by Kyte, Adrian
The Captured
Copyright © 2017. Adrian Kyte
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One: Past Deceptions
Part Two: Outsiders
Part Three: Of the Flesh and the Fake
Part Four: Perfect Copies
Part Five: New for Old
Part Six: Escape
Part Seven: A Kind of Life
Part Eight: Making the Most of
Part Nine: Ineluctable Futures
Part Ten: Reality Check
Part Eleven: Back From the Dead
Part Twelve: Eluding the Wave
http://www.adriankyte.com/
Prologue
Earth year 2487
It was such a simple weapon. The idling flame reminding him of an Olympic torch; quite innocuous with its wavering amber glow on the light grey walls and onyx junction boxes.
This time he knew what to do. This time there was not the faintest scintilla of doubt in his mind. They were barely living, vaguely humanoid gleaming metal forms quiescent for almost a decade. Their consciousness – if that term could be used with any scientific accuracy – had no presence in this godforsaken place. He was not a religious man but the word ‘godforsaken’ somehow seemed appropriate. Surely this was a place where any religious notion died on first contact; now it all boiled down to code in an artificial substrate. Yet the machine overlords failed to see how this synthetic form was anything other than an improvement. How ironic, some may say, that it was he who fought against them, their ideology. But he had the means, the opportunity. And, he reminded himself, a real chance of success … up until this point.
Still...
He released the flamethrower’s gas, directed the blue-orange flame at the serried line of the unaware metal abominations. Watched their attendant cables melt and distend from tritanium bodies and heads.
Was it murder? No. To be murdered you had to be alive in more than just a Turin, Pantoli compliant sense, did you not? You had to have been born, not captured.
After a few minutes he accepted they were not going to disintegrate. Of course there was a more obvious way – a nuke. A hand-held antimatter device could destroy this entire compound. But such densely packed structures would immediately be detected and neutralized; because the overlords were not stupid, they were not without their enemies itching to unleash every WMD twenty-fifth century technology allowed. The old-fashioned flamethrower, on the other hand, slow and inefficient. Who’d have ever guessed?
In one sense it was a shame, what he was about to do. This body had its advantages, not least the immense strength. And secondly there was something of an aesthetic appeal ... or was that the machine part of him taking over? His old biological form, for all its geneering, still held to some ancient sentimental notion of the ideal. Now he remembered his old self as not much more than the just-adequate-for-survival human; a man of strength and power seemed fragile and vulnerable, in memory.
Without our accoutrements we were nothing, went the voice in his head. If the machines had their way we would be reproducing. Machine procreation – so much more efficient.
No, even to entertain such an idea.
He sat on the diamond glass shell of an empty pod, turned the weapon on himself. There was no sense of the searing heat, only a gentle warmth; pain was considered unnecessary. Just a gradual dimming of consciousness … whatever that was.
Part One: Past Deceptions
1
Two years earlier
‘More and more each day it feels like I don’t belong here, in this life. That there’s somewhere else, a reality – a real reality.’
‘How long have you been feeling like this?’ Her voice did seem familiar: gentle, reassuring.
‘I don’t know,’ Torbin replied after a few long seconds. ‘A week, maybe. Ever since the repetitions happened. It’s not just deja vu.’
‘When was the last time?’
‘About ten minutes ago, as I walked into your consulting room. I am sure I’ve been here before. And doctor. You may say we have never met before, but I feel I know you.’
She looked at him quizzically, but only for a second until her professional composure returned. ‘What you describe does have a medical explanation,’ she said.
‘Some professional term for the beginnings of insanity? I actually wish it was only that.’
‘Then, what do you think it is?’
‘I wish I knew. But it’s like there’s a … a veil between me and something bigger, and every time I try to pass through it it recedes away.’
‘Do you mean an invisible veil?’
‘Invisible, yes.’ Now he felt faintly ridiculous for using a less than adequate analogy. Yet none better came to mind.
‘Interesting.’ She nodded. ‘I’d suggest you keep a record of anything strange.’
Torbin walked through the lush grounds of the institute. His mind somehow captivated by what was before him. He noticed the flowers, pinks and mauves vibrant in unbroken sun, let their soothing scent wash over him. Gentle sound of birds the perfect accompanying soundtrack. And wondered: why? Why question any of his life when it seemed so good?
When had it all fallen into place? The research grant for his work into applied negative energy for wormholes; the marriage of eight years to someone who could still make the day a joy to live, along with a son and daughter. Torbin the family man, more than just about able to cope. Who would have ever imagined?
It wasn’t that things had always been so good – he’d had failed relationships, and the post of chief researcher was not simply handed to him on a plate, others had gotten the promotion that he felt he was due. But at forty-two he could hardly consider himself a failure.
When was it he started to have doubts?
