Silicon Uprising

by Conor McCarthy

  While the SUV drove down the highway, Jason sat on the floor in front of the rear seat to stash the gear in the weapons compartment. The rear window gave him a view of the helicopter crossing the highway, heading away from the wreckage.

  The few scattered, thin clouds in the sky suddenly glowed brighter than the rising sun alone could illuminate them. Seconds later, rumbling came up through the suspension. In the side window, a mushroom cloud billowed above the desert hills.

  “Shock wave!” Jason said.

  Michael ordered the car to pull over.

  The wave shot dust through the air as it swept across the land, taking only seconds to reach their vehicle. The windows distorted but didn’t break, and the whole car shook. The wave faded into rolling thunder and petered out. A great dust cloud rose and swept toward them.

  Michael set the car moving again. The rush of wind never reached them.

  “They set it to blow and cleared out,” Jason said.

  “I’d say so. Good thing you weren’t waiting back there.”

  Jason looked back toward the distant spot by the roadside, now obscured by radioactive dust. “Yeah.”

  “A ground-level blast means lots of fallout. They’ll milk that for all it’s worth—fake a story about how they foiled a Crimson Unity plot, but they couldn’t stop the bomb from detonating.”

  “The cavalry will be incoming right now.”

  “Yep. Roadblocks are more likely now. But we’re turning off soon,” Michael said.

  In the oncoming lane, a police car headed toward them at high speed, siren wailing. If the officer wanted to, he could have electronically ordered their SUV to halt, but it maintained its speed as the cop neared. The car passed so fast that Jason felt its wake sweep against their vehicle.

  “Soon Half-Bit will deploy unmanned AI cop cars. Lots of them.”

  “Great,” Jason said, then started laughing. “At least we can blow them up without guilt.”

  “True.”

  “Will Half-Bit actually think Crimson Unity blew the rails?”

  Michael considered the question for a moment.

  “I think they’ll have better information than that. Crimson Unity may take advantage by sniffing out targets left unprotected in the shit storm over this. You find their antics funny, I know, but they’re dangerous people.”

  “Never heard of them targeting civilians.”

  “Not publicly at least. Remember the official story about Titus Forst?”

  Jason nodded. The genius who’d made general artificial intelligence possible had ended up opposing the CMC before the election. Then his body had been found in the Mojave Desert. Media reports at the time said he’d committed suicide, but the media never mentioned him anymore.

  Michael said, “Rumor has it that former raiders took him out into the desert and chained him there, then removed the chains after he died. Our information confirms that, and those men are now important Crimson Unity cell leaders.”

  “Man, why did they do that? He opposed Half-Bit.”

  “He made it possible. That’s enough for them. Now he’s a problematic figure for both sides since they don’t have a black-and-white story about what happened to him.”

  “The grapevine says Roger Wilberforce has disappeared too.”

  “Yeah, Half-Bit doesn’t want him around—he might say something, get punished for it, and become a symbol.”

  When they reached the turnoff, Jason took a deep breath, and as he let it out the tension fell away from his muscles. Soon the SUV turned onto a long driveway that led to an abandoned industrial building. Jason hauled open one of a pair of large doors and Michael drove inside.

  “By the way,” Michael said as he stepped out, “expect Half-Bit to find more and more ways to weaken the internal regulations that stop it from directly controlling robots.”

  “Shit. That’s great.”

  “And—keep this secret—I received word that Half-Bit will soon become worse than you already think possible. Don’t ask how. It’s big.”

  Jason frowned and said nothing.

  They removed and stashed the guns in case they needed to grab them quickly. Michael strung up a camp shower and began heating water over a gas stove.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “Definitely,” Jason replied.

  “We’ll put the rest of the water into the shower. You need one.”

  “I noticed.”

  By lunchtime Jason was cleaned up, rested, and hungry. Michael waited for a coded message that the way was clear back to the safe house.

  Jason said, “I’ll go buy us some takeout. I’m starving.”

  “I’ll get it,” Michael said. “One person is enough. There’ll be eyes everywhere around here after what you did. I’m used to that. You, on the other hand—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m a noob.”

  “You’re vengeful, is the problem. Wait here.”

  Thirteen

  AFTER MICHAEL PLACED his order, the guy behind the counter wanted to talk about the morning’s drama, as he’d done with everyone else there.

  “Heard about the bomb?”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “It’s shocking, isn’t it?”

  “If we catch those assholes in this town, they’ll be strung up in the main street before the Feds get ahold of ’em.”

  “I won’t be doing the stringing, but I can’t argue with that.”

  “Good thing the fallout’s not blowing this way, but there’ll be fallout for some folks. You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “Visiting. Going to have to cut it short I guess. Glad it didn’t go off near a town or anything.”

  He could swear that another man waiting off to one side and half a pace behind had taken an interest in him. He was watching without looking right at him.

  Another customer came to order, so the conversation ended. Michael stayed in the shop. The waiting man did nothing unusual.

