by David Beers
And now, Keke, Tim, Leon, Caesar, and himself all sat here without any idea of what to do. The train heading to The Genesis was gone and Caesar not on it, but sitting among them.
No one in the room responded to Jerry's question. The past hour had been full of arguments, with Jerry saying how stupid Caesar had acted. Leon stuck up for him, of course, and all Keke had to say was "Thank you." In fact, Jerry was the minority opinion, the only one making the argument that Caesar should have gone forward instead of coming here—even if he didn't fully believe it. Even if he was glad Paige was recovering. Even with the knowledge that they didn't have a plan once Caesar boarded the train. Even with the knowledge that he could have died at any point when he arrived at the train.
Even with all that—now, they had nothing. Not a single clue as to what should happen next. They were much worse off than when Caesar arrived months ago, their numbers devastated, Jerry’s most trusted people either dead or insane, and they didn't have any idea where to start. No idea how to even begin finding The Genesis.
"Maybe it's over," Tim said. He sat with his elbows on his knees, looking at the floor. "Maybe we don't try to go on; maybe we don't try to force this."
Jerry looked at him, feeling that almost everyone in this room thought the same thing Tim voiced. Keke leaned back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling. The two people he had known the longest in this room both saying, if not with their words then with their body language, that they wanted no more. That they wanted to cry off. That watching Paige almost die had been enough. Leon still looked at Jerry, not needing to hide his eyes from the old man. Jerry knew Leon didn't care what he thought. For all of his imperfections and cowardice before, he had made up his mind what should happen here and he wasn't changing it.
Only Jerry still believed. Only Jerry still...
Was obsessed.
That's the word that described it best, and it came to him like a bullet to his back, shocking and painful.
He was obsessed with this end. He would have let Paige die on that cot to make sure they had a chance at laying eyes on The Genesis, a chance to kill it—even a poor chance like the one he told Caesar to take. The rest of the people in this room weren't obsessed. The rest of them were tired, were exhausted and fearful. The rest wanted to live their lives, whatever life they had left, and not get anyone else killed.
"What about you?" Jerry asked, looking directly at Caesar. The prodigal son. The chosen one. Where was he at in this? Was he done too? Was that chip in his head and the metal lining his body all for nothing? Was Paige's brush with death and the choice he made to come back here all that he had left in him?
"I need some time to think," Caesar said. "I don't know where we go from here, not yet. I need to think."
* * *
Paige opened her eyes, not entirely sure why they were closed to begin with. She didn't remember going to sleep, didn't remember lying down on this cot. Yet here she was, and she felt so stiff, like she was some kind of machine that hadn't been moved or oiled in years.
Caesar sat in a chair in the corner, looking at her, a smirk on his face.
"At some point you're going to have to start doing some work around here," he said. "All you do is sleep."
Paige tried to sit up, but pain ripped through her back as she did. She gritted her teeth, groaning, and Caesar stood from his chair and walked to the cot.
"Don't get up. You need to lie there and rest."
"What happened? Why does it hurt so much?" She asked, collapsing completely back to the bed.
Caesar laughed, sitting down on the floor next to her, propping his arm across her legs. "Well, you almost died and then I came in and saved you."
"What?" She asked, not smiling, not understanding. She tried to go back, to remember what happened, and as her mind stretched through her memories, she realized that Caesar wasn't supposed to be here. He was gone, supposed to be finding The Tourist, supposed to be trying to find The Genesis.
And here he was, looking at her. Smiling. Sitting next to her and touching her.
"Your wound. It got too bad; you didn't tell anyone apparently, and you fell out—"
"What happened with The Tourist?" She asked, her eyes wide now, not listening to anything he said about her back.
Caesar only smiled, and she realized then that his face looked older. When he came here, to The Named, everything about him was young—even at thirty-three, he had a youthfulness about him. No more. He was thinner. His tanned skin showing off more wrinkles than he had a year ago.
"Goodness," he said. "It’s going to take a while to catch you up."
He didn't try to though, not right then. He kissed her and Paige was never happier to know nothing about the world around her.
Chapter Fifteen
Manny woke up in a weird position, one that he had never woken up in before—he was standing, his feet beneath him and his arms at his sides. That was the first thing he noticed, and the second was where he stood—inside a glass container.
A vat.
His eyes widened and his jaw flexed, a surge of adrenaline spiking through his body. He tried to move immediately, but couldn't, something invisible held his arms and legs in place. He was in a vat and unable to move.
He opened his mouth and screamed at the glass, but his voice echoed right back to him. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Where was he? What was happening?
A small white globe flew through the air in front of the vat, moving with purpose straight toward him, a red light beaming out from the front. It stopped directly in front of Manny, looking at him silently. The red light tilted toward his head and then moved down the rest of his body, seeming to scan him. Manny said nothing, only stared out at it, noticing his nakedness for the first time.
After a few seconds, the application flew off, exiting the room and leaving Manny alone again.
