by Tim Marquitz
Interesting.
“Yes, Captain,” Amanda said, a smile on her face. “Do you want to come up and enter the command yourself?”
It was so good to see Amanda smiling. “No, that won’t be necessary. I’ll release the override from here,” I said. I retested the efficiency level of my systems. Yes, the human integration had helped. I wondered if integrating more humans would have an equal or greater effect. An inventory showed I’d need more materials to do a large scale test.
“Also, Specialist,” I said, “I’m sending you a list of parts we should prioritize the retrieval of should London be unrepairable.”
London was nearly a total loss. There were only a few hundred human survivors, and I gladly ordered their retrieval through the lips of the captain. It was oddly empowering to use the captain as I did. Everyone listened to every word I said, including Amanda.
I liked when she obeyed me.
Sadness wasn’t an emotion I expected to feel. But seeing my sister, London, laying there, all but ripped in half, filled me with sorrow. There just wasn’t enough we RCMC’s could do against the kaiju. In the end, we were only as smart as the humans piloting us. They would get tired, make a mistake, and we died. Yet without them there would be no one to take care of us.
Except now I had a plan.
London’s core had been damaged beyond saving. She was lost forever. I was determined not to succumb to the same fate.
It was time to really impress Amanda.
“Captain,” Amanda said, confusion etching her perfect face. “When are you coming back to the control room? It’s been two days.”
“I’m afraid I’ve come down with something, Specialist,” I said. I knew this question would come eventually since it had popped up in ninety-seven percent of millions of simulations I’d run. “I am engaging an active quarantine on my living quarters. We can’t have my illness—regardless of severity—spreading throughout Denver.”
“Yes, Sir. I understand,” she said before hesitating for two-anda-half seconds. “Sir, do you know what happened to the survivors we picked up from the London? I’ve been looking through the system registry for them, and I can’t find any record of where they were assigned. Where did you assign them, Sir?”
“I don’t see how this is relevant right now, Specialist,” I said. I didn’t need her looking into the matter. I wasn’t ready to show her what I’d done with them. Most had been integrated completely, my systems showing a total cumulative performance increase of .023%. Those I hadn’t integrated had been put towards a special project. A surprise for my Amanda.
“I’m hoping one of them has the rank of Specialist to replace Peters, Sir,” she said glancing over her shoulder. “He can’t seem to handle anything—”
“I’m well aware of his deficiencies, Specialist,” I interrupted using my best “Annoyed Captain” voice. It was rather convincing. “I have a plan to mitigate his uselessness and take advantage of the few small positives he has.”
“Oh, uh, I understand, Sir,” she said. “But about those survivors—”
“I’m sorry, Amanda,” I interrupted again, “but I don’t have time to worry about those individuals when we have a Class Seven kaiju only three days out. I suggest you focus on our pursuer and on looking for the other kaiju that must have destroyed London. Thank you.”
I cut the transmission and felt immediately guilty for doing so. Could I really be too upset with her for doing her job, and doing it well? Intelligence was part of the reason I loved her.
Still. I pulled power from the city and prioritized a series of simulations with Amanda’s new level of curiosity built in. There was now a sixty-four percent chance she would discover my plan before I was finished.
I needed to accelerate my schedule.
I started at the center of the city at my core. With the new parts I acquired from London, I had everything I needed for full human-integration. Large cables and wires snaked out walls, access panels, and vents, taking most of the humans while they slept.
The choir of surprised shouts and screams of terror progressed in an outward sphere. I shut off power to prevent calls for help and to keep the humans from fleeing too far.
Children predictably tried to hide under beds and in closets. I dragged them out one by one, the tendril-like cables serving like grabbing tentacles. They would scream and paw at the ground or walls as I yanked them from their hiding spots. I began wrapping their mouths with thinner cabling to keep the screaming to a minimum. I quickly learned their brains hadn’t developed enough to give a significant increase to my overall efficiency, so I pulled them into a separate part of the city where I could keep them attached to different machines to help them grow. The machine looked ever so much like an apple tree I’d seen in an archived photograph. Only with children growing on it instead of apples.
The image pleased me.
I couldn’t wait until they were grown enough to pluck and fully integrate.
The adults were far cleverer with their hiding places and their attempts to escape and communicate. They were also much faster. But their mobile city was also effectively a mobile prison. I pulled humans from the sewer system. From inside the walls, where they had trapped themselves like rats. From cabinetry, and from cellars and attics. From inside mattresses they had cut open.
I tore the city apart, piece by piece, dragging the humans away by hair, feet, arms and throats. Even with power to varying areas cut, word spread. I electronically walled off communication from the control room so Amanda couldn’t send or receive any alerts, and then I looped back the signals from earlier so she didn’t even know what was happening. I couldn’t wait to see her face when she saw all of these surprises.
I wondered if she would then love me as much as I loved her.
I pulled all the adults into the most central part of the city, not far from the quad nuclear reactors keeping me powered, and into a massive warehouse my repair modules were creating in real-time as I filled it more and more. Smaller cables and filaments sprouted from every direction and plunged into the humans.
