He didn’t know what was going on. He kept walking, the clicks of his shoes now the most despondent sound he’s heard recently.
They reached the end of the corridor and turned left into another. A nudge in the side from the pistol told him to stop before a door. The officer touched the door and it slid open. Luke stepped into a warm space. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of unwashed bodies, stale alcohol, and piss emanating from the large holding room. It heaved with offenders, all wearing the notorious self-detonating electronic handcuffs. Little wonder the room’s temperature was kept at the human level.
The officer poked a finger in his chest. “Welcome, human.”
Luke was disinclined to talk to an android. He looked around quickly. There was no other officer in the room. His brain whirled with plans on how to escape. Maybe if he could talk to the offenders, they might be able to subdue the robot. The offenders stared back at him as if he was an object of amusing interest.
“You may speak if you wish.”
Luke gasped. “You’re not a robot?
“Never been one, never will be.”
“Unbelievable. What are you doing here?”
The officer shrugged. “Let’s say I’m here in the interest of humanity.”
A spell of vertigo attacked Luke. Granny had talked of saving humanity. A few days later, he was in the robot force headquarters, a human mole telling him he was also working for humanity. He nodded in the direction of the people.
“How about them?”
“They are miscreants. They will pass through correctional processes if I wasn’t here.”
“Who are you?”
“John Shapiro, Inspector of the real police force. I’m a real police officer.”
“That’s not true. Everybody knows the robots are our only security forces since the war.”
Inspector John leaned closer. “Don’t speak so loud. This room is electronically insulated, but that was hundreds of years ago. There might be a malfunction somewhere and the robots could hear us. If they do, where would we be?”
Luke looked at John out of the corners of his eye. The bright blue eyes were brittle cold. That was the only way he could describe it. A pasted-on smile spread over John’s face.
“Ok, let me tell you.” John winked conspiratorially. “When the government created the robot force, they also put in place a way to pull the plug on them if things go awry. For example, if the robots suddenly developed consciousness, I have to fight them, from within.”
“What can you do alone against millions of them?”
“There are many like me. That’s all I’m allowed to say. But what brought you here.”
Luke hesitated. He reasoned that if John was saying the truth, he could ask for his help in finding the children. He leaned closer and told John everything. “Can you help me access the computer database?”
“For what?”
“I have kids to track. They were taken from the schoolhouse because of me. I have to get them back.”
“Kids? John’s eyelids trembled. “Oh, yes, Kids.” He smiled. “That is the least I can do for humanity. It is within my job description.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?”
John smiled again. “That’s why I’m here.” He turned around and beckoned.
The offenders swarmed all over Luke like giant predatory insects. Luke kicked and punched and shoved. For a few seconds, he felt himself become one with his thoughts, his limbs obeying him instantly. A circle formed around him as the attackers backed away.
“Jeez! Why’s he snarling and growling like that?” a burly man in the flowered shorts said.
“Like some goddamn extinct monkey.” His friend pressed a hand to his eyes. “The damned animal nearly plucked my eye. Look at the freaking hair on his arms!”
“Get him,” Inspector John said, his voice promising a threat.
Clawed fingers almost touching the floor, Luke glared around him, sending the crowd several steps back. He nearly chuckled at the effect he was having on them. A slow clap came from behind. He snapped his head around.
John beamed mirthlessly. “This is fabulous.” He nodded in mock admiration. “But I’m not impressed. Maya said I was to expect a little fight from you.”
The room blurred, leaving only the uniformed inspector before Luke. “I’m confused. Do you know Maya?”
“The word’s out on you. Everybody loves a little bounty now and then.” John’s hand went to his pistol. “I’m to deliver you to her…”
Luke sailed through the air as the gun came free of the holster. A loud crack resonated in the room as his hands turned John’s neck sharply. The pistol clattered on the floor as they rolled over and over and bounced from the wall. Instantly on his feet, he stepped over John’s body. He kicked the measured steps, he approached the cowering offenders.
