by Phoenix Ward
“They said you’d say something like that,” the meat puppet assassin said. “Luckily, I was well conditioned before they transferred me into this body. There’s no doubt as to my loyalty.”
“Then I supposed you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do,” Beth replied.
Without hesitation, she spun around and ran down the first flight of stairs. The I.I. chased after her, pushing off of the closed door to give himself a boost.
Beth wanted to turn around and see how close her pursuer was, but she didn’t dare, focusing instead on the turn into the next flight of stairs. She could hear the heavy footfalls right behind her, catching up.
It was hopeless. He was right on her tail, and before she could turn down the next flight, she felt a large hand grab her by the forearm. The fingers crushed against her skin and bone, bruising her as her assailant tugged her back. She nearly lost her footing and fell on her face, but instead tumbled into the assassin’s chest.
She could smell the sweat on him. She could feel the dampness of perspiration even through his shirt. It was clear that this bodyshell didn’t exercise very much. Mark took a moment to breathe as he pulled Beth close into a hug-like lock. She shrieked and kicked against him, but he was too large. There was no real room to reach out, thrash, kick, punch, bite, or do much of anything. She felt helpless as her attacker reached into his pocket.
With a flick, he extended a pocket knife. He pointed the blade of it towards Beth’s neck, who struggled to get as far from it as she could.
“Let’s just make this simple, shall we?” Mark said.
Before Beth could make another thought, the door above them burst open and fell off its hinges. A silver-and-black form leaped through the opening and jumped straight down the stairs to the level Beth was being held. With a whirring of gears, the form spun like a tornado and collided with the meat puppet assassin. Mark went tumbling backward, falling on his rear while Beth fell forward down the stairs. She rolled over a few of the concrete steps before grabbing the railing and stopping herself. She only managed to turn her head upwards in time to see Mark lunge from the ground at the form that had attacked him.
Now that it wasn’t in blurring motion, she could see her savior. It was a sleek humanoid form, but she could tell from a mess of insulated wires and plastic plates that it was, in fact, a robot of some sort. Or a bodyshell.
Its limbs all went into motion as it fought against the meat puppet. The robotic form was knocked off balance by the assassin, but managed to find its footing and return a blow to Mark’s chest.
The I.I.-possessed man grunted in pain, but immediately countered with a kick of his own.
Beth started rising to her feet as soon as she was able to. She winced as she leaped up the stairs after the two fighters, feeling her bruises and cuts pulse with each step.
She roared a little as she punched Mark square in the face. As if on cue, the meat puppet’s nose exploded with blood. She had broken the cartilage there, but he didn’t have much time to bleed before the robotic hero also punched him in the face.
“Back up,” the robot bodyshell said.
Beth’s eyes widened. Though the body was clearly an artificial construct, the same couldn’t be said about the voice. In fact, she knew that voice.
It was Simon Mendez.
“I wouldn’t watch this if I were you,” the robotic bodyshell said. Then, as if the power switch had been hit, the lights on his body turned off and the head hung limp.
Mark looked around the stairway with angry eyes.
“What the — ” he started to say. He was stopped, however, by a sudden and deafening shriek. It came from himself. His own voice tore as he continued to scream in pain. The meat puppet raised his hands to his temples, as if trying to silence some terrible sound from getting in.
And without warning, Mark became limp. Blood gushed out in torrents from his nose, mouth, and ears. He fell to the ground with a soft thud and continued to bleed on the concrete.
He was dead.
Beth watched the scene unfold with her mouth agape. She had seen a lot of strange things in her time, but never a man’s brain implode. She was certain that that’s what she had just witnessed: a mind shatter.
Suddenly — but gently — the lights on the robotic bodyshell glowed back to life. The gears started to whir again, and the mechanical head turned to face Beth.
“Simon?” she asked, uncertain about anything at this point.
The bodyshell nodded.
“You’re in great danger,” Simon said.
16
Danger
Beth was astonished.
“What’s going on?” she asked. She brushed her hair back with both hands, holding them on the sides of her head like it might implode too.
“You’re a wanted woman, Beth,” Simon said. His voice came through the bodyshell’s advanced speakers, which gave it a sort of buzzing ambiance.
“Wanted? By Tarov?”
“That’s right,” her savior answered. “He’s got a hit out on both of us. And believe me when I say that he’s gotten his people riled up. They want your head, even without the massive reward he’s offering. All they know is that you plan to take them down — to undermine everything they’ve built.”
“And I’m guessing they conveniently left out the fact that Tarov is a computer program pretending to be an I.I.,” she said.
The robotic bodyshell nodded, the strange almost bird-like face it possessed protruding towards Beth.
“He’s got them all under his thumb. They won’t find out anything he doesn’t want them to, including anything you say. They’re programmed to believe you’re a liar — a heretic who will say anything to destroy I.I.-kind.”
“Surely that kind of conditioning can be broken,” Beth suggested.
“Perhaps,” Simon replied, “but I imagine it would take some time to find out. Years, even.”
