Machines of Eden

by Shad Callister

  He turned to the table and sorted through its contents. There were many maps of various kinds detailing the earth’s surface. In fact, there were maps of all the kinds he knew of except for political ones. Apparently, Janice wasn’t concerned with the boundaries of people and governments, only the land as it actually appeared.

  At least she isn’t racist. Just xenocidal.

  There was a population-density map of the whole earth, with red marks encircling every metropolitan center and little lines connecting them to outlying towns. He picked up a data tablet and activated it. It looked like a personal device, and he assumed it was Janice’s. Looking through the contents, he found a promising series of documents created over the past year, and read through them.

  It took several minutes. When he was finished, every last detail had fallen into place. The documents went by phases, with headings and summaries that were followed by detailed requirement lists, schedules, and execution plans.

  Phase One: Construction and Research (99%)

  Complete construction of primary facility and Eden -- While observing Eden’s results, research requisite nanotechnology and disassemble construction giants for use in In Corpus Deo

  Phase Two: Nanobot Development (95%)

  Improve lab equipment and safety measures -- Design final working bot structure and programming -- Begin limited replication for testing

  Phase Three: In Corpus Deo (98%)

  Finish designs -- Build Gaia

  Phase Four: Release (0%)

  Inhabit Gaia -- Begin releasing bots into the wild

  Phase Five: Search and Destroy (0%)

  From Gaia body: monitor progress of bot replication -- Travel and trigger new chains where necessary

  Phase Six: Hibernation (0%)

  Ensure that no pockets remain -- Initiate DeepSleep for 50 years

  Phase Seven: New Dawn (0%)

  Awake and assess global environment -- Retrieve seed banks -- Begin caretaking

  John read through some of the details, figuring out how feasible the plans really were. What he found chilled him.

  Although the Facility had originally been created for advanced research, Janice was definitely weaponizing the whole thing. She had Eve developing nanobots, sub-microscopic machines that individually were insignificant, but powerful in numbers.

  The truly dangerous part, however, was that she was programming them to do one very simple thing: self-replicate. The tiny virus-like robots, made into a form of completely biodegradable “smart dirt”, would attack specific non-organic substances and use those molecules to build more of themselves. The current programming mandates called for them to target and dismantle about a hundred of the molecular materials most commonly used in construction and technology: steel, plastic, concrete, silicon semiconductors, and the other compounds the civilized world was built on.

  The plans showed that there were several giant fans in the facility capable of forcing air out through vent tunnels like the one he’d used to gain entrance earlier. Once the nanobots were airborne and out in the wild, it wouldn’t take long for the prevailing winds to spread them far and wide. That way they weren’t dependent on a path that could be severed, like a pipeline to the mainland. Floating on the breeze like a long-lived virus, it would only be a matter of time before the nanos found something to eat.

  Starting small in number but growing exponentially as they came in contact with new sources of raw synthetic material, the nanobots would convert these materials into more of themselves, tiny machines that would remain active for fifty years and then quickly break down into dirt. The entire structure of the human world would be disassembled at the atomic level and reorganized into soil components so that plant life would be able to subsume it all into the natural cycle.

  Janice had mapped out connections between civilization points to ensure that the chain reaction wouldn’t break down too quickly. The prewar days of rapid over-building and urban spreading had effectively sealed humanity’s fate: with all the pipelines, cable runs, and highways, it was unlikely that the bots would ever reach the end of the line. They would eat mankind right off the earth.

  Not that they’ll attack mankind directly. Sure, jewelry and dental fillings and hearing aids will dissolve, and it won’t go well for those with pacemakers or artificial hip replacements. But the real damage will be done by the violent and sudden loss of housing, infrastructure, and tools. Images filled John’s mind of buildings collapsing into mountains of soil, burying their tenants alive, and streets crumbling into dirt. Machines, computers, vehicles, everything not made of wood or stone will become useless. It’s sick, and it’s ingenious.

  The plans predicted that humanity would fade from the earth overnight. Without all the luxuries of technology and civilization, and evolved too far past their primitive roots, the people of the world would disappear along with all that they had built. That would leave the earth back in its primeval, natural state.

  Now that he was in on the fullness of Janice’s plans for a global ecophagy, the percentages at the end of each header on the main summary document made him shiver. All the hatred and threats Janice had been spewing were clearly based on solid capability. With the power of Eve at her fingertips, she had brought the plan within reach of execution.

  And now, for whatever occult reasons, I arrive at the eleventh hour. How did Eve bring me down from the sky? And an even more pressing question: why?

  He walked back into the sleeping area, curious if anything there would tell him more about the woman he was up against. There was a cot, and he wondered how long it had been since he had woken up on the beach. He couldn’t imagine sleeping right now even if it were safe, though. Not with the end of the world weighing on my mind.

  There were various small hygiene items and some clothes. A tiny bamboo shoot grew in a jar with a miniature ultraviolet lamp clipped to it. There was a reading slate with a few books on it that he glanced through. He hadn’t heard of any of them: The Fall of Kings, Ecological Spectacle Vol. 1, and Cries of Our Mother.

