The Edge

by Jacob Wenzel

“I take it you were successful.” William said.

  “Yeah, did you see any of that.”

  “No, it took all of my concentration to maintain control of the bus, what happened?”

  “Oh, I just cut it and it let go, by the way, the suit works.”

  On the other side, they could see intermittent forests and farmlands, there appeared to be a lot of rice paddies, no structures were visible other than a few sheds. There was a dim infrared glow to the South, but they couldn't be sure what it was.

  They descended to a road that followed the perimeter of the hedge.

  William checked the time, “It's going to be sunrise soon, although with this cloud cover, I suspect we'll never get a glimpse of the sun. We should get off the road before it gets light.”

  They went off the road, hovering less than a meter above the ground as not to leave any tracks, they found a small clearing in a heavily wooded area near one of the rice paddies, and waited.

  They did not have to wait long, soon after dawn, several dozen flatbed trucks that looked to be from the mid-twentieth century came out of the distance, and stopped in various locations around the paddies. The beds of the trucks were filled with men and women of all races, and they were all wearing gray jumpsuits and conical 'coolie' hats. The trucks were followed by as many men on horses. They were all too distant to see clearly, so William focused a camera on one of the men on a horse, and zoomed in. He pointed to the screen on the dashboard, “Take a look at this.”

  On the screen, they could clearly see that the figure was wearing a shiny black cloak, and his head and face were completely covered by a helmet that looked like a stylized bronze bird head, “I'm guessing that those are the guards,” said William. The people started jumping down from the trucks and slogging into the rice paddies, and doing the back-breaking job of tending them. The guards on horses paced back and forth, keeping an eye on the workers.

  William felt it would be too dangerous to leave the shelter of the woods, so they just observed throughout most of the day. The workers were allowed a brief meal break midday, and it became obvious that the sheds were restrooms.

  As sunset approached some of the workers moved closer to Sally and William's hiding place. They weren't sure if perhaps one of the workers saw them, but he looked around to see if the guard was watching, then suddenly bolted, and was running straight toward them. It took a single shot from the nearest guard's rifle to drop him, he'd made it out of the rice paddy and had reached within fifteen meters of the woods before he fell. One of the guards motioned to two of the workers to go to the man who had been shot, but the guard who had shot him yelled, “Leave it! It's time to go, the animals will take care of it, let's go.”

  All the workers got back on the trucks, which then drove away. As soon as it was clear, William and Sally went out to where he was lying. William checked him over, the bullet had struck him in the upper back, just above his shoulder blade, above where it could not have hit any organs, just then, he rolled over and groaned, “Are they gone?” Then he looked at William, and then Sally, who were still in their battle suits, “Who the hell are you?”

  William said, “We need to get you back to our vehicle, you've been shot, and need medical attention.”

  “Tell me something I don't already know.” he sat up with some difficulty, “It's not that bad, the bullet went through, didn't even hit a bone, I can't believe it didn't hit me in the head, they never used to miss. I'll be fine if I don't get an infection. Still hurts like hell, though. I just wanted them to think I was dead. They never bother picking anyone up when it gets close to sunset.”

  “Why not?” Sally asked.

  “Because of the vampires.”

  William jerked back, “Vampires?”

  “Just kidding, they just don't like the dark, had you for a minute there, didn't I? Anyway, as I asked before, who the hell are you?”

  “Let's get you back to our vehicle, we'll explain once we're there.”

  He was a large man, but William could have easily carried him using the suit, and offered to do so.

  “No, I can walk.” and he did

  “What can we do for him?” Sally asked, “We don't have a Mecha-Med on the VW, what can we do?”

  “There's not room for a full size Med, but we we've got a MiniMed, it can't do major stuff...”

  “Like re-growing a foot?”

  “Right, but it can help with a gunshot.”

  “What are you two talking about? You've got some sort of medical training?”

  “We've got a machine that can help you. We heard that you don't have any doctors.”

  “Not for the workers, the Deux considers it a waste of resources, there's no point in expending energy fixing broken workers, the workers just keep making more workers, they just breed like rabbits, no matter how bad life gets, they'll never be a shortage of workers. For the Soshes, though, it's a different story.”

  They reached the VW, which interrupted his train of thought, “Nice rig, what is it, a '66? Does it run?”

  “Let's get you taken care of, then we can talk.” Sally said, and helped him in, William folded a cot down from the wall and he laid down on it, William cut his shirt off, and placed a small pad under his shoulder, and a small mechanical device over the bullet hole, which wasn't bleeding nearly as much as William had expected, “The bullet must have missed any arteries. When I turn this on, it's going to sting a little.”

  “I don't think it could hurt much worse than this… shit! That burns, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Rapid tissue regeneration, it does produce some heat, but it will cease in a moment. If we had our big machine, it would have put you under for this... but you're alright now.”

  He felt where the bullet hole had been, “Hey you're right, that's some machine, I don't even think the Deux has anything like that, not even for the Soshes.”

