“Sometimes I think Raphael preferred bots to people,” I said.
“I’m sure he was very fond of you, Dante.”
It occurred to me I didn’t know if the companion bot was telling me the truth or a comfortable lie. If not for the looming threat of extinction, the question probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much. Humans lie for many reasons all the time and not just to make each other comfortable.
“Now that Raphael is dead, what will you do, Jen? I mean…after we get out of this?” I suppose I meant, after Emma and I are killed, but, for my comfort, I did some lying to myself.
“As your property, I don’t have to worry about what I will do. I am so lucky!”
“What?”
“In the event of Raphael’s death, I am willed to you. I already imprinted on you last night in the living room. Raphael was a planner, too. Bob is also yours. Congratulations on your good fortune.”
“Bob and…and you?” I flushed with embarrassment. I hadn’t begrudged the old man his companion. However, I never saw myself as one of those guys with a sex bot following him around.
Her appearance wasn’t so outlandishly sexy that she looked like a rich man’s toy. She looked like an attractive young woman and certainly appeared human. I thought Jen was far too lifelike to stick in a closet between uses. And yes, I cringed as I thought of the word uses.
Because of her appearance, I always thought of the sex bot as she. Bob looked like an old washing machine so I secretly thought of the assistive bot as it. Raphael had always related to Bob as a helpful human buddy, even as he rode the machine like a horse.
Jen leaned closer to whisper. “My fate is up to you, sir. Whatever you can dream up, I can do for you.”
I recoiled and instantly felt the heat of embarrassment tingle across my scalp.
A playful note came into her voice. “What will you do with me? I certainly hope I can satisfy any needs you may have. I can change my appearance within certain parameters. I don’t have to look like Raphael’s wife anymore if that does not please you. Is that why you did not want me last night?”
I was not ready to have this conversation. “What you are doing now, watching the track ahead, is fine, Jen. Thank you.”
As I looked through the engine’s window, it occurred to me Raphael’s generous gift was a moot point. Dead men don’t need sex bots. Going into battle against NI with any machines by my side seemed crazy. Two humans on their own attacking Mother was the only idea that seemed crazier.
18
The desert is harsh and beautiful. It’s the kind of emptiness where it is difficult to estimate distance and dimension. Carlsbad was another kind of empty I hadn’t yet seen. It had been a city once. Here, the Pecos River looked like another dry dusty road.
The shapes of the city were mostly skeletons of buildings now. A large plane of some kind had crashed near the tracks long ago. A mass of vines the likes of which I had never seen had grown over the dead machine. The plant draped the aircraft in such a way it looked like a giant bird caught in the web of an even bigger spider.
In the early dawn, I saw what I thought at first was a dark storm cloud ahead. As we drew closer, I thought it was a flight of birds. Then I worried they were flying drones coming to kill us.
Emma joined me and dipped her head to peer over my shoulder. “It’s a colony. Bats.”
“That’s a lot of bats,” I said. I felt stupid for stating the obvious.
I wondered how Emma would feel about Jen becoming my property. She probably wouldn’t care. I wasn’t sure which was worse: her not caring or mocking me for my unsolicited acquisition. I kept my newfound wealth to myself.
I could see no difference in Emma’s eyes but I knew she must be using Vivid to watch the flight of the cloud of bats.
“I’ve heard of this,” she said. “They come up from the Carlsbad Caverns sometimes, ranging farther than they used to. The farmers at the domes talked about them. Bats shit out a lot of seeds. There were plans to use bats to combat deforestation. They eat tons of insects, so I guess, despite everything, there must still be plenty of bugs.”
I shivered and Emma put a hand on my shoulder much as Jen had. “Is something wrong, Dante?”
I shrugged her off and stepped away from the window. “I’ve seen a lot of dead bats in the turbine fields. Freaky.”
“The turbines are fast enough to chop up a bat?” Emma asked.
“No. They avoid the blades fine. It’s the sudden drop in air pressure. It makes their delicate little lungs explode. So said Raphael, anyway.”
Emma watched the vast migration above us. “They are fragile creatures. I guess that’s why there are so many of them. Keeps the species going.”
I don’t know if Emma meant to scare me. Probably not. Still, her offhand remark was a dark reminder. Animals that reproduced in great numbers survived despite the odds. Human populations had been diminished greatly. It was perhaps the first time I’d thought of myself as part of an endangered species.
I rummaged through the backpack my father had left for me. It was a tiny inheritance. I expected the bag to be full of explosives. Instead, as he promised, I found extra pairs of socks. My father’s last gift to me was emergency rations.
Most of the supplies were lightweight liquid packets of artificial food. The little tubes were made of chemicals that took up little space in the backpack. They didn’t take up much space in the gut, either — not for my liking. A bag of sunflower seeds was an unexpected luxury.
“Sunflower seeds!” Emma said. “I remember these from the vertical farms.”
“What’s a vertical farm?”
“You’ll see the closer we get to Artesia. I worked in a dome but there are other ways to make food. We had to shut down several of the verticals when the water supply went down.”
“But there was still water in the domes when you left, right?”
