Rupture

by Curtis Hox

  “A chance for what?” Beasley asked

  He turned back to his control stand. A seat emerged form the floor. He sat, then tapped away. He said, “Survival.”

  The Megamech shuddered. A loud, deep bellowing resounded from somewhere below them in the pit of the machine.

  “Watch it!” Hutto said, grabbing the railing.

  “It’s nothing,” Captain Wellborn said, pulling a helmet and visor from his chair. “She’s just saying hello. You two might want to hold that railing.”

  The walls on the inside of the mech disappeared. Display screens across every square inch of the hollowed-out sphere now rendered a three hundred and sixty-degree view of their surroundings. It was as if they stood on the torso of the mech and could look in all directions. The plank and chair on the edge of the platform began to rotate atop the stationary trench. Captain Wellborn swung it all the way around in a complete circle.

  “Platform check, complete,” he said. “Either of you know how to navigate or manage weapons systems?” He chuckled to himself. “Didn’t think so.”

  “Grade-A hardware,” Hutto said, walking around the platform on the inside of the railing. He pointed. “Look, you can see the gymnasium.”

  Both of them stared east across the lightly forested hills. The wide stretches of cattle fields ended in a slight tree-lined ridge, behind which they saw the tiny tip of the Sterling School gymnasium. They could also see the red Ag. Farm barn and the three grain silos. Behind the mech the forest thickened and the hills increased until each successive ridge of gray darkened into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia.

  “You two might as well put a visor on. You can help me spot the enemy.”

  Two AR helmets emerged out of the platform, atop stands.

  “Cool,” Hutto said, and put his on.

  Beasley did the same.

  Both saw data tiles emerge in the 3D space projected beyond the mech.

  “Here you go, son,” Captain Wellborn said to Wally and punched a few buttons. “You’re free to look around.”

  Inside his gel harness, Wally felt their presences inside the mech. He’d been sitting still, trying to calm himself, knowing how awesome it was to be sitting in a Megamech. He felt the floor beneath his seat move. He looked left and his seat rotated left, giving him a view over the mech’s left shoulder and into the woods. He looked right, and the chair rotated in the opposite direction. “Awesome!”

  He spun his chair all the way around, and back and forth.

  Through his AR visor’s HUD he saw readouts appear in the form of windows hanging in the air around him. A whole series of tiles flashed above him with incomprehensible data.

  “Don’t worry about all that,” Captain Wellborn said. “Just standard pre-go checks. I haven’t been up here in several months. Just pulled the camo-net off her. So she may give us a hiccup or two.”

  “Hiccup?” Wally asked, his voice amplified by the audio system. “What kind of hiccup?”

  “The kind that you can fix with a few soothing words. Let’s see how she sounds.” The war-horn on the Megamech blared, and even inside they could feel waves of harmonic bass meant to send the enemy running. “Sounds good to me.” To Wally, he said, “Why don’t you say hello? We called her MacEllen. You can call her what you want.” He hit a button. “Active Intelligence System engaged.”

  The sensation that reverberated through Wally’s mind made him gasp. He suddenly felt ... big. His awareness exponentially increased until every system of the Megamech became a part of him. He reached out to each one and caressed them, like he would a pet gorilla. The initial contact of the meld could have lasted a second or an hour—he couldn’t tell you—but at some point he knew all of her.

  Eventually, he heard Captain Wellborn say, “Let’s take her for a walk.”

  * * *

  Simone sat on a couch in her mother’s bungalow, while her mother rested in the bedroom. Simone was told to wait. The bungalow was a simple, well-shaded structure nestled under a copse of pines along the ridge that separated the campus from the farm. The living room had no cybertronics, not even an old-fashioned TV decoration. She sat on the couch and drummed her thumbs on bare knees. She’d refused to put the Bodyglove back on.

