Drones

by Rob J. Hayes

  “It’s been a while.” And it has. I can’t remember the last time I took an unexpected gut punch. Perhaps never.

  “Come on.” Says the bald man. “I hope you both know how to wear an atmo-suit.”

  “My guns,” Kendall says, nodding over towards the sedan.

  “You won’t need them.”

  “They’re still coming.”

  The two stare at each other for a moment and the bald heads nods. He orders another Sanctitist to fetch them and we follow him towards the airlock.

  I know how to wear atmo-suits. I know how to move in low gravity. It always leaves me feeling nauseas though.

  I notice Kendall hesitating as we pull the spare suits up and over. It seems strange, but she looks nervous. Anxiety and fear. I know those feelings well. I’ve experienced them a few times in the past week and they’re feelings I can’t shake. Emotions I can’t get rid of.

  “You Okay?” I ask quietly as I push my arms into the suit. Atmo-suits are bulky and awkward, but out there they’re the difference between life and very painful death.

  “I’m fine. Concentrate on yourself, Robot. Don’t want you getting your suit wrong. Don’t want your head popping because you haven’t locked your helmet on properly. That would make all this a bit pointless wouldn’t it?”

  “You scared of low-atmo?”

  Kendall lets out a sigh as she wriggles her way into the suit. “Gaia’s teeth! You don’t quit. I’m not scared. I just… don’t like the idea of it. So little between me and nothing.”

  I nod. “Do you want to hold my hand?” I grin at her and she gives me a hard shove.

  Before long we’re out of the airlock and into the Lunar expanse. Great dusty plains of nothing stretch out before us. Mounds and craters and little else. I glance up towards the Earth. The giant globe hanging above us gives me courage and hope. I can’t explain why, but I’m grateful all the same. I see stars now we’re away from all the light of Eden. Millions of twinkling specks of light.

  A shove in my back sends me stumbling and I turn to see Kendall’s face glaring at me out the glass screen of her helmet. She presses a button on her suit and I hear her voice over the comm channel.

  “Move it, Robot. Sooner we have an atmosphere again, the better.”

  The Sanctitists have a couple of buggies waiting. Fastest way to travel on the Lunar surface. The safest too. We crowd onto the two vehicles. They don’t split us up and I’m thankful for that. Kendall gives me courage, makes me think we might actually make it through this. I hope I don’t end up getting her killed.

  We drive for an hour before we come to a small atmo-dome, it’s a bare fraction of the size of Eden. They aren’t uncommon on the Lunar surface, but neither are they so regular they don’t go unnoticed. Some are owned by wealthy people who want a home in the actual middle of nowhere, some are owned by corporations who like to have their operations where regulations don’t apply. And some, it appears, are owned by terrorists hiding from persecution on Earth.

  The buggies slow to a stop and we’re escorted towards the dome’s single airlock. Before I even get inside, I recognise someone. The man with the red jacket stares at me intently from the other side of the glass.

  Chapter 24

  Anger: Burning. Seething. Eclipsing. Anger is a commodity generated and traded by everyone. No one wants to buy anger. It’s far too easy to come by. Some days it seems everyone is angry at someone for something. Hard to sell anger, harder still to be free of it.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again, Mr Garrick.” He’s not wearing the red jacket anymore, but I recognise him easily enough. Now he’s dressed in simple overalls, spotted in paint and grease. He stares at me through a pair of old spectacles he wasn’t wearing back at the Ark. Strange to see someone wearing glasses these days, most people just pay to have their eyes fixed.

  “No? Not even after you started throwing my face around as the Revolutionary?” I’m angry. I didn’t expect to be angry. Not even sure why I am. Maybe because they used me. Because they’re continuing to use me. Even so, I’ve been used one way or another for the past four years. Only now I’m not happy about it.

  He lets out a deep sigh and turns, waving for us to follow. We haven’t even managed to get out of the atmo-suits yet. Just removed our helmets. I labour after him, dropping bits of my suit on the ground as I go. Someone will have to pick it up out of the dust behind me. I don’t care. I want answers.

