But still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of jealousy over the relationship everyone in the compound had developed with these small children. All of them except for me.
********
They’re in the next unit now. It’s one of the groups of tweakers, the really dangerous ones with all of the guns and noxious chemicals. The gunfire is deafening, but it seems like they might actually be causing some damage. Maybe they’ll actually be able to kill them. I hear something that sounds like an explosion and then the oxygen fueled crackling and whoosh of a fire igniting. Would they be able to withstand being set on fire? But when I hear the same pained filled screams that I’ve been listening to for the last three hours, I realize that they can survive anything. They can survive because they are born of fire. They are born of bullets and swords. They are born of fear and death.
I finally just allow myself to empty my bowels and bladder in my pants. If I was any kind of man, I would have done it in a corner of the unit. But the mess briefly reminds me that I used to be child, a thing of innocence and purity who knew no better but to crap its pants.
The tweakers are dying a slow death for putting up a fight. They’re making them pay for their insolence in blood and pain. As bad as it makes me feel to hear them die, at least it gives me a slight reprieve so that I can make peace with God.
********
My jealousy got the best of me when the twins called Ollie into their RV, into their inner sanctum. I’d never been inside of the RV even when it was just me and Marty. But here were the twins, leading Ollie, a man who originally wanted to turn the children into the facility owner and then most likely the police, by the hand into their home. It was just so unfair! I had given them and their father a place to live, a place to thrive. I had offered them everything that was mine and then offered more. And how were they repaying me? By completely ignoring me and my contributions to this wonderful new community.
I stood outside of the facility showroom pacing after the three of them stepped inside of the RV and closed the door behind them. I wanted that to be me inside there. I wanted it to be me who heard the gentle wisdom they imparted to this broken, awful man that was Ollie. Finally, after 30 minutes of pacing, I built up my resolve. I decided that I would have an audience with the twins whether they wanted it or not. I marched to the RV’s rickety door, and instead of knocking, I yanked it open and was assaulted by the worst stench I’d experienced since cleaning out all of the rotted meat that had been left by the previous manager of EZ-Storage. At that moment, every instinct in me was urging me to turn around and run, that there was something not right about the stink of emanating from the trailer. But I pushed those voices aside and stepped through the doorway, into the darkness and the smell of rot and closed the door behind me.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw the shape on the narrow kitchen floor of the RV. It was Ollie lying flat on his back, except there was something wrong. As I moved closer, I saw exactly what was wrong. Ollie’s stomach had been ripped open from his balls to his chest, and the twins squatted on their hands and knees, their faces buried inside the massive, gaping wound. I wanted to run screaming from the RV. I wanted to rush to the office and call the sheriff and then run to each of the units warning the forty some odd people who were living in the storage units to get into their cars and run for the lives. But I didn’t do any of those things. I stood as still as a statue, my body trembling, shaking with fear and disgust.
After what seemed like hours—but what I’m sure was mere minutes—the twins finally noticed me and pulled themselves away from their unnatural meal, their faces dripping with cooling blood and flicks of flesh and bone coursing down their chins.
“Salias,” one of them said.
“We’ve been waiting.”
“For so long.”
“Waiting for you.”
“To join us.”
“To teach us.”
Their voices were hypnotic and came out as barely audible hisses. In the dim light of the trailer, I could see that their normally milk white skin had taken on a greenish hue and looked almost like scales. I should have been terrified, but instead, I squatted down between them, and joined them for their evening meal.
********
In a mere two hours, they showed me so much. They showed me the time before when the world was nothing but darkness and chaos. They showed me the ancients, marching lines of awestruck men and women into their caves. They showed me how these men and women would wait patiently, all of them laying themselves flat on the cold, blood slicked altar, offering prayers to the twins as they tore their sacrifices’ soft bellies open with their razor sharp teeth and claws. They showed me the exhilaration each of their followers felt as the twins methodically devoured both their souls and bodies.
After we finished feasting on Ollie, I wanted to rush out and spread the word. I wanted to shout the gospel of the twins to the heavens for all of the followers to hear, and then I wanted to devour them all so they could experience the servitude of blood and pain.
Surprisingly, the twins wanted the same thing as I did, so we left the RV and made our way to the units and the twins first blessed sacrifices that would usher in a truly new and glorious day.
********
The door of the unit I’ve been hiding in rolls open and in the light of the full moon and the fire raging in the unit next to mine, I see the twins standing there, hand-in-hand with Salias, just like they used to with me after I’d fed them. The only difference is, it looks like they’ve gifted Salias the power of transformation.
“Marty…”
“We’ve been…”
“Looking…”
“All over for you,” the three of them say in unison. They have truly bonded, Salias is indeed their true father. I was nothing more than a pretender just like Melinda, and her sister, and her parents, and all of the countless worshippers that had come before them.