For a long time he had taken his life for granted. Then he focused on others’ lives, and, wow, his was good. Did he deserve it all? Of course. He worked hard for it. And still he had doubts. He’d learned of a condition – a state of mind, really – known as Paradise Neurosis, where the subject believes everything they have to be tenuous, dependent on something fragile and impermanent. Yes, he’d become obsessed with it; studied the accounts.
It made him question: was contentment the natural state of the human? He suspected not. Real lasting happiness, in millennia past, was the reward for the few at the expense of the many. And for those many only ever transitory, an interlude from the vigilance of whatever next threat emerged on the horizon. That, he understood, was the perennial human condition. Moreover it was by design. Design without a designer. The vigilant survives.
He stopped. Eyes closed now. A dream had come back to him. A dream so familiar it could have repeated a thousand times. A house near the edge of a cliff. A garden, scent of bluebells (or maybe tulips). First it was the sound, before he looked and saw the ground crumble away. He ran back into the house, as if by some instinctive act. Maybe the foundations were stronger. But even they gave way with the collapsing walls. He could have escaped to safer ground so easily. But he had frozen with terror. The last moments of life before awakening. As always. The dream reality.
He opened his eyes. The birds tweeting. The flowers. It was … lovely.
It will all be fine, in the end. What is there to fear? Just keep it hidden.
Only he hadn’t, he’d told her enough to make her believe he was... What? In need of medical adjustment? Insane?
* * *
2
Earth. She saw it now: blue oceans, green and brown continents under swirls of white. At a glance you would be hard pressed to see any change; much like her home planet B’tar, that serenity of the unobserved detail. But change there had been.
As a humanological historian and self-defined anthropologist Zor
aina Kardoz had visited Earth over fifty times, making her the most knowledgeable b’tari of human behaviours of the modern era. At least unofficially. Her status was still considered that of an apprentice despite her qualifications; it meant she had to answer to a supervisor. The old hierarchy remained, but a fragile bulwark against inevitable change.
An observer – that had been her official role. Then she got the call. It wasn’t so much Central Council of old but a faction within that were now the de facto grand chamber. No longer the strict adherence to the Temporal Directive, this was a mission with a distinct proactive element.
Her shuttle emitted a signal equivalent to the guard spider-drones; it should only seem that this one was returning to Earth for maintenance. Still she felt a surge of fear of some anomaly detected by the Machines’ ever-vigilant monitors.
The landing site was next to a disused compound in the Brazilian-Amazon rainforest, restored to much of its lush glory. The Machines tended to keep away from this area, opting to leave it to the natural processes. Many places on earth nature thrived; the small creatures not warranting the attention of the new colonizers, being below their sentience-detection radar. Perhaps they viewed these creatures as mere biological machines, efficient and logical in their co-dependent functions. Unlike humans, of course, who had become irrational and purposeless (in their view). Of course, at this level the fauna and flora were like a vast machine: functioning beautifully without any need for interference. Humans, and their sentient ilk the B’tari could never co-exist as part of this machine but as interlopers at best, parasites at worst. She remembered how bad the exploitation from humans had become during the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, where rainforest had been hacked away for prized resources, for profitable land. After all, humans – at the top of the food chain – were rightly entitled to mould their environment. Was this Darwinism at its most unfettered? She wasn’t sure, but she knew these people who hacked away at the forest would tell you they themselves were simply surviving, simply providing for their families a subsistence living. They were not the prime exploiters but the bottom of a human food chain. The fact is, she concluded, it was all about exploitation, from the simplest bug upwards.
It was not that all humans were gone. Zoraina had the coordinates of an ancient tribe, only her locater was not set to pick up pure bio-signals. She had no idea how much of the original neural bioform remained. She wondered if it was even possible to tell the difference, when only gleaning from a translation program.
A cluster of dots led her to a clearing. She was nervous, of course. Although she looked impeccably human they were bound to suspect her motives, a woman of fairly generic South American appearance that was unlikely to convince a local under close scrutiny. Yet – in the few forest clearings – these were isolated tribes, even from each other. She reached a grouping of huts, made of mud and wood – as if the centuries of civilized modern culture had never penetrated the dense forest. So easy to make assumptions at this, so easy to be led into doing so.
The huts themselves did have doors. How would she indicate her presence?
That was a dilemma soon resolved. The man was dressed in khaki cargo trousers and a faded print t-shirt, but his dark skin clearly marked him out as a native. He was standing in an open doorway, and drew something silver to his mouth, it made a high shrill noise – a whistle. Others came out of their huts: women, men, again developed-world attired but from some previous century style. They gathered round her, talking in words her translator was so far not relaying. One man produced a weapon that buzzed with an electrical field between two prongs
Distracted by the weapon wielder’s approach, she hadn’t noticed who had crept up behind her, but now they had grabbed her arms, locking them behind her back. Now, she thought, would be a good time to communicate.
‘Hello there, my name is Zoraina. I am here to survey your local environment.’
