The Singularity Rising: Choice: (The Singularity Series 5/7)

by Beers,David

  Jerry turned his face to the direction of her voice, trying to give her the most dumbfounded look he could muster. "What do you think?"

  "I think you should have died a long time ago." A brief pause. "I guess we go and hope they don't need scrap metal."

  * * *

  It took all day to walk those five miles. Jerry felt every wire inside him holding on for dear life, and if one slipped, he thought they all might go.

  Which made traveling difficult, to say the least.

  Eventually though, they stood a half mile from the town.

  "I'm overheating," Jerry said.

  "Oh, so now you can feel?"

  "My internals can't keep going at this pace, not in this sun. We have to stop inside the city or rest here for the night."

  "Can you go another half mile?" Grace asked.

  Jerry scanned his major systems briefly. "I think so."

  "Think or know? You keeling over in two hundred feet is going to make this a huge waste of my time."

  "I'll make it."

  They trudged on, Jerry walking and Grace guiding him, as she had the rest of the way--telling him when he needed to lift his foot higher or step to the right to avoid a hole in the sand.

  "Is anyone watching us?"

  "Yes, I'd say so."

  Jerry stopped walking. "How far away are we?"

  "A hundred feet."

  "What do you see?"

  "Well ... there's about a hundred armed men in front of us. They're holding old weapons, guns. I think they were termed automatic, but they don't look like anything in my database. They're self-made."

  Jerry imagined a long line of men all holding homemade AK-47s like a bunch of old Arab freedom-fighters. Clearly a single bullet would wreck him. Probably shut him down for good.

  "Is there a leader?"

  "There's a man standing out from the crowd. Probably ten feet in front."

  "What's he wearing," Jerry said.

  "They all have on white robes, though his has a red sash across the chest."

  "Lead me to him."

  And so they walked the last hundred feet as they’d walked the previous ten thousand.

  "Tell me if anyone moves," Jerry said.

  "Why? Wouldn't you rather not know if you're going to die? Just have it be a painless surprise?"

  "Don't take my sense of humor as a cue to use your own."

  "Stop," Grace whispered and Jerry did.

  "Do you speak New-English?"

  Jerry heard the voice, guessing the man was probably five feet away. "I do."

  "What are you?"

  Jerry smiled, unable to help himself. "I'm almost dead."

  * * *

  "That is quite a story," Rario said.

  "It's all true," Jerry answered.

  "It's his version," Grace said from his right. "Though, the important parts are there. Jerry has a sense of righteousness that permeates his life, even if it might have been a little different in reality."

  "You can kill her if you want," Jerry said, though he wore that twisted smile.

  Jerry had an idea of his surroundings: a smallish room and he, sitting in a chair across from Rario. If Rario was to be believed, he was the military’s leader for this small town; the hundred men Grace saw in the desert were the entirety of that army, which meant, the entirety of men in the city--Sabaria.

  Jerry sat in a chair but the rest didn't matter too much. He lived in a world of black with only words lighting up his consciousness.

  "How long has this outpost been here?"

  "Outpost?" Rario said.

  "City. Forgive me."

  "Fifty years. Our second generation is preparing to take over many of my generation's duties."

  "Why would you come to this place?" Jerry asked.

  "You've been away a long time. The world has changed. The world The Genesis created doesn’t exist and what replaced it is worse."

  "The Reckoning," Jerry said. "Have you heard of that?"

  "Yes, of course. We're not savages--I was born in a major city as were most people here."

  "I don't mean any offense, I'm just wondering if you all have been Scanned? If The Genesis made its way out here, yet?"

  "No," Rario said. "No Scans. We don't think the world knows we're here. You're the first person from the outside we've seen in ten years."

  "What will you do when It comes for you? Are you going to submit?"

  Jerry understood why they had come out here, to get away from the terror Caesar created in his unholy union with The Genesis, but he also understood the steel it took to create a new society. People like this didn't submit to outside rule easily. They fought, even if it meant they died.

  "That will be up to the next generation. The founders will no longer be in charge."

  Jerry said nothing for a few seconds, thinking about what that meant--a willing and almost hopeful passage of power from one group to the next.

  "Do you have a ruler above you?" Grace asked.

  "Oh, yes. I run the military, but I have other jobs as well. We are far too small for any one person to specialize. I'm a blacksmith by trade, which I suppose is why I took over the military; I can make weapons. We have a Council and a Head of Council."

  "And they all know we're here?" she said.

  "Yes," Rario said. "We've been watching since you appeared in the desert. We knew who you were before you got here: The Named's leader. They want to speak with you, but I needed to make sure you weren't dangerous first."

  Jerry heard Rario stand up.

  "It's probably time I take you to them."

  "Wait," Jerry said. "Do you have anyone here skilled enough to help repair me? Even if only a bit?"

  "We do. The Head of Council was once an engineer. First, though, he has to decide if he's going to kill you."

