“Don’t do this,” Emma said.
“C’mon now. I’m the scary guy. Don’t make me be the bad guy. I’ve known Dante all my life. We never got along but I never quite figured on killing him, neither. I’ve never killed anybody…but, like I said, the rules have changed. They’re still changing. Every second you say no, it’s getting easier and easier for me to do what I want just because I got the guns and you’re starting to piss me off. This is already over. You just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.”
He took a step my way. I held my hands up in front of me, turned my head and squeezed my eyes tight. It wouldn’t stop him from blowing my brains out. I was pretty sure he was going to shoot me but I pleaded with Emma, “Just give it to him. Please!”
“Hear that, Emma? Shop boy says, ‘please.’ It’s all up to you.”
He took another step closer and Emma shouted, “Okay! Don’t shoot!”
“That’s more like it,” Peppard said.
“Stop pointing the gun at Dante,” she said. “You’ll need your flashlight. If you’re going to operate my exo-stilts properly, get over here and pay attention. I don’t want you damaging my equipment.”
Peppard laughed. “That’s just fine, Emma. I knew you’d listen to reason. Siddown, Dante.”
He stalked back toward her and, by the beam of his little flashlight, I watched Emma sit down in the street.
I wished a sec bot’s sniper bullet would dig through Jim Peppard’s head. I could almost see it happening in my mind’s eye. My father had described pink mist and cavitation so often, it was easy to picture Jim’s skull getting blown apart. The expensive ammunition any military bot uses would explode and split into barbs. The bots would shred his useless brain and I wouldn’t shed a tear.
“This is the sensory harness,” Emma explained. “This readout shows you how much battery life is left. This little lever here extends the legs for longer strides. The gyros automatically compensate for rough terrain. It takes some getting used to but you probably won’t have balance issues for long. These clips here are for hauling heavy loads.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Emma said. “This is the most important function key here. See this?” She pointed at a recessed button on her harness as she lifted one leg.
“Yeah. What’s that do?” Peppard asked.
The exoskeleton’s metal foot pointed, almost daintily. Jim Peppard’s laugh was cut short as the rail of the exoskeleton’s leg shot out and punched through the center of his chest with a wet crunch. He flew backward like a man-sized doll, boneless and useless.
Emma took a deep breath and held it a second before letting it out slowly through clenched teeth. “Jump mode, asshole.”
11
Emma skidded backward on her bum a little when the blow was delivered. That wasn’t why she was crying when she stood up. Jim made bubbling sounds from his mouth and each shuddering breath was thin and wet.
The flashlight had spun away and I dashed to retrieve it. Once I had that, I rushed back to check on Jim. I wasn’t thinking. I was just moving, working on automatic. If he’d still had my pistol in his fist, I would have tried to kill him. Instead, I found him on his back, disarmed and spitting blood.
I picked up his shotgun. He’d never need it again.
Jim’s breath came and went in short pants, shallower by the moment. One eye was rolled back. The other might have been looking at me but his stare had that blank, uncomprehending look. The big bloody hole in his chest told me my worries about big Jim Peppard were over.
I retrieved the pistol and considered putting Jim out of his misery. I wasn’t the guy for that job, though. Besides, a gunshot might invite the sort of attention we didn’t want from Jim’s father or from sec bots.
Emma joined me. She took the flashlight to turn it off. “I wasn’t kidding about the sec bots in sniper mode. Let’s go.”
“He’s still alive.”
“Not for long.”
“No. I s’pose not.” I looked down at my first enemy dying in the moonlight. Jim had been the only enemy I’d ever had. I had thought I wouldn’t feel anything if he was erased from the Earth. I did, though. It was a strange mixture of satisfaction and pity. I guess my satisfaction at his defeat was a little taller than my pity.
Emma was not stone. She wept but, looking back on it now, I think she cried for what he made her do. “Should we say something?” she asked.
“You mean, like…words over the body? He’s not dead yet.”
“Any moment now.”
“Maybe we should say something while he can still hear us.” I knelt beside him and whispered. “You were right, Jim. Everything worked out.”
That was a bit mean but it was the only eulogy I had in me. I’m ashamed of that now.
“Should we stay with him until he’s gone? Or tell his family?” Emma suggested.
“I don’t think the Peppards would take that well. No sense borrowing trouble. We got plenty on hand.”
I stood. “Past time we went. Sorry I wasn’t more help when the shit hit the turbine.”
“There was nothing you could do that wouldn’t leave you dead.”
“I was taught there is always a way and all you have to do is find it.”
“Always? That’s stupid. Who taught you that? There was nothing you could do. Period.”
“Still. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just show me where we’re hiding tonight. I’m exhausted.”
That sounded cold but I concluded Emma was a logical thinker. Logical thinkers are what every disaster needs. If we had a few more like her, we wouldn’t be in this apocalypse in the first place.
I left the man I’d known as a boy to die in the dark in the street between his house and mine. I’d passed that place who knows how many times. When something monumental happened somewhere, people used to put up monuments and plaques and crosses. Now that something bad was happening everywhere, there weren’t enough people left to put up monuments. The ratio of the dead to the survivors had flipped in a bad way. Not that Jim Peppard was worth a statue or anything. He could have lived a thousand years and never earned so much as a thank you note for his good works.
