by Devon C Ford
“Annie, it seems to be working. Don’t you think?”
She bleeped in his ear and immediately replied, “Yes, I do. As I suspected, they will not cross the fire. I am monitoring the signals they emit, and it’s very…interesting.” Her flat tone made it sound as though Hendricks wouldn’t find it quite as interesting as she did. He was still fighting the urge to raise his weapon and start popping bugs when she came back to him.
“All but one of them is continually emitting a repeated singe line of code. I am trying to decipher the meaning and the best I can calculate is it’s a simple greeting code. Like an ‘I am here’ message, for want of a better word.”
“Is it like a digital handshake?” Hendricks asked her. “An open line to link to the others?”
Annie’s soft ‘thinking’ tone sounded in his ear even over the painful level of noise the bugs were giving off.
“That sounds like a more accurate metaphor than the ones I had selected to describe the signal, thank you. My analysis of the signal broadcast by the lead bug before it was pushed into the flame shows it was emitting a different code. As it was in the lead, my best assumption is it was a ‘follow me’ signal which changed as it was pushed into the flames into the signal I picked up from the other bug before Weber destroyed it.”
She paused.
“Are you still listening, Jimmy? You seem distracted.”
Hendricks laughed dryly. “Yes, Annie, I’m still listening to you. Maybe the ten thousand flesh-eating bugs are proving a little distracting but yes, I’m here.”
“I could tell from your vital signs and brain signals you were not giving me your full attention. I suppose given current events, that is understandable. Should I continue?”
“Please, go on,” Hendricks said in a voice intended to sound languid but came across as a little too sarcastic.
“When the one issuing the ‘follow me’ signal died in the flames, that same signal began emitting from another bug, until that too was pushed into the flames and killed. This was repeated twenty-three times. What I am assuming to be the new lead bug has now changed the signal. I could follow the change as it spread through The Swarm.”
“And now the bugs have spread out around the walls, and less of them are being pushed into the flames by the ones in the rear?” Hendricks said, filling in the logical step in the conversation.
“That’s correct,” Annie responded, “the lead bug has remained constant for the last thirty-four seconds and none of The Swarm have attempted to breach our perimeter since.”
“It’s working then. I’ll keep Sierra team on full alert until they pass. I want the guns online and ready still; flick the switch only on my authority or if you detect an imminent breach. Confirm?” He opted to focus on the immediate positives and not think too deeply on the evident intelligence and organization of The Swarm.
“Acknowledged,” Annie responded with a professional alacrity that mirrored Hendricks’ speech patterns. She was finding it best to talk to him as though she was a military officer of equal or otherwise senior rank. She was learning rapidly through her constant communication with not just Hendricks, but everyone else, and realized that she got better responses and therefore more rapid results if she varied her communication style to suit whoever she was dealing with.
“Can you patch my radio through to everyone? All the pods too?” he asked her. A soft bleep preceded her reply.
“Done, channel open.”
“Everyone,” he said, turning away from the crackling fire and trying to sound what his father would have referred to as jolly, “this is Hendricks. We’re safe from The Swarm, I can confirm that none of them got anywhere near the walls this time. To be certain, I want everyone to stay inside the pods until daybreak. I know it isn’t the most comfortable but needs must. Thank you, Hendricks out.”
“Channel closed,” she told him.
“Good, link me back up to just the team?” Annie bleeped another soft tone in his ear.
“Sound off,” he said, waiting for the team to call up their names one by one. “Fingers off the triggers unless you have to,” he told them. “It’s gonna be a long night folks.”
Chapter 11
No Time to Sleep
The Swarm moved off after an hour, melting away to wherever it was they went and leaving the compound in silence. Silence with the exception of the remaining fires crackling into smoldering ashes.
Hendricks and the team remained alert on the walls throughout the night until the gray light of dawn broke the horizon and he stood half of them down to rest.
“Grab some food and get your heads down,” he told the chosen people. “Annie? Can you wake them in five hours, please?”
Annie’s two-tone acknowledgement sounded over the team’s radios before she spoke to Hendricks privately. “I am concerned about you. I’m detecting reduced cognitive functions which I assume is due to a lack of sleep. I calculate that you’ve slept for eight out of the last forty-eight hours.”
“I’m guessing you’re rounding that figure up?”
“I am. To be precise you’ve slept for periods of three hours and eighteen minutes, one hour and forty-six minutes an—”
“I get it,” Hendricks interrupted her, although not unkindly. In truth he was exhausted, but the responsibility of leadership meant that his priorities were his kit, his people and only then himself. “I’ll cope,” he assured her, “as will the others I haven’t stood down. I once saw Weber go without sleep for three days straight.”
“And from the messages between the team members after that training exercise, Weber was the source of great amusement due to sleep-deprived hallucinations.”
Hendricks chuckled, “Yeah, he wa—wait—did you say you read the messages between the team about that?”
“Yes, I found frequent references to it and searched your previous training logs. It was a source of great interest to me when I was assessing my interactions with Sierra team members.”
