Under Their Skin

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Nick began running his fingers underneath the display case. He heard a click—and the glass lid of the case slowly began to rise.

  “Oh, good job!” Eryn said, crouching down to see whatever was in the desk that much sooner, before the glass lid opened all the way.

  Nick did the same.

  Inside was a stack of papers.

  “They didn’t get more technologically advanced—they went old-school,” Nick whispered.

  Then he saw what was handwritten on the top of the stack: “For human eyes only. Absolutely no robots are allowed to read these papers.”

  “Okay, okay, we get the message,” Nick muttered. “This is something we’ve got to do for ourselves. Our mommies and daddies aren’t allowed to baby us anymore.”

  Eryn reached out and pulled aside the top sheet of paper. Underneath was another handwritten page that began, “Instructions for the new generation of humanity . . .”

  Eryn had always been a little faster at reading than Nick was. So he heard her gasp. And then he saw why.

  The rest of the hand-scrawled message on the second sheet of paper was:

  “Our own robots were the ones who destroyed us. You must destroy your robots before they destroy you.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Eryn took a shaky step back.

  “Our robots? Mom and Dad?” she whispered. “They mean we have to destroy our own parents? Kill them?”

  “There’s got to be some mistake,” Nick muttered. “Or this is a joke. A bad joke.”

  The glass lid, which had continued rising, began wobbling back and forth, as if it were meant to go still higher but had gotten stuck.

  And then it broke off its hinges and crashed to the floor in an explosion of glass.

  Eryn and Nick both jumped back, but Eryn guessed that they still ended up with tiny shards of glass on their clothes.

  They were both too stunned even to brush themselves off.

  At least we’re not hurt, Eryn thought. At least the ceiling didn’t cave in on us; at least the ground didn’t fall out from under our feet.

  Wasn’t being told that they needed to destroy their own parents worse than any of those things?

  “See, even their mechanized desks don’t work right,” Nick said. He probably meant it to be funny, but his voice trembled too much. It just made Eryn want to cry.

  “Nothing works perfectly every single time,” Eryn said, and her voice came out sounding like a whimper.

  “Probably the robots who destroyed the humans, they probably just . . . ,” Nick began.

  Eryn knew what he was thinking. There could have been some problem, one that turned robots into killers the humans couldn’t stop.

  “But the robots we have now, the ones like Mom and Dad—they wouldn’t kill anyone,” Eryn said. “They’re working the way they’re supposed to.”

  “Except that Michael and Brenda created Ava and Jackson,” Nick said numbly. “They went against their programming for that.”

  Eryn found herself clutching the side of the desk. She had to, to hold herself up. Her ears were ringing, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the crashing glass or just shock.

  Did you think there was going to be something cheerful about finding out what made humans go extinct? she wondered.

  She hadn’t. But she had kind of expected joy—and maybe even fame and glory—in finding out how to stop humans from going extinct again.

  She hadn’t expected to be told she needed to kill her parents, and everyone else’s, too.

  How would anyone even do that?

  She pushed the thought away. She wasn’t considering doing what the writing on the paper told her to do. It could just be the scrawling of a madman. It could be utterly meaningless.

  She already knew it was vile and cruel—and inhuman.

  “Maybe we should at least read what else it says in these papers?” Nick suggested in a small voice.

  Eryn didn’t trust her own voice to respond, but she nodded.

  “We can split it in half so we get through it faster,” Nick said, reaching for the papers.

  Eryn blindly took the half of the stack he handed her. Both of them sank to the floor and began reading.

  Evidently hers was the bottom half, because her first page started in the middle of a sentence: “. . . were on a quest to build superintelligent computers, artificial intelligence that would far surpass our own limited human capabilities . . .”

  Somehow Eryn seemed to have lost the ability to read words in order, one after another, all the way down a page. Every time she tried, her eyes jumped ahead or began to see other words superimposed atop the actual words on the paper.

  The words she kept seeing were: “You must destroy your robots. . . . You must destroy your robots. . . .”

  She found the best she could do was just skip around, grasping a phrase or two at a time: “military implications . . . sending robotic creatures into war zones rather than risking soldiers’ lives . . . became efficient killing machines, unsurpassed in their ability to extinguish human life . . . began to think for themselves, completely outside our control . . .”

  In spite of herself, her mind started putting together a story, figuring out a connection between the phrases.

  The military had been trying to save lives—human lives. They’d come up with robots to send into battle so human soldiers didn’t have to die.

  The robots were really good at killing. That’s what they were for.

  But then the humans lost control of the robots. They couldn’t be stopped.

  The robots began killing everyone.

  I guess they weren’t programmed to count embryos in embryo banks as human, Eryn thought. So they didn’t kill us, too.

  People like Dr. Grimaldi and Dr. Speck had known that. They must not have known how to stop the killing robots, but they knew how to start humanity again, after all the killing was over.

  They just had to rely on robots, the same type of creatures that had killed all of humanity in the first place.

  And then, once the human race was established again, they wanted Eryn and Nick and the rest of their generation to destroy their robots before humanity was destroyed once again.

