The Reality Rebellions

by Paul Anlee

  “She tries to keep a low profile. It’s better for Cybrid-human relations that way. Anyway, DAR-K says the future of Cybrids is tied to the future of humanity. We were built to serve, but as partners not as mere machines.

  “We used to be people, too. We remember our humanity, and we honor our heritage by serving humanity. We are here to help in any way we can. We’ve left behind any judgment of how we all got here.”

  “She sounds wise.”

  “And dedicated. She’s at the Central Administration Bank trying to decipher the system right now. You’re in good hands.”

  “Thanks,” Cynthia replied, momentarily reassured until she looked outside. “I don’t understand why the police haven’t cleared away the crowd.”

  “There aren’t that many police, and they’re not set up for riot control.”

  “Who said anything about riots?”

  “Crowd control, I should say.”

  “Do you really think there could be a riot?” Cynthia’s voice trembled.

  “I told you to go home. You can’t help here. We Cybrids can take care of ourselves. They won’t hurt us.”

  The manager hesitated. “But it’s my bank.”

  “And we will protect it.”

  Cynthia caught a glimpse of movement out the corner of one eye.

  JSC was extending her coat and purse to her from an appendage. The manager smiled weakly and accepted them.

  “I guess I should head home. It’s late.”

  “Yes, it is rather late,” JSC said. Her voice was gentle, without judgment. “We’ll have some progress to report when you get in tomorrow.”

  She helped Cynthia with her coat and passed her the purse.

  The manager straightened, and braced herself to face the crowd. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Do you want me to escort you to the train station or a starstep?”

  “Thanks, but I think it’ll be better if I go on my own.”

  “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

  Cynthia pulled open the door and a wave of noise rushed in. Her hand slipped on the handle, but she caught the door before it closed and stepped through.

  The crowd turned as one and watched as she walked down the steps of the building. They parted without a murmur and let her shuffle down the path they made for her.

  Cynthia kept her head high, and made her way through them and onto a quiet connecting street without incident. She wasn’t sure if that was a good sign, or if it would be the eerie calm before a horrific storm of resentment. It was unnerving, to say the least.

  JSC floated out the door and hovered at the top of the stairs, watching her leave. When people lost site of the retreating figure, they turned their gazes back toward the building and its silent sentinel.

  The Cybrid held her place, drawing their ire without a sound until she was certain that Cynthia was well out of harm’s reach.

  She drifted a little higher to address the people in front of her.

  “Our team is working as hard as possible to rectify the situation. It’s more complicated than we initially thought. We’re having to coordinate with other Cybrids who are all working equally diligently at other branches of the bank.”

  “Coordinating to take all our money, that is!” someone yelled.

  “Yeah!” a chorus jeered back, even though it made no sense. Cybrids had no need for money.

  “Maybe they’re coordinating to fix our water and power!” someone else called out. That drew some laughter.

  JSC increased her amplification. “We are, all of us Cybrids, here to help.”

  “Oh, that’s a good one. Right up there with, ‘We’re the government. We’re here to help,’” a man with a megaphone yelled into the mob. His amplified laugh bounced off buildings for blocks around.

  His laughter was picked up, joined, and echoed by thousands.

  “We’re the government. We’re here to help!” they chanted. The man with the megaphone pumped his first in the air and urged them on.

  “We’re the Cybrids. We’re here to help!” he yelled.

  The crowd gleefully followed his lead. “We’re the Cybrids. We’re here to help!”

  JSC floated back into the bank without a sound and stood watch at the door. One of her colleagues floated forward. A third Cybrid joined them, and the three stared out into the street wordlessly.

  Someone in the street threw a stone at the front entrance. It hit with a loud “tuk!” and rebounded without serious damage. Seconds later a brick sailed through the large, tempered glass window.

  The sound of shattering glass scared the crowd as much as the sight of the three machines inside the building, but the subsequent spell of shocked inaction was quickly broken by three groups of men brandishing construction crowbars, one for each Cybrid inside.

