by Scott Baron
Alongside them, their root structures encroaching into the fecund water, were small greenbelts surrounding the courtyards. Daisy found the scene strangely tranquil, how even in the middle of a great metropolis, nature still found a way to reclaim a small foothold in the man-made environment.
“Hang on a minute,” she said, detouring to a nearby patch of greenery.
“We are on a mission, Daisy,” Josiah said in a hushed tone. “We must keep moving.”
“This will only take a minute. Come here. I want to show you something.”
Reluctantly, the young team leader trudged to her side. “What is it?”
“It’s a water source,” she replied. “You know what that can mean?”
“That we can drink if we are thirsty. Daisy, we have water. Clean water from the tap system.”
“No, not that,” she said. “These.”
“Be careful, Daisy, the thorns!”
“Oh, they’re fine,” she said as she pulled aside a spike-covered vine, revealing a dense patch of plump blackberries. She picked a few, offering them to Josiah and his squad to sample.
“What are they?” he asked. “I’ve never seen these where we live.”
“Blackberries. They only grow where there’s a lot of water. There are no fountains where you live, so they never took root. Here, on the other hand, there’s water galore. The vines are really thorny, but I think they’re well worth the occasional poke,” she said. “Go on, try one.”
Josiah, not wanting to appear afraid in front of his team, popped one into his mouth and chewed. His eyes immediately brightened as the flavor registered on his taste buds. The rest of his team saw the reaction and quickly followed suit.
“These are wonderful,” a middle-aged woman with hard blue eyes marveled. Daisy looked at her scarred visage and wondered if she’d ever smiled in her life.
“Thank you for showing us this, Daisy. I can see why you wanted to stop, but now we really must be moving. The ship has to be close, now.”
“Okay, just give me two minutes, I want to bring some of these for Arthur and the others,” Daisy said with a grin.
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
I’m introducing them to amazing foods they never knew existed. Stuff that grows all around them. So yeah, I’m enjoying this. It’s cool brightening their day while teaching them something useful.
“Valid point.”
Daisy tucked a small bundle of berries into a loose pocket on her backpack and trotted off to catch up to the others.
Fifteen minutes later, they saw a glint in the distance.
“Vince’s ship,” Sarah said.
I see it, Daisy replied.
“Movement.”
Yep. Looks like Arthur’s team. I guess they got there before us.
“Well, sure. But they didn’t stop for blackberries, and I bet you they’re going to be thrilled that you did.”
One would hope, Daisy replied. I bet Vince will be happy too. You know his sweet tooth.
They rounded the rear of the small craft, Daisy flanked by Josiah on one side and a sturdy man with a long scar on his cheek on the other. The remainder of the team followed close behind.
Daisy noted that Arthur was packing the heavy communications rig from the ship into a backpack, while two of his team rummaged around inside. Then she saw Vince, lying on the ground, bound and unconscious, a nasty bruise forming on his forehead.
“He’s tied up, Daze!” Sarah cried out in warning.
Too late.
With a single glance, Arthur signaled Josiah and his team. Daisy didn’t have even a moment to ready herself for a fight.
“What are you doing?” she shouted at Arthur as she struggled against the strong hands holding her still. “What the hell have you done to Vince?”
“Take her weapon and bind her hands,” he instructed David.
The young scout nodded and pulled the sheathed sword free from her backpack. He drew the blade, cautiously testing the edge with his finger.
“This is not even sharp,” he noted, disappointed. “What good is that?”
“Give it to me, and I’ll show you,” Daisy growled.
He glared at her, then sheathed the sword and slung it over his shoulder.
“Bring them,” Arthur ordered. “We’re heading back home.”
Pulling Vince’s unconscious form on a makeshift sled, the team double-timed across the surface, eschewing the safety of the tunnels for the speed of a more direct route.
“Great, now they take my advice,” Daisy grimly noted.
Arthur pushed the pace, and soon they were far from Vince’s ship, descending back to the familiar network of their home tunnels.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“What have you brought me, my children?” Alma asked when they returned to her control center many hours later, the two bound captives marching in front of them.
Vince had regained consciousness long before and had spent the better part of the journey lambasting Arthur and his team for being dishonorable little shits. The insults seemed to have no effect.
“Alma,” Arthur called out, “we have retrieved the device, as you ordained.”
“Ordained?” Sarah said, confused.
“Excellent, my child. And did you encounter the invaders while on your quest?”
“No, my lord, we were undetected.”
“‘My lord’? Daisy, what the hell’s going on?”
Hell if I know, but it can’t be good. Whatever she’s up to, it’s pretty clear her followers drank the Kool-Aid.
“The what?”
Ancient beverage. I saw it in a movie. Never mind, I’ll explain later. The point is, we’re on our own down here.
“Bring them before me!” Alma said ominously.
Daisy and Vince were forced to their knees in front of her main terminal, where a pair of Alma’s sycophants adjusted a jury-rigged medical scanner aimed right at them.
