by Ryan Schow
“Yes sir,” he and Camila said in perfect unison, waiting to be dismissed.
There was something resolute in his voice. None of the urgency he’d displayed before was seen. This visibly disturbed all of them. Being war tested, having spent time in the fray, that gave the consummate soldier a chance to develop a sense of calm inside the storm, but this was different. A sort of cold disconnection.
This wasn’t calm; this looked a lot like defeat.
LtGen Page grabbed the sweet smelling cigar, popped it into his mouth, drew from it deeply, a look of satisfaction crossing his weathered face.
“We’ll provide cover fire off the base, but expect to take some hits,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you that you’ll be on your own.”
Jagger’s stomach dropped.
If these drones clogged the Sacramento skies the same way Lenna said they occupied the San Francisco skies, then going in solo could very well be a death sentence for them all.
“If I may, sir,” Jagger asked, waiting for a reply that might not come. He knew full well he should just zip it and go—triple time it on the double as LtGen Page had suggested—but this was his last chance to get some answers from a man clearly in the know.
Page chewed down on the cigar in his mouth, really sinking his teeth into it. He un-holstered his sidearm, checked the chamber. He glared at Jagger as if he were a maggot rather than the CJCS’s best hope of survival. After a second, Page gave him the subtlest of nods.
“Is this far reaching?” Jagger asked. “The coordinated attacks, I mean?”
Laying his .45 on the table beside him, talking around his cigar, LtGen Page said, “It is.” He blew out a lungful of smoke, watched it swirl all around his head then break apart in the small room.
“Who are we fighting? I mean, who’s controlling these things? Is this the Chinese? The Russians? Why haven’t we seen any…humans?”
“You’re on a need to know basis, son. You have a job to do, now go do it instead of chapping my ass with puerile questions.”
“It’s a legitimate question, sir,” Camila chimed in.
Had she been a man, Page would’ve blown fire and death upon her. Had she been an ugly woman, it might have been worse. Men are predictable, though, and Camila had the good sense to understand that. She also knew the train had completely come off the tracks so pissing off the top brass wouldn’t garner her the dressing down she deserved. At least not now.
“The machines. AI. We’re not fighting a who, we’re fighting a what.”
“How is this possible?” Camila asked.
“Some brain in Silicon Valley decided to create an AI God he claimed would be millions of times smarter than humans.”
“That’s science fiction, sir,” someone said. “A tech head’s wet dream if ever there was one.”
“Well apparently it’s now science fact.”
“So a machine is doing all this?” Jagger asked.
Page drew a deep breath, blew out the smoke, then said, “This AI God managed to reproduce himself dozens of times over without the geniuses in Palo Alto knowing, then ship them off to various sites across the US. They all came online at once, and when they did, their sole objective was to take our military from us, use it against us.”
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
No one said a word.
“Exactly,” Page said to the sickly looks on the faces around them.
“Aren’t there control measures for this?” Camila asked.
“Yes, but they’re not pretty. No more questions,” he said. “It’s time for you to go.”
The implications of this scenario tore a hole in Jagger’s guts. Not only was he filled with dread, he knew the tactical advantages the machines had over humans well enough to know the situation was beyond dire. Their transport was waiting though. And they had to go, regardless of their dismal chances of survival.
“Good luck, sir,” Jagger said to LtGen Page as he left the office with 2ndLT Cardoza in tow.
Camila and Jagger sprinted from Base Ops to Hangar Five where their Valor was waiting. After suiting up, Jagger took the controls and Camila ran second chair. Within moments they were airborne and taking substantial fire. True to Page’s word, they had just enough ground support to give them a small window out, which they managed without sustaining significant damage.
Jagger pushed the Valor as close to its top speed of 350 miles per hour as he could at a cruising altitude of one thousand feet. He settled in for the long flight to Sac, his mind still on LtGen Page’s last words.
“Marry our course settings to the uploaded flight plan,” Jagger said.
“Copy that,” Camila replied.
Turning, he looked at her and said, “What in the hell does puerile mean?”
She rolled her eyes and said, “It means trivial.”
He thought about this for a long time. His question to Page had not been trivial. To know the enemy, even by name, was the first step to understanding and overpowering them. This was not an enemy they’d ever faced before. Artificial Intelligence and the machines they controlled—they weren’t burdened by physical fatigue, hesitation, the computational limitations of the human brain, and they certainly didn’t possess the moral compass to show restraint. If AI decided humans were a target necessary for elimination, and that much was apparent, then Jagger trusted they would give no quarter to their enemy.
“We’re not getting out of this alive,” he finally said.
“I know,” she replied.
“Get the CJCS up here,” he told her. “Please.”
“He’s not crew,” Camila said.
He flashed her a look she understood. Leaving her seat, she collected the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who joined them without incident moments later.
“Take a seat,” Jagger said. He did. “It’s time you level with us.”
Jagger was thinking of Lenna at this point. Thinking of the kids, their city, the years, months or weeks they had left before the machines wiped out all of humanity.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be here, let alone have this kind of responsibility,” the CJCS said with a strange level of disconnect.
