A Perfect Machine

by Brett Savory

  People and vehicles began to stream down the hole like lemmings off a cliff.

  Milo and Faye ran away from the hole, toward Henry.

  Henry sat up, looked at Adelina. When their eyes met, something incredible happened – something neither of them thought could happen, not any more. They genuinely felt something. Something of themselves – the selves they’d given up, the selves they’d relinquished. Some kind of empathy, perhaps. Recognition. A strange kinship that neither of them understood. A feeling that no others on Earth have had, nor would ever have again. Something singular.

  Adelina Palermo saw the apology in Henry Kyllo’s eyes, and Henry saw and understood the pain, rage, and confusion in Adelina’s. Forgiveness passed between them then.

  The last of Adelina was snuffed out at that precise moment.

  Milo felt her go, feeling as though he’d lost something he’d never really had to begin with. It was a hollow ache, like the hole where a pulled tooth used to sit. He didn’t feel sad, exactly; he just felt a sort of slow, unnamable crumbling in his heart.

  Henry was fully aware now that whatever he’d be battling, it was not Adelina. It was not that girl. It was not that woman. It was no aspect of anything he understood, or could ever understand. It was simply Other now – more Other than the world had even known.

  And he knew that whatever awful, horrible thing was filling him up, very close now to snuffing Henry out entirely – it was one and the same. A cancer that grew and twisted in him, filling him up to bursting with its emptiness.

  The metal giant that once was Adelina Palermo moved toward Henry. It came at him tentatively. One earthshaking step, then another. Then one more. It stood in front of him now. It blinked twice, then sat down on the ground, hung its chin on its chest, and closed its eyes.

  Powered down.

  Of course. This is what it wanted, Henry thought, that sick churning feeling returning to his mind. Whatever I’m about to become – this was the plan all along.

  Henry didn’t know what awaited him, in what form his existence would be after this – if such a thing were even possible – but with every shred of his remaining will, he wanted Faye and Milo to be there with him. This became his sole objective.

  Henry leaned toward Milo and Faye where they crouched near one of the tunnel walls. He held out one hand, nodded his head toward it.

  Faye and Milo understood. They climbed onto his hand – Milo getting on first, then turning around to hoist Faye up.

  Henry closed his fingers around them protectively as much as he could, worked himself into a sitting position. He knew if he stood, he’d bash through the ceiling and onto the street again, endangering his friends.

  He remained in that position, while the bombs rained down overhead, punching holes in the pavement above him. More vehicles and people crashed through to the subway tunnel. Throngs of people began crawling on Henry, climbing him, their attacks vicious, but harmless.

  Henry shifted Faye to his right hand, so that he had one friend in each. He raised his arms higher so the people now swarming his legs couldn’t easily climb farther up him, get access to his hands.

  Milo and Faye did nothing but stare up at Henry, tears in their eyes while they waited for whatever came next.

  Kendul, Marcton, and Cleve stood far enough back from the scene unfolding in the tunnel that their thoughts remained calm. They felt detached from what was happening. They did not understand why Adelina stopped advancing on Henry. They had no idea why she’d simply sat down in front of him and closed her eyes.

  These three men knew only that they were witnessing the end of their city, and possibly the events that would usher in the end of their kind. They said nothing to each other, too shocked and confused to properly articulate their thoughts.

  Henry Kyllo sat with his back to them. Waiting.

  That’s when Henry entered the final stage of his transformation.

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  Something like creation filled him up inside.

  A slow-burn big bang.

  Not long after this process started, the last vestige of Henry Kyllo would vanish from existence. But for the final two minutes of his life, he would be vaguely aware only that he was getting bigger again, and that he had saved his friends. At least for a time.

  When he felt this last episode of growth coming on, he instinctively got to his feet. He curled his fingers around Faye and Milo, still one in each hand, to protect them.

  His head, shoulders, and torso shot up through the tunnel ceiling, destroying it. He emerged into a different section of the street above. Chaos was everywhere. Everything was burning. Everyone was dying. It no longer even seemed connected to him any more.

  Seeing this filled Henry with profound sadness, and he closed his eyes against the sight.

  Several missiles landed about a mile away, exploded, lit the night. More landed closer. And Henry continued to grow.

