Without saying anything to each other, Deirdre and Mark wandered up to the roof. Launches were a much simpler affair than they once were, but they still took a great deal of time. The onboard artificial intelligence was a source of potential danger, but it was a different thing from PePrs and apparently, not impacted by their rebellion. It handled almost all the actual work of launching by itself.
Mark grabbed two deck chairs—a rather large stash of them had been discovered on the roof, no doubt the illicit contributions of NASA workers who could not stop watching the sky—and set them near the edge of the roof. From here, they could see the launch pad, the wide circles of flat and artificial surface now at odds with the wider world.
If he turned his head, Mark could see the closest portion of the fence in another direction, but he didn’t turn his head. In the months since Deirdre’s intervention, all traces of humanity had been erased beyond the wall, which was now made up almost entirely of the remains of highways and streets.
Gregory had left the building and ventured out into the preserve they were in. Like Mark, he wasn’t making the trip to Mars. Only those with the most vital skills or attributes would be going. Mark had assumed that Gregory would disappear like all the others that left, but he’d returned the next morning no worse for wear. His news had not been good, but also not as bad as it could have been. As humans died of age or untreatable illness, they were plucked away. All those who could reproduce were being sterilized. Only approved reproduction would ever happen, though no one knew when that might commence.
He’d reported that the PePrs had determined an ideal human population of one hundred million worldwide. Given that information, Mark didn’t think any reproduction would be happening soon. To add to the strangeness, he also returned with a wagon overflowing with rations. Fresh fruit, vegetables, imitation meat, and even freshly made bread that still smelled of a bakery oven.
The PePrs weren’t starving anyone, that was for sure. They were kind masters, but there was no doubt that they were the masters now.
Deirdre grabbed Mark’s hand as the launch sequence began and they both let out sounds of awe and appreciation as the hours of waiting culminated in a perfect launch. The huge vehicle seemed too massive for such flight, yet it flew, arcing across the sky as dusk fell. Mark half-held his breath as it rose out of range of the surface PePrs, the possibility that they might stop the launch always in the back of his mind. They didn’t stop it, though.
Night fell and the sky filled with stars, far more than Mark had ever seen before the event. It was beautiful, and he held Deirdre’s hand like he’d done as a child during trips to museums or the cinema to see a slightly scary movie.
As the hours passed, the sound of grinding machinery broke through his reverie. He knew what he would see and he didn’t want to stop looking at the sky. Once he did, it would never been the same again. But he did look. The big machines were coming, a line of them with whirring, toothed wheels for dismantling concrete, huge hoppers for filling with debris, and other things he couldn’t imagine the purpose of. They had been waiting for their launch after all, it seemed.
Deirdre squeezed his fingers and murmured, “It’s okay, kiddo. I’m here with you. Be brave.”
Mark smiled in the darkness. Of course she knew. The little cubes of living space in a tower weren’t for him. As soon as those PePrs recognized Deirdre for what she was, she would be taken and repaired... turned into an enemy. He’d rather stay right here and look at the sky with her. He’d made his choice and she was with him.
“Don’t let go of me and I’ll be fine,” he said, then looked back up at the stars to locate the tiny red dot of Mars. At least humanity would have a home. That was something. When a voice warned that the building needed to be evacuated, Mark never even looked away from the sky.
The machines ground on.
Deirdre never let go of his hand.
A Word from Ann Christy
I love the way you’ve taken the human-versus-robot endgame and given it a twist. When you started writing this collection of stories, did you think about the range of entities and relative level of self-awareness that would emerge?
I started the PePr world with PePr, Inc. and that falls somewhere in the middle of the time continuum of PePr development. I always intended it to begin and end this way. Robot Evolution covers those developing years in ways meant to provoke the reader’s emotions and each has a gut punch in it somewhere. Becoming sentient is no walk in the park. In Hope/Less I’ve begun the Robot Revolution, with seeds sprinkled throughout the other stories that hint at how things might end. In Sequester, I’ve taken the events of Protector and looked at them from one spot in the world. It also lays the groundwork for the very last piece in the PePr saga... no hints! The thing is, PePrs are not evil, not robot overlords. They’ve simply become what we wanted them to be... which reinforces that we should be very careful what we wish for.
Tell us how this short story fits into the big picture of PePrs and humans in the universe you’ve created.
This fits firmly into the events covered in Protector (slated for future release), but takes that broad and large impact and zeroes in on one location, with one set of people and PePrs. It’s also my way of saying goodbye to Deirdre, who has been a reader favorite. She’s one of the very first sentient PePrs and is chronologically the first of them to get her own novella, Corrections. She’ll also be a major player in Mercy.
Any works-in-progress right now?
Of course! I’m like a squirrel when the nuts start falling! I’m working on the last book in the Strikers trilogy, which has been the most researched and “gamed” book I’ve ever done. In fact, that whole series required such an enormous effort in world-building that I’m exhausted just mentioning it. Even so, the readers love them so that makes it all worth it. I’ve also got Lulu 394 (as always) and three other books in various stages of development.
