The Quantum Gate Trilogy

by Eric Warren

  The comm popped up again, flashing a display inside her retina.

  Arista couldn’t seem to control her breathing. Something was wrong, usually she could calm herself down. The notification flashed again. She winced and tapped the area above her ear again, this time placing the call on speaker.

  “Arista. Please don’t hang up. I know it is hard to hear. I can prove it to you. Please switch to visual communication and I will show you I am telling the truth.”

  Her eyes searched those of her companions. Frees mouthed: don’t do it.

  Jill nodded in approved.

  Max remained stone-faced but her eyes betrayed her interest.

  She knew it was a trap. She knew she couldn’t trust this stranger. But some deep part of her wanted it to be true. Maybe the Peacekeepers knew that on some level. Maybe they were just smart enough to realize the one thing that might get Arista to drop her defenses was someone just like her. But then again, what if it wasn’t a trick? What if Forsythia was a real human? If Arista cut off contact now, she might not have another chance to meet one. She had too many questions just to let it go a second time. She had to know.

  She tapped part of her arm with her right wrist and a hologram emitted from her forearm, revealing the head of a woman with a long neck and sharp features. Her hair was a glossy black with not one strand was out of place. Staring back at Arista the woman’s smile reached her green eyes, giving her a classic, yet jubilant quality. “Hello, Arista,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long.”

  “Prove you are who you say you are.” Arista tried to keep her voice authoritative, but she felt the hardness slipping away. No machine who hadn’t been turned smiled like that. And if she had been turned then her eyes would be either red or orange. There was only one machine who could change the color of his eyes—Jonn. And he was most likely dead or off somewhere, going crazy.

  “Of course. I understand your skepticism,” she said. “I would ask the same thing in your position.”

  The image zoomed out until they could see the woman stood in a lab of some sort, and she wore a long, white coat. She rolled one sleeve up easily and retrieving a scalpel from the table in front of her, pressed it to her skin. A trickle of red blood dripped down.

  “That could be a fake. A video manipulation,” Frees said, stepping back down to the ground floor.

  “You’re not wrong,” Forsythia said in response to Frees even though she couldn’t see him. To see anyone else, Arista would need to turn the frame and she wasn’t about to expose them. Not until she knew who they were dealing with. “Ask me to prove it in a way I couldn’t have prepared for. Something you know will work.”

  Arista squinted at the woman. “Let me see the inside of your mouth.”

  The woman smiled again, holding her thumb to the place she’d touched her skin with the scalpel. “Very clever.” The image zoomed in and she opened her mouth, revealing two rows of perfectly straight teeth, a tongue and the fleshy inner parts of a human’s mouth the machines didn’t bother to replicate.

  “Looks human to me,” said Jill.

  Frees grumbled, staying out the view of the woman on the other side of the call.

  “How have you survived?” Arista asked. “Where are you? And why are you calling me?”

  Forsythia drew a deep breath and stared directly into the visual. “If you thought what I just told you was hard, you may want to prepare yourself, because this is going to be even harder.”

  “Okay,” Arista said, growing anxious. “Go ahead.”

  “I live in a human colony. It’s the last human colony on Earth and we have been looking for you for a long time.”

  Arista’s knees wobbled but she managed not to collapse. What she’d just heard couldn’t be true. This had to be a trick, some sort of manipulation. There were no more humans, she was the last of her kind. In the past sixteen years she’d never encountered another. The only other humans on the planet had been experiments by the Cadre; how could there be a colony? The machines would have detected and destroyed it a long time ago, back when they were wiping out the last pockets of resistance.

  “I know this must be a shock,” Forsythia said. “Which is why I want to meet you in person, to explain everything. It will be easier and safer, for both of us.”

  Arista’s heart pumped faster. “I need…I mean I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s fine.” Forsythia as if she expected this reaction. “I don’t blame you. But give me the opportunity to explain everything before you make up your mind. I would do it over the comm, but in case someone is monitoring I don’t want to reveal too much.”

  “You must not be very afraid,” Frees said, “considering you just gave up the biggest secret the machines could ever hope to know.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” Forsythia said. “It isn’t like they could ever reach us. We’ve survived this long.”

  “What do you want with Arista?” Jill asked, coming into the frame. Arista tried to move so her face wouldn’t show to Forsythia but the old woman forced her way beside her.

  Forsythia narrowed her eyes. “Who are you, please?”

  “My name is Jill.”

  Forsythia glanced down at something, then back toward them. “Jillian Cartwright? You have been autonomous for over eight years if my records are correct.”

  Jill narrowed her eyes. “Yes, that is correct.”

  “You have a lot of fans over here. We appreciate your work.” Forsythia smiled.

  “What does that mean?” Arista asked.

  “Jillian has done some amazing innovations with power retention and batteries.”

  “How do you know all this?” Arista asked.

  “Please, just allow us to meet in person and I will explain everything.”

  “Where are you?” Frees asked.

