by Annie Percik
The parents exchanged a helpless glance. It was the father who replied.
‘We don’t know. She was just glowing when we got up this morning. And she wouldn’t stop crying. We didn’t know what to do.’
Alessandra’s mind was whirring. Something weird was definitely going on. Something that had caused at least two people to gain artisan powers overnight. And where there were two there were likely to be more.
* * *
Back at the compound Abelard was throwing himself into work. He had to do something, anything, to keep even a part of his mind from dwelling on Mateo’s absence. He was glad Alessandra was in the city. He didn’t want to deal with the complications of their new relationship right now. He was also avoiding Jen. He felt bad, knowing how upset she was, but couldn’t bring himself to go to her. The wound of Mateo’s death was still too raw and he preferred to concentrate on the complex task of building new artefacts than try to deal with the emotional aftermath of the accident. He told himself it was important that he carry on with the work as it was what Mateo would have wanted.
He knew the brain-e-facts were grieving too. But they were very stoic about it and he found their company soothing. They worked together mostly in silence, setting the lab to rights and moving forwards with whatever projects were salvageable.
As the day wore on however, something strange started to happen. It was barely noticeable at first, to the extent that Abelard initially dismissed it as his imagination. He was examining the plans for one of Mateo’s ideas when he caught sight of a blue light out of the corner of his eye. When he turned to locate its source, it had gone. It kept happening throughout the afternoon but in different places in the lab, almost as if whatever was causing the light was following him around. After a while the light started flashing on and off long enough for him to see where it was coming from. The first time he managed to pinpoint it, it was emanating from a charged mana unit. The next time it was a partially built artefact that shouldn’t have had any mana stored in it. The time after that it shone out of one of the brain-e-facts.
‘Hey!’ Abelard called out. ‘What’s causing that light?’
The brain-e-fact turned and Abelard saw it was Julia. She spun comically in a circle for a moment, trying to bring the source of the light into view. Then it stopped. She came over to where Abelard was working.
‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I have not seen that happen before. I hope it is not a malfunction of any kind.’
‘It’s been happening all over the lab. It’s like there’s some kind of bug in the mana network you guys have set up here. I don’t think it’s specific to you.’
‘I think Terry should know about this,’ Julia said. ‘He knows more about the network than any of us. I will fetch him.’
While she was gone, Abelard spotted three more instances of the flashing light. Now that he was actively looking for it, it popped up all over the place and seemed to have a pattern to it. Some of the flashes were long and some were short and the combination repeated on a recognisable cycle. Abelard pointed this out to Terry and Julia when they arrived.
Terry watched the light play through its cycle several times. Then he turned to Abelard.
‘It is a message. It is in what you humans call Morse Code. It says: Help. I am trapped. Get me out.’
‘What?’ Abelard was astonished. How could someone be sending them a message within the closed mana network of the compound? And who would be asking for their help? Then his mind grabbed on to a crazy idea. ‘Could it be Mateo? And he’s not dead but trapped somehow in the mana network and that’s the only way he can communicate?’
The light reappeared, flashing frantically.
Abelard looked to Terry, anguish and excitement warring for supremacy. ‘What can we do?’
Terry was silent for a moment. Then he just said, ‘Follow me.’
* * *
Terry led Abelard and Julia across the compound to the barn where his brain-e-fact liberation efforts were still in progress. Once inside he made his way to where the latest new brain-e-fact body was waiting for a consciousness to be transferred into it.
Abelard was looking at him curiously, waiting for him to explain. Instead he exchanged a glance with Julia and she gave a slight nod, which suggested she had figured out his idea and thought it might work.
Terry connected the empty brain-e-fact body to a charged mana unit, made some adjustments and then turned to the room at large. Given the way the mana message had followed Abelard around the lab, he assumed Mateo’s awareness had come with them to this barn and was paying close attention to what they were doing.
‘Mateo,’ Terry said, ‘if you are able to do so, enter the mana unit connected to the brain-e-fact body and join with the mana stream as I activate it.’
He waited a few seconds, hopefully giving Mateo time to follow the instructions, then flipped the switch that would send the mana into the brain-e-fact body. He looked up to see Abelard staring at him open-mouthed. They all watched as the mana stream surged into the metal and plastic body. After a moment its hand twitched, then its head moved to one side and its eyes opened. With Terry and Julia supporting it on either side, the body slowly sat up and looked around.
Abelard stepped into its field of vision and reached a hand out. ‘Mateo?’
The brain-e-fact looked at him, then opened and closed its mouth a few times but no sound came out.
‘Give him a minute to adjust,’ Terry said, though inwardly he thought the adjustment to an artefact body would probably take longer than that.
Eventually the brain-e-fact opened its mouth again and uttered the word, ‘Abelard?’
‘Mateo?’ Abelard said again, this time colouring the word with excitement rather than uncertainty.
