Run

by Michaelbrent Collings

  John watched as the video cube changed, showing shots of what he recognized as nuclear warheads, though the designs were slightly different from the ones he’d been trained to recognize. Men stood around the weapons, wearing what were clearly military or paramilitary uniforms, though John did not recognize their insignia at all. The men worked on the nukes, tinkering and adjusting them in preparation for whatever was coming next. John felt a sinking dread in the base of his stomach that seemed like pure acid, scalding him and creating a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Adam continued. "Within a few months tensions were high enough that someone did the worst thing possible: they fired a warning shot. A sixty-megaton warning shot." The cube disappeared abruptly, leaving John in complete darkness, Adam’s voice wafting through it like a ghost from some nightmare version of a Dickens tale.

  "Within one month, most of the earth had been burned over."

  The cube reappeared then, and John gasped. It was a picture of a news anchor again. It could have been Tom Brokaw or Sam Donaldson or anyone else, but no one would be able to tell for sure, because the person’s face was ravaged by radiation poisoning, one eye burned away, skin hanging in stringy peels from the bone of his skull, and great tufts of hair falling out even as he spoke. He read from a pair of pages held in his wasted hands, and John heard sound with the video this time, the terrible voice of this world’s past.

  "I’m bringing you the latest," said the man. His voice was rough, gravelly, the voice of a corpse who hasn’t the sense to die. He coughed wetly, then put down the papers. "Is there anyone listening? Is there anyone even alive? I’m here in this studio, it’s automated. Just me and the machines. Me and the machines. Don’t bother trying to call in, the phone lines are gone. Everything is. I doubt this signal is even going out."

  Blood began to drip from his nose, spattering across his desk. The drip turned into a steady stream as he continued speaking, pooling in a crimson puddle beneath him, running in rivulets over the side of the desk. "It’s just me and the machines, but I have to try. Have...to...."

  His head slumped and hit the desk with a wet splat. His eyes were still open, but he was clearly dead. John couldn’t pull his eyes away from the vision, as though he were seeing the death of Pestilence, one of the Four Horsemen, himself. Adam spoke, the dead newsman providing eerie proof of his words.

  "Ninety-nine point nine percent of the earth’s population was dead, and the last one tenth of one percent looked like it would soon follow. Radiation was everywhere, and no one had any way of escape. The human race was destined for certain extinction."

  "But – " John said.

  Adam continued over him. "People survive, John. They always do. That’s God’s plan. I truly believe that, and you should too."

  The view on the video cube flickered and then disappeared, mercifully taking the apparition of the newscaster with it. The lights came on in the room and John let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and looked at Adam.

  "So in a hundred years," continued the older man, "there were more people. Still not many, though, and they were still in constant danger of dying off. The earth had been changed by the war - we call it Endwar - the ice caps melted, most of the vegetation gone forever. So the remaining few constructed domed cities, safe havens from the elements."

  "Like zoos," said John.

  "Very much so." Adam leaned forward, his blue eyes searing into John’s like icy lasers. "But people don’t do well in captivity, even the self-imposed kind. Most of them either went crazy or killed themselves. Radiation levels were up beyond what humans are made for, and one of the results was a new genetic predisposition to insanity. A few of those who went mad - the Fanatics, they call themselves - believed that Endwar was the harbinger of Armageddon, the battle of Gog and Magog. They believed that God was trying to destroy His wicked children, so they took it upon themselves to finish the job for Him."

  John started. "One of the people who tried to kill Fran and me said something about his salvation or something."

  "That was Malachi. He’s their leader. Their priest. Dedicated to killing off all humankind. They draw their numbers from the domes, and even a few of us," he waved, gesturing so that John would understand that by "us" he meant the people who worked with him, "join them. It’s a controlled madness and a rather strange religion, with only one important new scripture. I have it memorized. Want to hear it?"

