Machinehood

by S. B. Divya

  The weight of the decision to leave Earth landed on her. With the constant motion of the previous twenty-four hours, she’d had no time to absorb the enormity of what she was about to do. I’m going to outer space. And depending on what happened there, she might not make it back alive. She needed Nithya’s advice. What’ll happen if I go up there without zips? How bad will the withdrawal be? She had to stay functional. Someone in San Francisco must have stashed pills. Black-market garbage would be better than nothing.

  She sat and leaned against the wall. Grime had turned her cuticles black. Her skin itched everywhere. She needed a bath. A change of outfit would help her mood, too. And time in the kitchen. When was the last time she’d cooked? When had she eaten? She imagined the aroma of roasted pasilla and cumin and salivated.

  When the person after her in line cleared their throat, she opened her eyes. Had she dozed off without realizing it? Probably. She stood and moved two feet up.

  WELGA

  19. Given that our treatment of other intelligent creatures—living, mechanical, or virtual—is fundamentally flawed, how do we move forward as a civilization? We cannot exploit another intelligence for our own gain without its consent, even if (and perhaps especially if) it’s unable to give consent. How do we allow our lives to intersect and interact? By learning to live in harmony.

  —The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095

  The utility seats in the troop transport rattled and bucked from air turbulence. Welga leaned her head forward so she wouldn’t smack the hull as hard. Passenger airplanes were better, but sub-orbs were best. Up, down, a smooth arc in between, and all over in an hour or two. At least the aircraft’s shaking hid her own. Her muscles trembled at her extremities, and her head wobbled like an old person’s. What other symptoms awaited her? At some point, exhaustion overwhelmed the discomfort, and she fell asleep.

  They landed at Travis Air Force Base, where a master sergeant sorted them. He assigned a small four-by-four manual truck to Welga. She tried to hold the wheel steady and almost confessed right there on the tarmac. Suck it up, buttercup. She clenched trembling fists around the steering wheel.

  Mama had always said, Ayalas don’t quit until they’re dead. Welga wouldn’t give up either. She’d always needed a goal in life, the bigger the better. As long as the Machinehood had power and she had the capacity to stop them, she would move forward. Launching a slow-fast-food movement sounded trivial in comparison. If there was ever a time to embrace her Ayala half, it was now.

  Conditions along the way were worse than her trike ride into DC, the carnage of bots so thick in places that she had to drive over them. Good thing she had a military truck with high clearance. She expected to need an armored vehicle, too, but the violence was all directed at bots and WAI-based devices.

  She had to buy zips. Welga took a detour toward the Tenderloin, parking the truck on a street lined with recently constructed hives. She pulled her hair down and mussed it. The unwashed look came gratis, courtesy of three days without a shower.

  She walked down the street and passed a tree-lined park. Discarded WAI-pets roamed the fenced area and whimpered as they searched for their owners. Assholes. Too cowardly to turn them off, and too paranoid to keep them. She turned onto a less maintained street lined with old-style storefronts selling goods to people who weren’t networked.

  Welga concentrated on placing her feet. Between the homeless people and bot wreckage, the sidewalks were an obstacle course. In her current condition, that presented a serious challenge. She hugged herself as she walked to reduce the pain and trembling in her arms. Her problem would attract the right attention, though dealers would charge a premium, taking advantage of her apparent withdrawal symptoms.

  The sun’s disk shone wanly through the thinning marine layer. Warm, humid air surrounded Welga, carrying the odor of stale urine. Sweat gathered at her armpits and under her breasts.

  A plump figure mumbled from an alley, “Happiness, joyrides, pretties, wisdom.”

  Welga stepped into the shadowed space and gagged on the stench of shit and piss. “Joyrides—quads—and pretties,” she gasped.

  The dealer squinted at her. “Quads? Got none of those. Generic duos I can do. For pretties, I got wounds, antibac, and antiviral.”

  “Five each of the pretties. How many duos you got?”