  “You mind telling me your name?” I raise my voice, struggling with the left boot and hopping along behind him. “Everyone already seems to know mine.”

  “We don’t like to share our names for obvious reasons…”

  “Well we’re right in the middle of your compound. At your mercy. And I’ve come here looking for answers. Your name would be a good start.”

  Kendall catches me up. She’s removed her atmo-suit already and starts helping me out of mine. I could manage it, but I’m flustered. Now I’m finally here I’m in a rush to get the answers I’ve come searching for. I need to calm myself.

  “You alright, Robot?” she asks. “You seem a little out of sorts.”

  “Surrounded by terrorists, out in the middle of Lunar nowhere.” A terse reply she doesn’t deserve.

  She shrugs. “Haven’t you been in worse situations? I know I have.”

  “Simon Wilhelm,” the leader of the Sanctitist’s says. He stops and turns to me, an earnest look on his wide face. Almost looks kind, genteel. But I saw him murder Dr Brant with callous disregard. “It’s up to the others if they share their names or not. I won’t force anyone. I’m taking a risk, Mr Garrick. The same risk I’m taking by not removing either of your PDs. Speaking of which. I don’t believe I’ve met your companion.”

  “Kendall.” She offers nothing else and I take the hint.

  “She’s just here watching my back,” I add after a few moment’s silence.

  “She killed the Initiative,” the little bald man adds from nearby. “All of them.”

  Simon looks at Kendall then and gives her a respectful nod. “A useful bodyguard. Come with me.” Simon walks towards one of the little buildings. “I have some things I’d like to show you, Mr Garrick.”

  We walk through dusty ground that the Sanctitists are trying to irrigate and use to grow crops. It’s a useless endeavour. The Lunar soil is dead. Always has been. Earth tried for years to grow things on the Moon. Eventually they gave up. It’s why the Lunar government was allowed to declare its independence. The UEA realised it had nothing to gain from the Moon. It was a drain on resources and nothing more. Despite that, I do see a number of little green shoots popping out of the soil. I take care not to step on any.

  “Why have you put my face on your… agenda?” I’m normally a patient man, but that patience stems from a calmness I just don’t feel anymore.

  I see Simon’s shoulders shrug. He doesn’t turn around, just keeps walking. “We needed a face and you were kind enough to show us yours back in the Ark. You gave us the opportunity and we took it. We weren’t about to put any of our own faces out there, to do that would be to invite a surgical strike. You Earthers like to pretend you play by our rules up here, but if the UEA knew where we were… We’d be dead within minutes. Besides, you’re an Earther. That makes you more legitimate than us.

  “I’m afraid there was no ulterior purpose behind it. We saw the opportunity to put your face on our cause, and we took it. Not that we managed to get the message out to many. The UEA is doing a wonderful job of policing all communication from the Moon and Mars. Even net activity is tracked and monitored.”

  Kendall snorts. “Has been for decades. Longer even. You’d need a private satellite if you want real safe, unmonitored communication.”

  The bald man behind us laughs. “We had one. They blew it up. Turns out they’re even monitoring private sources of communication.”

  “So no one on Earth has seen the video of me giving you Brant?” I hesitate. We all know I killed him. Not sayin
g it seems to make it feel less like my fault though.

  Simon stops in front of one of the buildings. It looks like a workshop, a number of vehicles parked inside, along with a few of the darts they used to return to the Moon. He shakes his head.

  “We tried. Three times we’ve tried broadcasting that video to the net or to other sources. Each time the video was cut off or purged within moments of playing. Each time the source location, where we tried sending it from, was swarming with armed civilians within minutes. The UEA likes to pretend it doesn’t have any forces stationed on the Moon. I think we’ve just proven that to be false.”

  “Arkotech is covering it up well,” I say. It’s one thing I should be thankful for.

  “Too well,” Simon agrees. He pushes open a door and holds it while Kendall and I go through. The bald man waits outside.