  John wanted to say - to scream – "No!" To shake his head and close his eyes like he had when he was three and his mother tried to feed him peas. But he didn’t. He nodded soundlessly, more afraid of not knowing than he was of discovering the truth. He was realizing now that not knowing was the state in which he had spent his entire life. Not knowing had led him to death, and to this dead place in the future that was also, somehow, the present.

  Adam sat back again, closing his eyes. "‘After thou hast killed all others, thy final act will be to come unto Me.’"

  "Jesus."

  "I hope not." Adam smiled grimly at the joke. "Malachi’s a real danger. Used to be second in command here. Then it all got to him."

  "Why didn’t you stop him, then?"

  Adam pursed his lips as though this were a sore point. "We live a strange life here, John. One of the strange aspects of it is that we try to live in perfect emotional control. Not only does that free us to make hard decisions, but it also provides an early warning sign of impending insanity. Almost every one of the Controllers will go mad if not killed by a Fan or by radiation poisoning. So we teach ourselves to live in control of our feelings. When we can no longer contain our emotions, when we start to show to much passion, that gives those around us a sign that our mental processes are starting to deteriorate. But it didn’t happen that way with Malachi. He maintained perfect presence of mind, it seemed, up until the very day he ran from Control HQ, and joined the Fans."

  "And became their leader," said John.

  "Correct. The Fans came after us, or at least they tried to. We used to be located under Old Salt Lake City, but we closed down as soon as he left and came here instead. It’s standard procedure to move from place to place after a defection."

  "You must move a lot,"

  "Rarely," answered Malachi.

  "But you said everyone goes nuts. So don’t they all join his crew?"

  "Of course not," answered Adam. "We kill most of them before that happens."

  CONTROL HQ - RUSHM

  AD 1999/AE 3999

  John was silent for a moment, of necessity taking some time to digest the awesome amount of information that threatened to overload his mental processes.

  "You kill them?" he repeated at last.

  Adam nodded, wearily it seemed, and shut his eyes. "Yes. Try not to judge us too harshly for that. We are all that stands between the Fans and the end of humanity. So we can afford to take no chances with those who show signs of dementia or madness. Because when we miss one, like we missed Malachi, that person becomes just one more soldier in the crusade against our survival. Malachi went over to the Fans, and he’s been killing people in the domes and looking for our headquarters ever since."

  "If he’s been doing so much killing, then why isn’t everyone dead?"

  Adam’s eyes opened again, answering John’s question incorrectly, perhaps intentionally so. "Technology moved fast in the last year before Endwar. They could take a single atom and inscribe the words from an entire library on its face. They could take a man apart and put him together again." Adam paused, taking a deep breath. "And they could create life...or a reasonable facsimile thereof."

  Again, John’s mind reeled with the implications of what had been said and what he sensed Adam was about to say. The older man stood and gestured for John to follow him. They went to another part of the wall that looked no different from the other surfaces around them, but when they approached it split open, creating a narrow door that allowed them to exit. Adam stepped through and led John down a series of corridors before goin
g through yet another door. The new room they entered was a lab. Completely mechanized, lined by huge tubes with clear faces. Adam gestured, inviting John to look in the clearest tube.

  "Recognize anything?" asked Adam.

  "Gabriel," whispered John. "Oh, my God, it’s Gabe."

  Gabriel reclined in the tube, eyes closed as though asleep. But he couldn’t be asleep, because from the waist down he was nothing but bone. Literally. The bones of his pelvis and hips emerged below the line of his waist, continuing down to attach to leg bones, patellae, and the small bones of his feet and ankles. Then as John watched, a slick substance built up around the bones. Soon it sheathed the entire structure, and began to darken.

  "Tissue formation," said Adam. Then he said, "It’s not Gabe, it’s a robot. Another robot, like the first Gabe was."

  John turned to Adam, aghast and horrified. "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "Your best friend was a biomechanical construct. This one is to replace him."

