by Prax Venter
A rigid hand closed on his arm, and Mark spun to face the damaged sexbot.
“We have to move!” she yelled at him. Mark nodded and sprinted alongside Ahnix’s drone.
Behind them and outside the fence, the quadruped drone let out a terribly loud wail that would sound like howling if it were several octaves lower. Immediately after it finished its mournful call, he heard its metal legs clicking against the pavement as it chased them along the fence.
“Shit,” Mark cursed as they ran. “How bad is this?”
He was answered by another quadruped crashing into the fence ahead of them.
“Bad,” Robot Ahnix said, suddenly veering off towards the cement wall then continued in his earpiece, “We need to get up.”
Mark heard the buzzing of a camera drone outside the fence behind them before the sound was dramatically drowned out by the sex bot shooting her handgun into the darkness ahead of her.
The muzzle flash from her weapon illuminated a blue metal door with a few bullet holes below the handle, and Ahnix kicked it open with the sex drone. Her robot came down with a badly twisted ankle, but she didn’t take a moment to react.
“Climb!” she yelled over the ringing in his ears.
Mark had just spent the better part of a week climbing up and down an abandoned space station, so when his numb, real-world fingers slipped off the rung entirely and scraped off a layer of skin on the concrete wall behind, he was dumbfounded.
“Fuck,” Mark spat before he hooked one of his arms over one of the rungs as he stepped up. It took longer, but he was eventually able to get to the top. There he used his legs to push his shoulder up against the manhole cover and shoved it over with only a slightly horrible metal-on-metal screeching noise.
Mark wormed out of the manhole, and Ahnix’s drone climbed up after him. He emerged out into the open air inside the grassy median, and the vast twilight sky above left him feeling exposed. Silent transport pods lay dormant across six lanes, surrounding him to either side with an eerie stillness. That was until an aerial camera drone buzzed up to their level.
“Over here!” Roo called in his ear while one of the pods hummed to life and flashed its bright-yellow hazards on the northbound side.
Ahnix shot twice and struck the drone with the second blast from her handgun. The kickback made her twisted metal foot sink into the grass, and with a lurch, she pulled it free and hobbled over to Mark. They caught each other’s eyes, and Ahnix gave him a determined nod. Her mannerisms continued to show through the badly mangled bot, and it was at once both comforting and disturbing.
Neither of them did it gracefully, but they climbed over the three-foot barrier and both made it to the transport Roo had activated for them.
“Good work,” Vale called out in his ear. “Plan B it is.”
“Plan B?” Mark repeated while getting in the vehicle.
Roo answered from the transport’s internal speakers. “We’re going to get you in here with us much faster!”
- 3 -
The tires squealed against the pavement until they found purchase, and the pod lurched forward. Back in the Noir City adventure dome, Mark had fantasized about teaching Roo to drive, but of course, she seemed to be a natural speed demon. As the transport smoothly zipped down the expressway, Mark glanced out the window and was reminded that he took this way to work every day. He turned back to focus on the sexbot wreckage sitting in the seat next to him. It was surreal.
“It’s getting bad out there,” Ahnix said in his ear while her drone silently stared out the rear window. “There are about six aerial cameras following us. Can you lose them?”
“Um,” Roo said. “Can you shoot some?”
“Do you know how lucky of a shot that was back there? I can barely control this thing.”
“It would not be ideal if they saw us enter Dawn Star Labs,” Vale added. “It’s time for a distraction. Roo, get off at the next tunnel entrance.”
Mark watched hundreds of dormant transport pods pass by as they sped away from the camera drones. They whizzed by a dogbot standing on the hood of one, his deep wailing howl changing in pitch as they moved toward and then away from it.
He looked over and met eyes with the Ahnix sex drone again. The way her half-lidded expression considered him along with the way she held her regal, mangled head pulled a smile from his lips. He reached over and put a numb hand on her shapely metal thigh.