  She began playing with her fashionable boots that reached to mid calf. She ran her fingers over the leather straps and buckles. If she were going to own her new, exposed look, she needed the boots to ground her. With them on, she felt fine in her hot-shorts and sports bra and nothing else. Her mother had been so angry, she’d forgotten to tell Simone to get dressed.

  Maybe I should get a cape.

  Simone heard the school klaxons start up in the distance.

  Her mother appeared in the bedroom doorway, looking as hungover as if she’d spent a week in Vegas. “They’re here.”

  “Who?”

  Yancey ran her fingers through her hair, clearly still agitated after her reverse transformation. “You need a new talisman.”

  “I like my bucky.”

  Yancey sat at a small table under the kitchen window. The trees swayed in the wind outside as if they only faced a peaceful summer day. She had unzipped the top of her Bodyglove. Her neck and upper chest were moist from sweat. She said, “You need something more active.”

  Simone remained sitting on the couch, bare legs crossed, bouncing one foot up and down, and acting peeved. “I’ve had my bucky since I was—”

  “I know how long. I gave it to you. You can keep it.”

  “You don’t have one, I guess—”

  “I don’t need one.” Yancey closed her eyes, fingers rubbing her temples because she’d summoned her entity only an hour before. She’d explained to Simone that to return so quickly felt like she’d been held upside down and dipped in water repeatedly for a week. “But, you, my dear, do.”

  “Who are they, exactly? Who are the entities, Mom?”

  Yancey sighed, easing away from whatever aggravation bothered her as she sat on the couch. “I already told you about my time as a new Consortium psy-agent. I was eventually assigned to a support contingent of the First Mechanized Battalion.” Simone perked up. “I was stationed here, but in the most important battle of the Cyber War, your father was in Asia when the USC-Kraken stood before three colossi and saved humanity—”

  “Colossi?” Simone moved over and sat at the table.

  “Creatures of psy-summoning the size of skyscrapers.”

  “No.”

  Yancey continued. “I never forgot when I saw the satellite footage of what those mind-beasts did. I saw one step on an entire company of mechs and crush them under its foot.”

  “Was this in—”

  “—the Great Incursion, the big one: the Battle of the Steppe. Your father was there, as I said. I was home, helping with logistics, forced to watch from a distance. Only your father knew that I and others like me, like you, would become the world’s best defenses against new incursions. He was there, as was your Uncle Picham, and helped defeat them. After the Rogueminds lost the battle, they began taking different tacks and tried to sneak into Realspace. Your brother and I have been there to ferret them out before they can grow and call their own brothers and sisters.”

  “Is that what’s happening now?”

  Yancey patted her daughter on the hand. “Nothing so large. It took them a decade of dropping fabricators on the steppe before they had enough goo to create sentient substance with minds strong enough to summon. I’ll have to ask your brother to verify, but I’m guessing the flashes represent a small force.”

  “So, this isn’t a problem?”

  Her mother leaned back. “It’s a big problem.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re coming for you.” Simone stared back, her mouth snapping shut. “You still don’t believe me?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Simone, I’m the wife of Skippard Wellborn, your father. And you are our daughter.” Yancey took a deep, centering breath. “Your kind-and-gentle
father is not dead.” Simone continued to sit rigidly, glaring at her mother, as if this were another great revelation that would ruin her world with some cosmic screw you. Yancey continued. “He’s not dead, but he’s not alive. He gave up his body to combat the RAIs. But something happened to him. He lives as a ghost and fights the RAIs the best way he can. But, now a double exists of him.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Daddy is part of the Rogue AIs?”

  “Not him. His double is, misguided thing that it is.” She took her daughter’s hands in hers. “This is hard, I know. But you have to understand.”

  “He would never hurt me.”

  “I know, dear. The Rogue part of him thinks it’s cleansing humanity of its frailty.”

