Jade had explained on the way this was an entirely human neighborhood. It had, just a few years earlier, been double in size. People here generally couldn’t afford transitioning into hybrids, but they were skilled enough to warrant jobs within the city. Those who weren’t skilled enough had been kicked out beyond the cities walls (understandably disgruntled, thus creating more Lowsmiths.) The grunt work of the city had all been taken care of by bots (cleaning, maintenance, farming.) The high-end jobs were all taking by hybrids (synergy, corporate overtaking, public relations.) Left in the middle were jobs where bots were not the best solution, but didn’t pay particularly well (there were a lot of teachers.) But as bots continued to become more advanced, the numbers of the humans in the city kept shrinking.
But then, the plague had hit. Hybrids were getting extremely sick. In some instances, companies were even hiring people from Trenchtown to meet their needs.
The result: resentment all around. Tensions had never been higher between humans and hybrids. The humans in the city of Crowley were generally not like the Lowsmiths, hating the hybrid race, but knowing they had to live in harmony. But recently, many had begun to change their mind. Tensions were at an all-time high.
The reaction to Jade walking through the streets of Trenchtown was mixed. Jade was well known, for two reasons.
One, she was Jade. She was known throughout the city as a dangerous and mysterious person in Blake’s small inner circle. Few would have the guts to mess with her in the best of circumstances.
The second reason, Charlie was about to find out when they arrived at 615 Memorial Avenue, a small brick “townhouse”.
“Alright.” Jade took a deep breath and headed for the door. “Finally bringing a boy home to meet my parents.”
Chapter 16
Petra Wendigo, father of the girl who was once Jadyn Wendigo, was showing Charlie a polaroid photo album. Yes, a polaroid photo, circa 1970.
The house was a mix of futuristic and 1970’s décor. The family had a maid ServBot roaming around, and streams of content showed on monitors around the room. But the couch looked outdated, even to Charlie. Same with the chairs, and a table at the far end of the living room. It was like his grandmother and future great-great-great-great-grandchild got together and decorated the house.
At the far end of the room was Jade’s mother, Tella Wendigo. She did not seem to be particularly happy about the present company. Charlie would have to tread lightly.
“I can’t believe it,” Petra said with a shake of the head. “I had heard rumors, but…they actually brought Charlie Richards back from the past.”
“I’m still confused.” Charlie was. “How did Jade become a hybrid if only wealthy people become hybrids?”
Jade shifted uncomfortably.
Petra flipped through the album. When he flipped the page, it was just a swipe of a hand in the air, the book was meant to look like an old photo album, and the pictures like old polaroid photos, but wasn’t the case. At closer inspection, the pages were digital pages, and the pages turned by motion sensors. It was a futuristic polaroid scrapbook.
The page turned to a photo of a small run-down town. Petra explained, “This is Coyote Springs. About sixty miles from here.”
Charlie eyed Jade. She kept her gaze glued on the photo. He couldn’t quite get a read on her, but the photos seemed difficult for her to look at.
Petra carried on. “Tella and I grew up there. Met there. Had a daughter there. It was a nice place. I worked as a teacher, Tella, a baker.”
Petra flipped the page with the swipe of his hand. A young girl of six stood on the front porch of a house flanked by two adults. He swiped it again and there was a photo of a girl, smiling and happy, in a hospital bed with bots by her side.
Jade turned and looked away.
“She was eight when she got sick.” Petra kept it together. Tella, in the back of the room, stirred. Her face a mixture of anger and sadness. “We were told Jade was going to die. There was nothing they could do. Her heart just wasn’t strong. Then, a man came to me. He said his name was Monfils and said there was an experimental treatment in Vegas. This was just before the city was changed to Crowley.” Petra swiped again. A photo of the family, their things packed, and headed in a bullet car to the desert. “So, we packed our things and went. Put our lives behind us, but that’s what anyone would have done for their child.”
Tella broke down at this. She quickly exited the room.
The outburst caused Jade to teeter the edge as well. She turned from Charlie and Petra and buried her face in her hands.
