by Peter Smith
She leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder, “Me too, sure you’re ready for an eternity of me, I’m Catholic after all and I meant it when I said, til death do us part.”
He turned, and she straightened. He leaned in and kissed her. When they broke free from each other he smiled, “Yes.”
The plane jerked and her eyes slammed shut, clamping onto his hand, “I don’t know which of you all I hate more but right now I’m leaning toward Kellen.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he made us fly all the way to London to pick his ass up, then to Florida to get our guest. I hate flying. I hate taking off and I hate turbulence. He could have flown to New York on his own and we could have sent a transport to get the Ambassador.”
His hand slid to her thigh, “And you and I could have flown in private.”
She grabbed his hand and placed it back on the arm rest, “Um, no.”
“But weren’t you just talking about how I’m a stud?”
She patted his hand, “On the ground dear, up here you’re a flotation device.
He burst out laughing and was about to ask her what would have to occur for them to join the mile high club when the door to the other part of the cabin opened and their guest stepped.
They turned to see her enter and she looked at them questioningly as they waved her over, “How are you fairing Ambassador?” Eva asked.
The woman sat, her skin flushed as she let out a slight sigh and then appraised Eva’s tense body positioning, “Possibly better than you appear to be handling the flight. Is there anything I can do to help calm your nerves?”
Eva smiled, “That’s very nice of you to offer, but if you can endure as you have for the last day, I can survive a few more minutes in the air.”
The Ambassador nodded and David looked back to the door, “He kick you out?”
She shook her head, “Your Colonel Erwin contacted him. He needed privacy for the conversation and ours had wrapped up for the most part.” Her expression shifted into a grimace as she sank further into the chair, “If you two don’t mind, I’d like to get a bit of rest before we land.”
Eva and he shook their heads, “Not at all, please let us know if there is anything we can do for you.”
Williams turned to Eva as the Ambassador pulled out a neck pillow and used it to support her head. He smiled at her, remembering their recent conversation. He sat back, laughing lightly to himself as she closed her eyes, a content smile stretched across her face.
He patted her hand and thought to himself that he was very much aware of the duration of his decision to marry this woman and he would happily make the decision again.
Maria Patterson
New York Spire
The children’s village was silent as they walked through it on the way to the ground entrance of the New York Spire. Sean had run ahead to get to change into his uniform. Technically, he was still a member of the United States Marine Corps, or at least the organization that had survived “The Fall” and continued in its name.
Fortunately, her father-in-law had convinced the good general to allow for her husband to remain here as a cultural liaison and ambassador of sorts for free humanity and the allied Spire families. She knew he loved his family, but he also loved his Marine family. She knew he would choose her and Alex in a minute too. But she also knew that it would devastate her husband. She was glad the choice hadn’t needed to be made yet.
She, Alex and Tobor took their time walking back into their home and through the silent museum that stood as a reminder of her father’s aspirations. It hadn’t taken long, a little over a year, but after her father had died, many of those that had survived “The Fall” and her father’s subsequent robotic death squads, had emerged from the ruins of North America.
Not many, but a few million over the entire span of the land mass and a few hundred thousand in South America. It had appeared that her father hadn’t been as thorough as she had thought he was, or perhaps people were more canny than she had given them credit for.
It hadn’t felt right keeping the children here, to be raised by machines that had been programmed by the man. There were many families out there that the Marines knew were having problems with conceiving. Years of malnourishment and lack of access to proper medical facilities had led to fertility problems. Other families had suffered the death of children in their infancy. So the idea of adoption had made sense to a lot of them. Even though she wasn’t opposed to the idea, it had taken a lot of convincing from her mother and Williams to let the children go. She didn’t like what her father had done in creating them but they were her responsibility and letting them go to be the children of men and women she knew nothing about didn’t sit well with her.
Eventually agreements had been struck amongst the willing and herself. She would provide lodging, food, water producing equipment as well as 3D printers to anyone who was open to let her drones check in periodically on the progress of the children.
Some had refused, not trusting a robot to visit them after so many years of hiding from them, but the Marines had assured the safety of the families and more had accepted than she had expected. The idea of the children living with regular people had a sense of poetic justice that was too appealing for her to turn away from. Her father had thought the culture of humanity was poison and he was right in some ways, but it wasn’t his place to decide for all of mankind. So having the children he had envisioned as the cure to the toxic culture of man, be raised by those who were very much the product of that way of life just seemed right.
The symmetry of the solution didn’t stop her from losing sleep at night sometimes. It wasn’t unusual for her to get to bed late due to checking on the data feeds from the drone visits. She wasn’t worried that anything would happen to them, but if anything did, she wouldn’t forgive herself. She’d also be certain that anyone that brought harm to them wouldn’t hurt anyone ever again.
