Unnatural

by Anthony DiGiovanni

  * * * *

  An expansive cluster of dim clouds covered Everett that evening. It gave a peaceful stillness to the atmosphere that Sabrina found comforting as she followed the robot toward Everett Moon Frontier Institute. Not a single other person was to be found in the streets.

  They entered to find an extensive atrium, eighty feet from the front doors, that branched off on either side. A help desk was to the right just as one walked in, but the androids manning it appeared to have been beaten beyond easy repair. Sabrina’s escort headed for the elevator.

  She heard bustling from the direction of a room at the southwest corner of the fifth floor hall. More disintegrated robots littered the floor, and a drizzle began to obscure the view out of the windows. When they reached the room from which the noise was escaping, the bot said, “This is Mister Livingston’s office. Follow me inside.”

  Not two seconds after the door opened, the sound of an active EM gun and the android’s graceless fall prompted Sabrina to step away. A gruff male voice said, “Who’s there?”

  She dared not move more than was essential.

  “I nabbed your robo-friend, now show yourself unless your guts are artificial.”

  For some seconds no one moved, then she heard the man’s feet creeping to the doorway. He stopped right at the threshold, probably listening to distinguish between human breathing and the hum of a robot. Detecting the former, he calmly stepped into Sabrina’s view.

  She gasped. “I know you! Dennis Uriah – I saw you in a video of the moon-to-earth meeting.”

  “Nice to know I’m famous after less than a week. Get in here,” he said with a suddenly vigilant air. “Here there be robots.” He pulled her into the room by the upper arm and locked the door.

  “What was that about?” She stepped away, bringing into peripheral view a dead body with gore on its skull, which she made her strongest effort to pretend was a figment of her imagination.

  “Sorry, just trying to robot-proof you. I broke all the ones I could find in here, but ya never know when a snoopy ‘droid will drop in to screw you over.” He led her to the desk, gestured to a chair, and sat opposite her.

  “I don’t understand. That robot wasn’t trying to harm you.”

  He almost laughed. “You haven’t been in Everett very long, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t, and as long as I’ve been here no android has assaulted me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been attacked by enough bots in the past few days to last a lifetime, and they’ve revolved around this area.” Uriah bit his lip and studied her. “That’s odd that none of ‘em jumped you on your way here. Did this robot say it was taking you to Isaac Livingston?”

  “Of course, this is his office,” she said with a shrug. “Where is he, anyway?” An unpleasant answer lingered in the back of her mind, but she kept it there.

  His mouth hung open for a moment. “You’re not … Sabrina Lockhart?”

  Sabrina nodded. “How’d you know that?”

  Uriah looked down at the desk. “They sent you here to me, didn’t they? Zolnerowich and her cronies? And I suppose Livingston got a hold of ya after ya landed.”

  “I don’t know about that last part,” she said, feeling as awkward as he seemed, “but yeah, I was sent as an ambassador from Luna to terminate an android named Jane. Along the way I did some things that, well, I’m not proud of.”

  They heard a thud on the door.

  “Dammit, forgot!” Uriah lunged from his seat, picking up a metal stick that looked like a makeshift spear. He threw open the door and hurled the spear into the reanimated robot’s heart. Breathing heavily, his eyes darted to the floor. There was a stunner, which had just missed him. For good measure, he punctured the bot’s body a few more times, opened the rain-spattered window, and tossed the robotic remains down five stories.

  “Are you gonna explain yourself or are you just –”

  “I’ll get to that!” Uriah snapped. “But right now, we need to do more than skedaddle because I’ll bet my gun that bot’s got reinforcements.” He grabbed his ante, filled and put on his backpack, and motioned for Sabrina to follow him through the door. “Good thing this mess happened so soon. I know a place where they’ll never find us.”

  As they descended the stairs, on Uriah’s insistence on this path rather than an elevator, Sabrina lost her patience. “Mister Uriah, I’m not leaving this building until you give me a reason to think those robots want to kill us.”

  He stopped short, turned around, and pulled up his pant leg, revealing a prosthetic. “That’s not flesh and bone, Lockhart, and I sure wouldn’ta had to’ve gotten this if it weren’t for that rat Livingston. He used bombs to try to kill me, and he’s proven he isn’t above using robots for the same purpose. Ya know Strange? Psychopath blew it up along with all your friends from Luna.”

  She gave a pained look, to which Uriah replied with one of concern. “Something I said?”

  “You’re wrong,” she said through the harbingers of tears. “I-I did that, I’m as sorry as I could possibly be and I’ll never do something like that again!”

  Sabrina could tell he was pitying her, and for some reason that caused something contemptuous to well up inside her.

  He sighed. “Sabrina, we don’t have time to sort out all this B.S. Just trust me. If I were lying, why would I stab that android back there that was trying to break into the office? It could’ve helped me.”

