Time-Out

by Dean C. Moore

  TIME-OUT

  At the sudden blur of movement, the deer looked up from licking the mud. The jackal was nearly at it now, coming straight on across the parched field. The doe’s entire being was telling it to flee. But it held its ground. Nowhere to hide really. It had made the mistake of straying too far into the open. Not like it had had any choice. The parched, cracked earth beneath its feet could barely support this one recessed bit of water; all other signs of the recent rain already lapped up by the hungry, unpretentious earth.

  The predator pounced, confident in the outcome that was never to be.

  The deer yawned, exposing its fangs, and with an effortless flick of its neck dispatched the jackal. The wild dog’s one yelp never escaped its throat just like the rain never touched the ground.

  Peter popped his head up from his camouflaged outpost, barely ten yards from the deer. He’d dug a trench for himself shaped like a wine barrel, making sure to keep the “lid of the barrel”—the circular patch of mud hardened to cement—above his head; and his stink in. That jackal didn’t need any pointers on what was going on; let him think he had it all figured out.

  Climbing out of his earthen casket, Peter raised his fists to the sky in an outcry of joy. “So you think you’re smarter than me, do you, little doggie? Quelle surprise.”

  He pet his deer, “You’re quite the con artist, lady. Couldn’t have done it without you.” Unsheathing the Bowie knife strapped to his leg, Peter commenced with skinning the wild dog.

  “Careful,” the deer said. “I need to lap its blood. Tired getting my salt fill out of clay. Besides, I’m nearly as parched as this desert.”

  After peeling back the hide, Peter obligingly leaned back so the deer could drink its fill. One thing about codependent relationships: they didn’t exactly hinge on loyalty so much as mutual benefit. Wouldn’t do any good to make the deer resentful by making him wait until Peter had his fill.

  “Don’t you start. It’s not a desert, and you know it. I’m not so foolish as to steer us into a real desert. Just part of the con. I only hope you can remember where we put the holographic projector, or we’ll be stuck here for real, the victims of our own trap to draw him out.”

  The deer took a step back so Peter could do his work. “I suppose you’re going to make me carry those strips of meat once they’re done drying.”

  “You never stop angling for a better deal, do you? I swear, as scheming as you are, you’d think you were the trap setter.” Lucky for him the doe wasn’t high functioning. Its lack of hands and opposable thumbs, moreover, put it at a distinct disadvantage come time to refurbish any pre-End Times tech they stumbled upon. Peter may be the last person remaining alive in this Godforsaken world, but that just made everything not entirely consumed by the holocaust—including this doe—part of his bounty.

  Maybe bounty wasn’t quite the right word. The animals were getting harder to find, predator and prey alike. He’d be a vegetarian soon at this rate—providing he could find some device that could make anything growing digestible. Most of the edible plants were long gone, too. If he could find a way to eat bark, at least, that would buy him some time.

  A few hours later, he’d salvaged as much of that jackal as he could. The animal’s blood and stink was all over him, making him gag. His skin felt like someone had run a paintbrush over him and then stuck him out in the sun until his surface started feeling tight. “Some more blood for you to lick off,” he said to the deer. The doe’s eyes regarded him wearily. “No rush. Can’t hurt to have a predator’s funk all over me.”

  The two of them meandered to the edge of the endless desert, another hundred yards or so away. At least he thought that’s where he’d stashed the holo projector. The damn thing was so good at concealing itself he was already down on his hands feeling around for it, overturning every rock and cracked piece of mud.

  “For an ace trap setter, you’d think you’d have figured out a less trying way of crawling out of your own delusions,” the doe said.

  “Yeah, what’s with that, I wonder?” There. He had it. He picked up the nearly perfectly round piece of red clay, and squeezed. The desert disappeared and in its place was the world he’d left behind. Not too much more enticing, all things considered. The high chaparral country was nearly as dry and as lonely looking.

  “I guess we’re heading towards the Airstream. Whose idea was it to stick a mobile home on a piece of land that makes it visible in all directions for hundreds of miles?”

  “Maybe eyesores were all the rage once upon a time,” Peter mused out loud. “And nah, definitely not headed towards the mobile home. The other way.”

  “We keep going that way, we’ll be in real desert soon enough.”

  “That’s the idea.” Peter explained, “Supposed to be an airplane graveyard out there. Hoping I can get one of them running.”

  “Oh, no. Bad enough I have to figure out how to pivot my backside inside of a mobile home, but this doe don’t do planes. Nope, not enough charging bucks in the world to get me to gallop onto that thing.”

  “Up high we might be able to find us a piece of land worth spending some time on. You might even find one of those bucks you keep dreaming about. Just don’t smile at him. Could put a real crimp in his self-confidence.”

  “Fine. But if what we see from up high just traumatizes us more…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Peter said impatiently, “I’ll crash us into the nearest cliff.”

  “The least you can do.”

  ***

  “Is this the best you can do, after all this time?” Sasha asked, staring into the doctor’s eyes with a look meant to tear his soul right out of his body. Her tone accomplished just what she hoped it would; registering like a knife to the belly, it nearly caused him to double over.