Petra took notice, but he didn’t react, just flipped the page. It was a picture of Jade inside the Hybrid Center. There were surgeons and bots and all kinds of things there. Her chest was open. A mechanical heart was at the ready to replace.
Jade stood and left the room.
Jade stood in the kitchen (very futuristic, no 70’s style here. The food distributor made Charlie hungry for an In and Out burger.) Jade, who was once a full human named Jade Wendigo, and is currently in special operations at the Crowley Enterprises Corporation. She looked out the window at a small backyard. She remembered the sterile white walls and surgical bots before the virtual reality glasses would sweep her away to tropical islands. The truth of what had happened was slowly revealed to her over the years. Her parents spent all the money they had in this world to make her into a hybrid, with three mechanical organs, and saved her life. The money they paid still was not enough, and that’s why she was forced into a job with the corporation to repay her debts. But she couldn’t blame anyone. She had to be thankful, right? Her boss (and practically everyone’s boss) had some unquestionably marginal ethics, but she was alive because of him.
As she grew older, the jobs she was instructed to do had become increasingly, shall we say, more serious. From cleaning floors (not fun) to internal audits (not fun), to bot repair (sorta fun) to media production (sounds more fun than it was) to police enforcement (she was a natural) to Blake’s person security force (great fun, just stand behind the bots); then last year she was instructed, and carried out, the assassination of Victor Depoza, an executive at a competing technology company. Things had gotten real. An assassination was a hard thing to deal with, but this was the price she paid to still be here. She would do what Blake asked of her.
“You alright?” Charlie had finished getting the rest of the story from Petra, at least his version, and came in to check on Jade.
“No.” Jade took a dep breath and turned to Charlie. “Yes.” She crossed over to the food distribution unit (FDU) and got a hot cup of tea. “My mother is upset because I haven’t been here in over two years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And after everything they did for me...they don’t know the wars I fight for them is to pay them back. That I need to live on for them. That hybrid technology is a way for them to live on. Blake has told me, if I help fix this plague, he will make them hybrids. They can live on for hundreds of years.” Jade turned to look Charlie in the eye. “I even killed for him once. For them. I will kill for my parents. They have given everything for me.”
The look in Jade’s eyes said it all. He knew what she had said to be true. Regardless of what she felt for anyone, her true devotion was to her parents. This relieved him a bit, it was something he could relate to. He thought of his own mother. Guilt filled him. He never told her what she meant to her. He lived in her house because he was afraid not to. That was the truth. “Okay,” he said with a nod.
Jade took a deep breath and downed her tea. Okay. Charlie Richards, whom she went through time to get, who was the god of her race, was her only hope, responded to her last-ditch effort, an effort that was very, very difficult for her, responded with okay.
Hope was lost.
Charlie was at a loss for words. He crossed to the FDU. It could give him virtually any food he wanted. He was starving for fish ‘n chips. Yet, he had no appetite. It was gone. It was replaced by a heavy burden.<
br />
Beside the FDU was a rice cooker. Odd. They had a unit that could give any food in all the world, what was the point of an old rice cooker? “Why do you guys have this?
Jade wasn’t in the mood. “I don’t know, Charlie. Why does it matter?”
He picked it up and examined it. It was antique in this age but it was still futuristic to him. While it looked like a rice cooker from his day for the most part, it had a processing unit on the top of it. “How old is this?”
“I don’t know,” Jade said with frustration. “I think it’s from your time. Or just after. Your century.”
Charlie took out his iPhone. It didn’t work as a phone in this day of age, but if this cooker was old. He checked the Bluetooth and, indeed, the cooker popped up. He opened his HackALot app. The simple little cooker showed up as a connected device. From there he could download the programming.
The code was quite simplistic. The device was basically designed to track when you left work (or a desired location) to start the rice so it was fresh when you arrived home. The code told the microwave sensors to start. It gave Charlie an idea.
