Under the Flickering Light

by Russ Linton

  Knuckles jostled around in the backseat, his specs strapped tightly to his face. They’d lost all signals as soon as they left the hyperloop. She’d tried to talk to him once and it only made him flinch.

  Two other vehicles made up their little convoy. One was a six-wheeled enclosed truck which reminded her of a centipede. That one transported the robot. She’d caught a glimpse of the driver and was startled to see a little girl, wiry and covered in grease. Her appearance was as distinctive as Kraken’s. Darker skinned, her hair straight and jet black, she had voluminous eyes which gave her a perpetual look of awe.

  A second truck hauled a collapsed antenna. Some sort of portable signal amplifier. That vehicle held two more people, unidentifiable through a haze of mud and smeared bugs.

  M@ti stared out the window until the sun dropped low behind them. A few times she spotted buildings covered in vines, all of them wrecked and weathered, their roofs pierced by impatient trees. She wondered why each was there and how old they could be, her closest reference the blockhouse with its own obscured past.

  When the stars came, M@ti found her true bearings. Venus blazed above the trees ever so slightly to the south with Mercury in close pursuit. Directly in their path hung Corona Borealis, a tilted crown gifted to a princess by a god.

  Why did it have to be a gift? She’d just take the damn thing.

  “How much further?” she asked Kraken. With darkness slowing them down, the engine noise had reduced enough to talk but his concentration didn’t allow for much conversation.

  He squinted into the reddish glow of their headlights. His jacket hung over the back of his seat and he’d pushed his sleeves up to his elbows. “We’ll be there by morning. Get some rest.”

  “Give me the tablet,” M@ti said. “There’s more I need to know about this underlying architecture you’re talking about.”

  Kraken shrugged and pulled the device out from under his seat. “Be my guest. You’ll need to unlock it.”

  “Password?” she asked as she took it.

  “If you have to ask, you should’ve stayed on the train.”

  M@TI SPENT HALF THE night cracking the password for the ancient handheld. Most of the time involved her learning the syntax and file structure. Understanding how to jab in the correct command words with her fingers instead of using smooth, sweeping hand motions was another big adjustment. More than once she caught an amused glance from Kraken as she flailed at the screen.

  As soon as she had the basics down, she made short work of the security. The encryption was child’s play. Somehow, the device had to be shielded against AI access because such piss-poor security would only keep out organics.

  Every so often, she glanced up and watched the shadows slide past the window. Trees gave way to more definite shapes. She started to see gaps where other roads crossed theirs. Low, flat buildings rose out of the murk.

  The sights didn’t comfort her. These weren’t signs of civilization. These were tombstones.

  Knuckles’ head bounced against the glass as he slept. His specs made enough racket M@ti felt certain he’d wake up. After several miles and a few hard cracks, she twisted around and tried to situate him, so he wouldn’t wake up with a concussion. He mumbled something incoherent and she found her hand trapped between his cheek and shoulder.

  Her first instinct was to pull away. His face though had settled into a peaceful smile, so she didn’t. She left it there and slumped against her seat, trying to see more of him in the darkened interior. When she thought she could move again, she slowly lowered his head onto the empty seat next to him.

  M@ti swiveled to return to her tablet when a burst of color filled the windshield. Gold and green streamers spanned the sky. Too defined to be an Aurora, the threads winked in and out of existence creating a beacon for the entire countryside.

  “What is that?” M@ti pointed. Kraken followed her finger, shifting forward in his seat. When he looked confused, M@ti added, “The lights.”

  Kraken gave a knowing smile and he pointed at his eyes then to her.

  TrueSight. She’d left it on. M@ti shutdown her interface and a pre-dawn glow replaced the light show.

  “Detroit,” said Kraken. “We’re almost there.”

  M@ti stifled a yawn. Turning off her tools had signaled the end of her all-nighter. Her tired eyes welcomed the darkness. Two nights now and she’d had little sleep. More questions remained for Kraken, but she didn’t want to push too hard. Soon she was asleep, her head bouncing against the window too.