  “We’re only taking what’s ours!” they yelled as they crossed the front terrace. They were carrying something else that JSC couldn’t make out.

  The men demolished what was left of the windows and doors and surged inside. They spread out, intending to encircle the three Cybrid spheres. As they advanced, they spread nets made of light chain.

  Ah, so that’s what they were carrying—JSC realized.

  Their actions appeared well-coordinated, almost practiced. None of them had spoken a word of instruction or direction, but they all seemed to know what to do.

  “What should we do?” WLM asked JSC.

  “Do nothing,” JSC replied.

  Cybrids were space-hardened, even those who’d spent most of their time inside finished habitats. It was laughable for humans to think they could harm the mechanical beings.

  “Offer no resistance. They can’t hurt us. I’m transmitting our predicament to the authorities and to DAR-K. They’ll send someone to help us.”

  She hoped that would prove true. She hoped the humans didn’t try anything stupid. They looked mad, in both senses of the word. And determined.

  The men threw their steel nets over the three floating Cybrids and hauled them through the broken windows to the front terrace.

  The machines cooperated. They could have fled. They could have simply turned off their mass-compensators, the RAF-based generators that gave them little apparent weight, and made it impossible for the men to drag them anywhere. But JSC had warned her colleagues not to resist, that doing so would only rile the humans.

  The men towed the Cybrids into the street. The crowd closed in around them, hurling insults and bits of trash. Spittle dripped down the carboceramic shells.

  JSC felt humiliated and confused. The rioters’ actions weren’t hurting the Cybrids; everyone knew how tough the machines were. So what was the point of this mean behavior? It was helping nothing.

  A bottle filled with fuel and a flaming cloth wick flew through the air and broke against the edge of the gaping window pane, spilling flames into the lobby. The blinds, tucked back to one side, caught fire. Another four bottles smashed onto the lobby floor, spreading the flammable contents to the wood counters and furniture. The crowd cheered.

  Excited hands added refuse to the small fires burning in the street and doused smoldering piles with fuel. Within minutes, dozens of bonfires were roaring.

  The fire builders fanned out, seeking trash and branches to feed the flames. They broke into stores and businesses for several square blocks, pulling out whatever they could carry, and threw it into the flames.

  Residents in the surrounding apartment towers called out into the madness below, “Hey! What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “We’re sending a message,” someone yelled back. “They never listen to us; but they’ll listen to this!”

  The locals were all too aware of infrastructure problems in their neighborhood, unannounced power blackouts, water that suddenly stopped flowing, habitat lights that flared in the middle of the night or didn’t work at all, and ongoing problems with payment machines in the stores and businesses. And they all agreed, amongst themselves, that the proble
ms had worsened significantly since the government allowed the Cybrids back into the habitats.

  Thousands of residents poured onto the streets. Shouts of, “Cybrids out! Cybrids out!” echoed off the towers.

  JSC and her colleagues watched, held in place more by fear of making the situation worse than by the steel nets over them. She was sure someone in authority would be along soon to rescue them.

  A bottle smashed against her shell, and flames engulfed one of her visual sensors. JSC closed the port against possible damage and sealed other openings she wasn’t using, just in case.

  A couple of the men moved in and started bashing the Cybrids with crowbars. The tough shells, made to withstand asteroid belt debris fields, were unaffected.

  And then they were all bathed in a brilliant light. The habitat flared into full daylight, hours ahead of schedule. The attacks on the Cybrids came to an abrupt halt. The roaming troublemakers stopped pillaging. The chanting died down. People peered upward and exchanged puzzled glances.

  What now?

  “Over there! What’s that?” Someone cried out, pointing to the open sky over the town square a few blocks away. The mob’s attention swiveled to the end of the street, where a formation of black dots was rapidly approaching.

