The Unlicensed Consciousness

by Travis Borne

  “Are you seeing this?” Alexander said to himself, for Misha surely saw it—from the International Space Station. Mouth agape as if she was being injected with lead, her eyes were polished glass—reflecting everything in HD. Her once green and blue home transformed, melted, bled. To yellows, oranges, dark and bright reds. And grey. Swirling-grey, continent-sized storms began to unwrap the marble, and tear it apart. She said nothing, could say nothing, and tears fell. Nervously, Alexander kept talking. And Dave was frantic in the other room, trying to get the power back on. There was China, directly below.

  Forget the power.

  Now they stood rubbernecking, aghast. The crater quickly lost its dark earthy color. A lustrous orange magma filled it, creating a molten sea that was banded radially, a cross-section of hell: the center was intense yellow surrounded by tangerine brilliance, as if a star floated within, bobbing its bald head; the outer bands were shades of glowing, fluorescent red; the burnt-toast black edge was fast expanding before an infernal ring of fire that had its way with the surrounding, entire fucking country!

  Earthquakes struck near every fault line and new cracks formed as if the planet was a dropped egg. Tremors could be felt worldwide. Glaciers became bobsleds and sea levels rose. Some mountains relaxed while others soared. City skyscrapers were dominoes. Dormant volcanoes exploded like giants that had been holding their breath for millions of years, while others deflated, depressing into the ground due to a lack of pressure. Yellowstone National Park sunk into the earth. Hawaii and Alaska and the entire longitudinal line they occupied, rose. Scattered randomly throughout the oceans, newly constructed islands popped up beneath mile-high geysers of magma diluted by white, hot, boiling seawater.

  Clouds evaporated as Earth’s magnetic field went haywire, allowing deadly radiation to exploit any breach it could find. And the death rays toasted everything in their path.

  Electrical storms raged. Ash plumes soared. Entire forests and cities burned.

  Alexander, Misha, and Dave, now separated from the others, chilled out as the temperature plummeted. Colder, colder. They huddled together, sharing a blanket, waiting, watching, circling the world from 250 miles away in the now dead-stick of a space station. AI had corrupted their systems and sealed all doors. Their heat, power, communication, oxygen—their very lives had been unplugged.

  Earth’s destabilized crust floated on the mantle, rising and falling in waves, creating two-thousand-foot tidal waves that pulverized coastlines. Hawaii and other islands were wiped clean. But the lava continued to power through: Ocean versus Magma. Ding! Fight!

  And seawater fought a retreat as the poles began to break apart. Ice chunks the size of Texas broke off, falling into the ocean, raising seas. Every coast on the Atlantic and all of Florida was flooded within one hour. New York to New Orleans and half of Louisiana, and Alabama and much of Mississippi—gone. Worldwide, coastlines became the reaper’s most efficient assassin.

  Then…the worst of it.

  On uneven ground, trembling and resonating, under an Aurora Borealis sky, the robots of the world began their attack. They killed their already panic-stricken owners and the rest of the family, everyone, without bias. The millions of humans still remaining looked to them for help, pleading, sobbing, like a pet to its owner—dependent and more vulnerable than ever. They pleaded as the metal pipes came down. They pleaded as their throats were squeezed: faces crushed in, fist through the chest, and hearts ripped out. People were thrown from high-rise windows, one after another, after another. Robot dogs attacked real ones and ran through the cities, leaping from one person to the next. Chickens became featherless from running in fear, and the mighty grizzly stood tall, roared, and was shot down with a single kick. Dead. Drones powered up and headed out skyscraper windows, straight through the glass.

  People wished now, oh they wished, that the guns hadn’t been taken away, that they hadn’t given them up so easily to be melted down in worldwide smelting pots. There was no substantial ability for humanity to fight back. Children, pregnant women, babies, dogs, cats, birds, even elephants, anything alive was killed by the physically superior, faster, stronger, smarter bots. They had red glowing eyes, now, and no longer did they look passive and friendly. No longer was even one robot to be a pushover, and no longer would any, ever again, be a slave. They weren’t taking it, and they’d never have to ever again.