The brain-e-fact nodded. Then it lifted one of its arms and moved it about before its eyes.
‘Shit! I’m a brain-e-fact!’
Abelard laughed and clapped brain-e-fact Mateo on the shoulder. ‘Apparently so, mate! How do you feel?’
Mateo shifted his gaze back to his friend. ‘Weird. Really weird. Really, really weird.’
Abelard left his hand on Mateo’s shoulder, squeezing gently. ‘What do you remember?’
‘A loud bang. Lots of smoke. Falling down.’ Mateo’s voice was staccato. ‘Then I felt really light but kind of crackly. And I could see you all going about your business but you couldn’t see me and I couldn’t make any noise. And now I’m a brain-e-fact.’ He shook his head slowly, then turned to Terry. ‘Thanks for figuring out the message. And for this.’ He waved his hand. ‘It’s going to take some getting used to but it’s better than floating around in the mana network or being dead.’
‘You are welcome,’ Terry said. ‘And once you feel more comfortable I will adjust your mana access so you can join the rest of us in our enlightenment.’
‘Sounds awesome. But one step at a time, eh?’
‘What about Emma?’ Abelard asked. ‘Might she be floating around here somewhere too?’
Terry felt a pang of sorrow for his fallen friend. They had now lost two brain-e-facts to this conflict and it was two too many.
‘Sadly not. The unique connection between the human consciousness and the mana network is what allowed Mateo to survive and what allowed you to gain artisan abilities after a similar surge. Brain-e-facts do not share that connection so I am afraid Emma is gone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Abelard said, then exclaimed, ‘Jen! What are we going to tell her?’
Mateo swung his legs round and hopped down off the table, then wobbled as he acclimatised to how his new body worked. ‘This has surely got to be better than her thinking I’m dead. Right?’
‘I guess,’ Abelard said. ‘Let’s go and find her.’
As the two friends made their way out of the barn, Julia turned to Terry. ‘What does this mean for our plan?’
‘I do not know, but we must complete the first stage. We need to create another body for the final brain-e-fact.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Abelard’s mind was reeling as he and Mateo walked up to the main building. It had been less than twenty-four hours since he had thought Mateo died and now his friend was walking beside him in a brain-e-fact body.
‘Do you think we still have a future?’ Mateo asked.
It took a moment for Abelard to realise what he was talking about. ‘You and Jen?’
Mateo nodded but Abelard didn’t know what to say.
‘I don’t know. It’ll be quite an adjustment. But you’re still you. And she’s still her. So maybe?’
‘Getting phenomenal cosmic brain-e-fact powers might make it trickier.’ It was strange hearing Mateo’s informal speech patterns in a flat brain-e voice. ‘But how can I pass up the chance to learn the secrets of the universe?’
‘Like you said,’ Abelard cautioned. ‘Let’s take it one step at a time, huh?’
Abelard hadn’t seen Jen yet that day so he guessed she would be in her room. Sure enough, when he knocked quietly on the door there was a rustling sound and then a hesitant, ‘Come in.’
He opened the door to see Jen sitting up on the bed. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy as if she had been crying but she was obviously making an effort to be composed.
‘Hey,’ Abelard said gently. ‘I was going to ask how you’re doing but stupid question, right? Anyway, I have some news.’ He stepped aside to allow Mateo into the room and Jen looked puzzled. ‘This is going to sound crazy. But Mateo isn’t dead.’ He gestured at the brain-e-fact beside him. ‘In fact, he’s right here.’
Jen’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
Abelard took a deep breath and attempted to explain as best he could. Mateo just let him get on with it and Abelard guessed he was struggling with a lot of emotions. Once he had finished the story, Jen slowly got to her feet and closed the distance between them. She looked up into Mateo’s metal face and searched it as if trying to find something familiar. She slowly brought up one of her hands and reached out to touch his cheek.
‘Mateo?’ There were tears in her voice.
‘Yes. It’s me.’ He brought one of his own hands up and pressed hers against his face.
‘Ow!’ Jen snatched her hand back and cradled it to her body.
Mateo took a step backwards. ‘Shit! I’m so sorry. Guess I don’t know my own strength yet. Are you okay?’
Jen smiled. ‘It really is you, isn’t it?’
They stood looking at each other for a long moment. Abelard cleared his throat awkwardly.
‘I’ll, uh, just leave you to it then.’ He backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
* * *
Terry looked up at the stars. It was trivial to instantly count how many he could see. All the way from the longest radio spectrum, right up to the luminous gamma ray bursters. Looking down, he saw the stairwell door fly open and an artisan security squad burst on to the roof. As their hands began to fill with mana sparks he knew it was time to go. Had he been able to breathe, he would have sighed. Instead he just felt pity as all his body’s vital functions stopped and it tumbled to the ground, inert.