“Annie, you can’t do that. It’s an invasion of privacy,” Hendricks admonished her gently.
“Understood,” she responded, “I won’t mention it again.”
Hendricks sighed, dropping the subject as he lacked the brain power for it. Instead he climbed down from the wall, asked Annie to signal the all clear to the others sealed up safely inside the pods, and went in search of caffeine.
As he made his way toward the main shelter his eye caught the familiar shape of their resident computer expert exiting the hatch of a pod, followed closely by the smaller shape of the nurse he was evidently fond of.
Anderson fell in beside Hendricks, pointedly ignoring the single other occupant of the pod he’d spent the night with and tried to make conversation. Hendricks, smiling, filled him in on the events of the night, and watched as he moved off with what Hendricks suspected might’ve been a spring in his step.
The cleanup operation didn’t take long, and Hendricks watched from atop the wall wishing that they had a couple of small earthmovers to help and spare the backs of the people hauling away the burned carcasses of the destroyed bugs. When his turn to rest finally came around, he made sure he ran a cleaning cloth over his firearms and left them in reach. Laying down on his cot, he was out like a light after a few deep breaths.
A soft tone, rising in volume and pitch, brought him back out of his short sleep after what felt like a few minutes. He sat up, swung his feet off the cot and slipped them back into his boots, telling Annie that he was up.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” Annie said, “but I have calculated the minimum amount of sleep you require to function.” Hendricks grumbled a response which she chose to ignore. “I’ve assembled a few key personnel for a meeting regarding my recent findings.”
Hendricks walked into the shelter to find Amir, Anderson and a half dozen other people. He was handed another coffee by Nathalie and nodded his thanks as he took a sip.
“Greetings everyone,” Annie said via the speaker on the wall, “as you all k
now, we suspect that the ‘bugs’ communicate with one another through a limited range wireless capability to send and receive code. I studied this during last night’s attack and can confirm that they offer what Mister Hendricks called a digital handshake to one another.” She paused, offering opportunity for anyone not keeping up to ask questions and hearing none. “The code they communicate with is mine.”
“So, you understand what they’re saying to each other?” Anderson asked.
“Not exactly,” she said, sounding hesitant and more human than he had ever programmed her to be. “The best analogy I can offer is that they are speaking English, only in an accent so colloquial that I cannot understand their dialect fully.”
Hendricks chuckled, earning the attention of the others as they turned to him in confusion.
“Clearly none of you have ever been to Scotland,” he said.
“So,” Amir asked, “can you decipher it? Can you learn to speak their language?”
“I require further studies,” she replied, “and I maintain that the only technology within feasible distance of our location to be on a par with this is at the Charlie site.”
“So, the plan remains the same?” Anderson said. “We need to get to the Charlie site and connect our Annie to their Annie.”
“Agreed,” Annie told them, “I will be able to understand and therefore explain more when I have connected to the version of my former programming on site.”
“Okay,” Hendricks said, “I need a team of four, myself included, leaving three of my team here. Annie, you’re sure you can split yourself over that distance to remain in control of the guns here should we need them?”
“If I relinquish control of certain functions here then I will have sufficient memory to go portable with you,” Annie said.
“On top of the protection detail, who else do we need?” Anderson asked.
“I’ll have to be there,” Amir said quickly, calming himself and over-explaining enough to arouse Hendricks’ suspicions even more. “The access codes of all three sites are geared to unlock to my voice pattern…should we encounter any problems.” Anderson looked at the speaker, falling into that very human trap of thinking that Annie existed inside the thing she spoke to him from.
“I’m sure I can bypass anything programmed in th—”
“Doctor Anderson,” Amir said stiffly, showing a glimmer of how he used to present himself in courtroom and board meetings, “have you, in fact have any of you, actually been to Charlie site before?” He knew the answer, given that he had to authorize every visit. “I’ve been there many times, and I probably spent more time there than I did my brownstone in Carnegie Hill in the last year.”
A collective wave of embarrassment hung in the air as he unwittingly bragged about one of his former properties that cost more than any of them could afford even if they pooled their earnings.
“I mean,” Amir said, realizing he’d misread his target audience once more, “the facility is vast and goes down far below the surface.”
“Fine,” Hendricks said, preferring to keep Amir Weatherby in his sight anyway, “anyone else?”
“A couple of engineers wouldn’t hurt,” Stevens said, proving the theory about great minds, “in case we’ve got any cave-ins or anything.”
“Agreed,” Annie said, “I’ll consult the personnel lists and select the best candidates.”
“Cross reference them against the list of firearms certified first?” Hendricks put in. “No harm in taking a couple of extra guns.”
The team of eight was agreed, Annie working behind the scenes and multitasking as only she could to select and inform the chosen volunteers as the meeting continued. Those selected gathered and contributed their own equipment requirements they reckoned they would need to carry out tasks. Hendricks and Amir, working together, kept the decision-making process streamlined and before long the plan to set off just after midday was agreed. They dispersed, with Annie contacting Hendricks through his earpiece in private to suggest he got another hour of sleep before they departed.