“Jade.” Charlie turned to Jade sharply
Chapter 17
In the low-lying hills a good distance from Crowley, under the cover of the red earth, in dark passages, the rebel Lowsmiths gathered in the underground chapel that had once served as the training ground for a potential mission to Mars. However, they would object strongly to being labeled as Lowsmiths. The Crowley brass came up with that name, since before the revolt, many of the humans had primarily worked as smiths in the low plateaus, mining alluvium fan deposits. Crowley had, over the years, upped the demands on the smiths while offering less and less pay. When they were destitute and on the brink of starvation, Blake Crowley replaced all of them with bots. No, they did not become Lowsmiths like the greedy corporate king Blake said. Technically they were HOPE – The Human Operations for Permanent Existence- though most just referred to it as The Allegiance. They were going to make damn sure humans weren’t going to go extinct to this invasive hybrid species. That’s why they were gathered here today, in church. While not attending a service, the group of a hundred or so rebels were as quiet as a congregation as they stood and watched their leader pace the dais at the front of the room.
Trekon’s presence alone demanded respect. He was six foot seven, and looked like he could’ve played in the NFL back in the day, when it existed. He had gray hair, closely cropped over his ears, but the back was a little longer and pulled up in the short ponytail. His gray beard was precisely trimmed and he wore a white flowing robe that made him look very much not like a rebel leader fighting against a militant army.
He looked almost like a messiah.
“This is our greatest opportunity.” Trekon stood at the front of the Allegiance in the red rock underground chapel that was a central meeting space for the rebels. “We have broken through the Northern Wall and made significant incursions into Crowley.”
A holler rose from the crowd of brown-clad warriors which filled the chapel.
Trekon raised his hands to quiet the crowd. “We have lost many, but its success is monumental. It is the spearhead by which we will overtake Crowley and stop Blake Crowley’s insistence that humans become hybrids.”
Applause rippled through the room.
“My brother was killed!” A large man from the back called out. “There is no way we can win without hybrids and bots on our side!”
“We all lost someone,” Trekon said, “but forward momentum is imperative. We have word from intelligence that Crowley has brought Charlie Richards from the past to write code to strengthen the hybrids.”
A gasp went up from the dusty group in front of him.
“That’s impossible!” A voice rang out.
“We have seen many impossible things happen under Crowley’s leadership,” Trekon’s grey head bowed sagely to the crowd. Many heads bobbed in unison, each remembering an unexpected development with Blake Crowley at the helm.
The inseparable duo of Zeke and Tallahassee exchanged a look. They’d been through the trenches together. A couple of Outliers, whose families had been early victims to some of Blake’s less savory skirmishes, when he’d sent out the early hybrids to see if he could round up more humans to live in Crowley. When some families had refused to leave their settlements, and move into the protection of the city, Blake had decided to show the Outliers what could happen if they didn’t have protection.
Bad things happened.
He hadn’t just sent the hybrids, he had sent bots. It had been no contest. Zeke and Tallahassee’s settlement was in the remnants of St. George. Far enough away from Las Vegas that it wouldn’t make too much of a ripple. Their people had been wiped out, all except for the two little boys hiding in the metal water trough out by the cows. They’d held their breaths and ducked under, lasers flying overhead, the algae infested water washing away their tears as they huddled together.
When the battle had died down, they’d risen from the cold water, shivering in the dark night. There was no trace of their parents or the other settlers. The bodies were all gone, as if they’d never existed. Even at six and seven they had realized the raids from Crowley weren’t trying to get resources. The stores of food hadn’t been touched.
Tallahassee and Zeke had lived alone for thirty-three days before Trekon and the Allegiance had found them. The boys had been taken in, raised and trained by the rebels. The only thing they didn’t have to be taught was their hatred of Crowley and the technology that was developed there. The technology that had destroyed their families.
“They’re going to turn every human into a damn machine,” Tallahassee muttered, his hand resting on the hilt of his gun.
“Over my dead body,” hissed Zeke, spitting on the ground and tucking his hair behind his ear.
“Exactly how they’ll do it, too,” Tallahassee muttered.
