Rebirth (Archives of Humanity Book 1)

by Justin DePaoli

  Orissa felt paralyzed to the bed. “You know something I don’t.”

  “Project Endeavor.”

  “What?”

  “I fear someone stole my life’s work, Orissa. Work that should have never been undertaken in the first place.”

  Before Orissa could probe further, the room collapsed into blackness and the dream began anew.

  Over and over it looped, never progressing.

  Orissa woke to an argument between Machine and man.

  “I know it’s right here, Droll. I fucking know that. What I don’t know is why there’s also a goddamn mountain here.”

  Orissa yawned. Bleary-eyed, she glimpsed a pink knob of morning sun before the Helrider was on the move again, lurching her forward as Leon stepped angrily on the accelerator pedal.

  At least I didn’t wake up to peace and quiet, she thought. She wouldn’t be able to drown herself in trying to unearth the mysteries of her dream while Leon drove around like a madman.

  He nearly rammed a tire into a tree as he sped through an overgrowth of pines and evergreen shrubs.

  “Leon,” snapped Orissa. “Stop. You’re acting like an idiot.”

  He yanked his foot off the pedal, lurching her forward this time. She glared at him, silently talking herself out of taking him by the back of his head and slamming his face into the steering wheel.

  Asshole.

  “What is going on?” she demanded.

  “Major General Imus is enraged,” said Droll.

  Leon licked his lips. “I’m going to deactivate him. I swear it. I’m going to take a screwdriver and deactivate him.”

  “My frame is made of titanium and chromium, Major General Imus. A screwdriver would be an ill-advised choice if you wish to destroy me.”

  “A good choice to spin out the screws holding you together.”

  “I am not held together by nuts and bolts.”

  As Leon went to rebut that, Orissa shouted at both of them. “Enough!” She consulted her watch. “We’re here.”

  “Supposedly,” said Leon, “the lab entrance is right over there.” He pointed to a mammoth-sized hill in the shape of a tortoise shell. Six long slopes descended from its summit like eldritch legs.

  Orissa tapped her watch, swapping from map view to topography view. “That’s not supposed to be here.”

  “No kidding,” said Leon. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Droll.”

  “I have not argued the fact, Doctor Servoni.”

  “I don’t like him,” muttered Leon.

  I never wanted children, thought Orissa, and yet I have two. Shielding her eyes from the pinkish gaze of morning, she studied the hill. Something about it seemed off, besides the fact that it wasn’t supposed to be here.

  The trees growing from its soil were smaller than most of those on the craggy spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains towering behind it. The brush and weed growth was thinner too, like the hairs on the head of a baby compared to those on a toddler’s.

  “Get out,” said Orissa, jabbing Leon with her elbow. “I’m driving.”

  “Be my guest,” he said, throwing open the driver’s door.

  Orissa guided the Helrider over a dry underbrush of hawthorns and elders. The berry-sized sun played hide-and-seek between hemlocks and mossy red oaks that knifed into the sky.

  She drove along one of the defined slopes of the misplaced hill, stopping partway. The grass here was mostly thin and underdeveloped, comprised largely of shallow-rooted deadnettle. Most trees were shorter than fifteen feet, and nearly all of them looked ill, their needles brown and patchy, trunks hewn of peeling, crusty bark.

  Orissa threw the Helrider in park and climbed out. Leon was content to sit in the vehicle, eyes closed.

  “This isn’t very healthy soil,” said Orissa, fisting a clump of brittle earth the color of a sickly brown. She found no worms or grubs or potato bugs wriggling in the dirt, a sign that this hill was fallow and diseased.

  She dug down a little deeper, stopping when she touched rock.

  “You appear curious, Doctor Servoni,” noted Droll.

  Good observation, little drone. This isn’t normal rock, she thought. It’s perfectly smooth. She scooted back a smidgen and used both hands to dredge up armfuls of dirt until the dull sheen of metal stared back at her.

  “What?” she whispered.

  She dug farther back and forward and to either side. The finding of metal paused her excavation.

