The Quantum Gate Trilogy

by Eric Warren

  “No,” she said, standing. “You tell me about him right now. If there’s another human out there then I deserve to know. All this time you didn’t tell me? All this time you let me think I was the last of them, some kind of cruel anomaly of nature? Why can’t you get him to free your people for you? Let me guess, your winning personality pissed him off enough that he got fed up—”

  “He’s dead,” Frees said, the words landing like brick on concrete. “Happy?”

  She restrained from shaking her head. “No. What happened?”

  Frees took a long time before responding and she couldn’t tell if he was doing it to deny her, or if he was just trying to build up the courage. Finally, he spoke.

  “Marcus was a good soul. He only wanted to help. I found him wandering the plains near our home. At the time I thought he was another machine, someone who needed help. Because he was very disoriented.” Frees screwed up his face like recounting the memories caused him pain. But she wasn’t about to interrupt.

  “It was part of my programming to help people. And he hid it well. Better than you. He’s the one who took that picture you saw. Which was probably just incinerated. But he lived with us a while, me and my family. And I never questioned it. I was a good little soldier, just following my programming. I was the helpful farmer-slash-handyman. And all Marcus seemed to want to do was observe me. It didn’t interfere with my work, so I let him.”

  His words started coming faster. It was as if Arista had nicked a water pipe with a shovel, and the more water that poured out the larger the hole grew, until the water was unstoppable.

  “Things stayed the same for about six months, until the winter season hit. Marcus and I were out in the field, clearing the last of the weeds for the season. He’d started helping me by then and for a human he was very stout. I never would have suspected anything if he hadn’t started sneezing. But it came on quickly, and within hours he had a fever and was shivering. That was when I turned.”

  “Were you the only one?” she asked.

  “No one else was around us as he was getting sick. And by the time I’d changed he insisted I return him to the barn out by the house, and not let him near my family. I was so disoriented by what had happened I complied.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Max said under her breath to Jill. “He gets turned by one of them getting sick, but I have to have my neck broken by that one for it to happen?”

  “Shush,” Jill said, patting Max on the arm.

  Frees continued as if he hadn’t heard them. “I made sure he was as comfortable as he could be in the barn with plenty of blankets. I offered to get him medicine but he said it wouldn’t work on him. He carried some which I fed him, but it never seemed to make a difference. It was then he revealed to me he was human. And that he’d been observing me for scientific research.”

  “Scientific research?” Her neck grew hot.

  “He’d become enamored with the idea of the machines copying human culture. He said he had another mission, he was supposed to be checking on something else, but he thought he had time. He was going to spend a year with me then move on to his real mission.”

  “Which was?”

  “You, I presume.”

  Arista stepped back. “What…what does that mean?” She was someone’s mission? A human no less? How could that be possible? Why would she be anyone’s mission?

  “He told me it was his job to monitor another human in our society, but he hadn’t reached her yet. He said he wasn’t in a hurry. Which is how I knew you were out there somewhere. I just didn’t know where.”

  Arista took a few more steps back, having trouble processing what he’d said. “I don’t understand. Why would he want to monitor me?”

  “He never told me, despite me asking. Marcus went downhill fast and the following day he couldn’t even speak. The day after that he was dead.”

  “Do you know what killed him?”

  “Bacteria. Specifically, xenopolycythemia. It’s deadly to humans.”

  Another human. Someone else like her. A person who might have had some answers for her. Where she came from and why she couldn’t remember her life as a young child. He might have even been a blood relative.

  “Did he say anything else? Anything that I dunno, I might find useful?” Her sarcasm was biting, even to her.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was relevant. He’s already dead, he didn’t give me very much information and I thought it might…distract you.”

  “From your stupid little freedom cause?” Arista yelled. “Good call because finding out I’m not the only human is pretty distracting! Great job keeping me on target.” She stomped out of the living room, pushing past Max not even caring if she said anything or not.

  He’d lied, not only about how he’d changed to ochre, but about how she’d been the last person. He’d had so many opportunities to tell her, or at least give her a little hope.

  Before she reached the back door, she turned back to him. “It’s a good thing I don’t have a gun built into my hand right now because you’d have a hole in your head!” She threw the door open, storming into the backyard.

  It had grown colder and the moon shone down on her, bathing the overgrowth in soft light. Arista collapsed against the wooden fence, sliding down as tears streamed down her face. She knew it. She knew he was keeping something from her. She just hadn’t expected it to be another human. But now that he’d said it, it was foolish of her to think it had been anything else. She just hadn’t wanted to admit to herself her one ally had lied to her. And all for his stupid pride.

  “Arista?” Jill’s voice came from the back door. She didn’t answer, she didn’t want to see them, to listen to them. She was stranger to these people, someone who didn’t belong. What if there weren’t any others? But someone must have given Marcus his job, right?

  Jill approached, plopping down beside her with amazing spryness. She smiled upon seeing the surprise on Arista’s face. “I’m just programmed to act old. You ever hear that sayin’ don’t judge a book by its cover?” She winked at Arista.

