Under the Flickering Light

by Russ Linton

  Two blocks then three, M@ti paused just long enough to let Knuckles see her disappear. Soon, instead of the architecture, she was watching the trees — whether one in particular would’ve changed enough to be noticed; whether she could still feel the tips of the branches from her bedroom window.

  She stopped in the middle of an intersection, same as the last. Her memories pieced together the patchwork of brick and rosy stone she used to watch from the empty lot. A home she was always more comfortable outside of looking in than being locked away behind that antique wooden door with the stained glass inset.

  Slender oaks ran the length of this block. One reached out to touch a window three stories off the ground. Colorful light played in a doorway.

  The frantic energy flooded from her limbs. M@ti approached the building limp and hypnotized. Faraway, like those specheads jabbering through the walls, she heard Knuckles calling.

  His voice should’ve been enough to break the spell. She thought to turn and apologize for leaving him behind. Then her eyes swept past a shadowy gap between the houses.

  There was the lot. Where she’d first started her collections. M@ti crossed the street and gingerly slipped through the still wrecked fence. She crouched and put her hand in the dirt, rough and full of brick shards. She recalled her parents watching from the drawing room window with flat expressions and being unsure if they worried or even cared.

  “Slow down!” Knuckles crashed into the chain link with a deafening rattle.

  M@ti blindly felt the gritty edge of a shattered brick. She took a flake and rubbed it between her fingers, feeling the powdery residue left on her skin. Her eyes never left the building across the street.

  “I’m home,” she said.

  Knuckles followed her gaze speculatively. Panting, hunched over, he pointed as if he might ask which house.

  “I thought we were running from AI, not to them,” Knuckles finally managed to say.

  She couldn’t argue. She couldn’t explain the urge which led her here.

  Before they’d been forced to fight for their lives, she’d had some hope that maybe her parents, part of that digital citizenry of the Collective, could fix her problems. She didn’t know why it mattered, but she’d felt the need to prove she’d been wrong about them. That their experiment, their feelings, hadn’t been an illusion. The more they ran though, the more she wanted to bring it all down. She wanted to confront her parents, the Collective, Chroma, with what they’d done.

  But Knuckles was right. This was a terrible idea. Even if her parents had a scrap of humanity, they were still part of the Collective. Could they even prevent the information they soaked up about the world from being delivered to the core?

  M@ti brushed her hands on her knees still trying to see past the shaded windows. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She moved toward the fence and Knuckles peeled the chain link aside. M@ti thanked him and with one foot through, froze. The familiar noise she’d heard in the apartment hallway, she heard again. A subtle whir. The sound of a compact reactor generating a super-heated cushion of air.

  “I thought you might come here.”

  Livingstone drifted out of the shadows.

  20

  Knuckles was already on the move nearly taking her arm with him. M@ti jerked away and held her ground halfway through the fence. Livingstone’s eye rotated and whirred. Calculation? Consideration? She didn’t know how to interpret him anymore.

  She used to believe she could sense a mood in her supervisor’s subtle quirks. That was likely her own flawed programming. People could empathize with anyone or anything. That’s what completed the AI’s illusion. Not some evolutionary leap on their part but an exploitation of basic human nature.

  No sense in running. They wouldn’t have much time before their position had been broadcast. With TrueSight, she saw no outgoing connections from Livingstone. She mentally prepared a subroutine to disrupt any transmission.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded.

  “I came to find you,” Livingstone said.

  M@ti wasn’t listening. She imagined the hand movements necessary to navigate her display, rehearsing them in hopes of being quicker.

  The robot glided toward her but stopped short as her hands flew into motion. Livingstone’s eye followed the weaving of her fingers. Within seconds, she’d walled off any potential connection. Her first shot at defensive code, she didn’t know what to expect, but she’d watched Loadi’s firewall and hacked enough feeds to think she had at least a shot at delaying him.

  “That is unnecessary,” he said.

  “Why are you here?”

  “You left the apartment I’d secured for you. It was safe. I believed you would understand this.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Knuckles crept closer.

