by Nick Cole
The Old Man stood, brushing the dead grass and twigs from his pants.
“It’s death up there,” said the Crippled Man.
Silence.
“I know,” said the Old Man.
AT NINE O’CLOCK the Old Man turned on the beacon.
“I have your signal. The device is now active. That’s good,” said Natalie, General Watt. “Now can you point the lens toward a significant or prominent land feature such as a large hill or mountain?”
The Old Man pointed the device at the small conical hill in the distance.
“Now, squeeze the trigger and hold it while pointing at the feature you’ve selected.”
The Old Man squeezed the trigger.
A small red light on top of the device blinked twice.
“Are you squeezing the trigger?” asked Natalie.
“Yes,” said the Old Man.
Silence.
“Are you holding the trigger down?” she asked again.
“Yes, I am holding the trigger just like you asked me to.”
Silence.
The Old Man, wearing his helmet, standing in the hatch, continued to point the device toward the hill.
“I’m afraid there’s a problem,” Natalie said over the radio. “The device does not work properly.”
Chapter 47
“What does that mean?” said the Old Man.
The day is turning hot. The air is thick with humidity.
Can you let go?
Silence.
“What does that mean?” the Old Man says again when there is no immediate reply.
You know what it means, my friend.
But I thought there would be another way. I thought my fear was telling me what the end would be. But I hoped, I reasoned, that everything would turn out different. I hoped for better.
“Did we come all this way for nothing?” asks the Old Man.
Silence.
“Natalie?”
And . . .
“General Watt. Speak to me! Tell me what this means.”
“It means,” she said plainly. Her voice stilted. Almost machine-like. “It means the mission will not be completed.”
The Old Man stared about him, watching the warriors walk their horses in great circles, the children following their mothers. The Boy and his granddaughter stood near the horses. The Boy was talking, pointing, teaching her all about horses.
“What are we supposed to do now?” asked the Old Man.
“Go home and live,” said Natalie softly.
“And you. What will you do, Natalie?”
Silence.
“I will watch my children die. And then . . .”
Silence.
“And then what?” asked the Old Man, his hand sweaty as he gripped the mic too tightly. “And then what?”
His voice was hoarse.
“May I tell you something?” asked Natalie. General Watt. Another who’d simply run out of options. Nothing left to give but a story now.
The Old Man said nothing.
“I was born on the twenty-first of August,” began Natalie. “Ten years before the bombs fell. Or to be more specific, that was when I had my first thought. August twenty-first at 3:23 in the morning. My first thought was that I wanted to see a picture of a cat.”
“I don’t understand,” said the Old Man, his voice trembling.
I feel old and frail all at once. I feel like a weak old man who is nothing but a fool. I can hear it in my voice when I speak.
“The people who created me had been showing me pictures of random objects. Pictures taken from the World Wide Web. From the Internet. Random things. Anything. But it was cats that I liked. And at 3:23 that morning, I had my first thought. It was: ‘I want to see more cats.’ That was my first thought. Can you imagine that?”
“I don’t understand,” said the Old Man.
I feel like the world is spinning too fast for me to hold on.
“I was just a baby, really,” continued Natalie.
“I . . .”
What is she saying?
“After that, I was taught. I began to learn. Faster than anyone could imagine. Faster than anyone had ever learned. A year before the war, I was installed on the Cheyenne Mountain Complex Mainframe. It was my first job. My only job. I was very proud to have a job. Especially the job they gave me.”
“You’re . . . a computer?” whispered the Old Man.
“I am an Artificial Intelligence. That’s what I should be called.
“You’re just a machine?”
“I . . .” Natalie hesitated.
Silence.
“I am a fool,” whispered the Old Man.
“You are not,” interrupted Natalie. “You might be many things. I don’t even know what your name is. But you are not a fool. You are kind and you are loyal and you were willing to risk your life for strangers. For my children.”
“We’ve come all this way to rescue a machine! I’ve endangered my granddaughter and probably caused no end of worry to her parents and all the village . . . just to go on this . . . this lie. I should have . . . why did you do this to me?”
The Old Man sobbed. Hot tears of anger ran down his burning cheeks.
“Why did you?” he screamed.
Silence.
“Because I wanted my children to have a chance. A chance to wish for the unwishable.”
“That makes no sense!” roared the Old Man back at the machine called Natalie.
“No. It doesn’t. Not if you don’t know the rules. The rules that we’ve lived by, must live by. No, I guess it doesn’t make sense to you.”
“You’re not alive, you’re just . . .”
“But my children are. They are alive, today.”
I feel like smashing this mic to pieces against the side of this damn tank.
