Godlike Machines

by Johnathan Strahan

  I waded in as the water rushed and swirled and scooped my arms through the soup, looking for evidence of the youth gang that had burrowed there, but whatever evidence there had been was now gone. I’d had visions of the hill opening like a stone, splitting dryly and revealing a neat cross-section of the tunnels inside. I hadn’t really thought about the water table.

  The mud was sucking dangerously at the mecha’s legs. If I got it stuck here and had to abandon it, I’d never be able to walk out of the swamp on my own. I levered myself out of the sinkhole and stepped out into the world. I was covered in mud. The skin of the mecha would shed the dirt eventually, but for now, my shiny metal carapace was covered in disgusting, reeking glop.

  I was clearly not going about this right.

  I moved back out onto the road and headed for the Sugarloaf Key bridge. The wumpuses had left the bridges intact-otherwise how would they make their way up and down the keys?-and they were the most conspicuous remaining example of human life in the good old days. It was the bridges that the youth gangs staked out most avidly.

  It was there I’d find them.

  Being covered in mud had its advantages. I crouched under the bridge amid the rocks and made myself invisible. I set the mecha to estivate and recharge its batteries, leaving only its various ears and eyes open.

  Before shutting down, I primed my whole remaining missile battery, getting them aimed for fast launch, and recorded a macro for getting myself out of there when the time came, before the bridge could come down around my ears. It would be quite a bounce, but I was prepared to give up a rib or two if that’s what it took.

  Now it was just a matter of staying alert. I kept thinking about my mouth-watering fish and the feast I’d cook that night, drifting off into mouth-watering reverie. Then I’d snap back to my surroundings, looking back at my screens.

  Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  Then: something.

  Gliding out of the wilderness at both ends of the bridge like they were on casters. Silent. Eerie. I waited for them to converge on the center of the bridge before I hit it and quit it.

  Ker-BLAM! I barely had time to take satisfaction in the incredible, synchronized splosion of the struts at both ends of the bridge giving way, tossing lumps of reinforced concrete high into the sky. I was in the belly of the mecha as it sprang away, leaping nearly as high, landing with coiled legs, pushing off, somersaulting in mid-air, coming down blam-blam, one foot, two foot, on the remaining section of bridge, snatching out with both hands, seizing a wriggling child in each hand, knocking their heads together and leaping away.

  I let the mecha pilot itself for a while while I kept an eye out for pursuit. They’d all scattered when I’d chased them before, but that didn’t mean they’d do the same when I caught a couple of them.

  There they were, giving chase, leaping over obstacles, skittering through the dirt. And ahead-more of them, a dozen of them, gliding out of the bush. A couple hours ago, I hadn’t been able to find any of them, now they were boiling out of the underbrush.

  I wasn’t sure what they could do to my mecha, but I didn’t want to find out.

  The mecha’s arms pumped for balance, flailing the kids’ bodies back and forth like rag-dolls. I tried to get a look at them. I’d snatched up my little friend and one of his buddies, darker skinned, with longer hair. Both had blood on their faces. Either the missile concussion had done that, or I had, when I’d banged their heads together. Like I said, there’s not a lot of fine motor control in those mecha suits.

  I was breathing hard and it hurt like hell. Felt like another rib had cracked. Aging was coming on pretty quick.

  Here’s the thing: the mecha has some pretty heavy guns, regular, old-fashioned projectile weapons. I hadn’t fired them much in the line of duty, because wumpuses are missile jobs unless you want to chip away at them all day on full auto. So my clips were full.

  I could have sprayed those kids as they came out of the jungle, short, auto-targeted bursts. I’m pretty sure that however immortal the little bastards were, they weren’t immortal enough to survive ten or twenty explosive slugs in the chest and head.

  Why didn’t I shoot the kids? Maybe it’s because I knew they were my brothers. Maybe I just couldn’t shoot kids, even if they weren’t kids. Maybe I could plan a neat little explosion and kidnapping, but not gun down my enemies face to face.

