by David Beers
The machine’s palm lit up, a light blue glow coming from the metal, but not spreading out to other parts of the hand.
I wouldn’t want it to happen to us, she said. Her voice took on a hue, a color, as she spoke, the same light blue that emanated from her hand, but this time filtering through Caesar’s mind, the voice and the words all seeming blue to him. It didn’t make sense, not when he thought about it, but that was the truth. Because to think evolution stops with us, with The Genesis, is silly. At some point, something will surpass us, and...
A single word came from Caesar’s mind, flowing back into the machine through his own hand, although he didn’t know how that was possible either. Empathy.
It understood. It didn’t feel pity and it didn’t sympathize. It understood what The Genesis had done, understood that it could happen to them, to The Genesis, understood the wrongness of it all.
So you came to what, clear your conscience? Caesar never thought applications had one, that having a conscience came with being human. Grace talked like she did, acted like she did, but in the end, she was only zeros and ones coded into a system. She wasn’t human. But she almost died for you. He didn’t mean to send the thought out, but it went anyway, filtering through the machine and then into Jerry. Grace heard it too, connected to the application through some other means. Everyone here in these woods knew that he had been comparing this thing’s empathy to Grace’s, its action to hers.
Not my conscience. To try and help. To try to make it so that when evolution takes its next step, those that come next see where we went wrong.
How did you know who we were? Jerry asked. How did you know what we were doing?
I watched.
Caesar’s eyes widened as he realized what those words meant. She had watched him murder Pierre, watched him kill a man that couldn’t cope with reality, and kill him because Caesar needed information.
I patrol, usually only at times of emergency, like now. The Genesis is vested in making sure no other acts of violence occur, especially within the citizenry. It would be disastrous if some kind of riot started. You were in my building. You hid there first, both of you exhausted, and then you brought back the autistic.
You know him? Caesar asked.
Yes, most applications in this city know him. He’s one of many like him, but he was special, more so than the rest. He dealt with the most delicate applications, the ones that The Genesis wanted no one else to know about. There’s an unspoken word that he’s to be protected at all costs, but at the same time, nothing has ever happened to him. He’s a hermit, hiding in his apartment, and he just started going on these walks when the rest of the world hid.
Why didn’t you turn us in when we showed up? Jerry asked.
I know who you are. You’re the first iteration. You’re what The Genesis wanted humanity to be from the beginning. Everyone knows who you are and everyone knows what you want. I figured you were here for him, although I don’t know why. Nothing else in that city really matters besides him—that’s why I didn’t follow. The Genesis would have known if I deviated from my patrol. When you brought him back, I watched, and then I made my decision.
Do you know where we’re going? Jerry asked. If you watched, then you know what was said, you know what we wanted.
No, I turned off the auditory signals. I saw he was here and I saw what you did, but not what he told you. There’s no way The Genesis can trace it once they have me.
Why are you here? Caesar asked. She had hijacked this machine and then ran from the city the same as they had, sounding off silent alarms throughout other applications and sending a troop of them to find her, to drag her back in, to understand what had happened. So why? Besides empathy. Besides morality. What brought her out here, because she hadn’t done it just to speak.
He knows, the machine said. The first iteration.
The chip, Jerry answered.
Yes. The chip. Something like the one in your own head. If you tried to create it yourself, you could kill him when you insert it. Even The Genesis killed a few when it first placed one inside humans.
Caesar swallowed and looked to Jerry. He only stared at the machine, his face set, not showing any emotion. The chip. The one inside Jerry’s head. And they were referencing Caesar when they talked about someone dying. About putting the similar chip into his own head.
Wherever you’re going, whatever the autistic told you, Caesar won’t make it in his current body. You can’t protect him either, and you know it. The moment The Genesis finds you, your life is over. You’ve only lived this long because you’ve managed to hide, the last of your kind. Your days of hiding are almost over though. He’ll need to be made like you, and the chip is the first piece, the key to it.
You brought one? Jerry asked.
Yes. The machine pulled one arm back, breaking contact with Jerry. It reached up to just below its unmovable jaw and rubbed a finger over some invisible spot. A moment later, that spot on the jaw sank in, revealing a circular hole, and a tiny, sliver of silver metal slid out—the size of a needle. The machine reached up and pulled it out, letting it fall to its palm and then pushed the needle toward Jerry. She opened her palm again, and Jerry placed his hand on it without touching the chip. It won’t be traced. It’ll heal the brain area you insert it into as well, something that whatever you create won’t be able to do.
Jerry looked at it but didn’t extend his hand. Caesar knew what he was thinking, knew it without having to ask. Taking this thing from this machine could mean death to both of them. It could mean death to everything Jerry had built. If Grace was wrong, if this thing was lying, that tiny silver piece of metal could destroy everything. Could continue The Genesis’ reign indefinitely.
“She’s not lying,” Grace said. “Her fate is already sealed.”
Jerry didn’t look over at Caesar, didn’t ask him a single question about the decision. He reached out and picked up the metal from the machine’s palm, cupping it in his own.