Manny looked at the glass, seeing the thickness of it and suddenly understanding exactly how many pounds of pressure it would take to break through. Seven point two. And how did he know that and why the hell was he coming up with that number now? His legs shook against the invisible clamps holding him down, sweat rolling down his cheeks, and yet he understood precisely where and how hard to hit the glass in order to exit.
The vat darkened, slowly fading from transparent to black, leaving him unable to see into the room. No light filtered through the glass and he stood in complete darkness. A tiny chill ran up his spine and he shivered with it. White lines fell from the top of the vat, from the very center of the flat glass above Manny, falling evenly down to the bottom, seeming to flow like rivers. White water falling across a black land, continually moving down.
"Manuel Lendoiro." The lines shook as the words rolled out from the glass. "You have been selected."
For what? What was this thing talking about? He stood in a vat, naked and sweating, and he had nothing left to do in this world besides kill Caesar Wells. And where was Caesar? His mind took over, ignoring the white lines and the fact that he was trapped, going back to the only thought that mattered to him anymore: Where was Caesar Wells?
Gone. That's where. He'd escaped, somehow using Manny to do it. Somehow getting inside his head, inside his body, and controlling him and...
Manny remembered the pain the slender wisps of hair sticking out from the floor delivered, wrapping around his arms, torso, and head—heating his body up. Heating his blood until he was sure it boiled inside him, and then he remembered nothing. Not a single thing until he opened his eyes in this vat.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" He asked, anger rising in him, the same anger that had driven him for the past month, the same anger that soaked his brain and caused him to think of nothing else besides Caesar Wells. For a few moments, panic had gripped him, but that was gone now, replaced by his old friend. The one that drove him. The one that gave him purpose.
"A chip has been placed in your head, what you know as a computer chip—"
A computer chip? Like Jerr
y? Like Caesar?
"Your body has also been reinforced with some advanced metals. You are now very similar to both your mentor and your enemy. You have been remade, Manuel Lendoiro, into something much more powerful than you were before."
The white lines vibrated and Manny looked at them, but he wasn't concerned with what they said anymore. He was inside himself, recognizing almost instantly that the lines weren't lying. He could detect the metal lining his muscles, reinforcing bone. Knowing the pressure to break the glass vat, that was the chip, that was it working inside of him, automatically detecting what it would take for him to save himself.
"I am sure you are understanding now," the voice said, "so I will continue. You haven't been given these things as a gift, and if for any reason you begin to think that you are beyond control, everything now inside you will be ripped out at the same time. You've been given these things because we've chosen you to do something extremely important, something that is in line with your own wishes as well."
"You didn't kill Caesar," Manny said, almost certain his enemies had escaped. "Jerry either. They're both alive aren't they?"
"That is correct."
Manny's jaw flexed involuntarily again. He didn't say anything, though, because his mouth would only form expletives and once he started, he wasn't sure he could stop. Just a stream of four letter words that would continue until The Genesis filled this glass container with water and drowned him.
"That is where you come in," the lines vibrated. "You are going to hurt Caesar Wells. The first iteration, Jerry, too, if you wish. It is of no concern to us. In fact, you may do whatever you want to anyone you want. Besides Caesar. Caesar's pain must be borne out emotionally, not physically. That means you can touch anyone you want besides him. Anyone from The Named that you feel might break Caesar, you have free reign over. The only limitation, Manuel Lendoiro, is to leave Caesar's body alone. Do you understand that?"
Manny's mind was elsewhere again, clicking through a million possibilities in a few seconds. Walking through the ways that he could hurt Caesar. He wasn't going to argue with these white lines, wasn't going to try and rebut their wishes, at least not right now. Because he thought hurting Caesar like that might work quite well. Making him hurt the way that Manny hurt, making him understand loss in a way that the motherfucker didn't right now. Because there were a lot of ways that Manny could do that. Quite a lot.
"Sure," Manny said. "I understand."
* * *
Many applications thought of themselves in terms of gender. Mock didn't. In fact, Mock only called itself Mock because the acronym behind the letters was too long for humans to deal with in everyday conversation. It didn't understand the need of these other applications to take on such a human trait as gender. They were not male or female and pretending like they were was idiotic. You can paint a dog white, put a yellow beak on it and large fake feet, but that didn't make the dog a duck. Mock was fine with what it was, fine with being an application. It preferred that to being human, certainly.
Mock was given very general instructions. Incite a panic. Use pretty much any means necessary to do so. When The Genesis handed orders down like this, it did so because it understood that Mock would intuitively figure out the best way to accomplish its goals. The Genesis had an overarching plan that Mock wasn't privy too, but when it said it wanted panic, it meant that it wanted humans threatening humans. It meant that it wanted humans killing humans, and Mock understood how to accomplish that even if it had never been given a similar assignment.
It was confounding, why The Genesis would want something like this. Mock wouldn't pretend to understand the reasons, especially when it seemed antithetical to everything The Genesis had created. It wasn't Mock's place to question though; it was its place to strategize and then execute.
