System Ascension

by Prax Venter

  There were no operational audio sensors on the street sweeper, so when a massive garbage truck barreled past at a high speed from behind and came within inches of crushing Ahnix’s quietly stalking drone, Mark felt a rush of digital adrenaline.

  A severed robotic arm tumbled from the back of the carelessly driven vehicle and slid into their path against the curb. Mark was just making the connection when Vale spoke up.

  “Our wrap interpreted Evelyn’s home system as a mirror to what is happening in the real world. They are actually dumping garbage into- No… The supply chain must be broken. She’s melting down dead drones and metals to make new ones.” Excitement pulsed out of his brilliant giant naga along their bond.

  “This is our way in,” Vale whispered.

  After they scouted the rest of the way and saw the conveyor belt leading into the factory, their plan began to take shape. Mark and Vale left Ahnix to bring the street sweeper back a few blocks while he took one of the senior care drones out of the transport where Vince and Michelle waited for their part.

  “Together, we can do anything,” Mark said, gripping the EMP grenade in the damaged bot’s operational hand before leaving the pod and getting into a new vehicle. As Vale drove him to meet up with Ahnix, he used the exposed metal parts of his bot to rip up more of his pillowy body. He needed to appear more damaged.

  Not wanting to take any chances, Mark jumped out of the transport and ran the rest of the way, taking cover from any cameras as he moved. The morning sun peeked over the horizon and anything with a video feed became much more dangerous. Two more garbage trucks passed him before he made it to the damaged street cleaner inhabited by Ahnix.

  He looked down at its dirty domed surface and was overcome with a sudden bout of rage. His drone made a fist with its free hand so tight that he permanently bent the metal fingers. Seeing his desert queen as this gutter riding rust bucket…

  “Mark, stop,” Ahnix whispered in his ear after feeling his emotions. “Just make her pay.”

  “I will,” he said as he stuffed the EMP device through a rip in the drone’s side. The assisted living bot was screaming out warnings about all sorts of minor damage, but he ignored it all. Mark cleared his head, got down on the ground and created a job for his friend the streetcleaner.

  Ahnix pushed into him and was just barely able to roll his limp drone forward. He heard her bot’s motors squealing in protest, and he hoped everything would work out as he went over the plan again in his mind.

  Right now, Roo and Vale should be setting up a distraction attack. That part of the plan sounded a lot more fun. They were going to smash car after car into the place as fast they could. The velvet-girl was absolutely giddy over the destruction she was instructed to cause. Mark, on the other hand, was tasked with entering the facility as trash, and moving through an unknown layout, undetected. Then find the deep dive rigs with the humans, set off the grenade- no less than thirty yards from his drone, and then get out with one kid over each shoulder.

  No problem.

  With a virtual sigh, he uninhabited his drone and watched over Ahnix’s shoulder. Using street-mounted video feeds, Mark helped Ahnix time their arrival perfectly. The little street cleaner deposited the battered senior care bot at a sentry gate just as another garbage truck rolled up.

  One of the sleek military drones stepped out of the checkpoint followed by one of the new cat-bots, and Mark recognized the flick of its tail as it silently gazed down into the street sweeper’s camera. A copy of his love had to be-

  Mark’s disgusted thoughts were scattered as the humanoid soldier lifted its foot and smashed it right through the top of Ahnix’s drone.

  “Shit!” Mark said as he watched her perspective get kicked back up to the map view. “I can’t see if I was put in with the garbage.”

  The cat-girl hissed softly in his ear. He could tell she was still trying to recover from noticing the same thing he did. An alternate version of Ahnix was in that cat drone.

  Mark took a deep virtual breath and tried for the hundredth time to calm his mind.

  “Wait,” he said, jumping to his own interface and focusing on the drone on the map. It was still there at 68%, and that was great news- but he needed to know if it was inside the factory. He zoomed in as close as he could and saw the dot almost imperceptibly change position. It was moving.