  “How many you want?”

  “Fifty.”

  “Fuck! You lookin’ to sell?”

  Welga shook her head.

  “You think you can pay for all that?”

  She held her breath and moved close to the dealer, showing four microcard fifties in a cupped, trembling hand. She stuck her hand back in her pocket and stepped away.

  “You can have thirty duos for those. That’s my whole stash. Pretties gonna cost two more fifties.”

  A teenager made of skin and bones and wearing nothing but a static-cloth shift stumbled past them. Welga added two micros to her handful and gave them to the smirking dealer. They counted out the juvers and the zips into a pillbox and held it out on a broad, pale palm. Welga grabbed the box and walked out, extracting a zip and a pain reducer as she threaded her way back to the truck.

  “Fucking pillheads!” someone screamed from a balcony above her. “This is all your fault!”

  A low-profile mop-bot smacked Welga’s shoulder as it fell. It crashed onto the sidewalk, wheels facing the sky and spinning. A turtle on its back—Welga flipped it over, and it rolled forward, cleaning the cement and weaving past obstacles better than her unreliable legs. At least it hadn’t hit the back of her head. She’d be another junkie lying on the street.

  Welga shuddered. She’d never felt this alone, not even in the blacked-out regions of North Africa. At least there she had her squad mates. She missed Por Qué—the real one. She hadn’t bothered to talk to her agent since the stellas crashed. The majority of Por Qué’s capabilities resided in remote servers, not in the small bit of hardware embedded in her body, but maybe some company was better than none.

  “Por Qué, what’s the network status here?”

  “Emergency access only.” Christ, her agent sounded so stiff when she was off-line.

  Welga climbed into the truck. “It’s good to hear your voice. Por Qué, my location is the corner of Golden Gate and Leavenworth. I need real-time guidance to get home. Emergency network access code is—” She read the numbers from a physical encryption key.

  A map popped up in her visual. Welga sighed in relief as the overlay showed her where to drive. The way home posed challenges, but the zip took the edge off her tremors and Por Qué’s help allowed her to focus on steering.

  She parked along the curb and had to run over half a washing-bot, smashing it further. “Sorry,” she muttered as she passed through the entry into their hive.

  Someone had propped the door open with a chunk of metal. No doubt from another abused, destroyed bot. The wiser people would turn off their WAI-based devices rather than trash them, but everyone would pay to restore the world when sanity returned. Had this accomplished what the Machinehood wanted? People refusing to use their WAIs seemed temporary madness, not a change in the way of life. Her grandma had told stories of the days when only rich people or the military had access to AIs. Bots came even later, during her parents’ time. Would this fear last long enough for society to learn how to function without machines?

  The hive’s elevator was out of service, so Welga ran up the stairs, two at a time, through warm, still air. Someone must have shut down the building WAI. She knocked on the door to her apartment. Por Qué couldn’t let her in today. The door swung inward to reveal a care-bot.

  “Your name,” the bot said through its speaker.

  “Olga Ramírez. This is my apartment. Where’s Connor Troit?”

  “In here,” Connor called out. His voice, raspy and weak, came from the bedroom. “Care-bot, I authorize entry.”

  The bot moved aside, and Welga ran to the bedroom as fast as the duo-zip let her. Connor
lay on their bed and struggled into a sitting position as she entered. His blond hair stuck out in greasy tufts, and his skin looked more pink and raw than hers. Ugly green bruises mottled his bare, pale torso.

  “Christ, you look like shit,” Welga said.

  “Thanks. What are you doing here? Are you off the mission?”

  “I’m happy to see you, too.”

  She leaned in and kissed him. Days’ worth of stubble scratched around her lips, but she didn’t give a damn. He smelled ten times better than she did. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. Her breath hitched as he ran his hand down her spine.

  Welga sat back and held her hand to his forehead. “You’re feverish.” She fished the pill case from her pocket and handed him an antibac and an antiviral. “Figured you might need these. Guess I was right.”

