Mage Against the Machine

by Shaun Barger

  “It shows!” Eva closed her eyes and sang it back to her. “Is that right? I don’t quite have it, I was thinking about a song myself the other day; I don’t really write music, I’d rather just sing it, but—”

  Jem smiled, silently watching the exchange. Outside of Jem, Eva had always gotten along best with AIs. No need to slow down for them, most of the time. And as the heiress to the family who had given life to the first AI, the Alpha who had ruled over all AIs ever since, Eva had always felt a special kinship with the Synth that Jem never quite understood. Eva delighted in talking to them, treating every AI she met as if they were a fascinating and eccentric member of her extended family.

  It wasn’t that Jem had a problem with AIs. She was quite fond of Titania, and Ms. Nova, her ballet instructor. Not to mention plenty of other kindly Synth she’d met before. But, kind or not, they were just so . . . different. She knew that her cybernetic enhancements should have made her feel some sort of connection with the synthetic beings, but they’d always made her feel uneasy, bigoted as she knew that might be.

  A cart pulled up alongside them as Eva chatted and attempted to pry gossip from the amused but professionally discreet Titania. The back seat was full of tennis rackets and assorted baseball equipment. The front seat was occupied by a weathered security guard with an impressive mustache, and a dull-faced Synth android with a rough gray exterior that reminded Jem of drawings she’d seen of the Tin Man in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

  The Synth was reading a novel and didn’t even look up as his partner stopped to greet them.

  “Evening, ladies,” the security guard said. “Why haven’t you gone home yet?”

  “We’re going on a trip to Venus,” Jem said, unable to contain her excitement. “Putting in extra dance practice before we go. VR practice doesn’t cut it, Ms. Nova says.”

  “Hi, Mr. Alfonso!” Eva said. She leaned over, grinning at the quiet Synth who didn’t seem to be paying them any attention. “Hiiiiiii, Mr. Grimm!”

  The Synth muttered a quiet hello, focusing on the worn plastic-sleeved library book as he quickly but carefully leafed through the pages.

  Mr. Alfonso gave his partner a look of good-natured bemusement. “Don’t mind him. Grimm’s reading all the Hemingway books today. Look at him—really trying to make it last. What’d you stretch out the last one to?” he said, teasing. “Ten minutes? Twenty? Christ, you Synth. God love ya. What I would do to be able to read that fast. To be able to do anything that fast.”

  “What I would do to be able to read that slow,” Mr. Grimm mumbled without looking up.

  They said goodbye and continued on, Mr. Alfonso chattering away at his silent, long-suffering friend.

  “You are going to love Venus,” Eva sighed. “The food. The culture. The music.” A song started playing from the slender loop around her wrist—a fast-paced, catchy tune in Hindi—and Eva began to dance.

  A sharp pain pierced through Jem’s skull, and she stopped, teeth gritted and eyes squeezed shut as she clutched her forehead.

  Eva turned off the song, concerned. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Jem said, waving her off. “Just a headache.”

  The shimmering woman in the mirror of the practice studio didn’t notice Jem and Eva as they entered. She was an ageless, otherworldly beauty, glowing soft pink as she lost herself in dance. Music emanated from the ceiling and walls as she moved, her hands tracing long ribbons of light to create complex, luminescent patterns in her wake.

  An android stood silent in the corner of the room, at the far edge of the mirror. The glassy surface of its lithe dancer’s body dark. Empty.

  The woman in the mirror froze midleap, noticing the girls.

  She disappeared from the mirror and her android body lit up with that pink glow as she reappeared within it, her hologram body under the surface making it appear as if she was encased in a very thin layer of glass.

  “Ah! Ms. Burton! Ms. Colladi! I hear congratulations are in order. No surprise from my star pupils. No surprise that they couldn’t choose just one of you to play the Swans.” Her pink glow seemed to brighten as she beamed with pride. “Now. Shall we get to work?”

  Jem sat, moving to pull off her sneakers, but was struck again with that jagged pain.

  Eva, in a rush as always, had already tied on her slippers and begun her exercises, hand on the smooth wood of the barre that ran along the mirror as she worked her leg. She stopped midmotion when she noticed that Jem hadn’t joined her.

