Armored-ARC

by John Joseph Adams

  “Killers, poisoners, usurpers,” mutters the Third.

  “You have turned your hand to evil deeds. And you will be punished with death,” says the Second.

  “When your term expires, so must you,” adds the Third, staring blindly.

  The First continues, intoning the words like a prayer: “The responsibility for what you have done sweeps through your metal skin like a foul wind through the branches of the tree of death. It sinks its barbs into your flesh. And it will be set free by the purifying flame upon your skin.”

  “For the wages of sin…” intones the Third.

  “Death,” they say it together, solemnly. “Death. Death.”

  In my peripheral, I see six Helmets draw their flame-makers and walk forward. The rest of us re-orient our faces to follow. The six walking Helmets have chipped armor. Their visors are dimmed and faded with sunlight. Forming into three pairs, they stop at the base of the wall and raise their weapons to each other. No hesitation. Flames spurt out, coating each Helmet in an inferno. The golden metal shells stand firm, each continuing to pull the trigger.

  The Helmets burn.

  Finally, one falls to its knees. Still, it keeps flaming its partner. Another falls, and another. Mercifully, it ends. The chemical flames gutter and evaporate into nothing. Six charred Helmets lay on the ground, frozen in their last positions, visors stained black with soot.

  By some twisted logic, we are being punished for the Helmet’s crimes.

  I wonder how long the people inside lived. I wonder if they were even alive when they entered the room. Were they scared in those last moments? Or maybe they were relieved. Some part of me senses that the execution was merciful.

  We Helmets. Baby killers. We always come at dawn.

  I can only observe, locked in my shell. Through my visor I see there are many slums beyond Ukuta. Each area is isolated by a dead zone of old radiation. These tracts of land keep the people separated and weak. Ignorant of each other, the slums vote constantly, always reaffirming the control of the Triumvirate.

  My Helmet guides me, and the Triumvirate guides the people.

  Our raids are conducted in pairs. Little Doli is my permanent companion. Short and squat, she is nonetheless powerful. I have seen the streak of her burnt orange armor arcing high above the nameless, faceless slums. A twinkling morning star, she falls through the sky trailing a jet of cleansing flame.

  The days come and go as a waking nightmare. Weeks pass in which I cannot bear to open my eyes. I feel the lurch of my body as it leaps through the dead zones. The disturbing tickle of radiation seeps through the armor. The inevitable sound of Doli, always a few seconds behind me. My faithful echo. I hear the desperate curses of our victims. Their lamentations. Their begging.

  And in the end, their silence.

  I accumulate sin. Cement crumbles beneath my boots. My gauntleted fingers rend flesh. Flames spew from my weapon and then speak to me in guttural whispers as they eat their fill of innocent flesh.

  My lips are the only thing I can control.

  “Good morning, Doli,” I say, at the feeding station. “Did you sleep well, my dear? Of course you did; how could you not?

  Together, Doli and I stream out of the city, along with a thousand other Helmets. We break into a steady trot and I begin to talk. I know that Doli cannot hear me, but I leave in the pauses and imagine her responses.

  “Doli, do you want to hear a story?” I ask.

  I suppose.

  “Did I ever tell you the one about how Chima claimed our wall?”

  Only a hundred times.

  “The Ajani wall, as it came to be known, was controlled by a fat brute called Cleaver.”

  Why’d they call him Cleaver?

  “He was dangerous enough with his weapon to be named after it. No way to get near his wall. But it was the finest, safest wall in all of Ukuta.”

  How did little Chima claim it?

  “My brother Chima searched far and wide to find a butcher in need of a cleaver. Told him about this perfect knife. That butcher came one day and traded Cleaver a whole goat for his weapon.”

  Uh-oh.

  “That’s right, Doli. Without his legendary knife, fat old Cleaver had no chance to defend his wall. I took it away from him with only a single wound. A clever boy, that Chima. Much smarter than his older brother, that’s for sure.”

  We are leaping, soaring over yet another dead zone.

  When we touch down, the slum looks like any other. The screams are the same. The crackle of flames.