  Simon closes the door and walks into the centre of the workshop, ignoring the half-fixed buggies and the workbenches full of parts. He stamps three times on the floor and then stands back. A moment later a trap door opens up where before it had seemed solid concrete. I see stairs leading down into a dim orange light below.

  “Down you go,” he says, pointing.

  I look at Kendall. She nods towards the stairs. I start down them, hoping I’ll find some real answers to my questions down there.

  The steps lead down into a large room full of computers and electrical equipment. The room is built into the Lunar rock itself and I see a number of cracks along the walls. A couple of dark doorways lead off from the room, but I get the feeling whatever Simon wants to show us is here. Standing at one of the workbenches is the woman from the Ark, the one who took something from the computers there. She glances up at us as we enter and then away, then she stops fiddling with the workbench and looks up at me again.

  “It really is you,” she says with a laugh. “I thought you’d be in jail for sure. Either that or… well… gone.”

  “I think she means disappeared, Robot,” Kendall says. Her smile is predatory, especially so in the dim light underground.

  I nod. “I’m half surprised at that myself. They couldn’t throw me in jail though, first they’d have to admit what I’d done and that would make them look bad. Make their tech look bad. Might hurt their sales.”

  The woman snorts and opens her mouth, but Simon steps between us. “We’ll get to that, Milly. First, I want to show them why we’re opposed to emotion tech. I want them to see what it is that tech can do.”

  “I know what it does,” I say. “I’ve been a Drone for four years. Until a week ago.”

  “You’re still a Drone, Robot.”

  “You know what it does to you, Mr Garrick. But have you ever seen what it does to the people who buy your product? Have you ever seen what the other side of the addiction looks like? Ever seen what they go through?”

  I shake my head. Four years of life as a Drone and I’ve never actually met anyone who uses emotions. Pascal always kept that side of the business separate from the harvesting. Customers and Drones came through different doors at different times, never meeting face to face. I always assumed it was so we would never be tempted to cut him out as the middleman.

  “Load up the videos, Milly.” Simon picks up a small metallic disc from the nearby workbench as Milly moves to sit behind a series of computer monitors. “Recognise this?” He hands me the disc.

  I nod, flipping it over between my fingers, then offer it to Kendall. She backs up against the wall and just stares at me. I hand it back to Simon.

  “It’s an emotion. Or least it has the potential to be. That’s how they’re delivered.”

  “That’s it?” Kendall asks. “I thought it would be… I don’t know… a needle or something?”

  “How would you inject an emotion?” Simon asks.

  “I don’t know. I just… thought it would be a needle or something. This is out of my area of expertise. I usually just put bullets in people.” Kendall sounds indignant, as though her lack of knowledge in the area is being held against her.

  “It’s basically just an electrode and a storage device. It goes here at the base of the skull and stimulates the nervous system to fool the brain into thinking it’s experiencing an emotion it isn’t.”

  “Right,” Kendall doesn’t look convinced. “So why do they need robots like him?” She points at me. “Why not just program the electrode thingies to copy an emotion?”

  “Doesn’t work,” I say. “Emotions are too complex for machines to understand. They can’t be replicated because all the individual pushes and pulls on the nervous system, all the different chemical responses in the body, can’t be properly mapped. Especially as each person’s natural reaction and stimulation of each emotion are so different.”

  Kendall shakes her head. “You lost me. So it can’t be replicated. Needs idiots like you to feel it, and then it just takes it from you and stores it in one of those discs?”

  “Ready to be inflicted upon someone else,” Simon says. I’m not sold on his definition, but I see no point in arguing with a zealot.

  “All loaded up, boss,” Milly says from her seat at the computer monitors. “Where do you wanna start?”

  “Just play them all.”

  I feel it’s time to interject before the horror stories paint me in some gruesome light. “Look, I don’t care about your cause. You took something from Arkotech. Information. From their databases? I just want…”

  Simon holds up his hand and points towards a monitor screen mounted on a nearby wall. “First you see why we’re doing this. Then we’ll talk about what we found in Arkotech’s computers.” Fanatics are never happy until they’ve converted everyone to their cause.