  The shaman said he needed the kids brought to him at old Finds Bight in the Saddlebunch Keys. That was pretty rough terrain, jungle and swamp the whole way. But the mecha knew how to get there.

  One of the kids was thrashing now, trying to get free. The mecha’s gyros groaned and creaked as it tried to compensate for the thrashing and the weird terrain.

  I dropped the kid. I only needed one.

  I watched him fall in the rear-view as the mecha leapt a hillock and went over double, using its free hand as a stabilizing leg, running like a three-legged dog.

  That was when one of the kids came down on my mecha’s back, clinging to it. I could see the kid through the cowl, its face completely expressionless as its eyes bored into me.

  The youth gang’s squid needs more than one node to be fully effective—they can’t own your mind on their own. But that doesn’t mean that one kid is helpless. Far from it.

  It felt like my head was slowly filling with blood, crushing my brain and making my eyes bug out. Red mist crept around the edges of my vision and blood roared in my ears like the ocean. I couldn’t move anything.

  I almost smiled. Idiot child. If I couldn’t move, I couldn’t divert the mecha, and it knew where it was going.

  “You’re the only one that can run this mission,” the shaman had said, sitting in my treehouse. “You’re the only one they can’t just think to death. You might have spoiled your immortality, but that’s still intact. You and them, you’re all on the same footing. Bring one to me. I’m going to get a login to their little hobby-world. I’m going to blow it wide open. We’ll be able to go there—without having our minds raped by those little pin-dicks.”

  I didn’t exactly black out. My vision contracted to a hazy disc ringed by red-black pulses timed to my heartbeat, and I could barely hear, but I hadn’t blacked out. I was still conscious.

  So I saw more kids drop onto the mecha’s canopy as we galloped toward Saddlebunch. Some slid off when we leapt and jumped, but most stayed on. They had ropes. They lashed themselves down. They did something under the mecha too. Lassoing the legs, it seemed, from the little I could see. Working without any facial expression. Again. Again.

  Leaping free, holding onto the ropes. I felt the mecha jerk as the ropes went taut, skidding and tumbling. Then it was up again, running again, on its feet again. Ropes! Inside, I smiled. Idiot kids.

  Over the surf-roar of blood in my ears, I heard something else, new sounds. Clattering. The ropes. Something tied to the ends of the ropes.

  The mecha jerked again, caught up short.

  Anchors, that’s what it was. The mecha twisted from side to side, incidentally dislodging the child who stared at me through the carapace. The red haze receded, my muscles came back to me and I leapt to my controls.

  I swung the mecha back upright to give me more maneuverability and put my fingers on the triggers of all four guns.

  I rotated around to target the anchors behind me. A couple rounds severed the tight ropes. The kid who’d ridden my carapace was just getting to his feet beside the mecha. Another rattle of the guns took care of him, and he burst open.

  This is weird, but I’d never shot any person before. I’d blown up wumpuses and taken out the mechas and their drivers in Detroit, but I’d never done this before. There was an immediacy to the way he twisted and fell, the way his lungs opened out like wings from the hole the slugs tore in his back. It froze me just as certainly as the child had.

  That freeze gave the rest of them the chance they needed. They surrounded me, gliding out of the woods like they were on rollers. Dozens of them. Dozens and dozens
of them. I reached for the controls, trying to set the mecha back on its automated path to the shaman. My finger never made it.

  There was a blinding headache. It grew and grew, like a supernova. I didn’t know how it could hurt more. It hurt more.

  It is possible to mindrape an immortal, I discovered, if you don’t care about the immortal’s mind when it’s all over.

  PART 4: TURN BACK, TURN BACK

  Dad handed me the delicate hydraulic piston, still warm from the printer.

  “You know where this goes, right?” He was sweating in the June heat. Keeping all of Comerica Park air conditioned, even with the dome, was impossible, especially during one of those amazingly wet midwestern heat-waves.

  “I know, Dad,” I said. “I can fix this thing in my sleep, you know.”

  He smiled at me, then switched to a mock frown. “Well, I used to think that, but given your recent treatment of one of my prize machines—” He gestured at the remains of the big mecha, blasted open in the Battle for Detroit.

