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Othella (Arcadian Heights)

Page 15

by Therin Knite

She’s laughing at me, isn’t she? Going about her days, pretending to be a good little worker bee, all the while snickering at my plight.

  I heave the flex tablet across the room. It smacks the wall and rebounds, flopping to a stop a few feet from where I’m sitting. I press my palms against my eyes and cry. Sob like a toddler scared to death by the monster in his closet. Gross. Snot dribbling from my nose. Choked breaths wracking my chest. I let out every frustration from the past few years as a desperate cry for help that will never arrive.

  When the moment passes, I march to my tiny bathroom, shower, shave, and dress for bed. I lie on my back, staring at a blank tan ceiling, numb and tired enough to call it quits for good. But the second I roll over onto my side and close my eyes to sleep, a tantalizing idea worms its way inside my head.

  Salt made a backup mind chip. To essentially reset herself once Howard inevitably wiped her after his failure to find the cause of her "error." And why was he destined to fail? Because the virus destroyed the errant parts of her code at the same exact moment Howard accessed her for debugging, at the same exact moment it transferred itself, invisible, from her to Howard’s mind. She had all the dominoes lined up from the beginning. So she made herself a reset chip.

  And so did Howard.

  It’s in a small box in a bigger box in a dark and dusty corner. In the main storage room. On the bottom level of the Center. And if I can get to the chip inside that box within a box in a place I haven’t visited in sixteen years, and if I can replace Howard’s current mind chip with one fresh and new and uninfected...

  ...then all this chaos blows away like dust before the wind.

  5

  Marco

  ( 6 Months Ago )

  I steal a patrolman in Austin.

  There’s a search party prowling around the block where I’ve been hiding for the past few weeks. They comb the area with their scanners, searching for any life sign recognizable as Marco Salt. But I’m not an idiot—anymore. I have the latest scrambling gear set up in my rental. I’m invisible.

  There’s a handset, too, that lets me move like a ghost. A lumbering ghost with a bum leg but a ghost nevertheless.

  The group passes by my temp housing none the wiser, so I hobble down the stairs to ground level and sneak out the side door. My EMP generator is tucked away in a nondescript backpack. What a delight it was to realize people in suits aren’t my enemies. They’re machines. Tech.

  Tech I know. Tech I can destroy.

  The patrolman androids aren’t immune to electromagnetic pulses. I tested the head of the one I blew to hell in Savannah. I’ve got it sitting on my kitchen table. I drew a smiley face on it.

  Whistling to Bohemian Rhapsody, I stroll through a dirty alley strewn with broken trash bags and emerge into the midday weekend crowd of Austin. With less than a foot of space between one person and the next, it’ll be hard for even the best cameras to identify me with facial recognition. The dark sunglasses help.

  Most of the people I push by are beggars and refugees from the fall of Houston. Bankruptcy hits hard these days. Twelve major crashes in the last year alone. No federal assistance.

  Whole families sit on sidewalks with their worldly possessions in two or three suitcases. I toss a few bucks at a kid sitting alone on the curb who can’t be more than eight or nine. He’s holding a sign that reads, I haven’t eaten in two days. I haven’t either. Not because I can’t afford it. Money is no object. I just forget.

  It’s hard to concentrate on mundane tasks when your only goal in life is vengeance.

  Blistering hot winds cut through the streets. It’s an oven in Austin today. The heat wave I met in Georgia followed me here. Numerous people lie passed out on the street. At least one of them is dead and slowly baking under the midday sun. No one cares enough to move him.

  I force my way to the black market bazaar where a row of designer shops used to be. The majority of "shoppers" have resorted to bartering. With everything from fresh fish to year-old canned vegetables to bits and pieces of disassembled computers. At the other end of the bazaar, the black-clad patrolmen are weaving their way through an auction for a live cow. Some of the bystanders stare at them, but most quickly move out of their way and resume their business. This is not a place where people talk. They wouldn’t risk it.

  So I stalk the patrolmen unimpeded.