  “You’re amazing. The agency let you go with all of this?” He swallowed them and said, “That’s a lot of zips.”

  She tried to keep a blank face.

  “Goddamn it! You’re getting worse, aren’t you?”

  Maybe Olafson was right. She couldn’t do espionage.

  He grabbed her hand. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you before the launch, and then the stellas went down when you were with that Machinehood thing. I’m glad you’re home.” His grip tightened.

  “Me too, and I have good news: we’re going to Eko-Yi.”

  His expression didn’t reflect the joy she expected.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “According to the care-bot, my internal organs haven’t regrown enough to withstand launch forces. I’m fighting infections, too, as you could tell. You were right when you said I was in no shape for a rocket ride. I’m sorry. I can’t go up with you, but you should still do it. Like you said, they’ll give me priority once you’re there.”

  “I’ll get to the hospital and bring back what you need.”

  “Don’t bother. Marcelo tried yesterday. They’re out of supplies. Between the WAI shutdowns and the stellas, the trucks aren’t running.”

  “Goddamn the Machinehood. This is why we need to stop them.”

  “It isn’t over? What happened with the operative you caught?”

  “I’ll fill you in after I secure the room,” Welga promised. She kicked off her shoes and began to undress. “But first I need a bath. Can I get you anything before I go in?”

  He shook his head. “You’re teasing me.”

  Welga swayed her hips as she entered the bathroom. “I’m just getting started.”

  * * *

  She couldn’t get hot water from the tap, but at least it was clean. Without the centralized timer, she could run the shower as long as she wanted. She scrubbed with shampoo and soap until she couldn’t see dirt anywhere.

  “You are due to check in,” Por Qué reminded her.

  Right. A wooden-sounding off-line agent still beat having none. Welga dried off and pulled on basic pants and a shirt from the cleaner. They must have been sitting in there since before the Santiago assignment. She blew Connor a kiss and went to the front room for her gear. With the stellas down, swarms couldn’t fly, so the likelihood of the public seeing their conversation was slim, but the Machinehood remained a threat. Given what they’d already compromised, standard countermeasures might be worthless, but she had to try.

  “Bedroom secured,” Por Qué said.

  Welga flipped the switch on the agency’s radio. It had no visual feed, but Olafson’s voice came through clearly.

  “I’m here,” Welga said.

  “Good. Get Troit on the channel, and I’ll introduce him officially to the mission. His clearance is good otherwise.”

  “He’s here, too.”

  Connor raised his brows as Olafson spoke. After reading him into Operation Organica, Olafson explained the mission and recited the sequence of numbers and letters that would authorize their launch. Connor looked grim but kept his acknowledgments to a minimum. Thankfully, Olafson didn’t ask about Connor’s health, and her partner didn’t volunteer.

  “Ramírez, Troit, I know I don’t have to tell you how critical it is to get someone on that station, but I’m going to say it anyway. Whatever it takes.”

  “Understood,” Welga said.

  Olafson ended the call.

  Connor handed back the radio. “Please tell me what the hell is going on and why you didn’t say anything about my injuries.”

  “During the Jackson clusterfuck, I pocketed a piece of the metal from the Machinehood operative. It had traces of blood on it because I got to it before the explosion. The lab at headquarters did a genetic analysis and found a possible connection to a family on Eko-Yi, plus the material came from off-world. The Machinehood might have ties to the al-Muwahhidun empire—probably does—but the android we captured said she came from ‘one,’ which confirmed a connection to the space station, enough that the president issued an embargo on launches to them. Maybe the caliph is funding their operation or selling them some biotech, but I think Ao Tara and Eko-Yi might be running it. Where else could you hide something like this? The operative admitted to being a Buddhist. The agency doesn’t have anyone up there, but Rice thought my theory was worth checking out. Since I had a seat for the launch, it made more sense to send me there than to the Maghreb, and since you’re also a trained intelligence agent, they trust you to back me up.”