  The screen flicks on to footage of a young man, looks no more than fifteen, propped up against a dirty wall. There’s a slack expression to his face, his eyes rolled back in his skull. He’s wearing clothes little better than rags and on the floor around him are a number of emotion discs. A voice sounds through the footage, someone calling out a name. Brian. The lad looks towards the camera for a moment, then slumps over, his eyes rolling back once again.

  “Some of my people found the boy in one of the slums outside of London,” Simon says. “He’s addicted to pleasure. As many are. It turns him into a drooling, vacant fool, barely able to construct a thought, let alone words.”

  The camera moves towards the lad and a hand moves in front of it, lifting up the boy’s dirty grey sweatshirt. His chest is a motley of black and blue and purple and mouldy yellow. Bruises, some fresh, others weeks old. Dozens of them.

  “His friends used his body as a punching bag while he was high.” Simon shakes his head and I can see his jaw clenching.

  Next, the screen shows the inside of a padded white cell. There’s a man inside, tall and gaunt. His hair stands up on his head in clumps and his eyes are wide. Scars like claw marks streak down the length of his cheeks. There’s no sound to the footage, but as we watch he shouts, screams and punches at the wall to his cell. Then he looks to his left, towards his shadow, and jumps. He falls over, scrambles to one of the walls and hugs his knees, rocking back and forth and begins to laugh.

  “What in Gaia’s name is wrong with him?” Kendall asks.

  I don’t answer. I know. But I don’t want to admit it happens.

  “He’s broken,” Simon says. “It’s rare, but it can happen. Sometimes the donor of the emotion and the recipient aren’t compatible. It breaks the recipient’s mind. Sends them into a form of shock.”

  “So he’s mad? Crazy?” Kendall asks.

  “He is…” Simon pauses. “He feels everything all the time. He is completely unable to control his emotional responses. He is broken.”

  We watch the poor man for a few more moments as he tears at his own skin and then screams in rage. The feed changes again. I’m grateful for that. One in a ten million chance. Still too high for the victims. We Drones have no risk though. It’s why I’ve been able to ignore it, pretend it doesn’t happen, for so l
ong.

  The new footage shows a camera following a tall, young man with a pretty face. They look as though they’re in a club. The lighting is dim and there’s loud music in the background.

  “That one?” asks a voice, a hand behind the camera points towards a young woman with blonde hair, sitting alone at the bar. She has a drink. The bartender is nowhere to be seen.

  The man with the pretty face grins towards the camera and moves towards the woman. He approaches from behind and presses an emotion disc onto the woman neck, holding his hand over it so she can’t tear it away.

  “What the hell are you…” the woman starts.

  “It’s Okay,” the man behind the camera says.

  The pretty man leans in towards her. “It’s Okay.”

  The woman takes in a deep breath and sighs it out. “Okay.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” the pretty man says. “You want to come with us. It’ll be fun.”

  The woman smiles. “Okay.”

  Simon turns away from the screen and glares at me. The camera follows the woman as the pretty man leads her away.

  “What did I just see?” Kendall asks, her voice hard.

  “Trust,” Simon says through a voice choked with anger. “Pure trust used by the most untrustworthy of people. The video goes on. It is not pleasant to watch.”

  I look away from the monitor and shake my head. Don’t want to see Kendall and Simon staring at me as though I was one of the men. I gave away my trust. All of it. But Pascal didn’t sell it. I don’t think.

  The feed changes again. Another horror story of emotional transference gone wrong. Then another of how they can be misused. Simon continues. He’s passionate. Driven. We couldn’t be more opposite. I stop listening. It’s not that I don’t feel for the victims. I do. Wish I didn’t, but I do. I’ve seen videos like this before. But every new technology comes with horror stories just like this. They only show one side of the story.

  A knife can be used to hurt, kill, coerce, scare, maim. That same knife can also be used to perform life saving surgery, to prepare food, to carve lovers names into trees. For all the bad it can do, it can do good as well. It all depends on the person using it. Simon doesn’t see it that way. He blames the knife. He blames the technology.