dotmeme

by Mike A. Lancaster

  Reloading.

  But in the space that putting new magazines into the guns created, the creatures attacked. By the time Ani got to Razvan’s side, and was looking out the window with him, the golems—seven of them now, that she could see—had split into two groups. Three of them were separating off the army guys, keeping them busy, while the other four were moving in on the building. Which was bad. It showed that they were now strategizing. Planning. And, far from being the lumbering, clumsy creatures that they’d been on arrival, now they had found speed could be a weapon, and were using it against the wooden structure of the village church.

  Eight heavy fists pounded against wood, and the effect upon the villagers inside was as panicked as it was predictable. You couldn’t blame them. The madness that had descended upon their village was terrifying, sudden, and like nothing else that had ever happened there before. Their refuge—the church that formed such a large part of their identity and society—was no more secure than their own homes would be. The golem creatures weren’t deterred by superior numbers, or by gunfire.

  Or prayers.

  All in all, it was a wonder they’d held it together as long as they had.

  Ani figured they should all be counting their lucky stars. So far, the golems were so stupid they hadn’t worked out that the windows would be a quicker entrance strategy that hammering at solid wood.

  Still, it was easy to freak out in the face of the unexpected. Even some of the trained YETI operatives were showing the first signs of distress, but there was nothing to be gained by giving in to fear now, so Ani realized that it was up to her to get everyone pulling in the same direction, and that the direction should be away from navel-gazing and self-doubt.

  “We need an exit strategy,” she said, making sure it sounded unequivocal, calm and—more importantly—like she thought that such a strategy was even possible. “It’s only a matter of time before the … golems … get inside. We can’t be here when that happens. The good news is that we have an armored car parked close by and there’s a pretty good chance we can make it. The bad news is that I don’t think all the villagers will fit. Scratch that. I know they won’t. And we can’t leave them at the mercy of these things.”

  “They’d have been at the mercy of those things if YETI hadn’t shown up,” Abernathy said, “and I think it’s imperative that you reach that transport and drive it to the Dorian factory.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that we leave these people to fend for themselves?” Ani said indignantly.

  “Calm down, Ms. Lee,” Abernathy said. “I’m suggesting that you get everyone away from that dead end of a wooden church you find yourselves in, get to the armored car, avail yourself of any weapons that you find there, and hold the creatures … the golems … off for the few minutes that it takes until members of the Romanian Land Forces arrive on the scene.”

  “Okay, boss. That sounds like a much better idea.”

  “We’ll reserve judgment on that until everyone’s safe, I think.”

  It fell to Joe to liaise with the soldiers outside. To be honest, it was a relief. The walls of the church had started closing in on him, and the place had begun to feel less like a sanctuary and more like a trap. A barrel. Full of fish.

  “We’ve been advised to fall back to the armored car,” Joe told the soldier closest to him.

  The soldier nodded. “We’re getting low on ammo,” he said. “I can switch to a sidearm, but if an AK isn’t stopping them, I can’t see a Glock making a difference.”

  “I take it you have more ammo at the APC?” Joe asked.

  “A weapons chest,” the guy said. “We’re not leaving the villagers.”

  A statement, not a question.

  “No, we’re not. We’ve got inbound support, so we’ll need to move the villagers with us.”

  “As long as you’re on crowd control,” the guy said. “I’ll be kinda busy.”

  “Okay, we’ll leave as soon as I get everyone ready. Cover us?”

  The guy narrowed his eyes. “Of course. One request?”

  “Name it.”

  “Hurry.”

  Razvan translated the plan to the others, and everyone gathered by the door. Ani got Joe to count down from ten and then opened the door and everyone went through as quickly as they could heading left to take them away from the golems, and toward the armored car. Ani waited until everyone was through before following.

  The night air stank of propellant. Acrid. Unpleasant. Overhead, a fingernail sliver of moon had broken through a bed of clouds and cast a wan, almost surreal lighting on the scene.

  Mina and Dr. Ghoti helped the elderly villagers as best they could, and Furness and Gilman brought up the rear, firing controlled bursts in the direction of the golems. All seven of the creatures turned their attentions to the refugee group and began moving slowly but deliberately after them.

  The creatures could move faster, so why weren’t they?

  It was almost as if they were directing the group back up toward the armored car. Herding them. But that was nonsense.

  Wasn’t it?

  Ani felt then that she was missing something. Probably a lot of things, actually, to tie all these odd strands together into something that made sense. There was something that she was missing, that she ought to be seeing, that was nagging away at her. The events here, they seemed … familiar, or they followed a pattern that she felt she should recognize. Or something. She struggled to get her brain to analyze the situation, but then she heard a commotion and looked to where everyone was staring. Up the track. Between them and the armored car.

  Two more of the golems were emerging from the darkness at the sides of the path.

  Seven of the creatures coming up behind them.

  And two in front of them.

  Snapping shut the door on a trap.

  And then it hit her, why all this seemed familiar. What it reminded her of. She was about to tell Joe when the golems started moving.

  Fast.

  Toward them.

  And then all she could think was: GAME OVER.

