Evolution Z

by Everist J Miller

But for the minute he was a slave, now trapped by greedy brats. It angered him that the kids were wasting his time for their own ends. What was their plan? If only he knew.

  As he saw the rat scurrying away, R47 could only think of a missed opportunity. Could he have eaten it? Maybe. His energy was depleted. He hadn't fed in a while. But more importantly he wondered whether he could have had it work for him. He could not attack a human directly but could he do it indirectly by infecting the rat. Yes, he could infect the rat and let it loose to spread and end the world. Had any volunteer ever done that? He hadn't heard of it and it made sense that it wouldn't have happened when the volunteers were mindless feeders of only human flesh or, as now, brainless robots.

  But he was not restricted to instinct or commands. He needed to be free to destroy everything around him.

  "He's not supposed to be so still," Sharpie said. "I'm telling you he's dangerous."

  "Lardy's right. Stop calling it a he," The Queen said. "It's an it. And it can be still. And I've gotta tie it up. It'll get us our next meal."

  ''There are other ways," Sharpie said. "We've never done this before. We've only ever sold real people to him."

  To whom? R47 asked himself. Who would they sell people to? His mind panicked.

  The Queen was tying string around R47's wrists. Sharpie approached with caution. He knelt opposite the Queen, well within R47's sight.

  "Couldn't help yourself?" the Queen said without turning her attention to him.

  "His eyes just stare blankly," Sharpie said. "Vacantly." His eyes fixed on R47's but there was no intent to stare. They were observing eyes as one focusses on an inanimate object. After a sigh he said, "It's not right."

  R47 felt the string tighten around his wrists. Damn it. How could he get out of this? Soon he would be a helpless prisoner. I've got to find a way to get into that black box, he thought.

  Then it came to him. If he couldn't decrypt the software, maybe he could destroy the black box chip itself.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MARCIA WAS WITH her son Andrew in a loving embrace. How did he get to her? What about the lockdown? It didn't matter. He was with her. Alive. In her protection. As long as Cynthia didn't discover him.

  "I'm so sorry I left you alone like that," Marcia said, her voice soft and calming. She was so glad he was alive and well. The nightmare, and visions were false. What a relief.

  Andrew didn't speak. His body was cold and still. His arms were frozen at his sides.

  "What's wrong?" Marcia asked.

  His body was rigid.

  Marcia rested her head on his shoulder. She squeezed him. Relaxed and smiling she nuzzled his cheek and lifted her eyes to see his face.

  She shrieked at the sight of him. His eyes were wide, beastly and vacant. His pupils were dilated as if he was nocturnal. Skin pealed off him sticking to her cheek and revealed dead tissue peppered with drying clots of blood on his face. "Oh no," Marcia cried. "No." Her head shook in denial. "Not you. I should never have left you. No job is worth my son's life."

  She loved him despite his appearance. She hugged him tighter than before. Tears streamed down her face. She knew it was dangerous. So many victims in the V-Crisis had hung on to their feelings instead of killing their volunteer families in cold blood as they should have. How many times had she seen or heard of a son devouring his mother's flesh?

  Without warning, he was animated. He growled, moving his head to her neck. She tightened her embrace. Alarmed at the gravelly sound of his voice but warmed by his kiss on her neck. It's not a kiss, she realised. His jagged razor-sharp teeth sank into the side of her neck administering a thunderous, burning pain.

  Marcia freed her arms and tried to push him away, but he gripped and compressed her steadfastly with his rotting claws.

  His face lifted from her neck and he stared at her, mouth oozing with clots of blood, looking like a demented clown. He said something, his voice making the sound of a shovel scraping pebbles. "Wake up," he said, spitting droplets of her own blood into her face. It astonished her.

  How could a volunteer speak? God no. Her son was a volunteer.

  "Wake up," he said with more urgency this time. Marcia just stared at him. A volunteer. How could this be? How could she have let this happen?

  "Wake up!" He was shaking her arm. "Wake up…"

  Her eyes opened. Someone was shaking her arm. It was Ken. She was disoriented. "What's wrong?" she asked.

  She sighed with relief. A nightmare. Yes. Andrew was not a volunteer. She could not be sure but she hoped for the best.