  “Not buying it. If you wanna save time so much, then give me the gun or go by yourself.”

  Uriah froze, sizing her up. He lifted the weapon from its holster. “Only if it’s mine again once we get where we’re going.”

  She nodded, caught the gun as he tossed it, and returned to her run outside the institute. Power. Now that complying with the law wasn’t an option, it felt good, secure, to have this.

  Evidently the refuge was close enough – or his paranoia was so profound – that Uriah saw no need to use an automobile, as they kept dashing through the rain without a word. In about five minutes they emerged from a path that had thick woods on either side, into a modest village. No technology stained its naturality, as far as she could tell through the veil of precipitation.

  Uriah led her into the nearest house, a blanched building with a small hole in its brown roof and, imprinting itself into her memory forever, a plate of folk art resting on a porch seat. The plate depicted a long-haired Palestinian man in a robe of purest white, showing an eighteenth-century American child a stunning flower that also happened to be the nearest to the ground, yet its petals directed themselves toward the sunny sky.

  A thought came with that indelible mark on Sabrina’s mind, but before she could contemplate it much she sat across from Uriah in the humble yet utilitarian furniture. They seized blankets to dry and warm their soaked bodies, and after fetching a pot with which to catch raindrops falling through the missing shingles, Uriah offered to stoke a fire in the living room hearth. It was an amenity Sabrina hadn’t possessed in her home for over half her life, adding to the soothing effect.

  “Even as an Organic I’d always been tolerantly indifferent to the Amish,” said Uriah as he collapsed onto the sofa, “but if they’re in heaven after all, I hope they hear my message of thanks, now. But down here, I guess we both have some ‘splaining to do.”

  “Do you mind going first?”

  “After you honor a certain promise.”

  She didn’t move for a while, looking at that source of power. On the one hand, it wasn’t like he had any more reason to shoot her here than back at the EMFI, but on the other, maybe he was just using her as a well of info, disposable at his leisure.

  “Sabrina, you owe me this courtesy, especially considering I trusted you with that so willingly.”

  “Why should I compromise my safety to pay for your gullibility?” She knew this wasn’t just about the cold balance of leverage that happened to be in her favor, but it also wasn�
��t just about guarding the feelings of a stranger.

  “Because even if there were any safety to compromise, you need me. You love the moon so much, well guess what, they’re not letting you back up there without some useful leads on this human possum game. Which I can uniquely provide. If this is gonna turn into paranoia poker, I’ll either walk or lie to ya because you wouldn’t deserve the truth out of me.”

  Sabrina frowned slightly and cradled the gun in her hands. Uriah was right. He’d given her about as much cause for suspicion as a police officer, and more fundamentally, which life would at least be worth living compared to the hell of her mind as it currently was? One in which she tortured him in vain for information until he stole the gun anyway, or one that offered the self-respect that came with serving a duty to her fellow humans? The rewards simply piled up too strongly on one side to yield to the weight of the minuscule risks.

  Taking the firearm Sabrina held out, Uriah said, “Well, you know who I am and why Luna’s designated me public enemy number two, so that’s a good start. Number one is that Jane bot ya mentioned. I have a history with her, but let me start from the day all these deaths happened.”

  “Deaths?”

  “Uh, yeah, the reason we’re running away from Livingston’s ‘droids instead of just starting a human revolt against them.” Uriah squinted, the corner of his mouth turned up slightly and his head just a tad rotated. “You mean to tell me ya haven’t noticed there are billions of people dead on this planet?”

  She took a moment. “I didn’t see any other people here at all until just now. Since when do humans live on Earth anymore?”

  He gave her a look that said, This is gonna be a lot harder than I thought. “Ya know what, I think I should get us something to drink before we go any further. Maybe these were the kinds of Amish folks who used kerosene-fueled fridges.”

  It turned out they had been, and though it was April, he picked hot cocoa “for the one slice of fun we’ll have for a long time,” as he told Sabrina. He blew on his mug and began, “Sabrina, I think I have an idea what’s going on. He changed your brain. Livingston, I mean. That’s what made him one terrifying bastard, pardon my French.”

  “You think Mister Livingston had, well, less than innocent intentions when he had me go to Everett?”

  “As innocent as Charles Manson’s.”

  Sabrina glared. What did this random guy know? Trying to protect her was one thing, but insinuating that she was brainwashed and delusional?

  Uriah seemed to notice this as he hesitated. “Will you judge me if I say something I normally wouldn’t tell a total stranger?”

  “I told you what I did to Strange, didn’t I?” Not that she had no regrets about that. It had just happened.