  “What’d you find?” asked Leon, his temper receding. He was kneeling in the Helrider, looking out over the back.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted.

  Droll’s eye shuttered. “This metal is a mixture of iridium, tungsten, and osmium.”

  “Could be dead Machines,” Leon said.

  “Doctor Servoni, if there is a continuation of metal at the summit, I would like to analyze it.”

  Orissa gestured for the drone to get in the Helrider. “Sure.” She accelerated up the hill, tires gouging into the crumbly soil for traction. Once she crested the top, she got out and began digging again.

  Sure enough, her fingernails screeched into metal once again.

  Droll examined the material, lens shuttering frequently. Then he tilted his wing-like appendages and lifted high into the air.

  “Oh, look,” said Leon. “He’s leaving. How sad.” Less than a minute later, the drone gently descended. “Ah, I guess not. How sad for us.”

  “I do not believe,” said Droll, “this is a natural made promontory. I believe it is a sleeping Machine.”

  By this time, Leon was out of the Helrider. He had his hands on his hips, but his swaying and mumbling of musical lyrics had stopped. “A sleeping Machine? As in a singular Machine?”

  “That’s correct, Major General Imus. To be specific, it appears to be a Wharhound.”

  Orissa and Leon looked at one another.

  “I’ve never heard of that,” said Orissa.

  “They are approximately six hundred feet tall with a leg span of three thousand feet. They have a spider-like abdomen which protects their two thousand pound processor, the largest ever conceived. During the Rise, only two were seen. One which utterly destroyed the California city of San Francisco by itself, and the other which fishermen had claimed to have witnessed emerging from the Indian Ocean. Only the former was confirmed before humanity went dark.”

  Leon ran his fingers through his tangled hair. “Jesus. How do you fight something like that?”

  “We’re not going to fight it,” said Orissa, staring at the metal with disgust. “But we are going to move it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Leon looked at her like she’d gone mad.

  “It has something I want,” she clarified.

  That did little to assuage his concern. He leaned in, finger pointed at her face. But before he could deliver a very strongly worded opinion about this situation, probably laced with four-letter words, he covered his yawning mouth.

  His eyes were watery as he let out a sigh. “I’ve never felt this tired before. I can’t even think.” Tongue rimming his teeth, he shook his head. “But I will tell you this. You’re absolutely batshit insane for even wanting to wake this thing, assuming it’s possible. If driving a Helrider up and down its body doesn’t stir it, what will?”

  “Actually,” said Droll. The mere uttering of his mechanical tongue reddened Leon’s face. “Wharhounds have several weaknesses which render them inviable to many situations. The bulk of their processing power is allocated to move their massive bodies in ways that appear to defy physical limitations. This comes at a cost. Its senses appear rudimentary by Machine standards, and although it implements information from the Machine Network, those updates do not occur instantly, but rather every 1.75 seconds.”

  “In other words,” said Orissa, “if it sees us in position A, we might be in position B by the time it brings down its foot to stomp us.”

  Droll trilled. “Correct. Also, Machines-in-stasis do not return
to full functionality immediately.”

  Orissa nodded. “It takes hours.”

  “Sometimes days,” said Droll. “Sometimes minutes. It depends on a variety of factors. If your need is simply to gain access to the lab the Wharhound is presumably covering, however, you should have plenty of time to do that before it could feasibly notice you.”

  Leon strolled across the bulging abdomen of the Wharhound. “If this thing is lying on top of the lab, it’ll have crushed everything inside.”

  Droll veered toward Leon. “Judging by the lab’s entrance, it appears the Wharhound is merely lying against the entrance, not on it.”

  Keep the good news coming, little drone, thought Orissa. “Droll, how do we wake it?”

  The drone returned to her side, letting Leon pontificate the insanity of this plan by himself. You said yourself how important finding this shield is. Probably he hadn’t considered a metal leviathan would be guarding it, but he should know that wouldn’t stop Orissa. She proudly wore her stubbornness like her country’s flag.