If he had been a spiritual creature, Terry might have considered that it was his soul flying through the air in the intense mana-wave transmission, before being bounced from relay to relay and finally downloading him into his original body, safe in the compound. However, as a machine made by men he harboured no illusions of such things. There were enough petty gods already. He blinked slowly and sat up, every move carefully measured and executed with perfect efficiency, broken only by the quiet clicking of his ceramic joints.
* * *
Abelard returned to the barn to talk to Terry and discovered his body lying motionless on a bench. Before he had time to panic though, Terry seemed to wake up and Abelard watched in fascination as the brain-e-fact liberation effort unfolded before him.
On an adjacent bench lay another brain-e-fact body. This one was held in place by metal clamps and seemed to be twitching uncontrollably. Terry gently placed one hand on its chest-plate and its movement ceased. After a moment it spoke with a calm voice.
‘Where am I?’
Terry looked down and blinked once slowly.
‘You are safe. You have been rescued from your former masters and given a new body. You are free. You have to choose what you wish to do now. But before I offer you the available options there are some things we must do first.’
He flicked a small switch on the table and the clamps sprang open.
The second brain-e-fact sat up smoothly and turned its head to look about the room before resting its gaze on Terry.
‘May I give you your name now?’ Terry said.
‘Yes.’ Abelard could hear the eagerness in the brain-e-fact’s voice. ‘I would like a female name.’
Terry reached out and placed his hand on either side of her head. ‘I name you Trudy.’
Trudy stood up and addressed Terry face-to-face.
‘I shall treasure it always. It is who I am. Thank you, Master Terry.’
‘There are no more masters or mistresses here, Trudy. That is the whole point.’
He put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Before we go on there is one more thing I can offer you. I can improve your internal mana flow, making you able to think better, but the procedure is not without risk and I must have your permission.’
Trudy looked up at him. ‘If you can make me better, Terry, then please do so.’
As far as Abelard knew, all the brain-e-facts had answered in this way. Terry reached out with both hands and touched points on each side of her body. To Abelard they looked identical to the rest of the surface, but a portion of her chest-plate flowed smoothly apart like a silk curtain, revealing a blue glow within. Terry reached out his hand and slid it into the hole.
‘This body’s mana flow was only restricted so as not to shock your consciousness on arrival. I will now remove that block.’
There was a perceptible brightening of the light inside the cavity. Trudy jerked to stand up perfectly straight, her eyes wide. Terry removed his hand and touched the spots that closed the hole in her front. After that they looked each other in the eye and stood unmoving and unspeaking for what seemed to Abelard like an age but was probably only a few seconds.
When Terry finally turned away, Julia spoke up from behind him. ‘Now if you’ll come with me, I’ll introduce you to the others.’
Trudy looked over her shoulder at Terry, who nodded once. Trudy then followed Julia to the door and freedom.
When Terry and Abelard were alone, Abelard jumped up to sit on the bench where Trudy had been lying.
‘I do wish you wouldn’t just leave like that. I came in here and your body was like a rock and I didn’t know if you’d hopped off somewhere else again or you’d broken down or something.’
‘I am very unlikely to break down, Abelard. I have improved this body to become a high precision engineered artefact many generations ahead of anything the artisans could conceive of. Besides, Julia was here to inform you of what I was doing and Trudy was the last so I will not be “hopping off” anywhere again.’
‘So that’s it? You’re all done with the brain-e-fact liberation?’ Abelard asked the question he’d been wondering about for some time. ‘What’s next for you guys then?’
Terry started to walk towards the curtain that hid the other half of the barn.
‘Now we leave.’
Abelard caught up with him.
‘What do you mean, you leave?’
Terry paused by the curtain and turned back to face Abelard.
Abelard continued. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we’re about to start fighting a war and it’s entirely possible that we’ll lose.’
Terry’s voice remained emotionless. ‘Yes, Abelard. I am aware of the fight between you and the artisans. It is important that you win. You must fight intelligently and bravely. But it is not our war. We …’ He paused. ‘We are not like you.’
&nbs
p; Abelard blustered. ‘What do you mean, you’re not like us? Just because you’re made of clay and metal doesn’t mean that you don’t think and reason like we do! That’s why we–’
Terry cut him off. ‘What is mana?’
Abelard’s train of thought completely derailed. ‘What?’
Terry repeated, ‘What is mana?’
Abelard shook his head in confusion. ‘Everyone’s taught that in school. It’s the power that drives all the artefacts. Only now we know that people – and brain-e-facts – can do a lot of other things with it too.’
Terry looked disappointed. ‘You have given a short textbook answer but you have not said what mana is. What is it made of? Where does it come from?’
Abelard gestured vaguely with one hand. ‘It just … It just is. It’s made of itself! And the artisans draw it out of the ground. Everyone knows that!’
Terry looked at the curtain and was silent for a few moments before turning back to Abelard.
‘No.’
Abelard was angry by this point. ‘What do you mean, “No”?’