  I almost do not recognize the stick-thin boy running at me. His eyes burn with evil and hatred. As the rag covering his face falls away, I see the pink smear of flesh that is his face and recognize my own brother.

  “Chima,” I say. Or maybe I only think his name.

  My head rings with the impact of metal on metal. Chima has set a trap. Our wall surges into my vision just before it collapses onto me. The disintegrating rock smashes into my body, pulls me down in a wave of rubble. As the pain of the reverberation lances through my head, I pray for my prison to shatter, to fracture and fall away like plaster. I pray for Chima to be victorious. I pray for my own death.

  But the strength of the Helmet will not succumb to prayer.

  The armor is intact. I feel my arm questing through the broken shards. A slab of powdery cement scrapes off my visor and falls away. I sit up from the bed of sharp rock. Chima falls upon me, vicious, swinging my old rebar spear.

  “Die, demon,” he screams, each word a guttural cough. “Why won’t you die?”

  He is too close. My Helmet grabs Chima with one hand. Pulls him toward me and slams him onto his back. I hear his ribs snapping against the uneven rubble. Yet he continues to roar.

  A warrior.

  I choke down tears as my armored fingers crush my brother’s throat. Blinking, I focus on his face. This sweet boy who I raised and protected for so many years. When he screams, I bite through my own lips and scream with him.

  “I love you, Chima,” I sputter.

  I cannot close my eyes to the horrible sight.

  The one I love more than myself is dying inches from me. Suffocating with a broken neck. And all I can do is greedily memorize his features. Each fleck of shrapnel in his cheeks. His smoke-black eyes. Thick, arched eyebrows, twisted in venomous anger. In a moment, my body will leap away empty-handed. These memories will be all that I can carry.

  The life leaves his eyes and I feel it leave my own, as well. My little brother chokes, chest heaving, and his jaw moves. Mouths a final word.

  Ajani.

  It is not until later that I receive Chima’s gift.

  He found the answer in the shrapnel embedded in his face. Said it hurt him because of the radio transmissions between Helmets. And my Chima recognized a weak spot. Where there is radio, he must have thought, there is an antenna. Destroy the antenna and the radio cannot function.

  Such a clever boy.

  Our beautiful wall fell and pinned my Helmet in its ruin. Brave as a lion, Chima struck again and again. His blows were not random. Each landed in one spot at the base of my spine. The armored lump resting there was damaged, but not destroyed. Not yet.

  It happens while I’m crossing the dancing hills, the familiar nibble of radiation in my legs. I am mid-leap when I feel something wrong. I open my eyes and notice the ground is coming too fast. My Helmet is not reacting. Instinctively, I try to thrust out my hands before I hit the poisoned dirt and rock.

  I smash into the toxic hardpack like a meteorite.

  Rolling, limbs flailing, rocks battering my ribs and head—I luxuriate in the pain. Each gasp is a wonder, a reminder that I am still alive inside this cage. My own arms and legs are weak as dead grass but the Helmet is amplifying my tiniest movements. Climbing to my knees, I feel the venomous heat pouring up out of the ground and into my face. Sweat drips from my forehead and streaks the inside of my visor. The orange flash of Doli is rapidly disappearing ahead. Only enemies wait behind
me.

  My wall is gone. My brother gone.

  I scrabble to my feet and make a clumsy leap after Doli. My powered legs catapult my body into the air. It is a jerky, mechanical leap that sends me cutting through the sky like a bullet. There is no feel of wind on my face, no roar of the air in my ears. Even so, I find that for the first time I enjoy the leap.

  As we near the walled city, other incoming Helmets join us. It takes all of my concentration to maintain the scripted movements that my body has repeated day after day: Form in a line outside the city. March through the gate. Down narrow alleys. Every nerve in my body is pleading, begging for me to run away. Rip this Helmet off my flesh. Feel the air on my skin.

  But Doli marches ahead of me. Her frame is so small. Armor beginning to flake from our constant trips through the dancing hills. She is trapped, just as I was. Just as all Helmets are.

  And I cannot abandon her.