  "No, he wasn’t, he couldn’t," said John. He didn’t like the voice he heard coming from his mouth, whining and frightened. "All the memories he had," he continued. "Everything he had done...."

  "Were real. Within certain parameters. We permit them to live their lives out as they will, mostly, but there are certain requirements we have programmed into them," answered Adam. "He was real, and he led a real life, but he was just a machine. Like everyone else in Loston."

  John looked at the other tubes. Mertyl lay in one, slowly being reformed, no doubt complete with her old memories and soon to be reigning supreme in the school office once more. Adam pointed at the tubes, all of which were full. "We have to remake the ones we’ve lost and reinsert them into Loston, because we hope that soon it will be safe enough for you and Fran to go back there."

  John felt weak and fought to remain standing. His world spun around him as the implications of Adam’s words burrowed into his brain. He looked around the room and saw other tubes, other bodies. Some of them were incredibly tiny, like...

  "Babies," said Adam, noting where John’s gaze had fallen. "That’s the one thing we could never create: a viable living form, one that could not only survive but reproduce. So we make them here and a few other places, then ship them to their domes. They grow normally but all their implanted programming parameters are already there, waiting to be activated at the appropriate times. And they can’t breed. That’s why you and Fran are so very important."

  John stared at one of the babies. He reached out and touched the glass that separated him from the small form, and suddenly the body animated, the little chest expanding as breath was drawn into its lungs. John’s hand jerked away, and the thought that he had caused the baby’s movement gripped him. Then he realized that the baby was still unconscious, its body merely reacting to unseen directives given to it by the machines.

  "They can’t breed," said Adam again, as if this was the most important thing about them, and then continued, "but if you can’t tell the difference, and they can’t tell the difference, then who’s to say there even is a difference?"

  John’s gaze returned to Gabriel’s still form. The tissue around his legs was more formed now, growing incredibly rapidly. Above the tube a readout suddenly clicked on, reading 00:00:48:00:00.

  "That’s the Calibrator," said Adam. "We’re bringing everyone – all Loston robots - online with the memories they had 48 hours ago, so that in Loston none of this will have ever happened."

  John sank to the floor. He felt as though a vision of hell had opened up before him, and the worst thing about it was that he was already there.

  "Everyone?" he said. His voice was small and weak. Training had given him the skills to overcome physical threats, but this was more. This information threatened not just his body, but his mind and soul.

  "Everyone," replied Adam. He was looking at the tubes with the clinical expression of a doctor or a computer engineer: disassociated, dispassionate. "The ‘bots are completely undetectable, completely human, unless we put them on alert or their sensors indicate a threat to their primary functions. Then they change. They can withstand all but the most violent deaths, have extreme strength, and even resurrect themselves."

  John jerked slightly, Adam’s words bringing to vivid recollection the events of the past hours, the strange night of reanimating corpses and living dead.

  "There’s a supercomputer - a biological networking computer - at the base of each ‘bot’s thalamus. It regulates the organism, makes sure everything’s going smoothly. The physics and biology that are involved wouldn’t make any sense to you, but in times of need the computer triggers a series of electro-chemical changes that keep the organism alive."

  "That’s why they went for the heads," whispered John.

  Adam nodded. "Malachi knows that to destroy the computer you have to destroy its networking center. Kill the thalamus."

  Both men looked at Gabriel. The man looked so peaceful from the waist up, and so frightening and alien from the waist down. His tissue continued to generate, and John could see the individual strands of ropy muscle begin to form. Soon skin and hair covered them, and Gabriel was complete. A pair of cables, glistening with some kind of lubricant, snaked into the tube and inserted themselves into Gabe’s ears. His eyes jerked open and his mouth rounded in a silent scream.

  John almost screamed himself before Gabe’s eyes closed and he resumed his peaceful position. Adam gripped John’s arm. "It’s just downloading," he said. "We have to give him the memories he needs to be Gabe again."

  "He won’t be Gabe," said John.