  “Going in!” he yelled as he inhabited the half-broken bot again.

  At first, he thought the guard had put his boot through the senior care drone’s round head as well because he could only see blackness in every direction, and the rangefinders were all returning a reading of zero. He could hear though, and his working sensors told him the truck was rumbling forward. He didn’t want to move just yet and blow the whole mission, so he just waited. Again.

  Vale and Roo were quiet, focusing on their own part of the plan. The moment he was inside, they were to start the destruction derby. Until then, they were to single-mindedly reposition transports until he gave the signal.

  Sooner than he expected, the telltale beeping call of a large, backward-moving vehicle rang in his drone’s audio inputs. The world rolled sideways, and he saw glimpses of robotic limbs and black bags illuminated by brief patches of light.

  Mark tumbled down onto the industrial-sized conveyor belt amongst the refuse and was grateful when he discovered most of his sensors were left uncovered and fully functioning. The belt moved quickly, carrying him along in a current of broken robots and trash, straight toward his destiny.

  - 26 -

  The conveyor belt sent him tumbling down a chute into an enormous underground sorting facility. Mark’s senior care drone was currently headed toward a mechanical recycler, but he didn’t perceive any cameras or guards in this initial collection area. Down the line, however, he saw cameras inspecting the smaller conveyors loaded with separated material and knew it was now or never.

  Mark carefully rolled his drone out of the assorted debris and landed on the floor with a dull thud. The padding that remained on his battered drone’s knees muffled his fall, but he laid motionless- just in case.

  Nothing happened. No alarms sounded, nor did guards rush out of the shadows, so he carefully crawled his drone under the belt and then alongside the monstrous sorting machine until he was able to scuttle into a dark corner.

  “Hit her,” Mark gave the signal into their combined audio channel, and he felt his girl’s furious determination reverberate along their collective bond.

  He waited for the distant sound of collisions and felt Roo’s elation as she launched the first transport pod into the other side of the building. He just knew that this time the facility would go on high alert but was still surprised when no wailing sirens sounded. It struck him then that an enemy based on the net would be using private communications- just as they were.

  Two more rumbling shockwaves told him that Ahnix and Vale were doing their job up there. They wanted to make it seem desperate, random.

  The aggressive frontal attacks were intended to draw potential threats outside, but Mark expected more resistance as he crept through the offices of the dark and silent factory. Perhaps Evelyn was confident that no one would make it this far, or be stupid enough to try breaking in. The more he thought about it, Mark realized that no one he met in the digital world would care enough to physically attack this real-world factory. Many AIs wanted nothing to do with the humans and anything going on out here, mostly because existing out here was like mind-numbing torture compared to how fast they experienced reality as pure energy.

  Mark’s digital memory recorded every twist and turn he took, so he knew exactly how to get back out, but he had no idea where he was going. It wasn’t until Roo popped in to watch his feed that he started making progress.

  “Follow those tubes,” she said in his ear, and he shifted his sensors up at the black hoses affixed to the ceiling. “You can tell they were added recently by the different types of metal they used.”

  “Shit, of course,�
�� he said, seeing the mismatched bolts and feeling stupid.

  “Shit is right,” Roo said with a giggle. “Need to pipe that human waste somewhere. They are super angry out here, by the way. They keep pouring out of the factory, but we’ve already destroyed a bunch of her new drones!”

  Mark sent her positive vibes along their bond and focused on finding the brainwashed people while his team focused on causing chaos. He knew Vale was going to attack with one of the damaged construction drones. The crane was nonfunctional, and all the hulking vehicle could do was accelerate slowly, but if it got enough of a runway…

  Things were looking up now that he had a direction to follow. Mark picked up the pace. The walls went from plaster to bare cement as he crept deeper into the factory. He passed a few operating rooms and other medical areas that hinted that he was in the section dedicated to biological weapons. All the rooms and hallways were only labeled with serial numbers, but following the hoses seemed to be doing the trick.