  "Get up," Ken said. "Hurry." He hadn't let go of Marcia's arm.

  "What?" she asked. Her forehead crinkled as she squinted to make sense of what was happening.

  "Something's happened," he responded. "They need you. Right away."

  She didn't get up at once despite his insistence. What the hell was he doing in the modestly furnished meeting room they had allocated her for sleeping in, invading her privacy like that? Why believe him? He was a liar in her experience; always trying to deny her reality. Coldly contradicting what she had heard from others. How do you handle such a person without out and out conflict? Open aggression wouldn't work with him anyway. He would just be pushing her buttons to discredit her as he invariably did.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked. Her tone was insistent. Impatient.

  "There's no time for this," he said. There was agitation in his voice. He kept motioning to the doorway. "It's the volunteer. The experimental one. Cynthia demands that you come. Immediately."

  That got her attention. "What's happened to it?" she asked sitting up; yawning. What now? she thought. What could it possibly be? She was angry inside, her vivid dream still fresh. Something else to delay releasing her from the lockdown? Yet another excuse to keep her from finding out if her son was alive?

  "You'll find out when we get there," he said.

  ''Tell me now!" Marcia snapped. She wasn't afraid of him anymore. It was clear that Cynthia was in charge and Cynthia needed her.

  Marcia's focus was to satisfy Cynthia and get the hell out of there. She didn't care about being safe in her job anymore. Andrew was all that occupied her mind. Damn the fucking job. She had sacrificed her own child for it. Mindless, remorseless, uncaring, greedy, evil corporation. She just needed to finish this and get the hell out of there.

  Ken's mouth turned slowly into a smarmy smile. He was enjoying keeping the information from her.

  In desperation and breathless, Marcia said, "Tell me or I'm not coming."

  "You can tell that to Cynthia yourself," he said turning to the entrance, not waiting for a response. He strolled away leaving her alone in the room.

  ###

  Marcia sat up on her unfamiliar temporary bed, turning slowly to put her feet on the ground. Her face drooped as if she had no energy to spend to keep the muscles taut. She covered her eyes with her hands as if to block out the painful circumstances she found herself in. She bent over, resting her elbows on her knees.

  She wasn't looking forward to another session with Cynthia. Why should she get up? They exhausted her. She was human, not a machine. It was torture. She ground her teeth. There was a stabbing pain in her chest. Her outlook was grim.

  There was impatient knocking at her door that caused her adrenaline to fire. "I'm almost ready," she lied.

  She took another twenty minutes by which time it sounded like there was a firing squad at the door. Fuck them. She was not a mere instrument. She was a person with needs and, if not too late, boundaries had to be set.

  She found a guard at the entrance to her room. Just another thug. She didn't even have to look at him to know. They were tall, burley and with heads shaved. They were extras in a movie, except that their impact was real. "Follow me," he said. He did not require her to acknowledge his individuality and for that she was grateful.

  To hell with Cynthia and her precious company. Fuck the lockup. They couldn't keep her trapped like this. Not at the risk of her
son. It had been two days. Andrew was probably dead. The ones pushing her were selfish. No, it was more than that. Greedy. Scum of the Earth. She would tell Cynthia what she thought and storm out past the guards and away from the building. And then?

  She didn't know. Where would she start?

  By the time she had reached that uncertain thought, Marcia had exited the elevator, travelled the narrow corridor, and arrived at the guarded entrance to the experiment room.

  Why are they taking me here? I thought Cynthia wanted to talk to me.

  Knowing her well, the guards at the door nodded her in. To Marcia's surprise, Cynthia and Ken were both present. She was in the right place after all.

  Ken turned to her. "Good that you could finally make it," he said with a sardonic grin. Déjà vu.

  Cynthia didn't take time to view or greet her. Her physical attention was elsewhere."I asked for you to come immediately," she snapped.

  "I wasn't dressed," Marcia said. It was all she could manage, and it came out sounding like an excuse. She was shaking with anger but also dizzy with fear. Would she go through with it? Could she stand up to Cynthia? No amount of forethought could prepare her for the reality. It was different in Cynthia's presence. Cynthia had gravitas. Marcia felt small. Even the thought of questioning Cynthia's authority was surreal.