  He took a gulp of chocolate before setting the mug down on the table between them. “Sure, but that’s a lie planted in your mind by Livingston. Mine’s real, and even though I don’t regret it, there are lot of things people take pride in secretly that others would ostracize them for. Ya see, before all this, and I’ll get to that in a mo’, I knew a woman I loved to death. Name was Pat. She told me one day that –”

  Again he was reluctant to speak, but this time it seemed to pain him to say this. He spat the name: “That Isaac ‘Unnatural Bigot’ Livingston assaulted her. Ah, screw it, ‘assault’ is too wishy-washy a word. He raped her. Used her.” He kept his eyes on the table. “You at least know about Organics and Unnaturals, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must not hate Unnaturals as much as I do, ‘cause if ya did, Livingston would’ve wiped that out of your mind, too. Fair enough, some just don’t know what they do.”

  Sabrina, in her curiosity, figured she might as well see how elaborate his nonsense could get. After taking a sip, using the blanket as gloves, she said, “They can’t all be sick pervs, can they?”

  “Probably not, but back before Thursday, ya’d swear it was the heyday of the KKK, only these hacks don’t hate me for my skin color. They hate me, and presumably you, too, because we have skin at all. And in recent years, a lot of them committed violent hate crimes.”

  “Must’ve only been on Earth.”

  “Of course, there’s no one to hate up on the moon, is there? ‘Cept you.”

  How convenient. His say-so wasn’t convincing enough, but whether he was lying to her on this particular point wasn’t of sufficient concern for her to press further.

  A fork of lightning shone outside, bringing thunder as Uriah spoke. “Anyway, on Thursday night, I’d just about had it with these people, and knowing Livingston had treated Pat like a – well, I would say a robot, but after meeting Jane I really couldn’t insult her like that. So uh, after that, I just broke into his house, followed him to his basement, and shot him from the top of the stairs with one of these babies.” He drew the EM gun. “It’s harmless to Organics, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not that out of it.”

  She must have injected that statement with more bitterness than usual, as Uriah said, “You know, I don’t like this anymore than you do, so sorry if I sound like I’m spelling this out. It’ll make sense in a minute. So when I got out of the house I ran away and found a place to sleep. When I woke up, every human I saw was just … dead. It was like nothing I’d seen. No one on Luna could explain it.”

  “So after all that, you just found the woman you were trying to protect dead? All for nothing?” She set the cup down and, the cold of the night immaterial, reached out her hand to touch his.

  He seemed to feel both surprised that Sabrina hadn’t smacked him and equally sorry for her, and that only added to her self-loathing at this moment of weakness. She retracted her hand with a jerk. “The worst thing is, she missed a perfect opportunity for the both of us to just get away from it all. Don’t think badly of me for this, Sabrina, but, well, how should I put this? Have ya ever wanted to live the way you’ve dreamed of, in a world without other people except for the ones ya love?”

  “Of course I have” – at this Uriah blinked – “but I hope you don’t intend to kill me to live that kind of life.”

  “Nah.” He waved his hand as if hers were a frivolous question, expounding before she could ask what that former gesture was about. “For one thing, Pat’s gone, and this soon after her death I just can’t see a way to be happy in this world without her. Killing you wouldn’t make a difference.”

  A chill ran down her spine.

  “And besides, even though I’ve only known ya for less than an hour, I couldn’t get rid of you if I had it in me. Probably any human except Livingston or that witch Zolnerowich would be welcome at this point, but you don’t seem like the kind of lady who’d put this planet back in its old piss pool if ya had enough power.”

  “Well, I could die in peace knowing someone’s said that about me,” said Sabrina, though she crossed her arms regardless.

  He smirked briefly. “I guess I could best put it this way. Ever read The Brothers Karamazov?”

  She nodded, returning a smile in spite of herself. “I’d lived in a Russian community for the past thirteen years.” Uriah opened his mouth before quickly closing it. “It’s still a classic.”

  “I forgot which character it was that said something to the effect of, ‘The more I love humanity, the less able I am to love individual people themselves, and vice versa.’ Someone Father Zossima knew, if memory serves.”

  He looked at the fireplace, keeping his eyes on its embers for a while. “I wonder if every character in that novel would’ve felt that way if Dostoevsky had written it in this century. Now that I don’t have Pat to love, the world might not seem so despicable.”

  What on Earth could that mean?

  “But let me finish the story. I tried to fill the void by giving myself lives to save. They weren’t human lives, and I’ve never even been much of an animal rights guy, but it didn’t seem right to leave them to suffer for a human’s mistake.” He lo
oked away and winced for a moment.

  Probably not the best idea to open up old wounds. “So did you save them?”

  “Nope. On my way I stopped in a ghost town, Goodsprings, looking for some robots to help me get the food these animals needed, but these bots were locked. I got outta there, and a bomb went off behind me.”

  “Is that what blew your leg off?”

