The Mall

by Bryant Delafosse

  He glanced at the gauze taped over the wound, where the dart had entered his side and then had been pushed back out on its own again with the force of his earlier fall. The dressing had been Owen’s idea. Chance had wanted to let him bleed.

  His eyes opened again and stared up at Chance with a steely patient resolve.

  “Tell us how to get out of this place,” Chance stated as calmly as he could.

  “All the exits have been locked and will only be reopened at the discretion of the management,” the guard stated in a dry matter-of-fact tone. “There is no way out now.”

  Chance nodded, his lips pressed together in compressed anger. He reached out with the tip of his toe and found the bloody gauze attached to his side. He prodded.

  The man recoiled and sucked wind, but never screamed.

  “Tell us.”

  He opened his eyes and stared emotionlessly at the teenager.

  When hands touched Chance from behind, he nearly lashed out, then quickly remembered that he was not alone here. Owen tugged at his arm. “C’mon.”

  Chance started to back away, the voice in his head drowning out nearly all extraneous thought.

  Do not leave him alive! You’ll never get a better chance than right now!

  Setting his jaw, he turned away with a conscious effort and followed Owen toward the front entrance of the store. Then he remembered the crossbow and turned back.

  The guard’s eyes had been glued to it, hungrily.

  When he bent down and retrieved it, he saw a spark in the other’s eyes as they briefly glanced at his face.

  The clear emotion he saw there was rage. Pure and undiluted.

  37

  Slicing off another piece of summer sausage from the foot long log, Lara set it atop a honey wheat cracker and passed it to Cora, who shoveled it into her open mouth. She crunched loudly on it, humming contentedly.

  The three of them sat together at an immobile fountain just outside a Hickory Farms in the blue sector, watching the sun slowly reveal the wide, empty corridors of the Mall. Despite her assumption that every element of design had been stringently researched and tested to get consumers to spend more money, it really was a pretty Mall, Lara thought, as the stark morning sunlight sparkled off the dewy glass panes of the ceiling. From this distance, they looked like diamond facets.

  Cora stared at the Wheel of Time Ferris Wheel sitting like a giant child’s discarded toy in the distant center of the Mall. The structure was so enormous that she could only glimpse pieces of it between the cross-sections of the multi-leveled central walkway.

  “Hello, Owen!” Cora called up, listening as her tiny voice echoed through the empty city. She displayed crumb-filled teeth at Lara satisfactorily and glanced down at the sausage expectantly. Lara began to slice off another chunk for her, with the knife she also “borrowed” from the Hickory Farms store.

  To the extent a machine was capable of looking disgruntled, Simon did, protesting during the entire “transaction,” until Cora began to whine about being hungry and he simply stopped. He had even gone as far as to open a locked refrigerator for them with a set a keys he found lying in plain sight atop the counter next to a cash register--both the register and the metal keys themselves looking as archaic in this digital world as an abacus sitting beside a personal computer. There had even been a framed portrait of Richard Nixon on the wall behind the counter. The owner himself must have been quite an anachronism, Lara thought.

  As she sat there now beside the stagnant water of the fountain feeding her daughter, she couldn’t help wondering where the owner was and what he might be doing. Was he safe at home with his wife? Had he been widowed? Perhaps he’d never married, too busy to share his life with another and had only a rambunctious Schnauzer to come home to?

  Then as if she had just read her mind, Cora asked: “Mommy, what’s going to happen to all those puppies and kitties and Owen’s chameleon? Will someone feed them?”

  Lara had tried to make a habit of always telling the truth to her children even if it might hurt them, with the belief that, though white lies might save them immediately discomfort or pain, it usually hurt them in the long run. The only exception she made was for the concept of God and Santa Claus, neither of which she still believed in and both of which she felt were sacred institutions whose belief in were better left to the discretion of each individual.

  She knew that the answer to her daughter’s question would hurt her, but still, she couldn’t bring herself to lie to her. So she turned to Simon.

