by David Beers
What other choice did he have though?
He found the equipment, undisturbed by whatever came through this place. The applications hadn’t been looking for equipment, only for people to kill. He found it and lay it out on the table, a rectangular looking box, with buttons and lights on it. An antenna stood up in the right corner. Had anyone ever used this? None of the current Eight, for sure. If someone had, it was long ago, before anyone alive right now ever knew of Jerry. If it didn’t work, Manny was out of luck. If it didn’t work, Manny would live here with the dead, wondering about his wife and child until he decided to put a knife inside himself.
Manny pressed a button next to the antennae and the box lit up, not making a sound. Jerry showed him this a long time ago, showed him the same as he had showed the rest of The Eight.
In case you need me. But only when there’s no other choice. When you use this, you put me at a risk greater than any other way you possibly can. You have complete control over my life.
A risk greater than any other you possibly can. Jerry hadn’t known what he was talking about, it seemed. Manny had put him at a much greater risk today, put them all at a much greater risk.
He pressed the buttons, going through the ritual that he memorized all those years ago.
“Who’s here?” The voice that came from the box was mechanical, showing none of the emotions that Jerry’s voice normally carried. It was him though. His thoughts relaying through this machine.
“It’s me, Manny.” Manny’s voice broke on the last word, cracking as surprisingly as a whip.
Silence came through the machine. Manny understood he was inside Jerry’s head, that it wasn’t just his voice he heard, but Jerry’s thoughts as well, if Jerry let him. He wasn’t now, though. His mind was still, perfectly still, and Manny knew why. Jerry didn’t want him to know anything he thought, because Jerry believed he might have had something to do with the compound, with the dead people upstairs. With the dead in the rooms around him.
“What happened?” Manny asked, tears in his eyes and surely about to fall down onto his cheeks. “What happened here?”
Slowly, with precision, metering out each word, Jerry said, “Where were you, Manny?”
In his confusion, his sorrow, his goddamn panic, he’d forgotten his story. He had one, when he showed up here, was ready to tell Jerry and The Eight and whoever else wanted to hear. What was it? What was he going to tell them? He didn’t have time now to stumble, to give anything but...
“I went to the city. The one Caesar was born in, Allencine.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to see where he came from. I wanted to see if it was similar to where I came from.”
Silence on the other end again. A longer silence, without a single thought or word coming through the machine.
“Tell me, Jerry, what happened here? Where’s Brandi? Where’s my son?”
“They didn’t make it.”
A robot read the thought out to him, a robot that couldn’t possibly understand what it was saying or what it meant to the person it spoke too. Electrons firing off metal, creating sounds that relayed Jerry’s words.
They didn’t make it.
“What’s that mean, Jerry? What’s that fucking mean?” Manny asked, anger and panic rising inside like lava in a volcano, no amount of rock or Earth able to hold it back.
“They’re dead. The Genesis killed them like everyone else.”
“No,” he said simply. Refusing to believe it. Refusing it to be true. Refusing the whole goddamn thing.
“Do you want to come to us?” Jerry asked.
Do you want to come to us? To fucking who, Jerry? You and Caesar? Paige and the rest of them? Come to your new hide out? Come and do what? WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO, JERRY? The thoughts raged inside him, a bear trying to get to its cubs, but Manny had no more cubs. Had no more spouse. Had a compound full of dead people and a robot on the line who was asking if Manny wanted to come to them. What kind of a fucking question was that? Was he supposed to sit here, go cook some eggs, sleep in his bed tonight? Was that what the fuck he was supposed to do?
And then a calmer thought came, one closer to the reptilian part of his brain. One that discarded the emotions that were just about to take over completely. A thought that had to get a single phrase in before everything collapsed. He knows. Jerry knows and that’s why he’s asking rather than telling you where they are.
And then the rest of Manny shut the voice up and he sobbed. He sobbed and sobbed, not bothering to shut the machine off in front of him. He cried inside Jerry’s head, unable to hold back the pain any longer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Don’t move,” Grace said. “Stay still.”
She whispered it into Caesar’s ear and he heard her immediately. No lag time from waking to knowing exactly what she meant. The transmission from her voice to the neurons inside his head happened instantaneously.
Why? He asked, except his voice didn’t come from his mouth. It appeared inside his head, as if he had wanted to speak it but somewhere in the midst of communicating with his mouth, the words got lost.
“You’re not ready to move yet. Soon, but not yet.”
How did you...but the voice in his head trailed off as he realized he was doing it again, that he wasn’t communicating with his mouth, but through some other way, communicating and being understood.
“It’s the chip. It’s inside you, Caesar, and it’s making decisions. I...” She paused, sounding unsure of herself. “I didn’t know they were this advanced. The application that brought this to you...she...” But Grace didn’t finish. It was like she was lost for the first time, not knowing how to end her sentence, not knowing exactly what she wanted to say.
What decisions? Caesar asked.
“You’re connected to me and Jerry. You can access us whenever you want and the chip knows this. It knows the quickest way to communicate, the most direct. It’s trying to save you time right now. That’s why when you speak, the words aren’t leaving your head. It knows that all you have to do is think at me.”
