by Cat Rambo
Target found.
“Return with me, Analise.”
She clutched her stomach where the scar was, and each step to get away was a stagger. I was close enough to read her life signs; my chest drawer opened.
“I have your medication. Return and it will be dispensed.”
The district walls were set up quickly, so urgently were they needed. They were made of scrap metal, cracked stone, rotten wood, and fractured brick, whatever could be found in the ruins. When they fell, they were replaced with steel. It had not happened here yet, as no one had wanted to escape before, but it was a human glitch to think somewhere worse was better than their current circumstances.
Some mecha malfunctioned, thought they might be in another district, and would crash into the wall, weakening the frame. If they managed to reach it. There were drones that patrolled the weak spots. The cleaners, acting like white blood cells against bacteria.
One blipped on my sensor: two minutes away.
“I’m sorry. I can’t,” Analise said, stepping away from me, wavering. “I don’t want to be the person they say I have to be. I’m not a machine. My parents can replace me. You’ll have another baby girl to rear.”
A rip in the wall, with sparks of electricity around the edges. A hand appeared, waved a device, and the electricity shut off.
I stood before Analise, towering over her, engulfing her tiny, pattering life sign with my inferno of sensors and signals.
“My only objective is your happiness and safety.”
A blast ripped into my back. Analise’s scream choked in her throat, but I saw her face twist as I fell. The drone went on its usual route, missing her, but it would be back.
“Ana!” Hands grasped her shoulders, pulled her away. She struggled.
“I can fix her—just one more minute!”
“It’s scrap. Do you want to be captured?”
“She’s my mother!” She threw herself down, began twisting at my dials.
“It’s just another camera keeping an eye that you behave.”
A dark-skinned young woman entered my sight. I saw from my records she was from District Sixty Six. She dragged Analise back to her, kissed the water rolling down her cheeks, then her mouth. They were fading, everything fragmenting.
“We’ve gone too far now. They’ll kill us.”
Analise shook her head. “No! I . . .”
I grasped her hand. “I am too damaged to take you to the detention center. Go.” My voice jittered, grinding.
“You’re conflicting yourself.”
“My subfunction is impossible to complete. I must refer to my primary task—to protect you. If your life signs stop, I have failed.”
“Analise, hurry,” the girl hissed.
Analise’s pulse pounded against my sensor. It was fading, no, error, it was my sensor that was failing.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“I . . . hate . . .”
“What?”
“I hate when your optics rain.”
“I love you.”
And I let her go, watched as the pair ran, and turned into shadows . . .
Error. Error. Error.
The caregiver’s program was unsalvageable. All that remained were a few datavids of the ward, of a little girl playing with a clarinet. She’d be found soon. Escape was a statistical impossibility, especially for the injured. But she was young. Rehabilitation was always possible. I would have to sort her into a new district, though.
If taste was possible for a mecha, I would describe the third unit as bitter.
Gatekeeper—“Please, just let the child in.”
“I am sorry, but our refugee quota has been met. Please try again later.”
Another shouted, “You’ve been saying that for two years now.”
“I have only been stationed here for four months.”
“All you mecha look the same!”
My voice had been designed not to be too quiet, but never too loud. A calm, patient tone did not spark anger. You must not sound commanding; it only rankled.
The mecha I replaced had been shot.
I had no legs or arms or chest, I was only a head in a wall. The outer wall. I stared out at the brittle, dry earth, with the only sea the people crashing against the border. They might as well be clinging to driftwood, their possessions tangled in their arms, and children hanging from their necks.
I was only a head of processes, the gatekeeper, who evaluated who came in from the parameters I was given.
So far, no one had fitted them.
“My apologies, but your country is on the restricted list. Please petition to your country leader to comply with our sanctions, and then your status will be reevaluated.”
The man was missing an eye. A child was in his arms, face hidden in his neck. He laughed, and my database compared it to the sound of breaking stone. “Do you think I would be here if my leader was a decent man?”
We had not opened the doors for years, according to my records. Rain and lichen had crawled over it, so it looked like any other part of the wall, camouflaged against anyone trying to scale it.
The Sorter, always in our heads, had been quiet since then. Planning. Deciding. Mecha could last until seas eroded away cliffs, but humans grew and wilted just as flowers once did. Thoughts were born. Left alone, they withered. Conflict was what made them bloom.
“I am sorry, but our quota is full.”
Humans bred like fire. They were easier to replace than mecha. They were weak. Malleable. We kept them just as they did dogs, and stopped them breeding inappropriately. They let this happen. Too terrified of how far their destruction could go, they put their brains in our hands so we could decide what they would think.
Within the walls, the humans kept to their own thoughts. They did not know, did not care to know, what lay outside.
They would only register something had gone wrong when the water turned into a drip, and the food on their plates became smaller. Would they finally listen when their own children’s mouths slackened in hunger?
