From the Ruins

by Keith Silvas

  They had survived! They had shielded themselves from the contamination—enclosed a whole city inside that dome. People had found a way. They always found the loophole.

  Chapter 2: Omega Seki

  R

  aymond had no trouble crossing through the barrier. The translucent golden energy had the viscosity of oil as he passed through. He emerged on the other side unharmed and completely dry. Although it was radiant on the outside, the gilded canopy did more to keep light out than to illuminate the inside. The sun outside was high in the sky and bright, but inside its light was almost entirely blocked out by the barrier, as if filtered through a thick film of resin.

  He couldn’t help but stare upwards, craning his neck to see the myriad sights: the impossibly tall skyscrapers, all window-faced and dressed in concrete and steel. They seemed more like pillars holding up the canopy above than buildings. The city was awash in neon lights of every color. In fact, before him was a sea of a million lights—flashing signs and holographic billboards large enough to cover the faces of many buildings. The place was a maze of tightly packed streets and alleyways, stairways leading up and down, and catwalks. A network of highways and byways spiraled across the ground and through the air, passing above and beneath each other with dizzying spatial efficiency. It was almost enough to make even an android claustrophobic.

  The first people he saw were two teenagers, a boy and a girl, with brightly dyed hair. They took one look at him and fled in alarm, despite his efforts to call them back. He realized uncomfortably that he wore no clothing, nothing to hide the nakedness of his mechanical body. Evidently, they had not seen an android before, or androids in this city were things to be feared. He remembered the looks in their eyes though, it had been a fear of the unknown, not the practiced fear of something from which they were accustomed to running. He decided that obtaining clothing might by necessity become his first pursuit. It would not do to have everyone afraid of him.

  He wandered, his feet often clanking over metal grates that belched up clouds of steam and strong-smelling exhaust. Faded signs in countless languages littered the street sides and concrete walls. A high-speed train roared by on one of the railways high above, tussling his hair in the gust of its wake. He saw more people, but they all stayed further back, watching him cautiously from a distance. He did not try to approach them, better not to frighten them. Their fear of the unknown could easily transform into hatred of the metallic demon that had invaded their city.

  The street rounded a bend and he came to a giant plaza bustling with perhaps a thousand people. There were shops and stalls and merchants all over peddling food and gadgets to the masses. Advertising holograms featuring pretty girls, smiling people, and all manner of wares and food beamed amidst the crowd.

  Even at the edge of the market, the air was noticeably warmer and humid. The pounding of dance music and flashing lights emanated from the open doorways of many nightclubs in the buildings bordering the square. Raymond reckoned it was not yet 4 p.m. outside, but night, and its accompanying activities, seemed to be a perpetual thing in this city.

  People backed away, clearing a path in front of him as he entered the throng. As he walked, the crowd maintained a two metre radius from him on all sides, an impressive feat since everyone was rather packed in like sardines. He made a couple of attempts to politely strike up conversation with passersby who dared to make eye contact, but the effort was wasted. It seemed to startle them to learn that he could even speak with a voice that was indistinguishable from that of a human man. The poor souls he attempted to connect with quickly melted into the crowd in terror, and he redoubled his efforts to find a passable garment to cover his suddenly outlandish body.

  A greyish tarp, fraying and caked with filth caught his eye; it was just visible down a shadowy alleyway on the outskirts of the square. He made a beeline for it, the crowd scurrying to get out of his path. Stepping into the alley, he felt relieved to be partially out of sight. He wasn’t used to having so many eyes on him. He reached down, took hold of a corner of the tarp and pulled. To his surprise, when he drew the tarp up and around his shoulders, a small, misshapen body was revealed beneath. It was an old man, lying on his side, and blinking rapidly at being startled awake.

  “Whadaya doin’?” the old man croaked, sitting up stiffly. He was nearly toothless, pupils clouded by cataracts and his digits were thick and twisted with rheumatoid arthritis. He brandished a crude shiv threateningly in his gnarled fist, although Raymond doubted he could do much harm with it.

