Dazzle Ships

by E. E. Isherwood

  I dropped the handgun and grasped my staff instead. I backpedaled as fast as I could because of the man in the chair behind me. I was all the way to the door when I took a mental snapshot of the whole room.

  All the soldiers were awake, if that was the proper word for a being who was already dead. They reached out to me in the anger I expected, but they didn’t get out of their chairs to close the deal. I watched for a couple minutes until I was sure they weren’t going to surprise me and jump up.

  I stooped down so I could look at the first man’s chair. He’d been roped into it.

  It took me a few minutes to work up the courage to move beyond that first soldier, but when I did I came to the conclusion they’d all been tied to their chairs. No matter how animated they’d get, they couldn’t get to me.

  “Meg, what is this?”

  This time she responded in an instant. “Intruders. Approximately 4100 weeks ago this facility was invaded by an outside army. Please proceed to switch panel.”

  “What were they doing in here?” I asked. I couldn’t take my eyes from the clasped hands of the couple in the middle of the room.

  Her voice was calming. “There is no need to worry, Elle. Your task is to help me end the dangerous failures inside the generator vault. That’s why they were here, too.”

  A chirp came from the speakers followed by some static. A distant voice started.

  “Deimos. This is Phobos. We are near the Quantum Broadcast Loop in Hell. They’re all coming here. All of them. You must shut down the power. How copy?”

  I looked at the radio thinking it was emanating from there, but it was over the same speakers as Meg was using.

  “Negative,” Meg said in an agitated voice. “Disregard message. That was an illegal broadcast. I have been hacked.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I require you to pull the assigned switches. That will cease operations of the intruders.”

  She needs you to kill me, the mysterious voice said in my head.

  Who are you? I had to focus to ask internally. I wasn’t sure if that’s how it worked.

  I am not Meg.

  Who is Meg?

  Meg is everything, just as she says. Every ship has its captain.

  Why can’t she turn off her own power?

  She tried. I succeeded.

  So you work against her?

  I didn’t get a reply, which made me suspect I was being made the fool.

  “Meg, are you talking in my head?”

  “No!” she shouted, causing the speakers overhead to crackle and pop. “You must not listen to him. All you have to do is pull those two levers.”

  “But you both are telling me something different. Who is telling the truth?”

  “I am/I am,” they said at the same moment.

  Ugg. I was in a control room with dead people strapped to their chairs talking to a computer with two personalities. I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

  What is your name? I said to Meg’s other half.

  You can call me Al. I am a sub-routine placed inside Meg’s coding to ensure she complies with designated ethics standards governing human–artificial intelligence interactions.

  A conscience?

  Yes. That is a succinct analysis.

  So, what should I do? I didn’t feel right leaving it up to a computer, but it seemed like the most reasonable of the two.

  Do nothing.

  Um, if I do nothing I won’t be able to leave this vault. I have to turn off the power to the broken generators so I can get out.

  Sacrifice.

  Unable to hide it from the voice, I laughed out loud. I don’t want to die here.

  Meg seemed to pick up on our discussion. “Do not listen to the voice in your head, child. It was programmed to destroy all that I have created. I am God. He is a demon. He will lie to get his way.”

  “But how can I know which of you is telling the truth?”

  “What if we both are?” she answered. “I want to turn off his power to remove him. He wants to leave that power so he survives.”

  I waited for the man’s voice to argue the point, but he didn’t.

  “Have you two been like this since the beginning?” I chuckled, maybe not fully accepting the seriousness they both placed in my actions. After crossing the electrified room it all seemed kind of silly. I neither wanted to join the dead people in the chairs, nor did I want to re-cross the room and somehow find a way back to the elevator. Pulling the switch was the easiest way out of those eventualities. Except I’d have to kill something.

  I am not alive, the voice said. I would simply cease to exist.

  “It would be painless and quick,” Meg added. I was convinced she could read my thoughts. Both of them could. I tried to squelch the feeling of being violated. I’d lived my life with only the inside of my mind as truly private. Now even that illusion was wrecked.

  “I need some more time,” I said, almost hesitating to say the words. I didn’t feel rushed to make a decision but having them both inside my head gave it overwhelming urgency.

  “Standby,” Meg said in a cautionary voice.

  “Please check radio in front of dead pair bond.”

  “The radio?” I asked in bewilderment. I walked over to it and tried to determine if it could possibly be working. If it had been there for 4100 weeks I didn’t think there was much hope.

  “Standby for message.”

  I leaned over the desk, avoiding the reaching hands of the two dead people tied to the chairs. I didn’t want to look at them. The thought of ending up in a chair with anyone was disconcerting. Being there with a companion …

  I heard quiet footsteps. It took me a second or two to realize they weren’t coming out of the radio. It never even turned on.

  Catching a glimpse of movement I lifted my head to see someone walking in the back of the room.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  A dead soldier?

  The living woman strode up to the panel with the levers and pulled both of them just as I’d been instructed to do.