Where can fans find you and hear about future books?
My website is http://www.annchristy.com and I have loads of stuff on there, plus readers can sign up for my VIP List there and get some free books when they join. I also hang out on Facebook, so look me up! I’m super-interactive and love social media. I’m constantly sharing snippets, test chapters, and all sorts of stuff. Let’s connect!
Bio
Ann Christy is a retired navy commander and secret science fiction author. She lives by the sea under the benevolent rule of her canine overlord and a delusional, foul-mouthed cat. You can most often find her hyped up on caffeine while creating terrible situations for her characters to survive (or not).
Escape from Push Station 16
by S.M. Blooding
Push Station 16
Prison Station
115.5 LY from Reyher System
IN JUST OVER one p-hour, Domino was going to escape. The largest armada they’d seen in eight years was passing by. The clock was ticking and she wasn’t missing this opportunity. Live or die, she was getting off this station.
Domino walked down the long catwalk of Level 110. To her right was the rail protecting her from the drop into the open space at the center of the residential levels. If she leaned over, she could see all the way from the top to the bottom. Station residents loitered about. These were the people who had been born here, whose parents had been sentenced decades before.
Those who lived up above were the newer prisoners, still fresh, still violent and dangerous.
Well, dangerous only in that they were so desperate. The “criminals” that landed here were non-conformists. Those who didn’t obey or, in Domino’s case, didn’t murder innocent children when ordered to do so by the corporate elitist who wanted the kid’s lands.
This place had a way of stripping away those moral views, though. Survival in a shithole like this? Turned good men ugly, and decent people hard.
She stepped over Long John’s legs, jutting into the corridor from where he slept against the wall. He’d been born in low-
g so he was pretty tall. His long bones would break in standard ship g.
His daughter, Little Em, sat beside him. “Hey, Dom.” Her smile was infectious. She was all eyes and big teeth.
Domino nodded once and kept going. She’d never been much for chitchat. Especially not when she had shit to do, and especially not when their window was so small.
The four United Systems were connected by push lanes. Push stations, with their gravitational rings to give the ships a push to maintain momentum, were placed strategically along those lanes. Without them, ships could be lost for generations, if they even survived.
The trick to getting picked up as armada was pushed through was the ships looking to snag cargo on their way by. If she didn’t get picked up within minutes of entering the black, she would die. Simple as that. Their window was just seconds wide.
Domino walked around and over several residents. She knew every single one of them. She logged their names, roughly how old they were, their jobs, and their crimes. Well, most of them. On this level, the most common crime was being born on the wrong push station. She slipped into a room just off the main hallway for the residents’ wing.
Color slapped her in the face.
Domino didn’t know where Targie got half the things on her walls. She never asked. Some secrets should be kept, and everyone deserved at least one.
Targie looked up and grunted. The goggles on her face made her dark eyes huge and her face tiny. She was petite, having grown up on a planet in Reyher where the gravity was strong. It also had the best schools in the system.
Targie was a trained engineer. She was a good one, too. She had earned her criminal status giving away her designs for free, instead of handing them to the corporations who “owned” her.
“We’re running out of time.” Domino also didn’t know what most of the stuff that littered Targie’s space was. “Where are we?”
Targie didn’t answer immediately. She turned back to what she was working on, and then after a moment, held it up.
Domino took it. A circuit board. Really old-school, using things they could get their hands on, which were rudimentary at best. “This’ll work?” She turned the board around, trying to catch a glimpse of its inner workings.
Targie grunted again in acknowledgement. She pulled off her goggles revealing a cute, heart-shaped face. If she hadn’t pissed off the wrong person, she’d probably have been sold as a wife to a midlevel corporate exec instead of serving life on Push Station 16. She, like almost everyone else in the United Systems, had dark hair and brown eyes, brown skin, and soft hands. Few spacers actually got to see a sun, but most had genetic pigmentation.
“Have you tested it?”
“That one? No. This one?” Targie held up another one that looked entirely different: green with the wires bundled neatly. “Yes.”
The one Domino held looked like a child’s attempt. But it had to be as simple and as robust as possible. They would have to pass through an electrostatic field.
Targie shook her head, her full lips quirked. “It was the best I could do with what I had. The wire’s shit. High resistance.”
They’d pulled it off the power sluffing grid, which had been the only thing Domino could get to in time for the armada push.
“They’re coming.” Domino didn’t need to say anything more, the main reason she enjoyed working with Targie. She was a woman of few words.
“How long?”
“One p-hour.”
Time in the black was relative to the place. p stood for push station. An hour there would be different than an hour on Kalamatra, or Terra HUMP Joy, or Earth. Or an hour on any other push station. They were all relative to size and rotation.
Targie scooped up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “That’s not a lot of time.”
It should be just enough.
Domino led the way. They couldn’t use the main corridors and thoroughfares. That would have been the fastest choice.