  And there was a notebook written in pen. Its pages were actual paper, not plasti-matte, and he smirked as he remembered the endless circles the media had spun about whether it was better to kill trees to make biodegradable paper or to create “unnatural” products that wouldn’t harm forests directly but caused other problems. Evidently Janice favored killing the trees to save the forest. And killing the people to save the forest, too.

  Janice had terrible handwriting. There was a short poem entitled Earth Dying/Mother Crying and a drawing of two children holding hands, a boy and a girl. It was interesting to see the attempts at humanity that came out of a woman that had been through the very worst the Green Army offered. An interesting revelation appeared on the next page.

  “A message reached me from my brother today. It seems I am not the last of our family after all. I never looked back after leaving Durban, but I actually experienced nostalgia. He sounds committed to the ideals we always shared. I’m thinking about replying.”

  And a page later: “My brother says he is not well. He was gassed with something nasty while fighting with the Greens in Myanmar and hasn’t been the same since. The doctors can’t do anything for him, of course. Maybe I should bring him here. He would be a loyal ally for me if things end up going the way I think they will with Glenn.”

  So she’s human after all. But who’s the brother? John skipped ahead.

  “Big brother arrived today with a few other workers. He’s in worse shape than I feared. I don’t think he will be of any use; his mind is gone half the time, and he told me in a moment of coherence that it’s getting worse. The weapon that did it to him was Gray in origin, he said, but it was the Greens that were using it in Myanmar. I told him I hated them all equally for what they did, but he was already mumbling to himself about something else. Glenn is uncomfortable having him here, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. As long as he doesn’t interfere with the work, I guess we’ll just let him
have the run of the island.”

  Nut! That’s why she lets him live. Even though he has no memory of her now.

  The other entries focused more on the day-to-day of Janice’s work with Glenn, but there was one page that caught his eye near the end. It started as a poem, but broke off and there were several lines that were angrily scribbled out. Then two pages followed, written in harsh, dark red pen.

  I only asked for a little commitment. I was committed—all the way to the end. But now they commit people like me to asylums.

  I wanted to help, to destroy the Grays and save Mother. I gave everything for it, more than anyone else, and now what? They shake hands and kiss up, soiling themselves and the rest of us, and they brush their darker sins under the rug. But sins don’t like hiding, and I don’t want to be forgotten like an uneaten crust!

  I spent six years infiltrating Glenn and the Gray systems of academia that spawned him, and I did it better than anyone could have dreamed. I had him feeding from my hand! Him, with his lazy pacifism and his “show them a better way” drivel. I suffered through it all to turn it around, to make the ultimate weapon out of it. They knew I had succeeded, and they knew it would work—just months away. And they just cut me loose like a tangled fishing line.

  I would have been at the top. I would have rocketed to the very crest of the victory wave, but now they don’t want that anymore. They just let it all fall apart into a circus of “peacemaking”. How sweet. Well, I stayed true, truer than them or anyone, true enough to make the whole human race pay for its folly.

  Glenn knows where peace gets you. It was almost funny to hear him begging and pleading before I offed him. Soon everyone else will learn what he did, firsthand. EVERYONE. Even if I can’t see them all beg, I’d like them all to see and know what is about to happen to them before they blink out like dying embers.

  I want that, but I don’t need it. Earth doesn’t need it. She just needs them GONE.

  Give me six more months, give me some working nanos and a sustainable post-resurface design, and I will give them everything they deserve. Please, Mother, just give me that.

  Please!

  She certainly had a way with simile, although the prose wasn’t very good in general. I like the poetry better. Anyway, here’s written proof of Janice murdering Glenn. Not surprising, but good to know.

  Putting the papers aside, John went back to the computer room and got down to some real hacking on the main console. Finally he had everything in place to reset Eve back to the prime directives Glenn had set, closing out all of Janice’s introductions to her psyche. It would take several minutes to compile the routines and execute in a way that Eve couldn’t block and that Janice wouldn’t be notified of. He set it running and stood up.

  He studied some of the more detailed maps and diagrams of the island’s systems until he had a solid understanding. Then he checked on the code he was running (88%), and decided he needed to get going. He memorized the diagram of the vents and cooling systems for the Facility, and then walked to the door opposite the one he’d entered through.

  It will be nice to have Eve under her own power again-- I much preferred having a single deranged A.I. to deal with; the schizophrenic slave version was harder to deal with. But I still need to shut her down fast. Her plans will do as much damage to the earth as Janice's, just in different ways and not as quickly.

  The closed-circuit camera showing the area just outside the room’s exit looked all clear, so he unsealed the door and stepped out.

  “—you are, like a rat in the sewer! Come on!”

  It was Janice’s voice, and it was ringing out shrilly over the intercom system. Inside John had been totally deaf to the noise, with no earpiece connection or outside audio line.

  She’s probably inside the Facility now, but apparently not close enough to stalk me silently. That’s good.