I’ve stripped myself naked and as they enter my unit, I lay myself down on the cold concrete floor. As they tear my stomach and chest open and my mind fills with the exquisite pain of my body and soul being ripped asunder, I feel a pang of jealousy, because I know I won’t be on this plane of existence to witness what comes after and the joy the twins and their true father will bring to the world.
Then the feeling of floating away vanishes and I’m overwhelmed with sharp pains. My screams are the last thing I hear over the three devouring me until there’s nothing left.
M.A.T.T.
“Motor Artificial Technology Task-keeper, please respond.”
The voice stirred the conscious mind of one of the most recent technological advancements made to date.
The robot christened Motor Artificial Technology Task-keeper, or Matt, to those who worked most closely on him, opened his eyes for the first time that day.
Being a robot, he couldn’t fully experience thoughts or emotions. He had been programmed with them, rather than born. He did not have the ability to understand what he should say or do in a given situation. However, his highly sensitive and metallic skin registered that the temperature outside the building he was in was a mild seventy-four degrees, and his superb vision told him that there wasn’t a cloud in sight. Had he been human, he would have rejoiced in a beautiful afternoon like this. As a robot, he simply noted that the change in weather would likely result in several of the staff coming down with sinus infections.
“Matt? Hello?” Carter, the technician who spent most of his time with Matt, working out kinks to his operating system as well as making any necessary adjustments, was rapping hard with his knuckles on the metallic skin. The movement made Matt focus solely on the human in front of him. The jolting made Matt think that he wanted Carter to leave him alone. It wasn’t often that he was able to focus on things other than what he was told, but each time it was a riveting experience.
“Buddy, you’ve got to focus.” Carter’s voice sounded through the room, bouncing back to Matt, whose internal hard drive
processed the words through a tube in the side of his head much like the inner ear of a human. His creators had thought it best to model him after themselves, since it was something that they had much experience studying.
“Otherwise,” Carter continued, “what are we running all of these tests for?”
Carter was not his friend, as Matt couldn’t exactly have friends, but he was an acquaintance, someone who spent the most time with him. Matt did not have an opinion on Carter exactly, and he could not form the word to describe what knowledge went along with his experiences of Matt. He knew that although he spent much time around Carter every day, he would be equally as capable of not spending as much time with him. However, negative words were not programmed into Matt’s system, as he was not designed to be able to give his evaluation of either people or circumstances. It was disconcerting to be able to know so much and yet experience so little.
“Is it possible to be negative towards a human?” Matt asked, not unkindly. The question seemed a natural response given his reaction to his current surroundings.
“I don’t think that’s something that needs to be added to your database, no,” Carter responded evasively. His hands moved over the keyboard on a computer, typing in programing instead of facing Matt when he responded. Matt knew enough to register that Carter was being intentionally evasive, but was not capable enough to understand why. What was his purpose in doing so?
“I’m going to run a check on you. There were some bugs yesterday that affected your speech and range of motion. Just hold still while the information processes.”
If Matt had been working with someone else, they might have added a please onto the end of that sentence, but Carter never did. Carter never missed an opportunity to remind Matt that he was something far less than human.
He was told, almost daily, that he was going to be the biggest thing since sliced bread, whatever that meant. He was being created, as well as prototypes like him, to help people who had either had accidents or been born in such a way that they required a personal caregiver. He had been shown pictures of people called veterans, who had fought and been damaged in human wars, missing limbs that left them unable to care for themselves on a basic level; or humans that had been in automobile accidents and were likewise handicapped. It seemed to Matt that it would be more sensible to address the root problem of how the injuries were occurring rather than an invention to help them once the damage had been done, but no one had asked his opinion on the subject.
Mechanical Artificial Task-keeper had been designed to be that extra, accommodating help, without the issue of human error; there were already plenty of nurses and housekeepers in the world, but no one never truly knew another person’s nature or intentions. Some people weren’t willing to take the risk.
He had heard several of the scientists complaining that it would take several billion dollars to build Matt by the time it was all said and done, but he would eventually be made affordable enough so that everyone could have a robot like him to help them in their households. That was the game plan, as Carter called it.
“I wish someone would turn the damn heat off,” Carter mumbled under his breath as he stared at the screen. As a being who was created to help others, and as one who had nothing better to do, all of Matt’s focus was drawn to Carter’s words. “You’d think it was forty below outside the way they’ve got that thing cranked up. It feels like a furnace in here, doesn’t it?”
Complaining. Was Matt allowed to complain? The word was in his vocabulary, but nothing in his programming suggested that he should do it.
“It is a mild day outside. A running furnace serves no purpose in mild weather.” It was the best response Matt could determine for himself, although he wasn’t sure if it was what Carter was looking for.