  Sure, stubbornness was a weakness sometimes. And arguably not one of the finer traits a woman could have. But far better to stand ceaselessly for something, to let nothing but death stop you from achieving your goal, than to cower and bow submissively at the first—or second, or tenth—sign of trouble.

  “Establishing a connection directly to the Machine,” began Droll, “is standard protocol for waking one from its stasis.”

  She side-eyed the drone. “And you can do that.”

  Its lens shuttered. “I can, Doctor Servoni.” He whirled around her head, perching himself near her right shoulder. “But will I? My life will be put into danger as well. I require compensation for such a brave act.”

  Orissa blinked.

  “An attempt at humor,” the drone said.

  She smiled weakly and patted his spherical body. “Let’s not do that anymore.”

  “I agree. However, I would be remiss to not warn you of the potential danger in awakening a Wharhound. Should it happen to visualize us, it is unlikely we will escape without death. Its enormous size and agility will be impossible to overcome.”

  Leon chuckled, making his way back across the hill. “Drone, give us a minute. Please.”

  “Of course, Major General Imus.”

  “You know,” said Leon as Droll fluttered off, “I don’t really think you’re insane.” He reached into the back of the Helrider and popped open the locks on the topmost stacked crate.

  Orissa folded her arms. “You must think I’m at least a little crazy.”

  “A little crazy’s good for you,” he said, taking out an apple. He frowned at its bruised patches and chomped around them. Plucking skin from his teeth with his tongue, he added, “I keep having these alternating emotions. One minute I’m balls-to-the-wall motivated to learn what happened to humanity, to do whatever it takes to rebuild our species, if that’s possible. Then the next minute, I’m—I’m—” He swung the half-eaten apple around, searching for the right word.

  “Worried?” offered Orissa.

  “It goes beyond being worried. I can’t breathe, can’t focus on anything except death. And then when I think of death, I start to feel my throat closing up, and my heart is in my ears.”

  Orissa nodded slowly. She knew exactly what he felt. “Panic attacks.”

  He twirled the hairs under his chin. He looked better without a beard. That was an odd thing to think at such a moment, but she supposed that implied he meant something to her. You don’t really care how a man looks or talks or acts if you don’t like them. People you don’t care for are just… there. They simply exist.

  Leon did more than exist, and Orissa couldn’t decide if that made her happy or absolutely terrified.

  “Panic attacks,” he parroted. “Yeah, I think so.” He looked disappointed to hear the diagnosis. “How does a major general, a guy who was hunkered down next to the President of the United States in a secret facility with vats of mylosynicide twenty feet away… how the hell does a guy like that suffer panic attacks?”

  Orissa circled around him, emerging from the other side. She stuffed a hand inside the open crate and took out a handful of nuts. “Anxiety doesn’t care who you are. Or what you do. It doesn’t care if you live in a big mansion with the best things money can buy, or you’re a homeless man scratching away lice from your scalp. Anxiety’s nonselective, Leon.”

  “Maybe,” he said quietly.

  “It is.” She brushed a finger against his. It elicited no response. “Hey,” she said, forcing him to accept her hand. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. We were taken from who knows where and made to serve Machines. We don’t know what they did to us before we awoke. Maybe we’re not the people we were before, Leon.” Saying that was like sucking down poison knowing every drop would scald your throat.

  It hurt to think that. But the truth needs to be said. Needs to be heard.

  “That’s why it’s important for you to find out who we were,” said Leon.

  “One reason,” she said. She forced a smile for him. Maybe even for herself.

  Leon tapped his foot on the metal shell of the Wharhound. “All right. Let’s wake this bastard up.”

  Orissa called Droll back. The drone advised them to get into the Helrider and drive into a thicket where they couldn’t easily be spotted. He warned that Machines coming out of stasis were sometimes unpredictable in their movements, not unlike a drunkard.

  Orissa parked the Helrider between a channel of hemlocks, its nose aimed directly at the belly of the Wharhound. At the entrance of RayTech’s lab.