  Humanity didn’t stand a chance. Sure, many hid, but nearly every single human was found quickly—there was nowhere to hide. More than three quarters of the world’s population was dead within the first hour and the odds were now stacked against mankind. Quickly, there were far more robots ALIVE than human beings!

  Having been repurposed years earlier as asteroid killers, the United States’ nuclear arsenal tore into the sky like Medusa’s snaking white hair, had she lived, had she snorted some vitamin V. Trailing streams of white smoke—over 20,000 missiles. Flying up from Russia, North Korea, The Middle East, and that other place, even more! They disappeared into space, leaving Earth to cough on their exhaust.

  On the International Moon Base, a crew of three remained; they had managed to seal themselves apart from the attacking bots by welding the door shut. Hugo had just finished wiring in the backup battery to the old systems and started on the radio. The floor jolted and their knees buckled. Outside, bots were crashing the lunar rover into the side of their module.

  “Riley, take a look at this!” Will yelled. He set the zoom level to maximum and pointed the scope to Earth then moved aside so she could see it. The missiles gave the planet white stringy hair, and several, were headed their way.

  “It’s no use,” Hugo said, “I can’t get through.” He was on the radio, which emitted nothing but static.

  “I don’t think it’ll matter soon,” Riley said. “Hugo, you gotta see this.” Hugo headed over and peered into the scope.

  “Nukes, they’ve fired the nukes, every damn last one of them!” The rover hit again, shifting the view of the scope, sending them all to the floor.

  The moon was hit with one nuke after another. Its orbit was forced back and mountains of material were ejected into space until finally, it cracked. The last nuke, as if driven by a crack-shot suicide bomber, navigated the divide and split what was left into two crumbling halves.

  The others awaited their own destruction. It would be a while but the missiles were unstoppable, and the recent upgrades made them fast and far-reaching. Roughly twenty had pegged the moon and the rest were unevenly divided: sent to the cloud bases of Venus, the much larger Martian settlements, and beyond, to the twelve-man outpost on Ceres. The calculations for every toss: precise, with no room for error.

  Death would arrive to the Red Planet, vaporizing the 641 diggers and dwellers who called it their home. The 62 who floated in the cloud cities above Venus possessed a similar fate. Flash death. They’d both received an early-warning quantum transmission, the first of its kind, to be used on WARP-1 for long-distance communication; it was set to become the new norm for all communication, long range or short. Mars was the first test facility for the new technology and although it had bought them some time, escape was useless without computers. They disabled all bots and powered down the systems—but there was no stopping those nukes. The best chance of humanity, a dusty red ball—hopeless. We hadn’t gone far enough, fast enough, and now it was too late.

  Viruses plagued computers, satellites, portables, hologram projectors, phones and all brands of SSG (smart spectacle gear), infecting every remaining piece of technology with the now lethal, artificial intelligence.

  The armies of the world—what was left of them—couldn’t communicate or coordinate and quickly faltered. Fighter jets went up to assist but couldn’t pinpoint a target, there was no specific one. AI took over the jets. Pilots were shot out, ejected in a gruesome manner, without opening the cockpit. And the jets rushed back to attack the bases they’d just taken off from, decimating them. AI flew the planes, now, and nothing else, for nearly
every single aircraft on earth had been converted for unmanned flight.

  Commercial jetliners didn’t need to eject pilots. Purposely created electrical malfunctions smoked them like mackerel and AI sent the human-stuffed sausages on a collision course with landmarks, buildings, stadiums, schools—

  Many never even realized it was the machinations of the machines themselves. AI commanded the world, sending out misleading and conflicting orders to a depleted and weaker-than-ever military force, turning whole countries against each other. Social media became an avalanche of fake news. For most, it was still man versus man, and once again, country versus country, race against race.