  26

  “M@ti, wake up.”

  Knuckles stretched across the seat back, gripping both sides. He hadn’t touched her, but shook the seat enough to wake her.

  “I’m up.”

  She’d only just closed her eyes to rest them. Now they were stopped. Kraken was no longer in the driver’s seat. They’d parked on a dirt path littered with chunks of asphalt. A vague footprint left behind by lost streets and buildings showed through the undergrowth. A cracked concrete foundation sat to their left. She heard voices outside and opened the door to see.

  Knuckles grabbed her and quickly withdrew his hand. “Sorry, but the old dude said to wait here.”

  “I’m sure he did,” M@ti said and she climbed out.

  Until she moved she didn’t know how cramped every muscle had become. Her shoulders ached, neck muscles felt pinched, and her hips had a bruised, tenderized feeling which went deep into her bones.

  “Kraken, where are you?” she called, twisting into a stretch.

  None of the other drivers appeared to be around. The centipede looking truck which had carried the robot was parked behind them. M@ti went toward the back.

  “Hello?”

  M@ti swung the rear cargo door open. The robot lay in the bed covered by a canvas sheet. Shelves lined the walls and at the front was a terminal with a separate monitor and keyboard. More aging tech. The computer hardware must’ve been concealed beneath the bench. More opportunities for her learning abroad. She hoisted herself inside.

  Lying down, the robot looked smaller. She ran a hand along the canvas. Of all the relics she’d seen, this one spoke of a time when humanity truly controlled technology. Or maybe a time when they’d been closer to some unachievable equilibrium.

  M@ti peeled back the canvas.

  “She’s somethin’, huh?”

  M@ti jumped and let the canvas fall. The girl with eager eyes leaned into the truck. She rested with her elbows on the nearly chest high rear deck.

  “What is it?” M@ti asked.

  “That’s my Scarab. Don’t build them like her anymore of course, but I just had to have one. I made her after the original.”

  She took the girl’s lack of response as approval and folded the canvas cover back. Weld lines were obvious between the mismatched metal plates. They’d all been shaped to form a barrel-chested, bug-faced fiend, but nothing about it looked familiar to her.

  “The original?”

  The girl’s eyes went even wider if that were possible. “That’s right, you wouldn’t know, would you?” She gripped the door frame and hopped easily inside. “The Black Beetle. Drake’s initial model to be precise. Several generations replaced her, but this is the one Spencer chose. Old, reliable, and the technology level made her less...corruptible.”

  None of the names sounded familiar. M@ti could’ve bombarded the girl with more questions, but she let the canvas slide back into place. Next, she moved toward to the terminal.

  “And this?”

  “That’s my workstation for the bug. No connections, no compromise.” The waif of a girl bent to smooth the canvas cover down. She then half-disappeared into a cabinet and started rummaging inside. “I drafted the plans there and that’s also where I program the firmware. All hardwired. We don’t do open links.”

  “That’s what the tower’s for on the other truck,” M@ti speculated.

  “Oh sure, we all need a way to jack in. The Fel-0-Sh!p hacks the bubbles all the time.”


  “Bubbles?”

  “The Preserves. Their networks,” she said, peeking from behind the cabinet door with a metal cylinder in hand. “Bubbles ‘cause they’re kept all neat and tidy in their own little world. All them brain dead thralls—” the girl cut herself off. “My name’s Deva by the way.”

  “M@ti,” she said with a smile. M@ti could tell something the girl had said had made her uneasy, so she tried to change the subject. “How is it you managed all this?”

  Deva tilted her head and blindly returned the part to the cabinet. It landed with a thunk. “That surprises you?”

  “No, it’s just, I mean, you’re so young.”

  Deva laughed, deep throated and almost mocking. It was M@ti’s turn to feel self-conscious. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting. I’m older than I look.”

  Fourteen? Thirteen? M@ti figured she was close. She was small herself, maybe a little below average height. But more than the height, Deva didn't’ quite have the figure of a grown woman.

  “How old?”