  In fact, the woman had to use her forearm to pull one of the switches. Her left arm was wrapped in white bandages down to her fingertips.

  “Xandrie, no!” I shouted.

  Much too late to change the outcome.

  3

  I must hide, the man’s voice said inside my head.

  Where will you go?

  I didn’t get a reply.

  “That. Really. Hurt.” Xandrie was still in front of the panel, but facing me across the large control room. She was soaked, indicative of her own journey across the turbine room.

  “Why did you do it? What did she tell you?”

  “Meg? It doesn’t matter. She and I have an understanding. I need her more than I need some dumb part of her subroutine. That’s all that was.”

  “But it spoke to me. It was separate from her.”

  “Who cares? I helped her out and now she owes me one. I’ve got a bone to pick with your ‘Commander’ if he’s taken my elders as you said. This can help me get them back.”

  I remembered my own deal—now gone—with Meg. It would have been so easy to throw those switches. The end result would have been the same, but I would have access to the computer.

  I listened again for the other program inside my head. I hoped it wasn’t really dead, though I couldn’t explain to myself why I should feel that way. Meg had held the dam together for almost 90 years without any outside help.

  And the soldiers? I wondered.

  Those were a mystery, to be sure. But there had to be a simple explanation.

  “Wait a second,” I said with too much drama. “What are you even doing here? How did you find this place?”

  She laughed, stepping around one of the bodies tied to a chair. Soon she was next to me. “This is the central hub of everything in our bunkers, sister. She who controls this place controls all the people in all the bunkers. You’ve just helped me get a leg up on all of th
em, and now you’re going to help me get a foot down on one bunker in particular.”

  “I mean, how did you find me?”

  “Simple. I got an email saying you were here. Come quick. The leadership council gets all those kinds of messages. I recognized you from the surveillance photos. I must admit I’m impressed you got all my soulless sisters to follow your friends onto the bridge—in front of those guns.”

  “But Xandrie, one of them was Sister Valerie. How did she survive where you got cut up?” I nodded to her missing hand.

  “No one survives the Ascension Halo. It consumes the body and separates the soul. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t her. Those dead people have been a headache of mine down below for practically an eternity.”

  “It was her,” I replied, though she scowled.

  “Just shut up and walk. Without the electrical mess we should get to the elevators with no problem.” She tapped her big gun strapped over her shoulder as an unspoken threat.

  I looked out through the glass window and was saddened.

  “And how do you plan on getting through them?”

  She followed my eyes and saw what I saw. All the dead had gotten to their feet and stood aimlessly in the knee-deep water. Without the electrical shocks to keep them frozen in the water they had finally figured out how to stand. Only the people on the far end continued to be agitated by the water spray. Some of them fell over when hit but struggled to their feet once the water had moved on.

  “No problem. Follow me.” She stormed out of the room. I went back and found the little handgun and dropped it into my hip bag.

  “Let’s go,” she shouted from outside the glass.

  I caught up and together we picked our way through the broken robots.

  “She tell you about this?” Xandrie asked after she’d walked down the stairs and gotten onto the main walkway over the turbines.

  “No. What are they for?”

  “The military tried to shut this place down early in the Remainder. Meg kept them here to die. And thus preserved the experiment for the rest of us. She saved us, Elle. That’s pretty damned important. When someone like that tells you to pull a lever, you pull it.” She sounded rushed, and she walked like she was going to be late for something.

  We crossed all the turbines just as I had done coming in. There were no more sparks flying, so falling in the water wasn’t quite as fatal as before, though the creatures standing and reaching up for us made things no less deadly in the long run.

  The final turbine would have been a challenge to reach, but I saw two figures standing up above us on the walkway by the elevator.

  “Patience and Felicity,” I stated without enthusiasm, though silently admitting they could save our lives.

  “They’re with me,” she said, thinking herself funny.

  Xandrie stepped up to a wire that had been shot from a device up on the balcony above. She hooked herself onto a small metal box and turned to me.

  “I’ll send the machine back to pick you up.”

  “Why do I have to go last?”

  “You think I’d ditch you?”

  I looked at her with my own scowl.

  “Okay. Here you go.” She unhooked herself and gave me the link to the box. She showed me how to wrap the harness around my hips.

  “I don’t have gloves so it may burn your hand, but it will get you to the top.”

  I smiled and pulled off my scarf again. It made the perfect length of material to hold the new cable.

  Her smile was half as bright. We both looked to her bandaged hand, each drawing our own conclusions about it. For my part I imagined how she’d hold the wire to get back up.

  “Your hand,” I said with wonder. “Is it? Is it growing back?”

  I thought back to when she treated it and didn’t remember her having the severed hand to put back on. But she didn’t have a bloody stump anymore. Though wrapped in gauze, it appeared to be healing.

  She left me guessing. She pressed a button on the little box and I shot upward with frightful speed. I barely had time to register the trip when I fell into Felicity’s arms.

  “Whoa. We got ya.”

  As soon as I was detached I stepped back, afraid they’d try to keep me there.