  "Oh, but he will. He’ll be everything Gabe ever was up to two days ago. We build them well. In fact, the only thing we could never beat was the fact that they go insane if they find out the truth about themselves."

  "How can a robot go insane?"

  "How would you feel, John, if one day something triggered you - triggered something inside you that you didn’t even know was there? And all of a sudden you’re doing things you know are impossible and your body has become something different than you’ve known. You realize that all your most cherished memories are lies. Not only are you not you, you’re not even a real person." Adam nodded at Gabriel’s body. "As long as they live the lie, they’re fine. But when they realize it for what it is...rather than face that bleakness, they go mad. We make them too well, perhaps. Undetectable. Human."

  Both men were silent for a moment, staring at Gabriel’s body, which slept in its strange and macabre way, an analog to the life that John now knew was forever beyond the coach’s grasp.

  "Do you think," said Adam, "that God loves them as His own, or do you think they are anathema to Him?"

  The tubes in Gabe’s ears crackled, and Gabe drew a deep breath, beginning to breathe regularly as the tubes withdrew.

  John turned his head and vomited.

  ***

  Fran’s eyes fluttered, but all was a mist of gray and confusion, as though someone had padded her brain in cotton batting like the kind her grandmother had used once long ago to make quilts that reminded one of a gentler time, a time when people were good to each other and didn’t die and then stand up again, but had the good sense and courtesy to stay dead.

  What does that mean? she wondered to herself.

  A light appeared in the mist, and she realized that her eyes were open. She was trying to see, but for some reason resolution and clarity were evading her. The light grew bright, then was blocked by a pair of forms, like two dense clouds traveling through a lighter fog that hung over a fairy land.

  Her thoughts were muddled. Where’s Nathan? she thought. And why isn’t John here, either?

  One of the clouds spoke. "She’s coming out of it."

  The other cloud moved, and Fran thought she felt something touch her arm. Immediately the mist that surrounded her thickened into a more impenetrable darkness.

  "Keep her down," said another voice. "Adam wants her under for as long as she’s here."

  CONTROL
HQ - RUSHM

  AD 1999/AE 3999

  "You people are monsters," said John, and Adam’s eyes filled with tears as the statement stabbed him to the core.

  "Please," whispered Adam. John’s words caused a pain in his heart that was reflective of the self-doubt he felt, of the belief that John might be right. "Please don’t think that. We’re not monsters, just people doing what we have to to keep humankind alive."

  "What about you?" asked John. "Are you human?"

  Adam picked up a small box that lay near Gabe’s tube. He held it next to John’s head, and a panel on it glowed green. "Human," he said, then handed the box to John. "You can scan me if you want. I’ve never done it. I believe I’m human, but that could be the programming. You hold my soul - or if I don’t have one, then my sanity - in your hands."

  John looked at the box, obviously tempted to use it. "You’d go crazy if you knew?"

  Adam nodded.

  "What about the guy I saw in Iraq? Hell, what about Iraq?" asked John.

  Adam felt relief at the question, one he was actually prepared to answer. "The man - Devorough - was what we call a bit."

  "A bit?" repeated John.

  "Short for bit player," explained Adam. "It’s a robot model we use over and over again. It saves us a lot of time and difficulty, because each new face is made from scratch, basically. So there are thousands of recycled templates we use, and most people won’t notice the face in the mall that they also happened to see thirty years ago in the movie theater. Or if they do notice, they chalk it up to déjà vu or indigestion or a strange dream or any of a thousand other things. You, on the other hand, did notice, so we tried to transfer him out."

  "But he was in his house when I went looking."

  Adam’s brow furrowed, though he tried to hide his expression from John. This was one of the things that most concerned him: not only had Devorough shown up at Loston with a daughter, which his programming wasn’t designed to support, but to all appearances the bit either hadn’t responded to its directive to leave Loston, or it hadn’t received the order. The former alternative meant that the bit had somehow resisted its programming.