  Cynthia didn't respond. She continued to focus ahead of her.

  "Can't you see it?" Ken interjected. His attention had been with Marcia the whole time. See what? Marcia thought. Ken couldn't see shit when it came to science. Such a pompous political intellectual peasant. He stared at her, hands on his hips in a pose of apparent disbelief. When she didn't reply he pointed toward Cynthia's gaze.

  Marcia turned to look. She screamed reflexively. The experimental volunteer hung motionless on wires in his plastic prison. His head was distorted into the shape of an uneven hour glass as if the force of a giant clamp had crushed his skull. His eye sockets were hollowed out, with only squashed grapes in place of his eyes. The remnants of his exposed jaw contorted into a frozen melancholy frown. A brown paste of brain, spinal fluid and blood oozed from crevices created by an implosion. There were blood spatters crisscrossing the casing that surrounded him.

  "My God," Marcia said."You killed him." She looked away feeling light headed and nauseated.

  "It died spontaneously," Cynthia replied, "If you consider it death." She continued to observe the enclosure appearing unaffected by its gruesome contents. When she glanced at Marcia's distress, she said, "Why are you upset? You were in the V-Crisis. It was always a relief to see a sight like that." She tipped a glance at the mangled volunteer. "When they're coming at you in a bloodthirsty horde, you can't shoot fast enough." Then with a look of disgust, presumably at having slipped into meaningless reflection, she looked at Marcia and said, "The real question is what caused this."

  Marcia took several deep breaths to calm herself with her head bowed. After a pause, confident she wouldn't vomit or faint, she turned to Cynthia. "I'll read the data," she said.

  "We've already done that," Ken said. He raised his eyebrows in mocking disbelief.

  Cynthia eyeballed Ken. "Don't test my patience," she warned. "I don't even know why you're still here." Ken's mouth sagged at the corners in a sullen anger.

  "What did it show?" Marcia asked Cynthia.

  "I'm not a technician but we couldn't wait for you. I had the computer program translate it for me."

  "What program?" Marcia asked.

  "The one that would have eventually replaced you," Cynthia said with a sly grin.

  Marcia felt a tremor in her chin. A stinging urge to cry accompanied it. She had been right to be concerned about her worth. To be replaced by a computer program; by mere code; software that could mimic intelligence and not just a physical shell for menial tasks. It was so much worse than being replaced by a volunteer.

  Cynthia viewed Marcia, like an assassin waiting for her victim to beg. But, as the reflex to break down appeared inescapable, Marcia discovered a strength in pent up anger. Instead of crying she turned to Cynthia and asked, "What did it tell you?"

  Cynthia looked disappointed as if she had lost a game. "You can read the data yourself," she said, "instead of me wasting precious time giving you a layman's translation."

  Marcia turned to the console. Instead of bringing up the raw data, she pecked at the keyboard to reveal the software translation. Her rebelliousness was not validated. Cynthia wasn't paying any attention. She has no interest in data, Marcia thought to herself, merely in its consequences.

  Marcia stared at the machine. Let's see how good you are. Can you really replace me? She shivered in nervous anticipation.

  Since childhood, Marcia feared that she was concealing her inadequacy. She wasn't clever and she couldn't allow herself to be found out.

  She remembered taking an IQ test at school before the V-Crisis, sitting in a small teacher's office with her father. The teacher was short with a full head of matted silver hair and an ugly frown.

  "The tests show excellent clerical skills," the teacher had said grimly.

  "What do you mean?" Marcia's father had asked. Her father had a kind face and a warm inviting demeanour, but he was intimidated by academia.

  "Well, she has a decent memory for long numbers and she's competent at basic sums. She's not suitable for college or university. I'd say she would make a solid bank clerk."

  Her father's jaw dropped. His eyebrows crossed "My daughter is doing so well at school. Her marks. How so you explain that?"

  "It's her clerical skills. Parroting. It's okay for now but useless in higher education."

  Since then Marcia had been waiting for her real self to be discovered. The ugly, dumb clerk.

