“Let me get you help.”
She shook her head, her face distorted by an unusual grimace. “First, dash to that black shelf at the end of the aisle. Open it and bring to me the scrambler inside. Hurry.”
Luke had never run so fast. It seemed he floated, his feet barely touching the ground until he knelt beside granny with the equipment.
“Put the chip inside and turn it on.”
In a moment, the scrambler lit up, the tiny screen showing what went on inside.
Geolocation altered…Unique Identity altered…Error message broadcast…Chip disabled… Scrambler system shutting down.
“Excellent,” granny said. “Any other officer homing in on us will be confused.”
“Until another finds this place.”
“You are death without faith, young man. Granny looked away for a while. Something bad is going to happen.” “The children shouldn’t be in the hands of Maya in the first place. But if you rush into the fray and get killed, as I told you before, there’s no guarantee that Maya will release them.”
“So, what do I do now, sit down on my ass and eat cultured eggs and bacon?”
“Not funny. I’m not suggesting you take no action.” She waved her hands. “Do the contents of this vault resemble the equipment of one who sits on her ass?”
Luke shook his head, his eyes on the exoskeleton he’d been recently acquainted with.
“Excellent,” granny said through her reddened teeth. “Now, listen very carefully because I have a little time left.”
“I told you to take that longevity treatment. You’d have been…”
“Shut up and listen.” She waved her hands again. “You must have suspected that a small woman like I could not have built this vault, acquired all the hardware it contains, and ferry them here.”
“Not if you lived five hundred years and you brought one in daily. But you need help now…”
“You have functional use of your intellectual faculties. But listen.”
“Ok.”
“I’m not the only one in this town, country or the world committed to the old ways…”
“The old ways weren’t always good.”
“You are right. Let me call it the good way, the sustainable way. There used to be many of us, enough of us to counter the bad side. For a long time, we have succeeded in maintaining a balance, the last state necessary to maintain viable humanity. Note that we…”
“Who’s we?”
“The resistance.
“I didn’t sign up for any resistance.”
“Note that we were not, and are not, trying to destroy the bad side, they are necessary to the continued feasibility of the human race.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I thought you wanted to show me how to destroy Maya and rescue my pupils?”
“Not in the way you probably think. Evil is necessary for good to exist, and the other way round. Remove one and the other wanes into inexistence. Then where would we be?”
“Remind me.”
“Would you rather not exist at all or exist even if you have to live alongside evil?”
“I don’t need to think to answer that question.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Although it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t exist, the experience is the reason why we exist at all.”
“Go on.”
“As long as we exist, the best thing would be to spend our days pursuing only that which gives us the best experience.”
“The best could be subjective. There are others whose superlative world might be counter to your best. So?”
It hit Luke with a rush of excitement. “I see what you’re driving at. Some people enjoy doing evil.”
“Simply put! I might still be proud of you, Luke.”
Her breath shuddered. Luke stepped forward, wrapped his hands around the frail shoulders, pressing his head against her.
“That’s enough, young man.”
He let her go, his hands hovering gingerly over her.
“I’m not as fragile as I look,” granny said. “Just remember that in these days, so far away from our animal roots, we must still confront evil head-on, in the most basic way. That’s why, if you get familiar with this place, you will find weapons dating to a time before recorded history.”
He turned his head, scanning an assortment of bewildering weapons. Granny’s fingers were slick on his arm.
“They are yours, everything in this house. What you see here is the tip of an iceberg. There are many hidden rooms, filled with everything you need.”
“Granny, I’ve not agreed to join the resistance.”
“You can’t join us. All the resistance members are out of touch. We dare not communicate in the face of global surveillance.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will open the secret rooms at your own time. Whatever you find is yours. Use it to defend humanity.”
“Defend humanity?”
“In any way you can, even if you must use the enemy's method.”
She closed her eyes. Luke waited for her to speak. She didn’t. He touched her, gently shook her. No response. He pressed his ear against her chest. Not a flutter. He squatted on his heels and filled the vault with howls of anguish.
CHAPTER 10 CROSSING THE THRESHOLD
In the evening, he stood with Granny in his arms. She weighed less than a bag of dry leaves as he carried her out into the garden. Luke didn’t know whether she was so light because of old age, or because he was growing, his muscles and bones growing at an alarming rate. He had limited time before the growth became noticeable. He had to reach Maya before he turned into a freak abhorred and hunted by everybody with a gun. He went back into the vault and returned with a spade. It was in perfect condition after hundreds of years.
After thirty minutes of work, he’d dug a large enough hole. He buried granny in the old ways, outside the house underneath a lush tree bearing luscious low-hanging berries. He lacked the means to disintegrate her, anyway.
Scientists have recreated several predators to keep the herbivores under control. The worst thing was that some crazy people had illegally created other flesh-eaters that weren’t even on the government database. He spent several hours hunting for stones. He placed them on top of her to prevent any animals from digging her up. Then he covered the grave with the soil, and then leaves and branches. It was the best he could do to ensure he left no traces of the burial. If the agents of the government discovered that she was dead, they would take over the land and property in a second. They’d allocate it as they want.