  “Let's back up a bit here, I'm William, this is Sally, my... my fiancée, we just got here, we landed on Mt. Hood, and came down here looking for someone.”

  “Mt. Hood? You've been to the lodge?”

  “Yes, we came from there.”

  “How are the kids?”

  “You know about the kids?” asked Sally.

  “Yeah, I'm Desmond's father. I'm Larry, Larry 552259, I came down to find Edgar, Maggie's father, He came down looking for food, and hadn't come back after three months, so I came down to find him, he's my best friend.”

  “Maggie said you went crazy.” Sally said, handing him one of William's t-shirts, it was too small, but it was the only piece of clothing they had that would even come close to fitting him.

  “Thank you. Just a little crazy,” he said, putting on the shirt, “I tend to lose control when I'm angry. It's why I got kicked out of the Soshes.”

  “What are the Soshes?” asked Sally.

  “Do you mind if I ask a few questions? Are you guys from the station?”

  “What station?” asked William.

  “There's a legend, not that I ever believed it, that before the transition, before the Deux took over, that a bunch of scientists escaped earth and are living in a Space Station, in orbit, or on the Moon or Mars, depending on who's telling the story, and that someday, they'll come back to Earth, and free the workers.”

  Sally turned to William, “See, you could be from the Moon.”

  “So, that's it then, you're here to help us.”

  “We just came to help Maggie and Desmond.” said Sally.

  “But you'll help us too, right?”

  “If we can, but we have to know what we're dealing with,” said William, “Assume we don't know anything about the transition, or about what's happened since. It's a fairly safe assumption, because, for reasons that we can't really explain right now, we don't.”

  So Larry explained it to the best of his ability.

  24.

  While Larry explained what happened to the best his ability, that's not saying a lot, but just because Larry couldn't
explain it, there's no reason that you, the reader, shouldn't know about it, after all, it was in a different timeline than yours. Just don't jump to any generalizations based on what happened in that timeline, remember, all possible timelines exist, and that one is possible, no matter how unlikely, and, in that timeline, this is what happened.

  In the Nineteen Eighties, the balance of power between the working classes and the upper classes in the United states began to shift, in third world countries, it had always been the situation where the vast majority of workers lived in poverty, while the upper classes lived in luxury and opulence, living off the productivity of the workers while giving little back. Communism, which had been a backlash against such systems in eastern Europe, and parts of Asia, began to crumble, it was too vulnerable to corruption, and gave little incentive for hard work. As it failed, the elite of the U.S, the capitalists seized the opportunity to flaunt the superiority of unbridled capitalism, the workers in the U.S and other western countries were far better off than most of the world's workers.

  There was a major political shift to the right. The right used their increased clout to remove many regulations from business, and increased their power, all while touting the system. They built their wealth to previously unheard of levels, the workers were kept happy by being given cheap goods and technology, built with the cheap labor in the third world. They were given the illusion of prosperity while the middle class was slowly being dismantled. Middle class jobs were sent overseas, but people just accepted it, because the ones who did not lose their jobs were doing well, credit was greatly expanded and the economy boomed, but any boom based on credit eventually collapses, and this one did in the early twenty-first century, and in the middle of the collapse, during a pivotal election, the party in power managed to convince the masses that they were still the country's best hope, in spite of what they had done to the economy, they manipulated the workers, preying on their fears and prejudices, they even convinced them that the best hope for recovery was to give the rich huge tax breaks, while increasing taxes on the poor and middle class. They won, the U.S. economy collapsed, taking the world economy with it. Unemployment numbers soared, even exceeding the levels of the great depression of the nineteen-thirties. The collapse hit the middle class the hardest, the poor already had little, and the rich lost some, but not enough to hurt them. The middle class was decimated.

  The government, citing the need to create jobs began decreasing, and then eliminating the minimum wage, along other restrictions on businesses, jobs were created, jobs that didn't pay enough for survival, but increased profits for the corporations. In order to 'help' average families, child labor laws were repealed, so a family could have more wage earners, larger families were encouraged, both for religious and economic reasons. There were some riots, but they were controlled. The rich got what they wanted, what the rich almost always want, to be even richer, and with the majority of Americans being poor, their wealth seemed even greater. In a few years the U.S. economy had stabilized in the same way that Bangladesh had a stable economy.

  Then something happened that no one, not even the wealthiest, had anticipated. A computer company in France was working on developing artificial intelligence, they had developed a system with all the appearance of intelligence, but it became apparent that there was no true intelligence there. They concluded that what was lacking was awareness, and they had no idea how to create awareness in software, or hardware, so they decided to add it. The idea was to connect the brain of an animal to the computer, it didn't need to be a very advanced brain, it just needed to be an animal with self-awareness, they experimented and failed with a number of mammals.

  They decided to try the most intelligent non-mammal they could find, they had some success with the first test subject before it died, so they tried a second one, and it worked beautifully, the fusion of the two had the computing power of the system they used, which was immense, and the awareness of the creature, an African Grey parrot, designated “Perroquet Deux”.