  The being--which she had affectionately started to think of as Tin-nocchio—was practicing the very male-like behavior of pretending-to-ignore-when-we-both-know-you’re-listening routine and doing it quite well, in fact. Lara bumped him hard with her elbow.

  Though she knew it was patently unfair, she replied, “Let’s ask Mr. Simon.”

  Simon blinked at Lara in dismay, then at Cora. His eyes seemed full of conflict as several moments passed. “That’s a question better asked after we’ve found your brother, Cora.”

  Lara blinked in disbelief. That had been clear avoidance. He hadn’t lied and hadn’t told the truth. A deft deflection of which any parent could be proud, and better yet, the statement seemed to quell Cora’s curiosity, at least temporarily.

  But at the mention of her first born, Lara found her thoughts returning like a pendulum to Owen. “Air horn,” Lara suddenly barked in a voice hoarse from yelling. “Where can we get one of those?”

  Simon nodded. “Sporting goods store. There are five here. The nearest one is east of us in the yellow sector, level two about 500 yards away.”

  “No, I want to stay on this level. What else you got?”

  “The only other ones are back south where we came from and three-quarters of a mile ahead in the Red sector.”

  Lara nibbled her lip. “Okay, but we have to make this quick. Get in. Get out. Understood?”

  Simon nodded and rose to his feet. “This way.”

  “Do you want some of the sausage, Mr. Simon?”

  Simon glanced from Cora to Lara.

  I’ll be damned, Lara realized with amusement. He’s passing the buck just like I just did. He actually learned the tactic less than a minute ago and here he is applying it to save his own ass.

  “Mr. Simon isn’t hungry. Now, c’mon,” Lara said, rolling up the remnants of the sausage and placing it and the crackers along with the two radio/flashlights—unnecessary now that it was daylight again--in the shopping bag she’d procured at the same shop. “Let’s get moving.”

  Cora leapt down from the edge of the fountain, withdrawing her troll-doll from her pocket and stroking its wild orange hair while she waited patiently for the others.

  “You’re the leader, remember?” Lara responded, waving her on ahead.

  Cora started forward with an uncertain glance at Simon.

  Simon fell into step beside Lara. “You lied for me. Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lara replied after a moment’s consideration. “Sometimes we do without much reason behind it.” She glanced up at Simon and shrugged. “Perhaps I have a reason that my gut supplied that hasn’t registered with my brain quite yet.”

  “Gut?”

  “Instinct.”

  “There’s that word again.”

  Lara peered at Simon and sighed. “Do you understand the concept of instinct?”

  When Simon didn’t answer right away, Lara thought maybe he had chosen simply not to, thinking it a rhetorical question undeserving of an answer. But then he surprised her when he said, “You might say the behavioral code that makes up my basic programming is a sort of manufactured instinct. When I rushed to keep your daughter from falling, I did so without calculation.”

  Lara snapped her fingers and touched him lightly on the arm. “To do something without calculation. That’s as good a definition of instinct as I’ve ever heard.” They walked in silence for a while before Lara interjected, “Besides, I didn’t lie when I said you weren’t
hungry.”

  “The intent was still to deceive.”

  “That’s what we call a white lie, Spock,” she responded, giving him a smirk. When he returned it, she was pleasantly surprised. “So, why did you avoid answering Cora’s question?”

  Simon looked directly into Lara’s eyes. “I would think you of all people should know the answer to that one,” he replied.

  Lara nodded. The truth would hurt her.

  “How easily you all justify manipulations of the truth.” He gave her a look that might have translated to ‘envy’ in his programmer’s palette of facial expressions. “If I could do that without hesitation, how much more easily I could pass for one of you.” After a moment’s silence, Simon glanced over at Lara. “I can consume food, by the way, though it is an illusion that I’m actually digesting anything.”

  “So you might say that the concept of manipulation is part of your basic design.”