  Connor ran a hand through his hair. “So your homecoming wasn’t about retirement. You aren’t here for us to make a new life together.”

  “How can we do that with the world in chaos? Look at your condition! You should be healed by now. And you haven’t seen the outside world. The roads are full of wrecked bots. People are sick and dying in the streets. No one wants to leave home, because they don’t have pills or swarms to protect them.”

  “Goddamn it, Welga.” He settled back against his pillow and closed his eyes. “I’m so tired of this shit.” A tear trickled from the corner of one eye.

  “So am I,” she said gently, ignoring the pang in her heart, “but I can’t sit around and watch people get hurt like this, not when I can do something about it.”

  “I know,” he whispered. “And I can’t go with you to Eko-Yi. According to the minimal capability of Marcelo’s care-bot, I’m not in much danger as long as I keep lying here. The force of the launch could set off internal bleeding again. It could kill me.”

  Whatever it takes. “Okay, then you stay here. I’ll go up alone. We let the agency find out after the launch. They might not be thrilled by it, but I can’t risk them grounding me.”

  “In your condition? At least my body will heal. We don’t know what’s happening to yours. What if you can’t fight? You can’t defend yourself. What good will you do if you go up there and die?”

  “More than I’ll do here,” she said. “At the very least, I can look for firsthand proof of what they’re doing, how they’re making the dakini. I’m fine as long as I take zips. The pills will help me in a fight, too. Come on, cardo, this isn’t our first go at this.”

  “I thought—hoped—we had put ourselves on a new path.” His voice caught. “One where I didn’t have to worry about when or if you’d come home.”

  She stopped pacing. Connor’s face held an expression of resigned despair. The familiar contours had sunken from his illness, and she wanted nothing more than to hold him forever, watch him regain his health.

  Welga eased herself next to him on the bed and took his hand. “I can’t promise I’ll come back, but—short of abandoning this mission—I’ll do everything in my power to make it happen. I’ve spent my whole life looking for a way to help people. Don’t ask me to stop now, not even for you, please. If I can find and destroy the facility that’s creating the dakini, we can stop the Machinehood, and people can go back to whatever their lives were before all this.” She thought about her father, Luis, Carma. Would anyone go on as they had, now that they had seen how quickly things could go from calm to chaos? “I can help heal the world. No one’s life is wor
th more than that.”

  “Yours is, to me.”

  “Then help me. Please, cardo. Get me the contacts for the rocket club that’s doing the launch. Tell me everything you can recall about Ao Tara and Eko-Yi. The more prepared I am, the more likely I’ll succeed and come back to you.”

  “Just like old times?”

  “Not even remotely, but we can pretend.”

  * * *

  She spent the next day planning and packing. It took Welga half a day to reach the Neo-Buddhists’ rocket club and convince them to prepare for the launch in spite of the embargo.

  “My friends in the government are talking to the White House,” she told them. “They’re trying to frame this as a humanitarian launch. You won’t be allowed to send any material that the station could use for electronics or biotech, but you can send people, food, and water.”

  Some of the club members knew about her shield work for Platinum. She didn’t volunteer her connection with the agency. Nor did she mention that she’d be traveling alone. Connor’s fever rose and fell with each round of antibacs. She didn’t want to think about what might happen after supply ran out. He’d been right about the hospitals. She tried every one, and they had nothing to give. That almost tempted her into pulling strings with her Organica status, but the risk of telling the agency about Connor’s condition ruled it out. No matter what they could procure, he wouldn’t be fit in time for the launch.

  Every twelve hours, she checked in with Olafson. Neither the emergency constellation nor the agency’s satellite radio could handle the data exchange for a full briefing on Eko-Yi. The dakini hadn’t divulged any further information. The JIA would escalate its interrogation tactics, but by the time they convinced her to talk, Welga expected to be off-world.