Tin Men

by Christopher Golden

  “He’s a traitor,” Aimee said, surprised to find that she could barely speak above a whisper. The whole of her ached and she wanted to weep with exhaustion and sorrow. “He faked sick so he wouldn’t be with you all when the Pulse hit and he’s been trying to override defense protocols to let the anarchists in—“

  “The dead anarchists,” Torres sneered.

  “Oh, you son of a bitch,” Hawkins said, and Aimee flinched, sure that he was about to break North’s neck.

  The burnt robot lunged from the elevator and grabbed Hawkins by the arm. Only then did Aimee notice the pitchfork still barely visible on Kate Wade’s cheek.

  “Stop!” Kate snapped, pulling at Hawkins’ arm. “Let him go!”

  Kate stepped between Hawkins and North, pushing at their chests, and separated them. Hawkins scowled. North looked relieved until Kate pressed him back against the shelf and turned toward the elevator.

  “Mister President,” she said. “I have a present for you.”

  Aimee stared open-mouthed as President Matheson stepped off of the elevator, with the Russian president and a young woman behind them.

  “You think he’s got answers?” President Matheson asked.

  Kate stared at North. “Probably not many. But it’s like a kitten with a ball of string, sir. You bat it around enough, start tugging, and sooner or later it starts to unravel.”

  They others came off the elevator then. Aimee counted eight Tin Men in all, three of whose markings she didn’t recognize. She had watched them on the monitor but hadn’t been sure if there were others. Now she thought not, and wondered what had become of the rest of Platoon A, if they were still out there in the world somewhere or if the worst had happened. She took a closer look at the three she didn’t recognize, hoping that somehow their markings had been worn away and that she would see traces of that familiar WWII era blond riding a rocket.

  Hopeful heart aching, she looked at Danny. “Travaglini?”

  Danny shook his head.

  Fists began hammering at the door into the kitchen, on the far side of the stock room. The hiss of the cutting torch grew louder, drawing Kate’s attention.

  “Private Torres,” she said. “Go and open that door. Save them having to finish cutting through. The President’s going to want a word with Private North, and I think it’s high time the rest of us got our bodies back.”

  They all froze and then turned to stare expectantly at Aimee.

  “You can do that, right?” Kate asked. “Tell me you can do that?”

  Aimee exhaled. “I think so.”

  Later, Danny would remember them as having woken up together, but his canister hissed open a minute or two before Kate’s. The lid rose and he found himself looking up into the face of Aimee Bell. His thoughts were like cobwebs, all strung together and quivering as he tried to make his way from one to another. His eyelashes stuck together a bit until he blinked them free and his legs and neck ached until he began to stretch and groan.

  “Everything in working order?” Aimee asked.

  Danny twisted his head to crack his neck. “Ug. I think so. I figured I’d feel rested, but this feels like the world’s worst hangover.”

  Aimee helped him remove his headgear and the leads on his chest. “How can you feel rested when your brain’s been active for more than twenty-seven hours?” she said. “You need sleep. Real rest.”

  Danny sighed. “Sounds good.”

  But he knew they wouldn’t be getting much rest for the forseeable future. The handful of members of his platoon who’d made it back to the Hump were getting their human bodies back but the rest of the world was still falling apart. There was no way to tell how many anarchist cells were operating across the globe, never mind terrorists and would-be warlords. Other Tin Men would be working their way back to the Hump, but whether any of them would make it was still in question…and the world needed them more than ever.

  Technology was dead. Every community would have to circle the wagons and try to rebuild and the people making decisions would have to step carefully into the future. So much weighed upon their every move but fortunately that was their problem. He was just a soldier. A Tin Man. He would go where he was needed.

  Danny got himself into a sitting position and immediately felt dizzy. Exhaling, he held onto the sides of the canister and waited for it to subside. Blinking, he remembered the way his imagination had begun leaking into his perception. In one particular moment he had thought he had seen his dead father. Now that his mind had been returned to his flesh, he couldn’t help but think about ghosts and visions. If there were such things as ghosts, would they be very different from the consciousness of a soldier torn from his body and trapped inside circuits and metal?