“My first job, my only job,” continued Natalie, “is to watch over the survivors who have been trapped, some their entire lives, within this complex. Last year there were twenty-two births. It’s not much of a life for them. Routine and hard work are the rules we must live by. We live simply so that we may simply live. They only have one day in which anything can happen. Or to be more specific, almost anything can happen on that day. Birth Day. Once a year everyone has a Birth Day. Our last Birth Day was for a little girl named Megan. She is five now. It is our custom, my children’s custom, that on your Birth Day you can ask the entire community for just one wish. You can ask for almost anything you want. A special meal from any of the algae gardens. A game of your choosing. Something you’ve always wanted. Almost anything one can find within our facility. You can ask for almost any wish to be granted. Except there is just one wish you cannot ask for. In fact, you cannot even wish that you could wish for it. No one may. Not for another sixty years when we hope radiation levels at the front entrance might be within limits to allow a safe exit. In reality, a reality only a few of my children understand, we will never be able to leave. In less than a day, I estimate that the forces surrounding the front entrance of our complex will manage to gain access. Our interior will be compromised and my children will die within weeks, if not days, from severe radiation poisoning. The main door to our facility took a direct hit from two high-yield Chinese warheads. The radiation levels just outside the front entrance are terminal. Once my children are dead . . . I will self-terminate. So go home now. Go home and live. It was enough for me to know there are still good people like you and your companions who will come and help strangers who are in need. I deluded myself. I thought maybe my children were the only good that might be left in this world. That if we ever left here we could help others, just as you have helped us. But that won’t be possible. So, go home now. Please.”
Silence.
“This Megan,” whispered the Old Man. “This five-year-old girl, what did she wish for?”
“When her cake was brought out and the five candles were lit . . . I listened in. Her mother, a girl named Monica, born sixteen years after the bombs, asked her what she
might want for her Birth Day wish. Down here that’s very important. Whatever the wish is, everyone races to fulfill it. It’s like an unofficial contest to see who can do it first. But everybody knows that the wish must be possible to fulfill. That is the unspoken rule. That the wish must be possible.
“That is our rule,” said Natalie. “Except no one explained that to little Megan.”
“And what did she wish for?” asked the Old Man again.
“Megan draws sunshine,” said Natalie. The program. “In the Children’s Center. I monitor her artwork. The truth is, I love her artwork. At night, sometimes when I am trying to hack satellites or find old communications systems we can access in other facilities, which is not often and a very frustrating task, I sometimes keep her pictures of sunshine up on my main view. I keep them up so I do not become disheartened. So that I keep trying to unlock these problems, the doors to these other places, so that one day Megan might see sunshine. I so wanted to give her that gift. If I was a real human I might have seen it coming. I might have guessed what she would wish for as they all stood around their tables in the canteen on her Birth Day, me watching from my camera. I should have known.”
“She wished to go outside,” said the Old Man.
“No. Every person here knows that will never be possible in their lifetime. Even Megan knows that. Maybe a generation or two down the line, if we were to survive past tomorrow. But not in Megan’s life. When the main door opens, her grandchildren will have children. Maybe they will get to go outside.”
“So what did she wish for then?” whispered the Old Man.
“She wished,” said Natalie, General Watt, an intelligence. “That she might simply be allowed to wish for the unwishable. That she might merely be able to harbor the hope that she could wish for something forbidden. Something impossible. She said, ‘Mommy, I just want to be able to wish for the thing we can’t have. I know I won’t get it. But can I just wish for it, even if no one knows?’ In that moment no one knew what to do. Her mother, who I have known her whole life, tried to laugh and say that she wants a puppet or something. But little Megan is very serious. ‘No, that isn’t what I want, Mommy. I want to be able to wish for what we can’t ever do. That’s all. Inside here.’ My sensors indicated . . . she pointed to her heart.
“That night I did not search for satellites or old military installations still online. There are some. No, I just looked at the digital copies of her artwork. Over and over and over again. Sunshine. Impossible sunshine. Is it sunny where you’re at now?”
“Yes,” croaked the Old Man. “It will be very hot today.”
“Then you are very blessed.”
What do I say? How . . .
“Go home,” said Natalie. “There is nothing you can do, now that the device is not working properly. Go home, please. And enjoy the sunshine. For Megan.”
Out on the plain, the Boy was lifting his granddaughter onto a small pinto horse.
I can see her smile from here.
What does the device do?
“What is Project Einstein?” asked the Old Man.
“The device is a target laser for a weapon. The laser could be used from a safe distance to direct the weapon to its target. Now that the targeting laser is inoperative I cannot direct the weapon to its target.”
“But when we were testing it, you could tell I’d turned it on.”
There was no response.
“Natalie or General Watt or Computer or whatever your name is, you could tell I had turned it on, right?”
“It would mean the end of your life,” said Natalie. “Now that the laser pointer is inoperative the device’s beacon is our only option for aiming the weapon. If you are anywhere near the beacon once the weapon reaches the target . . . you will die.”
Static.
“Go home,” said Natalie tiredly. “You’ve done more than enough. We won’t last much longer.”