  On schedule, we enter the feeding tunnel. I march in careful step until I reach my hole in the wall. I stand the right distance away from Doli, face the wall, and draw on every last shred of my willpower to keep my super-powered limbs perfectly still. That cursed umbilical tube emerges and my stomach spasms as the blind, grasping appendage delivers sustenance and removes waste.

  Snap, snap, snap.

  The overhead lights blink out. We are left in semi-darkness, an endless row of shadowed statues standing at attention. No movement, no sound. Except the quiet, oh so quiet, grind of my Helmet.

  I turn my head slightly to the left, to see Doli. Nothing happens. No alarm sounds.

  In this world of sameness, I am miraculously different. A sculpted man come to life and alone in the company of my fellow works of art. I gingerly reach up and take my Helmet in both hands. My fingers are so strong; I must be careful. Gently, I pull my visor straight up.

  Metal strains. The visor hisses at the neck as the first rip appears. The helmet comes unmarried from the armor.

  And finally, blissfully, cool air washes over my filthy face.

  Smells. I can smell wet concrete around me. The strange chemical smell from the umbilical devices. My own breath and hair and skin take on a long-forgotten stink in contrast to these new odors. I sniff deeply and nearly cry out from the joy of air rushing into my nostrils. My tears evaporate from my cheeks and the feeling is blessed. Finally, I remember Doli.

  She stands loyally next to me, as always, facing her wall.

  I place a hand on her shoulder. In all the massacres and slaughter, our Helmets have never touched. I don’t even really know that she is a she. It could be anyone in there. Leaning over, I look into her visor. In the reflection, I see my lips are flecked with blood, lost in a tightly curled beard, and my cheeks are streaked with sweat. I notice that I am smiling, my teeth yellow and bright in the darkened corridor.

  “I have been looking forward to meeting you for a long time, Doli,” I whisper. “You do not know this, but we have had many conversations. We are old friends.”

  What must she be thinking? This change in routine. To be on the cusp of freedom after so long. Countless years of bloodshed and evil and those frowning monsters shouting down accusations of sin and responsibility.

  With both hands, I take hold of her helmet.

  Squeezing, I gently pull the visor up. A seam appears at the neck. Squealing, the metal parts. A putrid stench spews from the gap. I retch once before I can hold my breath. In a last burst, I tear the visor off. Stumbling backward, gasping for air, I finally meet Doli.

  She is a she.

  At first, I think Doli is smiling at me. And then I realize that she has no lips. Her teeth are bared at me in a rictus of pain and insanity. She has chewed through her own mouth and swallowed most of it and done the same for large pieces of her tongue. It has healed and been eaten again. Bits of rotting flesh line the inside of her visor. Blood and vomit and saliva coat the interior of her visor, obscuring the view.

  I realize it is possible that Doli has never even seen me.

  Clumps of hair cling to her peeling scalp. A stiff strand is plastered over one of her eyes. She has had no way to move it, maybe for years. Her eyes roll idiotically in their sockets. She moans, and I think of my murdered brother.

  “I’m so sorry, Doli,” I say.

  With all the gentleness I can muster, I push the crusted hair out of her eyes. Smooth it back in an uneven mass behind her ears. Then, reverently, I fit her visor back over her head. I press it down hard, crushing the metal seal back together. Then, I do the same for myself. Turn and face my own patch of nothing.

  I leave Doli there, small, facing the blank wall.

  The Triumvirate guides us.

  The three man-things huddle together behind the wooden wall of their bench. Twisted faces peering down from above. I have leapt higher in my months-long orgy of murder. I have vaulted city walls and crushed huddling families to ruin under my boots. Brushed my fingers over the throats of men and left yawning corpses. I have heard wild flames licking the bodies of the fallen.

  We thousand Helmets stand at attention in a sweeping semi-circle, arms by our sides, facing the bench, a mute audience held captive. Forced to absorb blame and abuse and madness. Each of us a slave to his own machine.

  All save one.

  As they do every morning, the Triumvirate speaks together, finishing each other’s sentences. The three-headed monster is here on schedule to lay down its sins upon our strong shoulders.