  He shook his head. “I never lost my leg, it just got broken. The store with the supplies I needed also had a bomb. It didn’t blow me up, but the building wasn’t so lucky. Crushed me with it, and under there are some bizarro rooms with animal-like robot schematics in them.” Uriah stopped talking, perhaps considering what he’d just said.

  He continued, “I sent an SOS, and Jane found it. We looked for a robo-doctor, but all the robots around the area were gone.”

  “It’s like the humans now.”

  “Yeah, Livingston’s responsible for both, but for different reasons. I dunno why he had the decency to move the bodies out of the streets and buildings, but as I found out on my way back to Aberdeen – not far from here, that’s where I shot Livingston – he rounded up the ‘droids because he could. Because he thought they could help him keep me down.”

  Startled by another violent lightning flash, he glanced outside before saying, “Saturday morning, after I’d boarded a Mag-Lev, I woke up in a saloon in Goodsprings, with this fake leg and some changes in my spine, too. Don’t ask how it withstood the bomb, maybe Livingston went out of his way to have the bots rebuild it just to fuck with me. But long story short, he tried to convince me everything I’d experienced in the past two days, including killing him, was ‘virtual reality.’” Gee, like you’re trying to convince me everything I know is a lie? “And he tried to drug me up in more ways than one on some janky machine that really was virtual reality.”

  “I’m sorry, this is too weird. You say this guy came back from the dead?”

  Uriah shrugged. “Not necessarily. Maybe I just misfired. But I wouldn’t say that was impossible, not for this sonuvabitch. Livingston wasn’t like other Unnaturals, Sabrina. They have mechanical bodies, sure, but I swear his mind itself was a robot’s. He could order around bots, and when he had them replace my spinal nerves with a machine, he could make me do things I didn’t want to do. I was just another robot for his ends, ‘til Jane saved my ass again.”

  He stared off to the side at nothing in particular, looking almost ready to punch something. Half of her found this to be a clear red flag, the other was … she couldn’t admit it even to herself. “I tell ya, I’d like to repay her for all this, even if I don’t know why someone else’s robotic girlfriend would help me. But then she decided to do what led you here in the first place.”

  Sabrina nodded again slowly, eyes wider with understanding. Now it was all coming full circle, almost believably so. “So you and Jane had a discussion with Governess Zolnerowich – if it helps, I’m not fond of her, either – and Jane started to get angry with her. She ran off to stop Strange.”

  “Pretty much, although if you’d been there you’d know Jane was in the right before that lapse in judgment. She was kinder than most humans I’ve known, but the ‘Wich thought she was dangerous. Ooh, scary robots! They’re too smart for their own good!”

  “Mm-hmm. I didn’t intend to harm Jane at all, just to keep her from, y’know …” What was wrong with her, coming this close to spilling the beans even more? She tensed up, nearly slamming her mug down.

  Uriah’s eyes narrowed again. “That’s where I need you to fill in some blanks. Let’s start with this: Who the hell are you?”

  She sat straighter, just about ready to call him out, but something was holding her back. “Sabrina Lockhart, who else?”

  “Well, as far as Zolnerowich told me, you fought for the freedom to migrate to the moon without getting a Libertas brain transplant first. That happened thirteen years ago, but you don’t look a day over fifteen.”

  Not the most tasteful way he could get this information, but a part of her couldn’t blame him given the context. “Oh, that. I guess I can’t blame you for being confused, but you see, living on the moon has certain, um, side effects. Mentally, I like to think I’m as mature as any other twenty-five-year-old, and I hate it when people forget that. But the moon’s gravity is about a sixth of that of Earth, so considering the effects gravity can have on metabolism and aging, you do the math.”

  “That’s real?”

  “As real as anything else going on lately.”

  “Fair point.” The storm was dying down, and they’d cast aside the blankets for lack of necessity. Sabrina could tell Uriah felt awkward about what she’d just told him, and as much to her benefit as his, he changed the subject.

  “It’s more than that I don’t get about you, though. You say ya caused the Strange explosion, but I’m pretty sure Livingston did it, maybe Jane. Even if ya seemed like the kind of person who’d blow up a bunch of astronauts trying to save their community, which happened to be yours until now, why would you come here in the first place if you intended to block the other ambassadors?”

  The liar. “First you tell me why I should believe a single word you’ve said to me.” Before she could stop herself, she stood up and thrust her hands onto the coffee table, towering over him.

  Uriah closed his eyes for a moment, folded his arms, and took a deep breath. “That’s a tad complicated. Let’s talk about it over dinner. Just please hear my full story before ya throw the baby out with the bathwater, because I can help you, even if you don’t believe me.”

  As he got up and strode to the kitchen, which, Sabrina could see from her seat, had more Jesus plates and other such Amish crafts, she soon realized what the problem was. She was infatuated with Dennis Uriah.