  Simon studied Lara and after a moment gave an uncertain nod. “Though I’ve never interpreted it in that way, what you say is absolutely accurate.”

  Lara turned to him and caught herself searching his face, uncertain of what she was trying to find there. “See? We’re more alike than you might think.”

  38

  Chance stepped outside the JC Penney and looked up into the early morning light, feeling some of the dread that had clung since his friend’s death fall away. “Look at that, willya!” When there was no answer from behind, he turned to see that the kid was still inside the store just within the shadows and appeared to be struggling with something.

  What now, Chance thought with alarm.

  Rushing back inside, he found Owen hopping on one foot, struggling to pull one leg of his jeans back on. He glanced up at Chance in embarrassment and pounced on a wadded pair of underwear lying on the floor at his feet. An open package of new underwear lay nearby, one he must have snagged from the boy’s department when he’d gone for the gauze and rope.

  Owen turned his back on Chance and zipped up. He snatched up the wadded pair and strode past Chance to the trash receptacle beside the entrance.

  Finally, he glanced up at Chance as if daring him to ask, but was surprised when the other just stepped back into the concourse of the Mall.

  “It’s morning. We’ve been in here all night.”

  “Uh huh,” Owen sighed, glancing one way then the other.

  “Funny, Jesse and I had always talked about…” His voice trailed off and he stared glassily into the distance.

  “I need to find the Sears store,” Owen felt it necessary to interject. When Chance gave him a questioning look, he added, “That’s where that Bot said my mom and sister are. Reggie. That’s what he said his name was… just before...”

  “Just before the security guard tore him apart?”

  Owen looked at Chance solemnly. “No way he’s a security guard.”

  “Any way you look at it, the guy’s bugfuck,” Chance spat, his own voice wavering with emotion.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” Owen asked in a small voice. “Your friend, I mean.”

  Get this kid! Chance heard the familiar voice in his head. “Do you think he’s dead?” Nah, I like catching skateboards to the head just for fun.

  Chance shivered visibly and Owen lowered his head with understanding.

  “Where’d your shoes go, little dude?”

  Owen looked down and realized for the first time since he’d grabbed the rope and underwear that he had forgotten to go back for his shoes and there was no way he was going back in there now. “I kinda took them off.”

  “Well, we should get you another pair,” Chance replied, starting off south down the concourse. “I think I know where there’s a Foot Locker.”

  Starting after him, Owen clutched his growling stomach with a wince. This was the first moment he’d had to spare long enough to realize that he was hungry. He’d eaten the bologna sandwich and popcorn over six hours ago. On a typical weekday, he’d be in the school cafeteria eating breakfast by now. He never thought there’d be a time when he’d miss those lukewarm potato planks and runny eggs.

  Suddenly, Chance pushed something into his hand. “Yeah, I almost forgot.”

  Owen looked down at the Power Cell, energy bar, with the little blocky Space Invader and Asteroid on the wrapper, then back up at Chance in wonder.

  “Sorry if it’s a little broken, but I had it in my pocket and I might have landed on it a couple of times,” he said with an off-kilter grin. He then displayed the four other flavors of the bar that he had stuffed down in his pockets.

  “Where’d you get all this?”

  “In that sporting goods store where I nabbed the crossbow.”

  The kid gave him a look that might have been surprise then retrieved a slip of paper and a pen from his back pocket. He went to the wall of the JC Penney and pressing the paper against the hard surface, he began to scribble on it.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I forgot to add the gauze and the rope… oh yeah, and the…” He gave him a look then and clammed up.

  “Add them to what?”

  “The list of what I need to pay for when the lights come back on,” Owen announced, his tongue slipping out of the corner of his mouth as he wrote. “How much was the crossbow and power bars, you think?”

