Feed the Machine

by Mathew Ferguson

  She didn’t tell him about them, fat, rich and laughing walking down the streets of Cago. Something that had never happened—at least to them.

  Back to the countdown, the bugs and the bomb. Will it destroy Cago? No, just things electrical in nature. Hasdees, pets, weapons? Yes. The Machine? Don’t know. Sourcecubes? Don’t know.

  Ash had seen the shocksticks—guessed they’d come from the stolen junkcube. The green gun was more proof.

  He’d looked at the map and the hasdees and clapped his hands—crack!—and they’d rushed back to the surface. Ash drew a circle in the dirt and told Silver and Hello to stay inside it. Then he started cutting the fence.

  “Too many variables,” Silver whispered. Ash was finishing on the inner fence. A few more shots and they’d be able to walk right through.

  A hole through the fence meant they could take materials down the mine, feed them to the hasdees. They could make the bomb, the blocker and the second bomb. Ash hadn’t said this was the plan but the voice seemed certain.

  But all the fighting in Cago was making it hard for her to think. Too much chaos. Too many things changing all at the same time. Fat Man’s guards could print better weapons and they would be killed robbing his warehouses for pure materials. The fighting could rush like a fire across Cago. Hazels might sneak in through the holes in the fence.

  The EMP might kill every pet within kilometers. It would destroy every hasdee and bug. What would happen then when starvation rippled back through the people?

  You’re not in control. Running out of time.

  “I know,” Silver said. The voice had whispered that Raj was susceptible to the lure of wealth, that Kin could be swayed by the promise of food, freedom and reuniting with Ash. Nola’s weakness was her anger. Find a terrible crime (hoarded collars) and direct her towards it. Their mother wanted safety, to survive another day.

  But all the people of Cago? They had too many motivations, too many drives and desires. Silver wanted them to follow her directions. Please open the warehouses and carry the materials down to the hasdees so we can make the bomb. It’s for your own good!

  Now storm the palace so we can crack Fat Man’s head open!

  If she had ten thousand bugs to do her bidding she wouldn’t need the people to help her. She’d send a wave of them to chew his guards to pieces and return with Fat Man’s head.

  If she had as many tablets to study the writhing mess of variables, pressures, desires, hungers and whims then perhaps she could understand it all.

  Ash cut through the fence. The mesh fell to the ground with a clang. He ducked his head and walked outside Cago, back to Silver. It was getting late, the afternoon wearing on and soon darkness would creep up on them.

  Hello was standing on the line, glaring at Ash.

  “We’ll make the bomb and those other things too. We’ll destroy the bugs and capture Fat Man but we’re not cracking his head open.”

  Silver nodded. Not a yes, not a no.

  “Ash!”

  Nola in the distance shouting. Their mother’s voice alongside it.

  Ash looked away from Silver and smiled. He walked towards their approaching family.

  Silver stepped out of the circle.

  “C’mon Hello, he’s not watching now.”

  Chapter 59

  Ella

  The pizza slice in her hand forgotten, she stared at the white box towering over Variko. One had appeared in every city twelve days ago. An incredible new change.

  Change means new pressure. New cracks will appear.

  The first Feed, some eight months after she awoke, was a shocking spectacle. The wallscreen had turned on by itself, displaying every city, every Machine. She watched twenty-six mayors give twenty-six speeches (some identical), the clock struck twelve and silver bugs tore some people apart. People screamed in terror then feasted while new electrical generators and water pumps were installed; the old ones eaten down.

  The voice had howled with glee.

  A year later it happened again but this time she knew it was because of the quota. She’d been studying the people, listening to their conversations. She could move the viewpoint of the screen to any position. She followed men sneaking to the shower to scare their wives before dragging them away to bed. She watched babies being born, all blood and screaming. She studied children playing and pets arguing with their owners.