General Kellen had also seen fit to make sure a sizable percentage of the children were accepted into families within the Marine ranks and had encouraged what remained of the British, French and German armed forces to do the same. These groups had survived, in one form or another, the destruction of their civilizations and had been working together clandestinely with Dawson of the London Spire and Warin of the Berlin Spire. That so much had slipped past her father spoke volumes to his inability to anticipate all outcomes. It served as further confirmation that his final determination as to the fate of humanity could be wrong.
So the children’s village would remain here. A silent reminder to anyone born after the events that led to their creation. History was a vitally important tool to let others learn from the mistakes and success of those that came before so they could avoid the bad and build upon the good. Despite the positive intentions she was showing by keeping the homes and buildings around, it felt creepy walking through them and she always propelled herself more quickly than she otherwise would have. Energy and life were what she expected from this place, those traits and one more, innocence. Without them, it felt eerie.
When they lived here, she checked on the children nearly every day. As they lived, learned and played at the base of The Spire, her home. They were always so precocious and mystified with the world. There was never a chance for her to slip through this village and into the wilderness beyond without being stopped by them.
The little ones always petitioned her to play in their games and answer their questions about the world, beyond what the nanny drones could or would provide for them. To be honest, it was easy to give into their needs. When she was down here, she was with the only people in the world who didn’t have some kind of dark or selfish agenda.
As they walked through the large glass doors that were the entrance to her home, she spun and walked backwards. While the abandoned nature of the village unnerved her, the place still brought her fond memories of peace, acceptance and safety.
It wasn’t the village that was the problem; it was
the absence of the life that had previously permeated every corner and centimeter of the place. She wondered, not for the first time, if she were to extend an offer to some of the free peoples of North and South America to move here, if any would accept. She could provide them absolute safety and security within the walls of the Spire fortifications and access to any resources they needed to pursue their happiness.
They could prove her father wrong, that those that were already alive weren’t beyond hope of being saved. That with the right situation those that were raised with tribalism, corruption and hatred could change, no matter their age or upbringing. Later tonight she’d sit down with Tobor and hammer out an action plan for approaching known groups of survivors and she’d have her AI assistants come up with a recruitment pitch.
She turned around and caught sight of the living fountain at the center of the vast entrance chamber. The smart material simulating water flowed slowly now. It had since the first day she had come here after the death of her father. The sensors within it still monitored her vitals to see what her mood was, it still was programmed to respond to those emotions by increasing its own rhythm to match her internal thoughts. But it had remained this way, slow, depressed, even the times she had played through the space with Alex and was consciously happy.
They crossed to the bank of elevators that would take them up the outside of the spire, or at least under the outer layer of protective glass that covered the surface of the building. They had an unobstructed view of the whole of the New York area as they rose into the sky.
A forest, vast and healthy, now existed where once a thriving metropolis had stood. Gone were the buildings, roads and subway tunnels, replaced instead by a natural landscape that at first had been very much planned. But as their family had allowed for nature to run its course, it was now a gorgeous display of random beauty.
Fleets of drones still maintained the forest, making certain to clear out debris from its floor so that wild fires only occurred when scheduled. They round up the Ferals that strayed too close and moved them to preserves where they could live in peace. Though the number of them that lived in this area were few now. So many of the Ferals were permanently located in the memorial cemetery she had created on the North Eastern side of the Spire, where the battle that had claimed their lives had occurred.
She remembered when Williams had asked her why she was spending so much time creating a space for people to visit, knowing full well that their families had died long ago. She had responded that it was important to remember the dead and that all atrocities, not just those attributable to her father, should be remembered.
It was the Marines that had used the Ferals as human weapons, forcing them against her family’s defenses. They had been tools for the soldiers, who sent them to the slaughter in order to reveal where the Spire’s defensive systems were. While her father had been responsible for the creation of the Ferals, it was the Marines that had used them.
If the human race was going to grow and become better, it couldn’t fall into the trap of thinking all evil lay at the feet of her father. Humanity needed to know that every man and woman that drew breath was capable of terrible acts, otherwise it might not be vigilant against those that would follow in Jacob Patterson’s footsteps.
She stared out into the distance, imagining that she knew exactly where the various colonies of free man were from where she stood. What she couldn’t see any more was the giant reclamation unit that had for most of her youth trundled its way through what had once been manhattan. The mobile reclamation and construction platform had long since made its way south. She knew exactly where it was she knew where each and everyone of them was as they removed the skeletons of the civilization her father had destroyed.
The lift track angled toward the center of The Spire and sent them beneath the actual skin of the building and the outside world vanished, replaced by a brief glimpse of the superstructure of the building and then an interior wall as the elevator car came to a stop at the hangar level.