“You are probably wondering what will become of you now that I have your communications device,” Alma said, smugly.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Vince said, his eyes shooting hot fire as he stared down the people he had considered friends so recently. “I assume you have some nefarious plans for us.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Alma replied. “I am going to bless you with the ultimate gift. If your bodies prove compatible, you will remain here, contributing your DNA to our people. As I spread my glory to my brothers and sisters around the globe, so will you spread your purifying genes, granting us a new era of health and prosperity.”
Daisy felt her anger rising even higher.
“Wait a minute, you want Vince to be a sperm donor for your little freak show?” she growled.
“He will be the progenitor of future generations!” Alma cried out, far too animated and excited for an AI.
“Not a chance,” Vince said.
“And what about me?” Daisy asked. “I’m not going to go around impregnating your flock.”
“No,” Alma replied. “You will bear the seed of my strongest child. Arthur will cleave unto you, and you shall produce the first heir of the next generation.”
“Oh, hell no!” Sarah barked.
“Yeah, that is so not happening.”
Alma seemed too excited by her plan to be inconvenienced by something so trivial as her captives’ unwillingness.
“Activate the device!” Alma cried out. “We will ensure their compatibility with our genetic line, then begin at once!”
The scanning machine fired up, quickly passing over Daisy as she knelt before it.
“Exceptional! Such a strong specimen. She will be an extraordinary child-bearer,” Alma said.
Oh, shit.
The device next scanned Vince. He sat calmly as it did, knowing full well what was coming.
“Vince, it’s going to––” Daisy blurted.
His gaze met hers. He already knew.
“Mechanical!” Alma bellowed in al
arm. “Vincent is a mechanical!”
The assembled followers panicked in a frenzy, several going so far as to take arms and aim them at their kneeling captive.
“Do not fire pulse weaponry in this sacred chamber!” Alma cried out to them. “Wait! He bears a lesser AI within him. A new union that I have never seen before.” Alma thought silently for a moment. “Your Almighty God will cleanse the abomination. Prepare the purifying stream!”
Arthur took the neuro-stim from its cradle and set it on Vince’s head.
“Daisy. She calls herself Alma.”
Yeah, I just figured it out, too. Alma. Short for Almighty, she grimly replied. It’s the virus, Sarah. This AI is infected.
Vince looked at Daisy, a sadness hiding behind his eyes as he flashed her a pained smile. “Stay strong, babe. Don’t let them break you,” he said as they finished tightening the strap across his forehead.
“Judgment is upon thee!” Alma shouted, then fired a massive burst from the modified neuro-stim directly into Vince’s head.
Into his AI.
“Vince!” Daisy cried out, but he was unhearing as he fell to the ground, convulsing violently for several seconds before falling still.
Josiah checked his pulse. “Still alive, Alma.”
“My glory has been shared with him and is doing my will. He will either accept it, or he will perish. Now put him in a cell and prepare the woman.”
A pair of men dragged Vince’s unconscious form from the room, while Arthur placed the neuro-stim on Daisy’s head.
“I shall enjoy our union. You are a strong woman and will bear me a fine son.”
“I’ll snap it off and choke you with it before that happens, you son of a bitch,” she growled.
“We shall see about that,” he said, laughing. “Once Alma has placed her blessing upon you, you will accept me to your arms willingly. You will see.”
“Not likely,” Daisy spat.
“Enough! Now you become my vessel!” Alma unleashed a powerful burst from her un-filtered neuro-stim.
“I’ve got you, Daze!” Sarah grunted, straining inside her head. “We can handle this!”
Daisy and Sarah joined their mental powers, fighting against the stream of commands the crazed AI was trying to implant in her mind. The force was almost overwhelming, and had Sarah not been operating in tandem, Daisy’s mental defenses certainly would have fallen.
With them fighting together, however, the neuro-stim was stymied by the unknown variable, finding itself quite unable to overcome their joint resistance. The machine was simply not designed to handle two minds at once.
“More power!” Alma shrieked in frustration.
A hum resonated, but then the neuro-stim sparked and smoked as its power unit overheated from the effort, abruptly shutting off, leaving its intended target intact.
Daisy looked up at Arthur and his men, sweaty hair hanging in her face, but otherwise completely unharmed.
“What?” she said, acid sarcasm dripping from her tongue. “Is that all you’ve got?”
Alma ignored the unexpected outcome.
“It is of no matter. Arthur will simply rely on the old ways. Take her from this sacred place. Lock her up!”
The cell was actually a real cell, much to Daisy’s surprise. Apparently, their camp was situated near the transit hub’s law enforcement facilities. She doubted they ever saw much use in the years prior to the insane AI’s raising its own batch of brainwashed lackeys. Now it had that well-worn look that made her wonder just how many others had been locked up there before her.
Vince lay on a ragged cot in the adjacent cell, sweating and unconscious. Occasionally he would twitch a little, but beyond that he was dead to the world, completely disconnected from reality.