  Michael looked sideways out the door and observed people going about their business in the town. They seemed tense and moved quicker than normal. That was no surprise. He couldn’t help but feel vaguely guilty. The bomb had gone off nearer to this town because of him and Jason. It was the right thing to do, but he felt guilt anyway, though its presence never bothered him.

  He turned back to face the soft drink refrigerator against the opposite wall. The suspicious man’s head made a barely perceptible turn away.

  When his number was called, Michael rose from his chair, conscious of the need to move at the same anxious pace as everyone else. Appearing different would only add to any suspicion of him. The feeling of eyes on him remained as he collected the food and left the shop. He carried it to the car, just as tense as everyone else around, and set off.

  Near the first corner, he turned and peered through the gap between the headrest and the seat. A dark gray car parked near the shop drove away in his direction. But that was not unusual.

  He faced forward again. Few cars were on the road. Maybe people were staying at home, fearing that the terrorists would come through town. They had, kind of. But he and Jason were freedom fighters, not terrorists.

  Through the gap he peeked again. A long, empty stretch of road lay behind. His car entered a sweeping right turn. Just before the stretch of road was hidden by a building, the same car appeared around a distant corner.

  At least it wasn’t an SUV. But they wouldn’t use those for surveillance, would they?

  Some people knew when you lied. They just knew. Michael had used that instinct himself to avoid a couple of bad situations. But the enemy had wily agents with the same talent. Giving more than one-word answers at the takeout counter was a mistake.

  Two more turns and nothing followed. But as he neared the driveway to the building where Jason waited, the car appeared in the distance again.

  “Reset destination—next intersection,” he said to the computer.

  Through a gap between the hills, the building appeared briefly. Nothing stirred
there.

  The foil-wrapped phone in his pocket could provide no help because they would be monitoring any communication from his position. Better to leave it wrapped.

  He needed to find a way back without his tail.

  Fourteen

  WITH NOTHING TO do, Jason carried a cup of coffee around inside the building, poking the remains of industrial relics, seeing what still turned or cranked. The place had a faint smell of dust-soaked oil.

  He climbed the rusty steel staircase to the balcony of the mezzanine level, which led to two offices. At the end of the balcony light streamed in through a gash in the wall.

  The door of the first office stood open. Only a decaying, threadbare chair remained inside. Part of the floor had collapsed under a leaking roof. Heavy rains had fallen during the Strife years, even in the desert. In one intact corner a piece of paper lay covered with dried mold. Jason picked it up by one edge. A memo was still readable:

  “In view of our inability to secure a loan to replace the computers and 3-D printers stolen in Monday’s armed raid, production will cease at close of business tomorrow. Prospective lenders said that any new equipment would most likely be stolen again. We have no means of reopening at this time.”

  Jason laid the paper back where it was, like a tiny piece of history that belonged there. Economic raiders all over the Western world had shipped stolen goods around, finding buyers seeking to replace their own losses. When economies collapsed, raiders exported goods instead. The ports did a roaring trade.

  On the balcony once more, the distant sound of a car echoed off the hills outside. Through the hole in the wall he looked out the front of the building.

  A gap between the hills revealed a short stretch of the road beyond. A car passed by. Exactly like Michael’s car. The face in the window was too far away to recognize, but something about it said Michael. Driving straight past.

  Thirty seconds later a dark gray car followed. Only about a half dozen cars had passed since they had arrived.

  It all added up to trouble. Michael had a tail.

  Jason dropped his cup of coffee and moved to rush down the stairs, but stopped at the thought of his leg plunging through a rusty broken stair after stomping on it.

  For an instant he studied the steel balcony railing, then kicked it and sent it crashing to the ground below. He planted a hand on the balcony floor and jumped down.

  He pulled an M4 carbine from its hiding place inside the service hatch of a large machine and heaved open one of the front double doors of the building.

  Before his butt even hit the seat he shouted an order to the SUV’s computer.

  On the drive out to the road, he activated the firmware mod to exceed standard speed. It carried a grave risk of drawing the attention of law enforcement or a civilian do-gooder, or simply skidding off the road, but he had to use it for long enough to close the distance.

  When he hit the road, the gray car had already disappeared around a bend.

  Michael would know that he stood little chance of losing his tail out on open roads. The town was his best bet, and he was smart enough to take it. That meant looping around and taking a different road.

  Jason’s eyes homed in on one intersection on the electronic map. To reach town, Michael had to pass through there. From his position Jason could reach it first by a different route if Michael kept to a normal speed.

  Jason set a waypoint near the intersection. His SUV swung around in a U-turn and sped away, taking corners with a screech of rubber. He braced himself against the door and dash and kept watch on the road ahead, behind, and down the side streets, ready to call for normal speed if anyone showed.

  He stopped by the side of the road before a low hill. Beyond the crest, the top half of a road sign marked the target intersection. Jason pulled the 3X optical sight from his rifle and watched through it.

  The roof of a car crested the hill and came into view from the opposite direction, distorted by heat rising from the road. As it slowed at the intersection, Michael’s face showed through the boiling air. He turned toward the town.