  She’d discovered the metal men by chance, exploring blood vessels one day before hitting metallic bone. A few days of searching and programming and she’d found them in every town. There was always one in power—like the so-called “Fat Man” in Cago—and there were others in various roles. The father, the drunk, the dedicated wife.

  They all had cubes in their heads instead of brains.

  One of the hypotheses was this was all a giant experiment being run over and over again. The variables changed and the metal men and women were agents of the experimenter, tweaking things to be the way they wanted. She didn’t have enough evidence to come to a conclusion.

  There was no limit to what she could see or understand. She could even display information about people on the screen as she watched them. Their age, their weight, their quantity of white blood cells. She could zoom into their bodies and watch the pulsing of a single blood vessel. Every conversation, every moment was captured. She could search and watch again and again if she so chose.

  Some she followed for only a few days. Erika, a six-year-old, who was upset because her mother was ill. Their father traded some goods to a bastardo and bought some blue heal. Erika’s mother recovered.

  Others she watched for months and years.

  An old man, Morris, rich beyond belief, doddering around a mansion as big as Ella’s. He died in year seven, losing his balance on flat marble flooring and toppling over. He broke his ribs, arm and hip and lay there for two days until he expired. She’d watched his death at least ten times, looking at his numbers sliding out of alignment, seeing his blood pressure dropping, his body sliding towards death. She tried to pinpoint the moment, the trigger but there was no one cause. His death was a cacophony of cells rupturing and potassium jolting and chemical reactions crackling away.

  A baby girl, Jada. Her parents hovered on the thin line between poverty and middle wealth. They dipped and rose according to the finds the parents made in the Scour. Jada grew from a long but chubby baby into a blonde toddler who laughed at everything. Every year she grew larger and happier, resilient to the fortunes of her family. She seemed unaffected, even when they didn’t have any food to eat.

  There were others, spread across the entire Scour, living in every city. She watched them and learned about their world. The never-ending roiling junk pile was the Scour. The yearly ritual called Feed. The quota enforced by the Machine.

  The Machine, hated and loved alternatively. Source of food and money but also collars and bugs. It recorded the quota, administered it, assigning value to anything dropped inside it. It provided the generators and water pumps for every town.

  Ella patched together the stories they told of their own beginnings. A war between those who worked hard and those who wanted to take without contributing. Great and terrible weapons that destroyed their cities, obliterating them. The Scour was the ruined remains of the last city. The only one to survive. A great shake had hit them and everything toppled. Nothing survived outside its bounds. Some weapon had destroyed all the plants, rendered the earth infertile so that nothing grew. The glow over the horizon, the great pillar of light a mystery.

  She could not go there on her screen. The images all stopped on the edge of what the people called “the Gap”.

  She heard the story of the fall again, twelve days ago and now a woman was whispering to her friend that perhaps the box of bugs was a weapon from hundreds of years ago. She was scared of it.

  Many people were. The boxes had stood still and silent and now they were humming, fine cracks forming on their surface. It was five minutes until noon.

  Oi
l dripped from the pizza onto Ella’s lap and she remembered her food. She forced herself to take another bite, her stomach already ridiculously overfull. Another experiment—could she get fat? It had been running for one year but no matter what she ate, she couldn’t gain more than ten kilograms. In a week if the weight gain continued to stall she’d quit. Then it was time to begin the starvation experiment.

  Since the white boxes had risen out of the ground rather than the expected electrical generator and water pump, Ella had been watching almost continuously. When she got tired she drank black heal. After the first seven days she’d slept when the heal hadn’t wiped away the fuzzy feeling that had crept around her brain, as though it were wrapped in soft cotton wool. She’d been awake for five days now and her mind was sharp, crackling with ideas.

  When the boxes appeared she’d zoomed into them. They were filled with silver bugs, the same as the ones that lived in the Machine. Nothing special about them. Ella sent her questioning program to search through every conversation anyone had ever had, looking for mentions of the white boxes. Prior to them appearing there were none. They were a new and unexpected event.