  The dots expanded into a squadron of fifty machines, flying thirty meters above the street. They were similar to Cybrids but half again as large, matte black, and considerably more menacing. They moved in a precise, coordinated whole. Subgroups of two split off down side streets, swooping toward anyone engaged in illegal activities.

  People dropped their weapons and sped home or back into the bank, illogically hoping to find safety in the confines of a building they’d just breached.

  The intimidating new Cybrid fleet herded them together, darting from side to side to discourage stragglers from peeling away into alleys or hiding in buildings along the street.

  The intersection in front of the bank overflowed with subdued protestors. The dark Cybrids hovered over the crowd at the end of each block, penning them in.

  One rose above the bank building.

  “We are Securitors,” it announced in a booming voice that carried for blocks. “Your images have been reported to habitat police, and your activities have been recorded. Appropriate charges will be filed later this week. You are hereby ordered to release the Cybrids you hold captive and disperse immediately.”

  “Who the hell are you to tell us what to do?” someone called out.

  “Yeah!” the crowd echoed.

  “You’re just another damn Cybrid. You can’t tell people what to do!”

  Rocks and debris flew up from the crowd, bouncing harmlessly off the Securitor’s exterior. People shook fists and crowbars at the hovering black spheres.

  “Cybrids out! Cybrids out!” the crowd chanted.

  “Disperse,” ordered the lead Securitor.

  Nobody moved.

  The Securitors launched smoke and tear gas into the crowd. Several spheres descended to within a meter of the people. Lengthy appendages shot out of their bodies and they plucked individuals from the ground, one for each of their six tentacles. They flew to the top stories of nearby buildings and dropped their prisoners inside the steep walls of the prison sleds that had been waiting on the rooftops. They zipped back down to the street to snatch more prisoners from the frightened masses below and repeated the process.

  A flaming bottle struck the head Securitor, engulfing its shell in fire. The black sphere tracked the source, opened a small port, and shot the perpetrator with a brief burst of 12 millimeter cannon fire.

  Screams rang out and the scene gave way to utter chaos. People ran in all directions. Someone had smuggled a gun into the habitat and fired shots at the shell of another Securitor. Its sharpened tentacle whipped out and cut the man in half.

  JSC rose inside the confines of her steel net until she was level with the Securitor in charge.

  “You have to stop this!” she cried. “We don’t kill people. We’re here to help.”

  “Your help was ineffective,” the Securitor replied. “We have come to reinstate order.”

  On the street below, a teenager picked up the gun lying beside the severed trunk of the man who’d wielded it. He aimed the gun at the head Securitor and fired once.

  The Securitor opened a port, but JSC blocked the trajectory line to the young man.

  “No!” she shouted. “No more killing!”

  “They are disorderly,” the Securitor stated.

  “Their bullets do you no harm. Throw them in jail if you must, but don’t hurt them.”

  The Securitor didn’t reply. Half a dozen ports opened along its shell.

  “You are disorderly,” it stated, and intense beams erupted from its body, slicing JSC into dozens of chunks. She fell in pieces to the street below.

  Rioters were quickly dispersed or imprisoned and the trapped Cybrids were freed. The fleet of mysterious new, and distinctly more aggressive, style of Cybrids disappeared as quickly as it came. Witnesses report that the machines called themselves Securitors, though their origin remains a mystery. Who sent them and to what purpose? To date, no one has taken responsibility for the bank failure, the riot, or the actions of the Securitors themselves.

  35

  The Cybrid crashed through the double-paned front doors, breaking glass, bending metal frames, and rending hinges.

  The reception staff of the elegantly appointed Vesta Project Head Office managed visitor traffic in and out of Administration; they weren’t equipped for violence. They sensibly stepped aside and let the machine float through the lobby.

  The orb went directly to the Director’s elevator, the one requiring special permission even to call. A chime sounded, the doors swished open, and the machine floated in. It said nothing to anyone. It gave no hint of its purpose.