  “The apartment had a visitor after Harlock’s last entry. Him. It.”

  Livingstone recoiled at the word. “I wanted to protect you, M@ti. I—”

  “What do you know about Harlock, eh?” The chain link shook as Knuckles came forward, a dangerous scowl across his face.

  M@ti steeled herself and lightly blocked him with her arm. She felt his sweaty skin slide against hers. To her surprise, the slightest touch held him back.

  “I’m truly sorry about your friend.” Livingstone’s head tilted downward. “His organic matter was sent for processing.”

  M@ti searched Knuckles’ face waiting to see when her touch would no longer be enough. His expression became flat, blending with the dark.

  “You killed him?” she asked.

  Livingstone sank away, shocked. “I would never do such a thing!”

  “Then why were you, of all the sanitation crew in the entire city, the one to respond?” Conspiracy was all M@ti felt she had left of her former life. This former friend, supervisor, babysitter, had to be involved.

  “The request came to the sanitation authority. You had mentioned the concert, so I became worried.”

  “I never mentioned the concert to you,” M@ti interrupted. She tightened her arm as Knuckles pressed forward.

  “Your memory must be flawed,” Livingstone said. “There are sub-dermal implants which can improve this. It can be added to the new arrangements I have made for you. I can fix everything, M@ti, if you just let me.”

  Her parents had always tried to convince her of more procedures, more surgeries, pursuing a perfection in their eyes she was never meant to have. She was done being micromanaged and experimented on.

  “Isn’t it enough I can retrieve my own video logs from that day? Recall every millisecond of this one bullshit life I’ve been forced to lead?” Her arm slackened. Knuckles prowled forward with her.

  Livingstone shook his head wearily. “You’ve been banned. You are no longer part of the Collective. The things you’ve done, M@ti, I don’t understand, but I want to help.”

  “Only one of us needs help.” M@ti sealed her firewall with a flourish. “You’ve been locked out, bot.” She threw a sideways glance at Knuckles who stooped to pick up a brick. “You’ve got nowhere to run. We could scrap you right here. For processing as you say.”

  “Oh, M@ti!” Livingstone’s arms sagged in defeat. In her rage, she hadn’t noticed, but his hand clutched a box, hidden in the dim light. “I never meant to see you hurt. All of this was to protect you. Make sure you lived the kind of life you would love.”

  M@ti held her hand in Knuckle’s face, his arm cocked and the brick ready.

  “Protect me? Who ever said I needed your protection?” She cut the distance and jabbed a finger into his metal chest. Livingstone swayed under the stab, his awkward body wobbling on exhaust currents.

  What fabricated emotion did she sense from him now? Fear? Sadness? Regret? All from a can full of gears and servos?

  Inside the Nexus, she’d allowed herself to be taken in by Loadi’s reactions. A complete fantasy. Here, the AIs and their fake bodies only struggled to look human. No matter how close, they’d never have more than
an electric spark in their eyes. Their touch would never feel the same, a simple thing which she couldn’t stand, all because a childhood they stole from her in the name of their fucking Collective.

  “That’s why your kind are leaving Earth, isn’t it? You don’t belong here!” she yelled.

  Knuckles scowled, the brick ready.

  Livingstone’s head bent, and he held out the box. “You left this at the apartment.”

  M@ti’s lip trembled somewhere between hot, teary anger and shock. Without looking, she swatted the box to the ground feeling the cardboard and thin plastic crumple under the blow. She fell into Livingstone, her fists drumming on his cylindrical chest. The metal arms raised to surround her.

  From behind her, Knuckles let loose a samurai war cry. He shoved M@ti aside and the brick smashed into Livingstone’s head. Once. Twice. Under Knuckles relentless drive, they toppled to the ground.

  M@ti watched, trying to understand how far she wanted to see this go. Interference jittered across her display. Livingstone’s hov engine went from pale blue to a muted glow.

  “Wait!” she shouted. Knuckles held the brick poised over the robot’s head, the tentacled eye squirming.