  Joe realized that they’d been out-maneuvered by the damned golem creatures and hoped that someone else had a plan, because right now, he was all out. The group was already starting to panic, and if they started running, the golems would be free to pick off stragglers. It would be carnage.

  There might, in theory, be no such thing as an all-dark night, but this was getting pretty close.

  To put it simply, they were being outplayed.

  And Joe couldn’t see the next move that would get his side out in front.

  Then, just as the despair was beginning to assert itself, there was a loud roar and the Wolf armored car lurched out of the darkness, headlights throwing the scene into a macabre chiaroscuro that exaggerated foreground brightness and made shadows longer and more threatening.

  The personnel carrier slewed into the two golems that were blocking the group’s exit, throwing one of the creatures violently to the ground and bouncing the other off the engine grill, before grinding it beneath the front fender and the ground, and then underneath one of the front wheels. If the things weren’t so weird and dangerous, Joe would almost have felt sorry for it.

  Almost.

  The truck stopped next to Joe, the driver’s door opened, and someone tossed him a shotgun. Joe caught it, nodded his thanks, pumped to load it, then walked up to the golem that the carrier had hit and thrown to the ground. Joe put his foot on its chest and leveled the shotgun off at the creature’s head. He hesitated, pretty sure that pulling the trigger was the right thing to do, but wondering if there was some other way. The golem reached up with one of its hands and grabbed his calf, squeezing tight.

  Joe pulled the trigger.

  The golem let go of his leg.

  Let go of its life.

  He was about to turn his shotgun on the remaining golems when something caught his eye. A flash of light.

  So he knelt down, puzzled, and looked through
the wreckage of the creature’s head. He wasn’t the world’s greatest biologist, but he knew that some of the stuff in there really didn’t belong.

  “Ani?” Joe called. “How’s your stomach? I need you to look at something for me.”

  Ani took a deep breath, held back her gag reflex, steadied herself, and then reached out and raked through the contents of the creature’s head with her fingers, pulling the noxious pulp aside and concentrating on the thing that Joe had brought her over to examine.

  There was a flashing LED inside a matchbook-sized device, damaged but discernable, lodged within the creature’s brain. She reached in and tried to pull the device free, but it had wires stretching out into the golem’s brain matter, anchoring it in place. Then she began twisting it and tugging until there was a horrible tearing sound and she had the thing in her hand.

  She turned it over in her fingers, scanning the object for some kind of clue as to its function, a squid-like mass of wires connected to a central device that was packed with circuitry. There was a plastic casing, only partially damaged by the shotgun round, which Ani saw as a stroke of luck. Joe had missed the box when he turned the creature’s head into pulp and bone.

  Except, now that she thought about it, the splintered material really didn’t look much like bone at all. She picked some up and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger, then scratched at it with her fingernail. It felt more like … plastic.

  These creatures—these golems—they had plastic skulls. Probably plastic skeletons, too. It explained a lot, but made even more unclear. Still, one thing at a time. She needed to get a look inside that device.

  The good news was that she was a hacker and she always came prepared.

  She dried one of her hands off on the leg of her jeans and reached into her jacket pocket, rooting through past the USB cables and crocodile clip wires, before pulling out a small set of emergency repair tools: her “go” kit, complete with electrical screwdrivers, wire cutters, and three types of tweezers. She judged the size she needed by eye, took a hex-headed screwdriver out of the case, and used it to take off part of a protective cover from the device.

  She ignored most of the circuits and chips and concentrated on the processor that looked unlike any of the other components, but was still familiar to her. She didn’t need to magnify the part’s casing to know its manufacturer’s mark would be a stylized letter D.

  “You know what that is?” Joe asked.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” Ani told him. “Things are falling into place. I just really dislike the picture they’re starting to form. We need to get a good look around that factory.”

  “One thing at a time,” Joe said, pump-loading the shotgun again and moving forward, toward the other golems.

  The number of missions where Joe got to handle firearms was … well, actually pretty high, now that he thought about it. The missions where he discharged a weapon were far fewer, though, and that was a good thing. He had nothing against guns per se, but he didn’t like the feeling of pulling the trigger on another human being, no matter how evil or crazed or dangerous they were. Some people got used to it; Joe didn’t think that was right.

  Shooting a human being should never become routine, and it should never get easier.

  Shooting monsters, it turned out, was far less morally troubling.

  And an Ithaca 37 shotgun—a pre-1957 model that didn’t have the trigger disconnector, which meant you could fire pretty much continuously by slam firing, or holding down the trigger as you pump reloaded—was a pretty good gun to declare open season on them with. Sure, it was limited to seven—now six—cartridges, but the damage each of those shots could do made Joe feel a little braver about facing off against another golem.

  The APC driver stepped down from the vehicle and stood next to Joe holding some Eastern European version of an Uzi machine pistol. The driver nodded at Joe, who nodded back, and they advanced on the golems.

  Ani stashed the tech, wiped her hands again, and then helped Dr. Ghoti and Mina to get the locals out of danger, which was a matter of moving them around the back of the APC, basically putting an armored car between them and the golems.