  Chapter 28

  Marty watched Leon work with an intensity he didn't know the man possessed. For all the time Marty spent with Leon, he liked him, but thought him a bit weak. Marty never understood how Caesar befriended him and then brought him along on The Named's quest. He thought Leon would be a liability in any difficult situation.

  Yet, watching him now, Marty saw some of what Caesar might have.

  Leon rarely stayed in the hotel room anymore. No, now he and Marty spent their days in Network Shops--something new to Marty. The Genesis had extensive data from Its thousand year rule, but the last five hundred produced much sparser information.

  Basically, the Shops allowed Leon to research what was happening around him.

  And research he did.

  "You need to eat," Marty said.

  "I'm not hungry," Leon responded, not looking up from his work station. A large screen sat inside the desk and he pecked away at it, reading everything he could on the subject of people being taken from their homes over the past few days.

  It was happening, perhaps not en masse, but to a lot of people. The more Leon read the more he wanted to read.

  "You haven't eaten in thirty-six hours. You've only slept four."

  He broke his concentration on the screen before him and turned around to Marty. "Don't you have something you can go do? Maybe go chase some robot tail?"

  "I'm not saying you need to quit this ridiculous search, but you do have to eat. It's within my purview to knock you unconscious and hook up an IV if I think it's necessary, and I'm beginning to think it might be."

  Leon turned around but didn't go back to scrolling through the screen. He leaned back in his chair and sighed. "They're reporting it all over the globe, but things are too fragmented. There's no central news source so this isn't appearing on anyone's radar, though I'm not sure anything would happen if it did."

  "Take a break. That's all I'm asking. Whatever's happening won't be finished by the time you come back."

  He nodded. "Fine. Let's go back to the room for a minute."

  "There's no food at the room."

  "Well get me some there, then. You should be able to handle that, right?"
>
  Marty only stared at him, wishing he had more mechanics in his face to show his disdain.

  * * *

  Leon felt rage again for the first time in centuries. The emotion felt good, though, like an old friend embracing him. He had felt it toward Manny for so long that when it left, relief replaced it. He hadn't known he could miss such anger.

  He followed Marty back to the hotel room almost in a daze. Marty was right, he needed food and sleep. Leon just couldn't pull himself away from what he read--some common strand had to exist between the people being taken, but he couldn't see it.

  They were all the same: machines arrived, took someone, and any followup revealed the person never returned. How much could Leon keep reading, though? Would another news story tell him anything he didn't already know? He had to act, but he didn't know how. He didn't even know where to begin.

  Caesar had excelled in these situations. He always knew what to do when things looked hopeless. He always found a way to push through, but Leon couldn't think himself out of this.

  He was too average.

  He was what The Genesis always wanted.

  Marty's palm landed on his chest and Leon stopped his dazed walk, his eyes coming into focus on the hallway in front of him.

  "Why are you here?" Marty said.

  Leon looked at Mrs. Owen standing in front of his hotel room door.

  "I want to talk to you," she said, not looking at Marty, but at Leon.

  "About what?" Marty said.

  "Hush." Leon sidestepped Marty's hand, trying to walk forward, but felt the heavy grip fall on his shoulder and stop him again. Leon looked to his left. "Let me go. She's fine. She's the woman from the apartment."

  "I know who she is," Marty said, not taking his eyes from her. "What do you want to speak to him about?"

  The woman finally stopped staring at Leon and looked to the machine. "I want to help. Whatever he's doing, I want to help and get my daughter back."

  "See," Leon said. "Everything's a-okay. Go get us some food and hope that I don't have hotel management throw you out."

  Chapter 29

  Caesar looked at the specimen.

  She's a girl, whether or not you want to admit it. She's not a specimen.

  Which was true, though he knew why he referred to her as a specimen--it allowed him to keep his distance. All of humanity were now specimens. Things to be poked and prodded in order to create the best possible world.

  He hadn't walked into the room yet, only stood outside looking in. Caesar knew that the world's children were taught about him, that even now most people could recognize a picture of him, which meant he couldn't show up here in his own body.

  He had transferred himself into one of the machines working in the laboratory, one that appeared less threatening than those monitoring this specimen.

  She still showed the signs of having woken from her catatonic state, as Caesar now thought of it. Days had passed and she didn't regress, but now was asking questions of the machines, and growing insubordinate at points. All applications were under strict instructions not to harm the girl anymore, so her refusals were met with nothing but insistence, and finally acquiescence from the machines.

  Caesar wanted to speak with her, though he knew Grim and Gay would use different methods to understand her. He didn't think those methods would work, though--something was happening here and none of their formulas understood any of it.

  Right now the specimen sat on a chair with a book in her hands. When an application tried to bring her an Air Reader, she refused, saying she wanted paper. Caesar thought she only did it to piss off the application ... and he liked that. It reminded him of Jerry, though Jerry probably would have said something much harsher.

  And where is he now? Do you think he died in that desert with Grace?

  No.

  Caesar didn't push the thought away. He wouldn't ignore what he'd done. If anyone could make it out of the desert, Jerry could. And if not, he'd rather die trying than in that room.