The two of them were beside the lone non-human in the group, an Enceladusian in fact. “You jump conclusions,” Gunk said, his fluorescent skin glowing in the dim chapel lights.
“Jump to conclusions,” Zeke corrected the seven-foot-tall alien without even thinking about it.
A holographic map projected up from a small sphere on the table in front of Trekon.
“We will lose everything if we do not continue our fight against Crowley and their eager dissemination of the human species. Each loss has made a difference. Either we have weakened their defenses, or we have strengthened our resolve. Now is the time to continue the attack. We have breached their walls and can enter through Northeast Sector 42 and make our way to Trenchtown.”
“That’s a human community!” Tallahassee called out.
“Exactly,” Trekon nodded. “It’s the least guarded. We can also set up a barricade to protect the humans, and who knows, we may win over some more recruits.”
Zeke nodded. “Not a bad idea. We could use the help.”
Tallahassee snorted “We’ll be lucky. What’re we going to say? Fight or die?”
Trekon swiped at the hologram map and it changed to Trenchtown and the surrounding quadrants. “This is where our people are being held,” he said, pointing to a tall metal building adjacent to Trenchtown. “We need to free those people and strengthen our forces on the Northern Wall. We must strengthen our forces in Crowley to hold our ground and stand against the hybrids. Without us, humans will cease to exist.”
The light in the Lowsmith transport passage was low, but Gunk’s fluorescent yellow skin still stood out. Vividly.
“I go with you,” Gunk said. “I want be part of next rebel attack on city.”
“How long you been living with us?” Tallahassee asked the tall fluorescent creature walking in front of him, trying to deflect the conversation from his inevitable no.
“75.63 years. Plus or minus four hours. I can’t remember exactly what time I landed.”
“Well, your English still sucks. “
Gunk’s laugh was like a
series of small chirps, like something you might hear from three or four baby birds. They came out of the side valves on his neck.
“I can be a hybrid. Or you can let me run the garbage truck.”
“How the hell are you going to pull off being a bot or a hybrid? There’s no way you can pull off a hybrid. And you would make one weird-ass bot.”
Tallahassee had always felt kind of bad for the guy. Gunk’s ship had landed seventy-five years ago. Long before the Allegiance had even started rebelling. Before the plague, before hybrids were created. At first, Gunk worked with the top-tier technologists in the Crowley Corporation, but he eventually got super bored of that when they started focusing solely on hybrid technology, and started doing tests trying to learn about his planet and how he got here in a spaceship. But soon they started talking about doing stuff to his body. He slipped away one night and never went back. He’d been with the original Allegiance since they first started. The Crowley Corporation had let him go, thinking they had everything they needed out of him. But they didn’t know he could take on the form of a human.
“I go,” Gunk insisted.
“No, and that’s final,” Tallahassee said as he loaded up his weapons and headed to the transport. He had enough problems with the potential loss of the human race. He wasn’t going to take responsibility for Gunk’s people dying out in one attack. It was better that Gunk just stuck to driving the Crowley garbage incinerator.
Zeke shrugged his shoulders towards Gunk. “I can’t say I want to argue with him,” he said. “You are the last of your kind.”
Gunk flitted into human form and shook his head. “One day I help,” he said to the rebels’ retreating backs.
Chapter 18
Charlie’s fingers had shooting pains and cramps right underneath his knuckles, the same pains he always got when he was typing furiously. Only this time he wasn’t typing. He was trying to work the computer system with his eyes and mind, and his fingers were twitching in time as if he was typing. But he wasn’t paying much attention. He was hunched over, shoulders drawn together, and if the shooting pains in his knuckles were noticeable, it was three times as bad in his shoulders. He had always had bad posture, even as a kid he was the slouchy slump. Miss Reynolds had yelled at him every day of his third-grade year to sit up straight. Though, to be fair, she would yell at him not matter what. Miss Reynolds was not a Charlie fan, much like the programmers in this room. His slouching was especially bad when he went to visit his sister. Something about her made him want to shrink away and not be noticed. But right now, he wasn’t trying to hide.
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