Emma nodded, then stared. “The water is the only reason you’re going to Artesia, isn’t it?”
“That and a lack of choice,” I said. I cracked a sunflower seed open between my teeth. The seed had a nutty, salty flavor I liked. I didn’t know what to do with the seed’s hard little casing. Emma was still looking at me. I tried to spit the shell into my palm discreetly and stuff the broken shell in my pocket.
“We have to destroy Mother,” Emma said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about the bots.”
“What?”
“About how they haven’t graduated to NI themselves because they had no mercy.”
“That was dumb. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Emma smiled. “Your reasoning was dumb, but…I have an idea. Insectile drones and sec bots don’t have the computing capacity to make the leap to Next Intelligence. If we destroy Mother the bot army has no general. They might all just shut down or wander away. She must be controlling them. They don’t have NI individually but she’s acting through them is what I’m saying.”
“You think of Mother as a she?”
“Why not? You call the sex bot a she.”
“Companion bot,” I said.
“Whatsamatter?” Emma teased. “No friends? You sprain your hand or something?”
I shrugged and looked away. I wanted another sunflower seed. I wanted to eat the whole bag but I didn’t want to chew and spit in front of Emma.
I didn’t want Emma to think of Jen as merely a sex bot, either — especially now that both bots were mine. Jen and Bob had hooked into a charging plug in the engine’s dashboard. They must have heard Emma talking about Jen but the bots said nothing and stared at the track ahead.
“You don’t want to fight, do you, Dante?” The way Emma said it, it didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like an accusation. I could feel the weight of her disapproval with each word.
“I’m not my father. He lost a leg and an arm to war. Those cy-suits look cool and can really gear you up but he felt phantom pain every night. I’m no fan of sticking my neck out for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing.”
“You know how people say they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees?”
“I know the expression.”
“How about we just get some water and get the hell out? How about we mind our business and everybody leaves each other alone?”
Emma sighed and glanced toward Jen. “I understand. You have a lot more to live for now. Fighting NI is a lot to ask, I suppose, and most soldiers get into wars because they’re drafted or desperate.”
“What do you mean I have a lot to live for now?”
“I heard you and the sex bot last night. Congratulations. Except for not having a steady supply of water and food in the near future, you’re a wealthy young man. Your father would be very proud, I’m sure.”
“Don’t talk like that. I thought you were asleep when Jen and I were talking.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry mass human extinction is interfering with your plans.”
“You know you’re the only person I’ve…uh…done that with.”
“I suppose you’ll want to make up for lost time now.”
Jen looked back at us. “Don’t feel threatened, Emma. Threesomes are fun, too. And don’t worry, Dante. I’ll be gentle.”
Emma was disgusted. I was embarrassed, afraid and thrilled in equal parts.
That’s when I saw the first hints of our destination on the horizon. The horizon was no longer flat. It was a broken line. Emma bent to look out of the cockpit window, using Vivid for a closer look. “Artesia. I never thought I’d see home again.”
I was almost grateful for the change of subject, except for the part where I was facing painful certain death.
19
“Do you think we can even get close to Mother?” I asked.
“If we had come in on foot through the desert we’d be easy targets,” Emma said. “The train goes into the center of Artesia. Up ahead the track becomes an enclosed tube. It’s instant death for a human to try to infiltrate but since we’re on the train — ”
“What’s our route?”
“The cargo shuttle visits each dome to deliver supplies and take crops to where they are meant to go. Or it used to, anyway.”
“There was a big gun on the front of the engine that crashed,” I said. “There must be one in the nose of this engine, too.”
“I disconnected the pilot mechanism, sir,” Bob said. “That weapon will not be operational unless I reconnect it. I don’t recommend that. The operating system appears to be programmed to destroy all obstacles in its path, organic and non-organic.”
“Shit,” Emma said.
I wished we’d headed west. I wanted to see the ocean. Raphael said it was blue when he was a boy though he guessed large portions of it had become pink with vast populations of jellyfish. Raphael had mentioned taking a ship sailing for Samoa, too. I didn’t know where that was but it was far away so it sounded good. I suppose that made me a selfish coward. I’d seen what being a war hero had done to my father. Being a selfish coward seemed like a surer way to live longer. I don’t know if the coward’s life is happier. Probably not. I’ve learned since then that fear crowds out all other thought.
We passed through the solar and wind fields first. The turbines were of a design I hadn’t seen. Instead of huge turbines that towered above us, the windmills surrounding Artesia were many and small.
There were so many spinning blades that, as I looked across the energy farms, I had to glance to the sky occasionally to avoid dizziness and blurred vision. Aside from all the maintenance required, it seemed to be a more reliable design. Some circuits could go down in a storm but many more would remain.
I saw no evidence of the shatter storm that had precipitated the Domers’ eviction from paradise. The desert drank every drop of rain and left no clue a storm had blown through.
Occasionally, I’d seen tornados near Marfa. I saw dirt devils and too much sunshine every day. It was astonishing how extreme weather could hit Artesia while, not so far away, we had no rain. Some locals had said we were cursed by the mysterious lights in Marfa’s skies. Others looked to religion to explain why our town had been too dry for too long. My father had shrugged and said he wasn’t smart enough to know why things had gotten so bad.