Caesar opened his eyes and looked down but only saw sheets covering his body.
Can Jerry hear this?
“No. You’re talking to me. The chip knows. It automatically knows who you’re addressing and does the necessary work.”
Caesar’s eyes moved around the rest of the room, taking in his surroundings. He lay on a cot of sorts, near the floor, but his arms and legs were restrained by something, he couldn’t see it without removing the sheets.
Grab the belts.
The words came to him from nowhere, and yet he knew who had spoken them. Jerry, at some time in the past. The sound of belts rustling and then being tied to his hands and feet came to him next; he could almost feel it happening.
How do I know there are belts tying me down? He asked.
“The chip doesn’t turn off. Your mind will. It’ll sleep and you’ll sleep, but the chip is always listening, recording. It’s endless.”
How long ago did it take? But before Grace could answer he knew: fifteen hours.
“There’s a lot you won’t have to ask anyone, ever again, Caesar.”
Why do you sound so frightened? He asked.
“I had an idea of what it would do, but not this. This wasn’t possible, at least not that I knew about. Certainly Jerry didn’t. Jerry’s mind is powerful, but his chip is like the first wheel when compared with yours. A break-through for the human race, but something that doesn’t work anymore, that is less than useless. You’re...you’re the closet any human has ever come to achieving The Genesis.”
What else? That wasn’t all and he knew it. The tone in her voice relayed emotions at a much deeper level than he had understood before. His mind was coming up with calculations, calculations he didn’t really even understand, that would take time to dive into, but he understood the conclusion: Grace was holding something from him.
“You know. I can tell you, but
you know.”
And so he did. There wasn’t anything Grace could hide from him. She told him not to move because his bones hadn’t grafted to the metal yet. His muscles in all the major parts of his body had been replaced, ripped out and filled with something much harder, much stronger.
“We didn’t think you were going to make it, Caesar. A lot...a lot’s happened and we thought your brain was going to reject the implant and you would end up stroking out. Jerry decided to do all of it. The whole transformation instead of just the chip. If you were going to make it, then he didn’t want to have to put you under again. It’ll take some time, but your body is adjusting to the material inside it. The chip is wiring all of it together, constantly, but building it out isn’t...”
Instantaneous, Caesar thought. Seventy-eight hours, four minutes, and twenty seven seconds left. He wouldn’t be able to function fully until then. His arms would move before that, of course, because the chip wired them first given their proximity to it. What else happened? He asked, his mind moving on from the time to fix himself. He couldn’t answer the next question, and he imagined it was because the chip hadn’t been turned on at that point.
“The Genesis attacked. It found The Named’s location and killed over half of them. Of us, I guess. We’re not at the compound; we’re in a cave, one that Jerry mapped out a long time ago.”
Caesar didn’t say anything back. Half of The Named dead. He didn’t ask about Leon because he knew his friend still lived, the chip relaying a voice clip of Leon looking at him lying on this cot. Paige either. Four of The Eight still lived, all of them having come into this part of the cavern at some point, to look at him. That was it though, he didn’t know about anyone else because there had been no other voices to record.
Where’s Jerry?
“Call to him. He’ll come.”
* * *
Caesar called the meeting four days after he woke up.
Everyone sat on the ground. There wasn’t anything else for them to sit on. Jerry had found this place but he hadn’t outfitted it. He hadn’t let anyone know it even existed, having visited it once and then never again. It was extensive, the caverns, and so far they hadn’t found any large animals—only small ones such as snakes and vermin. The further they pushed back, it looked like everyone would have enough living space. The comforts though, that was a large step down. No more kitchen. No more indoor plumbing. No more cooking on a stove. Hunting had begun, first in the cave, and then at night to the surrounding desert. When they were able to kill coyotes, that was a good night, but everyone in this room, the remainder of The Eight knew that wouldn’t last. That eventually, introducing this many humans into the ecosystem would destroy it, and their food supply would be depleted soon.
Jerry sat next to Caesar and Manny next to Jerry. There were seven of them here, the five from the original Eight plus Leon and Caesar. The Eight were no more. Would never be again, as far as Caesar cared. Its purpose had been served and The Genesis ended it with a speed none of them thought possible.
Caesar spent the past four days discovering himself, understanding what this new body was. Limitless. That’s the only way he could think of it. The chip in his mind calculated instantaneously what he could and couldn’t do, of course, but compared to his previous body, this one was unstoppable. The weak points were his bones. The metal that moved them could propel him at such a force that if he collided with something hard, his bones would turn to dust. He thought he had figured a way around that, though, but he needed time to implement it. They didn’t have time right now. They had the location of The Tourist and it was time to move.
Caesar didn’t understand The Genesis any better now than he had before; perhaps it was the only thing in this world that remained similar to his life before the surgery. It had moved against The Named though, for the first time in history. In one afternoon it reduced their number by over half. The brainpower, the ones that had directed the group for the past twenty years, were now half. Caesar brought the chip to the table, plus his innate intelligence, but he couldn’t bring that experience and he understood the limitation. The Genesis tried to annihilate them, and nearly did. Now, it was their turn to move. To attack.