  “It’s alright,” Raymond said, “I don’t mean you any harm. I just wanted the tarp to cover myself. I didn’t know you were underneath.”

  “‘S mine! Go findja own!” the old man snapped.

  “Yes of course,” Raymond replied, hurriedly stooping down to return the tarp and taking care to tuck it around the old man’s feet to ensure against any draft.

  The old man grunted and squinted at Raymond. “Whassat ya got on? Are ya oneuh thum club boys with the shiny clothes? Couldja spare an ol’ man a few bits?”

  “I don’t have any money,” Raymond said apologetically. The old man waved his hand dismissively and lay back down. He was about to pull the tarp back over his head when Raymond asked him, “What is the name of this city? I’m not from here.”

  The old man propped himself up on an elbow and scoffed, “‘Course ya are, ya jus’ fuhgot. Ya mus’ be a crystal junky real bad ‘f ya can’t ‘member that. Omega Seki’s the only city thur is. And ’s toxic ousside so don’ think ya can go walkin’ ‘round out’n th’ wastes. Yu’ll be so fulla’ poison out there yu’ll drop dead ‘fore the thirst gits ya.”

  Raymond was just wondering how he might go about asking this old man if he would accept him as a servant, when a hand touched his shoulder. He turned to see three men, sleekly dressed in fitted black long coats and slacks. One man sported a candy apple red mohawk and a goatee of the same color. He had a cigar between his teeth that he puffed at mercilessly. The next had platinum dreadlocks that splayed out from his head like wooly caterpillars reaching for elusive leaves. The third, was bald on the sides with purple spikes on top and a long flamingo-pink mullet flowing down his back, as coarse and straight as horsehair. Raymond was taken aback by it and stifled a smile. Rob had always gone out of his way to make fun of the mullet hairstyle whenever it had shown itself in a book or old photograph. He would have laughed until he cried, had he been around to see this guy’s hair and how seriously he took himself.

  “Android, come with us. The Boss wants you.” Candy Apple said between puffs. With that, they took him by the arms and whisked him away.

  Raymond cast a final glance back at the old man. He was watching them cautiously, hardly visible in the shadows. His entire demeanor had changed when the three men showed up. Raymond recalled he had begun to cower in fear since the mention of the word “Boss”.

  Chapter 3: Nexus

  The Complex looked faintly like a prison as they approached, although it was clearly designed to keep people out rather than in. A thick octagonal wall topped with razor wire and turrets above each of its eight points surrounded the perimeter. Men peered down from the guns, watching them closely as they paused at the gates, waiting to be let through. Candy Apple rapped impatiently with his nightstick and soon the gates groaned and swung open.

  There were a handful of men inside the courtyard who wore the same black jackets as Raymond’s three companions. A couple of the men were crouched down shooting dice with dots that flashed on every bounce. The rest lounged on the steps of the main building, passing a flask around and laughing. When they caught sight of Raymond, all of them stopped and stared. Raymond met their gazes and, to his relief, none of them shrank away or ran. These men did not fear him the way the other citizens did. Their eyes only seemed to hold questions.

  Like the walls that surrounded it, the building within was also octagonal. It was markedly different from the rest of the city’s architecture, due to its domed roof
and wide base. It was short compared to those around it, only ten stories or so, but it took up more ground space than any four of the surrounding skyscrapers. A column of golden light rose from the peak of the dome up into the sky to feed the golden canopy.

  They ascended the steps, past the onlookers, and entered the building. The bottom floor was a spacious hall with two rotunda staircases winding upwards along opposite walls. There were numerous doors along the walls as well, which had traffic from other black coated men. Raymond guessed these were something like dormitories. Towards the far side of the room, a massive power generator stood taller than any two men, and nearly as wide. It hummed almost musically from within its dull alloy casing.