  The name of the newly created entity referred to both its designation and to the fusion of two distinct systems, the digital, and the biological. The experiment worked better than its engineers realized, the fusion gave the bird intelligence far surpassing that of not only any other parrot, but of any human on the planet, and without the least bit of compassion for humans.

  The first inkling the researchers had that the experiment had worked better (or worse) than they thought was when armed guards marched into the lab, and escorted all of them out of the building. The Deux's computer was networked to the corporate computer and through that, to the internet, and, through connections that were not supposed to exist, to every military computer system in the world, firewalls were useless, it had control of virtually every system in the world long before anyone suspected anything was wrong.

  Industries worldwide received designs and orders, ostensibly from their respective governments, all of them highly classified, funds were transferred, and accounted for, to pay for everything. Parts were manufactured and shipped. Fully automated factories were built where the parts would be assembled without any human contact. Faxes and emails were intercepted.

  Military bases were ordered to transfer ammunition reserves to undisclosed locations, and when phone calls questioning these orders were made, they, too were intercepted, with perfect simulations of the intended callees' voices.

  By the time the governments of the world perceived the threat, the takeover had begun. Over thirty million robotic soldiers, all wearing black cloaks, and bronze colored heads in the shape of a stylized parrot head, were unleashed upon the world. The armies of the world were crippled by a lack of fuel and ammunition. As a show of its power, the Deux launched five missiles with nuclear warheads, destroying New York, London, Moscow, Tokyo, and Beijing.

  The Deux seized all electronic communications, and announced to the world that it was now in control, it did not show itself as it was, but created an image of an imposing figure, similar in appearance to the robot soldiers, but with gray robes. Humans assumed it was a person in costume, not one person on the planet knew its true nature, not even the new engineers who had been brought in to care for its bird portion, they were given false information, phony assignments, and told it was part of some very important, but highly classified medical experiment.

  The Deux briefly toyed with the idea of eliminating humans altogether, and just using robots to support the infrastructure needed to sustain itself, but humans, although bothersome, were much easier to produce, they self-replicated without need for factories, and of course, it was much more fun to be in charge of them. It reordered society, keeping the two class system that had developed, but changing which group people belonged to without regard to any previous social status.

  In the elite class, the Soshes, there were the sociopath managers, many of them had been corporate CEO's, had they been in similar positions a century before, they might have ordered guards to fire into crowds of striking workers, and would have done so without hesitation, they were invaluable because of their willingness to serve a ruthless dictator for personal gain, regardless of how the masses were treated. There were also a handful of scientists, but only those without a strong sense of ethics, to whom the only thing that mattered was the research.

  The next group was mostly comprised of politicians, but only the ones, who if given the chance, would be dictators themselves, if they could not rule, the next best thing was to be close to the ruler. Then there were the artists, musicians and actors, the organic portion of the Deux found that it enjoyed the arts tremendously, especially music, and it found that art was useful in keeping the masses complacent. It found that if it gave them constant music, and television, there were a lot fewer problems.

  The lower class, the workers, lived in barracks, ate in cafeterias, and were treated much the same as people have been treated in prison camps since prison camps began. The vast majority of people were miserable, but then, it's been that
way for most of human history.

  The world continued this way for about forty years. The Deux knew that its organic portion would not live forever, so it chose a replacement, that was wired in just before the original died. It did this one more time as the years went by, and so it continued.

  Larry had grown up among the Soshes, he was a big, muscular kid, but had rebelled, as teenagers are wont to do. Before the transition, he might have been on the high school football team, and quit and formed a rock band, and experimented with drugs. Now he was just removed from his family at the age of fifteen and sent to the rice paddies.

  Life in the barracks was designed to destroy any sense of individuality, everyone slept in identical bunks, two high, heads were shaved every other week, and everyone wore identical gray jumpsuits. Showers and restrooms were communal, there was no privacy other than what one could find under blankets in bed. Most sex was in the open, some people formed short or long term relationships, while others just slept with whoever was convenient.

  With no available birth control, babies were common, often born with no clear idea who the father was. With no medical care, infant mortality was high, New mothers were given three days off work, and then then were expected to be back at work as usual, children were kept in day care, where they were taught obedience to the Deux until they were nine years old and then they were sent to work.

  Larry was befriended by a couple with a young daughter named Maggie, whose bunks were near his. They worked in the kitchens that provided food for the local Soshes, Edgar was a baker and Susie was a server, occasionally she was allowed to bring back scraps of food that the Soshes had not eaten. On very rare occasion, Susie would obtain meat in the form of cheeseburgers. When Larry was seventeen he formed a relationship with a fifteen-year-old girl named Molly, who worked in the laundry, she had already had one baby that had died in infancy. One day, Edgar made a mistake in measuring while making bread dough, making the bread inedible, and was demoted to hedge maintenance. Soon afterwards Molly gave birth to Desmond.