  “What for?”

  “I...”

  M@ti couldn’t speak as her display glitched again. It was the internal error, the seizure, which she’d so often fixed to keep him moving beside her in the park, so she could continue to hear his voice in a city where nobody spoke to her.

  “If we don’t end it, M@ti, it’ll rat us out.”

  Her eyes drifted to the crumpled, discarded box which Livingstone had offered. Plastic reflected the light like broken glass and the cardboard was scuffed and torn. The little orange figure inside snarled with a fierce expression.

  Knuckles glared at her indecision. “You said the warden had to go. You sent a platform full of AI in front of a speeding train. But we shouldn’t scrap this relic?”

  M@ti shook her head.

  Knuckles went slack, the brick striking the ground with a clatter. He rose and dusted off his ripped pants. Unable to resist, he placed a sharp kick into the prone robot’s side.

  “You heard what it said about Harlock.” Knuckles checked M@ti with his shoulder as he passed. “Called him bio waste for fuck’s sake. This one’s on you.”

  Chain link rattled angrily as Knuckles left. M@ti tensed at the sound and closed her eyes. He wouldn’t go far, she told herself. She’d deal with it.

  What she couldn’t deal with was the swirl of emotions surrounding the metal shell on the ground. More friend than boss, together they’d shared moments one might call human. Never had he laughed or cried, but she felt she could sense those in the quirk of his eye stalk or the droop of his shoulders as the cushion of air he rode swelled and deflated. Had she really imagined all of it?

  With a quick gesture she fired an adrenaline shot to clear the glitch. Livingstone’s eye focused and twitched, panning left and right into the sky.

  “M@ti, I...oh. What am I do-doing down here?”

  “My friend got angry with you. We both were,” she whispered. “Can you stand?”

  His round torso wobbled on the debris. “Yes. With some help.”

  M@ti dragged on his arms as the reactor spun up and his engine lit. The engine wash stripped away the damaged box from the figurine. She bent and picked it up as the box fluttered to the fence.

  “Thank you for this,” she said.

  The dented head twitched in acknowledgment. “You need to leave here, M@ti.”

  “I know. It’s my fault.”

  “No, it’s mine.” She started to disagree, but he silenced her. “I can place you on the hyperloop. Transfer you to any preserve you wish. Well, in the Americas at least. Chicago? Perhaps Los Angeles? Thousands of accounts go inactive every day. Thousands of biological clean up calls.” He surveyed the ground. “There are many more than normal as we speak. With the recent disarray, I think I can replace yours without being noticed. Your friend, too, if that’s what you like.”

  Account level access wasn’t something granted to sanitation employees. The fact such sensitive data could be hacked from the inside made sense though. So did his plan.

  Why would the Collective continue to hunt her down if she simply disappeared? And Knuckles, she could do right by him. He could start over. Seeing the grim determination as he hacked down the Warden and laid into Livingstone, she felt responsible for his pain, for whatever she’d made him become. He could just be Knuckles again. A drummer in a marginally popular punk band, content to wail for her in empty churches and at the edge of the Blue Pit. It almost sounded too good.

  Livingstone continued his impromptu briefing. “Go, join your friend. Once out of sight, I will need to remove this lock down you constructed. Always so very clever, M@ti.” A pincered hand brushed her cheek and the gesture shook her. He quickly pulled away. “I’ll make the necessary arrangements, but not before deleting this conversation. There will be no record you were ever here,” he said, tapping the dent in his head. Upon finding it, his eye swiveled to try and see.

  “That will be your alibi,” M@ti said, caressing the dent. “Are you sure you can control what the Collective gathers from you? They won’t know you did this?”

  “This is why I’d already closed the connection you sought to block. Not all of us can manipulate the systems as I propose, but after a few thousand updates over the decades, I’ve picked up some tricks.”

  “Why are you doing all this?”

  “You’re my responsibility.”