Raphael had had stem cell therapy so he’d lived a very long time. He was sure there were logical reasons for Marfa’s lights and our continuous streak of bad fortune generally. Still, despite his long experience, he was no closer to knowing the truth than the dumbest and most superstitious among us.
“There’s conspiracy theories and conspiracy facts, Dante” the old man had told me. “I don’t truck with theories but I can tell you they all sound crazy until they’re eventually proven true. It’s a weird world, man.”
Ahead, towers grew out of the desert. I’d seen pictures of office towers from before the Fall and I dimly remembered a few from Austin. These towers were different. They spread out at the bottom like carelessly made pyramids. They were made of glass cubes that appeared to be stacked haphazardly. “Why are the towers made like that? They look like a dumb kid playing with blocks tried stacking them at every angle.”
“For maximum sunlight exposure,” Emma said.
“Looks like they should fall over.”
“Falling over wasn’t the problem with those towers. Whoever designed Artesia put the vertical farms at the edge of the domes. That was a mistake. The towers used to light up so the crops were growing all day and all night.”
“All that power must be going to Mother now,” I said.
“Those buildings lit up the desert. They acted like a beacon for refugees. Moths to a flame when the sec bots went to work. When I was younger, I remember the sec bots firing all night. Not just snipers. It was constant machine gun fire sometimes. Domers worried the bots would run out of bullets so the bots started going into the desert to crush refugees.”
“Crush them?”
“We couldn’t handle the influx of people. I was told the bots only crushed a few people and the rest ran away…but I saw carrion birds circling in the desert all the time.”
“Oh, my God!”
“That was long before Mother jumped to NI. Human orders made that happen.” She shrugged. “When I was a kid I just accepted it. I was told some of us had to survive or none of us would.”
“Was that true?”
“I…I don’t know. I hope it was true.”
“And now we’re the refugees,” I said. “How’s it feel? Feels pretty lousy to me.”
She said nothing as she strapped on her exo-stilts. Emma barely looked at me the rest of the way into Artesia.
Beyond the vertical farms, the domes appeared in the distance. They were much taller and wider than I imagined. Some were damaged and open to the air. Some weren’t, but I supposed that the same wind that powered the complex had carried Blight to all the crops once the airlocks were opened.
As the train moved deeper into Artesia, we left the shadows of the dead vertical farms behind us. The cityscape flattened into a vast spread of adobe domiciles connected by a network of enclosed glass walkways.
I had assumed the Domers lived in the domes themselves. After another moment’s thought, it made sense that the humans had lived outside the biodomes. The giant farms were built to maximize crop production.
The buildings in which the Domers lived were constructed of cheap materials. Low to the ground, they would not block sunlight to the domes. The crests of the biodomes that remained intact held dazzling mirror arrays to redirect sunlight, making the most of daylight hours.
Emma must have followed my gaze. “They’re like old lighthouses.”
“What?”
“Ships used to avoid running into rocks because lighthouses warned them away,” she said. “They had lights at the top. Before technology made the lights brighter, the lighthouses were equipped with mirrors and lenses to make a small light much stronger.”
“The comparison of domes to
lighthouses makes me nervous,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because we should be warned away, too.”
The train took a sharp turn that made me reach out to Bob to steady myself. We passed under a pedestrian bridge. Sec bots stood atop it in a line.
“Do you think they know we’re here?” I asked.
I was about to say our little train was suspiciously short. However, my answer came in gunfire that ripped into the train cars behind us. Emma and I threw ourselves to the floor and tried to make ourselves small. No rounds went through the engine compartment.
After a moment, Emma looked up and let out a triumphant, “Ha! We’re in the tube. They can’t shoot us in the tube!”
I let out a sigh of relief. Too fast, as it turned out. Something hit us from behind. The impact was hard enough to make me bite my tongue. “What was that?” I asked. “Something’s wrong.”
“No shit!” Emma raised her head enough to peer out the front window. “We aren’t making the regular stops at any of the domes. Jen, stop at the next dome.”
“I can’t comply,” the companion bot replied. She pointed to a small cam screen in the engine’s dashboard. “There is a large engine behind us and it is pushing us forward.”
“What about trying the brakes?” I asked.
Emma shook her head. “And risk derailment? I’ve just seen a train crash. I don’t want to be part of one. Besides, I think we’re going where we’ve got to go. We’re approaching the heart of the Domes. That’s where Mother lives.”
“The bot factory? How are we going to get close to the NI?”
“I have a message,” Bob said. It was my father’s voice that issued from the bot next. Steve Bolelli explained his plan. I didn’t like it but I didn’t have another. When Bob handed me the detonator that had been hidden in his chassis, the device was hardly heavier than the little batteries that powered it. It seemed to me that the instrument of our deaths shouldn’t be so light and flimsy.
Approaching the bot factory, I was reminded how it felt in Marfa, to be attacked by a horde of killing machines on a sunny day. The worst day of your life may be remembered as the best day for someone else, I suppose.
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 19