“Not a bad idea,” he told her, thinking of what to ask her to get ready as he slept but being interrupted by an announcement he knew would have gone to every person inside the compound.
“Movement detected outside the walls.”
Chapter 12
Alliance
Annie had identified them through the facial recognition software she had developed after reading about it on the internet a millennium before. She informed them that the two people approaching were from the other settlement.
“Stand down,” Hendricks announced over the radio. “Stevens and Geiger on me.” He asked for the gates to open and strode outside to meet them.
Harrison, walking slightly ahead of the female Hendricks recalled was named Tori, held his hands out to his sides as if to demonstrate that he was no threat to them.
Hendricks held his hand out to Harrison who shook it with a firm grip, feeling the calloused hands that spoke of a lifetime of hard work.
“I see you’ve had visitors also,” Harrison said, his face drawn and the dark circles under his eyes mirroring Hendricks’ own appearance.
“More than once,” Hendricks said, frowning as he picked up on the words he used. “You’ve been attacked too?”
The younger man’s face dropped. “Tanaka’s people burned our walls just as The Swarm came,” he said. “Hundreds of my people were lost.”
Hendricks didn’t know how to respond. He felt the pain in him, seeing it on the face of Tori also.
“He sent them to us as well,” Hendricks said, “after he came to demand we join him.” At the mention of Tanaka Harrison’s eyes snapped up to meet Hendricks’.
“How? How does Tanaka send The Swarm anywhere?” he asked fervently.
“He bragged,” Hendricks told him, “showed me a transponder or something.” He realized that his words were lost on the man and explained it differently. “He has a device, a…a magic box, that controls where the bugs attack.”
Harrison staggered backwards an involuntary step, the weight of the revelation almost knocking him down. He looked at Tori, her own shocked expression switching between Harrison and Hendricks.
“How?” she asked. “How is it possible?”
“We’re not sure yet, but we’re going to find out. These bugs, they’re not natural.”
“What do you mean, they aren’t natural?” Harrison asked, recovering from the shock and allowing anger to infect his words. “They have been here since before my grandfather’s grandfather’s time. The walls of Three Hills were built hundreds of years ago to protect our people from them. How can they not be natural?”
“You know the wristband you have? The one like this?” He showed the thin band on his wrist, waiting for the man’s nod of understanding. “Our computer”—he winced as he knew Annie was listening to his description of her and that he’d have to apologize later—“she can hear them talking to each other… in a way… they’re computerized. They’re made, not reproduced. They’re machines.”
“Machines?” he asked, confused.
“Creations, artificial things that aren’t alive.” Again Hendricks winced as he knew Annie would have heard that too.
“This… this can’t be possible,” Tori said, “they move like animals. They are insects, not machines.”
“Believe me,” Hendricks said, “it’s true. Even we didn’t believe it at first, but the evidence is clear. Annie?” he said, unplugging the wire for the earpiece to his radio.
“Hello Harrison and Tori,” she said, startling both of them. Harrison’s face remained shrouded in confused thought as he looked at the small radio on Hendricks’ vest. “I can confirm what Mister Hendricks has told you; the creatures that form The Swarm are partly artificial.”
“And…and Tanaka did this? He controls these machines?”
“So he claims,” Annie replied, “we are planning an expedition to what you call The Source to learn more.”
“The Source? Where I heard your voice before?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Harrison shot back. “If Tanaka attacked you why don’t you use your guns to kill him?”
“Because we want to know more before we do anything,” Hendricks said firmly. “There aren’t enough people left on Earth to just kill everyone.”
“Except, perhaps, Tanaka,” Annie offered. Hendricks ignored her words as he didn’t see them as helpful to the conversation. He harbored a nagging doubt that decisions on mortality should be left to humans but said nothing.
“We should attack them,” Harrison agreed, clenching his fist before his face, “bring your guns and we can stop him from doing this again.” He saw the hesitation on Hendricks’ face and urged him to join them. “I lost hundreds of my people. Hundreds. That bastard must pay; a life for a life, that is what our law says.”
“Our laws are a little different,” Hendricks told him, “but… but I agree, Tanaka has to go; however, not until we know more.”
“We’re going to The Source,” Annie said, “today. Will you show us the way?”
“Yes,” Tori cut in, “but there are Keepers there.”
“There were,” Harrison reminded her, “we killed them.”
“You think The Tanaka won’t have found that out yet? You think he would leave The Source unguarded? Do the Springs not send food for them?”
“But they have guns,” Harrison argued with Tori as though the newcomers weren’t there, “if we can kill them with blades then there is no danger if they have their guns.”
“My tactical assessment of any potential enemy we have encountered thus far is that even a small detachment of Sierra team is more than capable of dominating any engagement,” Annie said.
Harrison looked to Hendricks for a translation.
“You’re right,” he said, “without guns they’re vulnerable to our weapons, even if we’re outnumbered ten to one.”
“We will go with you,” Harrison agreed, “as soon as you come with my people and kill Tanaka.”