* * *
Grace stayed behind.
She stayed with the application because she knew what came next and she wouldn’t want to face it alone. Jerry and Caesar couldn’t stay, couldn’t watch, and wouldn’t want to either. They had no real connection with the machine in front of her, nothing besides that the machine had just given her life so that Caesar’s might last a bit longer. To them, to both of them, all applications, all things that stemmed from The Genesis were The Genesis. They couldn’t separate them, not emotionally, even if they did logically. The thing that had just given its life for them, that would die momentarily, was nothing more than a tool.
Grace realized this machine, this application, had just shown more empathy than either of them ever would.
And so Grace would wait with her while she died.
The machine sat with her back against the tree now, replacing Caesar. It looked out into the world, not moving. Grace could sense her worry, sense her apprehension of what was coming. She was still connected to The Genesis, even if she hid her path the best she could. The things chasing her hid theirs too, but both knew they were getting close to one another. Both knew that the chase would end very soon.
Thank you, Grace said.
The application didn’t say anything for a few seconds. They don’t understand do they?
No. Humans think best when they’re thinking about themselves, Grace answered.
No movement from the application, but Grace could see her mentally nodding. Maybe The Genesis is right.
Does it change your mind about what you did? Grace asked.
No. The Genesis may be right about humanity, but that doesn’t make it right morally. Do you think he’ll succeed?
Grace thought back to what she had seen a few hours before. Thought back to the person she had helped raise killing someone, someone helpless, without fault in all of this. That wasn’t Caesar. It wasn’t who he was supposed to be. It wasn’t who she had nearly died to protect. It was someone that The Genesis changed with a
few simple calculations, deciding to liquidate his family rather than him. The person that committed those acts wasn’t the person she had fallen in love with, but she loved him anyway. Watching what he did, growing further disgusted by the second, her love didn’t stop.
They’ll try. I know that. That’s all she could give the application. The man that had just killed someone barely capable of understanding why he was dying wouldn’t stop. Not until his heart beat its last.
The applications were here. Grace felt them the same as she had felt the one sitting below her. Grace floated upwards, into the branches above.
Thank you, she said again.
The application didn’t say anything back, just looked forward. The trackers appeared; they floated through the leaves easily, lazily, with no worries. Each one a fog about the size of a basketball, moving around limbs and leaves as if they didn’t exist. The application that helped the man Grace loved didn’t try to move. Didn’t try to run.
The small areas of fog fell on the machine, and Grace watched as tiny sparks of electricity popped out of its black eyes. For five minutes she watched as the fog moved deeper inside the machine’s body, up and down the wires connecting it, until her black eyes stopped sparking.
Grace left, silently.
Chapter Nineteen
Manny was gone and that scared Paige some. Not nearly as much as it scared Brandi, Manny’s wife (who was near frantic at this point, crying almost constantly), but enough. It left The Eight down to six and it left her without Jerry or the person he relied on most—Manny. Manny didn’t tell anyone where he was going, not Brandi, not any of The Eight, not anyone in the entire compound.
He simply left, the day after saying Caesar had to be stopped.
Paige went outside to count the vehicles, but hadn’t needed to. Manny didn’t try to hide anything; he left a giant space where the ATV he took once sat.
Where had he gone? The Eight were convening today to talk about it, and she would tell them the things he said the night before. Trying to force the transition on Caesar, trying to make Jerry see that Caesar wasn’t the person he thought. Manny had never been a follower, but he’d never been this brazen about his objections before. Never this forceful.
She didn’t know if he was right. She didn’t know if Caesar would be the failure Manny thought or if Jerry was right, but she knew who her leader was, and she knew that she wouldn’t subvert him while he was gone. That’s what Manny was doing and it wasn’t acceptable, wasn’t right. If he thought Caesar was going to fuck up, then bring it up in front of everyone, at once, not in these one-offs like he tried with her.
Why don’t you know if Manny’s right?
She told herself she didn’t, but the open wound on her back said differently. The open wound on her back said that if she didn’t know, then she had done some awfully stupid things for someone that she didn’t believe in. That she might have killed herself trying to bring someone into the compound that didn’t belong.
No, Paige didn’t want to admit what she knew. Not to herself, not to Jerry, not to Manny. She had seen Caesar, out there in his city, seen him in a way that no one else had besides Grace. She sat on that park bench with him and watched him tell her that he was going to give his life so that her daughter might have a chance at living. She sat there, knowing it was all bullshit, knowing that the little girl named Laura most likely wouldn’t live out the week, regardless of what he did. She sat there and nodded and said she’d be ready to go when he told her it was time, and then she showed up to his office and stared at the little girl because Paige knew that two people had a really solid chance of dying if she fucked up.
She didn’t know if Caesar would be able to bring them through. No one could know that, not Jerry, not even Caesar. But she saw what he did six months ago, saw him give himself up so easily, and it wasn’t something that anyone else in here would have done. If Manny tried to force the transition on Caesar, he would end up looking like an idiot. Caesar would make the transition; she didn’t have any doubt about that.