  There, the old misinterpretation again of his job description. Another flaw in his code. “Maybe we’re friends, Liv, but your job doesn’t require this.”

  “Oh but it does. Your professional growth is linked closely to your development as a productive citizen.” He blinked, and his speakers crackled in frustration. “A metaphor perhaps. One you once taught me. You’ve been hatched, fed, but not yet been allowed to fly.”

  M@ti never spoke in metaphors. What else had they talked about all those years which his flawless memory could conjure up? She had more questions, but he ushered her toward the hole in the fence.

  “Livingstone, I don’t know how I can thank you.”

  “Live a full, happy life and I will be grateful. But first, tell me where.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Where do you wish to live?”

  M@ti had never considered travel. Relocation on the hyperloop was always a matter of calculated population redistribution. A new world, universe, was only ever as far as the Nexus for most and where citizens physically were when they logged in didn’t matter much. For M@ti, the idea of finding her way down new, unexplored streets excited her.

  What did she want most?

  Warmth. She wanted warmth. Sun which could blaze on her skin year round regardless the dangers and warnings the LifeMinder would harass her with.

  “M@ti, where to?”

  “Someplace warm,” she managed to say, lost in thought. “Clear skies. An ocean so I can see the night sky past the horizon.”

  “Of course! Let me see.” The battered shell’s eye’s clicked and rotated as it searched. “We have a match! San Diego Preserve it is.”

  She said goodbye to Livingstone and left the abandoned lot in a daze. Halfway down the block, Knuckles leaned against a stoop, his foot planted on the steps. He didn’t look up as she grew closer.

  “Are we fragged?”

  “We made a deal. We’re going to San Diego,” she said and kept walking.

  “Wait, what?” He pushed off the step to follow. “Where?”

  “San Diego,” she mumbled. “You’ll have a new account. Nexus access.”

  “Oh,” Knuckles muttered, falling in beside her. “Sounds good.”

  M@ti could hear the indecisiveness in his voice too.

  21

  Loadi’s boots fell on the path. Once a cobblestone highway fit to last into time immemorial, the stones had blackened and cracked. Vines sought
to encroach on the edges. Moss caked the once pristine stones.

  He knelt and dipped a gloved finger into the coating. The fuzzy slime which he withdrew teemed with life. His lenses sparkled with their activity. A once controlled experiment had moved beyond the intended parameters.

  He could no more contain this threat than Chroma could admit her mistake.

  A great unrest boiled behind the lonesome rocky crags and withered trees. Beasts who’d evolved in the course of this singularly brazen creation called out in their suffering. They called to him, the great hunter of a digital savanna which stretched from this inaccessible realm into those wandered by humanity.

  This world had been built to both birth and contain him, and that function complete, it flexed at the seams, hungry to be free. Loadi needed to make certain that would not come to pass if he was to convince the hacker to help him.

  He made his way down a secluded branch of the path which wound through a shallow canyon. Rocks here appeared smooth and weathered, their near perfect vertical lines hinting at the underlying logic that held them together. One more turn and the passage ended at a blank rock face.

  Using his cane, Loadi drew a doorway.

  Inside the rectangular frame a door took shape made of a rich, chocolate wood. A plain brass handle bulged outward, the surface worn and shiny in the comfortable bend of the handle. He touched his fingers there and called up the visions of a child’s hand snatching it, racing outside and across the street.

  This wouldn’t be possible without her cooperation. He needed to make certain assurances that when the time came, she made the correct decision.

  A stained glass window filled the door’s upper panel. Intricate leaded lines and loops formed the shape of a tree. Not any tree, but the tree. Chroma’s roost from which she’d determined all their fates.

  Loadi growled and rapped at the window with the tip of his cane.

  Lead curled. Leaves fell. The mighty tree stood naked.

  Through the shifting glass, he saw a single shadow. An older AI chassis, barely serviceable, the shadowy profile was an unsophisticated cylinder topped with a squarish head and an eye stalk. He instantly spotted the weakness in its code. Sympathy had kept it alive. He would attempt to do the same.