The man in shorts fell on his knees, his face a grimace of fear. “I’m Julian. He forced us. He said if we helped him subdue you quietly, he would take us out of this place in his man pilotable glide car.”
“How.”
“In the same glide car that brought us. He arrested all of us. It was an opportunity to get out. “So, how do we get out of here, all of us?”
“He said he has a device to make us invisible to the robot police.” Julian crawled fast on his hands and knees to John’s body. After a short search, he raised an oblong metallic device. It had small red and blue buttons. “A magnetic jammer. It freezes the internal process of the robots for a given time, according to how you set it.
“How did you know all of this?”
Julian stared back. “The Inspector told me.”
“I can’t imagine a police officer sharing secrets with felons.”
“John and I go a long way. But listen, I heard you talk of accessing the fucking database. I can help you. I know how to get to the operation room.” He switched on the jammer, gesturing at the door.
Luke considered for a second. He picked John’s pistol and faced the offenders. “Stay here,” he said to the men and women. “I’ll come back to get you out of this place.”
CHAPTER13 BELLY OF THE WHALE
Although he was a nature lover, it was the first time that Luke truly appreciated the warmth of the sun. After the freezing air of the police headquarters, the sun rays penetrate through the shiny black hair that covered him all over. He’d lost his depilatory container, he must get home fast or find a way to make more hair remover.
It was anticlimactic walking with thirty men and women through the long corridors lined with lethally armed robots. He still had an itch in the small of his back as he increased the distance between them and the main building. He expected a bullet to plow into him at any time. It was high time he should learn not to trust strangers, but he still did, and not bullet hit him.
A tall woman spat on a frozen robot to the suppressed amusement of the others. “I hope your damn DNA isn’t in their database,” Julian said with a smirk.
Luke ignored the look of regret on the woman’s face. He sighed in relief as the pleasantly sleek shape of a spacious midrange cruiser came within a few feet. “It seems the jammer worked after all.”
Julian waved the offenders ahead. “It is old technology for deactivating any robot, only issued to fucking VIPs.”
“We’re all VIPs now.” Luke scrutinized his new friends. “All right, who knows how to fly this thing?”
Julian raised his free hand, his mouth bunched to one side.
Luke hesitated. He shrugged and lifted a teenage girl into the craft. With the smell of synthetic grease and leather in his nose, he put the women in first before he let the men enter; that was how granny raised him.
Julian handed over the jammer. He boarded the glide car and made his way to the only seat in the pilot’s cabin. “Put on your seat belts.”
The cruiser hummed alive. Someone began to sob. Luke climbed the short steps and gripped the handhold. He scanned the precinct, as his guts seemed to drop into hi
s tight boots. Houses and trees slipped away far underneath.
It was his first time flying. An urge to get off the craft filled him. It grew until everything was a blur except the feeling of being a subsonic projectile. Lightheadedness threatened him but things were changing and he had to keep up. He stared resolutely out of the tiny portholes. It was a wonder there were portholes. The enforcement vehicle was even air-conditioned.
When he resigned himself to the almost imperceptible hum of the glide car, the scenery far below had become strange. Not that he was used to seeing it from above but a certain instinct he didn’t have before told him he wasn’t in a familiar location. The fleeting vista of tall buildings, road networks, and the forest was different. He was far away from anywhere he knew. He made his way through the narrow aisle to the front. Julian leaned forward in the seat, the lights of the dashboard casting an eerie glow on his rugged face.
Luke tapped him on the shoulder. “Where are we?”
“Huh?”
“We were supposed to drop off everybody before you set me down a kilometer from Maya’s place.”
“Of course.”
“Of course?”
“We are almost there.” Julian stood up and stretched. He stepped back from the deep leather seat. “You want to fly the car?”