  Enough. Get this over with, Grim said.

  Caesar let out a mental sigh, the only kind available to him.

  Yes, master. Anything else? He asked, but Grim had left.

  Caesar walked through the doors, his metal feet clicking softly on the floor beneath him. He had picked a female body, one that would have a female voice and hopefully bond better with the specimen.

  A girl, Caesar. A girl.

  She looked up as he approached, her eyes bright and mistrusting.

  "Whatever you're selling, I don't want any," she said.

  "Hi, Michele," Caesar responded, knowing it was the first time anyone had used her name.

  "You know my name? Good. Did you know my father's name? David."

  She stared at him as if all the hate in the world had been divided between her two pupils.

  "I know his name. I'm sorry, Michele. Truly. It wasn't part of the plan."

  Her eyes grew wet. "Let me go home. Please."

  "I want to, Michele. I do, but I need to understand some things first."

  "Understand what? I don't know anything. I'm fifteen years old for goodness sake." The girl tried to hold it together, but was nearing her breaking point. Caesar knew she didn't want to sob to this machine, breaking like a cheap toy finally poked one too many times.

  An application approached from behind and handed Caesar tissues. He tried passing them to the girl. She stared at them as if they were beautiful snakes--dangerous, but something she desperately wanted to touch simply to say she had.

  "Take them. There's no reason to sit here and cry in front of someone you don't want to."

  Michele snatched the tissue from his open hand.

  "I will let you go home if you tell me what I need to know."

  "No you won't," she said as she dabbed at her eyes. "I'm never leaving here unless you guys dump my body somewhere."

  "You won't believe me, but I don't break promises. If you help me, you can go home."

  "I can't help you," she said. "I don't even know what you want from me."

  "For now, just to talk. Do you remember the second Scan you went through? After the back mapping?"

  "You mean after you stabbed me about a hundred times? Yeah I remember that Scan."

  "Something happened before you walked up the stairs, before the red lights shone on your hands. You know it as well as I do. I want to know what happened," Caesar said.

  The girl stopped wiping her eyes and stared at him. Caesar monitored everything around her and all her bodily functions--heart rate, respiration, everything. Nothing registered abnormal, neither internally nor externally, and yet he knew a change was happening. Again, something she hadn't expected but yet showed no visible signs.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

  "Michele, you're not being truthful. I really do want to help, but I can't until you tell me what happened in there."

  "Nothing happened. You're crazy and so is this whole thing. Let me go home or just leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you anymore."

  Caesar looked at the girl for a few more seconds, realizing whatever inroads he made a few minutes ago had now been blocked. Another mental sigh.

  "I'll come back later, Michele. Think about it some."

  "Don't come back, not unless you're letting me out of here."

  * * *

  Michele leaned against her chair and kept her paperback open.

  She didn't read a single word.

  She only appeared to because the voice told her to act normal. The voice? It was her voice. She felt like a split was growing in her mind, one part saying the voice was hers, and another saying it was someone else. Someone from outside her head, only using her voice, her thoughts.

  Because she couldn't deny she was thinking them.

  But are they originating from you?

  The voice had been silent, from the stairwell right up until three minutes ago, and then it stood up like a student giving a presentation--expecti
ng everyone to pay attention. And Michele had.

  "Something happened before you walked across that floor, before the red lights shone on your hands. You know it as well as I do. I want to know what happened," the machine had said.

  Don't tell it anything.

  Her voice, her thoughts, yet something different about them.

  Michele didn't understand why, but she felt danger awaited if she didn't obey. Maybe from that machine or maybe another, but she felt a finality with the thought that said all hung in the balance of her answer.

  And so she gave the machine nothing, telling it to leave and not come back.

  Now be normal. In a few minutes all this will be in the past and you can go on with your day.

  Michele listened again.

  Minutes passed and the voice didn't speak. Only silence and the pages in front of her.

  Hello? she thought.

  Nothing came back, though, just her own mind saying she was going crazy.

  So Michele sat and looked at her book, doing her best to look normal, for what reason, she didn't know.

  However, she forgot to flip the pages.

  * * *

  Daniel Bennett heard the voice and knew immediately something else was inside his head. In all honesty, he had been waiting for this moment his whole life.

  His city was priding itself on not shutting down like many others across the globe. Signs lined windows in buildings declaring "We're staying. The Genesis can leave." Or, "The world needs more cities like Hallas. We don't fold. We have grit."

  Daniel didn't know much about any of that, only he found it odd that the signs hung in buildings that The Genesis built. He lived in one of the few remaining original cities built fifteen hundred years ago. The upper floors of buildings couldn't be used; humanity hadn't been able to reproduce the needed oxygen levels at low enough costs, but all of the lower levels were occupied. Hallas had to expand outside the original city limits, though, due to its inability to use all The Genesis built--so the city had done some construction.

  Hallas took pride in itself, which was fine, and it looked like that pride might have actually saved Daniel's ass--because all the people on the road kept him from walking to his death.