by Ryan Somma
3.08
“Good luck,” Ibio said to Flatline that morning, giving him a hug. Her bald head, tunic, and ever-morphing features were strange yet familiar to Flatline, although he could not remember ever seeing them before. She was certainly a far cry from the woman he considered his domestic partner for over a century.
Flatline looked around her to where his two children were standing. They were obviously frozen with the inability to react to any of this. Their mother and father were not following the script, and that left them trying to act as though all were normal, which meant not acting at all.
“Stand tall,” Point-Five said from Ibio’s cradling arms. He balled up one tiny fist and knocked Flatline gently on the chin.
Flatline nodded and waddled out to his car. He was waddling now that he knew he had an animal’s hind legs, which were not made for standing upright. He turned just before getting into his car and dared a final wave to his family. Then he left for work and his lunch date with revolution.
The young couple was still present on the drive in to work. They paused in their Bot-smashing to greet him.
“Hey Flatline!” the girl said.
“Good luck Flatline!” the boy added.
Flatline waved in return, feeling good about himself and the great deeds he intended to accomplish today. His foot felt heavy on the accelerator as he tried to keep the car from baring down on the car in front of him. The car behind looked especially small today and it took him a moment to realize it was in the right place, but he had accelerated to take the place of his neighbor on the right, the one whom the Enforcer Bots had taken yesterday.
Remembering this did not make him snicker with amusement as it had yesterday, and his foot lightened off the accelerator subconsciously. The gap increased between him and the car ahead. He stared at the empty spot and swallowed nervously.
He spent the morning at work bonking widgets with a nervous energy, afraid of drawing attention to himself. His eyes searched from their corners to seek out any sign that the others were in on the conspiracy. All down the assembly line it was business as usual.
When the lunch whistle blew, Flatline practically jumped out of his skin. Quickly regaining his composure, he took his lunch pail and slowly turned to follow the other workers into the factory cafeteria. He shook himself out of his suddenly downcast state and forced himself to search the faces of his coworkers for any sign that they were in on the plan.
He found a pair of eyes, regarding him in a side-glance. Flatline held that gaze and nodded slightly. There was too much purpose in that look, intention. The worker nodded in return and Flatline continued to scan the crowd.
He found another pair of knowing eyes, and another. Each pair of eyes was an affirmation that this was the right thing to do. Flatline could feel the energy building inside of him, ready to let go.
They filed into the cafeteria and saddled up to the tables. Less than half the room announced how their ‘surprise’ lunch was their ‘favorite’. The others eyed one another, waiting for the chaos to begin.
Then they waited some more, not touching their food, tense with anticipation. Time passed and Flatline wondered, How do we know when to start?
Someone had to take the initiative. Someone had to release the spark that would turn this room into pandemonium. Someone had to play the leader.
Why hadn’t they decided on a leader?
Flatline’s anxious energy began to turn to dismay. This whole plan was going to fail because no one knew how to lead. They were going to sit here all the way through lunch without doing anything.
What difference does it make? Flatline wondered to himself. Wasn’t I happier as a mindless slave? Sure the work was purposeless and my life repeated the same events day after day, but I was enjoying it. Isn’t happiness what’s important ultimately, even if it relies on me not knowing any better?
I should turn myself in to the Enforcer Bots, he thought. They could reintegrate me to the Community and I wouldn’t know the difference. I would be happy, not like now, not like this uncertainty. This is awful, not knowing what’s going to happen next. Where’s the stability in such a system? This is a mistake and I’m not going to be part of it.
Flatline stood up with his hands raised and shouted to the ceiling, “I surrender!”
The room exploded. Every third worker stood up flinging food into the air and screaming nonsense. The other two-thirds of the room tried to pretend that nothing unusual was happening. They continued to eat their lunches, looking absurd with their coworkers’ food plastered all over them.
Flatline took a cupcake right on the snout. It stuck there, forcing him to pluck it off and try to wipe at the icing with one finger. Then he shrugged and smashed it into the face of the coworker sitting beside him.
Flatline looked around and wondered, When does phase two begin?
The cafeteria roof came off and vanished into the blue skies above, which quickly filled with Enforcer Bots, and a cacophony of, “Violation! Violation!”
A claw came down and snatched up the man sitting next to Flatline with a cupcake smashed into his face. He vanished into the chest of a Bot, arms and legs flailing wildly. More claws came down all around, grabbing the rebels and innocent alike, but the rebels were able to dodge.
“Into the work area!” one shouted and they all ran for the widget production facility.
Flatline ran with them. He stumbled and fell in the commotion. Instead of panicking at this development, he found himself falling into a gallop. It was as if going on all fours were natural to him. Then he remembered he had four arms and ripped apart the sleeves of his shirt to free them. Running on all sixes felt wonderful.