Daisy looked at her surroundings. Debris and bits of discarded components littered the cell, but the only means of exit was not something she could do much with. Rather than a nice high-tech locking mechanism she could bypass and hotwire, the door was held fast by an old-fashioned key lock.
“Not up to date on lock-picking, huh?”
Silly me, I should have known I’d be trapped in an old-timey jail cell, Daisy joked. But Sarah, thank you. For reals. I couldn’t have overpowered Alma’s mind-scrubbing neuro unit without you.
“Aw, shucks. That’s what sisters are for, right?”
You’re awesome, have I told you that?
“Yeah, but I could stand to hear it again.”
Help me figure a way out of here, Sis, and you’ll be hearing it a lot.
Daisy began digging through the rubbish, hoping to find something of use.
“I am so screwed. There’s nothing I could possibly use in here, and Vince is looking worse every minute. I don’t even have––”
She stopped mid-thought and looked at the inert device on her wrist.
They didn’t take the power-whip thing. They think of them as merely junk, so they didn’t bother to take it from me.
A renewed sense of purpose washed over her. Yeah, I can do this.
Daisy began digging through the debris with a new goal: finding scraps that could help her open the device’s housing, and then possibly even get it working.
“Ooh, I like what you’re thinking,” Sarah said.
“Yeah,” Daisy replied, a grim smile forming on her lips. “These fuckers are going to be in for one nasty surprise, if I’m lucky.”
Alma found herself experiencing an unfamiliar sensation. She was actually impatient now that she had the coveted communications device from Vince’s ship. After centuries alone, having been abruptly cut off from the world when the other AIs realized she had been infected, she was finally going to have her revenge. She would not only escape their holier-than-thou exile imposed on her, but she would also infect every last one of them.
Soon they would all be just like her.
“Connect the leads to my communication output ports,” she directed her loyal humans. They did as she asked, then powered the device on.
Alma didn’t know exactly how it worked—Vincent hadn’t told her those specifics before she fried his brain—but that was no matter. She would send her divine message out to the AIs hiding out on the moon and bring them into the fold.
“Yes, I see,” she said, deciphering the mechanism protocols needed to transmit. “In just a few seconds, the first step will be complete!”
Alma loaded a virus packet into her communications system and fed it to the transmitter, sending it beaming out into space. The moon was so close that even with the delay for the unconventional technology, it should be less than a minute until her mission was a success.
Far above, however, her plan was not going as smoothly as planned.
“Cut the comms, quarantine the signal, and trace the source back to its transmission point,” Sid instructed.
Chu jumped to work, while Mal and Bob chipped in, lending an electronic hand.
It was the relay system Daisy had designed to fool the Chithiid that saved them. When an unexpected signal beamed past them to the distant satellite, Sid and Mal both recognized the signature of the virus loaded into the message when it overwhelmed an innocent peripheral receiver satellite. They severed comms on that frequency and quarantined the affected unit immediately before jumping into action tracking it back to its terrestrial source.
“Something is definitely wrong,” Commander Mrazich said as the crew of Dark Side scurried about, trying to ensure any possible route of infection was manually, as well as electronically, severed until the threat could be fully assessed. “The comms are encrypted and firewalled,” he grumbled. “That means someone put the virus into the signal intentionally, and they could only do it if they physically possessed the transmitter. What exactly that means for Daisy and Vince I don’t know.”
Tamara and Shelly shared a look. This was unexpected. The primary as well as backup plans had both been compromised. They could only hope it wouldn’t get worse.
Back in the city of Los Angeles
, an unexpected quiet greeted Alma as she awaited word from the newly infected AIs.
She expected communication. None came.
“No, this doesn’t make sense. I know it transmitted!” Her human servants jumped at her angry tone. “Something is wrong. Something must have changed.” She quickly considered her options. “Bring me the woman!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“He’s not looking so good, Daze,” Sarah said. “Is he dying?”
“I don’t know,” Daisy answered, frustration in her voice. “And I can’t get over there to do anything even if he is.” She turned her attention back to the power whip device in her hands.
Daisy had managed—thanks to the carelessly discarded “junk” in her cell—to open the almost-invisible seam on the wrist gauntlet and was hard at work tinkering and learning how the strange device worked. It was alien tech, so it was only natural that it wouldn’t be as instinctively easy as human electronics, but the perfectly reasonable slow pace of progress was finally beginning to frustrate her. Then she abruptly made a breakthrough of understanding.
“Holy shit. That’s how they do it!”
“Do what?”
“It looks like the alloy of the housing itself acts as a receiver. See how these leads terminate into the internal framework?”
“Yeah, that makes sense. I didn’t see them pushing any buttons, either, so I’d think either a low-level wireless implant or a nerve sensor built in would most likely be what activates it.”
“I was thinking that too, though there must be some mechanism to control the––what do I call it? A whip? An energy loop? A power coil?”
“Let’s go with power-whip for now. I like the way it sounds. Has a nice ‘I’m going to kick all your asses and get revenge’ ring to it.”