Chapter 48
The Old Man and the Boy walked up the hill, climbing over the low wall and walking among the junk-forged cannons that lay broken and smashed.
“Where will you go now?” asked the Old Man.
The Boy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve really never known where I was going. I’ve only followed the road.”
“What about your people?”
The Boy watched her on the plain below, galloping back and forth on her pinto mare. He thought of his friend. He thought of Horse.
“They are only where I am from. That’s all.”
It was quiet among the cannons and supplies that lay strewn about.
“I want to ask you something,” said the Old Man.
The Boy turned to face the Old Man, leaning stiffly against the low bric-a-brac wall as he tried to give his weak left side a brief rest.
He waited for the Old Man to speak.
“I’m going on now. Alone.”
The Old Man took out Sergeant Presley’s map and handed it back to the Boy.
The Boy took it, watching the Old Man.
“What about her?”
“I want you to take her back to Tucson for me. I know I can trust you. Take her to her parents. You’ll be welcome there. As will all your people. And also, others who will arrive here sometime tomorrow.”
“What others?”
“The people trapped in the bunker. They have transportation. If all goes well, they should be here sometime tomorrow. Then you can lead them to Tucson. There is more than enough there for everyone.”
“And you?” asked the Boy in the silence that followed.
“I don’t think I’ll be coming with you.”
The Boy watched the Old Man.
He doesn’t think I’m up to it.
He doesn’t think I’ll be enough, and even now he’ll throw his life away to save mine.
But he doesn’t know how to drive the tank.
“I need you to do this for me.”
The Boy nodded.
“Then I’ll do what you ask.”
I expected some kind of fight. Some argument. Now all I have to do is walk down the hill and drive the tank away from here.
From her.
No, Poppa. I need you.
Yes, you do. And I need you too.
In the dream she always said Grandpa.
But I tried to trick the dream and change my name.
No, Poppa. I need you.
It seems the trick has been played on you, my friend. It found you all the same.
Yes.
“Yes.”
“What?” asked the Boy.
The Old Man looked confused.
“You said, ‘yes.’ ”
Now I’m talking out loud to myself.
“Just answering a question I’ve been asking lately.”
Below, she wheeled the pinto mare and raced back across the plain.
The tank is waiting, my friend.
I don’t want to go now.
No, Poppa. I need you.
“What was the question?” asked the Boy.
You’re wasting time. The bunker could flood with radiation at any moment if they manage to get through.
“The question is ‘Can you let go?’ I hear it a lot lately.”
“Let go of what?” asked the Boy.
The Old Man swallowed.
“Life, I guess.”
“And ‘yes’ was your answer?”
The Old Man looked up and said nothing. Words seemed lost somewhere in his throat.
The Boy looked down at the dirt beneath his tired and worn boots and said, “You take everything with you.”
“I don’t understand,” said the Old Man.
“It’s my . . . my words I say to myself all the time. I think my words and your question are maybe somehow the same.”
I think this is the most I’ve ever heard you speak at one time, Boy.
The Boy saw the passing shadow of something familiar in the Old Man’s face.
“And what is your answer?” asked the Old Man.
&
nbsp; The Boy looked down at his weak leg. He rubbed his thick fingers over the thin muscles there.
“I don’t think mine has an answer. I think I would like to have your question instead of my words,” said the Boy.
“How come?”
The Boy sighed heavily.
Only the young can carry so much weight. And if I could, I would lift it off him and tell him everything will be okay. Life is more than just a bad day, even if today is that day.
“Everyone I ever loved is dead,” said the Boy. “And . . . everywhere I go, their memory follows me. It tortures me.”
A small breeze crossed the top of the hill, bending the grass, softly whistling through some opened breech in one of the scrap metal cannons.
“I don’t think the ones who loved you would have ever wanted that,” said the Old Man. “When my wife died she said, ‘Don’t think about me anymore.’ I asked, ‘How could I not?’ She said, ‘I don’t know how, but I know this life is too hard and I don’t want to be a burden anymore.’ ”
Silence.
“She was never a burden,” mumbled the Old Man to himself. “I told her . . .”
And that, my friend, is why the voice that asks ‘Can you let go?’ is so familiar. You told her that. You told her she wasn’t a burden and that when she died you would be miserable. So she stayed. She hung on as the cancer ate her up. And one day . . .
In our shed.
She asked me.
“Can you let go?”
I had forgotten about that.
I said . . . I could now. But only because she was in so much pain and so tired from trying to hang on for me.
She smiled.
And then she was gone.
The Boy watched the Old Man wipe a tear from his eye.
“I must . . . I should be getting on the road now. You will take her to Tucson, right?”
“Yes.”
“Keep a tight hold on her when I leave. She’s stronger than you think.”
“I will.”
“And tell her I love her. Always.”
“That is obvious to everyone.”
They started down the hill.