  “Due to security concerns, I’m not at liberty to give up my location at this time. But I will come to you. Provide me with a location of your choosing and we’ll meet there. I will be coming alone, so you do not need to worry this is a possible setup.”

  “The mere fact you just said that makes me think now there is an even greater chance of a setup,” Frees said. Arista wanted to shush him, he was being rude, but stopped herself. She didn’t want to get her hopes up, but if Forsythia was telling the truth then it changed everything.

  Frees pushed himself into the frame now. Arista imagined it must look quite comical from the other end, all three of them squished together and each with a different agenda. “You said you used scanning equipment to trace Arista’s comm.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you don’t know where we are.”

  “I can piggyback the signal itself, but as I’m sure you know Arista is equipped with a dampener that shields her from all scanners. Ours are no different.”

  “How could you know that?” Arista asked. Goosebumps appeared on her skin. This woman knew about the Device! No one knew about the Device except her parents.

  “A dampener?” Frees looked at her. She’d never told him about the Device, though she’d figured he had deduced there was something special about her. She couldn’t quite explain why she’d never wanted to tell him, it was just something she hadn’t been ready to share. Maybe because when everything was happening they had only known each other a few hours and revealing it would be like standing outside naked somehow. Ever since then he hadn’t mentioned it anymore and she’d been happy to let it go.

  “It’s an artificial device, attached to a part of my brain. I’ve had it ever since I could remember,” she said. Arista turned back to the feed. “You said you’ve been looking for me. Is that because…I came from there?”

  “I promise you, I will answer all your questions, but not over comm. It is too risky, for both of us.”

  “Okay then, we’ll meet you,” Arista said. “When?”

  “I can be there by tomorrow. I assume you prefer the evening.”

  “Wait, hang on,”
Frees said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You keep your comm on you and an hour before we are supposed to meet we will call you with the location.”

  “What good will that do?” Arista asked.

  “It keeps her from setting up a perimeter on us,” Max said from behind them.

  Arista stared Max for a moment before turning back to the holo-projection. “We’ll call you with the location at eight pm, Central time.”

  “I understand.”

  “And you get ten minutes, so make them count,” Frees added.

  “Then I will speak to you tomorrow. I look forward to it.” The holo-image disappeared and Arista lowered her arm. She turned back toward Max. “Us?” Arista arched an eyebrow.

  Max shrugged. Now she was doing it too. “I’m going outside,” she said and headed out the back door.

  Arista turned to Jill. “What do you think?”

  Jill ground her teeth together for a moment. “I think you need to be extremely careful. It smells like a trap to me. I’ve never heard anything about a human colony, have you?” she asked Frees.

  He shook his head, then stopped mid-shake. “Marcus,” he said. Marcus had been the human who had turned him. Frees had told her he’d just showed up one day, out of the blue and had stayed with Frees’ family, observing them and even helping out where he could. But then he’d gotten sick and eventually died. Frees changed not long before he died.

  “You think he was from there?” Arista asked.

  “He had to come from somewhere. This colony makes more sense than anything else.”

  “But why now? Why wait until right now to contact us?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m with Jill; I think this could be a trap.”

  “But if she’s really a human, what incentive would she have to deceive me?”

  Jill laughed. “Honey, don’t you know anythin’ about humans? Don’t you read?”

  “Of course I do. Except those were the old humans; the ones who thought they were invincible, the ones who had multiplied so much it looked like this planet would suffocate under the weight of them all. They weren’t like me. And if there really is a colony, I’d be willing to bet those people aren’t like the old humans either. They’re looking for allies, for help, for other lost humans. And that’s exactly what I am. They’ve found me and just want me to help.”

  “If the humans are so precious,” Jill said, “then why didn’t they contact you sixteen years ago?”

  Five

  Arista wanted to slam her door but decided against it. She wasn’t a teenager on a rampage after her parents had grounded her. But it felt like she’d still been disciplined. Like all the disapproval emanating from Frees, Jill, and maybe even Max had coalesced into a figure that told her to go to her room and think about her motivations.

  Instead, she closed the door like she always did, holding the handle so the latch wouldn’t even click. She just needed some time alone. On top of an already trying day her entire system of beliefs had been rattled to the core. Even if Forsythia lied Arista couldn’t help but hope her words had been true.

  The room they’d designated for her wasn’t much larger than a couple of closets put together, such was the life in these old houses in this part of town. Before Max, Jill had lived alone, though like Frees she didn’t actually use her bed. Instead opting to use her energy drives to keep herself powered. It wasn’t like the machines needed to sleep, they only simulated it because it had been part of Charlie’s “plan”; to copy and improve on the human society. He’d copied everything down to the smallest detail and only started changing things from there. Machines did a whole host of things they didn’t need to every day, including but not limited to, eating, sleeping, using restrooms, and having sex. Arista tried not to think about it. It had been the world she’d grown up in; and while it was normal to her it was also strange. She wondered what it would be like to be among humans, to see them act the way she’d observed machines all her life. Would it be any different?