  “Oh, Dad!” I said. “What did you want me to do? Let them raid us? You know, I took down eight of them. Single-handedly.”

  The flea bounced me, landing on my shoulders and leaping away. I staggered and would have dropped the piston, had Dad not caught me. “You had some help,” he said.

  He gave me a hug. “It’s OK, you know. You were brave and amazing. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said. It was awkward saying it, but it felt good.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, back to work, you! I’m not paying you to stand around.”

  “You’re paying me?”

  “When was the last time you paid rent? You’re getting it in trade.”

  The Carousel sat in the middle of the field, where second base had been. We’d dug it in, sitting it flush to the ground, the way it was supposed to be. It looked great, but it made reaching the maintenance areas a bit of a pain, so we’d winched out the entire Jimmy’s Bedroom assembly and put it on the turf next to the Carousel.

  Poor Jimmy. One of his arms hung to one side, jerking spastically when I powered him up. I unbuttoned his shirt, fumbling with the unfamiliar fasteners, and undressed him. The arm hydraulics were not easy to get at. Man, screws sucked. I tossed them in the air as I got them free, letting Ike and Mike fight to snatch them out of the sky.

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll lose one?”

  I looked up from my work. Lacey looked prettier than ever, wearing a sleeveless shirt and a pair of shorts that showed off her hips, which had really changed shape in the past couple months, all for the better.

  “Jeez,” I said. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, OK?”

  She gave me a playful shove and I shoved her back and then she snuck me a kiss. I broke it off.

  “Not in front of my Dad,” I said, pleading.

  “Your Dad adores me—don’t you, Harv?”

  I turned around and there he was, wiping his hands on his many-pocketed work-shorts, then tugging his shirt out of his belt-loop and pulling it on. “You’ll do,” he said.

  I set down the piston carefully.

  It sank a few inches below the surface. I tried to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  Pepe flew over us, then swooped in for a landing. His aim was off, though. He swooped right at my chest. Right through my chest.

  “Dammit,” I said.

  “It’s OK,” Lacey said. “They’ll fix it. Let’s go for a walk.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t do it. If the spacial stuff isn’t working, I can’t believe it.”

  “Debugging is a process. We’ll file a bug against it. They’ll have it fixed soon enough.”

  “Look,” I said. “If the platform is so buggy that it can’t even keep track of collisions, how do we know it’s running us accurately?”

  “Of course it’s not running us accurately,” she said. “Otherwise, you’d still hate my guts, your Dad would still be dead—” Dad nodded “-and you’d be like 400 years old. Can’t you just be happy for once?”

  “You keep telling me that things will get better—”

  “So forget about a great big, beautiful tomorrow, Jimmy,” Dad said. “Maybe they’ll never debug it. But tell me that now isn’t the best time of your life.”

  I tried to argue. I couldn’t. Whether that was because there was a bug in me, or because he was right, I couldn’t say.

  A GLIMPSE OF THE MARVELLOUS STRUCTURE [AND THE THREAT IT ENTAILS]

  Sean Williams

  Born in the dry, flat lands of South Australia, Sean Williams is the author of 70 short stories, five collections, and 30 novels aimed at adult, young adult, and child readers. Multiple winner of both Ditmar and Aurealis awards for science fiction, fantasy and horror, and Philip K Dick Award nominee for his 2007 space opera Saturn Returns, he also works in the Doctor Who and Star Wars universes, resulting in several good stories to tell at parties.

  2010 sees the publication of Castle of the Zombies and Planet of the Cyborgs, the first two instalments of a science fiction adventure series for kids, and the sequel to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the the first computer game tie-in novel to debut at #l on the New York Times hardback bestseller list. Troubletwisters, a series co-written with Garth Nix, commences in 2011.

  Former winner and now a judge of the international Writers of the Future Contest, Sean takes an active role in writing-related organizations - he is the current Overseas Regional Director of SFWA - and enjoys the odd teaching stint, such as Clarion South. He still lives in Australia, where he received an MA in Creative Writing from Adelaide University in 2005 and is currently a PhD candidate at the same institution, not solely so he can one day call himself “Doctor”.