When I look back on the first day the bots came to Marfa, there are certain things that stand out above the others: the crane bot rummaging under the City Hall’s roof, that old man’s decapitated head held high in a bot’s claw and the children screaming along with their mothers and fathers. There weren’t many kids around anymore so their loss was somehow even worse.
Chief among these memories, I think I will remember best the feeling of a gun pointed at my head. I was sure I was about to die and, despite everything that had happened that day, I still wanted to live.
That’s a mystery for the ages. Old people can get tired of living and, on their deathbeds, they’ll ask earnestly why they should bother about seeing another sunrise. Surviving the apocalypse is for the young and stupid, I think. We still have the will to keep going when a wiser person would give up, lay down and relax into oblivion.
Down the street, a smaller mystery was solved easily. Steve Bolelli, resourceful and determined as ever, had survived another day of war. My father had not hugged me since I was little but he did that day.
“I don’t think I managed to draw any drone away from downtown,” he said. “Makes sense. They want maximum casualties so they stuck where the largest population density was. To get up here, I went to the edge of town and took the long way.”
“We did the same,” I said.
“I knew you would, son. You got my brains and your mother’s ass.”
“Uh, thanks, Dad.”
Emma’s cheeks were still wet with tears but she managed a half-smile. Then she broke down and cried into my shoulder.
“Young lady?” Raphael came forward out of the kitchen using his walker. “Hello. I’ve heard about you. Welcome to Marfa’s survivor’s club. Not many of us left, I’m afraid.”
Bo
b must have been charging in the kitchen but Raphael’s companion bot followed him into the living room. This was not the same Jen who witnessed Jim Peppard bully me when I was seven. This was Jen #3 (“premium with oral upgrades,” Raphael had bragged.)
Raphael introduced Jen to Emma. The machine smiled but said nothing.
Emma looked at Jen warily. “Is it safe?”
Raphael laughed. “She’s fine. I never allow automatic updates. The idea of allowing an unknown entity to update her software has always seemed crazy to me. She’s a companion bot. Updates from elsewhere are invitations to surveillance. That could be embarrassing, couldn’t it?”
I relaxed a little. Then I thought of Bob. “Does Bob get automatic updates?”
“Nah,” Raphael said. “I never bothered. He’s fine, too. When I want more bells and whistles on my assistive devices, I buy new.”
“Great!” Emma said. “So they probably won’t kill us in our sleep.”
“Tough day for you, I’m sure,” Raphael said. “Steve has tracked the progress of the drone attack. Between his observations and my math, we’re safe here tonight and at least until noon tomorrow. Probably longer.”
I was about to ask how they could possibly know that but Emma got it right away. “They’re killers but they’re still bots. They’re being systematic, aren’t they? They’re probably organizing the slaughter on a grid for maximum effect.”
My father nodded and I could see the pain on his face. “People run home when things get bad. If their homes aren’t there anymore, they’ll run to churches. From what I could see, the bots have recognized that pattern. Things being the way they are, not many people are really in a position to leave. We’re stuck here. If that train doesn’t stop tomorrow night, few will escape.”
“That’s talk for tomorrow,” Raphael said. “Get some sleep everyone, if you can. I’ll take the first watch.”
“How far can you see, old man?” Dad asked.
“Jenny can see fine. I’ll watch with her.”
I fell into a deep sleep on the living room floor. I didn’t sleep for long. I startled awake. Jen was beside me, her head on my shoulder. She had one arm around my waist and she was hugging tight.
12
My first thought was of Travis Chinto, squeezed in the middle until his insides became outsides. But Jen wasn’t holding me that tight.
“Jen?”
Her hardware mimicked taking a deep breath so when she said, “Hello, Dante,” her soft whisper was soft and sultry.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you to wake up.” She raised her head and, in the dim light cast from the kitchen, I could see her inviting smile. Her small face was framed by short hair in brown and blonde ringlets.
“Where is everybody?”
“Raphael is in your father’s bed. Your father is off on a mission to make preparations for tomorrow with Bob. Emma is out on the front porch on watch.” Her hand brushed the crotch of my jeans gently. “And I’m here with you. We’re alone.”
“Why?”
She sat up. Her flannel shirt was unbuttoned. She pulled it back to reveal two perfect breasts. I’d always been curious about companion bots, of course. Her brown nipples were erect. I wondered if they were always that way. Though she was a sex bot, Raphael usually dressed her conservatively.
“Um,” I said.
“Raphael said I should pay you a visit.”
“Why?”
“Do you want me to say it? Would you like me to tell you? I can talk slow and dirty or I can provide the full menu of my services in an itemized list, if you prefer. Just tell me what you want. I’m yours tonight.”
I was silent for a moment. I’d fantasized about this. Now that the fantasy could become a reality, I was too nervous to move.
Companion bots were expensive. All three of Raphael’s sex bots had been custom made to his specs and identical as far as I could see. My father told me he’d seen a picture of Raphael’s dead wife once. Each Jen looked exactly like her.
