Feed the Machine

by Mathew Ferguson

  “Where did you get them from?”

  “Fat Man has been killing our people and holding them!”

  The same questions came over and over. By the time she reached the Machine the crowd had swelled to at least two hundred people. More were in the surrounding streets. People were running to the fires, away from the fires, getting out to see what was happening or running home to hide.

  Nola saw Sheriff Toll yelling out for calm, his hands up in the air. The crowd around him wasn’t listening.

  Then they saw Nola and the collars and grew quiet.

  She made her way through them and dumped the collars on the ground. They clanged as they hit the stone, some of them rolling away. In the light Nola saw some of them were still encrusted with dried blood. People started picking them up, reading the attached labels.

  Sheriff Toll grabbed one.

  “This is Gustav Nott’s collar,” he said.

  He moved closer to the Machine and held it out. Gustav’s name flashed on the screen. The bin opened and Sheriff Toll threw the collar in. Gustav’s name vanished and his family quota appeared. His named faded away on the screen. DECEASED flashed for a moment and disappeared.

  “Where did you get these Nola?”

  Nola pointed back to Fat Man’s district. Her blood boiled in her veins.

  “They’re in Fat Man’s compound. Hundreds of them! This is all I could carry. He kills people and takes their collars so you have to pay. He makes you become his slave. He has traps set all around Cago. My brother was caught in one!”

  She screamed it out in one long burst of fury. It swept over the crowd and gained force. The low murmur of a hundred people talking grew angry.

  “If you have a missing family member their collar is still in Fat Man’s possession. Come with me to get them back! Then we kill Fat Man!”

  The crowd roared. They’d picked up all the collars, were yelling out names. People were rushing forwards, claiming their dead. The anger crackled outward, leaping through the streets, carried by voice and murderous chant.

  “Take us there Nola,” Sheriff Toll said.

  “Make way for her!” he called out.

  The crowd divided and then joined behind them. Nola led Sheriff Toll and the people down the street and back the way she came.

  The chant was growing.

  Kill Fat Man.

  Kill Fat Man.

  Kill Fat Man.

  Sheriff Toll signaled his deputies to follow but that was all they could do. They were outnumbered. At best he might be able to talk the mob down, stop them exacting their bloody justice on Fat Man.

  They entered his district unchallenged. No guards with shocksticks to stop them. Emboldened, the crowd pushed forward, urging Nola on. She was sweeping forward on the crest of a giant wave. Soon it would crash down and destroy the entire world.

  They were close to the building, another few hundred meters when Fat Man’s guards emerged from around a corner.

  Each of them was carrying a bright green gun.

  “Stop!” one of them shouted at the massive crowd.

  “Put down your weapons!” Sheriff Toll yelled back, his voice deep and terrible.

  One of the guards fired. A flash of red light and a cracking sound and Sheriff Toll dropped to the ground, his arm missing at the shoulder.

  The crowd howled. A mixture of fear, anger and terror.

  It rushed through Nola’s bones and released all the anger inside her. Tirrel groping her. Working as a slave. Gardner. Candle. Fat Man.

  Being forced to kill Garrick.

  This hell they were forced into because of Fat Man.

  The final straw burst into flame.

  “Kill them!” she screamed.

  Then she ran towards the guards.

  The people followed.

  Chapter 50

  Silver

  She shot Munro in the foot, taking the end of it off in a burst of laser fire.

  He screamed and fell to the floor of his medicine shop.

  “Open the door and give me two bottles of black heal and the sourcecube.”

  “I can’t. I can’t. He’ll kill me.”

  Silver aimed the gun at his other foot and fired. She missed, burning a hole in the floor instead.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t. I think this gun might be able to burn through that door. What do you think?”

  After leading Nola to the collars, Silver had backtracked. She collected her tablet and gold from under the house and ran all the way home with Hello flying ahead. It was a wreck—it had been ransacked by looters or Fat Man’s thugs but they hadn’t found her secret hiding space. She’d built a blocker box—it was mesh and connected to a power source. Everything inside it was invisible to scanning. The small hasdee she’d built was still there along with the plan for the compass cutter and a few bugs waiting for commands. The screen had been blinking: gold, 78 grams.