But people crowded the halls and the higher they got—the closer to the dock ring—the more desperate people were.
Recruits: the newest residents on the station. Those who hadn’t made peace with their fate, still looking to score, get better rations, more rations, more... anything.
The guards wouldn’t be a problem until they reached the hangar.
Long John blocked her path, his dark eye on Domino.
She sighed. She knew what he wanted and she knew her answer. It was the only one she could give. She didn’t kill children.
Long John had one good eye. His injury happened before her time. The ring had gone down and the pressure in the lower levels had been almost deadly. He’d lost one eye and had a permanent red stain scarring the other. But he was one of the nicest people there. Most pushers were. “You’ve got to take her.”
It was the same argument they’d had for the past three years—after he caught her trying to escape the last time. “We don’t have an extra regulator.”
He towered over her, a long, slim pole, and pulled something from his back pocket. “Had Rigsbee doctor it up.”
It looked even worse than Domino’s.
Targie took it and looked it over. “Rigsbee’s mad bad at the dice, but his work’s good.” She shrugged and handed it to Domino. “Life’s on you.”
It was one thing to take her own life in her own hands. And Targie had her own mind and will and wants. But this? “She’ll need a suit.”
Long John nodded and pulled Little Em from behind him. “Done. Momma Tea fixed it up.”
Momma Tea was a damned fine hand at suit work. She could seal anything up with what she could find in a common power conduit. That was the thing. When the government elite warehoused a bunch of people who were too brilliant to comply in one place, the percentage of amazing minds was high. Though they weren’t all smart. Domino was just stubborn.
She looked a question at Targie. They were burning seconds.
She shrugged again. “We gotta move. Stay. Go. I don’t care. She’s good.”
Em was third gen push. She might survive the pickup and die in the lock.
Long John gave Em a gentle shove and tilted his head. “She’s the best thing I’ve done, Dom.”
She knew what her answer should be, but nodded anyway. “Let’s go.” Because she didn’t kill kids.
Damn it.
Staying there was just as much a death sentence as escaping.
Not waiting for goodbyes, she stashed the girl’s regulator board in her belt pack and continued down the corridor.
Thanks to being born in full g, she had the muscle structure to push through pretty quickly. Em had to jog to keep up.
Domino slipped into a service corridor barely large enough for an average human. Narrower now than the original design specs, it had filled with more and more conduits as the old ones stopped functioning. Conduits for everything from power to food, air, waste, and water.
She pressed her back against the wall and squeezed through, a red conduit pressing hard against her cheekbone. She leaned away from a tear, a fuzzy blue slit in another.
It wasn’t fuzz. It was electric current, enough to seize her muscles and knock her out. Unable to break away from the current, it would continue to arc through her until she was nothing more than a fried husk. There were no safeties on the power net. Without power, the station went down. No gravity, no life support.
And the ships coming in would lose momentum. Some might not make it to the next push.
Better one fried prisoner than a risk to the power system.
Domino came to a space just large enough for a small person to wriggle up a ladder. Most of these tunnels were only big enough for longer, slimmer, and more flexible pushers. Terrans didn’t stand a chance. Spacers? A few of them, maybe.
Domino barely fit, and probably only because she’d been on the station for almost a decade. She didn’t even want to think about the atrophy in her bones. She might never recover.
She couldn’t think about that.
Em was a trooper. She didn’t say a single word. She just shimmied up the ladder, keeping pace.
At Level 63, Domino squeezed herself into the corridor. Sixty-two and above were so crammed with conduits and recycle pipes, she couldn’t hope to fit through. Em could probably make it another eight levels, but Sixty-one also had a massive power dump. A major power conduit was open and couldn’t be repaired. The re-route wouldn’t be complete for another week at best.
Squirming toward the commerce side, Domino kept her hands on her packs. In tight quarters like this, she could lose just about anything.
She bent her knees awkwardly and inched forward, keeping her head as far from the boiler pipe as possible. Sweat beaded on her forehead. The boiler pipe wasn’t insulated and the other pipes and conduits siphoned some of that heat and radiated it back, making the corridor a hotbox.
Em cried out, but Domino didn’t have room to turn her head. She reached with her left hand and grabbed Em’s shoulder, tugging her along.
She stumbled into a big open space.
The Commons took up the entire block and included over thirty levels. Anything the prisoners or pushers could turn into commodities were bought and sold. Rations were dished out there. Whoever controlled the floor dictated what the currency for payment would be.
Sometimes it was easy to stomach.
Sometimes it wasn’t.
Most prisoners were men, of varying sizes and shapes. Women who disrespected the corporate customs of acceptable conduct were typically sold for sex or marriage.
But Domino wasn’t pretty. As a child, the damage inflicted on her after she’d been sold had left scars all over her body and face. A chunk of her scalp was so scarred over she couldn’t grow hair, and the area around it was silver. No one wanted her. She looked like damaged goods.
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