  Maybe you’re still out there somewhere. Huh, Dad?

  Or maybe that was just bullshit, more cobwebs in his brain.

  Beside him, Kate’s canister hissed and the lid climbed upward. Aimee bent over the open canister a moment before returning to the control panel at its feet.

  Grunting, Kate sat up. She huffed out a long breath and then pulled off her own headgear.

  “God,” she rasped, “I need to brush my teeth maybe a dozen times.”

  Danny gave a soft laugh. “This is you in the morning, huh?”

  Kate glanced at him with the mischievous eyes he had so missed, and her smile held all of the sadness that Danny knew must be in his own. Around them, other canisters began to hiss as their lids rose. Aimee and several other techs were monitoring vital signs, but a single glance reminded Danny just how few of Platoon A’s canisters would be opening. Trang, Reilly, and Guzzo were still back in Damascus, as far as anyone knew, along with a handful of other soldiers from the platoon. Rawlins had stayed with Trang, too, but nobody knew what would happen if Rawlins made it back to the Hump.

  Danny stared across Staging Area 12 at Rawlins’ canister. It stood open, no lights on the control panel readout. Rawlins had no body to come back to. Looking at that empty canister, Danny wished Hawkins had snapped North’s neck after all, no matter what Peter Matheson wanted.

  He studied the green lights on nearby canisters. Hartschorn. Prosky. Corcoran. Their hearts were still beating, their lungs drawing breath, but for all intents and purposes, they were dead. Their minds were simply gone, souls departed. Had Rawlins made it back, could Aimee and the other techs have found a way to slip Rawlins’ mind into Hartschorn’s body? He didn’t know.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Kate didn’t reply.

  Danny glanced at her and found her staring at him.

  “Don’t even suggest it,” she said, and he understood that her thoughts had strayed into the same dark and impossible waters.

  “You sure?” he asked. “I don’t…I mean, it’s crazy, I know. But none of them are coming back.”

  “Danny, look at me,” she said.

  He studied those purple eyes again. He had wondered many times what it would be like to kiss her, but this time there was something more in that curiosity than there had been before. Something urgent and protective.

  Danny climbed out of his canister and moved to hers, his hands on the smooth metal. Torres and Birnbaum were awake and sitting up, which meant good things for Birnbaum’s baby, he hoped. Hawkins hadn’t gotten up yet, but his lid stood open and his control panel was green.

  He lowered his voice just above a whisper, so only Kate could hear him.

  “You’re not interested in living in someone else’s body,” he said, gaze fixed on her. “I get it. Crazy idea. Stupid, even. I have a lot of those.”

  “I don’t want to wake to see someone else looking back from the mirror,” she said quietly.

  “I just thought you might want to…I mean…”

  “My legs.”

  “…run.”

  “I’m never going back into a bot,” Kate told him. “I need to be human. My face in the mirror has to be mine. And if something’s going to happen between us, I want my own hands and my own arms
. Even my own legs. I want to be the Kate you know.”

  Danny was silent.

  “That is, if you want something to happen,” she added, her eyes narrowed with hurt. “I know you’ve got this wandering samurai thing in your brain where you feel like you can’t—“

  Danny reached into her canister and twined his fingers in hers.

  “Stop,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

  For a moment, neither of them spoke a word.

  “Well, you two aren’t wasting any time,” a voice said.

  He flinched and turned to see Aimee leaning against another canister, watching them with a smile.

  Danny looked past her, up toward the catwalk at the far end of the staging area. Alexa Day sat up there on the latticed steel, watching them, her arms draped over the railing.

  “Has she been there the whole time?” he asked.

  Aimee and Kate both glanced over at the girl.

  “Never left,” Aimee replied.

  “She doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” Kate replied.

  As if summoned, Alexa climbed to her feet and hurried down the metal stairs, weaving through canisters as she came toward them.

  “Okay,” Alexa said, pushing a lock of hair behind her left ear. “They’re all awake, safe and sound. Now how long is it going to take for you to format Kate’s bot for me.”