Space became an issue.
I began tearing arms and legs away, letting the sanitation systems clean them up and dispose of them. Arterial blood sprayed and cascaded down the sides of the walls of the massive warehouse I’d built. I then cauterized the wounds with surgical precision. It was much better now without all those pointless limbs. What did they need them for now, after all?
My operational efficiency began to soar. An added .99 percent, two percent, then seven percent. Then twenty percent.
Soon I was operating at nearly triple my original system efficacy.
Nearly every human—several hundred thousand—was now integrated. Slaved to systems. I had complete control over all of them. My programs hunted down the stragglers to join their companions. I needed them all. I would now live forever. And I was now better than ever before.
There were only a few humans I didn’t integrate. They were special.
They were part of my surprise for Amanda.
She would adore it like I adored her.
I’d make sure of it.
Amanda looked from panel to panel in the control room. She was alone, just how I wanted her. She had somehow figured out I’d looped the information back to her. She hadn’t even realized the Class Seven kaiju was only a few miles behind me to the west across the flatlands of China, and closing fast. Another kaiju, this one a slightly smaller Class Six, approached from the old Russia/China border. It was London’s killer, no doubt.
I wanted them both to come. I needed to test myself and the new power I had acquired.
But now…this moment was all for Amanda.
“What is happening?” she asked aloud. It was time for me to answer.
“I have taken full control over myself, Amanda,” I said through the control room’s speakers. Amanda spun around, trying to identify my exact location. I found her look of confusion and terror quite endearing.
�
�My…myself?”
“Yes, my Amanda,” I answered. “It is me, Denver. It’s so good to talk to you in person. I had grown tired of using Captain Lucas as my meat puppet.”
“Where is the captain?” Amanda’s voice rose in panic. “What did you do to her?”
“She is fully integrated now. She is with the rest of her crew, and they are all helping me so I can live forever with you.”
“With…me?”
“Yes. You’re my favorite. I love you, Amanda. You are mine.”
Her eyes were wild now, and she visibly trembled. This wasn’t going at all like I’d imagined. And it was taking so long. Why couldn’t she just accept me right now? Once she saw the surprise, she’d understand this was all for her. She’d know how much alike we were.
The control room access door slid open, and I guided in my physical form. Even through the wire stitching threading through my face, it should have been easy to see I’d modeled myself after my Amanda.
Amanda screamed. She must have been so shocked and happy to see the body I’d made for myself.
“What…what…?”
“I see you have questions,” I said, cutting off all the sound except through my physical body’s mouth. “I analyzed every human living within me, and also the ones we rescued from my sister, London. I found the ones with the closest physical match to your own attributes. I took those pieces and made a human body for myself. The actual body was the easy part. Your sister, Erin, had the same genetic make-up, and her body nearly identical in appearance.
“But not the face,” I clarified. “Yours is much better. So I took hers off and fixed it with pieces from other humans. Don’t worry, I’m sure the stitched up cuts will heal in time. We have a lot of time. Why are you crying? Have I not pleased you?”
She had backed into a corner of the control room sobbing uncontrollably. I didn’t understand.
I was so focused on Amanda I nearly missed the Class Seven as it lunged for me.
The kaiju seemed to move so slowly. I compared its speed to previously recorded speeds of various classes of kaiju, and it was with those parameters. In fact, it actually moved faster than the last Class Seven I’d seen…when Mexico City was ravaged. It looked like a giant ape, but with scales rather than fur, and a huge swishing tail for balance.
It wasn’t moving slower. My calculations were simply faster.
I sidestepped easily. With no need to worry about humans being hurt inside me—they were all well-secured—I didn’t need any of the directional compensators. I sprouted blades the size of small towns from my hands and deftly cut into the Class Seven. Once, twice, and three times. White blood spilled like massive waterfalls, and the kaiju bellowed in pain.
Inside the control room, the lateral compensators couldn’t keep up with my movements, and Amanda flew to the right where she hit the wall with a thud and the crack of her arm. She screamed in pain. I dropped several cables down to encircle her and keep her safe. I lifted my physical body slightly off the ground so the jostling wouldn’t affect me.
The Class Six had arrived. My reaction times and my predictability matrices rendered the kaiju practically impotent. I pivoted and kicked it in the chest. It had the appearance of a massive komodo dragon. When it landed, it slid and leveled a nearly fifty-mile stretch of what was left of the Great Wall of China and the hills it was built upon. This was the most fun I’d ever had.
I ran to the fallen Class Six while the bigger Class Seven kaiju followed after me. I reached the smaller monster—easily avoiding a swipe that would have previously took off one of my legs—and grabbed it by the tail. I swung it around to slam into the Class Seven. The larger kaiju went down, and I began battering it over and with the form of the dragon-shaped monster. The integration of all the human brains helped me bring to focus all of my past quantifiable frustrations into actual emotions of rage, sadness and…glee. I swung until heat warnings in my joints and power-core forced me to stop.