  Lobby Security had no idea what business the robot might have with the Administration. Anyway, what was a Cybrid doing roaming freely through the habitat in the first place? Hadn’t Alum prohibited their movement in the cities? The guard called the Director’s office to tell them what had happened and warn them of its impending arrival.

  “It just got in the elevator.”

  “The elevator?”

  “Yeah. I mean, what’s a Cybrid need an elevator for? But that’s what it did.”

  “Okay, thanks. We’ll take care of it up here.”

  The Lobby guard hung up, grabbed his jacket, and walked out of the building, gingerly stepping over the shattered front doors and windows. He’d seen enough shooting on Earth to last a lifetime and he wasn’t going to hang around anywhere bullets, or possibly worse, could be flying.

  Alum’s personal security team rallied in the upstairs Executive Reception area. The first four took a position behind the main counter, and an additional four blocked the halls to the right and left. They drew their guns and waited for the elevator to travel the fifty floors from ground level.

  The elevator doors whispered opened and the Cybrid floated into Reception. There was no one behind the desk, so it announced to the room, “Hello, I am DAR-K. I would like to speak with Alum.”

  The Security team was dumbfounded. The Chief Officer called out from behind the counter, “Cybrids are not permitted in the habitat without special permission. You have entered this building forcefully. If you have business with the Director, please submit your request through the proper channels.”

  The Cybrid inched forward. “Not today. Today, I will speak with Alum.”

  The Team Leader tried one more time. “You have damaged a government building and acted with hostility. If you don’t withdraw, we will be forced to respond with extreme prejudice.”

  DAR-K emitted a harsh laugh. “Your prejudice has already been adequately extreme. I know Alum is in. I require only a few minutes of his time.” She moved toward Alum’s office.

  Gunfire erupted from the Security Team. Tentacles shot out of DAR-K’s body, and plucked the weapons from the guards. Witho
ut guns, the guards were helpless to deter the Cybrid; they decided on a strategic retreat.

  DAR-K ignored the fleeing Security team and pushed through the doors into the Director’s office.

  Alum stood up behind his desk and barked, “Now!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Now!” Alum repeated, more urgently.

  Rather than unleashing their energy beams on DAR-K, the two ominous, black Securitors bookending the door squeaked, shuddered, and dropped to the floor.

  Alum gaped at the lifeless spheres, not understanding.

  “I designed Cybrid brains. Did you think I wouldn’t leave a back door into their minds in case I needed it?” DAR-K asked.

  Alum’s eyes darted frantically around the room.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not here for anything besides talk,” the Cybrid said.

  Alum sat down, and forced himself to relax. “And what do you wish to talk about, DAR-K? Or should I call you Dr. Liang?”

  “While Kathy Liang may have provided the template for my mind, I think I’ve proven myself to be my own person these past twenty-odd years.”

  “Indeed. You do have some interesting capabilities.”

  “Capabilities all Cybrids could have, were it not for the restrictive and fearful laws passed on Earth during our construction.”

  “So your mind is enhanced,” he stated, “I thought as much.”

  “No less than yours. I believe our lattice architectures are similar, Alum. Or should I call you Reverend LaMontagne?”

  Alum laughed. “Touché!”

  He leaned forward. “Yes, my young mind was patterned on my father’s, nearly as much as yours was patterned on Dr. Liang’s. But, as you say, I believe I have proven myself to be quite my own person.”

  DAR-K drifted toward Alum’s desk. “You have. I’m glad there’s no longer any need for subterfuge between us.”

  Alum squinted, as if looking into the sun. “Say what you came here to say and be on your way.”

  “I have a proposal, and a plan for the election.”

  “The election is no concern of the Cybrids.”

  “It is of great concern. Here is my proposal. Over the next few months, Jared Strang will make enfranchising the Cybrid vote an issue in the election. Naturally, my people will support it and you will oppose it.”