  His pursuer followed soon after. One man sat inside the gray car.

  After the man turned to follow Michael and disappeared down the road, Jason drove up near the intersection. He edged just close enough to the top of the hill so that he could see the gray car. When it was far enough away, he rolled further forward.

  Michael was visible in the distance. Toward him in the oncoming lane came two gray SUVs. They turned across the road, blocking both lanes.

  “Assholes,” Jason said.

  Michael’s car braked and stopped at the roadblock. Four armed men poured out of the SUVs and arrested him. They put him into one of the SUVs. All of the vehicles drove off, including Michael’s car, now empty.

  They must have ordered his car to go with them, no doubt to search for evidence. The goons would likely be more thorough than typical police.

  Jason could do little against at least five men. The best option was to send a steg message to Susan. She’d team him up with someone else who might devise a plan.

  But the thought of waiting alone for a stranger to come and fix the mess made him slump in despair. He dismissed the idea, sat up straight, and directed a determined glare toward the receding convoy. If he persisted, chance might reward him with an opportunity.

  To hell with it. What good was winning freedom if he didn’t back up his mentor to the hilt?

  He followed far behind the CMC men. He managed to correctly guess their route twice when he lost them. But on the far side of town, he went left at a T-junction and came up empty.

  Jason turned back and searched on the other side of the junction. There was no sign. He slammed his fist into the dash, leaving a shallow depression. “Where the fuck are they!”

  A low hill stood on vacant land only a block away.

  Jason slammed open a compartment, seized the steering wheel inside. and rammed it into a socket on the dash. He put the SUV into free-driving mode and steered it at the hill.

  It skidded its way up, sending stones flying in all directions.

  At the top, his eyes latched onto distant movement. Two gray SUVs emerged from behind a building. The two cars followed. Jason had a sweeping view of their journey away from the town, onto a long driveway, and out to an isolated, sprawling single-level house on a vast tract of land.

  He found the spot on the map and marked it, then turned the car around and set the hideout as his destination. No way would he leave Michael with those people. Before the train mission Jason had still felt like a twenty-three-year-old kid. Training with Michael had reminded him of the old days with his father, when he practiced gun handling, raid drills, and evacuation procedure. He had shot at raiders after his brother fell.

  But that time he’d missed the target.

  The SUV carried him back toward the hideout. There he would wait until nightfall.

  Fifteen

  LOWGRAVE BARKED INTO the phone, “Get them something to sleep in that will keep them warm enough. I don’t care what. After they’ve had what little sleep they need, more stimulants. They’re not leaving that valley until the capsule is found. They didn’t sign up for this job to have it easy in a crisis.”

  He slammed the phone down. At least Zarather’s personal assistant was on her way to the bunker. After a long interview with her he might learn the identity of this impressive junior employee.

  He marched down the hall to one of the high-level supervisors. “What did surveillance find? If anyone had something and failed to report it I’ll chain him to a CMC cooling pipe and one of those robot dogs can punch holes in his ass.”

  “Nothing at all, sir. Should I tap all possible sources within Crimson Unity?”

  “You all think it was Crimson Unity because you lack imagination and are incapable of listening to intuition. Our rocket fugitives’ paw prints are all over this. And they’re not members of Crimson Unity.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  �
��I thought we had a collection of independent misfits and disaffected intellectuals, but a coherent organization has formed, and Zarather is at or near the center of it. Find him.”

  “We will, sir.”

  When Lowgrave returned to his office the phone was ringing. He snatched it up. “Who fucked up now?”

  As he heard the news of Michael’s arrest, a broad smile spread across his face.

  “Excellent. If he won’t answer direct questions, leave him until I arrive. Did you set up the temporary field interrogation site as I ordered? Is he there now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Send me the address. I’ll be there at six tomorrow morning.”

  He replaced the phone with a satisfying clunk.

  Sixteen

  JASON TURNED INTO the safe house driveway. No one seemed to be tailing the SUV, which meant the goons hadn’t flagged it yet. He craved food, but needed to stash the M4 first.

  The hideout stood undisturbed. He found no sign of an unwanted presence. He parked around the back instead of bothering with the doors.

  Michael had gone for fast food, and that had ended badly. Maybe the goons liked to catch Crimson Unity members and other subversives at fast food joints. Sausages and eggs from a supermarket would do. And some fruit.

  As he carried the carbine through the back door of the building, he remembered leaving the front door open after his frantic exit. Hadn’t it been closed as he drove up? But the realization came too late.

  One step inside and he stopped dead. Two cars were parked there.

  Four people walked out casually from behind the vehicles. Two more stepped from an office on the mezzanine above them. All were armed with either an AK-47 or a pump-action shotgun.

  At least they weren’t aiming at him. Yet.

  “What are you doing in our squat?” the tallest of them said. He had longish hair with a few curls, a jagged scar on one cheek, and tattooed arms.

  Jason’s brow furrowed. “We were here first.”