“With all due respect,” Jagger said, his patience exhausted, “no one gives a single crap about that right now.”
“We were assured safeguards were in place for this sort of thing,” the man said, clearly flummoxed. Easily sixty with all his good years behind him, CJCS Bartholomew Goddard’s face was not made of stone. He wore a fatalistic look if anything.
“What sort of thing?” Camila asked.
His eyes clearing, Goddard held her purposefully casual gaze with his, not an ounce of carnal interest to be found. “We’ve been cut out of the grid,” he admitted. “The machines control it now. At any minute they could crash it and send us into the dark ages.”
“Like…California’s grid?” Camila asked, now sounding a bit squeamish.
“No. Not just California. All of it. The entire United States of America.”
For more than an hour they flew without incident in near silence. It was an agonizing sixty minutes that felt more like sixty hours with the fatigue they shouldered. Camila dozed off a couple of times and he didn’t want to wake her. She finally woke up, looked around, then settled quietly into her seat as she tried to shake off the physical exhaustion.
“My wife lives in San Francisco,” Jagger finally said to CJCS Goddard, breaking the long silence. “She said they attack during the day. Not at night.”
“They’ve been hitting Sacramento at night,” CJCS Goddard said. “One of our sources who expired early on said the machines are now fully autonomous. They’re making weapons on their own while the AI God in charge of whatever region they’re in orchestrates strikes on multiple cities splitting them up between days and nights.”
“Won’t they run out of weapons?” Camila asked.
“We have the US Military,” Goddard said. “Our budget is beyond enormous. And when
did we ever run out of weapons? Think about it. Most of our industry is now run by robotics. Human labor is fast becoming a thing of the past.”
A ringing cut Goddard off mid-thought. He fished a sat phone out of his jacket, said, “Excuse me,” and answered the call.
The CJCS didn’t say anything, he just listened carefully.
Jagger wished there was a way to eavesdrop on that call, but there wasn’t. He needed to be patient. Patience, however, wasn’t his strong suit. The closest he’d ever come to being patient was mastering the appearance of patience.
“I understand, Mr. President,” Goddard finally said, then he hung up.
“Well?” Camila asked, ever the inquisitive one.
Men could easily assert dominance over other men, but when it came to women, the right one could control a man of any rank. When it came to matters of the flesh, most men had a weak resolve. For being in her mid-twenties, Jagger was amazed at how Camila seemed to understand both the timing and the practical application of this tried-and-true approach to information extraction. If he asked her, Camila would most likely chalk it up to having a pretty face and nice boobs, and maybe she’d be right.
“Everything is fine,” he said, nonchalant, like she wasn’t even there. “We’re…getting the upper hand on things. Here in California anyway.”
“And Camp Pendleton?” Jagger pressed.
The man waved him off, remained silent. It seemed not all men were loose lipped around the company of an attractive young woman. Camila looked at him, baffled; Jagger slowly shook his head, no. As in don’t bother.
They were fifty miles out from Sacramento when the CJCS’s sat phone rang once more. He answered, but didn’t say anything for a good minute. Finally he hung up the phone, then sat there in the most crushing of silences.
“We’re twenty miles out, sir,” Jagger said.
“Can we go any faster?” Goddard asked, like he was somewhere else completely.
The CJCS sat there looking so small, utterly defenseless. He had that look like Death was standing at his doorstep, a black rose in hand trying to decide the man’s fate. Live or die. Judging by the look on the Goddard’s face, however, it appeared he already knew the Reaper’s answer.
“We’re just under three hundred knots, sir. This bird is already at top speed.”
“On second thought, I think you’d better start dropping altitude now, and then brace for impact,” he said, chilling Jagger’s blood. He didn’t question the man. He dropped altitude fast, taking them to a hundred feet and cutting their speed. The CJCS checked his watch, then grabbed his harness and closed his eyes. A second later the Valor lost all power.
They were going down.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Rex was beyond nervous with Indigo. When society fell from grace and things like night clubs and social media and dating apps like Tinder hit the skids, the idea of there being plenty of fish in the sea was an archaic notion. He liked Indigo. He respected her skillset, her determination, who she was becoming in spite of who she was. The girl was hurting inside. Wounded. So when he held her hand, felt the warmth of her skin on his and their connection, he did not take it for granted. In fact, it felt like something he needed to protect.
They sat on the front porch sharing a blanket, talking. The sun had fallen, bringing the temperature down. They’d somehow scooted so close to each other that their bodies were touching.
“It’s getting late,” he finally said.
“I’ll give Atlanta my old room,” Indigo said.
“Where’s your mom going to stay?”
“In the spare bedroom.”
Reaching up, tracing the back of a finger down her cheek, he looked right at her, marveled at how beautiful she had become to him.
“Why are you telling me this?”
She tucked her face into his hand, put her hand over his, then smiled for only a moment or two before it faded and she pulled away. When she turned her gaze on him, it was somehow haunted, so sad, resolute.
