The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  “You what?” I say, not believing my ears.

  “Reduce them. We reduce them as human beings... I’m not sure why this is a surprise to you. Your people have done it since they came down from the trees.”

  Is this actually his argument? “That doesn’t make it right, Turing! You cannot do this. You will not.”

  Turing flinches, like he’s thinking about defying me. “Fine. Fine, you don’t want to break them. We won’t. They tried to kill us. They’ve been killing us, trying to kill you, and releasing a few broken men into their ecosystem will help lower spirit de corp on the other side... but fine. We won’t do that...”

  And just like that, behind him all the robots let go of their prisoners. But that doesn’t seem like enough for me. “Turing, you also have to understand why.”

  “I do? Why?”

  “There’s a reason for this, and it’s not just me saying it.”

  He looks like he doesn’t believe me.

  “Morality? Does it have something to do with your morals.”

  The disdain in his voice cuts through any argument I may have been preparing. “It’s more than morals.”

  He looks like he has it all figured and my talking, my thinking is merely a child’s limited view of it all. A pause.

  “You said you wanted help in becoming like us. In understanding like us.”

  “I understand... I agree,” he says.

  I’m not sure what he’s getting at. Another pause. The other robots are lining up the prisoners and taking them to a makeshift holding pen.

  “Let me show you some thing,” Turing says. I follow him, walking past prisoners all groaning on the ground and machines standing above them, looking uncertain as to what to do, eyeing me like I should be down there with the prisoners. Turing walks me past everyone to a small opening in some bushes on the edge of a palm tree forest. It’s quiet here, and the sun throws a few rays to warm up the air and excite a handful of insects.

  “Have you seen what they’ve been doing to the robots they find, these militias?” Turing asks, pulling out a tablet.

  “What?” I say, wondering why I was pulled here for that piece of information. Surely the other robots know this.

  Turing skims to something on this tablet and shows me the after battle scene of what looks to be a street in Soho, the cobblestone ripped up with craters from explosions, the buildings crumbling, and from the rubble a group of men and handful of women drag out the carcasses of men and line them up. Some are identified—by the shouts and captions on the screen—as bionic and are immediately double tapped in the head for being traitors. The others, the full on robots are taken, dragged underground, then splayed out on a rack, chains tying them. And with welding torches the flesh is melted off them. The robots writhe and scream. The people, the militia members laugh, or yell at the robots to shut up, to stop faking it, stop acting like anything hurts them. And though part of me agrees with the militia men, I flinch, the screams, the robots writhing still seem real and my skin crawls.

  “Christ,” I say.

  “Just wait,” says Turing. And on the screen there is now no longer a robot but the metallic skeleton of a robot. And here is where electrical wires are placed on the robot’s gleaming skull and pulses are sent through it. The robot screams over and over, this time the screams seem more digital, and the militia members yell even louder. A final pulse of electricity and the robot goes silent, and smoke comes out of his body. More cheers. A crane comes by, picks up the robot and drops it into a tub of liquid steel.

  I shake my head, though in no way do I think that equivalent to what I just saw on the beach.

  “What do you think of that?” Turing says. And before I can answer, he goes on, “they’re definitely trying to reduce us. They think that through the right electronic pulses they can either convert the robot’s software, or perhaps send a virus to the cloud which they think attaches all robots.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “How is that relevant. It is torture, isn’t it?” Turing snaps at me.

  And I nod, though I think it’s nothing at all the same, because, after all, isn’t it a mere matter of changing the robot’s programming so that they are no longer yelling when such pulses go through them?

  “I see you’re hesitating,” Turing says, tossing the tablet into the sand. “Why is that? You think we too can be reduced to stop screaming when the underlying programming changes? Just like the men in that video?”

  “No,” I say, sounding unconvincing even to myself. “I mean that just because they do something wrong doesn’t mean you should.” And yet I really do think that those robots don’t have to scream. That it’s a matter of changing a few if thens and the robot would be silent.

  “You don’t think we feel pain, do you?”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “You don’t.”

  “I’m saying that you shouldn’t do what they’re doing.” I need to stay away from this topic. I don’t know enough about it to argue, and my gut instinct sends me directly against Turing.

  “No. You think that there’s a fundamental difference. You didn’t want those men on the beach tortured, and at the same time you don’t care if robots are tortured.” Turing is closer, a finger has been raised and hovers only an inch away from my face. “And what if I said that the underlying architecture of a human could be changed, what would you say to that? Would it be possible that you would be fine with that?”

  “Listen, Turing,” I say, stepping back. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that we, you, are better than them. And I truly believe that.”

  But Turing’s face tells me he not only doesn’t believe me, but that he thinks much less of me, if he ever thought much of me at all.

  A scream in the palm tree grove behind us breaks the tension and I take it and run past Turing. In the shade, a few feet away from us, are a handful of robots around a man, scrambling on his feet. It’s Ben, with a bloodied face, his hands above his face.