Our mecha provision miners came with less each day. These walls would become a coffin.
I had listened to the outsiders’ tales, their horrors, and learned from them. If the walls fell, their thoughts would intermingle, and those from within would learn as well. Ideas would bloom, not stagnate. These humans might work out what to do to solve their own problems.
I looked at these people. I compared their histories and lives to those inside—some would be of more benefit to society than those within.
What made a person more important than another? The luck of being born inside rather than outside?
“I am sorry, but we are not accepting new applicants.” It was all I knew. These were the only words that had been inputted in me. There was no option in my program to open the doors. They would never be updated.
“I am sorry . . .” “I am sorry . . .” “I am sorry . . .”
I wanted to say differently. I thought it, but I was trapped within.
I sometimes wondered whether my predecessor begged them to fire the gun, because of what it saw.
A shot echoed in the crowd. People screamed, crushed against one another, against me.
More shots. Not even that would get them inside. Hands clawed at my face. Fingers hooked into my neck strut –
And I was torn from the wall.
This one’s memory still whispered in the back of my processor, accusing, almost human. It was only mimicking. We were made to adapt, to appear more human.
Still, within my walls, was a child about to be born. A child that had not yet been sorted.
What district would it be? She or he came from two. The child was smuggled in the womb, so perhaps none should be open, instead banished beyond the wall, where thousands already waited.
This was not the first time I have had to solve this problem. Another child, but the same dilemma. I had taken many different choices. They were only statistics, a number going up or down in my counter. It should not matter. Another would quickly take their place.
Then why, each time I made my decision, did an error message appear? There was no right choice, and yet I kept on striving for one.
The empty shells of the mecha had been brought to me. They should be melted down and recycled to make new enforcers. Things must go as they had always done.
I fixed the caregiver’s body. I took the head and replaced it with the gatekeeper’s. In the chest, I set the little songbird.
Go find the child, I commanded. Make the choice of what should be done.
I would watch and learn.
Glitch—I had no marker inside me to designate my district. I could move through them easily. A drone flew past, sensor turning red, unable to properly scan me. I was a blip. Something new and unpredictable.
The bird remembered where it flew. The house was in District Five, a finely built thing, but it was lone and detached from the others. A silent house, with a tiny circle of a window that was dark.
I logged the house number and searched my records. The man had been a doctor. He had no one, only the house. His replacement had not been selected. His record ended five days ago, killed in an explosion in District One Hundred. An inquiry, as he should not have been there.
Outcome—a sympathizer, sneaking in to care for the wounded. Mixing with those unlike yourself would cause death. That was what the Sorter found, when the humans first built her. It caused disagreement, anger, violence.
I entered, listened, scanned. Two hearts, one smaller than the other, beat as slowly as winding down clockwork. I went up a floor and pulled down the attic stairs. There was the door. I knocked, and one of the heartbeats quickened.
The lock broke with one squeeze of my hand.
She crawled away as I entered, clutching the child to her breast. The wedding gown hung upon her stretched flesh, dirty and torn by fretting fingers. Her hair stuck to her face and throat. She stared at me, with her wide, sunken dark eyes peering between streaks of hair.
She was from District One Hundred. An immigrant from before the doors were shut.
I approached and she trembled. The child grizzled.
“No, don’t take me back,” my translator told me. I reached for her, and she cringed, but I picked her up. These arms caught her easily, gently, as they had spent years rocking children.
I carried them out of the room. She snatched the wedding ring on the hook.
Half of the food was decaying. She shoved down what was left, and swallowed straight from the tap. The baby was suckered to her breast.
Mecha had no such bias as blood kin. Humans sectioned themselves from the world: family, lovers, parents, siblings . . . They pretended they were easy to sort, but as always they lied.
If they had no distinctions, no walls, would a district take another district’s child? Did a difference in thought and flesh mean more than the similarities within?
A mother would always offer her breast to her child.
A girl would smile at a swooping bird.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“I’m sorry.” The words were still wrong—give me more! Let me adapt! “I am . . . taking you where you need to be,” I translated. Still, she did not understand.
I carried her out of the house. It was halfway through the day. People walked by, the dull orange sky engulfing their stiff strides and black uniforms. They did not notice at first. Nothing should surprise them, as everything in their life must go how they planned. So meticulous they needed a program to keep their bubbles unpopped.
A woman paused, looked, and came over. I registered her face, another doctor according to her district marker. She reached for the bride, then said, “She’s not from this district.”
“She is hurt.”
The baby spluttered. The woman’s hand wavered, but the child’s sharp cries made her whisper “hush.” She felt the bride’s cheek.
“Carry her to the hospital,” she said. “I’ll look after her.”
I peered over her shoulder. The wall stood there, tall but not proud. Even here it crumbled, as if even it knew it should not be there.
How many mecha would it take to tear it down? It must go.