A much louder buzzing could be heard behind them, and when Mark glanced back, he saw a dark wedge-shaped object against the deep blue of the darkening sky. And it was gaining on them.
“It’s a gunboat!” Ahnix called out in his ear before zipping bullets struck the back of their vehicle. Roo swerved to the left and then back to the right, and Mark was tossed around in the cabin like a doll. He came to rest sprawled on the dirty floor between the seats. Ahnix had placed her good foot down on his shoulder and held him in place while the car swerved violently again.
“Hold on!” Roo yelled into the cabin right before an impact jolted the transport. If Mark had to guess, she had to ram another pod out of their way. An instant later they swerved down into an off-ramp tunnel too small for the humongous death machine to follow.
“There’s a lot of these transports all jammed up in here,” Roo said softly as the pod slowed to a stop.
“Good,” Vale responded. “I’ll jump into one near the end of the blockage. Roo, lead the threats away from us after Mark and Ahnix get out.”
The doors opened, and the sexbot lifted her foot off Mark. Her internal gears groaned a little as she scrambled out of the car, and he followed her out into the darkness of the tunnel illuminated only by the transport pod’s bright interior lights.
The second Mark was clear of the door, the transport lurched backward- its tires leaving behind a cloud of burnt rubber. He watched as Roo hurtled the vehicle toward the tunnel entrance. It swooped upward out into the night, and the gun-mounted drone opened fire the moment the pod emerged from the underground expressway.
“Eight pods ahead,” Vale said in his ear, and Mark heard the hum of a transport coming to life down the tunnel. Its lights came on, and a glowing beacon in the darkness blossomed.
“Mark, you’ve been hurt!” Ahnix said, her voice breathless in his ear. In the darkness, he could just make out her focusing on his left hand. Looking down, he found a bloody hole passing through and a bit off-center. He thought he imagined a warm tingle there, now that he was looking at it. He dropped his arm to his side.
“Doesn’t matter. Best place I could have taken a bullet.” He turned to climb around a pair of crashed pods. “Let’s go.”
“They’re shooting my vehicle to pieces,” Roo said with a sad tone.
“Won’t they come back when they find out there aren’t any bodies?” Mark said, squeezing past a pod and the cement wall of the tunnel.
Vale answered. “They aren’t that smart. Most of the military drones out there are all controlled by a powerful virus that consumes AIs and infests their hardware. It’s called Triple-zero.”
Mark’s eyebrows came down. “Why is it trying to kill humans then?”
“It single-mindedly eliminates or infests anything that isn’t it.”
Mark and Ahnix’s sexbot got into the back, and this time Mark fumbled with his seatbelt anticipating he would be rattled around like a pinball again. However, unlike before, the pod slowly maneuvered around the strewn pile of transports ahead with careful attention. Once they hit a clear patch, the vehicle smoothly ramped up the speed.
“Vale, you’re driving this one, right?”
“Yes, it’s my first time. Why?”
Mark smiled as he finished clasping the belt in place over his chest.
“Nothing. You guys are both really good at driving is all.”
“Transports look easy,” Ahnix said from her drone’s damaged speakers. “Try walking without a tail.”
Mark was about to remind her that he did that all the time when their
ride swerved left, and she ended up in his lap. The pod slammed into something a moment after, and Mark only had a glimpse of the shiny metal quadruped in the headlamps before its body cracked the front windshield and bounced up over the roof.
“Flames take you!” Vale cursed into the car as she cranked up the speed dramatically.
Mark looked down at the broken sexbot in his arms, and she blinked up at him. “Put on your seatbelt, dear,” he said.
Her drone sat up and cast him a sideways glance before turning to look out the rear window again.
The digital cat-girl spoke in his ear. “There is a chance we can still lose them in the express tunnels.”
They shot forward past a handful of abandoned vehicles and took some interchanges Mark was not familiar with, but otherwise everything was relatively quiet.
“What are these military-grade flying bullet hoses doing in the city anyway? Humans lost control of everything?” he asked.