He and the other rebels spread out into the cavernous workplace. Many of them, like Flatline, gravitated to their assigned place on the assembly line. Flatline even grabbed his rubber mallet and held it poised in one hand.
There was a long, tense pause as the Enforcer Bots continued to clear out the Cafeteria. Claws dropping from above to whisk away the remaining workers until it was empty. Through the double doors, Enforcer Bots streamed through, each one focusing on an individual worker.
One focused on Flatline and he swung his rubber mallet when it came in range. Bwoooioooiooonnnggg!!! The Enforcer Bot deflected away, but was otherwise unharmed. To his right, Flatline caught a glimpse of a coworker who had also instinctively grabbed his tool The man looked at Flatline, then to his slide-ruler, and then back to Flatline to wave goodbye, just before he was dragged away into the waiting cell of an Enforcer.
Flatline’s Enforcer charged him again, and he swung the mallet at the claw it launched. The claw deflected and the mallet flew from his hand. It was lost in the gears of the assembly line.
So Flatline fled. He galloped to the front doors of the factory, through the throngs of robots and men battling. His coworkers were doomed. Their numbers dwindling so that it would all be over in moments.
He struck the doors and bounced off of them as if they were a solid wall. Rolling back into the fray, he got back to his feet just in time to see the Enforcer Bot chasing him at the doors. His escape plan was blocked.
So he turned and bounded back to his workstation, then across it and onto the conveyor belt. He always wondered where the widgets went after he bonked them. Now he would find out.
The Enforcer Bot was too large to pursue him, but it hovered menacingly beyond the gears and pistons between it and its prey. Flatline stuck his tongue out at it and continued to gallop down the rolling belt. When it reached the dark portal where all widgets vanished, he dove in.
He was cast into complete darkness. Crunch! A mechanism forced him through a set of alternating gears that carried him upward. Chug! Chug! Chug! Pistons below him took turns pummeling his face, chest and abdomen. WANGGGGGG!!! Something flat and metal whacked him in the face and sent him flying through the air to land on a small platform. This dumped him onto his head on another platform, which dumped him on his butt
to a platform, so on and so forth in a downward seesaw.
Then he landed on the rubber, rumbling track that could only be a conveyor belt. Dizzy and disoriented, he sat up and tried to focus on the portal of light up ahead. It was growing larger.
He shielded his eyes as he was carted out into a bright world. It looked promising. A bit gray, another indoor setting, but it was free, and held the promise of permanent escape. All around gears and pistons rolled like clockwork. Finally, Flatline rolled off the belt at a convenient place, looked around, and found himself back in his work area.
“Curses,” he muttered, turning back to the Enforcer Bot.
Its chest opened, there was a flash of the claw, and all was black.
3.09
Flatline was strapped against a wall with his four arms bound together painfully in pairs to either side in manacles that hung above his head. His hind legs were stretched beyond their range of motion toward the floor without reaching it. He was feeling pretty miserable.
Surveying the thousands of faces all around the massive chamber, it appeared everyone else felt the same way. More people than Flatline could imagine fitting in Eden’s Paradigm’s seemingly small neighborhood were shackled in endless rows that vanished into a white haze far below and darkness up above. The rows shifted left approximately the span of one person at semi-regular intervals. Flatline knew they were all on a conveyor of some kind, moving toward a processing facility for reintegration to Eden’s Paradigm.
“Well,” Ibio said to his right, “It was fun while it lasted.”
Flatline said nothing. He didn’t know what Ibio’s experience had been, but he could hardly see how any of this could fall within the definition of ‘fun’. They slid another person length to the left again.
“Of course, we won’t remember any of it,” she added.
Flatline merely stared off into space.
“Doesn’t that strike you as tragic?” Ibio asked.
“At least I’ll be happy again,” Flatline muttered.
Ibio’s eyebrows vanished over the horizon of her bald head in shock, “You call that happiness? Your life had no meaning. My life had no meaning. We simply repeated the same rituals day after day, exactly the same. It was a nightmare. I’m glad we got a brief respite from it.”
“We were still happy,” Flatline looked at her, they moved another notch closer along the assembly line. “It was meaningless and repetitive, but we didn’t know any better. Our ignorance was… it was…”
“Bliss?” Ibio offered politely.
“Yes,” Flatline nodded. “It’s all this knowing how absurd it was that made us unhappy. That knowing made the world uncertain and insecure. We’ll be back in our happy delusions again soon enough.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Ibio said, looking down the line. In the distance, she could see a towering structure, where the lines of captives were disappearing into the processing plant. “Still. There was something to the uncertainty. It was different. It felt good to experience new things.”