He looked around the room at the faces in front of him. Their eyes didn’t fall on Jerry any longer, but on Caesar. The change had been made quickly and without any push back. Naturally. This was his circle now, these seven people, and they would go to the rest of The Named and make what he said so. No longer a council, this had turned into a dictatorship with himself at the helm.
It was a rational decision, not made with any emotion. All of these men and women were geniuses, but all of them still human. The irony of his demand—that they obey him in order to kill that which controlled the human race—wasn’t lost on him, but it was still necessary. After this was done, his control would end, but it couldn’t until then.
What he didn’t know, what bothered him even now but which mainly remained unspoken, was how The Genesis did it. Manny, most likely, but Caesar wouldn’t kill him on a most likely bid. Jerry and he discussed it in depth, but what did they have? He left and when he returned everyone was dead? Including his son and wife? That’s where the doubt lay. It didn’t make sense, that theory, because everyone that saw Manny understood he was feeling an immense amount of pain. If he somehow turned in The Named, then why was he back? Why was he still alive? And was Caesar, or Jerry, just to kill him based on a possibility?
No. Caesar knew he couldn’t. Not without reason, without certainty. Pierre died because there was no other choice; Caesar understood that now. Caesar missed the person he was a year ago but Jerry had been right in pushing, in coaxing. This, though—there was no certainty here, not yet.
And so, here they were, and he was ready to speak. He knew what must be done and knew the time had come to do it. He was telling them all, the rest of the decapitated Eight, and they would know at the end of this if Manny was the leak. The problem was, they didn’t have time to plant a false leak. What he told today would be the truth. They couldn’t stay in this hole forever, couldn’t trust that The Genesis didn’t already have applications scanning the entire area, looking for them. If Manny leaked, then Caesar would have to figure that out when the time came.
“I’m going to get The Tourist,” he said. He looked at his shoes, folded up underneath his legs. “I’ll leave in two days and I should be in its city three days after that. I’m going alone. We’ll find out The Genesis’ home and then we’ll go there next.” He looked up. “Any questions about it?”
“I know why you can’t bring Jerry, but why not one of us? Anyone will be better than no one,” Tim said from across the circle.
Caesar shook his head. “If something happens, you’ll only die. I can’t look after myself and someone else at the same time, not effectively. If I go alone, I have the highest chance of success. If I bring someone else, I’m just putting them in danger.”
Paige looked to Jerry. “You’re okay with this? He’s ready?”
Caesar didn’t say anything, didn’t look at Jerry, but kept his eyes on Paige. She was the only one that would ask such a question, the only one that still looked to Jerry for guidance. The rest were lost right now, swimming in a sea full of dead bodies and trying not to bump into them. Manny? Manny might not make it out of this with his sanity. Paige though, she still wanted Jerry’s opinion. Still wanted to hear it from him.
Jerry nodded. “He speaks for me. Whether or not he’s ready, Paige, we don’t have any more time. I found this place and that means The Genesis can too. Probably fairly easy. If it sets off fire here, there’s nowhere to hide. It will eat through this entire cave and kill everyone. He has to get The Tourist and we have to find somewhere else to live. I’ve begun looking, but if the strike on the compound taught us anything, it’s that we’re out of time.”
Paige looked away from Jerry and to Caesar. She opened her mouth to speak again, but Jerry interrupted.
“The Genesis know
s. That’s why it did what it did. It knows about the chip it lost and knows we have Caesar. However it found us, it attacked because it knows we’re coming. It knows he’s coming and it’s scared. He’s ready, Paige.”
* * *
They were all so goddamn stupid it was laughable, really. Manny could have laughed and laughed and laughed at them until tears streamed down his eyes and splashed on the floor, until those same tears flooded the entire cave.
Caesar was ready?
What a fucking joke.
Caesar put a little bit of metal in his body and suddenly thought he was ready to take on The Singularity? The Genesis? He was a child and didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. Jerry? Jerry was either insane or working for The Singularity, those were the only two options as Manny saw it. Manny knew. He knew what was going to happen to that group, knew what was going to happen to all of The Named. The same thing that happened to his wife. They were going to die face down in the sand, with their bodies charred beyond recognition. Not a single one of them, from Jerry down to Keke, would have a fucking say in anything that happened. The Genesis controlled all.
That’s what Manny knew now, what none of them had a clue about.
Except maybe Jerry. Manny hadn’t figured that out yet. The old man had tricked Manny for a long time, years on end. No more though. The Genesis had laughed inside Manny’s head, told him that they were no threat, and then shown up at the compound and killed half of them in less than five minutes. The only thing Manny didn’t really understand was why it didn’t just kill them all? It could have, easily. Maybe it was playing with them, just a cat pawing at a mouse. It didn’t matter though; everyone was already as dead as Brandi and Dustin. Either Jerry knew that and was leading them to their death or Jerry had lost his goddamn mind over the past thousand years. Either way, Manny didn’t care.