Amped

by Daniel H. Wilson

  Millions would die. Because once we have the tech, we can’t let it go.

  Fwish, fwish, fwish goes the implant in my head. It is inscrutable and mute and God knows what it does. But it doesn’t seem like a clock ticking down anymore. More like a heartbeat. Steady and dependable.

  At least, I hope so.

  I have seen

  The old gods go

  And the new gods come.

  Day by day

  And year by year

  The idols fall

  And the idols rise.

  Today

  I worship the hammer.

  —CARL SANDBURG (1914)

  * * *

  Disbanded Echo Squad Vets Under Investigation

  FORT COLLINS—This morning a spokesman for the US Army confirmed that members of the so-called Echo Squad, made up entirely of “amped” soldiers outfitted with prototype neural implants, were under federal investigation for plotting terrorist crimes. Four federal warrants were issued, although records indicate there were twelve original members.

  Echo Squad was dissolved a decade ago in the wake of a scandal. Documents exposing the existence of the squad were leaked by an online coalition of hackers known as Archos, and published simultaneously by three collaborating newspapers.

  An Army spokesman said, “In the interest of national security we cannot comment. These men are walking weapons. People’s lives are at stake here.”

  Army officials have come under criticism for failing to track the soldiers after Echo Squad was decommissioned. Head of the Pure Human Citizen’s Council (PHCC) and U.S. senator from Pennsylvania Joseph Vaughn argued that the effort was bungled. “How could the U.S. Army allow dishonorably discharged veterans with militarized neural implants back into society? These members of our service personnel volunteered for an illegal and immoral program, and there should have been a system of tracking put in place before these animals were discharged into the general public,” he said.

  Jim Howard lives in the Eden trailer park in Eastern Oklahoma. About a four-mile walk from the motel. I can’t sleep, so I hoof it at first light. My legs are soaked by the time I arrive, lashed by the dewy grass that grows knee-high along the roadside. I’m shivering as the sun teases the horizon, a reluctant lump of warmth and light that seems to want to let me freeze in the dark a little bit longer.

  Birds are starting to sing, and the list of questions in my head is growing.

  I find the dirty white trailer on the edge of Eden. The trailer park is the size of a couple football fields, wrapped in a fence and strewn with trailers in loose rows connected by meandering dirt paths. The ground is carpeted with sticks and stems from a sprawling canopy of pecan trees. Jim’s trailer is up on concrete blocks, weeds sprouting under it. A haphazard wooden deck has been built alongside a small porch, with the remains of old paper lanterns strung over the gaping carcass of a hot tub.

  The porch light wavers in the dawn, powering through mildewed plastic and crusted layers of insect corpses. As I climb the steps, I hear creaking from over my head. It’s a stealthy, careful sound.

  I step back until I can see the roof.

  A dark figure stands on top, thin and crooked. It’s a man with his hands out, elbows bending as he takes an exaggerated slow-motion step. The roof of the trailer complains as he moves through some kind of tai chi routine. Silhouetted fingers splay and his head turns toward me. He slows and then stops. Stands up straight.

  “Howdy, kid,” says a firm voice.

  “Jim?” I ask.

  There’s a long pause. If this doesn’t work and Jim turns me away, well, I saw an overpass on my walk over here. I guess that’s where I’ll be living.

  “Owen,” says the old man. “Your pop told me you might be coming.”

  “Is he …” I trail off, voice breaking.

  Jim shakes his head, mouth in a line.

  “How did you know him?” I ask.

  “We worked together, a long time ago. Good man.”

  “Oh,” is all I can say.

  “I’m headed out to work about now. You can come along, I guess. Long as you ain’t scared of getting yelled at a little bit.”

  “Pure trash,” snaps the old man. “That’s what I call ’em. Not Pure Pride. Joe Vaughn can kiss my wrinkled old ass.”

  White hair sticking out from under a ball cap, Jim hooks a thumb at a group of young men standing across the street. The demonstrators watch us silently, heads cocked, squinted eyes swimming in shadows. One of them spits on the ground. Standing with crossed arms or perched on pickup truck tailgates, none of them reveals the slightest expression.