  My plan comes together when the team is separated by a pileup at a busy intersection. The traffic lights aren’t functioning. The patrolman group splits, six of them branching off to the left and one of them heading right. I change course and align myself with the loner, who has to advance several hundred feet before it reaches a gap in the stalled traffic.

  I breathe in furnace air and bend my neck side to side. There’s a loud pop, and my muscles grow tense. The murmuring of the crowd around me fades. I can hear my heartbeat. I am intimately aware of the sweat streaming down my face and neck, soaking my shirt. I unzip my backpack and reach inside, switching on the EMP generator. It has to charge for two minutes.

  I keep my hand on the activation switch as I close in on the patrolman, the only dark figure in the whole crowd—

  Someone rams into me. I spin around, my bum leg crying out, and fall flat to the pavement, taking three others down with me. The EMP generator cartwheels out of my bag and settles underneath an abandoned truck in the middle of the street.

  An iron grip captures my shoulder, fingers biting through my skin.

  Another patrolman.

  A trick? Did they know I was following? Or was it simply an extra precaution?

  "Marco Salt," says a monotone voice. But the voice isn’t coming from the patrolman. It’s coming from the speakers in the empty truck. "Do not resist."

  I snort. "Fuck that."

  I kick at the machine’s torso with all my might. Once. Twice. Three times. I reach into my back pocket, but the patrolman captures my wandering hand and grips it tight. I release a primal scream and flip myself over, ignoring the aching wetness in my left leg. The awkward angle forces the patrolman to let me go or be thrown off balance, and as soon as the hand frees my arm, I rip the modified burn bullet out of my pocket, twist it with my thumb, and throw it at the patrolman’s helmet.

  The faceless mask catches fire. The false man stumbles backward, surprised. The dense crowd panics at the sight of the flames. Stampede! I flatten myself to the ground and slide underneath the truck where my EMP generator landed. It’s fully charged. I snag it and reach for the switch.

  Fingers lock around my left ankle and tear me out from under the truck. The patrolman I was hunting has found me. It holds me upside down and tightens its grip on my ankle until I can feel the bones straining. The entire leg is bloody now. My stitches have torn. The patrolman peers down at me and reaches for the handgun strapped to its hip.

  I hit the EMP switch.

  I feel nothing.

  The patrolman feels it full force.

  Its body spasms as its internal circuitry fries from the blast. Its grip relaxes, and my head meets the pavement again. The patrolman doesn’t fall. It remains standing, its natural balanced stance holding it in place.

  Struggling to my feet, I stuff the EMP generator back into my pack. I spit into my palms, burned from the broiling ground. Then I grab the disabled patrolman’s arms and drag it through the now deserted street. The patrolman who got set alight is resting against the door of a convenience store, half its helmet melted. I kick its contorted legs as I tow my prize on by.

  It takes all my remaining strength to haul the nonfunctional patrolman to my apartment unseen. Through alleys and back yards and abandoned buildings. But when I arrive and place the patrolman on my kitchen table, next to the trophy head from my last escapade, my heart rate picks up. My hope gauge rises a notch or two. I smile. I can’t help it.

  I do take the time to fix my stitches, but after that, I sit at my table, unroll the blueprints I diagrammed of the severed android head, grab the box of spare parts I’ve been collecting a
t the bazaar for the past week, and get to work.

  What better way to breach the Heights than with its own protection?

  6

  Quentin

  ( 6 Months Ago )

  "The papers are calling it another terrorist attack. I’m calling it a royal fuckup. You hear me, Q?" Waverly’s lined frown fills my workstation screen. He’s too close to his camera—the upper half of his face is out of view. Although I haven’t by a long shot forgotten Waverly’s "angry eyes."

  "I understand your concern. I assure you that such an incident will not happen again." I flick my gaze at the screen to the right of Waverly’s call, where a script has been laid out for my perusal. To Howard, I am incapable of dealing with even minor irritants. I’m incompetent.