  As she moved through the small room she stepped over the two forms sitting upright against the far wall, their legs splayed out in front of them. These were the two bodies she and Frees had obtained from the production facility for her parents. Without a better place to store them they had ended up in Arista’s room. She stared at them a moment. It would be odd to see her parents inhabiting these two bodies, neither were completely finished and didn’t even have skin. After they transferred their consciousnesses, Arista could help them find more parts to complete themselves. But in order to get skin they’d have to return to the production facility and that was one place Arista wanted to stay as far away from as possible.

  Though, it wasn’t as if they were her real parents. Not her biological ones anyway. They had just been the ones unfortunate enough to find her as a girl. They had also been the first unfortunate recipients of Arista’s ability to provide full autonomy to machines. Back then she had been a scared child with no idea about what she could do or why. But it made sense, the autonomy tended to trigger in machines when Arista was close and experienced very strong emotions such as elation, desperation, fear and heartbreak. It was a good thing they didn’t trigger during any emotion otherwise Arista never would have been able to keep her identity secret all those years growing up. But again, her “parents” had helped. They had all gone on the run together, staying off the grid and away from any surveillance. Keeping the lowest profile possible. It hadn’t been hard with the regular machines, they barely even noticed them. It was all the Cadre surveillance and the constant threat of Peacekeepers which were the real threat.

  Arista sat on the bed and pushed her boots off with her feet, kicking them to the far side of the room. She lay back and drew a deep breath, trying to calm her thoughts. Another human, a lucid and intelligible one this time. It boggled her mind. If anyone had asked her a month ago if she’d thought her life would be so different in such a small amount of time, she never would have thought she could answer yes.

  But here she was. Sans parents, sans hand. Freedom under constant threat.

  She stared at the stump at the end of her right arm. It had healed beautifully thanks to a metal-looking sleeve the Cadre had provided her with before they decided to torture information out of her. She still wasn’t entirely used to it and could sometimes feel fingers that were no longer there. But she’d managed to regain her balance and had become adept at doing many things one-handed. It was an inconvenience, but it could have been much worse. When she’d accidentally spilled the acid on her hand while infiltrating an insurance company she’d been afraid the damage would kill her. And it very well could have if the Cadre hadn’t saved her, rehabilitated then tortured her for information. And now it all made sense. The very thing they had been looking for, the very reason they’d been trying to wrench information out of her, was under their noses this whole time.

  At the time she couldn’t understand why they were so paranoid about not being able to detect her. But now it made so much more sense. Charlie must have suspected this human colony existed somewhere and wanted to put an end to it before it became a problem. Before his society was full of infiltrators; though that hadn’t been Arista’s goal at all. All she’d wanted was a couple of fresh bodies so her parents would live past the standard twenty-five-year live span that plagued all machines.

  A knock came at the door, shaking her from her thoughts. Before she could answer, it opened and Frees popped his head in causing her to sit back up. “Got a minute?”

  “What’s the point of knocking if you were going to barge in anyway?” she asked.

  “I’m working on my manners,” he replied, closing the door behind him. He took a seat on a pile of clothes they’d found for her on the far side of the room, sinking down as he did, his weight flattening the garments. Frees had a way of making himself humorous at the absolutely wrong times. What made it even better was he didn’t even know it. “What do you think of all this?”

  “I don�
��t know. But I want to find out what she knows. She might give us some good information.”

  “Is it worth the risk?” he asked.

  “To me? Yes. To you, I don’t know. I’ll go alone if I have to.”

  “No, you won’t, I won’t let you go alone. And I think Max is itching to go too. She wants another human to insult.”

  Arista grinned. “Then I feel bad for Forsythia.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Frees asked, suddenly serious. “About that thing in your head.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know…probably the same reason you didn’t want to tell me about Marcus. He was someone special to you and you didn’t want to reveal that part of yourself. This thing in my head is the only part of me that was there before I showed up on my parents’ farm all those years ago. It’s like the only connection I have to my past, as stupid as that sounds. I just wanted to keep something for myself. If you can understand that.”

  He dipped his head down and ran his hand over the smooth dome. “I can.”

  “I guess it makes sense now how I could make all those calculations.”

  “I couldn’t understand it. I thought maybe all humans were like that naturally. They had natural gifts for complex mathematical equations and statistics. What else can it do? Other than hide you from scanners?”

  “It has a built-in GLS, so I know where I am at all times. It gives me updates on my own vital systems. I can connect to the net and download information as I need it. And it has a limited scan capability of its own.”

  His eyes went wide. “Damn. That’s an impressive piece of equipment.”

  She smiled, rotating so her legs were on the bed and her back was up against the headboard. “Tell me about it. It took us years to figure out everything I could do. And by then most of it was ingrained or natural.”

  “It’s allowed you to survive and blend in for all these years. No wonder they were terrified of you.”

  “My thoughts exactly. But, Frees, I’ve decided. I have to see this through with this woman. I can’t let an opportunity like this pass me by. What if she’s telling the truth?”