  “But the robots now—Mom and Dad—they weren’t designed to kill us,” Eryn moaned. “It’s different.”

  Her eyes fell on a line on the papers that might as well have been an answer to her moan: “. . . clear that robots will always evolve, just like living things . . . it’s inevitable that humans lose control of what their creations become . . .”

  Just like Michael and Brenda had defied their programming to create Ava and Jackson.

  “Ready to trade?” Nick asked beside her.

  Silently Eryn handed him the papers she’d been reading, and took his stack instead. But she didn’t bend her head to look down at the pages.

  “Do you hear something?” she asked. “Outside?”

  Distantly, even with the door shut, she could still hear the dripping of water somewhere out there in the enormous space known as Mammoth Cave. It’d been there the whole time, a background noise she’d tuned out while they’d turned on the light, discovered the desk, shattered the glass, and read the horrifying papers.

  But something about the dripping sound had changed. That was what made her notice it again. It wasn’t just dripping. Was it maybe also the sound of . . .

  Footsteps?

  Eryn clutched Nick’s arm.

  “Listen!” she hissed, leaning close. “What if some of those killer robots are hiding in the back of the cave? What if they heard us come in here? What if—”

  Nick looked up. His eyes looked so big and terrified they seemed to take up his whole face. Eryn guessed he’d put together as much of the story of the extinction as she had.

  “The signs on the door,�
� he said. “And at the front of the cave. They’d keep robots out. All robots.”

  There were definitely footsteps sounding outside the door. They were definitely coming toward this room.

  Then the door began to open.

  FIFTY

  Nick stuffed the papers he was holding into his shirt. Eryn started to shove hers into her sweatshirt pocket, but they didn’t fit. She thrust them at Nick instead. This told him they both still had hope. Hope that they could keep these papers secret. Hope that whoever they were about to face could still be reasoned with, maybe even fooled into thinking that Nick and Eryn were too sweet and innocent and ignorant to be killed.

  Oh no, Mr. Killer Robot, I don’t know that you’re a killer. I just think of robots as . . . part of the family.

  But the papers in his hands and the ones jabbing his stomach said even the robots in his own family could be killers. Even the robots in his own family should be killed.

  Nick jammed Eryn’s papers into his shirt too. The door kept opening. It was open far enough now that Nick could see . . .

  Mom. And Dad, Michael, Brenda, Ava, and Jackson.

  Nick felt everything at once: relief and fear, fear and relief. . . . His heart raced and slowed and raced again.

  What were he and Eryn supposed to do now?

  “There you are!” Mom cried, rushing toward him and Eryn. “We were so worried!”

  She knelt before them, wrapping her arms around both of them, drawing them close, mashing them into a huge hug.

  Nick was too overcome to do anything but let himself be hugged. He flopped against Eryn as if the two of them were nothing but rag dolls.

  But the papers . . . what if the papers fall out and Mom sees them? he wondered.

  The folded pages stabbed against his bare skin, but Mom had on her winter coat and a fleece underneath that. Surely she couldn’t feel them.

  Still, the rustle of the papers beneath his shirt woke up Nick’s brain. He had to cover for the noise.

  “But—those signs,” Nick mumbled into Mom’s hair as she continued hugging him. “‘Absolutely no robots allowed.’ How could you go past those signs? Wasn’t that against your programming?”

  Mom made a sound that could have been an amused snort or the beginning of sobs. It reminded Nick of hearing Jackson break down.

  “You’re forgetting the parental imperative,” she said. She kept her head between Nick’s and Eryn’s, and pressed them close.

  Nick pulled back. Eryn did too.

  “The parental what?” Eryn asked.

  Back at the door, Michael chuckled.

  “I’ll translate,” he said. “She means we’re programmed to be parents first and foremost. If there’s a contradiction in orders or programming, our parental instincts win. So parents have to go after children in danger, even at risk to their own lives.”

  Nick glanced at Eryn, wanting to tell her, See? That means our parents could never kill us! We’re fine!

  Eryn squinted back at him, and he wondered if she was thinking the same thing that popped into his own head next: Yes, but somebody else’s parents wouldn’t mind killing us. We’re not every robot’s kids.

  Eryn’s squint intensified.

  “Ava and Jackson aren’t anyone’s parents,” she said. “They don’t have children in danger. So how’d they manage to disobey the signs?”

  “Oh, I didn’t program them to think of themselves as robots,” Michael said.

  Nick didn’t even have to look at his sister again to know that she would be staring pointedly at him, thinking with laser intensity, See? See? They’re the ones we have to worry about!

  “Even if we aren’t your parents, we wanted to make sure you were safe,” Ava said softly, tilting her heart-shaped face.

  She looked more like a kitten than a killer. She sounded so sincere.

  “We woke up and heard the grown-ups talking,” Jackson said. “So we followed our dad and your parents into the cave. We wanted to rescue you too! And Mom followed us. Because, duh, then she thought her kids were in danger.”