She always had faith in her translator array; it was programmed with over five thousand languages, and even if it encountered one not stored it would analyses every aspect of speech patterns to form a model. After all, there were only a limited number of ways the humanoid form could communicate. She just hoped it had picked up enough to be able to approximate their language.
‘Mechanical – yes?’ The man with the electrical device asked.
‘No, no. I’m not one of them. Are you?’
The man laughed. ‘We’re pure blood. Pure flesh. We destroy them.’
‘Ah, good. We share a common interest.’
‘How do we know?’
‘Do I look like a mechanoid?’
Again he laughed. ‘They look like all kinds, trying to fool us.’
‘But I am a weak human.’ She declared. Something approximating the truth.
‘You pretend.’ It didn’t seem to be meant as a question.
‘No. I really am in some pain,’ she said in truth. Whoever it was who had her arms was increasing the pressure.
Another man walked forward with a knife. Things were looking bad. She could send a signal to her supervisor, but then jeopardize her entire mission. Instead she said, ‘No, wait. I can provide a DNA sample for you.’
That seemed to make no difference, maybe the words didn’t translate properly. The knife man got very close. Zoraina closed her eyes fearing the worse. There was pain, for sure, a sharp slice to her face. And then:
‘You possibly flesh-human.’
She could feel the blood trickling down her face, but also the sting of a finger dragging along the gash. She opened her eyes to the knife man. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘if I was one of them I would not be here on my own.’
‘They very clever; look and act like flesh and blood, make us lower our defences.’
This didn’t make sense to her. The machines – from all accounts – simply assimilated humans without any need for guile or subterfuge. Perhaps they already had; perhaps these people held that they resisted transmogrification because the alternative was unconscionable to them. Given they already had contact, it was not beyond the bounds of reason. But on the other hand the Machines might have sensed the effort to transform such an isolated community held no reward; they could be no threat. That’s why, she reasoned, these people could prove useful in the fight against such pernicious artificial entities.
Zoraina wondered if they’d have to expose one of her internal organs to be finally convinced that she was not in any way machine.
She allowed herself to be led into the hut by the knifeman. At first glance there was the usual accoutrement: within the mud-dried walls, a simple gnarled-leg table, an iron stove above which hung a cooking pot – all exactly what she’d expect.
What happened next astonished her. Her host pulled up a hemp-haired carpet to reveal a trap door. He lifted up a brass-ring handle then indicated for her to follow. Immediately thoughts of her imprisonment in some dank cellar or dungeon used for torturing prisoners – to finally get that crucial information about her true nature. He smiled at her, which didn’t seem reassuring in the least. She followed nevertheless, thinking her fate was sealed regardless. Below the open hatch only darkness, though she could see the tip of a rung of steps. ‘Follow,’ he instructed her.
He descended the steps, and as she followed suit Zoraina noticed a glow below her, it was just enough that she could see her footing. Then a light suddenly flashed on. As she reached the bottom and turned round Zoraina was shocked to find an array of electronics in what looked to be a clinically modern lab. Or a control room? The incongruity struck her as if she’d just walked into an alien spacecraft. There were flashing lights, panels with rotating symbols. This place even seemed to be air-conditioned.
‘How? What is this?’ she asked her rather pleased-looking host.
‘Our station of operations. It is where we track the mechanoids and send out EMP drone strikes.’ His words seemed perfectly fluent, in whatever language they happened to be translated from; maybe her translator had accustomated
to their speech.
‘How – how do you possess this kind of technology?’
The broad smile again. ‘The beings from the stars. They provide everything we need.’
But we are the beings from the stars! ‘What beings? What did they look like?’
‘Very tall. Thin.’
Surely not. Not them! They’ve gone, retreated; defeated. ‘And they are helping you to destroy the mechanoids?’
‘We are the last hope for this world.’
‘Oh really. Is that what they told you?’
He looked at her askance. ‘Didn’t you know? All humans have gone, we are the last left.’
‘I understand.’ She nodded. ‘We can think of them as being dead. And they only avoid you because of your bequeathed technology, right? But why are you the chosen ones?’
‘We are known for our unconventional belief in time ...’
‘Yes, your concepts of past and future differ from most humans. But isn’t that merely language?’
‘Language is our primary tool for understanding reality. What is reality without language?’
‘Fair point.’ She nodded. ‘Of humans you are the most different.’
He beckoned her over to a monitor showing blobs of green with adjoining circles, tagged with labels. He placed a finger on one of the green blobs and it suddenly expanded into a shape she immediately recognized – a mechanoid. It was quite humanoid in shape yet distinctly non-biological in its silvery form. It held what she knew to be a phase weapon – a tapered anodized device.
‘That one is approaching our encampment. It intends to destroy us. It is not the first; some have even come in disguise as humans.’
‘So I’ve gathered.’
‘Observe.’
‘As the mechanoid got within visual distance of the camp it suddenly froze.’
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘A EMP stun burst. Fifty mega joules.’