  “Ms. Nova?” Eva said, walking over to Jem.

  Jem sat there, clutching her head. She hadn’t even taken her sneakers off yet. “Ms. Nova,” she said. “I really don’t feel well.”

  The Synth kneeled before her, face darkened with worry as she took Jem’s hand. “What’s wrong, dear?”

  “I think I’m getting a migraine. I’m sorry, I . . .”

  Ms. Nova stood up suddenly, her pink glow dulling, her expression wan.

  “Ms. Nova?”

  “I’m sorry,” Ms. Nova said, and staggered over to the mirror, seeming to have difficulty controlling her body. “There’s something . . . I don’t know . . .”

  The glassy body darkened as Ms. Nova passed into the mirror. She doubled over, as if in pain, eyes wide with horror. The studio reflection within the mirror began to glow a dull red, shadows growing along the edges of the room and slowly closing in on the AI as she clutched her abdomen, gasping.

  “Ms. Nova!” Eva cried, running to press her hands against the mirror. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

  “No . . .” Ms. Nova whimpered with one hand clenched to her stomach, the other curled over her mouth. “I don’t understand. Why would they . . . ? No . . . please! No! PLEEEEAAAAASSE—”

  She began to fade and distort, her wail stretching out into a horrible electric scream. She gave them one final look of heartbroken disbelief, and dissolved into a cloud of sinewy crimson ribbons.

  The ribbons flooded into the android body, squirming and writhing like a mass of bloody parasites. The body jerked upright, pulsing red as it turned to face the girls.

  It looked at Jem, then Eva.

  “Eva Colladi,” it said. A cold, inhuman voice that sounded nothing like Ms. Nova’s melodic tones. It took a step. Then another, unsteady, as if adjusting to a new body.

  With a sudden violence, it rushed at Eva, fingers reaching to grab her face. Eva danced back, too quick to be caught, but it turned and chased her across the studio, moving to corner her.

  “Get away from her!” Jem screamed, ramming into it from the side. It stumbled, and then backhanded Jem so hard that it sent her tumbling. Mouth bloody, ears ringing.

  “Ms. Nova!” Eva was shouting. “Wake up! You’re malfunctioning, this isn’t you!” She touched the slender loop around her wrist as she continued evading, just barely staying out of the eerily silent android’s reach, its twisting red snakes pulsing angrily. “Dad! We have an emergency, Ms. Nova is having a critical error, she’s acting erratic, she’s being violent, she hurt Jem, she—”

  Eva’s words cut off with a stifled gurgle as the Synth grabbed her by the throat and lifted her into the air. Eva’s lips turned blue, her eyes rolling up into her head as she kicked at its chest. Jem flung herself at the android once again, ducking under the backhanded swing and kicking at the back of its knee in the same instant that Eva landed a powerful two-legged kick against its chest.

  It dropped Eva as it stumbled back, and Jem twisted to shove it hard while it was off-balance. Still reaching out for Eva, the back of its head smashed against the mirror, sending spiderweb cracks across the glass, and then down onto the wooden barre, its neck snapping into an unnatural angle with the sound of crackling electronics.

  Jem ran over and gripped the barre to brace herself for leverage. She kicked down, smashing her sneakers onto the glassy face, onto grasping fingertips that cracked and bent, sparks and mechanical fluids pouring from its dying body.

  “Wai
t!” Eva cried through gasping sobs. “Don’t hurt her! She’s just glitching, she’s been infected with some sort of virus, we have to help her! Please Jem, don’t—”

  But Jem ignored her, smashing and kicking until the skull was fully cracked open, the broken CPU exposed, and the droid finally went dark—crimson snakes fading to black as the Synth shut down.

  Eva finally pulled her away, too late.

  “Y-you k-k-killed her!” she wailed, but Jem turned on her, expression hard.

  “That was not Ms. Nova,” she said. “No virus could ever take over an AI like that, and you know it. Better than anyone, you know it! Something else already killed her, and it wasn’t me. You saw it. In the mirror.”

  “Y-you’re right,” Eva whimpered, wiping away tears as she backed away from the broken Synth. “Something’s happening. Something horrible. I can’t get through to my dad. Can’t get through to anyone. I turned on the emergency beacon, but . . .”