  “I sometimes forget. Or maybe sometimes I just pretend. That you’re all not really machines after all, but you’re like me. Seems less lonely that way.”

  “Bah,” Jill said, making a dismissive motion with her hand. “What’s the difference? Human, machine, we’re all alive, ain’t we? It’s just as easy to hurt my feelings as it is yours.”

  “I suppose.”

  “He’s ashamed. He thinks Marcus’s death was his fault. Like he should have been able to prevent it somehow.” Jill said.

  “He told you?”

  “I coaxed it out of him once. Never could get him to show me his face though. Makes sense to me now.”

  “What’s that?” She sniffed, wiping her nose with her jacket sleeve.

  “Why he’s so skittish about bacteria. Why he removed his skin. Nothing to infect.”

  “Yeah, but it couldn’t have been infected anyway. It’s—”

  Jill put her weathered hand on Arista’s arm. “We ain’t always logical, hon. Not after what you do to us.”

  Arista drew a deep breath, letting it out slowly through her nose. The back of her head tapped against the fence.

  “Do you remember Mike’s Fruit Stand?” Jill asked.

  Arista shook her head, rocking it back and forth against the wood.

  “Cute little place on the Pacific Coast Highway. Little ways north of what used to be San Fran. You and your parents stopped for some fruit. Weren’t many people around that day. I was on my way to see my grand-daughter; I always brought her a basket of goods and got them from Mike’s Fruit Stand. Every month, same day, same hour. No matter what was ‘in season’. And you and your family pulled up in that beat-up old Subaru.” Jill laughed. “Thing had to be a hundred years old.”

  “One-hundred-twenty-five. My dad found it, fixed it up,” Arista said softly. “It kept us from being tracked. No onboard computer.”


  Jill nodded. “You accompanied your mom to the stand, I don’t even think you saw me sitting at one of the picnic tables, counting my fruit for Sarah. You must have been starving, because you picked up an apple and bit into it before realizing it wasn’t a real apple. At least, not the kind you could ingest. And I don’t know if you got scared or angry or what, but your parents hustled you out of there faster than I could see. And as your car pulled out of the dirt I felt this tingling sensation in the back of my head. Seems I was the only one close enough to you to be turned.”

  Arista barely remembered the day. She’d had a bad reaction to the apple without her powders. It had taken a few days to stabilize her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant for that to happen.”

  “Oh, hon, don’t be sorry. You gave me the greatest gift. Though Sarah never did get that fruit.” She laughed long and hard at that, and Arista had a hard time not joining in. “I tried following you for a while, but you were crafty. Eventually I settled on Chicago. I knew eventually you’d probably need replacement bodies for your parents. It was all a matter of time. What I didn’t count on was finding Frees here too.”

  “He should have told me.”

  “You’re right. He should have.”

  “All he cares about—”

  “Is making sure everyone has the same opportunities and experiences he has. As you have. He’s not perfect by any means, but I believe his heart is in the right place.” She smirked. “And when I say heart, ah’m speaking metaphorically.”

  Arista smiled, turning to Jill. “We have to steal two bodies from the production facility. Can we store them here until we can find my parents?”

  “’course.”

  “Do you still think I should help him?”

  “If you do, I wouldn’t make it easy on him,” she said, winking again. Her eyes traveled to Arista’s wrist. “Don’t you make any unnecessary sacrifices. If it’s not worth it to you, don’t do it. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

  Jill stood, making her way back into the house. Arista noticed how much straighter she walked when she wasn’t pretending to be old. Damn. This wasn’t supposed to be this hard. Machines were just supposed to be machines, she wasn’t supposed to feel bad for them. But then again, her parents and Jonn had just been machines once. And now they were so much more. Didn’t all the machines deserve that fate? Self-determination? And if she had the ability to make it happen, it was her fault if nothing ever changed. Maybe they weren’t human, but if they all acted a little more human she might not feel so isolated all the time.

  Arista pushed herself back up and re-entered the house, a new sense of vigor running through her veins. It was time to make some changes.

  Twenty-Nine

  “MAX?”

  The woman turned to Arista as she re-entered the house. Her dark eyes remained narrowed like she wanted to kill her.

  “I just wanted to say I am truly sorry for attacking you. I was selfish and callous and honestly didn’t even consider you a person at the time. I won’t make that mistake again and I apologize.”

  “Didn’t consider me a person?” she asked, a threat beneath the voice.

  “I didn’t expect you to change. I thought you’d remain a husk. I figured they would come and pick you up, repair you, and send you on your merry way.”

  Max stared daggers at her. “You nearly killed me for some clothes. Which you happen to still be wearing.”

  “I know. I can’t tell you how much I regret it. All of it.”

  Max grimaced. “Well. I guess you did free me in a way. But you scared me shitless. It wasn’t until Jill picked me up and brought me back here before I finally calmed down. She’s had me downloading terabytes of information ever since this afternoon.”

  “On what?”

  “How shitty humans were.”

  Arista resigned herself. “I guess I deserve that.”

  “Tell you what. You let me hit you across the neck with a steel pipe and we’ll call it even.”