  “Twenty-eight,” she said.

  M@ti’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be joking. Either that or we’re in the Nexus and I’m looking at your avatar.”

  “My avatar? No, no, no.” Deva laughed. Her excited gaze went to the robot and she stroked the tarp. “Online, she’s my avatar, Scarab. I took a page from Kraken’s book and added a twist. He reserved his user name system wide. I sourced mine right off the banned list.”

  Watching her move, hearing the confidence in the girl’s youthful voice, M@ti started to believe her about the age. The self-conscious feeling returned. Hands stuffed in her pockets, she touched the plastic figurine and felt immature, clueless. Deva, this not-a-little-girl, had made a killer robot with her bare hands while she’d been collecting garbage. Clearly, she had more to learn than she even imagined before trying to take Chroma offline.

  Deva’s laughter faded but the smile stayed. “Hey, I could use some help with the machine language to update her processors. Wanna give it a whirl?”

  “Assembly?” M@ti knew she sounded way too eager, but Deva had thrown her a lifeline and she was glad to accept. Understanding this could only help her grasp the rest of their tech and, presumably, the Collective core. “Or are we talking strictly binary input output?”

  “Strictly binary.” Deva grinned so wide it erased M@ti’s awkwardness. “It’s a bitch.”

  M@ti moved with Deva toward the terminal. The dainty girl’s fingers fluttered across the keyboard.

  “I hear you’re quite the hacker.” Deva said. “That Revelation Virus was insane.”

  “You have no idea,” M@ti said. She wanted to say more, to find out what Deva knew about that day when she’d first met Loadi, but a loud bang from the back of the truck interrupted them.

  “M@ti! M@ti!” Knuckles collided with the steel door, sending a cringe-worthy echo through the compartment.

  “Girl talk, Knuck. Log off for a bit.”

  “No, really, you’ve got to check this out.”

  She sighed. He’d finally removed his specs. Whatever had gotten him to join the real world again had to be worth seeing.

  “I’m coming,” she said, saving an apologetic smile for Deva.

  When she climbed outside, Knuckles practically dragged her down the street. They moved up the broken trail of dirt and tarry clumps of rock to where a bridge once stood, now just a jagged ledge stretching over a deep ravine lined with shattered concrete. Knuckles hurried her close to the edge — too close for a spechead without his LifeMinder. She backed him away.

  “Okay, so the place went to shit. Fascinating,” she said.

  “Look! There!”

  He pointed with one hand and with the other drummed an impatient beat on his thigh as he waited for the moment to overtake her. She looked slowly up, about ready to tell him in less diplomatic terms to fuck off, and she felt her limbs go slack.

  On the far side of the ravine rose the skyline of a city.

  Skyscrapers loomed fractured and jagged like rotten teeth. One leaned haphazardly against another, a mass of steel tendons curling from where the building had snapped. Another stood taller than the rest, the distinctive gabled roof collecting in a multi-storied pyramid. The faces of those upper floors had been blasted out and roof line had held against all odds, the triangular void vomiting vines and growth.

  Of all the signs of a lost civilization M@ti had seen, this one sunk into her heart like a jagged knife. Believing she’d left Manhattan behind, probably for good, had hurt. This felt like the same wound, reopened.

  People had built that city. They’d built Manhattan, too. These marvels of engineering had been turned into nothing more than cages or abandoned to the wilds in the name of efficiency. The bones of steel and concrete were the product of human hands, a history underlying every accomplishment to which the Collective lay claim.

  Deva approached. Her youthful face shielding the aged soul, she stared impassively at the wreckage. She wiped her hands on a rag and stuffed it in her pocket.

  “Welcome to Detroit. Come on, we should really be getting to the meeting.”

  “What meeting?”

  “The one where you tell us how to bring down the Collective.”

  M@ti took one last look at the city. She didn’t know what they expected her to tell them, but she knew she’d not rest until Chroma had been dealt with, for good.