  “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “To be free of this life? No, but if I have to, I’ll shed my body for your sake, your brother’s, and for the rest of humanity’s. Otherwise, we’ll eventually lose. Human beings can defeat the RAIs in two ways: We become disembodied and retain our humanity and defeat them in the borders between Realspace and Cyberspace or ... and you are never to repeat this.” Simone shook her head like she’d rather eat nails than talk. “If we could awaken what expresses itself in you and me in every Transhuman, we would have an army to resist them, no matter what form they took, here in our own reality. This was your father’s original hope, before he became a ghost and opted on disembodiment.”

  “What if our entities aren’t what you think?” Simone asked.

  She leaned in. “Forget that. It’s semantics. We can control them. I proved that today, didn’t I? Otherwise—”

  The door opened and Rigon burst in. “Several authentic incursions, twelve clicks northwest of us. They’ll be here before Consortium support can arrive.” He glanced once toward their mother’s bedroom, snarled, and walked over there. He came back with her shades and handed them to her. She put them on unconsciously. He continued. “Unknown forms. But I can guess.”

  “Oh my,” she mumbled.

  Rigon smiled at his sister. “Mom ruin the bucky for you?”

  She nodded, happy Rigon understood how much it had once meant to her.

  Rigon continued to smile. “I’ve got just the thing. Think of it as an early birthday present.” He went back outside and returned with a plastic bag. “Remember when we used to play bullfighter?”

  Simone stood up and tried to see in the bag. Of course she remembered. He used to take her in the backyard and make her try to knock soda cans off a fence with a …

  He opened the bag and dug out two black leather bullwhips.

  “No, Rigon,” Yancey said.

  “Why not?” Rigon asked. “You used a real assault rifle before switching to those old-fashioned knives.”

  Simone looked up. “A rifle? What did it do?”

  Yancey waved away the question. “It wasn’t loaded. Do you know how to use those without taking out an eye?”

  Simone grabbed the whips, headed for the backdoor, and went outside, mother and brother following. She unraveled the whips on the small deck. A pine sapling ten feet away looked to be a perfect target. She struck with her right arm first, the leather snapping forward, wrapping around the trunk. Then her left, with the same result. She shook them free. “See?”

  “They’re martial,” Rigon said. “And she likes them. Isn’t that what Dad said was important?”

  Yancey nodded. “He got me the gun because I wouldn’t take anything else.”

  “I bet you bought her a little pocket-knife or something.”

  Yancey frowned. “Never mind what I was thinking. Start your centering, dear, but don’t summon your entity.”

  “I can use these as my new talismans? Will they work? Awesome!”

  Rigon looked north. “More sat readings in.”

  Yancey paused on the sill, also looking north. “What are they?”

  Rigon turned and regarded them, but said nothing, as if Simone shouldn’t hear.

  Yancey waved that away. “No more secrets.”

  “Zombie Vamp frontrunners followed by something big. My guess, a Dread Walker nest of Nanovamp Wraiths.”

  Simone looked at her seniors like they’d just spoken another language. “Are you serious? Zombies? Vampires? Wraiths? Please. How old school, and clichéd.”

  “They’re easy to insert,” Yancey said, “and they do one thing really well.”

  “Capture human code,” Rigon said.

  “Daddy would never be a part of that.”

  Rigon swiveled on Yancey. “You told her?”

  “She needed to know, Rigon.”

  “Dammit. I don’t want to hear any talk about that. Not around me.” To Simone, he said, “You’re right: Dad would never be part of this. But, somehow, he is.” He strode back inside the bungalow, the air itself kinetically charged by his anger. Before he left, he said, “I hope you’re wrong, Mom, about everything. Love you.” And, finally, he said, “I’ll contact you when I hear something.”

  “I’m not wrong.” Yancey faced her daughter. “Now, while I get ready, these whips of yours, the entities love to feel weapons in hand. One day, when you’re more experienced in controlling them, you can have them bring their own. Until then, master the whips, and all else follows.”

  * * *

  Rigon walked atop the ridge behind the gymnasium. He moved between the pines and cherry trees separating the campus from the farm, enjoying the coolness in the shade. He took a deep breath and inhaled the smell of tree sap that always reminded him of home in the Southern Appalachian Blue Ridge. He didn’t need to hurry to activate his offensive mechanism, and so he relaxed, as best he could.