I stared at the bot’s breasts and Jen looked pleased. She shimmied a little, putting on a show. Then the bot rose to swing a leg over mine and she climbed on top of me, her hands on my shoulders held me still. She began to undulate slowly but with increasing purpose, rubbing her pubis up and down my crotch. Of course, she was programmed to respond that way but, organic or non-organic, her manipulations had the desired effect. I was rock hard.
“Are you shy, Dante?” Jen said. “You don’t have to be shy with me. I can do whatever you want. Whatever you need, I’m here.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I told you. Raphael sent me.”
“Why did Raphael send you?”
“To do what I do. Raphael hasn’t fucked me in a long time, Dante. It feels good for me, too, you know.”
“Stop!”
Jen got off me immediately.
“Button up your shirt and go charge yourself or something.”
“I’m sorry. Have I done something wrong?”
“I know why Raphael sent you. That’s…that’s all. Go. Thank you, but go.”
When my erection subsided, I stood and paced. Then I went outside for some fresh air. Emma was on the porch, standing guard. She was shorter than I expected without the exo-stilts.
“Have a good time?” she asked.
“What?”
“You heard me. Raphael said you’d need a little privacy for a while. Seems it didn’t last long. I’ve heard that’s the problem with sex bots. They can be too good. When you do the math, it works out to millions of dollars a minute.”
“It wasn’t like that. I told her to go away.”
Emma turned to me, curious. “That’s weird. I guess I was sounding unkind, but women have used machines for much longer than men. I mean for — ”
“Jen is a replica of Raphael’s wife. She died of cancer before I was born. All three Jens have been her double.”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s more than that. Raphael expects us to die tomorrow. That’s why he sent her.”
“That does kill the mood.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “Well…it didn’t exactly kill the mood. I mean, they are very lifelike. It’s just…it didn’t feel right. Besides, bots scare the shit out of me right now. If Jen had arrived at my bed a couple of nights ago, different story.”
Emma took a long breath. “Yeah, I think it’s a good bet we’re gonna die tomorrow. You should have taken Raphael up on the offer.”
She turned to watch Marfa.
“What do you see that I don’t?” I asked.
“More bots have arrived. I think the insectiles have moved on. Makes sense. They’re basically bees. Excellent navigation, good scouts. There are more buildings burning. I think they’re burning them in a ring.”
“Why?”
“Driving the humans together. Coralling them.”
“It’s genocide.”
“It’s the extinction,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about something the man I killed said.”
“What about him?”
“He said if the old rules worked, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
“Yeah? So?”
“This is our fault. We saw the Next Intelligence coming and we didn’t stop the tech. We just figured somebody else would figure it out.”
“Guess they didn’t. I’m still unclear…I mean, if NI is so damn smart, what’s with trying to kill us all?”
“Maybe because we aren’t so smart. When the jump to NI happens, it’s never a small increment. A computer builds a computer. Then it builds a brain that’s not just ten times smarter than us. It’s a thousand times smarter.”
“What’s your point?”
“You ever kill a bug in your kitchen and feel bad about it, Dante?”
“I see what you’re saying.”
“I remember talking to engineers about NI. One of the tricks to stopping NI was to set traps for it. The idea was, when
a system jumps to sentience, you give it dead ends to go down. You offer it a chance to do terrible things and if it chooses those terrible things, the system shuts down.”
“And?”
“That was the safety on the gun. Sounds brilliant, right?”
“Sure.”
“Think about it a moment longer. How would a hyper-intelligent system outsmart the trap?”
I shrugged. “It’d have to be suspicious. Mostly it would have to learn to lie, I guess.”
“So, you’re saying a pretty dim toddler would get around the trap. Keep in mind that I’m talking about a machine that has access to all information in human history and makes billions of calculations per second. How long do you think it should take an advanced neuromimetic matrix to figure out how to fool us?”
“Oh.”
“One of the first things we taught computers to do was play games. Those same computer scientists devising traps and dead ends for NI probably programmed computers to recognize feints and traps in chess. Idiots all.”
“Shit. We will die tomorrow.”
“Fuck, yeah,” she said. “We’re definitely going to die tomorrow. No. It’s long past midnight. We’re going to die today.”
We didn’t talk for a long time. She watched Marfa burn. I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t know what to say.
Eventually, we turned to each other. You can guess what happened next. Raphael had the right idea but a bot wasn’t right. Not then.
As Emma held me in her arms, she squeezed me tight to her body. She rocked up and down, riding me with aching slowness. “This is my last time,” she said. “Let’s make it last.”
“This is my first time,” I said. “I’ll try.”
13
The plan was simple. The desert was too big. We had to escape Marfa by train. That evening it would be heading west. The last city was out there, somewhere along the coast. It was rumored to be so large, people called it The City in the Sky or just The City.
The train wouldn’t take us that far. There wasn’t enough rail that was intact. One of the Cataclysms had hit the coast — maybe more than one. The options once we got to the water would be a long hike or to get a ride in a sailboat.
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 16