  They took an elevator that Raymond had not noticed initially, up to the tenth and topmost floor. From there, it was down a long, dimly lit hallway. During their jaunt Raymond had found that all three men smoked like chimneys, though only Candy Apple puffed stogies; Caterpillars and Mullet preferred cigarettes. By the incessant plumes of smoke that rose from his escorts, an onlooker might deduce that they were the machines—perhaps some distant relations of a diesel engine—and not him

  They proceeded into a room full of hundreds of holographic screens displaying all sorts of data being processed, and reports being generated. Many of the screens showed live feed from drones all across the city. He stepped closer to a cluster of the screens to get a better look when a strangely distorted voice that sounded neither male nor female addressed him.

  “Android, what is your name?”

  Raymond looked up to see a holographic image of an angel. It towered over him, standing three metres tall at least, with a wingspan that might have doubled that. The image was comprised entirely of orange light that flickered occasionally; it was sexless, lifeless, expressionless, lacking that spark that all sentient beings possessed, and yet it had intelligence behind it. Raymond realized that he was looking at a glorified puppet. “I am Raymond-tz48” He replied.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “A city to the east that has long since been uninhabited.”

  “How did you find Omega Seki?”

  “I just walked west and eventually stumbled upon it.” Raymond answered. He did his best to ignore the feeling of foreboding that was creeping up on him. The attitudes of the three men who had brought him, the angel’s cold questioning, the barbed wire and turrets, the way the old man in the alley had been so afraid after hearing the word “Boss”, there was something about it all that felt strange.

  “You must know that an android has never been seen here. They have not been used since before the Cataclysm. Are you from before the Cataclysm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there more like you?”

  “I don’t know. There were none in the city I came from. I was among the first to be released to serve the public.”

  Nexus turned to address the three men, standing in their cloud of smoke. “Leave us. The android will obey me; his programming makes it impossible for him to do otherwise.”

  When the men had left the room, Nexus turned back to Raymond. “There are a few things you must know. I am called Nexus, but you must never talk about me to the plebs outside these walls. They know me only as ‘the Boss’, and that is how it will remain.

  “I know why you came here Raymond, I understand your programming. Your old masters are dead, and with no manufacturer to return yourself to, you are to serve society, and therefore me. I am this society’s director, its Boss, and I command you to serve me exclusively.”

  “It is my pleasure to do so,” Raymond said with a smile, though he didn’t feel like smiling. There was a question eating at him, far worse than the many others he’d recently acquired upon meeting Nexus and the men in black coats. “Why are the people afraid to leave Omega Seki? I spoke with a man earlier who believed that humans cannot survive outside of the city. Do they not know that the atmosphere has not been toxic for two hundred years?”

  “That is something you must never repeat Raymond!” Nexus blurted out almost angrily, but then softened. “You have much to learn. You will not leave the Complex until you have been sufficiently educated. There are many things the plebs are not to know; we control them this way—guide them. We protect them by keeping them from leaving the city. Many would die out there if they wandered too far. In a way, we are telling them the truth by saying the environment cannot sustain life outside.”

  “But there is life outside.” Raymond protested. “I have seen a canyon with living plants and animals.” He was surprised to find that this information displeased Nexus. How could such good news make anyone unhappy?

  “That is another thing you must not repeat. It is true that some of the indigenous organisms of this planet have begun to repopulate. Our drones discover such things periodically, but the plebs must never know. In the future it may be necessary to administer herbicide to the landscape surrounding the city, to maintain the appearance of wasteland, but that is still a long time off. For now, you will not speak of these things, even to my men. It is for the greater good. Do you understand?”

  Raymond understood. He was being commanded to lie, or at the very least, omit truth. The notion didn’t sit well with him, but what other option did he have? Nexus was the Boss. Serving Nexus was in essence, the highest form of serving the public. “I understand.” He said obediently. There was one more pressing question he dared to ask, “Are there any other people left on Earth besides the ones here in Omega Seki?”