  “Alexa—“ Kate began.

  “You don’t want it anymore. You said so yourself. Aimee told me the bots have these synthetic gangli-whatevers. They can insert one that hasn’t been imprinted yet and map almost anyone’s brain onto it, so the consciousness moves from one to the other and it’s no different from an impulse sending emotion or pain from one part of your brain to another. Like adding an external drive to your mind.”

  Danny held up a hand. “Whoa, kid—“

  “I’m not a kid, Kelso,” Alexa snapped, and the flint in her eyes showed the truth of it. “I’m a year or so younger than that asshole Mavrides. That’s it. Kate doesn’t want her bot and I do!”

  “Just slow down,” Aimee warned. “I said it was possible. I can’t snap my fingers and make it happen. This is a military operation. You want to sign up, you’re going to need training and you’re going to need to get authorization from whoever ends up in official command of the base now that Major Zander’s dead.”

  Alexa glanced at the floor, frustration and grief almost steaming out of her. She took a deep breath and then looked up.

  “I’ll be patient for now, but I’m going out there. The Tin Men can go wherever they want, can do the things that human beings can’t do, and protect the people who don’t have anyone else looking out for them. Right now, that’s most of the world. So whatever’s gonna happen, it better be quick.”

  Torres, Birnbaum, and Hawkins had come over to join them while Alexa spoke. Not one of them said a word, waiting for Kate. Whether she wanted to be or not, Danny realized, she really had become Queen of the Tin Men.

  But Kate wasn’t looking at Alexa anymore.

  “Who’s this, now?” she asked.

  The man coming down the metal steps stood at least six and a half feet tall and had arms like Redwoods. His hair was shaved down to stubble and he wore a beard the same length.

  “I know him,” Aimee said. “Fourth Battalion.”

  “Which one of you is Sergeant Wade?” the giant asked.

  “That’d be me, soldier. And you are?”

  “Corporal Sedensky.”

  Danny frowned. “I know that voice.”

  Sedensky nodded. “It’s Zuzu, Sarge.”

  “Wow,” Alexa said.

  “POTUS is asking for you, Sarge,” Zuzu said. “Time to put our heads together, he said. Figure out the next step.”

  “Why does he want us in there? We’re a bunch of grunts,” Hawkins growled.

  “We’re survivors,” Zuzu replied.

  Danny looked at Kate, wondering. She didn’t want to be in a bot ever again, but did that mean she had stopped being a soldier? She glanced at him, and he knew the answer.

  “Warrant Officer Bell,” she said, turning to Aimee. “Bring my chair.”

  Zuzu blinked in surprise. “Wait, you’re Bell?”

  Aimee hesitated. “Yes?”

  “Got a message for you, too,” Zuzu said. “Chief Schuler says to tell you it’s a good thing you’re not a traitor. You were trying to get one of the old satcomm lines working, right? And you got a signal?”

  They all turned to stare at her.

  “I thought I did. An underground research base in Vancouver.”

  Zuzu grinned. “Well, apparently you got through. One of the other techs was at your station and heard voices. They lost the signal, and Schuler wants you to get it back.”

  “I have no idea if I can do that,” she said.

  “Well, he thinks you can.”

  Danny turned to her. “Go, Aimee. Fast as you can.”

  “What’s the hurry?” Hawkins asked.

  “Vancouver’s a hell of a lot closer to home than Germany,” Danny said. “Maybe they can get messages out, spread the word. And not just to the people we’re worried about. America needs to know their President is alive, just like Russia needs to know that Rostov is alive. There are going to be a lot of people who think this is the end, that society is shattered—“

  “It is shattered,” Torres said.

  Danny wanted to argue, but he couldn’t deny the truth. With a grim nod, Aimee turned and headed off and everyone watched her go—except for Kate, who turned to Danny. He took her hand, saw the determination in her eyes, and knew she shared his reaction to Torres’s words.

  The world had fallen apart.

  Time to start putting it back together.

  THE END