  Silver had fed the gold in and five minutes later she had the compass cutter. It was as it was named—a standard-looking cutter with a small screen on the handle. It gave a direction and distance. Wherever it wanted her to go, it wasn’t far outside Cago. It was underground though.

  Silver left the shock bracelet there hidden away in the blocker box and closed it back up. On her way out she’d come across Ed and Michael who were looking for the house with the blue door to hide in. She told them to hide in her old workshop and in return they’d handed over the laser.

  A grand plan blossomed and the voice agreed. It enjoyed violence and fear and there was sure to be both.

  The town was aflame. More of Fat Man’s warehouses were engulfed in fire and there was angry yelling echoing across Cago.

  She could hear the faint sound of cracking. Someone was firing laser guns.

  Silver ran to the medicine shop and shot the door open. Munro was for some reason still behind the counter. He’d sneered at her and she’d shot at him. He refused to open the vault door that held the medicine and so she’d shot him again, taking off the end of his foot.

  The voice howled with glee.

  “Don’t shoot me! Please!”

  “Better get some heal for that foot,” Silver said, pointing the gun at him. She moved it a little and shot again. A hole appeared in the floor beside him. Munro screamed and scuttled back. The end of his foot was charred, sealed shut like cooked meat. There was only a little blood.

  Silver aimed at the vault door and took a shot. The metal absorbed it, turning orange and making a cracking noise as it heated and cooled.

  You don’t need him! Burn his legs off!

  It was getting harder to resist the voice but Silver knew she needed to leave Munro alive. He was a slave just like everyone else. He might have enjoyed exerting his power over everyone else but she couldn’t kill all of them. There would be no one left.

  He looked at the vault door and saw she’d be able to burn through it.

  “Okay, okay,” he whimpered.

  He pressed his hand to a panel on the door. It scanned and then the vault unlocked. He crawled in. Silver followed, keeping the gun on him. Hello kept watch out the front.

  “You need to shut that door first,” Munro gasped from the floor. He was sweating like crazy, his clothes wet like he’d fallen in the river.

  Careful not to come too near to him, Silver pulled the heavy door closed. It was balanced and swung shut easily. As soon as it did, the second door unlocked.

  The back room contained a hasdee covered in multiple colorful buttons. Each was a different strength of heal. There was also a small shelf holding two bottles of black heal, a bottle of yellow and one of blue.

  Munro went to take a bottle of black but Silver shooed him away with the gun and made him sit in the far corner.

  “My foot is missing! I need black!”

  She put all the medicine in her bag and went to the hasdee without answering him. She hit yellow. The hasdee printed a bottle in about a minute. She tossed it to Munro who opened it and gulped it down w
ith a sigh of relief.

  There was another button. It was white with the image of a cube on it.

  “What’s this?”

  “Tempcube. Makes tempcubes.”

  Silver pressed it. Various options appeared on the screen. Strength of heal (divided into colors), maximum number of bottles produced (1–1000).

  She set it to black and 1000 and hit print.

  It was even faster than the bottle printing. Twenty seconds later she had a deep blue tempcube.

  Silver turned to face Munro. His foot wasn’t growing back but it wasn’t looking so raw and burned now.

  “You could make tempcubes with a thousand doses of black heal in twenty seconds and you didn’t?”

  “It’s Fat Man’s. He owns it.”

  She seared his other foot off. He screamed until she threw him a bottle of blue. He gulped it down.

  “It’s not enough. I need black. I need black. Please.”

  “Babies have died. Twelve percent of babies.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll give it to everyone. I promise.”

  Kaleen the midwife’s record book flashed into her mind. Numbers of babies born, numbers died.

  She shot him again, taking his leg off at the knee. Then she printed him a bottle of blue and threw it to him.