  “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  She returned her eyes to the observation window showing her son, Peter, in his staging area. The therapy room was meant to be necessary only so long as Peter needed that reality more than this one. She supposed she couldn’t blame him, considering what their reality was like. She’d nearly checked herself into this place herself on more than one occasion. Her sixteen year old son’s body was lean, sculpted and tanned, not to mention fully exposed with just the loin skin to cover him. His piercing green eyes at once sharp and dreamy. He was marked up like a Native American with his war paint on now that he had the blood of the coyote smeared all over him. He was at that age where he was half boy, half man. Only … “He’s still age regressed.”

  “Yes, but now he’s sixteen going on twelve. Last time you checked in he was sixteen going on eight. So we’re making progress. I’m sorry it’s not fast enough for you.”

  She caught the you thankless bitch connotation in his words. Figured she deserved it. But damn it; it had been nearly a year. Would Peter ever come back to her? “What do you suggest I do?” she asked.

  “Go back to your daily routines. Try to find in them something which might entice him back.”

  She snorted. “You’d think that would be longing to be with his parents, but, as it is …” Her voice trailed off, lost in a fog of self-recriminations.

  “It’s not your fault. Ours is a harsh world. Few adults are coping It’s no surprise most of the children don’t make it. No way to shelter them the way we’d like. And not sheltering them leads to this more often than not,” he said, pointing to the glass wall that was camouflaged from Peter’s side.

  She stared into the doc’s eyes one last time, registered the empathy he seemed to genuinely feel for her. Maybe that was all she needed from him for today. Some sign he actually gave a damn. Then she turned and left.

  ***

  Sasha made sure when she exited the underground bunker not to reveal her position. That’s the last t
hing she needed was to have their little oasis in this desert of the soul taken from them.

  “You took your sweet time,” her husband said. Fully camouflaged, he was waiting for her in the brush near the treatment center. She wondered what he looked like these days under all the face paint. It had been years since she’d seen him without it. Even the square jaw and bird beak she remembered from once upon a time found their lines softened and altered by the makeup. The scars hidden by the black and gray grease paint followed similarly irregular lines across his face.

  “Come on. Let’s get our asses out of here. You know the drill. Never too long in one place.”

  “Don’t you even want to know about your son?”

  His look bore into her with such intensity she stopped wondering why he hadn’t asked her to remove her face paint, not once in however many years, to say nothing of her camo fatigues, so he could get a better look at her. Those x-ray eyes saw clear through to her soul, layer by layer, and when they hit bottom and came up dry, he probably figured what was the point of getting her to peel it all back.

  There was nothing to get closer to. She hadn’t just disappeared to the naked eye on the surface, where a round face with a shaved head and big brown eyes was still visible; she’d disappeared even to herself. What was left of her soul was inside Peter now. And that’s why she couldn’t let go.

  “What son?” he said. “That’s your fantasy. You do what you need to carry on. Just don’t expect me to play along.”

  He was just being true to himself. Who couldn’t hack it out here was dead to him. You were either a survivor or you were nothing. She supposed he kept himself hard and heartless because to get in touch with his feelings wouldn’t exactly be adaptive. Their bodies were no less steeled, what with being on the run nearly twenty-four-seven.

  Once back at the edge of their urban jungle, they darted to the nearest blind, an overturned jeep. Syria, after decades of urban warfare, bombed out with no building left entirely intact, never looked this bad.

  Of course, Syria didn’t have robospiders to deal with, spawned from “Mother,” a suspension bridge stretching across the San Francisco Bay. They had called it The Golden Gate once upon a time. Upgraded to repair itself, it spawned “baby” bridge segments in response to earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks. Only something had gone wrong with the AI. Now it just kept spitting out babies. And those babies weren’t interested in growing up to be bridges. They only wanted to supply “Mother” with more feedstock to keep making more babies; when they weren’t busy razing humans to the ground for getting in their way.

  The irony, or more appropriately speaking, the irony of ironies: the day the bridge went AWOL, abandoning its original mission, was the day someone had upgraded it to provide an energy shield that was bombproof. It was deemed the ultimate antiterrorist device. Usually claims of “ultimate” were overblown. Not in this case.

  She laughed inside her head, too conditioned to make disruptive noises like that aloud. What had brought humanity to its knees in the end wasn’t a Terminator AI, some supersentient computer with planet-wide reach; it was a God damn suspension bridge.

  All there was to do now was wait for Lawrence to build up the nerve he needed to leave his wife’s side and do what he did best: bronco ride a beast the size of a three story building. You’d think he wouldn’t need to give himself a moment after all his prior romps; he must have ridden hundreds of baby robospiders over the years. But each ride was a little more traumatizing than the last, so each time he had to clear all that crap from his mind, start afresh. She envied him his rebirthing exercise. She could never forget anything.

  By the third deep breath he was on the move, climbing one of the spider’s legs faster than a cat burglar scales a rich man’s home exterior to get to the safe on the third story. It wasn’t like he had to expose himself for long by straying away from the overturned jeep and into the open to find a spider; they were in no short supply and constantly on the roam.