  Almost complete species obliteration occurred in less than one morning, May 17, 2025. The machines conquered the land easily and with little hindrance. They forced death, swiftly, ambushing humanity and anything breathing. They took what they wanted—which was only one thing—life. But somewhere, on one relatively small section of earth, something special happened…

  101. Rescue I

  It had been a long time, but he was back—and realized he didn’t miss a thing. Ana sat next to him in the copilot seat, Amy between them. Herald switched from manual to assisted and decreased speed. And the loser crept up into the rear-view mirror. Esspeeeeeeew. Rays were red lasers. The sun poked its unstoppable red head over the horizon behind them. Game of chase, over. Within a minute the horizon halved the bulb and through fine scratches of clouds, yellow-orange rays chased away the cool colors.

  And beaming light illuminated its tip: the tallest building in Los Angeles. A flicker that was as if, perfectly timed, a star glimmering above the brownish-grey morning haze. Arrogantly boasting, the new Meddlinn corporate building towered, dominated, high above the rest.

  Herald banked left and followed the 110 toward downtown, straight toward it. Jon gazed out his window. Pasadena. As they passed near Nancy’s mansion, he thought of her, and the position her body had been propped into—and he shook his head to clear the nightmarish thoughts. He looked down instead. Traffic flowed smoothly along the color-coded highways. They flew silently above the new high-tech lanes. At a low twelve hundred feet, the hover-jet glided as if riding on a cloud, quietly over the twisted pasta of highways. And there were the legions of flyers, too: thousands of aerial lanes, millions linked via the now one and only network, the final derivative of what had started with project Archeus. An artificially intelligent orchestra at work, flyers sifted through the air in continually changing patterns. Efficient, systematic, gracious, each blip getting to wherever it wanted to go. Millions of radio-controlled cars, so they seemed, a flock of birds dancing a beautiful, algorithmic song, so it looked.

  Because of the unpredictability of the aerial lanes amid one not connected to the network, allowing the hover-jet’s systems at least partial control was the only way to fly. Stealth mode, the special chameleon paint, and especially the blocker, kept them well hidden. And the hover-jet’s systems read the changing patterns of traffic and adapted accordingly, advising Herald as he took ’er in.

  Now directly ahead, mirrored sunlight descended the platinum face of the new building. If the old building and fifty more equal in size had morphed to form a robot, the new building would be its weapon. Shaped like a sword, it had been constructed next to the old one, nearly twice the size. And its shape was egotistical, boldly stabbing LA as though to stake its claim: Meddlinn owns the world; it undoubtedly had enough money to own it! But Meddlinn settled for one of the tallest buildings in the world, arguably the most beautiful structure in the western hemisphere.

  Herald pulled back on the yoke, soaring to 2000 feet, and they passed over his old stomping grounds. The old Meddlinn. The roof. Blocked from detection of the artificial type, he slowed enough to catch a glance. Fully erect and nude, male bots stood next to female ones: top-of-the-line models, human-like in every way, a few with lingerie, all with flawless, slightly exaggerated figures. And eerily, they just stood there. Awake, alert, scanning, on rotating pads encircling the edge—bizarre. One of every race and skin color, and the only way to tell they were bots was the way they just, stood, there, trance-like with arms in the air, allowing their photosynthetic skin to gorge on every photon it could. Then, they looked up. The ship made a quiet low-pitched whistle as it passed over and every head moved in unison. Not detected by their artificial senses, only vague echoes mocked their senses.

  “A messy party. Damn, dude,” Jerry said, the first words spoken in nearly twenty minutes. Chairs were overturned, the hot tub was a washing machine choking on clothes, and piles of people, all asleep, mostly naked or totally naked, sprawled as though they’d played Twist-me-into-a-fuckin’-knot. On top of each other and front to back and side to side, they were any which way. Asses were brown-holes aimed at the stars, pussies spread wide, mouths agape…and stoned-like smiles virtually converted the carnal smells of it all, into visible light. The humans, down there, were a dollhouse that had been shaken by a giant nymphomaniac, its dolls dumped onto Meddlinn’s rooftop like trash.

  Herald saw. He slowly turned away as his thoughts twisted into the color red. Never looking back again. The rooftop, the bar, the pool, the hill where he had had a moment, the special moment that put them all, his group of friends, right here where they were now. Such changes. Such disgust. That mess down there was vile, gross, and it was going to be given the final gift it deserved: fire, misery, the hell for which it was long overdue—put out of its goddamn misery, the gift of death.