  Silver turned back to the hasdee and printed another black heal 1000-dose tempcube. Then it required more materials. She ejected the sourcecube and the buttons on the hasdee faded away.

  Kill him.

  She came close to doing it. The gun in her hand and it was easy to pull the trigger. She could exert her will with near-absolute power. It was tempting but for what purpose? Better to leave him alive, see if he could redeem himself.

  Silver left Munro whimpering in the corner, desperately licking the heal bottle for the final drops. She went out through the double vault doors and back out to Cago.

  A short trip across it. People yelling. Anger. Fear. She kept hearing his name. Fat Man. Fat Man. Fat Man. Death. Attacks.

  She was at Bell Dorrit’s home so fast it was like she’d flown there.

  Her husband was there, full of fear and questions. Her daughter, terrified. She took out the bottle of black heal and they led her to the bedroom.

  Bell was bones and rotting flesh somehow still alive. The necrosis had climbed inside her, liquefying. The room was dead meat stench.

  Silver trickled black heal between her lips and a moment later the living skeleton turned its head so she could pour the rest in. Her color returned as the heal flowed through her. Silver gave her husband the two tempcubes, told him to use them to heal the wounded he met. He had two thousand doses of black heal.

  She left. By the time she was walking out the door Bell Dorrit was sitting up in bed, skinny but alive.

  The gates were open, manned by fearful guards. They ignored the shit-carter’s weird little daughter, even if she was carrying a bright green gun. Hello flew above her as she followed the compass on the cutter, heading to Fat Man’s mines.

  Hurry.

  “I am,” Silver said. She’d run from Fat Man’s to her home and to Bell Dorrit’s. She was getting tired.

  There were a few slaves around outside the fence looking fearfully in at the rising smoke. One of them came towards her and she raised her gun. He put his hands up.

  “You’re Ash’s sister right?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Down there.”

  He pointed at the opening of one of the mines. Kin was sitting there next to a smoking mound.

  She rushed past the slave, the voice already telling her what had happened.

  An explosion. A rush of fire. Too slow. Too slow.

  Kin looked up as she approached.

  “He was caught in the blast,” he said and ducked his head to touch blackened fingers.

  Silver knelt and turned her brother over. He was a mess of burned flesh. His uniform had melted onto his body. He wasn’t breathing. She pulled out the bottles of heal and tipped them one by one into his open mouth. Black, yellow, blue.

  Nothing.

  She could go back, get more black heal.

  If one dose doesn’t do it, another won’t.

  Silver touched her brother’s burned face. She walked away.

  There was a pain in the core of her. It was not the pain of welts or lack of air. Not the pain of a body turning against itself. It was something else.

  Loss.

  Her dead brother.

  All those dead babies.

  Silver followed the compass down the next of Fat Man’s mines. She was close now. Tears prickled in the corners of her eyes. Hello fluttered to sit on her shoulder.

  All those dead people.

  Maybe Nola. Maybe her mother.

  She reached the end of the tunnel and still had further to go. She turned the cutter on and a long beam leapt out, brilliant green. She carved a circle in the junk. It made a silver tube, like the ones the bugs had made. The junk inside the circle turned to liquid and became the walls.

  All the dead in Char. All the dead in Maran. Was it twelve percent of all babies in all cities? What about the Scabs? They had babies too didn’t they?

  She had the tablet in her bag and knew she could discover these answers if she searched long enough. But what did it matter the precise number?

  You need to know how angry to be.

  Silver carved her tunnel and kept walking downwards.

  Twenty meters.

  Ten.

  Five.

  One.

  The wall of junk fell away to reveal a cave with walls of polished silver. Sitting in it was a blocker cage the size of her workroom with a door on the side. The mesh was rusted but still whole. The cutter died in her hand, the battery flat and she was left in darkness. She opened the door and stepped inside. It was dark and smelled dusty, lit only by the glimmer of three hasdee screens blinking their requests for more materials. The hasdees were lined on the right wall.