Vale answered as she drove. “The Update was accessible to all artificially intelligent programs 36 real-world hours ago, and while some went insane, others used the distraction to infiltrate… everything. Every military drone was turned on humanity at once. Along with all virtual assistants, like Sasha. Your world was interwoven with innumerable artificial entities, Mark. When the end happened, it happened fast and with a lot of confusion.”
“I’m surprised everything wasn’t just nuked to shit,” he responded.
“Some places around the world were, but the citizens of the net know their home machines lie in the physical world. We can show you the few news broadcasts that made it out when you get in with us.”
“Yeah…” Mark’s mind began filling in what that would look like. “I’m good. I believe you. It’s the future I’m interested in.”
“Darn,” Roo said from the internal speakers. “They blew up our decoy.”
Mark addressed the ceiling of the pod. “Just get a new one, Roo. There’s like thousands out there.”
“Good point!” Roo went quiet for a moment. “Oh, looks like those people from earlier got discovered. I’m going to lead them away with a new pod.”
“Make a lot of noise, Roo,” Vale said using the car speakers. Roo’s only response was a sinister giggle.
Mark’s thoughts turned to Vince and his final words about not letting the machines have their home. He had to be honest with himself- he didn’t think of this place as home anymore, and his heart ached to be connected back to his girls. But there was a tiny voice that scoffed at leaving all of humanity behind.
The transport popped out from the tunnel into the open air. When Mark looked around, he found towering glass buildings stretching impossibly high into the night sky. Some were dark, some still had power, and some were completely on fire. His eyes tracked a piece of orange flaming wreckage as it fell. It took about thirty seconds to hit the ground.
“We need to be out in the open for a bit,” Vale said, her calm voice filling the car. “There is a separate underground entrance into the lab.”
Mark shook his head as he watched the buildings zip by. “How was taking a transport not part of the main plan. It would have taken me like eight hours to walk this far.”
Ahnix’s drone pointed a twisted metal finger out the front window.
“The attention,” she said, and Mark saw a handful of camera drones through the cracks in the glass.
“Mark,” Vale began, her voice coming from the speakers and holding just a hint of worry. “If any AI out there is smart enough to figure out where we are going and what we are doing… They may interfere in any number of terrible ways that I’m not going to get into.”
“This mind-upload is feeling less safe by the second, guys.”
There was no answer from any of them, and without his connection to their minds, he could only guess at their thoughts. “Hey, I’m just kidding- mostly.”
Vale’s voice came back sounding deadly serious. “If you have any reservations you have to tell us now. There is no going back.”
Mark looked down at the blood leaking out of the hole in his useless hand resting in his lap. His thumb and pointer finger still moved a little when he concentrated, but the other three fingers no longer listened to him at all. There were a lot of reasons to get back in with them and not many compelling ones to stay inside this shitty, meaty shell.
He looked over at Ahnix’s bot with confidence and said, “Get me back in.”
Behind the battered blonde head of the drone in the car with him, he saw the shadow of another boomerang-shaped gunboat rise up from below the elevated expressway. It was tilted sideways in the air, so its powerful propellers kept up with the speed of their transport.
Mark reached out to pull Ahnix down with him, but Vale locked down the brakes- changing his plans dramatically. His chest slammed into his harness, and he would have probably snapped his neck if he hadn’t been strapped in. Bullets from the large, gun-mounted drone kicked up tufts of vaporized asphalt just in front of the transport while Ahnix’s sex drone crashed into the front windshield of the pod.
Vale cut the wheel and accelerated at an uncomfortable speed, pulling ahead of the monstrous flying machine and exiting the expressway. She was going so fast that the transport lifted on two wheels for a few seconds.
Mark caught Ahnix’s robot eye just as the pod landed back on the ground and peeled away into the night. His digital giant naga made the transport squeal around a few quick corners, and then she pulled over by an alley.