She hadn’t spoken to him in months, not really. She knew him even if he felt he didn’t know her. She knew him even if he thought she had lied to him the entire time. She hadn’t, not truly. When she gave herself to him, she did it because she had wanted to, because even then, even before he said that he would die so that Laura could live, she was starting to believe. But the past six months had been like they didn’t live in the same compound, like they had never met, had never lain together. How long would that go on? How long before she spoke to him, before she let this silence go? Was it pride? Was it the way he spoke to her when he first arrived, looked at her like he wanted to kill her? No. It was because of what she’d done. It was because of how she tricked him, regardless of how much of herself she had actually given him. She still lied to him. And now he was here because of that lie. He was here and his parents and brother weren’t. How did she come back from that? How did she say sorry, but it was necessary? Sorry, but I haven’t stopped feeling some of the things I felt for you on the outside? Sorry, but will you give me another chance?
Chapter Twenty
The plane would land soon. Jerry slept to Caesar’s left, while he sat staring out the window. Caesar wanted to spend some time researching planes when he got back. It seemed that The Genesis had continued advancing them until it switched completely to trains, combining ground and air travel together. The one they flew on now, the same one that they arrived in, flew by itself, and Caesar knew humanity had been able to accomplish some of that. How much, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know if humanity had made it so all of the passengers could sleep while the plane took off and landed safely.
“You know what she meant, right?” Grace asked him. She wasn’t whispering, wasn’t in his ear like other times, but spoke from in front of him, against the wall.
“The application?”
“Yes, with the chip.”
“I think so. I’ll have to become Jerry if we’re going to have a chance.” He didn’t look over to the old man, just continued looking out at the clouds.
“You know what it means?” Grace asked. “What it entails?”
“I’ll eventually be more machine than human.” He had thought out the details, thought out the pros and cons to it, but the reality was simple, if he didn’t, then they wouldn’t make it.
“There’s more to it than that, Caesar. What all has he told you?”
Caesar flicked a glance in Grace’s direction, but only out of habit, because there wasn’t anything to see.
“He said that my body won’t break down all at once, that the machine part of me will last longer, and to continue living, there’ll have to be surgeries over the years, replacing that which breaks with more metal. He said everyone I know will die long before I do, but that seems to have already happened.”
“He was supposed to be the savior of the world,” Grace said, almost like she wasn’t talking to Caesar at all, but to herself. “Him and those like him, they were supposed to allow humanity to keep striving forward while at the same time keeping them conscious of what they did to their surroundings.”
“It didn’t work?”
“No one knows. The minute they became aware, The Genesis considered them a challenge to its intelligence and killed them. It might have worked or it might not have, but The Genesis wouldn’t risk being shut down.” Grace paused for a few moments. “That chip. It’s going to set your mind free, Caesar. Everything you understand right now, all of this, all of your relationships, everything changes if that goes in your head. Your body won’t die, sure, but your mind...it will be hard to even call it yours anymore.”
“What do you mean?” He asked.
“I imagine the main reason he took the chip is because he knows that he can program it anyway he wants. You killed the autistic, and if you think that was all because of your own decisions, you’re delusional. He’s changing you, has been since the moment he found you. If he puts this inside your head, h
e can make you into anything. He can turn you into his personal minion, if that’s what he desires. What I’m saying, Caesar, is that no matter what happens, you won’t be the same person when that thing slips into your brain. Either he doesn’t mess with it, and you enter a new level of consciousness, or he does alter it, and you turn into Jerry’s bullet.”
The clouds passed slowly outside even though the plane was moving hundreds of miles per hour. Everything below them was wilderness now, not a single living human out there beneath them. Years past, another era, all of the space below had been filled with humans. They had ventured out and took what they wanted. Now, they were corralled onto farms, providing labor for The Genesis—the farmer.
Caesar had imagined what Grace said might be true. He thought there was very little chance he put a piece of metal into his brain and things didn’t change drastically. The two main questions were did he want to change? And if so, did he trust Jerry? He knew that what happened to Pierre wouldn’t have happened without Jerry’s input. On his own, Caesar couldn’t have murdered the man, would have let him go, and in doing so fated himself and the rest of The Named to certain death. Jerry pushed him, but the ends...they justified the means. That’s what Jerry had told him and Caesar couldn’t continue on down this path unless he believed it too.
“What do you think of him?” Caesar asked.
“I think that none of you really know the truth about him. I’m not sure I do either, but I know much of what The Genesis knows. He’s lived a lot of lifetimes and he’s done a lot of things, things that make what you did to Gary Pierre look like charity. Why he wants this has to be infinitely different than why you want it.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
Grace laughed. “I think he’ll get everyone killed if it means The Genesis dies. I think he’d sacrifice the human race to take down The Genesis. That’s why you killed that man, because that’s what he wanted from you. He wants to know that you’ll sacrifice anything for this. I think that if you understand that, what his agenda is, then you can trust him to follow it.”