Beth groaned in frustration. The shock was starting to wear off and her numb calm had been replaced with a burning fury. Her groan erupted into a feral yell, and she kicked the dead man on the ground as if he was going to hop right back up and try to kill her again.
Simon reached out with a mechanical hand and touched Beth’s shoulder. She batted it away, then brought her hands up to her eyes. She started to cry — though whether from frustration or fear, she couldn’t say.
“It’ll be okay,” Simon said. “We can beat them together.”
Beth looked up at the bodyshell. There were no features capable of an expression, just a bunch of lights and servos, but she liked to imagine a warm look of concern.
I should be grateful, she realized, the anger receding from her face. She wiped a bit of snot from her cheek. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be the one bleeding on the stairs. There’s no telling how many minutes — how many seconds — I was away from death.
Then her brow furrowed and a bit of suspicion crept into her eyes.
“How did you get out of your restraints?” she asked, suddenly remembering the digital prison she had left Simon in. “How did you find a bodyshell? How did you find me?”
Simon laughed. It sounded strange from the speakers, like Darth Vader had remembered a funny joke.
“As you know, I was pretty high up in the Liberator echelon,” he said. “There are a lot of things the militia can do that you can’t even imagine. And even though I’ve gone rogue, I still have access to a lot of those resources. Namely, surveillance and bodyshell tech. I’m sure they’ll catch on soon enough and block me out of the system, if they haven’t already, but I’ve already reprogrammed some things to work independently of their network.”
“Resourceful,” Beth commented.
“I can’t claim the credit alone,” Simon replied. “A lot of what I can do — what we can do— is due to a lot of work from a variety of people. It took years and dozens of talented minds to develop the weapons I.I.s now have at their disposal.”
“Like blowing up heads?” Beth asked, looking down
at the carcass.
“I overloaded his implant,” the I.I. explained. “I was able to get in there and shut it down from the inside. Unfortunately, that involved a tiny explosion in the implants key components.”
“Can you do this to anyone?” Beth asked, a tinge of fear in her tone.
“No — at least — not yet,” Simon answered. “They’ve been working on it, but that’s one reason we needed the Fog. To make access easier. They’re a long way off, but nothing’s impossible. You’d be amazed at the strides we’ve accomplished since the days of Maynard Batiste.”
“Maynard Batiste?” Beth echoed. The name was familiar, but she couldn’t figure out from where she’d heard it.
“He was the first I.I. to live inside a human’s cerebral computer,” Simon explained. “He’s also the one who taught us how to ‘jump’. He was the world’s first puppetmaster.”
Beth shuddered a little as she contemplated Simon’s words. Even though it had just been used to save her life, the idea that any I.I—especially those under Tarov’s charge— could just jump into someone’s implant and shut down their brain was terrifying. Even if they were ages away from developing it to be strong enough against all humans, the possibility made her skin crawl.
Simon seemed to be able to hear her thoughts.
“I know it’s scary,” he said, “but we can beat them before it ever gets that bad.”
“We should go to the police,” Beth suggested. Then her partner came to her mind and concern grew within her. “In fact, where is Marcus? He was the one I was supposed to meet here.”
“I know,” Simon said. “I diverted him. I wanted to keep as many people out of harm’s way as possible. Besides — he might be followed.”
“Followed? By one of Tarov’s men?”
“Yes — but likely within the department,” Simon replied.
Beth’s eyes grew wide and her brow furrowed in confusion.
“Within the department?”
“That’s right, Beth,” the bodyshell said. “Tarov has people in the police. A lot of people, in fact. Some of them are I.I.s in organic bodyshells, and others are just people who’ve been blackmailed or threatened into compliance. Whatever the police know, Tarov knows. If we go to them, he’ll be able to reach us before anyone knows about his secret.”
“But if they see the data, they’ll know Tarov was lying to them.”
“It won’t matter,” Simon continued. “He has officers so loyal in the police that they’d delete the data without so much as a peek. They have faith in Tarov as a leader, and if he says something is a lie, they will believe him.”
Everything just keeps getting better, Beth mused bitterly. They can jump into people’s minds, they control the police, and worse of all, they want me dead. And the only one who can seem to help me is a murder suspect and former terrorist.
“Then what do we do?” Beth asked. Her tone was defeated, and Simon could tell. He offered a hand on her shoulder again, and this time, she didn’t fend it off.
“We have to be smarter than the Liberators,” Simon replied.
“And how do we do that?”
“Well, first, we need a plan,” Simon said. “The odds are stacked up against us, so we need to take our next steps carefully. Take time and do some research; reach out and try to find allies.”
“But we’re being hunted,” Beth replied. “The way you’ve talked about it, it sounds like Tarov will send countless assassins after us until he knows his secret is safe.”
“That’s right,” Simon started, “but only if he can track us.”
“And how do we avoid that?”
“By getting off the grid,” Simon answered. “We have to go where civilization can’t find us. Someplace the police — strangers — even I.I. terrorists won’t go.”
Beth’s eyes seemed to gleam for a moment as she thought over their predicament.
“I think I know of a place,” she said.