The chore done, he went about the house like an automaton. The questions of how Maya had managed to send a public robot after he whirled in his mind. If it was true that some advanced AI machines have developed consciousness, this must be how they felt.
The public robots were a vestige of the collapsed world government. After the Coalition of Angry Citizens quashed the Global Party and its supporters, most of the useful autonomous and semi-autonomous systems were spared from destruction because of a severe shortage of labor. They have been performing their functions ever since and they were impossible to hack. But Maya has done it. It meant he could trust no electronic android system, a difficult thing to do.
He spent the rest of the day changing the door locking system and then he went and smeared himself with a generous helping of the depilatory. Satisfied he'd suppress the hair growth for the day, he returned to the underground vault.
From that midday, he began a systematic tour, inspecting the various machines of death. Some had digital instruction manuals, some had pieces of papers and booklets explaining uses. Some had none. He stared clear of those.
In the box from which he'd grabbed the scrambler earlier on, he found a small handheld monitor. He pushed the tiny button in the side. The full-color screen came on, displaying an interactive content table. Tapping a link called up three-dimensional schematics of granny's house. Luke shook his head at the u
nbelievable extent of the underground infrastructure. He wanted to explore the complex but he needed to get to the children. And if possible, avenge granny, if it was the last thing he did even though he knew not where Maya was.
The anger in him seemed to suck out the air from his lungs. He hid the handheld device and jogged to his room. He filled a silver pocket bottle with a depilatory. On his way out of the house, he averted his eye from granny’s room. He felt he was partly responsible for her death.
Outside, he cupped his palm over his eyes, the heat of the sun hitting him like a furnace. He took a last look around at the few acres of land that granny had clung to for reasons that he was just understanding. It was covered with genetically modified plants that were either cultivated or have invaded. The land itself was invaluable because few people had their land these days, but the value of what lay under it was invaluable. If what granny said was true, the weapons might very well be his only means of survival. It would be his base from now on. He took a deep breath, turned his back on the house, and jogged down the gentle slope.
He slipped off the narrow road into the forest, reminding himself to always return home by a different route. It felt more comfortable, more at ease slipping through the trees. Of course, he was a biologist and had spent a lot of time exploring the wild, even staying for days in the field categorizing countless illegal fauna and flora. But this was different. The wooded area felt like home. He found himself turning to the right, away from his direction. He headed deeper into the jungle, the calls of birds brittle in his ears, a certain hunger growing in him. He bumped his head against a branch and stopped to rub his forehead. He shook his head. He was a good three inches taller. He froze as a large grub wriggled out of a hole in the branch.
It must be the larva of one of the new insects. It was as large as his forearm, with large almost intelligent eyes all over its body. Its body glistened with oil. It must contain a higher percentage of protein. He swallowed and reached out to grab it and froze. The grub was a startling red with bright yellow lines down its length. An animal that wasn’t trying to hide, that wasn’t camouflaged was a confident animal. In the old word science, it meant poison, or the ability to do serious mischief. In the new world, it could be worse. He retracted his hand and stepped back, surprised that he was heading in the opposite direction to his objective.
“What am I?” he said to the grub. “What am I?” The grub continued on its sedate way without a glance at him. He slapped himself on the chest. “This is what Maya turned me into, a half-animal. I’m sorry.” He turned and headed back toward the town.
CHAPTER 11
As usual, the street was crowded. Even when people no longer needed to go to work at a specific place, like in the olden days, harried pedestrians rubbed shoulders with android robots. Colored autonomous vehicles of all kinds raced mindlessly along magnetic motorways or low air corridors, outperforming the standard glide cars citizens were allowed to own.
High above, under a cloudless sky, in the network of high air corridors, family flying cars jostled with kilometer-long self-controlled freight ships.
It was good that the pedestrians minded their business but it was impossible to know who was who. Or if someone was tailing him. He regretted that in his anger at granny's death, he'd forgotten to carry a weapon lethal to man and machines. There were several in the vault. Rather he'd left home with only an electromagnetic pulse gun and a screwdriver, just what he needed to raid the police headquarters database.
If he managed to get in alive, he'd find a way to access other computers. He suspected that the officers knew where Maya held the children but she'd silenced their pursuit by one means or the other. He wouldn't be surprised if they all came after him. Otherwise, although the robot officers were mostly programmed to prevent crimes, in emergencies, the police response was usually automatic and lightning-fast.
There were no uniformed police robots around. Not even their ubiquitous silver vehicles. If luck was on his side, there'd be no busybody undercover officers too. When there was a short lull in traffic, he vaulted the fence and went down the road. In another moment, he was a nobody in a sea of sentient and insentient beings.
He refused to board a self-driving taxi. He was testing things out to see what he could get away with. Four hours of walking took him to the metal perimeter fence of the police headquarters. It was the best place to begin the search for his pupils.