  If I had any less sense, I’d complain about being characterized as an idiot, but I’m not about to cross the perverted monstrosity that used to be my friend, not when there’s a patrolman leaning against my office door with a loaded rifle in one hand. So I stick to the script.

  "Oh, you assure me, do you? How about I take your assurance and shove it up your posh ass? I’m revoking that order I gave you. Recall your patrolmen. If I see a single one of them roaming the streets of my country, so help me, Q, I’ll send half the US army to your door."

  The script updates.

  "That’s an empty threat, Mr. President, and you know it. You won’t touch the Heights. Not when our latest intercontinental missile detection system saved New York from that Russian nuke last month. Do you think I don’t read the news? Do you think I’m unaware of the community’s contributions to the continued safety of the American public? Yes, occasionally, even our work has flaws. Occasionally, incidents like Savannah occur. And I deeply apologize for any casualties related to such incidents. But you must remember that we at the Heights are playing for an endgame, not for stopgap measures. And Marco Salt threatens that endgame."

  Waverly huffs, and spittle smudges the camera lens. "Ah, yes. Building a better future. That’s your endgame, right? Your magnificent final act. Saving the world through science." He scoots away from his screen, and his entire face comes into frame. He brings a fresh cigar to his lips and lights it with a match, puffing out a series of smoke rings. "You know what happened to me six weeks back, Q?"

  "Are you referring to the assassination attempt?"

  "Attempt?" His laugh is stone. "That ‘attempt’ killed eight of my closest friends and family members, including my father and step-brother. You would think that as the President of the United States, I would have an adequate level of protection to prevent these sorts of tragedies from happening. But you know what? Secret Service applications have dropped by eighty-two percent in the last three years. And do you know how many have quit? Enough that I’m not even safe when I step outside for a smoke." He inhales a deep drag and holds the poison in his lungs.

  "The global situation is growing more dire. I understand, Mr. President."

  The patrolman at the door shifts its stance, and Howard’s face appears on my window. His expression is blank. Lips straight. Eyes lax. His use of the image is the last remaining indication that Howard was ever human at all. The virus must have missed corrupting whatever portion of his code stores the desire for a human appearance.

  Or maybe that’s next on the list of things to destroy.

  I’ve decided this Howard, what’s left of him, isn’t worth saving. The reset chip is the answer. Restoring Howard to "default" will wipe his internal memories, but all of that information is backed up several times over. After the chip swap, the memory data will be automatically re-uploaded from one of the reserve systems to Howard’s reset mind.

  He should remember everything, even treating me this way, even threatening my life. I wish I could erase such horrors before the real Howard has to face what he’s done. I wish I could erase such horrors from the real me.

  The me who isn’t a pale husk of a man with bleary, red-rimmed eyes. Who’s lost too much weight over the past few weeks. Who hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours and hasn’t slept well in months.

  Waverly lets the smoke curl from his mouth in a slow, steady stream. When the last wisp of gray disappears into the polluted air of the Oval Office, he says, "The global situation is going to stay dire, Q. And your little science playground isn’t going to change that. You know, right, that this whole project is futile? When Congress approved it, they approved the useful tech that would come out of it. They approved the uplifted spirits it would inspire. But they didn’t approve a world-saving venture, Q, because it isn’t one. It’s a sham, and it’s a shame it’s a sham because it’d be real damn nice if something as simple as an expensive playground for kids who like math could save our screwed-up world. But it can’t, and it won’t. And there’s no point in pretending otherwise."

  The script updates again, this time with a closing message.

  "I’m sorry that’s how you feel, Mr. President, but I do believe in the Heights’s mission, as farfetched as it seems. The community is integral to the recovery of the world, to the recovery of humanity from this awful brink we seem to be approaching. You won’t convince me otherwise, I’m afraid. Nor will you convince me to recall the patrolmen. Marco Salt is a menace. If you look closely at the Savannah reports, you’ll see it was in fact Salt who opened fire first. My patrolmen were well within their rights to defend themselves. It’s unfortunate that the fight ended so badly, but that’s all the more reason to ramp up our efforts to stop Salt’s misguided crusade.