  Now they were humming and cracking, so close to noon. There was no doubt there was a precise countdown in effect.

  Ella forgot her food as the minutes dragged by like eons. She tapped from screen to screen, watching people in every city gather around the boxes. It was the rich and the middle rich. Everyone poor was in the Scour scavenging.

  Two minutes then one and crack.

  The bugs came pouring out in the flood, their jaws clacking.

  Obliteration.

  All the people, all the cities.

  No one was spared. Ground down to component atoms by the bugs and the Machine.

  It took a day, the bugs flying deep into the Scour to find the last man sleeping in a hole, unaware he was the last. The bugs set upon him and reduced him to nothing. They didn’t even leave a smear of blood on the junk. They took the wealth of the cities and randomly distributed gold, platinum, diamonds in the Scour. Precious sourcecubes were dropped haphazardly or buried deep.

  Another day and the cities were rebuilt from the ground up. White coffins with people inside them were printed and moved into position by thousands of bugs. The coffins cracked open and flaked away to nothing in the middle of the night and not a single person blinked an eye. They slept or fucked or ate food, totally unaware. People stood from the floor of the bar, shook their heads and carried on.

  Printed as easily as the forever sleeping version of her upstairs.

  The next day, her mind humming like the boxes, black heal unable to push away the tiredness, Ella sat at the screen, moving from town to town, searching, seeking for mentions of bugs or white boxes and then she saw Jada’s mother, enormously pregnant, waddling down the street.

  “Holy fucking fuck,” Ella said.

  Her stomach rumbled and she decided to abandon the starvation experiment for now. This new puzzle required all of her attention.

  Chapter 60

  Nola

  The night was a furious roar as the storm moved over Cago, lashing down freezing rain, lightning cracking and being answered by guns and screams in reply.

  The old generator keeping the fence electrified and lights running was struggling. They were dropped into darkness, blinded by light. Hazels surrounded Cago, growing bolder as the periods of pure night grew longer.

  They were losing this battle.

  “Left, left, left,” Nola screamed. She couldn’t hear her voice. It wasn’t only the storm—something had exploded too close an hour ago and her ears were still ringing. She needed black heal but there was none. No one knew what had happened to their supply.

  The blue bug scuttled down the left side of the street towards them. They only had three guns. Nola fired, along with the two others but no one hit. Others threw bricks and stones but the bug was too quick.

  They’d seen the first one at midnight, before the storm had hit. It had run down the street and they’d fired upon it, fearing it was a weapon. It reached the front line and ripped a man’s jugular out, leaping and clawing with sudden viciousness. Two more men died before a woman smashed it with a brick, crippling its back half. They’d finished it off after that.

  The battle had twisted and flowed and was hanging on a knife edge. They were only two streets away from the warehouses Silver and the others were looting to feed the hasdees underground. If more of these blue bugs came running they’d be wiped out and they’d lose the warehouses.

  “Bricks!”

  Nola took another shot, the laser burning a hole in the wall beside the bug. She swung her gun behind her back and grabbed two bricks. They were cold and wet in her hands.

  Jarrah was down the end of the line, bricks in hand. Beside him was the woman who’d been with Dia. Nola didn’t remember her name. All she knew was she hadn’t found her son and after Fat Man had exploded ten kids and teenagers, the woman had gone cold and violent. She’d been fighting at the front all night. There were others holding bricks and slingshots, men, woman and teenagers huddling in the rain, fighting for their lives.

  The bug dodged a thrown brick, ran up the wall and launched itself at one of the random men. He got a hand up and lost his fingers as the bug slashed at him. He screamed and shook his hand but the bug was already gone, leaping down the line. It stabbed a woman on the shoulder, a single sting and jumped again.

  Dia’s friend swung her gun and swatted the bug out of the air. It hit the cobblestones, shooting sparks. They dived on it, smashing bricks, hitting each other, frantic, yelling until the bug was a twisted pulpy mess.