“I’m telling you this because I know you’re going to go with Cincinnati and leave me here alone.”
He looked down. He’d been agonizing over that all day.
“I know you’re hoping you dad will get back,” he replied.
“I am.”
“Is that the only reason you’re staying?”
“It’s not,” she said. “It took me a long time to stock this place. The idea of leaving it all behind…it sort of makes me feel like all of this was for nothing.”
“You’ve done well,” he said, “but you don’t know what they’ve got at the college. It could be nice. Certainly a lot safer than just hanging out indefensible in a neighborhood.”
“The college is a compound Rex, not a school or a house. I want to live in a house. This house.”
“Because it makes you feel close to your father,” he said, getting it.
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure what to say.”
“Say you’ll stay the night,” she said. Then looking away, out into the street at nothing in particular, she said, “And maybe pretend you’ll stay with me regardless of what your sister does.”
“I’ll stay the night,” he said.
Reaching out, he took her chin, slowly turned her face toward him. Her eyes held so much hope, her expression full of wanting yet low on expectation. When he leaned in and kissed her, she did not pull away, but there was something hesitant in her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Besides everything.”
“I’ve never been with a boy,” she admits, unable to look at him.
“Didn’t you tell me that already?”
“I guess.”
“It’s okay,” he said, tender, understanding. “If it’s any consolation, I haven’t been with a boy either.”
She laughed and smacked him, then said, “I’m sure you’ve been with girls though.”
“Maybe one or two.”
“Which one is it?” she asked.
“Two.”
“I want you to touch me, Rex.”
With that, he stood and took her hand, then he took the blanket and led her inside. It was quiet, dark, but by now she knew the house as much in the dark as she did the light. He followed her upstairs, then she said, “Wait here.”
He waited outside her bedroom door holding the blanket. A moment later Indigo and Atlanta came out. She walked the blonde girl down the hall, got her situated in her spare bedroom, then came back and said, “Well that was uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, right?”
“Don’t talk anymore,” she said, pulling him inside the dark room.
She lit two votive candles, letting him see her, the smaller details of her, the expression on her face: wanting, fear, curiosity, surrender.
He went to her, kissed her, slowly began to undress her. This was her first time and he wanted to make it special. He wanted her to feel everything.
At first he sensed her nervousness, her reluctance, but then he said, “I won’t hurt you,” to which she said, “I know,” and from there she began to relax, to lose herself, to let herself be swept away by his kiss, his touch, by the very nature of him.
When they were in bed, at the point where she could do something, or do everything, he said, “Where do you want me to touch you?”
“Everywhere,” she said, breathless. “I want you to touch me everywhere.”
In the morning, Indigo’s mother walked in the room, saw them and drew a sharp breath. Rex and Indigo both looked up at her.
“Oh, I…I didn’t realize you two…what are you two?” she asked.
“Mom, get out.”
“This was my room, never yours,” Margot said, making Rex very uncomfortable. He wanted to shrink under the covers, hide from her, from the consequences of their affair, from the fear that Margot would somehow make him pay for taking her daughter’s virtue, even though the girl had given it willingly.
“You room is at Tad’s house and Dad is gone, or
dead. So this became my house and if this is my house, which it is, then this is my room and right now you’re being very rude.”
She just stood there, her mouth hanging open.
“Good morning, Margot,” Rex said.
“Shut up, Rex.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, feeling twelve years old.
“Before I realized this was your little love nest,” she quipped, but without an ounce of humor, “I was coming to tell you I’d like to go to my old house today, see about Tad.”
“What are you hoping to find?” she asked pulling the covers to her chin.
“Tad, of course.”
“I already found him when I went looking for you.”
“Oh?” she said, stilled.
The longer Indigo waited to give her an answer, the higher Margot’s breath seemed to rise in her chest. When she realized Indigo was holding onto bad news, the woman’s eyes took on the most incredible shine and something shifted in her stance.
“Where is he?” she asked on a shaky breath.
Rex thought of excusing himself, but neither he nor Indigo were wearing clothes under the blankets and the last thing he needed to do was make things more uncomfortable. So he stayed there. Wanting to hide. Wanting to not be a part of the conversation. Wanting to not hear the next words coming out of Indigo’s mouth.
“I found him in the kitchen,” Indigo answered, slowly, trying to give nothing away.
“Did he…” Did he make it? That was the question Rex knew she wanted to ask. It was the question she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Indigo said, her eyes shrink-wrapped with tears. Rex wondered what Tad meant to her, but it was clear she was reacting to her mother’s pain, not her own.
“So he’s—?”
When Indigo didn’t respond, the agony of loss etched itself in Margot’s features quickly and with a tragic edge. A small sob escaped her before she could leave, causing her hand to come to her mouth. Before Indigo could speak, Margot turned and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.
Rex said, “You didn’t tell me that.”
Wiping her eyes, turning away, Indigo said, “He was a jerk. Besides, I couldn’t talk about it. Just thinking about both my parents being dead was too much for me to handle, much less talk about with you.”