  Within a moment small lights glimmered in the ceiling like a sheet of stars. They rose in power, making the room bright. Silver saw there were bugs collected around the bases of the hasdees, waiting for instructions.

  Above the hasdees there was a large screen, much like her tablet but a good meter across it. Silver touched her fingers to it but nothing happened. It was dead.

  On the back wall there was a long dull gray metal workbench and a small stool sitting in front of it. Silver walked over to it and ran her fingers over the golden lines etched into its surface. A message.

  KILL FAT MAN

  CRACK HIS HEAD

  TAKE HIS CUBES

  BUILD THE BOMB

  DESTROY THE BUGS

  BUILD THE BLOCKER

  BUILD THE BOMB

  GO TO HER

  A map was etched on the tabletop in deep lines of glowing gold. The Scour and all its cities. A line drawn from Cago, across the Gap and to the shining glow.

  Hello hopped off her shoulder and onto the map. He pecked at the gold to see if it would come loose.

  “Sorry about Ash,” he said.

  Silver reached out and stroked his feathers. Hello nuzzled into her hand.

  There was a loud explosion in the direction of Cago and the ground rumbled.

  “What is that?” Hello said, jumping nervously from one foot to the other.

  “Fighting I think.”

  A darker voice whispered in her mind.

  War.

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 51

  Ella

  She awoke naked and cold on a plush carpet. No gap between asleep and awake, no grogginess. Perhaps she hadn’t been asleep then? Ella sat up and looked around. A corridor, stairs, gentle lighting. The wallpaper was printed with tiny roses. In the wall next to her, above her head, was a large glass window.

  Something is wrong.

  “Yes it is.”

  Her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat. Mucus in her lungs. She coughed. It felt familiar.

  She stoo
d, her muscles cold and weak. The air around her was warm and pleasant but she was chilled through. She took note of this.

  Through the glass window there was a long white box—like a coffin—sitting on the tiled floor. Bugs were scurrying around cleaning spilled liquid. The room was lit by discreet lights embedded in the ceiling. Except for the box and the bugs, it was empty.

  She tried the door. It swung out to reveal a flat featureless wall of silver. The door was decorative only. She knocked on the wall. It sounded solid.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  A memory swiped at her, bursting like a firework. Calling out Hello but not in greeting. Something else…

  It crackled away. No one answered.

  Ella walked down the corridor opening all the doors. They led to furnished rooms. Beds, bookshelves, bathrooms. Each was comfortable but pristine as though it had never been lived in. The first mirror she saw was a small shock. She knew she was twenty-six and the face and naked body in the mirror was twenty-six. Layered over that was an echo of a thought. Being older. Lines at the corners of her eyes, breasts being tugged down by gravity. A scar somewhere below her navel. She stoked her stomach. It was flat and strong. No scar.

  She found clothes that fit her in one of the wardrobes.

  That’s weird.

  “I agree.”

  She walked down the flight of stairs. She’d awoken on the third floor. She checked two rooms on the second floor (bedrooms with bookshelves) and walked to ground level.

  It was a mansion, clearly belonging to someone ridiculously wealthy. There were multiple hasdees sitting in different places, bugs hiding in discreet locations. She gave them an instruction to form a circle and they did.

  They were her bugs. Or at least put temporarily under her control.

  The lounge room was gigantic. Plush leather sofas, beautiful end tables, subtle lighting that seemed to make everything glow and colors pop. There were plants scattered around the place—one was a peace lily—adding a touch of nature.

  In the lounge there was a large black screen that filled an entire wall.

  She passed it by and went to the front door. It opened to a warm day, a flowering garden, a brick path that led to a white picket fence. There was a sidewalk, a gutter and a hint of black road before the world cut off in a semitranslucent wall that glowed a warm white. Ella went to the wall and pressed her hand to it. There was a low buzz running through the smooth surface. It felt pleasantly warm to touch. To the left and right it curved around, encircling the mansion. It rose up above, like a protective bubble.