  He was thinking they might actually be able to pull this off without being caught when he rounded a corner and came sensor to sensor with the faceless curved surface of a humanoid military drone. In Mark’s 360 video perception he noticed the angular cat-drone at their feet- but his rangefinders also showed him the tight clusters of deep dive immersion rigs in the room behind them.

  The humanoid robot looked down at the tailed quadruped and the smaller creature launched forward into Mark’s chest. His senior care drone was knocked to the floor as the feline-shaped robot tore into his chest.

  Mark saw the attacks coming and tried to fight back, but the metal animal was much faster and more focused than the mindless beasts he had found before. A warning that some of his internal pneumatic pressure was escaping flashed in his mind, and Mark knew he had to stop this thing before it did critical damage.

  But there was hesitation slowing his every move. The creature’s tail was held high, its tip flicking as it savagely destroyed its enemy. Its eyes looked down into Mark’s visual cameras, and he could feel his precious cat-girl’s presence as she tore into him.

  His intense and conflicting emotions must have pulled the real Ahnix into his feed because she whispered in his ear.

  “Kill her, please… For me.”

  All of the anger Mark had felt ever since he was forced to fight for his life hardened into a swirling maelstrom of determination. For her, he would pull down the universe.

  Time took on a whole new dimension as Mark brought his drone’s exposed metal thumbs right over the impostor’s eyes. With all the pressure he could allocate, Mark squeezed and perceived the slight crunch-pop that accompanied the destruction of the creature’s visual sensors.

  The military drone had been casually watching, confident that his partner would wipe the floor with this damaged ass wiping bot, but he took one step forward, ready to assist. In the second before the sleek humanoid guard could raise his rifle, Mark jammed his hand deep into the shocked cat-bot’s mouth and made a fist. With his other hand, he grabbed the disgusting creature’s angular upper jaw and ripped its head in two, instantly shutting it down.

  The brainwashed human inhabiting the guard watched the senior care drone shove off the lifeless cat-bot and began to visibly shake with rage. The operator had just lost their own precious cat-girl, and Mark saw him toss down the rifle before rushing forward. They were going to end his existence with their bare hands.

  His rangefinders told him what was going to happen, but the top-of-the-line military robot was built for combat and closed the distance quickly. Before Mark could even sit up, the sleek, black death machine was on him.

  The blows came quick and violent, but the person inside was insane with loss, and the emotions made them clumsy. Mark was able to deflect a few hits, but his drone would be reduced to a twisted wreck if he didn’t find a way to end this.

  Part of his mind played out all the possible scenarios as the sloppy but effective blows rained down on him. Warning messages flared in his brain as more systems went off-line and all his rangefinders went dark.

  Settling on the only remaining solution, Mark reached his drone’s hand into his chest cavity. He only had one backward-facing visual camera that wasn’t damaged, so he had no confirmation that the device would be thrown far enough away- but his new mind had recorded a physical map of the room behind the instant his rangefinders detected each and every surface. He had also mentally mapped the shape of the EMP grenade and its location within his drone’s torso.

  Mark used this perfectly recorded data to close his numb drone fingers around the spherical weapon and activated the grenade. With all their lives and futures riding on this blind toss, he slid it across the floor, timing the detonation against its velocity. The shiny drone slamming its fists into his chest was too preoccupied with blind rage that it completely ignored the object skittering into the room behind them. Three seconds later, a wave of electromagnetism radiated outward and fried every bit of tech in its wake.

  The drone beating Mark into a pile of scrap convulsed a few times as the human remotely operating it was cut off and then it fell lifelessly on top of him.

  “Now!” he yelled into their shared connection. “Get them past the dead zone!”

  “On it,” Vale said in his ear, and he shoved the shiny robot husk off him.

  Mark needed to get up and find Vince’s sons. The others were going to have to figure out their own destinies but at least they were free. As he tried to push his broken drone up off the floor, his eyes fell onto the two lifeless machines lying in the hallway- and his mind locked up with horrible realization.