“Then let’s go,” Simon replied. “The next killer is probably already on his way.”
17
Off the Grid
Dust blew over the buildings to the north. Beth’s eyelids fluttered as the wind brought the particles to them, but she continued to scan the horizon. It was broken and craggy, like some national park in the Southwest, but it wasn’t a natural formation. The skyline was filled with the hollowed out husks of abandoned homes and rundown offices. Places that hadn’t been warm in decades and knew nothing but wind and silence.
Beth worked deftly with her hands while she looked around. Despite the ugliness of all the dilapidated structures, there was a certain peace to the scene. Something about that place reminded Beth that the world would be able to carry on just fine once Man coughed his dying breath. That the Earth would continue to spin, plants would continue to grow, and the wind would continue to howl. It gave her mind a comfortable respite from the frightened and concerned thoughts that filled it.
Where were they going to go next? She wondered if she would ever be able to hand off the data Simon had given her, or if Tarov would be lurking behind every shadow, waiting for her to slip up. She wished Marcus was there. He was her partner, and they’d tackled many dark challenges together. He would know what to do, or at least, how to get Beth to think of what to do.
Was he in on it? She started to scare herself a little with her thoughts. Could anyone be trusted? Tarov certainly couldn’t, but that should have been obvious from the get-go. You don’t make a deal with a terrorist leader and expect no complications. A “man” like that thrives on complications; in fact, they were his driving call. To complicate everything around him until it frustrated or scared enough people into letting him have what he wants.
But what does he want, anyway? To take over both humankind and the installed intelligences? To what end?
Maybe if she could speak to the one who programmed the Tarov A.I., she could ask him or her these questions. What did you program him for? What was he made to do? And what do we do if he gets too powerful?
Simon hummed a little as he leaned against an old mailbox.
“Need any help there?” he offered.
Beth looked down at the deflated tent and rods in her hands. She had been trying to funnel the damn aluminum things through the top of the tent’s canopy, but they kept getting bunched up or caught in segments of fiber. Frustrated, she threw the things down and looked up at her metal companion.
“By all means,” she said, gesturing to the crumpled shelter as if it was the prize in a game show.
Simon stood up and walked over to the tent, his gears whirring a little with each step. He went to work on the thing, immediately getting the metal rods to respond to his commands.
Beth rolled her eyes as she watched the bodyshell construct the tent. Once it was up and she had adequately congratulated him — not lacking any sarcasm — she began to unpack their cooking supplies.
They were only able to take some bare essential things they could find as they made their way out of the city. Simon advised Beth against going back to her apartment, despite how many things she had there that could be of use now. She had one of her laptops there, which could have run separate of her C.C., and therefore anonymously, but they couldn’t go for it. They were just able to make a couple stops at hunting and outdoor supply stores, and a thrift store. Still, they were lucky to have what they did. They wouldn’t starve in under a week (especially since Simon didn’t have to eat) and they would be warm the entire duration.
Before they had left Seattle, Simon helped Beth make sure they didn’t leave any traces. Nothing digital that could be used to follow them out into the wilds. It took a while — including several double-checks — before they felt comfortable enough to leave. Once the tall buildings and the zooming traffic was behind them, Beth was able to breathe a little easier.
Now that the sun was beginning to sink behind all the skeletons of the old world, though, she wasn’t quite at ease. As much as the tent and the howling of coy
otes made her think she was in nature, she knew she was in the middle of ruins. The graveyard of a previous generation, left behind to rot. Forgotten.
Beth didn’t believe in ghosts, of course, but it was hard not to get some shivers from the place. Where they camped used to be the main street of a sprawling suburb. They made their camp against the wall of an old drugstore, the brick-and-mortar kind, though a good number of the brick walls had caved in on themselves. A bit of vine clung to the side of the structure, running from cracks in the sidewalk, or at least, what remained of the sidewalk. A disabled traffic light hung overhead, watching over them with three dull gray eyes.
This particular suburb had been abandoned for over forty years, according to Beth’s records. She had to access most data offline now, so she wasn’t sure of its accuracy, but no one had lived in these parts for decades. At least no one but a few Luddites, as her records referred to them. They were country folk who lived outside of the hustle and bustle of the modern world. They preferred the open skies and the silent hum of a world without computers whirring, vehicles honking, or just people yelling over loud music. In fact, these Luddites were typically so extreme that they shunned technology — in the modern sense — altogether. They lived in a sort of agrarian society, like Amish people but without the religion. Some of them banded together to form groups or tribes, but they never seemed to step on each other’s toes too much. With so much open and abandoned space to choose from, they left the fighting for the people in the cities.
She had yet to meet one of these Luddites — these wild men. But it made her a little uncomfortable to think of one or two of them stumbling upon her while she slept. There was no way to tell what they would do. Luddites weren’t easily subject to modern laws, though she reckoned they probably had some sort of justice system between themselves. Otherwise, they’d be nothing more than feral animals.
“What do we do now?” the detective asked, gazing up as the first stars started to appear. There was a hopeless tone to her voice, and Simon didn’t fail to notice it.
