damage is done.”

  She nodded.

  “We’re going to hack their server. We’re going to put our own code in, overriding the old Ravager code and the new version Phoenix would eventually send out. My code turns them into machines like those in this container. But that’s not the critical part. The key part I’ve figured out is how to tell them that the old server is no longer the communication hub due to damage sustained by the original. Instead, they’ll get all future instructions from a new server.”

  Sheila’s jaw fell open. “Yours?”

  “Mine.”

  “So you’ll control all of the Ravagers out there now?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Can you code them to devour only members of the Phoenix?”

  Micah frowned. “I don’t think that’s wise, Sheila.”

  “I was joking. Sort of.”

  He sighed. “That’s the basics of the plan. There are two major risk factors.”

  “Only two?”

  “Two major. Plenty of minor.” He paused. “First, the server is housed at Phoenix headqu
arters. They’ll not exactly open the door and escort us to the machine. It means we’ll risk detection, and, if caught, there’s every reason to think we’ll die.”

  “I love this plan already. What’s the other problem?”

  “I don’t know where the server is housed at their site.”

  “Ah.” She paused. “So we’re marching into enemy territory looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The needle is the enemy’s most potent weapon. We have to replace the old needle with a new needle and leave, all without being noticed.”

  Micah paused. She almost laughed. Had she stumped him with her odd analogy?

  He finally responded. “That’s accurate. Get there. Find the server. Replace the code. Leave. Avoid detection the entire time.”

  “Okay. But I have a question. Why worry about it?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Micah glanced at the map, then jogged off to the farthest corner of the room to grab another mini-generator.

  “Why risk our lives—human or robot—to do this? The Lakeplex is destroyed. I doubt any other sites survived. Who can we actually save? Why not just wait and let them hit their own off switch and then fight?”

  Micah returned and added the latest generator to the stash aboard the carts. “The Purge, as they call it, was designed to occur in phases. The West was the first target because it is a single political entity covering a contiguous geographic area. In many ways, this is a test run. If something goes wrong—if, for instance, they can’t turn the machines off—then they don’t want to try it again in the East. They’ll employ other techniques to eliminate what they don’t want and abandon Western lands forever. They could test everything on an island, say one of the islands part of the East. But a test would be noticed, and someone would get a communication out to others, warning them that something’s coming. Nobody in the Lakeplex will send out a warning to someone in the East, but they’ll email a friend in the Mountainplex.”

  Sheila felt a chill at his words, the cold logic and reasoning of people who saw the planet as theirs to remake and lives as theirs to take, in whatever manner was most expedient for them. “They have Ravagers poised to do this in the East as well, then? They won’t activate them until they ensure that everything worked as planned in the West?”