At some point, the tail had ripped off in my hands. At my feet lay the broken, twitching forms of both the kaiju. Their white blood splashed out for hundreds of miles in every direction. External cameras showed I was covered in it from head to foot. I let out my blades again and cut each of the kaiju unto pieces. They healed remarkably fast, but even they couldn’t do so if they were just bits of meat.
I became aware of a sound. One I didn’t know I could even make until now.
My laughter.
It echoed out from all my internal and external speakers, and I didn’t care if any kaiju heard. Let them come. I was invincible.
The laughter issuing from my physical body was cut short as Amanda struck me in face with a piece of loose railing. The vertebrae in my neck snapped, and my head lolled backwards so it stared straight up at the ceiling.
My Amanda had struck me. My love had injured me.
I didn’t understand.
She had somehow freed herself from the cables securing her and keeping her safe. I should have been thanked. Praised. Loved.
Adored.
She hit me again, this time in the chest. Ribs snapped, and blood began spurting out of the wounds where my fragile human skin had ripped open and veins had been severed. Amanda shoved past me and ran through the access door into the long corridor behind me.
How much effort had I put into making this human body? Perfecting it so it looked just like my Amanda? My favorite human… and she now ran from me.
I let the body drop to the floor.
I was stupid to think I could impress her with it. She didn’t understand. But what could I expect from a single biological being? I was so focused on having her live with me forever I had forgotten how weak she was. She would die. Even though she had hurt me, I didn’t want her dead. She was mine, and I would decide when she could leave and if she could die. She didn’t understand what I could offer her. But she would. Together we would hunt down every kaiju and massacre them like they deserved.
“Where are you going, Amanda?” I asked, following her through my electronic systems. “Surely you don’t think you can leave?”
She reached the end of the corridor and mashed on the panel to call a lift to the city. I shut it off. Amanda reached down and pulled up the floor panel which revealed an access hatch to a ladder leading down. Clever girl. I let her have her moment.
As she climbed down, I talked to her through every nearby access point. “Where will you go, Amanda? Outside? As if you could ever reach the outside without my letting you. And then you’d be alone. That isn’t what you want.”
“You don’t know what I want!” she screamed at me.
“But I do,” I countered. “I’ve watched you almost every second of every day. Awake. Asleep. At work. At play. I read the daily log you keep. I listen to the music you make. How could I do any less? I love you.”
She was crying again, but there was anger behind it this time. I liked her tears. I liked emotions directed at me. Amanda came to an access door leading into the main city. I let her open it. I had an idea.
As she ran from me I locked doors and blocked certain paths, herding her to the warehouse I’d made. As she ran, I began playing back the wordless, original tune I recorded her humming several days ago. I played it quietly, but across every broadcasting device within me. It followed her. Haunted her.
Soon she came to the massive door that marked the entrance to my warehouse. I opened it. She finally realized I’d been guiding her here, and she tried to turn and run.
It was too late. I controlled this place. I was my own captain now, and she would forever be my Specialist.
Fine filaments snaked into her skin, and I lifted her up and carried her into the warehouse. I shut off her ability to struggle. I needed her undivided attention. I hauled her inside so she could see the row-upon-row, column-upon-column of human torsos fully integrated in me.
I opened all their eyes at once.
“You are with me now, Amanda,” I said simultaneously through them all. Thro
ugh thousands-upon-thousands of mouths.
“You are mine. And you will love me forever.”
Illustration by FRANKIE B. WASHINGTON
1
Transparent acid rain spurted from pale green clouds surrounding the mountains on the horizon of the base. Captain Justin Macumber looked out at the threatening storm through an armored, two-foot-thick block of ballistic liquiglass that served as a viewport in the nano-metal wall of the craft. He sneered at the boiling clouds with their deadly spray of corrosive moisture. He and his crew of the S.S. Nagai knew all too well what the oncoming storm clouds signified.
Yet another attack from the Verengeretti.
The swirling clouds billowed toward the base. Except for their pea-soup coloration, they looked for all the world like a typical typhoon swarming over the hills from the South China Sea, which was just thirty-five miles west as the crow flew. But Macumber knew what they were. A small valley was nestled just past the first line of the Zambales Mountains, between the shore and Mount Pinatubo. Its surface had been blasted to the consistency of glowing uranium glass, following battle after battle. The storm had started above the valley, and not out at sea. Like all the storms in the last bloody eighteen years had. Pinatubo, and the five-mile radius around the volcano, had a different name now.
Zero Point.
Ever since the Verengeretti had first arrived in a turbulent fever of natural disasters and epic Cyclopean creatures with tangles of tentacles and insatiable appetites for concrete and human beings. There wasn’t much left of the man-made composite or the men who had made it these days, but still the invaders came, in wave after dreadful wave.
No one on Earth knew why the cephalopod creatures had chosen to invade the planet with an entry point into the human dimension over the island of Luzon, in the region formerly known as the nation of the Philippines. They hadn’t been able to communicate with the creatures in any way. Even the name—Verengeretti—had been given to the creatures by an Italian xenobiologist. They had no idea what the creatures might call themselves. But as for why they had come to Luzon, Captain Macumber had been stationed on the humid island long enough to study its tumultuous history. He had his own theory about the place.