  A couple of kids, who couldn’t have been older than six or seven, were freaking out pretty badly, and their mother was trying her best to comfort them. It was a horrible detail, those tear-smeared faces upturned, looking for reassurance, for explanations, when none were forthcoming.

  Whether it was Dorian behind this, or victorious, it didn’t matter. Make children cry in fear of their lives and you need to be taken down.

  Ani got the tablet out and made sure that Abernathy was still available.

  “It’s weird having you in my pocket out in the field,” she joked.

  “Big pockets,” Abernathy said. “I’ll tell you my latest intelligence if you’ll tell me yours.”

  “Dorian chips in plastic skulls—these golems are manmade and computer controlled. You?”

  Abernathy looked surprised, but nodded.

  “That’s some mighty fine work there,” he said. “Considering the situation. Anyway, while you’ve been away, your dotmeme file has been incredibly busy. It has inserted its own version of reality throughout the whole Internet and deleted whatever it replaced. It’s added a backstory to the events you’re experiencing, making the Internet tell elaborate, but completely consistent, lies to make it look like people have been predicting something like Poiana Mazik happening for years. If we hadn’t been watching it happen in real time, we’d probably never have seen it happen. It’s perfect. Seamless.”

  “Holy crap,” Ani said. “They retconned reality.”

  “Retconned?”

  “A plot revision in comic books and TV shows that affects the established continuity of the story. RETroactive CONtinuity. You see them do it with Spider-Man, but reality? So what’s the story they’re telling?”

  “Gaia,” Abernathy said.

  “Of course.” Ani sighed. “The earth goddess is fighting back against us, right?”

  “Sort of,” Abernathy said. “The earth is Gaia, a self-regulating organism that maintains life for all its inhabitants. Unfortunately, the human race has become too much of a threat to the creature’s body.”

  “So she’s turned monsters against us?”

  “Well, the … retconning—am I even using that word correctly?—has a more poetic kind of metaphor at its heart. Gaia has mobilized her immune system to fight off what she’s now viewing as an infection. But yes, that’s pretty much the long, tall, and short of it. A whole host of scientists agree. At least they do now. I’m waiting to see what happens when they try to disagree with what the Internet is now saying they said and providing references to boot.”

  “But why?” Ani asked. “I mean I can understand the attraction of rewriting digital reality, but it can’t stick. It’s a deception that requires people to not speak out against it. I know people. They’ll talk.”

  “On a digital platform, perhaps? I hoped that doesn’t get rewritten.”

  “You think the meme file is going to maintain its own illusion? Police the Internet for dissent? What’s the endgame?”

  “What if this is the tiniest field test of a dotmeme’s powers?” Abernathy asked. “Nickel-and-dime stuff, as they say over the pond. Just to see if the general concept works.”

  “I’d say we’d better make sure this is the only test Dorian and victorious get,” Ani said.

  Abernathy went silent, appearing to be listening to something off-camera, and then said, “You should have reinforcements with you in minutes. I think you know what you’ve got to do.”

  “Get to the Dorian factory,” Ani said. “But how are we going to stop victorious?”

  “I think you’ll find that they’re the same thing,” Abernathy told her.

  Four people with weapons were now the line in the sand for the golems to try to cross: a reasonably widespread, with the area in front of them drawn up, almost instinctively, into quadrants for t
hem to police. Each trusted the others to do what needed to be done. Protect the villagers.

  Joe waited until one of the golems was right on top of him before pulling the trigger of his shotgun. It was simple economy. Sure, the expansion of the shot from the barrel gave a wider cone of damage the farther from the muzzle it got, but its damage was dissipated as a result. Lots of wounds, moderate damage. Close up—not point blank, that was something else entirely: the optimum distance between a weapon and a target, a distance which varied from weapon to weapon—the shot was concentrated. It delivered more damage to a smaller area.

  The blast stopped the golem in its tracks and gave it cosmetic surgery in the face department. It hit the deck soon after, a major malfunction from which it wasn’t going to be recovering anytime soon.

  Joe realized that he was thinking in euphemisms. People often did when thinking about death, especially when they were causing it. Targets were “neutralized,” “taken out,” or “mopped up.” And it seemed that even killing monsters required them. Because it was easier to think that you took something down than it was to think you took something’s life.

  Joe was considering pulling the trigger again when light and sound signaled the long-overdue arrival of reinforcements.

  Which meant it was time.

  Time to go back to the factory.

  To find answers.

  And to end this. End it forever.

  There was a grim silence as the armored personnel carrier took them away from Poiana Mazik and toward the Dorian factory. Furness and Gilman had reloaded their weapons and were waiting, quietly, for the next phase of the mission.

  Ani, Joe, Mina, and Dr. Ghoti were also silent for now, lost in their own thoughts, preparing for whatever came next. They’d left the villagers in the good hands of the Romanian Land Force, who had already been wiping out the remaining golems when the YETI team was heading for the APC. Ani had taken a minute to thank Razvan for his help, and Joe had stopped by to shake his hand and wish him all the best.