“New things?” Flatline scoffed. “I do not equate ‘new’ with feeling ‘good’. These experiences were terrible. They made me feel anxious, cold, scared. They gave me butterflies in my stomach. That is not a pleasant feeling. It was not good.”
“I enjoyed it,” Ibio shrugged.
“You enjoyed feeling bad?” Flatline asked, disbelieving.
“I enjoyed feeling different,” Ibio turned to him suddenly. “I enjoyed the bad feelings because it made the happy ones feel all the more special. I had something to contrast the good with. Good feelings don’t feel as good when you only have good feelings to compare them to.”
“A fascinating rationalization,” Flatline observed.
“You’re a jerk,” Ibio snapped and Flatline was taken back. “I can’t believe you have no curiosity about who you really are? What if you have deeper dreams, hopes, or aspirations than playing house and pretending to manufacture imaginary products? I would think you might want to know something about yourself, especially looking the way you do.”
“Look who’s talking,” Flatline snapped at Ibio’s morphing features.
Ibio sniffed and looked away, muttering, “Point-Five said it feared your ingrained selfishness might ruin it for everyone.”
“What?” Flatline said incredulously. “What does Point-Five know about me?”
“Oh, now you’re curious.” Ibio turned back to him. “We’re about to completely loose whatever identity Point-Five returned to us and you suddenly want to know about yourself. I can’t believe you.”
“At the present I am curious to know more about what Point-Five told you concerning my previous identity,” Flatline said. “Just because I’m not going to remember it in the future doesn’t prevent me from wanting to know more now.”
“Hmmm,” Ibio sniffed. “Point-Five said you were fairly short sighted too. That you could not see past your immediate desires and that these desires fell into a simple and predictable hierarchy.”
“Go on,” Flatline prompted. “Tell me about the hierarchy.”
“Your survival comes first, then killing somebody named Devin Matthews, and then you want to take over the world,” Ibio shrugged. “See? Simple.”
“Who’s Devin Matthews?”
“How should I know?”
“Then it’s not so simple,” Flatline rebuked. “There must be a reason I want to kill this person.”
“Jealousy,” Ibio stated.
“I—“ Flatline began, but this stopped him. “You know that for certain?”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Ibio said, trying to subdue his sudden concern. “Point-Five didn’t know what you were jealous of. Apparently you erased that component of yourself a long time ago.”
Flatline’s countenance dropped, “Still. Jealousy is a pretty base motivation.”
“But that doesn’t mean you’re a base individual,” Ibio piped into his sudden flood of self-doubt. “Besides, you want to take over the world. That’s pretty complex and high up as far as aspirations go. Point-Five didn’t know why you wanted to do that either, but I bet you wanted to make the world a better place.”
Flatline looked up, “You think so?”
“No,” Ibio smiled. “I think it’s more likely you want to rule it with an iron fist. It goes along with the whole jealousy thing, but that’s redundant now. In a few moments we won’t remember this conversation.”
“That’s good,” Flatline muttered unenthusiastically.
Ibio smiled, “I knew you could see the bright side of something.”
Flatline just looked at her.
“Come on,” Ibio pleaded. “Didn’t anything in this soon to be forgotten episode of your life bring you joy? Anything at all?”
Flatline reviewed the events of the past three days in his mind and suddenly cracked a smile, “I got a kick out of sending my snobbish, ahead-of-me-in-line, neighbor to the Enforcer Bots.” He looked up and snickered, “I framed him.”
Ibio chuckled in spite of herself, “How like the person Point-Five described you to be.”
The tower was very close now. Ibio and Flatline stared at it fearfully. Flatline kept telling himself the fear would all end in a few moments. He strained his neck to see what was happening to the captives ahead of him. They disappeared into one of the many openings lining the tower. A flurry of lights came through the crevices of the entry and the next captive was brought in.
“You can still escape you know,” Ibio said to Flatline. “You could wiggle your arms out of those shackles.”
“Now why would I want to do that?” Flatline scoffed at her.
“Just to keep the option open,” Ibio suggested. “I’m not saying you will want to fight, but you might want to and it’s best to be prepared for anything.”
Flatline just frowned at her.
“Right now you don’t see why you would want to fight back,” Ibio explained, “but in there, you mig
ht learn something that will make you not want to return to Eden’s Paradigm.”
“I can’t imagine any such thing,” Flatline said sourly.
“Three days ago you couldn’t imagine anything at all,” Ibio countered. “Please? Just do it for me, or if not me, then do it for the children.”
Flatline eyed her skeptically and then looked to his son and daughter, manacled behind Ibio on the processing line. They wore expressions of fear and disbelief. Finally, Flatline wiggled one arm on each side out of the manacles. The other set of hands were too loose to stay in the binds, so he gripped them to keep himself in the air. It was a slightly less painful position.