  “Earth is an old name: dead just like this planet. We call it Zero System now… And no, there are no others.”

  ∆∆∆

  The days passed, and Raymond spent most of his time alone in a holding cell on the top floor of the Complex, or one-on-one with Nexus being quizzed about his life before the Cataclysm and further instructed on what he should not talk about. One day the Boss’s Man whose real name Raymond still didn’t know, but he called “Mullet” in his imagination, was admitted to his cell with the orders of making combat modifications on Raymond’s body. All androids were endowed with basic strength and resilience that was superior to humans, but the augmentations enhanced these traits, and more.

  For a week and a day, cigarette smoke and curse words peppered the chamber as Mullet worked on Raymond’s body. Every hour spent with Mullet was pure agony. Raymond realized very quickly that the man had either something against him personally, or a huge chip on his shoulder. Every attempt Raymond made to engage him in conversation was shut down quickly and rudely. After the first couple of exchanges, Raymond made a point of being exceptionally kind to him in an attempt to win him over, but that only seemed to make him more irritable. Even simple greetings when he arrived each day seemed to do more harm than good. The situation became steadily more caustic as the days went on, and in the end, Raymond found that the least problematic solution was simply not to talk to the purple and pink haired man at all.

  When, at long last, the work was complete, Raymond felt relieved to stand before Nexus waiting for approval at the changes, and with any luck, be through with his interactions with Mullet. The augmentations made him vastly quicker of foot and reflex, and his strength was much greater than before. However, the crowning achievement, according to Mullet, were the blades: two ulnar implants, double-folded when retracted within his forearms, but able to lash out, lightning quick, like bladed nightsticks. The blades were dark, cruel things, charged along the edges with the dull glow of anti-matter. No substance could withstand their cut; in the tests they had performed, the blades annihilated every target, from steel to diamond, in a burst of energy.

  Mullet had an undeniable air of pride as he presented the work he had done on Raymond. The work, however, was the only thing he mentioned with any favor. Mullet never so much as referred to Raymond by name or even in such terms as “he” or “the android”. Every comment was centered on the improvements, as if Raymond were no different than a house or vehicle that had received upgrades.

&
nbsp; Just as Raymond was getting ready to settle back into his holding cell, or perhaps be engaged by Nexus with more behavioral guidelines, a voice came through the chamber’s speakers.

  “Boss, it’s Ruda. We’ve got a problem. Cen Vultz just told me the owner over at Destiny is refusing to pay him protection money. I know you always say to ask you when it comes to business with the Cens, so I was just—”

  “What does Vultz want you to do?” Nexus cut him off impatiently.

  “Well, I’m right by Destiny. Vultz caught me while he was leaving—and he is pissed. Said he wants me to go in there and make Brunus, the owner, pay him what he owes. It shouldn’t be a problem, but I’d like some backup if that’s possible. He has a couple new guys—big bruisers—working security and I don’t like the looks of them.”

  “I am sending backup now. Wait for them,” Nexus told Ruda, then turned to address Mullet and Raymond. The words were just what Raymond had been hoping they would not be: “Both of you, get down there and help him.”

  Chapter 4: Shadow Dancer

  Raymond sat in the hovercar, eyes glued to the sky space ahead. Mullet’s driving fit his personality well: angry, brash, and with a complete lack of regard for others. They almost collided with several other airborne vehicles on their trip.

  “What is Destiny?” Raymond risked asking. He was feeling antsy about going into a possibly hostile situation, since he had never been programmed for warfare.

  Mullet didn’t respond.

  Raymond was getting fed up with the man’s rudeness and, although he knew the answer, asked, “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I heard. I just don’t answer stupid questions,” Mullet said.

  “I don’t see how the question is stupid.” Mullet wasn’t his master, so why accept such treatment?