  Nola stood, feeling her fingers stinging. She was bleeding—a long scratch from a brick or something down her hand.

  “Back in position! Wounded to the rear, get them heal!”

  “Fuck,” someone shouted.

  The man who’d lost his fingers was jerking around on the ground, his mouth foaming. The woman stung on the shoulder dropped to her hands and knees and folded into a ball before she joined him.

  “Poison,” Dia’s friend yelled. Her eyes went glassy and she dropped.

  The three of them died in quick succession, shaking and foaming before a sudden full-body clench went through them. They relaxed from it and slipped into death.

  “Nola, your hand,” Jarrah said.

  “We need to get back—”

  Nola’s mouth went numb, filling with saliva. She spat it out on the street. Above, the storm cracked lightning and the lights around Cago died.

  Ten seconds of darkness lit only by lightning strikes and the glow over the horizon.

  The lights came back and Nola was still standing.

  She looked behind her at the gathered faces of her shrinking army. After Fat Man had exploded the collars of those kids they’d lost many people. Those who remained were the most angry, the most desperate, the most crazy.

  But they were absolutely going to die and lose if they continued to try to hold the line, to keep Fat Man and his guards in their palace.

  Green guns and gray disks and now poisonous bugs… Nola knew Fat Man would be frantically duplicating tempcubes, building hasdees, printing as many of those motherfuckers as he could.

  Even ten together might be unstoppable.

  Nola took the gun off Dia’s friend and gave it to another woman. She put it on and knelt down in the street, focusing on the enemy.

  Ash had told an incredible story—their little sister had discovered bombs in the Collector’s house and told Raj and Kin to plant them. She’d found a hidden room and in it was a weapon—an EMP bomb—that would wipe out every hasdee, bug and weapon in Cago.

  The bomb wasn’t only for Fat Man—it was to destroy the bugs in the block. They had to protect the warehouses so they could loot them.

  In her tired state, Nola had missed some details—who made the hidden room—but as soon as Ash told her about the EMP she was on board.

  Dwindling though her army was,
they still outnumbered Fat Man and his guards three to one.

  Nola had asked Silver if she could work out how to overcome the gray disks or how to make them but her sister had told her there was no time. They had to make the bomb and destroy the bugs inside the white block. She’d left the disk with her.

  Considering what she was about to do, she wished she’d kept it.

  “Jarrah, send a message out. We need everyone gathered here. Abandon all street ends.”

  “His guards could get behind us though. They could ambush. We can’t fight on two sides.”

  “We’re not. We’re going to attack the palace with everything we have. If Fat Man is printing those bugs then we can’t stay here.”

  Jarrah glanced at Fat Man’s palace. Some of the interior lights were still on but most of the grounds were in darkness, lit only by Cago’s fence. The street was littered with dead bodies and dismembered limbs.

  “Jarrah!”

  Nola stepped up to him and grabbed his hands. He was surprisingly warm.

  “We stay here, we die. Spread the word, get everyone here.”

  He nodded.

  The lights around Cago died.

  The hazels outside howled in triumph.

  Chapter 61

  Ella

  “Forty-six years, eight months and twelve days old,” Ella told Bug. He scratched a leg on his nose and made a sort of chirping noise at her.

  She’d found animal behavior packs stored away in the flow almost as soon as she’d started her hacking all those years ago but had been thus far unable to download them to a chip. They were readable—the thousands of rules and patterns that made a cat a cat or a giraffe a giraffe for example—but the hasdee chips and everything else thwarted her attempts to directly build a pet.

  So she built and programmed the bug herself, making new rules for how to move its legs, how to see, how to use its senses, when to hide, how to recognize predators. She wasn’t making it a bug but rather giving it a complex mix of anything she thought useful. One day she decided it was male. Ella named him Bug because she couldn’t think of anything better.