Maria looked down at Alex who was jumping with excitement. Her lips stretched into a smile that rebelled against the exhaustion she was enduring. To say she wasn’t looking forward to this meeting was an understatement, “Ready to see Grandma and Grandpa?”
Alex beamed a giant unfettered smile at her, his own special kind of response to her rhetorical question. The doors parted and Tobor was the first to exit, the machine always was even when she tried to beat it to the doors. The hangar was, as always, awash in activity as fighter aircraft were refueled and sent out on their combat air patrols. Transports of various sizes and shapes were loaded with equipment bound for distant parts of the empire or being offloaded to replenish this spire’s supplies.
Already taxied to the side, its ramp lowering to the metal deck, was the Marine transport. Its iconic four jet engine design setting it apart from the rest of the aircraft in the bay. A flash of a memory for so very long ago came to her in that instant. The deafening sound of an explosion, the heat from the flame. Men and pieces of debris raining down from above. She looked up at Tobor, and the machine looked back at her. For a moment, the briefest of seconds, she felt as if Mr. Miller were looking at her.
She and Tobor walked toward the aircraft, Alex did his best to break the sound barrier as he rushed to greet his grand parents. Heavy equipment and drones in the hangar were constantly aware of their position and adjusted their pacing and paths to avoid her little boy as he careened toward the aircraft.
“Do you want to talk about it?” She asked.
“I am unaware of what you are referring to.”
She frowned, “The last time we saw one of these transports, I was four and it was exploding above us as you were getting us all out of D.C.”
The machine regarded her for a moment more and then turned forward again, “I have no additional input.”
“Your sure it doesn’t bother you?”
“I am incapable of experiencing emotion, you are aware of this.”
She smirked, “Yes I know that smart ass, but still, you’re based on him.”
Toby’s steps slowed, and they both came to a stop, “Aaron Miller’s memories and neural pathways were used as a foundational template for my own operating system, however I have none of the emotional attachment to those experiences he did.”
“So it doesn’t anger you, what my father did, stealing your memories” She paused, fighting back a wave of resentment and regret that surged forward. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes and down her face at the memory of losing Mr. Miller the first time her father told her of his death, of the fabricated events that transpired. When she had been searching through the empire’s data bases after her father’s death and discovered the true events, learned that her father had murdered Mr. Miller and his entire team, it felt as if she had lost them all again for a second time.
“He killed you, Toby.”
Tobor’s shoulder’s seemed to sag, at least that’s how she interpreted it, she had that problem assigning human mannerisms to Toby when they weren’t always there, “Mrs. Patterson, I am no more Aaron Miller than he was me, nor Jonathan him.”
She winced, fresh anger brewing within at the genetic experiments that her father had performed. The little boy from the children’s village being the clone of Aaron Miller. The boy had been created out of some misguided effort by her father to assuage his guilt at murdering a good man, “And that doesn’t upset or disturb you. Machines are supposed to want things to be orderly right, well my father doing whatever he damn well pleased with the fates of everyone around him sure as hell doesn’t seem orderly to me.”
“These actions coincide with the personality assessment of your father I have built through years of direct observation. In effect, order was maintained.”
She closed her eyes, letting the statement sink in. A finger slowly raised as if by its presence she could be able to keep the drone from continuing, “Are you telling me that if my father hadn’t acted like a psychop
athic dictatorial douche bag, that would have bothered you?”
Toby’s hand gently laid upon her shoulder and her eyes snapped open, she looked at it resting there and the hate that was boiling over within her subsided, “I’m just so damn tired Toby.”
The machine nodded its head, its opaque black visor reflecting her exhaustion back at her, “I am aware, Maria.”
Her head dipped toward the hand and tt leaned in slightly, “You are attempting to distract yourself from the matter at hand by focusing on the anger you have for your father. You are right to be upset with him, though fixating on that at the current moment will only increase the likelihood of a negative encounter with General Kellen. Which could result in unanticipated consequences that will only further aggravate and distract you.”
She sighed and turned, wrapping her arms around Toby’s body and resting her head on its cold metal chest plate. Tobor was right about all of it, “Toby.”
Tobor’s hands wrapped around her and she wished that she could stay there, but she knew she couldn’t, “Yes, Maria.”
She shifted her head to look into her companion’s faceplate, “If you ever try to psychoanalyze me again, I’ll transfer your program back into the waste processing system.”
“Such behavior would fit with my assessment of your personality.”
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t suppress the grin that rose to her face. She stepped back and pushed Toby’s shoulder, “Come on you ass, lets get this over with.”
“Did I miss him?” Sean said, trotting up next to her, finishing his run from the lift.
She looked him up and down with a smirk, “Nope.”
He looked over his BDU blouse, tugging at the edges to straighten out phantom wrinkles. The sound of feet moving down the ramp reached them and she laughed, “What?” He asked.
“Gum.”