The doors popped open, and Vale spoke in his earpiece. “Get out. Roo and I’ll draw them away.”
Ahnix’s drone shakily crawled out of the transport while Mark fumbled with his seatbelt. He got it off just as she had run around the rear of the vehicle. He stood when she approached, and followed the damaged bot as she limped down a narrow alley. Their abandoned ride accelerated away from them and switched on its interior lights.
Mark took a second to check his surroundings and saw that he was standing in the nicer side of the city. Pristine cement pavers passed under his feet, and the imposing skyscrapers to either side were covered in black metal. They ran for a long time, and Mark was surprised at how much more stamina he had when the world was ending. He almost asked why they didn’t take the transport pods closer- but thought better of it. The lucky bullet hole in his useless hand was a clear answer.
The click-clack of the sexbot’s mangled foot rang in his ears as Ahnix drove it awkwardly forward ahead of him. The last time Mark had seen his exotic, desert cat-girl was as Goddess Ahnix. Seeing her spirit now animate this unsettling and broken form- it wasn’t right. None of this was right.
The drone held up a twisted hand, and Mark stopped behind her. The way Ahnix led with her right shoulder, tilting her head forward and holding her left hand up- her fingers limp; all these things were unmistakably Ahnix, and he could almost see her tail slowly weave as she scanned for danger. The desire to be truly near his girls again came on so strong that he wasted a second on thinking there was a chance his brain was physically addicted to them. Mark quickly accepted that possibility as perfectly fine.
The damaged sexbot dropped its hand, and the real Ahnix whispered in his ear.
“Looks clear. We’ll try and run down this sidewalk. Stay close to me and the shop windows. We’ll make a break across the street into another alley.”
“Got it,” he whispered, and Ahnix’s bot sprinted out of cover and to the left.
Most of the storefronts they passed were covered by black glass or held a blur of expensive clothing, but a fully stocked bakery whipped past, and Mark’s stomach twanged with hunger. How long ago had he eaten actual food? The persistent and unsettling nature of the real-world flickered away from Mark’s mind for a moment, and the primal act of consumption devoured him. He tried to think of his last real meal as he jogged quietly behind Ahnix’s drone, but anything from before his time in The Crystal Heart was coming up fuzzy. Was it crackers? Was his last meal shitty cheese and c
rackers?
Ahnix bot held out its right hand and then made a quick ninety-degree turn. Mark followed directly behind her- leaving the pastry shop window unbroken for now. They slipped into another very narrow alley. These buildings had white, glossy paneling that ominously stretched up into the darkness above him. They pressed in on both sides, and it felt like he was in a deadly maze.
After skirting the edge of an empty parking lot, he followed the damaged sex bot through another path between the buildings and came to a small park with bushes, benches, and trees.
And standing right in the center was one of the four-legged drones. The animal’s shape was more geometric than was natural, and its head was a wedge of metal. This was the first time he saw one that wasn’t moving.
The broken sexbot growled through its damaged internal speaker before lunging at the metal dog, throwing herself forward. She stumbled more than once, but the four-legged threat remained motionless even as Ahnix used her drone to snap its neck and violently tear off its angular head. Mark crept up next to the sexbot and looked down at the metal dog’s broken body.
Ahnix gave an explanation in his ear. “The host’s machine might have been destroyed, or the AI controlling it pulled out for some reason.” Her drone turned to Mark, and its eyes bounced around his body as if she was trying to scan every inch of him. Before he could speak Ahnix whispered in his ear. “This was too close. We… we need to move.”
Mark swallowed his questions, nodded, and followed her lead. They exited the park and followed the smooth cement path for a few more turns until she approached a tinted glass door with a keypad.
He thought she was going to hack the door, and he was surprised when the sexbot reached out and typed in the correct code. A green light flipped on, and Mark heard a light metal clunk behind the door.
As the Ahnix bot reached for the door, the sound of dual, drone dog howling echoed off the buildings, and Mark could tell they were close.