Cries came from behind as the craft tilted to one side. The floor dropping from under his feet, Luke grabbed the pilot’s seat to steady himself, his bulging eyes on Julian. “What are you doing?”
“Flying.”
With that, Julian touched a button. With a crackling sound, the faint bluish shimmer of an energy field sealed off the cabin entrance, cutting off the screams that came from the rear. Luke lunged. Julian easily evaded him and jumped into the seat, buckling in himself with practiced ease. Luke pressed his hands against his ears as a sharp explosion filled the small space. When the smoke cleared, the pilot’s seat was gone. Air rushed in through the gaping hole at the top of the downward pointed cabin. He shook his head at being tricked twice in a row.
Luke forced himself against the force that threatened to push him against the energy field. It could electrocute him. He managed to grab a finger hold and hauled himself inch by inch to the instrument panel. A scream escaped as the ground rushed to meet them at an unbelievable speed. He refused to close his eyes. Then blackout.
Blackness.
Heat.
Burning.
The hiss of escaping air.
The hiss of gas escaping under pressure.
A silver line of daylight appeared. It widened into a rectangular manhole.
Luke took a moment recollecting himself. His fingers were wrapped around a hard object, the magnetic jammer. The last thing he remembered that he was inside a plummeting police glide car. Stiff with pain, he pulled himself up by the edge of the opening and peered into a reddening sunset. Reluctantly, afraid of what he would see, he lowered his eyes.
A forest surrounded him. The spherically shaped shell of the pilot’s cabin lay in the center of a crater the size of a small swimming pool. Apart from the charred remains of the cabin, there was no sign of either the vehicle or the offenders. Julian had ejected and left them to plummet to their death. All because of him, Maya abducted children, granny had died, and thirty men and women had died. He found the pistol, and then he heaved himself out of the cabin, onto the stony ground. Dust puffed into the air. He suppressed a sneeze as he clawed his way up the crater and stood on the stony ground. He kept the pistol in the ground and dusted vaporized rocks and the remains of the people in the glide car from his hands.
He looked up into the sky. Attracted by the smell of vaporized flesh, four sparrow vultures circled lazily. They seemed to know he was there. At that moment, his lack of importance came home to him. If he had his way, he would mourn forever, but the explosion of the missing craft would bring other types of vultures, metal vultures, autonomous armed vehicles, or manned cars carrying robot police officers. They would hunt Luke, the bringer of death, who survived in a crash-proof cabin.
“Go away!”
The birds continued their relentless search for the next meal.
Low laughter came from the forest behind.
Julian stepped from behind a thick tree trunk. The distinct outline of two autonomous dogs, or bogs, appeared on either side of him.
The bogs always found their quarry. Convinced he’d had enough bad luck for one day, Luke scrabbled for the pistol. His fingers touched the butt, tipping the gun into the crater. Shit! The dogs are already stalking ahead.
Sharp grit in his teeth, clutching the jammer, he stumbled on small and large boulders as he raced towards the embracing edge of the unknown forest.
CHAPTER 14
His boots were killing him. His trousers and shirt already tight, he ran for close to fifteen minutes. Trees popped in his front, the wind blew stiff in his face as he ducked under branches, pushed over bushes his height, and crossed large hollows or small hills in one bound. It was like that first night when he escaped from Maya. Only that he was in fast-forward mode. Tangled branches broke against his face. Logical thinking had receded to a deep corner of his mind, leaving only one real thing: survival, for the sake of the children.
As he ran deeper into the forest, he forced himself to look around him. Julian and the bogs were out there. As if to confirm his fear, a bog’s notorious warning, a programmed combination of the attack cries of all extant and new predators, sounded to his left. He veered right to avoid it. He halted as another warning emanated out of sight from the right. An irrepressible trembling in his knees, he tore on straight between the bogs, thinking fast.