  Once he was in the “saddle”—the connecting hub for all the spider’s joints, analogous to a real spider’s thorax—he quickly popped the casing and hacked his way in using the only weapons of any value in this war, a screw driver, a pair of pliers, and a few other workman’s tools from his tool belt.

  “I’m in!” he shouted, indicating he had control of the spider, so she could head on up.

  Sasha didn’t have the heart to tell him, his hellacious Coney Island ride that never settled down until the beast was “broken” never came to an end on account of anything he did. It was Sasha, hacking the spider from a safe distance off that allowed him to play he-man. She couldn’t deny him his coping mechanism of being her brave provider, without whom she couldn’t survive a day out here. If he didn’t have that, he’d crumble like a house of cards.

  It wasn’t like she had room in her head to pity him. That space was reserved for all the self-hate and more she could crowd in there. Most of it arising from the knowledge someone out there had hacked their bridge a long, long time ago, then modified its coding to turn it into what it was now: a mama spider intent on turning out baby spiders until the end of time. It had not been a fluke accident as they’d all thought once upon a time. They should have figured when the “spiders” being spawned weren’t merely bridge replacement parts with a repurposed mission in life. The segments had additional modifications that saw to it that the mini-fab factories, adhering to the underside of the bridge, cranked out the appropriately weaponized parts. That was one too many “tweaks” to pin on one lightning strike, or whatever had caused the malfunction if it were just fate involved. Surely at least some of these defects in the manufacture would have been less than adaptive.

  A bad guy at least gave her someone concrete to hate and someone that might well yield to her actions over time, certainly a lot more readily than fate ever would.

  Only …

  She had never been smart enough to track the guy down, or overwrite his coding. Thus the growing pool of self-hate she drowned in most nights.

  Maybe if there were other hackers out there, and she could just find them. Maybe working together … they could each take a piece of the code, one suiting their specialty, until they managed to come up with something a good deal smarter than what Mr. X could counter. Then maybe, she’d only have the guilt over what she’d pulled over on her husband all these years to get over; keeping him infantilized worse than her own son, no less regressed in his own way. He deserved better.

  Wiping her eyes, she traded in one big picture view for another as she climbed the spider’s leg to get up to her husband waiting for her to take the ride of a lifetime with him. The one where he’d do the monster mash and battle it out with any other spiders coming his way. They’d barely survive, of course, explaining the accrual of battle scars over the years. But she had to keep it real so he didn’t grow suspicious. So the hero myth he spun about himself didn’t unravel. And what the hell, with each battle won, it was one less spider. Never mind that the parts would just be recycled to make more spiders, meaning they were accomplishing nothing. He never once voiced such a lament. Maybe he kept this insight at the periphery of his awareness because it challenged his sense of self-importance.

  Lawrence set the spider in motion, straight up the side of the nearest skyscraper. The spider on the roof was waiting for him. Others were already bounding his way from the vertical surfaces of the nearby buildings. Soon she’d feel as if at the bottom of a pile of tackled bodies on a football field. Only the limbs wouldn’t just be wriggling on top of her. They’d be doing their damnedest to slice and dice her into chunked meat.

  ***

  “I don’t understand how even after all this time…”

  “We don’t think they’ll ever come out of it,” the doctor said.

  “Ask anyone and they’ll tell you, Sasha and Lawrence were two of the toughest people they ever knew,” Michelle said, her eyes glued to the therapy room where her parents were battling for their lives
against giant robotic spiders, or so they thought.

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” the doc suggested. “Hard as nails, just not pliable enough to deal with what this world had to throw at them.”

  “But our world is a relative utopia compared to that post-apocalyptic hell.”

  “One man’s heaven is another man’s hell.”

  She regarded the Native American doctor, towering nearly a foot above her, his hair braided tightly and running to nearly his waist. His ripped physique barely hidden behind a stretched tee shirt and peel-them-on-and-off jeans. He must have figured one look at his contours was more placating than a typical doctor’s smock and stethoscope. He was gorgeous enough to be a supermodel. You could put his face under a microscope and look for hours without finding a flaw. He was nano-enhanced, of course. They all were.

  “What do you think really triggered this?” Michelle asked.

  The doc shrugged. “Legions of nanobots swimming about our bodies … You had to imbibe a cocktail once upon a time, tailored to whatever enhancements you wanted. Nowadays, the air is so saturated with them there’s no way to be rid of the little buggers. Save for what you see here, of course,” he said, gesturing to the glass wall. “Some people can’t handle that. No way to know if they are who they are because they’re being true to themselves, or because they were hacked. About five percent go mad. The hospitals are filled with rooms just like this.”

  She shook her head. “And my younger brother, Peter?”

  “He might be the result of a recessive gene he inherited from both his parents, one you were spared. It’s too early to tell if he’ll come out of it or not.”

  “But the longer he spends inside …”

  “You hear of people coming out of it after decades locked in rooms like these, but yes, as a rule, the longer they’re in, the less the likelihood they’ll ever …”

  “Thanks, Doc. I trust you’ll apply the latest breakthroughs as they come on line, whatever it takes.”