  Deva led her and Knuckles through the streets, the dirty rag swinging from the back pocket of her black coveralls. M@ti’d first found the grease smeared face and coveralls adorable. But those thoughts quickly faded. She could see Deva’s age now in the way she carried herself. A swift confidence marked each step. No childhood whimsy, she meant business.

  Not a bad idea either, the black color of her clothes. M@ti checked her own blue gray coveralls which showed every smear of dirt. Sewer grime ringed her calves. Her indestructible combat boots looked like they were about to lose their hard-earned title.

  The idea of a meeting where she might be the center of attention and where people weren’t lost behind their Nexus gear started to make her feel more nervous with each step. She peeled away the top of her coveralls, letting it bunch around her waist. She didn’t know how much that helped. Her white sleeveless undershirt sported its own unsightly rings.

  Voices ahead grew louder. The footpath led through the brush and into a larger intersection where continued traffic had kept the wild at bay. Seeing the people gathered there, M@ti’s concerns about first impressions vanished.

  The best way she could describe their clothes was Cro-Magnon couture. Some had historical costumes like Kraken’s, but many wore stiff-looking leather with traces of fur or a patchwork of discarded smocks sewn into various fashions. Technology adorned their rags completing the bizarre picture. Cables ran along seams and screens peeked from vest pockets or out of hip cases worn like holsters, all of it archaeological finds like Kraken’s tablet.

  Not only their clothes, but their faces appeared wild. Skin tones were everything from pale snow to dark obsidian. Hair too. M@ti found herself staring at a fiery red-headed woman. She’d never thought she’d see anything in real life which matched the figurine.

  “We’re in the Nexus. Gotta be,” Knuckles said over her shoulder. He’d pulled his specs back on and was examining the crowd.

  “Already asked,” she muttered. “Besides, everyone would smell better. Self included.”

  The crowd thickened along with the odor. The antenna truck from their convoy had deployed in the middle of the intersection alongside several others. A quick check with TrueSight confirmed weak but open connections.

  The strange tribe of hackers surrounded the trucks, engrossed in their screens. They sat in the bed, perched on the foot boards, dangled their feet from the hood. In TrueSight, tethers glowed from the antenna like a digital maypole while others had jacked in through hardwires at the base.

  “They’re in the Nexus?!”

  “Sure.” Seeing M@ti’s
alarm, Deva added, “Bandwidth is limited. We’re a grain of sand on the beach. A highly-encrypted, elusive grain. We won’t be here long enough for them to lock on. Once they do, we pack up and roll.”

  Knuckles wandered toward the truck, following a siren song. “I gotta check something...”

  “It’s text only,” Deva called after him. She got no response. M@ti started to go with him but Deva grabbed her arm. “He’ll be fine. We’re late.”

  M@ti tried to pull away but Deva, like Kraken, was disturbingly stronger than she looked. M@ti caught one last glimpse of Knuckles approaching the truck. Two hackers scrutinized him and made room. They seemed to immediately take way too much interest in his specs.

  “I’d better...”

  Deva wasn’t letting go.

  27

  Deva steered her to the single building which had been spared the surrounding city’s destruction. Pitted red brick skirted the lower story. Wood siding covered the upper half. Gray and curling, the boards might’ve once been painted but decades of exposure had stripped them bare. Above the doorway a newer sign ran the full length of the building:

  FELLOWSHIP OF THE CRIMSON MASK.

  A knot of people blocked the door.

  “Clear out,” Deva shouted. “Go say your respects at the hallowed ground if you haven’t already. We won’t be here long.”

  The crowd packed into the recessed doorway sneered, but they made room. That’s when M@ti noticed they hadn’t been waiting at a closed door. A massive plug of a man filled the entrance.

  “Fuck off.” The grim, snarling man had a semicolon tattooed on his bald forehead. He gave Deva a dismissive swat which seemed to indicate a bare patch of earth east of the church. “Go pay your respects to your dead little god over there.”

  Deva suddenly released M@ti’s wrist. One quick stride and the dainty woman had planted herself at the foot of the mountain of flesh. He drew up to his full height, head scraping the bricks.