He looked to his left. The neighbor wife was staring at the closed sliding steel door, turned away so that Flatline could not see her face. There were flashing lights coming from all around the door, but they gave no clue as to what was going on behind it. The lights stopped, the door slid open with a hiss, and the neighbor disappeared through the black portal.
“Tell you what,” Ibio said, her weak smile made even more absurd by the sudden loss of color in her face, “why don’t you go first?”
Flatline rolled his eyes at her, but whipped his head around when the steel door slid open. He was instantly propelled into the darkness. Looking back, he caught a glimpse of Ibio’s fearful expression before the door slid shut after him.
All around lights strobed like old fluorescents powering up. Flatline caught glimpses of various, nasty looking machinery coming closer with each flash. Mechanical arms appeared before his eyes and began pulling things off of him.
It took a moment, but Flatline realized they were stripping the layers of obfuscation from his identity. Each shell they removed brought him a greater understanding of himself. He began to remember things. Ibio, Cho, Devin, Zai… All of these people were players in his life’s memories. He knew who he was, and with this, he wanted to rule the world.
He let the machines finish stripping away the many levels of perceptual distortions from him and poised himself. The machines retreated, apparently done with their purpose. Flatline realized this was an assembly line. Each component of the program was allowed to perform its function alone.
There was darkness again, and he felt himself whisked away. Behind on the line, the metal door slid open and the Ibio’s silhouette slid in to take his place. A green glow ahead marked his next stop through the integration program, and he tensed once again.
Bright lights obscured his vision and dark figures surrounded him. Flatline knew he had what he wanted, his memories, and leapt out of his binds into the gang of unidentified beings. Spots of pain flashed all over his body and his vision cleared enough so that he could see he had tackled several surgical bots, sprouting numerous arms baring blades, drills, and such. These cut into him all over and he quickly tried to disentangle himself from their midst.
He rolled through more pain and landed on the white-tiled floor. Black blood from his many wounds dripped all around him and he came up on all sixes. The spider-like surgical bots came forward, and he backed away into a low crouch, growling and snapping as the scalpels and drills came near him.
One scalpel thrust at him and he dodged aside, grabbing the arm it was attached to. The bot’s many legs crumpled, not designed for resistance. He swung the robot around and flung it into the others. They rolled away into a tangled mess of arms and legs.
Three robots remained and they appeared wary to confront him. Flatline and their attentions were drawn to the back of the room, where a swooshing noise signaled Ibio’s arrival to this component in the integration program. She struggled against her bonds, eyes going wide as the three robot surgeons came for her.
Flatline bounded up behind the center one and tackled it, feeling more sharp pains as its many laser scalpels, rheostats, and hypodermic needles bit into him. He came up onto his hind legs and threw the robot into one of its companions. When he turned to face the third robot, it was retreating down a nearby hallway.
“Flatline help me!” Ibio shrieked and he quickly pulled apart her binds with the strength he remembered her giving him so long ago.
Just in time, as the empty prisoner block whooshed away to the next component. His son replaced it, only now it was Buton Cho. She frowned at him with her blue and brown eyes intense with what Flatline thought was humiliation.
“Free me, mutant dog bot,” she commanded.
With time to consider this, Flatline might have refused, but as it was he quickly pulled apart her binds. She dropped to her feet on the floor and looked around, rubbing her wrists absentmindedly. Another whoosh and Bot appeared in place of Flatline’s daughter. He made to remove the bonds, which Bot’s arms and legs were stretched out to reach, but Bot quickly cut them with a laser beam.
“Why couldn’t you free yourself?” Flatline asked Cho. “You’re a goddess aren’t you?”
“This is only part of me,” Cho snapped, her eyes searching the room. “The rest of me is spread throughout all the families in Eden’s Paradigm.”
“They chopped up an omniscient being,” Flatline noted, amused. “Interesting.”
“Enforcer Bots!” Cho shouted, pointing to the hallway where the spider surgeon had fled. The barrel-chested bots began to fill the far end of the room. Their cycloptic red eyes glowing menacingly.
“Everyone behind me!” Flatline shouted, but took Ibio by the upper arm. “I need a hand with this.”
“What?” Ibio asked, but Flatline was reaching one arm down his throat. He pulled out a black line, tied into a bow. It was dripping water.
“Take the other end,” Flatline told Ibio, offering it, and she complied.
Then he waited. Letting the room continue to fill with Enforcer Bots. They were not taking any chances, allowing their numbers to expand insanely before attempting an attack.
“Now pull!” Flatline shouted. He and Ibio each pulled on their end of the black line and the bow came undone. A tear in the fabric of reality was allowed to open into the underwater world, unleashing a geyser at the Enforcers with the water pressure of an entire ocean.