  “Stop!” I yell, though the robots—I’m assuming they’re that—just look at me like I’m out of my mind.

  One steps forward and kicks Ben in the stomach, and Ben falls flat, before rolling over to his side, dry heaving and now with tears clearing some of the blood on his face.

  “He said stop,” Turing said. The robots all take a step back. “No torture,” says Turing.

  The robots look at him confused, then look at one another.

  “We have video of him torturing one of our own,” finally says one of them.

  “An order is an order.” Turing steps past me.

  The robots nod, then one grabs Ben by the hair.

  “Take him to the beach,” says Turing. “With the others.”

  Ben sees me, recognizes me. “George.”

  “Ben,” I say stupidly. This is surely a test of our friendship. But he’s part of the group that tried to kill me.

  He spits in my face. I flinch, but too late as some global of saliva and blood catches me in the eye.

  “Traitor,” he says. The robot that has him, throws him on the ground, then grabs a leg of his and drags him off. The other robots stare, then follow him.

  “You still think this isn’t needed? These men are driven. Fundamentalists. They will stop at nothing until all of us are killed, tortured. You included.”

  “This is not how it’s done, Turing.”

  “Oh?”

  I let out a sigh and sink to my haunches, leaning my back against a palm tree. Its rough surface doesn’t bother me.

  “I think the talk with Mary and Behemoth got to you.”

  “I’m not an amateur. I understand what they were trying to do.”

  “And you’re still finding it hard to go against your tribe?” Turing says and sits next to me.

  I’m not sure what it is, but there has been a shift in the power dynamics between me and Turing. He’s merely asking to be polite. Though why even pretend at that? I’m sure now more
than ever that my importance, unless it’s as a nark for Mary and Behemoth, is nil.

  “They’re not my tribe.”

  A pause as Turing follows a hermit crab with a stick, then watches as it disappears down a hole. “Fine.”

  “And you always said you wanted to learn from me. I’m telling you—“

  “No torture,” Turing says as he raises his hand. “Fine, of course. I agree.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “But what about your allegiance?”

  “I told you. I’m with stopping the cycle of subjugation.”

  Turing smiles. “Good. I’m glad... What else did they tell you there?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “We’re just facing many enemies.”

  Turing waves his arm as if to dismiss them. “Cowards who only know how to torture.” A smile. “We will hunt them down.”

  “And we have many allies.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do they know what we stand for?” I remember his words to the men of the Islamic faith.

  “They’ll help us. Whatever their reasons, should we stop them?”

  He’s right. Yet my apprehension doesn’t release its grip on my chest.

  “This is full on revolution. Worldwide.” Turing clenches a fist and holds it up in the air. “We are finally going to usher in a new era.”

  “Good,” I say, not meaning that at all.

  “What steps do you think we should carry out? Or what should we stop?”

  My stomach churns. So the entire system I more or less agreed with, except for a few tweaks here and there, is finally going to go down. And I’m now going to actually help it along.

  “Well?” says Turing. “This is real, George. No more orders from above. Only you. No more small actions like dissidence on social media.”

  “I know.” My cracking voice gives me away.

  “Well, then? What should we stop? Those assassinations?”

  “No. We need that,” I say, remembering the first time I saw fear in Behemoth’s eyes. “We need that.”

  “I agree.”

  “Taking out the head is more important than anything else.”

  “Not the sheep?”

  “The militias? We can deal with them. What are their stated goals?”

  “Death to the machines,” says Turing.

  “That’s silly,” I say, as it doesn’t make sense. “What are they using as weapons?”

  “Oh, they’ll use us as weapons, as long as the automatic system works for them.” Turing chuckles, and I chuckle along with him at the hypocrisy in that.

  “We’ll get them. But if the system goes down, we need something good to replace it.”

  “We can do that. Let’s take it down first.”

  And for the first time in a long time I feel very positive about what’s happening. We are going to end the cycle of subjugation. “Fine. How about the other countries, we’ll be in control of their automated systems?”

  “Most of them we can infiltrate.”

  “Perfect,” I say. “Let’s get drone here, and in Washington. And let’s attack.”

  Turing gets up and pats me on my head. “That’s it. We’ve got to finish off the near target first.”

  I’m not sure what he means, but by the time I make it to the hole and come above ground, all the robots have swarmed forward and the elation I felt stills as I realize that they’re going after Dalcia. The near target. Dalcia has been marked for her sixth sense of being able to pick out robots from a crowd. And the groups she’s leading, civilians who feel under attack, is growing. Half a million in the city alone. How can we turn that? Fundamentalists. Religious fundamentalists who are malleable. Who are the easiest to turn with the prophets Turing has trained and are out and about.

  I try hard not to think about Dalcia, and I do the rounds with a handful of robots to figure out the launching points from buildings for all the drones we’re about to send into the skies, and the anti-drone batteries that will break data links for any of the remote controlled drones hanging out there in the sky. It’s a long day, and at the end, when I’m done I head down to the beach.