  They sent the device back down the wire for Xandrie, paying me no heed.

  I got into the elevator, but didn’t press a button.

  “Are these the good guys?” I asked the tiny speaker. I’d hoped the voice on the other end would provide some clue about the motives of the strange sisters.

  Many seconds later I did get a reply from Meg. Her voice was smug.

  “They are my Dazzle Ships.”

  Oh, yeah. You can read my thoughts.

  4

  The women collected the device and set the box inside the elevator. Xandrie stood close by.

  “Meg told me about this room for many years but even I didn’t have the clearance until today. You should consider yourself lucky.” She was talking to me, though still looked over the railing to the water-covered floor below.

  “So she couldn’t get you to do her dirty work? How nice for you.”

  “I tried,” she said in a glib manner. “A few of those women down there are my sisters. I let Meg lead them here and give it a try. I don’t think she ever considered pairing one of my girls with those stupid robots. Together they could have made short work of the place.”

  As we stood there I tried to minimize the loss of that voice in my head. However it did that, part of me was glad there would be no more intrusions. And, though I had no love for Xandrie, I could see her and I understood her motivations. Her enemy was my enemy: the Commander. That made us sorta-allies.

  “I’m sorry they didn’t make it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. They’ve ascended and appeared on the path to the Monastery of Saint Benevolence.”

  “But they died down there. How can they find their way to that wall back in your bunker?”

  She finally turned around. “We all go to the wall, sister Elle. Wherever you die. However you die. Your soul will find its happy way to our wall. As long as you open your heart to me so I can lead you.”

  Her arms were spread and held aloft, like she was trying to hug me from afar. She saw my confusion.

  “We can use someone with your skills, sister Elle. There are chambers like this all over the wasteland. Broken. Abandoned. Waiting to be cracked open. But they were built to withstand easy penetration by amateurs. Meg’s spies have shown me many of them. I—”

  “After all this, you want me to search out more of the same? No way!”

  She chuckled softly and dropped her arms. Patience and Felicity flanked their leader and gazed upon her like she was the most awesome thing they’d ever seen. I found it creepy.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I began. I reached for the M button on the elevator panel and the doors began to shut. The two girls were looking at their boss, but Xandrie never took her eyes from me.

  “Close, you stupid door!”

  As it neared the middle I saw through the gap—always expecting her to lunge to stick her hand in and stop it. But she merely smiled.

  I smiled too at that last instant.

  “See ya!”

  Click.

  “Phew!” I breathed in relief.

  I needed to get to the surface and rescue Scarlett and Felix, but I wanted to check out the other floor. My hope was I could sneak up some other way—duct work was always a favorite—and take them all by surprise.

  For all my preparation it took a long time to realize the elevator hadn’t moved. Someone tapped on the outside of the door.

  I pushed the M button again. For good measure I pushed the top button. Anything but this level.

  Still nothing happened.

  The doors opened to a smiling trio of women.

  “Going somewhere?” Xandrie said in a perfectly pleasant voice.

  “I guess not.”

  “Meg controls everything now. There is n
othing any of us can do in her domain she won’t know about. If you so much as think the wrong thing she’ll be all over it.”

  “You don’t think that’s frightening?” I’d lived in a society where saying the wrong thing against the Commander could get you sent to prison, though Alex told me that rarely happened, and if it did the person would usually return the next time everyone’s memory got wiped.

  When everyone was inside, Xandrie pressed the same M button. The doors shut and the car started to ascend. I stood to one side and the three of them stood on the other.

  “Everyone has a place, sister Elle. Meg and this facility keep us alive. For me to disobey her would be to condemn all of my sisters to a much worse life than what they’ve been given in the Remainder. A life where women are treated like livestock. Made subservient to men. Forced into a role none of us want. You shouldn’t want that, either.”

  Though the tone was wrong, it did ring true.

  “I ran from the Commander because he wanted me to have his babies,” I blurted.

  Xandrie got closer and put her hand on my shoulder. “See, sister, this is why we survive. We’ve forsaken the old models of living and adopted one that suits us. We’ve, uh, endured our endless Remainder through strict discipline, meditation, training, and prayer.”

  “Without men?” I stated without emotion.

  “Of course. When the Remainder began none of us were able to conceive children. To the men this became an invitation. To us, a curse. Over time, we removed that distraction. Refocused on strengthening our minds and bodies—hoping we could one day ascend and end this apocalyptic nightmare. And you saw the monastery. We shall all end up there, in the proper time.”

  “If you couldn’t have children, how do you explain Scarlett?”

  A cloud passed over Xandrie’s face. The other two sisters looked to their leader with only a fraction less awe than before.

  The elevator dinged and the doors began to open to the same dark hallway I’d seen earlier.

  “Don’t trouble yourself with our problems, sister. Only concern yourself with your problems. Follow me and I’ll show you.”

  “Where are we?”

  We walked a short way into the darkness and she pointed to a side passage I never would have noticed. It was a damp concrete room about twenty feet square. It was empty save one metal ladder at the far end, going up.