Julian would still be a while behind. The bogs were still on their own and were aiming for whatever their masters had instructed them to do. The police used them to track down criminals or rescue people in danger. Luke wasn’t about to find out what they would do under Julian’s control. He kept running straight for a long time, his breath coming out in ragged puffs.
It slowly dawned on him that he was moving north, imperceptibly but surely. If he didn’t, he’d run into the fearsome bogs. But he was still a mortal being. He would soon tire, the bogs would rip him apart, and he wouldn’t be able to reach the children. A realization hit him like a thunderbolt.
“Fuck me.” He skidded to a stop. He was bumbling through the woods in terror of bogs when he had a robot jammer in his hand. He pressed his thumb into the black metal button. Held out toward the source of the emasculating noise, the jammer vibrated once, a short antenna popping out.
Luke’s confidence soared and went back into his legs as the electronic snarling waned and then resurged stronger. He whirled left and right. A bog emerged from a wild tangle. It rocked gently on well-sprung legs, the muzzle of its inbuilt gun protruding from a telescoping barrel.
“Stay where you are,” a synthetic voice said.
The second bog appeared on the other side.
Luke turned the jammer off, and on again. This time, there was no interruption in their threatening noise.
“Good try, Luke.” Julian now stood behind the second dog, sweat pouring down his face and dripping from his cleft chin. “The jammer doesn’t work all the time. The big people designed some robots to react actively against all countermeasures, a sort of failsafe against failsafe. Wrap your head around that, boy.”
The jammer sailed into the branches of a tree from a fling. It was useless. “What do you want with me?”
Julian held his right hand under his face, his eyes narrowed as he enjoyed the cool air from the wrist air conditioner. He turned it off, and then he popped a pill in his mouth. “Continue in a northerly direction. I believe you wanted to meet Professor Maya?”
Luke stepped forward. The bogs leaped into the gap between him and Julian, suggesting a crazy idea to him. He fell on his knees and rose with a boulder high above his head. Sparks lighted his face as a bog flattened on the ground from the devastating impact he unleashed. The bogs, like everything, had a weak
point after all. With the smell of ozone from shorted high current circuits in his nose, he raised the boulder and hit the empty ground, sending a bolt of pain into his arms. He sprang and met the other bog mid-air. He fell to the ground, his arms wrapped around the metal beast.
The bog was a shooter. Luke grabbed the gun muzzle protruding from its face and held on for all he was worth. The bog was a quarter of his weight but it flipped him around as if he was weightless. They rolled repeatedly on the ground, the smell of crushed plants invading his nose. He was faintly aware of Julian giggling in the background. It was annoying. It awakened an enormous rage and a sly realization. Luke stood on his feet, holding the bog off the ground with its back to him. With no surface to press against, the bog was helpless.
Julian stepped back, avoiding the aim of the bog’s gun. Luke took a deep breath, hurled the bog into the air, and grabbed his boulder. A split second before it landed, Luke ground it against the ground, permanently.
Fingers clawed, teeth bared, he turned to face Julian. “As intelligent as you are, you depended on machines to do your job for you. There you are.” He waved his hand at the bog remains.
With a smirk on his face, Julian charged with a knife in his hand.
Eyes narrowed to a slit, Luke stepped forward too eagerly for his liking. The gap between them was less than fifteen feet but in the heightened perception that now filled him in time of danger since the Maya treatment, the short distance seemed like fifteen kilometers.
Julian seemed to move in slow motion, each of his movements as deliberate as if he consulted with Luke before he moved. Luke knew what was coming. He was a biology teacher, a lover of life, but he knew what was coming if Julian reached him. An ordinary human was too slow to be of real harm to him. It made him feel guilty but how about the men and women killed in cold blood when the glide car crashed? He caught Julian’s knife hand as it descended on him. His left hand closed around Julian’s muscular neck. With less than the amount of effort he thought he would need, he lifted the heavily built man until Julian dangled one foot from the ground.
MARK OF THE EARTHWALKER: Evolution Protocol Page 5