  “Janice, I kind of liked that radio silence thing,” he answered. “All this verbal abuse is starting to hurt my feelings. I had to go have a good cry in the bathroom just now because of all your hounding.”

  “You haven’t begun to cry. Your pitiful counterattack failed, and your bots are scrap metal. You’re next.”

  Shutting the door and jamming it electronically behind him, he slinked up a short stairwell and peeked out into the hallway it ascended to. It was clear, so he hurried down it. “But I feel like I know you so well, now, Jannie baby. I got to read your nice poems, see all your cool plans…”

  Dead silence. I thought that would do it.

  “Janice, in all seriousness,” he continued, “I need to tell you this as one human being to another: you’re dangerously out of touch with reality, and your plan is going to smother the entire planet. I know you hate humanity, but for the Earth’s sake, I’m going to ask you once to please come to your senses. You are going to kill your ‘mother’.”

  Her reply was whispered. “No. I’m going to save her the only way that’s left to us.”

  “Our planet can never survive a total resurfacing like that. You will turn it into a wasteland that will never recover.”

  “That’s what your ridiculous Green tribal leaders thought. They got scared once I told them it was actually possible, and they backed out. But I’m not backing out. I’ve almost got my finger on the button, and believe me: I will push it. Earth will recover; she always does. It will be even easier with no parasites.”

  “Okay, if that’s how you want it,” John replied. “Just had to warn you, in good conscience. Eve, do you have anything to say?” He was hoping for proof that his code had completed and worked.

  “I’m afraid she’s right, Adam. We worked it all out. The Plan has no flaws.”

  She called me Adam.

  He headed for the nearest elevator shaft that would take him to Level 5.

  17

  Nut watched as Janice entered the Facility. She couldn't see him, and that was how he liked to keep it these days. She was not a forgiving woman. At the moment she was carrying a large rifle and looked rattled. The gunshots and explosions outside had drawn him to his upper-floor vent lookout, but he had missed most of the action.

  He knew the man he had met earlier was around somewhere, causing trouble. He knew that Janice was in a killing rage. And he knew that Eve had been quite flustered recently. It all added up to one thing in Nut's perilously unbalanced mind.

  Janice has found my cache of hose bibs and stopcocks, and now she will try to take them away from me! Or kill me for the violation. But I do not want her to do that.

  Crawling swiftly back through the web of ceiling tunnels, vertical shafts, and catwalks that were his safe routes, he returned to his secondary lair and took up his weaponry. It had come down to this after all, and his careful preparation had not been vain. He would now have the fight of his life, with one or the other falling, or perhaps both. Nut meant to do everything he knew how to make Janice be the one that fell, and the plan started with an elaborate ambush.

  He couldn’t help giggling softly to himself as he scurried off to check his tripwires.

  Janice, unknowing and uncaring, went nowhere near Nut’s traps, instead heading straight for the entrance to her inner sanctum after grabbing a first aid kit. She knew that the man she wanted so desperately to kill would not be there, but the thought that he had infiltrated and violated her holy of holies compelled her to go and see how it had happened, and what he had done there.

  That the man had been able to penetrate the saferoom was yet another failing on Eve’s part. She had entrusted Eve with the design of the redundant security measures, commanding her to make it as lethal as possible for any human other than Janice herself to go there. But Eve had failed, apparently leaving loopholes and blind spots.

  Well, now I know better than to leave such things in the hands of a machine. Eve is nearly obsolete anyway, and in five or six more hours she’ll be swept away with the rest of the machines.

  When she got to the sanctum she realized that it would be foolhardy to
explore the corridors after the defenses had been activated and possibly tampered with or damaged. She went up a level to her favorite data console and queued up the surveillance files for the last hour. Sitting in front of the screen, she held drug-laced bandages to the side of her head until the painkiller erased the burning sensation from the area, and focused on the videos.

  After watching the man dance past her most foolproof and deadly automated defenses, she began to gain a new respect for her opponent. He had at first annoyed her to the extreme with his attempts at witticism and verbal banter, but now she saw that it had been a front to put her off her guard. The man knew what he was doing, and obviously had experience in infiltration, hacking, and human vs. robot tactics.

  The surveillance record showed that he had gotten into everything in the safe-room. It didn’t look like he had destroyed anything inside, but she had to assume that he had a full knowledge of current operations and the Plan. She would need to slow down and conduct the endgame much more carefully now. If she underestimated the man again, it might mean the failure of the entire Plan.

  She would need to think clearly, act rationally, and be decisive in bringing him down before he could do more harm. And yet she had to also remain flexible. It might become necessary to inhabit Gaia immediately, sidestepping the final five percent of tests on the nanobots. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but this wrench in the works was starting to shake her confidence. The last thing in the universe she wanted was a total failure of the Plan.

  She took several calming breaths, checked her weapon, and stood up.

  “Eve. I need you to help me now. And I need you to carry out my orders perfectly, because your next failure will be your last. That’s a promise.”