  “And all of you kids are in so much trouble,” Dad said, shaking his head so hard his hair flaired out. Mom was usually much more into discipline than he was, so having him scold them made it seem worse. “Putting yourselves in danger—for what?”

  “We had to . . . ,” Eryn began. She glanced at Nick and let her voice trail off.

  Mom sighed and settled back into a crouch before them. She kept her hands on their shoulders.

  “Eryn, Nick, I know this past week has been hard on you,” she said. “I know everything you found out has been a jolt, and you’ve gotten this strange obsession with finding answers to all your questions. But I’ve studied human psychology—centuries worth of it—and it is the nature of human life that there is always something that’s a mystery. That’s a fact we just couldn’t explain to you when you were younger. But you’re old enough to understand that now. It’s part of the transition to adulthood. Accepting that you’re never going to have all your questions answered.”

  She glanced around, her sharp eyes seeming to take in every corner of the room.

  Look what you found,” she said. “An empty room and a broken desk. That’s all. That’s all you’ll ever find, looking for the past. Because if there was more you were supposed to know about the extinction, we’d already know it.”

  She really didn’t feel the papers through her coat, Nick thought. This time, he was very careful not to glance at Eryn. It seemed like even a tiny turn of the head would give away that the two of them were keeping secrets. But he could practically feel Eryn thinking along with him: None of the grown-ups—none of the robots—know about the papers. They won’t know anything unless we tell them. And we’re not going to.

  Mom was still talking, still in her calm, soothing school-psychologist voice. “I let you look at my generation’s ideas for what might have caused the extinction because I thought you would see a natural conclusion: With the changes the previous humans made—their arrangements for the reawakening of human civilization—those were already enough to prevent a second extinction. Probably the original extinction was caused by a complicated combination of many factors. But we’ve ended poverty, racism, war, the previous humans’ environmental destruction of the planet . . . surely that’s enough. Surely if there was anything else your generation needed to do, they would have given you those instructions in the awakening video.”

  Nick glanced quickly back at the other grown-ups—they were all nodding as if they completely agreed with what Mom was saying. As if none of the others could read the guilty secrets on Nick’s and Eryn’s faces, either.

  “You understand that we had to look, though, don’t you, Mom?” Eryn asked, and Nick could tell that she was trying to sound chastised and humbled.

  Trying to fake it.

  “Yes, but this has gone far enough,” Mom said sternly. “Promise me you’re done now. Promise me you won’t put yourselves or anyone else in any more danger, looking for reasons for the extinction.”

  “I promise,” Eryn said, hanging her head.

  “Me too,” Nick said, because what did it matter? They didn’t have to look for reasons they already knew.

  Now he let himself glance at Eryn, and he hoped she could read a different promise on his face: I promise I won’t say anything about the papers if you don’t. We have to keep this secret. And then we have to . . .

  He wasn’t sure what other promises he needed to make.

  “Look, it’s been a long night, after a long day—and a long week,” Dad said. “Why don’t we get out of this dangerous cave and go grab a few more hours of sleep before morning. We can leave any discussions about punishment for tomorrow. We’ll figure out how you can make this up to us then.”

  “Sounds good,” Mom said, standing and turning back toward the door.
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br />   That’s it? Nick thought. That’s all they’re going to say?

  Maybe they’d been programmed not to have any curiosity about the extinction; maybe that was programming they couldn’t fight.

  But shouldn’t they, if that parental imperative thing makes them want to keep us out of danger? Nick thought.

  Maybe not wondering about the extinction was an even higher imperative, one they didn’t even know they had.

  And . . . were they programmed somehow to raise us to think negative things about robots? Nick wondered. Is that why, from the first time I saw wires sticking out of a human-looking body, I was disgusted? Is it like I’ve kind of been programmed too?

  He didn’t know. He felt like he didn’t know anything. His thoughts twisted around so much they were practically in knots.

  He realized that Eryn had already stood up. She reached down to give him a hand up. And under the cover of reaching for him, she whispered, “We don’t have to tell them anything, because we aren’t killing anyone. We aren’t like that. We’ll find some other way.”

  Nick felt a pulse of gratitude to his sister for saying that, for spelling out the ground rules. Their imperative. It was something to hold on to, even as everything else confused him.

  Mom turned and put an arm around Eryn’s shoulders, and as they stepped out the door, Dad did the same to Nick. Eryn kept her hand on Nick’s arm. For a moment the four of them walked like that, all of them linked together. Maybe kids whose parents had stayed married walked like that with their families all the time, but for Nick it was something new.

  For a split second he could almost imagine they were just an ordinary family—everyone human, his parents still happily married. But then Mom let go of Eryn to turn off the light and shut the door, and Eryn let go of Nick to pull out her flashlight. In the dim glow of the flashlight beam, he could see Michael, Ava, Jackson, and Brenda ahead of him walking together, exactly the same way, and they looked even more like an ordinary happy family.

  And they were all robots. Robots who had violated their programming, robots who didn’t even have the right programming—robots who had already proved they could break and act unpredictably.