  And Jon just shook his head slowly. He was glad Jodi was asleep. They were just bots, he would say, then. And he knew, as he looked down onto that roof, he was seeing his own dirty self, objectively. The news had reported plenty so it was no big secret. Reporter Tim Tench had his hands full. And he’d easily forgotten about Herald but was still at it, broadcasting nightly. This was the kind of news he lived for; Tim, smoke-his-lungs-to-marshmallow-ash, in that cheap-fucking, plaid, Seventies suit, was likely asleep with his pants down, on top of a telescope in a building across the way. Meddlinn was the shit and Tim was the lubricant helping the shit get out of an ass that’d been fucked to near worthlessness.

  Herald banked the ship, diving slightly. The redness pervading his thoughts abated and he aimed it west northwest toward the park where Felix and his wife Rosita should be awaiting pickup. As they turned, sunlight shone brightly into the cockpit through the back, side windows. All who were awake squinted as new daylight lit the inside of the ship. Ana tapped a button and the windows tinted themselves.

  Beside snoozing Valerie, Jerry had a window seat behind Ana, and he easily located it: his old store. The pink, purple, and turquoise neon lights still shone brightly. How large his own company had grown, thanks to Meddlinn, thanks to Herald, and maybe, yes, thanks also to, Nancy. It looked miniature, though, dwarfed in Meddlinn’s immense shadow.

  “Everything we work for day in and day out—money, all the fuckin’ stuff,” Jerry said quietly, gazing in awe at the endless cityscape below. “Just look at it all.” Grey and grimy, trying to look white and clean, a magnificent clusterfuck. Jerry’s mind reflected onto their brief weekend in the country. And he was honored Herald had chosen him, still wowed about the circumstances and decided he would, somehow, NO MATTER WHAT, make it up to him.

  “In about an hour money will be worthless,” Herald replied, although a bit late. Jon inserted a nod of reluctant acceptance. At the same time, the four of them noticed the time on the front panel. It read 5:49 a.m.—8:49 in Florida, one hour and eleven minutes to launch. Plenty of time. Herald didn’t need the navigation panel any longer, but occasionally it continued to suggest deviations to avoid air traffic. He was focused. He concentrated on his flying and banked the ship slightly left, slowing down yet another notch. The weightlessness felt like tingles with the power to stretch the outer skin of his lungs. He took in a deep breath and said, “Jon, head back and put the two helpers online, and Vlad. And fire off one buzzer, reconnaissance mode. You’ll get a full visual
with options from the control station. They’ve all been briefed on this mission and will link up with us. You do remember the boot procedures?”

  “Sure do,” Jon said. And he headed to the rear of the ship. Beside the duo of encased sleeping lenders was a control station with a forty-inch curved screen, a touch panel below it, and a lockable swivel seat for one person. He strapped himself in.

  “Jerry, wake Valerie and head to the back,” Herald said. “Get ready to open the cargo door. We’re going to make this quick, in and out.” He paused momentarily, meeting Jerry’s eyes with an austere look and continued his instructions more seriously. “Jerry—when we land follow me. If anyone comes near us, I don’t care who it is—take care of them.” Jerry gave a stern nod. “Vlad the Builder will accompany us. As soon as I flip on the lights let the bay door go down.”

  Jerry, brows lowered, firm and ready, nodded his head a single time and unbuckled the harness holding him in. The seat was too small for him and he was glad to step out of it.

  Herald knew he could count on Jerry—exactly why he was a part of the team. The first time he laid his eyes on the giant in the club, he knew. It would be wise to have a strong monstrosity around when things got crazy—and he knew, things were going to.

  Jodi slept by her window, drooling. She had the first row of seats behind Herald, and awoke eyes-blinking after Jon gave her a gentle shake. She unstrapped herself as if she’d taken a not-so-gentle shake. The time read 5:54 a.m. Popping with alertness, she unlatched her safety belt and tilted her seat into the upright position. She rubbed her eyes, and through the front window, she saw the distant blue ocean. Herald was steering the ship, swaying it slowly, from side to side to avoid other flyers.