The giant crane in the center of the compound began to raise its wrecking ball, preparing to bring it down on our heads. The restrictionists had overheard my speech, blocking the door just in time to prevent a stream of loaders and graders, carts and excavators from entering at once. The smallest machines made their way through nevertheless, moving across Muller’s body. I took a fire extinguisher from the corner and smashed them as they scurried in, leaving a heap of damaged machines at my feet, wheels and pistons and circuit boards lying exposed in the flickering light of the chamber. I saw Soledad frozen, her face turned over her shoulder as if she were expecting someone. She didn’t move until I pulled her out of the way of a careening construction vehicle. She didn’t look grateful to me, although I held her in my arms for a moment before letting her go.
The top of the dome fell in suddenly, broken by the wrecking ball. Fragments of concrete and glass scattered around us. Streaming fire came in through the hole as well. Through the opening I could see the largest machines on the bases pulling back, digging in while they accelerated their engines. The restrictionists took positions around the dome, opening fire on the crane with their laser pens. The vast iron wrecking ball swung back and forth without taking visible damage, although its chain was struck over and over again.
In the corner of my eye I saw that Shanumi had established an arch. The colored lens floated in the center of the disintegrating room, even more unearthly in these strange settings, and I knew, after traveling for centuries, that there was not a second to spare. I stood in front of the console and arranged the pieces on the chessboard, playing white against black. Then I reversed to play black against white, five more moves until the positions were the same as they had been on the holograph. I played my role in straitening the loop.
Then, I pulled the lever on the console, hiding my face from the cameras which were recording me to make sure they wouldn’t see the tears running down my face, and did my best to reenact the set of moves I had already seen myself make. I ran my hands along the dials as I was intended to do, bringing the reflecting mirrors around the needle into focus. The beam outside was so bright and blue, it obscured the blue flash in the sky.
Redemption, the dream of the machines allied to the Board of Protection, was at hand. But I reached under the console and pulled out the circuit board. The lights on one side turned off and white smoke came curling quickly out of the keypad. I had made it so the machines had fooled themselves. They would be as deceived by their holograph as the people who had followed its lure.
I opened another arch and pushed Soledad through it because there was a man she had yet to fall in love with who had yet to fall in love with her. At that moment, the automatic bulldozer broke into the compartment, letting the stark light of the supernova onto our deliberations. The restrictionists were nowhere to be seen by that point. They had found themselves outnumbered, and had fallen back to the outside where their hovercarts turned against them.
Shanumi Six, my Six, had been standing on the side of the room when the bulldozer entered. She fell in front of the bulldozer’s blade, not caring to plead for her life, and I stepped through the remaining archway into a better place and time.
I thought I would have to find Manfred. I took a minute of pride in my work before the tears began.
Imraan Coovadia is a writer and director of the creative writing program at the University of Cape Town. His fiction has been published in several countries, and he has written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Independent, Times of India and Sunday Independent. He graduated from Harvard College. His work has won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize and the M-Net Prize, and has been longlisted for the IMPAC Prize.
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