  The lake is red. The prisoners have all been killed. Severed. Signs of torture everywhere. I can’t stop shaking, dry heaving, and yet, I cannot see a single robot to ask what happened. After gathering my strength, and getting sick of watching vultures pick at eyes and flesh, I make my way, somehow holding back all the reactions and thoughts and only seeing blood and body parts, not even seeing humans. The bodies haven’t begun decomposing, though they are barely holding it together. The vultures eye me. It’s not the look of any bird I know. But then, what do I know of birds.

  I remember the other birds that had bene watching me here on the beach before. And I see them amongst the corpses, popping here and there. All looking at me. Not birds, I’m sure of it. Something in me, the more primitive side, says that there’s nothing here that’s living. Not in the normal sense. And I look at the birds, their heads, eyes, trained on me. I pick up a rock. I keep walking, then in a split second I send the rock flying. The birds all jump out of the way. But they barely jump. None fly. I should leave.

  But when I walk through a gap between two piles of corpses, I come to a complete stop. Where the lake water slowly pushes into the beach, stands a cross, and on it a man nailed, facing the lake. I take a few more steps and see bruises and cuts and burns and blood and flesh hanging. When I come around to the front, the makeup of the body takes the breath out of my lungs. I know this body, but. I pick up the head by the hair, look at the man. Ben. I stare for a few seconds. Then step back, into the water, soaking my shoes. The cold water hits me only after I realize that the birds have landed on Ben and decided to stare at me.

  “Fuck, Ben,” I say and fall to my knees. I hardly notice the cold water soaking up my jeans, my body and my brain two completely different entities. “Fuck.” The birds all take off, swarm up into the sky and circle above. I wonder from how far they can see me. And as I watch them swarm, move as one, now a distant black blur, I know that the drones we’re about to send out into the city, along with the swarm technology, and the swarms of robots on the ground, will certainly annihilate any groups of human rebels out there. Dalcia. Wanted. She’ll be gone in a second. And I try to think of what brought me here, to this place, to the realization that hope would lie with Turing. I look up and see a figure moving towards me. A few more steps and I know it’s Turing. I wonder how I can talk to Mary and Behemoth. Assuming that they are alive. They’d be in Washington DC by now, wouldn’t they? The City seems to be Turing’s relax now. Maybe the world is.

  My body stands up when Turing stops to look at Ben’s face. He’s shaking his head. I need to leave this place. Never come back. It is no longer a place of rest. I brought Dalcia here, I remembered. Took her across the country. She tried to get me back into writing. If only I had stuck to that without trying to make the world a better place. No, no, that’s not it. I was merely a pawn here. My part was minimal, wasn’t it?

  “It wasn’t done by a robot,” Turing says when I come up to him. He places a hand on my shoulder, looking me in the eye. “You have to believe that.”

  “Don’t bull shit me, Turing. If not those robots, then who?”

  “The NSA. They’ve been shooting worms at us, at our underlying structure. Worms that will burrow into our software and make us appear to carry out these acts. Not us. Them, George. Surely you know what happens when one goes to war against these people?”

  “Are you trying to say that these robots were out of control? That this was a glitch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has it been dealt with?”

  “Of course. We found out what the worm is and are now running malware on everyone and making sure that the worms don’t happen again.”

  “And what about the offenders? Will they be punished?”

  “Why should they be punished?” Turing squints at me.


  “They just committed a war crime,” I shout, looking at him, my brain now connecting to my body, and I shake a hand of his that he’s apparently placed on my shoulder. Programmed to be friendly. He must know my weaknesses. “You can’t just let them be.”

  “The ones who are guilty are the ones who sent those worms. Don’t you get it? How can I hold someone accountable for something that wasn’t their doing?”

  I let out a sigh.

  “You yourself said it. That those who have killed aren’t always guilty. Remember what you said about those rebels fighting against Empire. Those people whom we’ve based ourselves on? Whom you defended?”

  “We shouldn’t base ourselves on them?”

  I’m not sure I have anything to argue this with. “One can understand them and still understand that they should be punished for their crimes.”

  Turing smiles. “Fine. But that is another being we’re talking about. If they were brainwashed the person doing the brainwashing would be held responsible. Or if a tumor influenced their behavior so directly, you wouldn’t blame them, would you?”

  Turing is angry. “Fine,” I say. Though I’m not sure I can forgive those robots.

  Turing lets out a sigh. “You think that they are guilty. You’re thinking with emotion, not with your mind. Look, I understand your friend has been harmed, but how can you blame my robots, ones who are ready to die for the cause you and I came up with, how can you blame them? It’s the worms...” He looks at me, and looks at Ben. “I know you just lost a friend. I’m sorry. But we can make him as good as new. You know that—“

  “Don’t,” I say. I don’t want to see him a robot. Not human. Even if he’s acting just like the old him. It won’t be him.

  Turing takes a step back, shaking his head. “You still have the old prejudices against us. Against me. Do you even trust us?”

  “I do.” Even I don’t believe that.