  Chance stared at the ten-year-old in amusement. “Hell, I wasn’t really comparing prices when I grabbed them, y’know.” He stepped over to Owen and glanced at the list. Owen pulled it out of sight defensively. “Hey, don’t sweat it, man. I nearly squirted a few out too. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Owen folded the slip of paper and pocketed it again. Finally, he stripped the wrapper off and ripped into the chocolate covered peanut butter bar. “I just figured I should keep track of what I used. Otherwise, it’s stealing.”

  Chance gave the kid another off-kilter smile. After all the years hanging out with Jesse, those sorts of juvenile rules had grown less and less important to adhere to. Now Chance was feeling something he couldn’t identify. Maybe it was simply nostalgia for quaint notions.

  “The way I figure it, as long as we’re locked in here, we got beef with the management. Odds are, they won’t mind us borrowing a few items against the millions we’re gonna make off them when we sue their asses off, right kid?”

  “Why would I sue them? If I hadn’t run away, me, my mom and my sister wouldn’t still be in this Mall. So I figure it’s all my fault.” Giving Chance a shrug, he started forward in the direction of the Sears store, just as Reggie had told him.

  39

  Albert stirred. For a moment, he was utterly confused. Was he still in his apartment? What day was it?

  He felt a sudden tightening then loosening of his muscles and blinked up into the glowing sensors of a Mall Bot, who bent closely over him. The Bot had a big red cross on its chest and forehead, a Med Bot.

  “You are injured,” the Med Bot said in a shaky voice.

  There was a final tug and he felt his shoulders loosen and his bound wrists shift apart.

  He recalled being shot and tied up. He remembered internal and external damage translated into computer code as pain, followed by power conservation mode leading to a full powering down.

  “I have cleaned the torn epidermis of your hands, but you require immediate medical assistance.”

  Then it all came back to Albert and he realized that he was not Albert Lynch.

  He was a machine called Lamia.

  “I require maintenance.”

  The Bot simply stared with stuttering blue sensors, its metal body jittering in place. Though it had been programmed with a much stronger constitution, than the average unit, the Med Bot still seemed unsettled by all the blood it had witnessed.

  It must be confused by my outward appearance, Lamia decided. He remembered clearly what the Voice had told him: Although you are a machine, Lamia, you appear to all other Bots as human.

  “How did you come to be restrained?” the Bot want
ed to know.

  “I was attacked. They tried to de-acti… kill me,” Lamia replied, realizing that somehow the other machines had failed. He was still on-line. The Bot stepped back as Lamia rolled onto his knees and slowly rose to all fours.

  “You require stitches,” the Med Bot announced loudly. “Please refrain from unnecessary movement. This unit is attempting to connect to the network so that a suitable medical technician can conduct the procedure remotely.”

  Taking a moment to view the situation from a distance, Lamia realized how improbable it was that a single Med Bot had found him by sheer chance in a space as big as the Mall of the Nation encompassed. “How did you locate me?”

  “I was told,” the Bot responded enigmatically.

  “The network is down,” Lamia replied. “Where did you get your information?”

  “I was told,” the Bot repeated.

  This was going nowhere and precious time was being wasted.

  Rising slowly to his knees, ignoring the pulsing heat in his side for the simple background alert that it must be, Lamia said, “Those responsible for my injuries must be located before they hurt anyone else. That is your designated priority.”

  The Bot stiffened. Its sensors intensified for a moment. “There is currently one human remaining inside the Mall of the Nation. Security Agent Albert Lynch, badge #21635.”

  “That is correct. As the last human remaining, I alone have the authority to set a new program objective. Do you understand?”

  “I am required to follow your new program objective. Please proceed.”

  Albert recalled the words the silver Bot had said to the boy just before it was de-activated. There was the boy’s mother and sister and another one called Simon Peter.

  “To my knowledge, there are five H-type android units remaining inside this facility. Are you familiar with the designation, H-type?”

  “No,” the Med Bot replied simply.

  “H-type units are units that appear human in every way but are not human. They are machines. Do you understand?”