  “War criminals,” says the First, voice booming.

  “Are you not ashamed?” howls the Second.

  “Murderers, know that your path leads to death,” mutters the Third.

  And I take a step forward.

  “Your grisly work…” says the First, trailing off. The old man sees me. Blinks his shark eyes sleepily, not believing it.

  “Criminals responsible for atrocity,” says the Second, rotely.

  I break into a trot, weaving between the rows of Helmets, gaining speed.

  The First shoves the Second on the shoulder, points at me frantically.

  “Killers!” booms the Third, clueless, as the Second gives him a push.

  I launch my body upward, rising above the wooden wall in a single bound. My body is a majestic suit of golden armor, soaring. I thrust out my rippling metallic arms like wings. At the top of my arc, at my perfect zenith, I gaze down through my blank mask. In my shadow, the Triumvirate gape up at me.

  Scared old men with dirty minds and clean hands.

  Once, I had a little brother named Chima. He slept with his mouth open. Together, we conquered a wall and built our lives in its safety. Our wall was made to shelter and protect. Others are made to confine and control. But no wall yet built can deflect the knifing flight of blame. The sin circles above, waiting for its moment. And one day it will strike its true target.

  My fingers collapse into fists. Legs brace for impact. The three old men hold each other and wail for mercy. But there is no mercy.

  At last, I am ready to sin.

  Daniel H. Wilson is a New York Times bestselling author and contributing editor to Popular Mechanics magazine. He earned a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he also received Master’s degrees in Robotics and Machine Learning. He has published over a dozen scientific papers, holds four patents, and has written seven books. Wilson has written for Popular Science, Wired, and Discover, as well as online venues such as MSNBC.com, Gizmodo, Lightspeed, and Tor.com. In 2008, Wilson hosted The Works, a television series on The History Channel that uncovered the science behind everyday stuff. His books include How to Survive a Robot Uprising, A Boy and His Bot, and Robopocalypse. He lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.

  The N-Body Solution

  Sean Williams

  What happens next is irrelevant. All that matters is where it started.

  Harvester bars are pretty much the same wherever you go, but I hadn’t learned that yet. Fresh out of Infall and all out of hope, I was looking for the sleaz
iest, most pointless, dead-end dive that ever existed. I had nothing to look forward to but getting as plastered as the ancients and spending the rest of my days in a hangover.

  There were plenty of bars to choose from. They were busy, too. I clearly wasn’t the only one looking to drown my sorrows under a sky devoid of stars.

  That made it instantly more boring.

  I settled on a place called, unimaginatively, the End of the Line. It was full of humans, sub-humans, post-humans, poly-humans—every category I’d ever heard of, plus some types that probably weren’t human at all. The Loop has been around a long time, and if half the things I had heard were true, then it was quite likely I Was Not Alone. In that sense, at least.

  I knew I should be depressed: I had reason to be. But the possibility of talking to a real, live alien was not just intriguing; it was something the rest of my scattered self might never experience. It was something I could cling to, something that was mine, and would be mine alone for as long as I could bear it.

  The thing about aliens, though, I soon realized, is that they’re alien. After five conversations in which we utterly failed to find opinions, experiences, and in one case even words in common, I gave up and took to leaning against the long, corroded bar on my own. Nursing a drink in sullen silence turned out to be a natural part of my social inheritance.

  “You’re new,” said a voice from the other end of the bar.

  “It’s that obvious, I suppose,” I said without looking up.

  “Not really. We’re all floundering. I’m just permanently jacked into the news feed. You’re the third today. I recognize your face.”

  “There’s a news feed?”

  “Sure, but not much in the way of actual news. No offence.”

  I looked up. Judging by the voice, I’d expected the owner to be a woman. What I saw instead was a bipedal mech suit almost twice as tall as I was, all ceramics, alloys, and plastics, as streamlined as a stiletto. It occupied the deepest, darkest corner of the bar, but even so, it gleamed. Pinpricks of light ricocheted off its faceted eyes, the sharp tips of its digits, its many beveled edges.