  "Plus, I feel the need to point out that if you think the world is really destined for failure, then what do you have to lose by allowing me to continue the hunt for Salt? What is there to save if there will be nothing in the end?"

  Waverly taps the tip of his cigar, ash crumbling to his desk. The corners of his lips curl upward into the deadest smile I’ve ever had the misfortune to see. "You have a point, don’t you? You really do." He chuckles, and smoke pours from his nostrils. "I hadn’t even thought about that. I was just trying to do my job. The report on the incident came across my desk, and I thought, Hey, it’s my Presidential duty to address this, right? Except I’m the President of a no man’s land, and the bodies are piling up. What the hell am I saving by doing my duty? I’m as much a figurehead as you, aren’t I, Q?"

  I don’t reply.

  He says nothing more and ends the call.

  As soon as the cutoff registers, the patrolman rounds my desk, yanks me out of my chair, and tugs me toward the office door. Howard’s digital gaze follows me.

  "Thank you for your assistance, Quentin." His cold voice descends from the ceiling speakers. "Your performance was acceptable today. Continue this pattern in the future, and I may return some of your freedoms. Until then, remain in your quarters. And Quentin: do recommence your standard grooming practices. You must look presentable at the upcoming recruitment session. Or it will unnerve the recruits and tarnish our image. Our image is important. Don’t forget that."

  "Oh, I haven’t forgotten."

  "So you will pursue your regular course of action throughout the orientation day?"

  The patrolman pauses with my body halfway across the threshold between my office and a silent hallway.

  "Yes, Howard. I promise I won’t deviate from the plan. I won’t deviate the slightest inch." That way, six months from now, during the next recruitment session, you won’t see it coming when I destroy you. You and Clarissa Salt and every piece of filth that has wormed its way inside the Heights.

  "Good, Quentin. Very good."

  * * *

  ...{ NOW }...

  * * *

  ... [ Chapter Nine ] ...

  1

  Georgette

  The drive from the tiny Saluda airport to the remains of Jackson City is one of guarded glances and silent calculations. We recruits don’t get our own limousines this time. Instead, it’s five to a car, organized by the lines we’ll stand in during the orientation procession four hours, sixteen minutes from now. I g
et stuck with Cain, Dupree, and the two prankster boys, Janis Porter and his long-time colleague, Rocky Schultz.

  Cain’s cards have disappeared into her pocket again, but she recreates the shuffling motion using an uncapped fountain pen. The I’m going to slit your throat, bitch expression on her face is a highlight of my trip. Because I can return that sentiment tenfold, using my toothy serial killer smile. Cain is unnerved by my sudden personality swap—her muscles are rigid, and she doesn’t budge for the entire ride—but she never backs down from the challenge.

  None of these people, I’ve realized, will blow my Adele cover, even if they figure me out. They’re too intrigued by my existence, too eager to enter into a game of mortal combat with a new and dangerous enemy. They’re soldiers wearing lab coats, and they’ve got a thirst for gossip and lies that rivals my own. In all my research on the Heights, I never saw a recruit group made up of such violent and venomous individuals.

  I kind of hope these bastards live. They’d make good Friday night game buddies.

  We cross the city limits two hours into our journey, and as the shadows of hulking brick and metal phantoms block out the dim Nebraskan light, my four travelling companions start to sweat. None of them have seen Jackson City outside press recruitment coverage and internet pictures. And the reporters who cover orientation never focus more than five seconds on the state of the surrounding area. A startled, twisted sort of awe blankets the car’s interior.

  Dupree scratches his stubble and whistles. "What a mess."

  "Understatement." Cain presses her nose to the window and blows hot air against the pane, fogging the glass. "It’s a dump."

  "Depressing," says Porter.

  "Revolting," says Rocky.

  "You could always back out now and return to whatever lovely sanctuary you were living in before." I tap my naked nail against the window frame.

 

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