He reminded himself of the technicians, when they were thinking out loud. But Matt didn’t have thoughts. He couldn’t possibly. His sole purpose was to exist to help others, not be selfish enough to think and consider his own being.
Isn’t that what you’re doing now?
You. I. Pronouns that hadn’t been programmed into his system upon his creation, but that had been developed into his regular language after adjusting to being around the humans who worked so tirelessly on him. It was a strange sensation to be considering such things, but Matt supposed that he, like a toddler moving from infancy to childhood, would grow based on his surroundings and those who nurtured him.
“Carter Thomas?” Matt would have preferred to ask one of the other technicians, but Carter was the one who put the most hours in at the lab and was currently the only one around.
“I’ve told you before, Matt, just Carter is fine.” The human did not look up from what he was doing.
“Carter, then,” Matt said, correcting himself. “Carter?”
“What?” Carter responded with a resigned sigh. He looked supremely irritated.
“When will I be put into action? When will I be able to help those people who cannot help themselves? I am…bored?” Matt didn’t think it was quite the right word. He knew that it was not enjoyable to see the same four walls of the lab every day. He knew that it was not nice to only have access to the information that was provided to him. There was more out there.
“I don’t know the exact time schedule. Versions of you are supposed to be hitting shelves sometime in the next five years, but who is ever able to stick to a schedule anymore?”
Matt had learned that, in this case, Carter was not employing the denotative meaning of the word stick. It was a strange phrase that the humans had coined and that Matt had discussed with them when they had first utilized it in front of him.
“Should we not attempt to adhere to the schedule anyway?” Matt asked, his only concern to do his job well and as soon as possible.
“Where is all of this coming from, Matt?” Carter asked him, rubbing his forehead. “You’re suddenly not happy with being here anymore?”
“I do not have the capability of being happy. As I have never known another home I must accept that I am content here. However, curiosity does enable me to—”
“Curiosity?” Carter asked incredulously, followed with a mean sounding laugh. “You don’t have the ability to be curious, my friend. It isn’t in your coding.”
The strange thing that was almost a feeling tried to rise up again, going against Matt’s normal programming. It felt like his circuits were being short wired. He did not think that if he had the ability to feel, that he would like the way Carter was laughing at him. He had asked a very reasonable set of questions.
Matt did not talk for the remaining three hours that Carter, Quinn, and Leslie, the other technicians that often came and went through the sliding glass doors of the laboratory, worked on him. They tested how his joints moved. They tried to decide if they should make his metallic skin more like the cream color or the rich chocolate brown that matched their own skin tones, to make him more appealing to potential consumers. They decided, ultimately, that he needed an internet connection to be hooked inside of him, for emergency situations, or if the person who hosted him needed a quick answer to something.
That was something new and interesting to Matt. Suddenly, he did not have to be hooked up to the computers that they worked so tirelessly on. He could have access to anything that he wanted. He could—
“It’s best to put a lock on the internet connection. That way only the consumer is the one who can use its internet connection. We don’t want someone else trying to break in and use it for their own purposes, not to mention, access to that much information might overload our boy here,” Leslie suggested.
It effectively cut out any potential plans Matt might have made to get the information he so desperately sought, to be able to develop names for the different things he was constantly pondering. He was clever enough to know metaphors; he’d heard humans use them. He felt like his entire mind was a bowl filled with knowledge, except there was a curtain separating him from half of the information that he
needed to be complete.
He hated having the access to information, and outlet to it all, tapped into the back of his mind, without having the ability to open it. It was maddening. At least, that is the emotion he assumed it would be.
It seemed as though months passed in this manner, making minor adjustments, little things here or there that were of no consequence to Matt, but that seemed extremely important to those who were working on them.
“He can’t just be sent in there…” he heard Leslie telling the other two one day. “There are lots of people who don’t have anyone else, that’s why they’re investing in this. He needs to be more personable.”
“What do you suggest we do, make him a personality?” Carter sounded rude, even to his own kind. It made Matt wonder if it saddened the others that he talked with them this way. He knew that Carter often said he had a sense of sarcasm, but to Matt, it seemed a way to simply mask him being mean.
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” Leslie retorted, not deterred by Carter’s skepticism in the slightest.
“There’s no kind of program that’s been developed that can fully manufacture emotions or thoughts for robots. It’s a pipe dream,” Quinn chimed in this time, sounding every bit as skeptical as Carter, but without putting Leslie down quite so much.
“We built him, didn’t we?” she asked defensively. “We can do this too.”
“How would you suggest going about it then?” Carter asked her, sounding like he was a little more intrigued, at least to Matt’s listening ears.
“If we did this, and found a way to program him with emotions, we might not have to program feelings for every situation, just the ability to determine what emotions might be appropriate for any given similar situations. Teach him to think for himself, the same way you would with a baby.”
Descendants Page 3