In a spurious resemblance to the old reality, a manicured landscape surrounded the police precinct. The metal fence rose thirty feet. The surface was smooth, with neither an indentation nor a handhold. He'd never been sporty but he wasn't intimidated. The obstacle was an interesting challenge. It excited him to solve it.
He looked closely. Certainly, there would be a loophole. Artificially complex systems open themselves up to catastrophic failures, if one knew the location of their weak points. An hour of scrutinizing gave him the answer. There were no surveillance systems in place outside the wall unless they are microscopic ones. If there were any, he'd find out soon.
Somehow, he wasn't surprised at his newfound confidence. Or strength. He backed away from the imposing wall.
The untiring monitors of all things humans have failed to monitor their perimeter. It could be a bug, a backdoor, that the developers emplaced for future exploitation or as a fail-safe. But what some long-forgotten robotics engineer did before his late grandfather was born wasn't why he was here.
He leaned forward and sprinted, propelling himself faster with each push of his foot. The silver wall seemed to rush at him. At the last instant, he pushed hard off the ground, sailed through the air, and stamped his foot more than halfway up. His fingers grabbed the edge and he pulled himself up with one swift motion.
Chin on the sun-warmed metal, Luke peeked into the sprawling complex. Rows of office geometrically aligned office buildings and barracks spread into the distance. Silver-colored squad glide cars and flying motorcycles stood with unnatural precision in designated parking places. From what he knew, each Roboforce vehicle was armored and practically indestructible. At least not by normal means. Armed sentries patrolled, their unnervingly human-like heads and eyes swiveling, watching.
There were several different robots, from the ancient to the latest. Luke made his pick, a much-tarnished officer standing stock still, paying attention to its front. It was probably vintage. It wouldn't have all the capabilities of the newer ones.
The precinct was busy, vehicles going in and out. A heavy-duty glide car flashed in from the other side and deposited a group of nine men and women in handcuffs. The arrested offenders protested loudly, raining insults on the deadpanned-faced officers. A woman scrubbed her face on the ground from a shove in the small of her back. Screams of pain filled the precinct. The officer that pushed the woman shrugged, a perfect imitation of the real thing, and then marched them into a large building at gunpoint.
Luke ducked as High-powered sirens howled too close for comfort. Unable to block his ears, he clenched his teeth against the pain as another police glide car bristling with the black metal of Haley guns popped the sky and vanished over the horizon to some unknown emergency. Maybe a riot. Another car followed. And then another. It was an August opportunity.
He hauled himself up and slid down the other side, his feet thumping into the ground. Creeping on silent feet, Luke pushed the EMP gun against it a split second before the officer wheeled with an oversized pistol in his hand. Luke caught it before its knees hit the ground. He dragged the robot behind a tree and relieved it of its uniform. He inserted the tip of his screwdriver in a well-chosen spot and short-circuited the officer.
A few minutes later, he walked in through the front door of the police headquarters.
CHAPTER 12
A bitter cold sent a shiver through him. He’d forgotten that the robots used supercomputers and their entire habitation was just a sort of cryogenic chamber for a normal human being. The subzero temperature was necessary, the only way to k
eep the fine electronics the robots depended on working. He passed through the security scanners. He let out his breath, as the ringing of alarms didn’t happen as he’d thought it would.
He proceeded along the extensive corridor. The walls on either side of him were lined with officers. They stood still, shoulder to shoulder, in a way that was impossible for a living organism to be. If he spent too much time in the headquarters, he would die of hypothermia before the officers killed him. He kept his body straight, resisting a need to shake. He strode with measured steps until he reached a junction. Further corridors went to both sides.
There wasn’t a sign he could follow. He looked left and right, trying to make up his mind how to find the computer database. Convinced that he was on a fool’s errand, he turned to the right, being a hopeful person. Far down the brightly lit corridor, an officer stepped its dock on the wall. Its movements indistinguishable from that of a human, it approached, its footsteps echoing in the large enclosed space.
Luke turned to the right and went down the other corridor. He threw long strides while making it look as if he wasn’t in a hurry. The other end looked so far away that he had the urge to break into a sprint. But that would be signing his death. Yet, no matter how fast he walked, the approaching steps drew nearer. Beads of sweat rolled down his neck as he walked the gauntlet of inactive robots, while one of them trailed him.
It was certainly trailing him.
Then it was walking next to him.
Then it stuck a pistol into his side.
“Go on,” it said.
Luke had no option but to comply. He concentrated on the EMP pistol in his waistband, waiting for an opportunity to deactivate the lifeless thing. But even if he did, there would be no getting out alive, when Maya had captured thirty children because of him. Robot officers didn’t like being stared in the face. He stole a sideways look and gasped. Was that a wink? He repressed the urge to look behind. The wink again! Luke winked back and he got a minuscule nod ahead in response.
MARK OF THE EARTHWALKER: Evolution Protocol Page 4