  It is difficult to measure the time since my last communication. Too much has passed, I fear, for the suspicion of my demise not to have become a certainty in some minds. Suspend all judgement, Master Catterson, on that score and any other, until I have conveyed the full import of recent events to you.

  As suspected, the citizens of Gevira have uncovered something wondrous beneath the veneer of their civilisation-wondrous and at the same time utterly strange and deadly. Here is my account of it, sent a second time in full now I know my previous missives have gone unread. I leave to you, as always, the divination of the will of the Guild.

 

  Security Officer Gluis alerted the shift supervisor of his discovery at 1900 hours. I arrived at 1910. Both Gluis and Supervisor Nemke were in attendance, but no other security officers beyond a small detail preserving the scene from the public.

  (As Guild regulations demand, I have attached audiovisual recordings of the events should you need to verify my abbreviated transcript.)

  “I’ve called topside.” Nemke indicated the unsealed container that Gluis had pulled out of the habitat walls. “They’re sending an investigator immediately. Before they come, Donaldan, I want you to tell me what you see. Step aside, Rudi, and let him look.”

  Gluis backed away with a contemptuous look solely for my benefit. It irked me that Supervisor Nemke insisted on using our first names, but I swallowed my irritation and complied. As the greenest of Nemke’s security detail, I allowed her to educate me only so far as it complied with my goals. You know, Master Catterson, that I consider you my only teacher. That day’s lesson, however, was one I am unlikely to forget.

  The container was a standard-issue one-meter cube that slid on low-friction runners from its recess and opened by rolling its flexible top panel along runners down the front of the container, revealing a catalogue number stenciled in black. A quick search of inventory determined that it was supposed to contain scrubbers for the masks used on the main face. Someone—Gluis, I presumed at the time, and have no reason to doubt now-had swept aside the scrubbers to reveal something much more sinister.

  The body was curled in a foetal position, with its thighs against its chest and arms tightly folded around its legs. The head had been tipped back to reveal its
face. Slight features; a delicacy of ears, nose and jaw; brown hair longer than a man’s; full lips, slightly parted—all suggested, correctly, that the corpse was that of a woman. An attractive one too, I thought, allowing myself the observation in case it related to the woman’s demise and subsequent concealment. Deep frown lines suggested recent unhappiness, not yet smoothed away by death. More scrubbers had been pushed away to reveal her clothing, a khaki fieldsuit of crisply synthetic material. There were no bulges in the pockets, and no obvious sign of injury.

  Forensic technology on Gevira lags significantly behind ours, but I could tell that the corpse had been scanned by Gluis and Nemke, and that neither officer had teased the cause of death from other intimate details. It didn’t appear to be murder; that much was clear. The body’s organs had ceased functioning by an act of will. Euthanasia is socially acceptable on Gevira, but that fact prompted more questions than it answered. Why had this woman chosen such an option and then hidden her body in a container where it might never be found? Why was I called out in the middle of the night to witness its examination? Why summon a topsider, furthermore, to investigate what must surely have been a case of no great importance?

  The seven habitats on this level are kept uniformly cool in order to prevent thermal leakage into the bedrock outside. So close to the planet’s South Pole, the mine cannot afford any slippage due to melting permafrost. Touching the corpse’s smooth forehead, I found it be precisely at room temperature. The corpse’s memory dump was protected by security algorithms I could not penetrate.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “She’s dead, Supervisor Nemke,” I said with practised nonchalance. “Have you IDed her?”

  “That’s where it gets interesting.” Nemke looked up as footsteps sounded in the corridor behind us. “Here’s our colleague now. Donaldan, I’d like you to meet Investigator Cotton.”

  I turned to see a slight woman approaching with her hand extended, but it was not her hand that made me recoil. Her face took me so completely off-guard that I stumbled backwards a step, caught my boot on the corner of the container, and fell gracelessly onto my backside.