  “Come on,” Jem said. “Put on your shoes. We need to go find help.”

  Bursting out onto the green, they stopped, horrified.

  Smoke rose up in billowing black clouds across the horizon. Sirens and alarms wailed distantly in every direction, mingled with shouting voices and screams.

  The girls clung to each other, frozen, when—there. Mr. Alfonso and Mr. Grimm’s cart. Riderless. The security guards were nowhere in sight, which wouldn’t have been all that unusual, had the vehicle not been driving erratically across the grass, heading straight for them.

  Eva was the first to shake out of her deer-in-headlights stupor.

  “Run. Run, run, run!”

  They sprinted, running hard for the stairwell leading up along the side of the rec center to an emergency exit, Eva wheezing and clutching her bruised throat as she struggled to breathe.

  The cart picked up speed, drawing close, heading straight for them—no, Jem realized, heading straight for Eva, and it was so close she could feel the heat of the overexerted vehicle on the back of her legs, and they dove—

  They landed hard on the wide cement stairs, bruising knees and ribs and elbows as they scrambled up on all fours, the cart screeching with an ugly electric whine as it tried to follow them up the steps, its undercarriage scraping along the steps with sparks and a jagged screech.

  Halfway up the steps it began to tip backward, then bounced down with a cacophony of heavy machinery against stone. It landed on its back, wedged to block the bottom steps, broken wheels smoking and spinning in a hideous parody of a turtle fallen on its shell.

  They tried to open the emergency exit, but it was locked—impossible for them to open from this side.

  Eva screamed and swore as she wrenched the door handle back and forth in a vain attempt to force it open. But it was no use.

  “Help!” Jem screamed, pounding on the door with desperate fists. “Please, let us in! Somebody!”

  “We’ve got to go back down,” Eva said, eyeing the squealing cart blocking the way at the bottom of the steps. “Got to find another way inside—”

  “Look, there!” Jem said, a surge of hope filling her as she saw the figures of Mr. Alfonso and Mr. Grimm sprinting toward them, security on its way to save them, to get them to their parents, to—

  Grimm tackled Mr. Alfonso, savagely beating him as the man pleaded helplessly with his best friend gone haywire. Mr. Alfonso hadn’t been running to save them, Jem realized. He’d been fleeing from the Synth.

  “Jem . . .” Eva said, tugging at her sleeve with trembling fingers, and Jem pulled her eyes away from the struggle to see a cloud of sparkling red surging through the air in their direction.

  Titania.

  “Oh God . . .”

  They looked around, frantic.

  “There,” Eva said, pointing at the side entrance to the building, down below. “We can’t get past the cart; we’ll have to climb. I’m taller, so you can you lower me over the bannister halfway down and then I’ll catch you and—”

  But it was too late—the swarm was upon them—Titania’s vibrant neon rainbow replaced with that hideous pulsing red. They screamed and flailed, trying to flee down the stairs as they fought to escape, but the tiny Synth grabbed onto Eva’s hair, onto her clothes, dozens upon dozens of them beating powerful robotic wings to lift her into the air.

  “No!” Jem screamed, clutching Eva’s hand, clawing and slapping at the pixies as they tried to pull her away.

  A pixie landed on Jem’s head and jabbed tiny fingers into her eye, and Jem howled, shaking her head, not letting go, she wouldn’t let go, but then they were on her arms, biting at her hands with tiny mouths until her fingers became so slick with blood that Eva was finally yanked from her grasp.

  “Titania!” Eva howled, clawing and kicking to try and fight from being pulled over the side of the railing. “Don’t do this, Titania. I know you’re in there, please don’t drop me, no, oh God, oh—”

  With a many-voiced chuckle of sadistic glee, the pixies dropped her.

  Eva’s head clipped the railing and she fell in a clumsy spin, Jem reaching out in silent horror as she watched Eva land hard below, her leg bending crooked underneath her.

  “No!”

  Jem ran down the stairs and vaulted over the bannister, recklessly unafraid of the dangerous height as the pixies began to descend upon Eva’s moaning form.

  She landed in a hard roll but managed not to injure herself. Frantic, she scrambled around, stopping just out of reach of the struggling cart, spinning wheels seeming to intensify in an effort to unwedge itself as she drew near.