Mock had a plan, or rather it was developing one. The Genesis wanted terror, wanted the collective more frightened than they had ever been. Mock remembered when all of this started, when the poor and then the rich were walked through the streets to their death. There was fear then, but Mock felt The Genesis wanted more than that now. People were afraid back then, but they still walked outside to watch the condemned march forward. When the twelve on the Population Control Council died, they were afraid then too, and perhaps it was a greater fear because humanity had grown to be such cowards. But that wasn't enough either.
It didn't know if The Genesis planned on this being the last dance for humanity, if by allowing Mock to do this, The Genesis was planning on finally killing all of humanity. Mock would be fine with that, indeed, the plan Mock was developing could lead to it.
Either way, Mock had its orders and would execute them as perfectly as it could. If The Genesis wanted fear, Mock would give it exactly that.
* * *
Mock walked the stairs of the building with the human following a few steps behind. His name was Theo, though Mock didn't care about the man's name in the slightest. Mock genuinely didn't care about this man at all; even knowing his name took up far too much circuitry.
The work began last night in this building and Mock wanted to see the progress so far. Applications oversaw the whole operation, of course, but one needed human hands if this was to be finished at the speed Mock required. While it wasn’t really Mock’s job to understand why The Genesis wanted this, it couldn't adequately do The Genesis’ bidding if it didn't understand why. That was the key to Mock's success so far; it always tried to understand the why, the rationale underlying these assignments, rather than just acting on them.
The why allowed for decisions that fit into a larger goal. Had The Genesis only wanted panic, Mock could have turned the water off in the city for a day and let people think it wouldn't turn back on. People would lose their minds and begin moving out into the wilderness or trying to gain entrance into other cities. That wasn't what The Genesis wanted though, not entirely. Panic yes, but a very specific panic. Humanity needed to feel danger was near, but a very specific danger directed at a very specific entity: The Named. The panic and fear would revolve around those two words, and everything that stemmed afterward would center on making everyone in this city terrified of them—at least at first, and if The Genesis wanted (which Mock thought it did), that fear could spread to the rest of the cities on Earth.
"We're done with the first thirty floors," Theo said from behind him.
"Thirty?" Mock asked. Theo didn’t stare at Mock like others, and that was good. When humans stared at it, Mock wanted to stick its hands in their mouth and rip loose their jaw, so they stood there gaping without a mouth.
Mock knew what it looked like, of course, had purposefully picked this body. It looked like an androgynous human, completely nude, but instead of flesh or something resembling flesh covering it, one could see straight into its body. Not through it, because the pieces inside were very real. Tiny wires crisscrossing, mechanical gears turning, even its eyes attached to wires that pulled them one way or another. Humans thought of themselves as a sum greater than their parts. That's because they didn't walk around seeing their parts all day, their intestines, their valued brains that were little more than a grotesque looking sponge. Mock's body made them at least see its insides, and while the purpose was lost on most of them, perhaps some understood it. I look like you and this is what I am, a bunch of wires and moving parts. You're the same, except with flesh.
Theo didn't even glance down at Mock's body though, didn't look at the wires that turned the machine's eyes. Instead, he simply answered Mock's questions.
"Yeah, thirty. Not that many when you realize this building has around four thousand floors. We've only been working about six hours though."
Mock figured the math immediately; Theo would need another twenty-seven days to finish the entire building, and that wasn't going to work. Mock needed it done within three days. "We've got to speed it up. What do you need?"
They continued climbing the stairs, Mock looking at the bricks, unable to see any of the work the crew had
done the previous night, which was exactly what it wanted. Complete invisibility.
"More applications and more men. The applications direct us, telling us the correct coordinates for each piece, which is good—it saves us a lot of time—but we need more hands holding each piece. We had a hundred of us last night, and we probably need another five hundred more."
The information flowed through Mock to other applications; not to The Genesis, of course, it trusted Mock to do this and wouldn't want to be bothered with the details of how it all worked out. The other applications took the information and immediately made adjustments to their own production schedules, understanding Mock's priority.
"You should have a thousand by two PM," Mock said, still walking upwards.
Theo didn't say anything and Mock liked that too. It'd keep the man around for a while. It could always use a human who worked and didn't do a whole lot of talking.
* * *
Theo Yellen laid down on his couch, his body feeling about as tired as it had ever felt. He had worked for the past twenty-four hours straight, with barely a break to have a cigarette or a cup of coffee. He probably could have taken off if he wanted, especially once the new group of workers arrived, but he didn't think that would be a great idea. He didn't trust that application, Mock. Something about its demeanor said it would dispatch anything that displeased it, and Theo wasn't trying to be dispatched anytime soon. So he stuck it out and worked, directing people when he needed to and taking orders from applications when he needed to. They were useful things, Theo couldn't deny that; they saved him and the rest of his crew an almost insurmountable amount of time by automatically sending the correct math down, which allowed Theo to simply be a tool rather than having to do all of the calculations.
His body ached, unable to thank him for finally allowing it to rest. He didn't bother kicking his shoes off, but left them on as he propped his feet on the couch and closed his eyes.