  Her face was taut. She bit the corner of her lip. It wasn't so much the memory of that day and the ones that followed. It was the feeling. The unease. The humiliation. I can only follow instructions - was that it? Clerical skills?

  Marcia's breathing was shallow as she read the computer generated report.

  It was mechanical. The software strung words together like a bad translation of a language, half sensible but jumbled. Rules were followed inflexibility without regard to meaning. It was in clear contrast to the refined coalescence of the human brain.

  She got the gist. She had a choice. She could parody the computer's nonsense or she could supplement it as she assumed Cynthia expected. Cynthia should have known the computer's jumbled mess wouldn't cut it.

  Marcia realised that by letting the computer be better than her it could free her from the slavery of the lock-in. But then her worst fear about herself would be realised; that she was not clever. A mere clerk.

  Why was she so damn selfish? Andrew, if he was still alive (she dared not think otherwise) needed her. It wasn't about her. She should have just given up; proved that the program was superior and got the hell out of there. But Cynthia had touched a nerve.

  If Marcia got them out of this bind and Andrew was alive, she could still have a future, but only so long as she could prove herself better than a computer.

  ###

  Marcia couldn't help herself. She focussed on revealing the weaknesses in the computer's translation. "The volunteer tried to hack the failsafe chip," she said. That's crazy, Marcia thought. Dangerous was an understatement.

  "Got that part," Cynthia said.

  "Did you get that it tried to fry the chip; that it was an attack on the hardware?"

  "Not sure." Cynthia tried to be evasive but Marcia knew what the computer had said. "A communication traced from cortex to memory," were its words. It hadn't identified what the signal was or whether it was hardware or software. It was also unlike Cynthia to indicate uncertainty which gave her away.

  Cynthia added, "You tell me whether I got that."

  "Huh?" Marcia asked. It was all she could manage in her confusion.

  "I assumed you read the translation," Cynthia said raising her eyebrows. Marcia nodded in acknowledgement. "Of course you'
d want to after what I said. Yes, it has a long way to go, and I need you to explain it. Let's not waste any more time."

  "I'll explain it to you on a condition", Marcia said, a tremor in her voice, her hands shaking.

  Cynthia stared without offering a response. Marcia felt the heat from her own blush. She felt dizzy. Unreal. What was she doing standing up to Cynthia? Had she gone too far?

  "My son," Marcia continued. "I need to call him to check if he's okay. If he's alive." She had trouble getting the words out.

  "This is a lockup," Ken interrupted.

  Marcia was incensed. Ken had no business interfering. "I wasn't talking to you," Marcia said turning to him brusquely.

  "This is bigger than you or your son," Cynthia said. "But I can see that it's hard for you to understand. If volunteers can reprogram themselves there may be another crisis. Even a war." After a pause she added, "They'll be zombies again."

  Ken, the guards and all others in the room gasped. Cynthia had used the forbidden word; the word that had been excised from spoken language, from all materials in digital or print and even thought; the word that could cause immediate execution.

  "Yes," Cynthia said in acknowledgement. "It's easy to risk death when all of our lives are at stake. Why don't you call the police?" She gestured mockingly. "When they see that," she pointed at the dead volunteer, "we're all dead."

  Marcia's eyes sank to the floor. She was trapped in a place she hated, doing a job she despised and anxious about a son who was probably dead.

  "Now I think you're beginning to understand," Cynthia said.

  "I might as well be dead," Marcia mumbled.

  "What?" Cynthia asked.

  "I've failed," Marcia said, more to herself than the others. "I've let my son down," she continued, "and for what? We're never going to be able to resolve this." Marcia was unsure whether the others heard but it didn't bother her.

  "Just tell me what happened," Cynthia said. "We can solve it together." Her attempt at consolation sounded empty. It was crazy how her superficial charm had been lost and she had become so venomous. She had discarded the repetitive flutter of her eyelids, replacing it with an icy, concentrated stare. It was ironic that Marcia had considered Cynthia the kind, supportive boss and Ken the superficial ill-intentioned politician. Cynthia had revealed herself to suit the circumstances and manipulate the outcome. Ken had dissolved into a subservient, spineless insect, stinging randomly in a feeble effort to discredit Marcia and hoping to gain favour.