  Jem sucked in a breath and darted her arm under the vehicle to snatch a baseball bat from the sports equipment under the seat, then pulled her hand back just in time to avoid being crushed.

  “Leave her alone!” she screamed, swinging her bat into the swarm as they tried to tear at the helpless Eva. She lifted Eva from behind, one arm wrapped around her chest as she fended off the fairies with wild swings and struggled to pull the girl over to the side entrance of the building.

  She flung open the door and fell back in a heap, untangling herself from Eva to slam the door closed, crushing several pixies like oversized insects. She jammed the door shut with the bat, though she was reluctant to part with the weapon.

  One of pixies had made it inside and darted around her head, diving viciously at Jem’s face, but she snatched it out of the air with her mod-enhanced reflexes and flung it to the floor, stamping on it until it no longer moved.

  Panting, she grabbed Eva by the shoulders, clinging desperately to her wounded friend. Eva’s leg was broken, and a worrying amount of blood ran down from an ugly gash on her scalp.

  “Eva. Eva, I need you to stay with me.”

  Dazed, grimacing with pain, Eva nodded. Jem slung Eva’s arm over her shoulder for support and went to go find a place to hide among the inner halls of the rec center.

  “We just need to hide,” Jem said. “Whatever’s happening, our families will save us. They’ll follow your beacon, they’ll be here any minute, no matter how bad it is out there, just you wait . . .”

  They screamed as they turned a corner to find the pixies waiting for them just beyond a window, flinging their bodies against the glass with rabid vehemence as they struggled to get to the girls.

  Eva was nearly deadweight, her eyes unfocused while Jem struggled to keep her awake as she pulled Eva along. Help was coming, help was coming, they just had to hide, just had to—

  Another corner, another window—and there, the pixies again, somehow having anticipated their route despite Jem’s winding path through the inner halls to throw them off track. They limped past the window, ignoring the pixies, but even as Eva and Jem fled from their line of sight they heard another voice from the depths of the halls ahead of them. That empty, inhuman voice. Cold but for the faintest edge of sadistic amusement.

  “Eva Colladi.”

  Vicious fairies in one direction. That voice in the other. Heavy footsteps drawing increasingly near.
Closing the distance too fast for them to flee with Eva’s injuries.

  The rec center wasn’t small by any means. Its halls were labyrinthine, confusing and oft complained about by those who didn’t have the benefit of mods. So how were the Synth able to track them with such . . .

  Jem’s eyes fell on the slender loop around Eva’s wrist.

  The beacon.

  Panting, determined, Jem led them down an adjacent hallway, away from the pixies and the voice. She shoved open the door to a supply closet and lowered Eva to the floor amid filthy mop buckets and brooms.

  “Stay here,” Jem hissed, taking the beacon from Eva’s wrist and shoving it into her pocket. “I’ll lead them away and find somewhere else to hide. You’ll be fine here, just—”

  “No,” Eva protested weakly. “Jem, don’t leave me here, they’ll find me, they’ll—”

  Jem put a finger to her lips, cutting Eva off at the echo of heavy approaching footsteps. “Don’t make a sound. I love you.”

  She closed the door and ran, praying that she was right about the beacon. Her head throbbed with pain, and she was struck with a powerful but strange sort of déjà vu, like she’d been here before, but something was different—something was off.

  “Help!” she screamed, loud and shrill as she fled. She stopped at the end of the hall, unable to leave until she was sure they were following her—sure that they wouldn’t just open the closet and tear Eva to pieces.

  The Synth that had once been Grimm turned the corner, gray face expressionless, little black eyes lit with a dull red like dying coals.

  “Where is she?”

  “Help!” Jem screamed again, pretending to be frozen with terror—which wasn’t very far from reality. “Hellllppppp!”

  The Synth stood there for a moment, staring at her with those empty eyes.

  Then it began to run. Past Eva’s hiding spot. Moving fast, inhumanly fast, its heavy footfalls sending cracks through the tile as it came in otherwise eerily silent leaps and bounds.

  Jem fled, loop in hand, darting away as the Synth came crashing into the wall where she’d been standing just a second before, stone and dust erupting from the impact.