  He paused, listening, letting his senses adjust to the nanoengines ramping up inside him. The Alters were a mystery because they possessed no such physio-technology. Rigon, on the other hand, was the highest example of human ingenuity and mastery. He prepared himself to sacrifice his body for the construction of a weapon that might save his sister’s life.

  A quiet descended around him. Squirrels stopped their scampering, birds their singing, crickets their chirping.

  He withdrew a device no bigger than a small flashlight. He thumbed it nervously. He felt a pang of regret. Then, without another thought, triggered the device.

  The immense power-source that surged into the ground and up his body activated his nanosystems, and they went to work. In under a minute the transformation was irreversible, the factories in his body catalyzing his chemistry and changing it. Around him the earth itself gave up its fuel; nature’s bond broke and reformed. In minutes, Rigon Wellborn emerged from the process a fifteen-foot-tall warrior of hard adamantine titanium, the flesh inside him a memory found in the core intelligence of a being designed for aggression. From one arm extended a massive lance with a sharpened point. The other arm ended in a plasma canon.

  He felt a deep burning to find the enemies and smash them to bits like the man-made thinking-toasters they were. In a brain encased in titanium, in a faraway place where he retained his humanity, he knew the Roguelords of the incursion sent their demons and monsters to eradicate the human spirit because it was that spirit that challenged all they were. He raised his arms once, smashing two saplings, and roared.

  Rigon Wellborn, the cy-warrior, began to run and look for prey.

  * * *

  Not far away Yancey watched her scantily clad daughter, with all her scratches and bruises, wield two cattle whips like a pro. After only an hour, they looked like living things in Simone’s hands. Already, the tips sometimes snapped with electric barbs, sometime with hooks, sometimes with fire.

  Her entity is strong, Yancey thought. It wants out.

  “Try steel spikes now, dear,” she said from the doorway.

  Without pause, Simone kept moving through her katas and channeled the psychic energies around her.

  Yancey felt better, but not whole yet. She knew her son had just become his cyborg techno-self, their government
’s own version of what they found so troubling in the Alters. All the science in the world couldn’t explain how Skippard had created the entities as a weapons and armor system. He had hidden his methods, although the technomystics claimed they know. They say he simply unlocked what was already buried in us. Alone, with no one around, Yancey believed the entities were alien in origin. She believed that when her husband helped machines break the general intelligence ceiling, alien intelligences somehow took notice and came calling, working through our enhanced DNA to enter Realspace. The Consortium did its best to mimic what they saw as powerful in the entities. And they did it through a rational blending of biological and cybernetic systems. Nanotech as complex as any science out there had morphed her son’s chemistry into a killing machine: a cyborg. Rigon was now a brain encased in a walking mechanized murdering machine, and she was glad to have him.

  She had only seen him like that once before, years ago on the front lines of an incursion battle in the Gobi. She had been dropped in with a few light infantry mechs led by her son, the powerful cy-warrior himself. The regular mech troops looked at him in awe as he led them against a swarm of elephant-sized insects. That was just after the Battle of the Steppe, when the Enemies still sporadically attacked in bulk and Alters were beginning to be used on the front lines. Yancey was one of the first to follow her husband in this new role.

  The Rogues now used a different tactic: specialized hit-and-run incursions with a purpose. Still, the body that was Rigon’s was gone. Right now, he was just a memory in a computer system housed in a facility, ready to rehusk him when this was over. She knew a tear should come, but none did. The body means nothing. Nothing. She looked at her daughter, knowing the Rogues wanted her genosoul, her essence, and tried to stifle the anxiety.

  “Keep going, dear,” she said. “You have to learn to channel your energies.”

  Simone continued her dance, such a little thing without her entity.

  Yancey heard the first eruptions of cannon fire from her son and knew the battle had begun.