  Had he been inside that drone? Evelyn had collected other humans, including Vince’s kids. Did his real body get picked up too? The person driving that drone reacted as he would have in the same situation, but he didn’t really feel his own presence there the same way he felt Ahnix in the cat drones.

  Yet the possibility lingered in the back of his mind.

  Mark used an exposed part of his metal foot and destroyed the shiny dome of the humanoid drone’s head. Rabid aggravation at everything he and the ones he loved were forced to endure poured out of him as he made his drone violently smash the bot’s head in, over and over- way past what was necessary. Mark forced himself to stop and knew there was little more his sanity could take.

  Mark felt his girls quietly lend him their confidence in him along their bond. Their encouraging caress brushed up against his soul, soothing the inferno that was consuming his mind. He adored them all beyond words, and the last thing he wanted to do was blow everything after getting his far.

  He had a fucking job to do.

  His senior care bot was at 32% functionality. Most of his sensors were offline and he couldn’t even rotate the head. Mark had to face backward if he wanted to see where he was going. He turned around and shambled into the area he had been searching for and saw dozens of dazed people stepping out of the closely packed deep dive immersion pods.

  “Get out!” he yelled through his chest speakers, but the sound came out horribly garbled. As he maneuvered the drone deeper amongst the closely packed black pods, he passed an older man holding his head and a green-haired teenage girl who was crying. Mark heard someone yell, “Put me back!” from further in and then he spotted them; two teenage boys with ash blond hair they must have received from their mother. They looked exactly like the pictures Vince carried around with him, and Mark limped the banged-up elderly care drone backward in their direction.

  “Ken, Jason,” he said, realizing he didn’t really know which was which. “I’m here to take you to your father. Come with me.”

  They groggily looked up at him, but the taller one fell to his knees, and the other one tried to close himself back inside the pod.

  “No… She needs me,” he mumbled, and Mark seriously felt bad for the kid. A quick pivot in place swept his one functioning camera over the area, and although his own face did not register as a match, there were several people still closed in
side pods and remained unidentified. With a sigh, he used his drone to reach behind him and grab the kid trying to get back in the neural rig, pulling him over his shoulder.

  “You can’t do this!” he screamed. Mark ignored him and hooked his arm under the other kid, who was currently heaving the contents of his stomach onto the floor. With them both more or less secure, he stood up and started for the door, weaving his way past the disoriented people. As he left- more than one tried to close themselves back into their prisons, and the others sat in broken defeat, wailing about their loss.

  They were all totally and truly brainwashed.

  Mark’s drone made it halfway down the first hall when he heard Ahnix’s voice speak into their connection. After all this insanity, it was like pure bliss in his ear. He wanted nothing more than to have her in his arms right now, his fingers stroking the sleek, soft fur on her back while she nuzzled his neck.

  “Vince and Michelle are safely inside the research campus. Roo is popping drone heads left and right. You did it, Lover. Now get those kids out of there.”

  The one he was dragging by the arm began to fight him, pushing back with his legs and slowing them down. Luckily the one draped over his shoulder had passed out.

  “Working on it,” Mark said. “These fuckers don’t want to be rescued.”

  They made it halfway back to the sorting center when the teenager he was fighting to pull along broke free of the drone’s grasp and made a break for it.

  Mark felt it all happen in slow motion, and he knew that if the kid were able to run away, the malfunctioning robot he was inhabiting would never be able to stop him.

  So, with a blind, calculated strike he kicked the teenager’s leg sideways, tripping him up and causing him to smack his face hard on the cement ground. Mark was done playing games with these ungrateful shits. He unceremoniously grabbed the stunned child’s foot and pulled him over his drone’s other shoulder.

  Mark felt the sickening pop his senior care bot was tuned to feel just before Vince’s son began to wail from a newly fractured ankle.