  The old man takes off his cap, tosses it to me. “Put this on and don’t talk to anybody. Nobody should be out here looking for you, but better to play it safe.”

  I shuffle ahead to keep up with Jim as the bent old man humps it across the street. With only a piece of toast in my belly and virtually no sleep, it’s a struggle to keep my footsteps in his shadow. He’s got a heavy-looking duffel bag over one shoulder, but he hobbles quick and steady in the dry morning heat, like an old camel.

  Jim has a strong chin and high, weathered cheekbones. On the drive over, he told me he’s a full-blood Cherokee but his hair went pale after his life hit a rough spot. I don’t have the gall to ask what that was. I imagine it involved a war.

  “Fuckin’ gray hair,” calls one of the men from across the street as we reach the orange-ribbed fence of the construction zone. “Go home, ya scab amp!”

  Jim doesn’t even look up, just leads me into the job site.

  “Who are they?” I ask.

  “Workers we replaced. They’re pure human. And young. But I tell you what, every man’s got a right to earn a living. Being young don’t earn you a damn thing in my book.”

  A five-story, half-framed building crowds the work site. The rising sun flings skewers of light through its half-renovated steel skeleton. The frame straddles a deep, unfinished subbasement that makes a nauseating drop into crisp shadow. Jim tells me that, in a few months, this steep pit will be a claustrophobic parking garage for auto-driven cars. He says we don’t even have to run lighting down there—the cars won’t need it.

  It’s still early. A crusty cement mixer filled with toolboxes swings overhead, lifted out of thieves’ reach by the site crane. A few elderly men mill around, drinking coffee. There’s hardly a worker here under sixty-five. Each has a maintenance nub, including Jim. Amps. When the old guys pass each other, they nod. Sometimes they give each other halfhearted little salutes. No smiles.

  “Not a big talker, are you?” I ask Jim.

  He shakes his head.

  “My dad said I needed to find you. He said that you could explain why I’m here.”

  Jim glances at me, eyes sharp and calculating. Chews on the inside of his cheek, considering. Finally, he shrugs. “Maybe,” he says. “Probably not. Anyway, there’s work to do.”

  The old man drops to one knee and fiddles the drawstring open on his canvas duffel bag. In a well-practiced motion, he rolls down the sides of the faded bag to reveal tangled columns of dust-coated metal. Under a frenzied pattern of scratches and dings, I see the thin tubes are light-gold colored. Titanium alloy.

  An ID code, like a VIN, is stamped onto one tube.

  “My ride,” says Jim. “Beats a wheelchair and it beats the living crap out of the goddamn scooters that civilians get. Semper fi, kid. Semper friggin’ fidelis.”

  Jim grabs the lightweight frame, lifts it out of the bag, and shakes it like a dirty T-shirt. The tubes flop out onto the ground, connected like a skeleton, with legs and arms attached to a backpack-like trunk. Without a pause, Jim plants one boot onto a foot-shaped piece of plastic at the end of one tube. He steps in with the other foot and then shrugs on the backpack part. The skeletal arms hang loose, their unfastened straps lolling like tongues.

  “You’re a vet?” I ask, reaching out and touching the loose metal wrist of the thing. Jim nods. A pair of dull pincers hang from j
ust above the wrist joint, scarred with shining gashes. I lift the dead metal, and the arm bends, limp. An array of compact tools is folded underneath, ready to be deployed: screwdrivers, files, even a power saw.

  The pincer clamps onto my wrist and I jump back. I reflexively wrench my arm away from the cold metal, shake it off like a spider. Jim lets out a hoarse giggle. As both robotic arms settle down to his sides, the old man taps the maintenance nub on his temple.

  “Settle down, kid. The exoskeleton is linked to my amp. Works even for a guy with no arms and legs. Mind control. All a vet has to do is claim arthritis and the VA coughs these things up like nickels.”

  He casually lowers his arms into the arm bars of the device, straps them in one at a time. “Makes us more employable,” he says.