  Hands still wrapped as tightly as possible without crushing Milo and Faye, he rose up through the ground, expanded, changed, now fully smooth and entirely black. A massive robot carved from obsidian.

  Taller and taller. His head shot past the fourth floor of a glass skyscraper to which he was adjacent. He turned toward it, saw his reflection for the first time – truly saw what he’d become. And that loss of self-identity – that part of everyone that anchors who we are to how we look – was the last thing to break inside of Henry Kyllo. As he grew taller than the tenth floor of the skyscraper, he felt his consciousness drain from this machine like water down a rainspout.

  When he passed the twentieth floor, he was gone from this world.

  Henry, Milo’s and Faye’s dear friend, no longer held them; they were now simply in the hands of an unfeeling, unknowable monolith.

  As Henry’s torso expanded, Milo and Faye stared in terror at each other through his fingers, the gap between them becoming greater and greater. By the time Henry’s head cleared the seventy-story skyscraper, his chest was nearly the width of the building itself.

  And still, he continued to grow.

  Missiles exploded down at his feet, and as far as the eye could see. All throughout the city, out into the countryside.

  Henry grew further outward, shooting up through clouds still dumping the neverending snow onto the earth. A passenger plane crashed into one of his arms, burst into a fiery ball.

  Down below, Clive, Kendul, and Marcton sat huddled near each other underground, waiting to die. When the first nuke hit, they were vaporized instantly.

  The mushroom cloud rose up, engulfing Henry’s legs.

  At about forty thousand feet, the tiny dead people in his hands forgotten, the worldchanging machine known as Henry Kyllo dropped his arms to his sides and opened his hands. Faye’s and Milo’s bodies tumbled down, down through the night sky. Swallowed up by the devastation below.

  Henry rose up and expanded into the stratosphere still.

  Fifty thousand. Eighty thousand. A hundred thousand feet.

  Henry looked around him at this height, saw the curvature of the world. And it seemed very, very small to him.

  Small and worthless.

  Henry grew more, out into space.

  Beyond the moon.

  Beyond the sun.

  Beyond the solar system.

  He grew and grew until the universe knew nothing but Him.

  Acknowledgments

  Erik Mohr, for drawing on it

  Phil Jourdan, for understanding it

  Marc Gascoigne, for buying it

  Paul Simpson, for editing it

  Trish Byrne and Andrew Hook, for proofreading it

  Penny Reeve and Mike Underwood, for pimping it

  Nick Tyler, for editorially assisting it

  Paul Goat Allen; Tony Burgess; Mike Carey; Craig Davidson; Brian Evenson; Christopher Golden; Brian Hodge; Stephen Graham Jones; Tim Lebbon; Jim Moore; Mark Morris; Benjamin Percy; Michael Rowe; Robert Shearman; Peter Straub; Paul Tremblay; and Peter Watts for blurbing it
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  Your face, for reading it

  About the Author

  Brett Savory recently stepped down as the Co-Publisher of the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Award-winning ChiZine Publications so he could dedicate more time to writing. His title is now Editor/eBook Czar/Webmaster, so he apparently thinks he can hang on in the company simply by increasing the titles he holds. He's had over fifty short stories published – some of those collected in No Further Messages – as well as two other novels, In and Down and The Distance Travelled. He’s halfway through his fourth novel, Lake of Spaces, Wood of Nothing, is the drummer for the metal band Ol’ Time Moonshine – who just released their first full-length album, The Apocalypse Trilogies: Space Wolf and Other Dark Tales on Salt of the Earth Records – and lives in Peterborough, ON, Canada with his wife, writer/editor/publisher Sandra Kasturi.

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  brettsavory.com • twitter.com/brettsavory

  ANGRY ROBOT

  An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

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  20 Fletcher Gate,

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  NG1 2FZ

  UK

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  Running beneath the skin

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  An Angry Robot paperback original 2017

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  Copyright © Brett Savory 2017

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  Brett Savory asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  UK ISBN 978 0 85766 629 1

  US ISBN 978 0 85766 630 7

  EBook ISBN 978 0 85766 631 4

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  Set by Epub Services.

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  Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-85766-631-4

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