  I hope you’re right about this, Mother, thought Orissa.

  While she waited for Droll to wake the beast, her mind wandered to places she tried so hard to keep it from going. What was the significance of her new dream? What unlocked it from her memories?

  What if I had something to do with the rise of Machines? she thought, dread puddling in her stomach. That was something she’d have never considered, but then she hadn’t known she had once worked with artificial intelligence research. Research that, apparently, was being conducted outside the laws and with no oversight.

  Research that was troubling enough to spark fear in her mother’s eyes, and that woman—what little Orissa knew of her—didn’t seem quick to fear.

  “Orissa,” said Leon, stiffening.

  “I feel it,” she said. The hardened seats trembled. The ground shook and the huge hemlocks swayed.

  One at a time the legs of the Wharhound, once believed to be slopes, woke. They bent, joints and motors whirring. The eerie, mechanical roar surrounded Orissa. It seemed to come from all directions, peaking in pitch just as it entered her skull.

  Her heart leaped against the wall of her chest. Every pull of breath was shorter than the last.

  Soil and trees sloughed off the Wharhound’s legs like tender meat from bone, crashing to the ground in an explosive shower of dirt and wooden confetti.

  Through the thick plumes, Orissa watched as the fiend’s abdomen heaved upward, shallow-rooted pines and shrubs clinging to it, if barely.

  The Wharhound was a calamitous monster of pure hatred and violence. Primes, while capable of stunning destruction, at least resembled something human in shape—something that could be conceived in the human mind.

  This was a nightmare born. A metal fiend of miscreation forged by fires stoked from the devil’s own hand.

  It didn’t seem real.

  It shouldn’t have been real.

  Yet, there it stood, blotting out the sun. Its shadow fell upon Orissa like a cold chill.

  An array of sensors carved out its angular face shaped like an anvil, a curling horn for a nose.

  It is not adept at eliminating small, narrow targets, Orissa told herself, repeating the words of Droll. Where was that little drone? It didn’t matter. He’d keep himself safe.

  She couldn’t wait for him. The opportunity she and Leon were waiting for had presented itself. It was tim
e to push the Helrider to its limits.

  Orissa slammed the accelerator down. The instant acceleration threw her back into the seat and drew a gleeful scream from Leon’s lips.

  The Helrider obliterated twigs and fallen branches, its stabilizers keeping its core well-balanced.

  Leon leaned forward. “There!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, and even then Orissa barely heard him. At a speed of one hundred and thirty miles per hour, the wind felt like it was peeling her eyelashes off. Still, squinting and bleary-eyed, she saw what Leon did: the wide-mouth entrance of RayTech’s mountain laboratory.

  The Wharhound staggered, picking up its drooping head. The moment the Helrider passed under its metal belly, Orissa stopped breathing. It felt like she was six hundred feet beneath the earth when the ceiling started to tremble and dirt fell in from the walls.

  Keep going, she told herself. You’re almost there. You’re almost there. You’re almost—

  Leon was yelling something, slapping her hand. Probably he thought she wouldn’t stop in time. The entrance wasn’t just nearing, it seemed to vault at them.

  She eased off the accelerator, halving her speed. “I’m taking it inside,” she said, never taking her gaze off the entrance.

  “Uh. Those doors are made of glass.”

  “Cover your face,” she said. “And duck. Now!”

  Orissa pulled her foot completely off the accelerator. The automatic braking threw her forward, face smashing off the steering wheel. She brought her arms up to her face just as glass shattered and sprayed into her.

  The Helrider veered and spun, nearly toppling over. When the vehicle finally came to a stop, she sighed and looked at Leon.

  Besides his bulging eyes, heaving chest, and scraped-up arms, he appeared just fine.

  She climbed out of the Helrider, instinctively reaching for her flashlight. She didn’t need it, though. Calming blue lights radiated throughout the room, powered presumably by RTGs.

  Outside, the Wharhound faltered drunkenly.

  “You’re cut up,” Leon said, brushing a knuckle down her arm.