  Arista took a step back, eyeing the woman until a hint of a smile broke out across Max’s face. “You had me there.”

  “Just don’t try it again. I’ve been studying all kinds of combat. No one will ever get the jump on me ever.”

  “I believe it,” Arista said, feeling the uneasy truce between them. Maybe it was best to offer an olive branch. “Do you want your jacket back? I can always find something else.”

  “No. New life, new clothes, new name,” Max said. “Those represent my old life. I don’t need them anymore.”

  “New name?”

  “Maria sounded a little too soft. And if we can just rename ourselves anything…” She indicated through the doorway to the living room. “I think Max is quite tame.”

  “It fits you,” Arista said. Sensing this was about the best she could accept from Max, Arista moved back into the living room. Jill was back in her rocker, watching Frees who sat on the couch in the spot Arista had previously occupied. He jumped up when she entered. “Arista I—”

  “Shut up. We’re going to the production facility. We’ll bring the bodies back here before it gets daylight. Then tomorrow night, we hit the Cadre.”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me how I change the machines. What do I need to do?”

  “It’s when you get emotional. At least I think that’s what it is.”

  “Emotional? I’m emotional all the time. If that were it I would change every person I came in contact with.”

  “It happens when you’re feeling some extreme emotion. Whether it’s being happy, hurt, angry, scared—anything that moves you outside of the ‘baseline’ that all machines live in. That’s how you changed your parents when you first met them, you were scared to death.”

  She thought back. Jonn had changed when she’d first kissed him on the cheek. Arista had been nervous beyond belief but had been able to mask it. To keep it under the surface like she did with most of her emotions. At the office when her hand burned off she’d been in intense pain coupled with intense fear. The nurse in the elevator had changed when she’d been angry at being caught. And Patrick had changed when her adrenaline had skyrocketed after all those Peacekeepers fired at her. Finally, Max had changed when she’d been determined, yet scared. Was it really that simple?

  “That…makes sense,” she said. “How do I do that to everyone at once?”

  “The Cadre has some kind of communication system. I don’t know what it is, but it is something built into the building. If we can access that, get you to broadcast your emotions, I think we can make it work.”

  “What about the proximity?”

  “I’m not convinced that’s part of it. I think the only reason they change when they’re close to you is because they witness what’s going on. If we can send that to each machine’s central cortex, it shouldn’t make a difference if you’re there or not.”

  “Fine. If we meet any resistance on the way, at least I have a weapon now.”

  “You could always take mine,” Max said, tapping the shotgun beside the door.

  “Frees,” Jill said, tearing his attention from Arista. “Don’t let them follow you back here. I can’t afford to lose this place. And neither can you. The equipment to create the power cells is too unstable to move and I doubt I could find it again. If you’re being pursued, do not come back here.”

  “I understand.”

  They made their way to the back door.

  “An’ try not to make any more mouths to feed,” she added. “At least until you’ve gotten rid of the Cadre first. Resources are scarce.”

  Arista nodded.

  “Y’all have fun.”

  ***

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” Arista asked as they slipped back into the hyperloop pod.

  “Yes. Once everything was over. I thought it was best to wait until then.”

  “Do you see why that might anger me?”

  “Now I do.”

  They rode the short trip in silence.
Once they reached the atrium Frees got out and diverted the power to the production facility line. The small pod moved to the center of the room, where the giant turntable turned fifteen degrees, then moved the pod down a new track to a different tunnel.

  “Here we go,” Frees said, getting back in.

  Less than three seconds later they had arrived. The station was similar to the one near Jill’s house, except larger. Built for a bigger capacity. Since the production facility had been built into an old conference center Arista assumed a lot of people used to move through here every day. Back when they still held conferences.

  The climb up the stairs was mercifully short. The stairs looked like they had been a sort of escalator at one point, but without the power they’d taken them the old-fashioned way. Arista had no idea what to expect in the production plant. As far as she knew, this was the primary facility for new machine creation for most of North America. There was probably a backup facility somewhere else; the machines were nothing if not redundant.

  At the top of the stairs was an opening leading out into a wide hallway. Overtop the entrance it proclaimed they were entering the McCormick Convention Center Complex. They passed a variety of abandoned shops, storefronts and kiosks on the way; this had apparently been a kind of mall back when the humans still used it. But since the machines turned it into their own facility, there was no need for them to continue to operate the mall here. Without the convention center traffic, it would serve no purpose. This whole area had been sliced clean from society as if by a scalpel.

  As they drew closer the sounds of humming and whirring reached Arista’s ears. The facility no doubt, with its constant production of new machines to replace the old, non-functioning ones made a lot of noise. She thought back to the person she’d replaced at Manheim. She had managed to break into the insurance company database and intercept the signal to the production plant authorizing a replacement. That was the easiest way to work her way into the position. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t figure out how to get the facility to generate extra bodies. She’d been at it for years without any luck. They’d realized creating a claim through the insurance company would be the easiest way to produce additional units that they could intercept. But all of that had gone to hell. And here she was, in the center of the place she thought she’d never see.