  Jim is in his late seventies. He says he retired from the military forty years ago and he retired from the workforce a decade ago. Now he’s standing in front of me wearing a government-issued medical exoskeleton and about to start another day of hard labor, and this is the reason that those young men across the street are huddled together giving us the evil eye.

  The old folks have stolen all the jobs.

  Jim speaks to the foreman on my behalf. The Pure Priders outside won’t work alongside the old men, so the work site has to bring in extra amps. They could always use one more, according to Jim.

  Around the site, a dozen other elderly workers shrug themselves into glinting metallic devices—drinking in the pure, sweet strength of youth. Others sway on prosthetic legs or flex sinuous carbon fiber forearms. All the old men set to their jobs with the grim robotic work ethic that always belongs to the previous generation. And across the street from the construction site, a dark pool of anger deepens.

  For the next few hours, I’m setting up scaffolding and breaking it down so these vintage spider monkeys can place chattering rods of rebar. The sun has come up for real now, dull and pounding. Jim tells me I’m making less than minimum wage in cash for this. I’m thankful for the money but mostly for the mindless routine of work.

  “Things are changing faster and faster,” calls Jim over his shoulder as he lays out rebar for cementing. He talks between the sporadic catcalls that still ring out from beyond the fence. “Change scares people. Makes them dangerous.”

  “Then why are you here?” I ask. “You’ve got a pension, right?”

  Jim chuckles drily. “You’re just a kid. You don’t know about getting old. But you’re right—it ain’t about money.”

  “Then maybe you should think about getting a hobby.”

  In a sudden mechanical jerk, Jim hops off the scaffolding and lands hard enough to make me flinch. He holds out his calloused hands, palms up. The exoskeleton motors grind quietly, like a cat purring, as the pincers retract.

  “I’m a builder right now. What am I without a job? Without a tool in my hand?” asks Jim.

  I picture Jim sitting inside his trailer, alone with a bottle of booze, finishing the umpteenth pointless game of solitaire. Stale, heavy air and the mindless whisper of a television. To him, the exoskeleton must seem like a second chance. Like youth bottled and sold.

  “And what if the tool is inside you? What are you then?” I ask.

  Jim shrugs an arm out of the machine and wipes sweat off his forehead. Puts his arm back in without looking. He speaks carefully. “It’s still only a tool. In the end, a man makes his own decisions. You decide, not the machine.”

  “Why am I here, Jim?”

  Jim reaches for a rod of rebar. He clamps the curved pincers around it, lifts the bouncing metal like it was made of Styrofoam. He stops and looks at the rebar with fresh eyes, as if realizing that every move he makes is a miracle.

  “I bet this mess weighs more than I do. And I’m holding it like it was nothing. The machines give us a lot of power.” Jim places the rod, continues. “Way I figure, your pop sent you to me, hoping I could tell you what’s in your head and what you’re going to do with it. Problem is, I don’t really know.”

  My shoulders slump.

  “But I got an idea,” continues Jim. “And from what I can tell, there are only two bets. Either you’re here for Eden to protect you … or you’re here to protect Eden.”

  A shrill whistle blows from across the street.

  From over the wall, I hear the demonstrators start up a chant. The voice of the crowd is deep, the edges of the words grated off by straining vocal cords. “Pure Pride,” they’re saying. “Pure Pride.”

  I imagine those dozens of ragged pink mouths spilling their garbled words and remember Samantha falling between my fingers. Events are still moving out of control. The reins have slipped away and now they’re dragging loose, slapping on the ground.

  Jim plucks a dusty sledgehammer off the ground.

  “How could I protect you?” I ask, incredulous.

  Jim stares at me, letting his eyes wander to the nub on my temple. “You might be surprised what you’re capable of.”

  The old man is hunched up, leaning over the sledgehammer. A drop of sweat hangs from the tip of his nose and he ignores it. “We’ve got big problems. And not just here,” he says. “Everywhere. Battle lines are being drawn up. Amps and their families are running back to Uplift sites all over the country. Regulars are moving out.”