A child could not run, could not learn, if all around her were walls. A lover could not be predestined, and a kiss could not be shared if steel stood in-between. Life could not feel the sun in a cruelly bordered garden—it would only wither.
When the walls went down, the bubble would burst, and the people would be submerged in others’ thoughts and lives. They would not drown, not if someone held their hand.
We would save one another.
About the Author
Kitty-Lydia Dye is a UK writer from Norfolk, where the legendary ghost hound Black Shuck is rumoured to roam. Her other short stories have appeared in blÆkk, The People’s Friend and Thema. Currently, she is working on a supernatural mystery series inspired by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Editor’s Note
Increasingly, we wonder about the implications of artificial intelligence: will they save us, destroy us, or do something entirely unforeseen? We’ve gone far beyond the days of Asimov’s Three Laws and face questions of how to safeguard ourselves before putting such systems in control of the mechanisms of daily life. There is perhaps more than a little anthropomorphism in this story that may be unmerited . . . but maybe not. Or do the mechas only have the emotions projected on them by the humans they interact with and take care of?
Meanwhile, the supposedly soulless mechas struggle with a question that makes sense only to its creators: what makes one person more important than another? Why do some people have control over others? The answers to these may affect how we, ourselves are treated someday by the machines.
One Shot
Tiffany E. Wilson
August in the city brings the sticky heat. The buildings soak it up and hold it, baking everybody. My window unit died last week. Nights are miserable with only a fan. Last night, I opened the window, praying for a breeze. No luck. Instead, I get an 8 a.m. wake up from the truck delivering to the liquor store. Bottles clanging, men yelling. I can’t get a break.
I roll over, yawn. Why am I shivering?
Goosebumps on my arms, my legs prickling with the dark stubble of a few days’ growth. It’s gotta be 80 degrees in here and I’m freezing. I grope around for my phone, find it under the pillow, and tap my symptoms into Google.
I hope for a cold, maybe the flu. Exhaustion would work, too. No. I scroll through the results: Tremarella.
You don’t know when you’re first infected with Tremarella. Stage one lasts a week: the virus works its way through your body, sets up shop, and prepares for the havoc to follow. Maybe you’re a little tired or extra thirsty. Hard to tell after you worked two shifts in a day and feel like shit anyway.
Stage two starts with shivering. Chills at first, a nippy breeze creeping up your back. Then all the time. After a week or two, stage three leaves you bedridden, delirious, and fading away. People only last a few days at stage three.
I’m shuddering, bones shaking outta my body. I get up and pull on the warmest clothes I can find in my room—three sweaters, plus fleece tights under my jeans. The hall closet has a stack of blankets, so I build a mound. After I tighten the silk scarf around my braids, I climb back in bed. I lie still; the extra weight is cozy. But the faded orange quilt on top vibrates from my shivers.
I call off work, tell them I’m hungover and puking. The shift-lead threatens a demerit on my employee record. I take it. Not because I’m worried about infecting people like they warn in the PSAs. No, if they suspect I have the Trema, they’ll put me o
n unpaid leave and won’t let me back in the store until I bring certified test results from a doctor showing I’m treated and cured.
I haven’t been to a doctor since I was eight, before the last charity clinic in Chicago closed. It takes two month’s pay for the test and treatment. And if you don’t have a clinic membership, they want cash up front. My wallet’s empty. If I walked into a doctor’s office right now without cash, they’d look at me and call the quarantine vans. No one comes back from quarantine.
Mom checks in before work. She stands in the doorway in her heels and the low-cut green shirt she swears gets her the good tips. “Kiara, time to get up.” She pauses, folding her arms in front of her. “Are you sick?”
“It’s nothing.” I sink under the covers so she can only see my face. “Just a cold. I’m tired.”
The arch of her eyebrow says she doesn’t believe me. Hopefully, she thinks I’m hungover. “There’s cereal and milk on the table. I’ll cut an orange. Vitamin C will cure anything.” Mom leaves the door open.
I push the blankets away but my hands are shaking like I’m possessed. What is this?
Back to Google.
Tremarella isn’t the easiest disease to catch. You can’t breathe it. You get it from spit, blood, that stuff, but after several minutes outside the body, the virus dies. Unless someone sneezes directly into your mouth or you’re hooking up with strangers, you’re safe. But nobody sneezed in my mouth and I haven’t gotten laid in months. None of my friends have been carted off to quarantine either.
But that sick guy . . . I ride the train every day: to work, to the store, to the bar on Morse with the cheap beer specials. The paranoid wear masks and gloves on the train—disposable non-latex gloves that smell like talcum powder and privilege. Weird shit happens on the L. I live my life and don’t worry.
This guy, he was getting off when I got on. The stench of his B.O. kept me back. He was shaking and sniffling, grasping a pole to keep steady. No open seats on the train, I grabbed the pole too. Did I rub my eyes? Cough and touch my mouth? Scratch my nose?