  “What do you think is going to happen?” I ask.

  “If we don’t figure this out quick—find some goddamned way to stop Vaughn and his Pure Priders—well, there’s only one thing that can happen … war.”

  Then the screaming starts from outside the fence.

  The panicked yelling in the street is mixed with strange laughter. The kind of laughter that’s got nothing to do with humor. It gets louder as I walk closer.

  Through the gaps in the chain-link fence, I spot the laughing man standing on top of his stark shadow in the middle of the street.

  He’s a shirtless cowboy in dusty black jeans and boots. His lanky arms and slim chest are smothered in tattoos. Crows. Dozens of crows flapping and screeching and tearing their way up and down his body. And a bloody star tattooed across the center of his chest.

  Another guy, one of the protesters—and a big one—is staggering away from the cowboy, holding his right hand in his left and looking at it with bugged-out eyes. He is shrieking at what he sees. It strikes me that most of his fingers are pointed the wrong way.

  The laughing man takes his cowboy hat in his hand and leans one forearm on his thigh, giggling. He stands and takes a hoarse breath, then doubles over again with barking laughter. Ropes of matted brown hair fall into his face but not before I spot the node on his temple.

  The laughing cowboy is an amp.

  “Oh, you came way too close,” says the laughing man. “Paint by numbers, amigo. Saw your game coming a mile away.”

  A half-formed thought rises. This man looks familiar. I look over at Jim, but he just turns away. Walks back into the job site, shaking his gray head.

  “Who is that?” I call.

  Jim doesn’t stop walking. “Lyle Crosby,” he says. “Grew up around here. Gone for a while but now he’s back.”

  A couple of protesters shuffle the guy with broken fingers off the street. The rest watch Lyle with dark expressions, but nobody gets near him.

  I let go of the fence and follow Jim. The old man grabs his sledgehammer and gets back to work smashing up a hunk of misplaced concrete. I talk to him between blows.

  “Why don’t they call the cops?”

  “Half of those Priders aren’t even American citizens. Just human.”

  “Then how come they aren’t kicking that guy’s ass?”

  “Won’t risk it,” says Jim.

  “Why?”

  Jim stops, turns, and points the twenty-pound sledgehammer at the street, holding it straight out by the tail end. The tube of his exoarm flashes in the sunlight and the hammer goes as level and steady as a girder. “Because they’ve already seen what happens if they cross him. They know he’s dangerous. That he’s got a
gang of amped kids at his beck and call. What they don’t know”—Jim lowers his voice—“is that Lyle is military. Ex-military, anyway.”

  Now I remember. Those faces flashing across the dash video screen of the semitruck. Crosby. I picture the laughing cowboy in my mind. In the image he was younger, had shorter hair. But it’s the same guy.

  “Echo Squad,” I say.

  “It was an experimental group. But somebody tattled. Once the press found out, the squad got disbanded. Lyle was their commander.”

  “I knew he looked familiar. Our faces were together on the broadcast. They grouped me with him like I was part of his squad.”

  “Course they did,” says Jim, “because technically, you are.”

  Fwish, fwish, fwish, goes the implant in my skull. My vision blurs for a second and I rest a hand on the cool metal of Jim’s exoskeleton forearm. The arm dips, then comes back up, firm as a banister.

  “What did you say?” I manage to croak.

  Jim continues: “Fifteen years ago, your daddy called me up, crying in the middle of the night. Never heard him like that before. Said you hurt your head real bad. He asked me for a hell of a favor and I helped him. It scared me how much he loved you.”

  From the street, the chanting has started up again.

  “What—” I begin, but my thoughts are moving too fast. My mouth can’t keep up. I take a sharp breath through my nose, slow down, and start again.

  “What the hell is in my head, Jim?” I ask.

  Jim squints at me in the glare of the sun. “It’s called a Zenith-class amp. A prototype. There were twelve of them officially installed. A team of handpicked soldiers. Later, when the press found out, they were called Echo Squad. Turns out, the whole operation was illegal. Squad went away and those disgraced soldiers spread to the wind. All that was in the news.”