by JT Lawrence
“What is this?” asks Kate.
“The best way to shuttle bodies out of here without being seen,” says Bernard.
“Bodies?” says Kate.
“Corpses.”
Kate shivers. She’s seen enough dead bodies for the day. Her wrecked state of mind spills over into her imagination, and she daydreams of the tunnel interior being studded with eyeballs and teeth, and whips her hand away from the sandy wall.
“We’re almost there,” Bernard says, mostly for Zack’s benefit, who seems to be flagging. As Kate gets her hopes up that they’ll be in the fresh air soon, Bernard curses and Kate almost walks into her back. The flashlight illuminates a huge heap of soil where the shaft has collapsed, blocking the tunnel. Bernard issues a string of expletives so coarse even Kate is surprised. Sounds are coming from behind them now.
Guards? Criminals?
“They’ll find us in here,” says Zack. “They’ll follow our trail.”
Kate and Bernard look at the ground where fresh crimson drops shine. Betrayed by their own blood.
Bernard uses her baton to tap the ceiling. Clods of sand rain down on them. It’s loose: loose enough to move. Bernard dislodges more of the soil. It’s their only option.
“Dig,” she says.
They dig and dig the hard soil above them. It coats them in dust and mud and the grains on the ground becomes their step up so that they can dig some more. The baton is especially helpful, and they take turns with it. Zack dislodges a small, sharp rock and uses it as a hammer to speed up the work. When Bernard has the baton Kate uses her hands, scraping the skin off her fingers and palms and tearing her nails off while she frantically claws to get to the fresh air and light. Whenever they hear a sound from silo-side they stop to listen.
“Hurry, hurry,” says Kate, more to herself than the others. They all know what the stakes are. Zack gives Kate his cut-throat razor. Perhaps he’ll use his digging rock as a weapon if the stragglers decide to take another chance with them. It’s hard work digging upwards because you lose circulation in your arms if you hold them up for too long, never mind trying to move stubborn soil. And there is just so much of the stuff. It’s everywhere, including Kate’s mouth and eyes. Eventually they hit something, some kind of weak strata, and there is a rumbling sound above them.
“Watch out!” shouts Bernard, just before the landslide buries all of them and they have to fight to breathe, and crawl and kick so they don’t drown in it, have to swim upwards through the silt, but they all do it and when their heads are above the mound that’s just almost swallowed them they whoop and smile with their soil-covered faces—just white eyes and grins—because the outside air has rushed to meet them: dappled light and cool forest air and the smell of decomposing leaves. They’ve made it. It was like digging her way out of her grave, as if she’d been buried alive, but here she is, here they are, alive, with the worst behind them.
They struggle to wrench their limbs free from the heavy soil, and once they’re all above ground level they look at each other again with stupid grins. Kate laughs, ridiculously, frantically, because of course there’s nothing to laugh about. Yet here she is, with two virtual strangers, and they’ve just escaped a certain death not once but twice. Now they’re standing in a godforsaken forest and she has what—or, rather, who—she came for.
For a moment it seems like time stops, and her urgent issues seem far away: Silver unspooling in a hospital bed, Mally staring into Vega’s dangerous eyes. Keke butchered by a schoolgirl. For now she just breathes in the chlorophyll-rich air and rubs the sand off her cheeks, reminded as she does so that her elbow is probably broken—at the very least fractured—and of course it’s the same arm she broke in 2021, and damaged again in 2024, and she thinks: perfect. Because she’s alive.
And then the clock starts ticking again, and she remembers that she needs to get to Silver before the Lipworth powers down. And this makes her think of Seth, and her heart turns grey.
Chapter 72
Corpse Compost
The three of them hurry along in the brindled light of the forest. It’s the first time Zack has been outside in twelve years. It’s utterly peaceful, a block away from the SkyRest building and its subterranean cells, and further still from the jagged Jozi skyline and all the mayhem contained therein.
Kate trips over what feels like a root of a tree but as her body pitches forward, and she softens the fall with her good arm, her face comes close enough to the ground to see the slipping-off skin of a marbled arm escaping the ground. She yells in alarm and backs away, reverse crawling, but then her elbow sinks into the soft soil and there’s another limb—a short leg—and a half-decomposed face with teeth bared in a death snarl. She shoots up, stumbles again, and suddenly Zack is right there, catching her hand.
“Don’t panic,” he says, and she looks at him as if he is crazy. “They can’t hurt us.”
They’re ankle-deep in decaying flesh and bone, soil and leaf mould (Corpse Compost). The idea is sickening to Kate, but the truth Zack speaks evaporates her fright. These skeletons are harmless. The men trying to tear her apart underground were the real danger. Roguebots and Bot Hunters and the V1R1S are a real danger. Anyway, there’s no time for fear.
With her mind on her kids, Kate’s able to half-ignore the bones she feels cracking under her boots, and the squelching of putrefied flesh she hears.
“This is one of their experimentation fields,” says Bernard, slightly breathless with the effort of walking through the soft matter.
“I’ve dreamed of this forest,” says Zack. “Dreamed of it enough times to know that it can’t hurt us.”
Kate steps on a particularly slimy part and slides a little, then gags.
“Keep your focus on the trees,” he says.
Kate looks up, and Zack’s right, the trees are shimmering with health and energy and fresh new leaves. The new life that is nourished by the death below. She realises they’re all breathing easily without their face-masks on, as if they’re in a bubble of oxygen.
Kate wants to call Seth, but realises that her mandible is gone; ripped off by the crims. She says a quick nonsense-prayer to the multiverse, hoping he’s making his way back to the Lipworth Foundation. She has a bad feeling.
Kate shudders. “I need to find Seth. What if he went back down to find me?”
“He wouldn’t want you going back,” says Zack. “He’d want you to save Silver.”
Chapter 73
Anthrobot Academy
Seth’s Apartment
Johannesburg, 2036
Mally and Vega sit on Mally’s bed, facing each other and holding hands. He leans forward and kisses her on the mouth, tentatively, tenderly. Her body warms and arches. She runs her fingers through his hair, and his scalp comes alive under her touch. Other parts of his body, too. She knows exactly what sets him on fire.
Vega starts pulling at his cargo pants. He stops her with gentle hands.
“Don’t,” he says. “Not today. Not after what you’ve been through.”
“I want to,” says Vega. “I am very fond of you.”
“I love you,” Mally says, “but we don’t have to have sex to prove it.”
“I want to,” says Vega. “Things are happening in this world. What if this is our last chance?”
Vega opens her shirt to Mally. He traces the perfect outline of her breasts over her smooth brassiere, feels her pulse through her warm silicone skin. Spends a moment with his hand covering her heart pocket which contains her living hard drive, her Soul Shard. Vega slips her fingers under the waistband of his pants and pulls them down. His desire is clear. She kisses him, and he melts under her, sinking into his pillow. She moves her lips and tongue down his body.
“This isn’t why—” Mally starts saying, but then his yearning overcomes him and the sentence turns into a groan.
Vega knows, anyway.
She knows this isn’t the reason he dates her. Other men do it, of course, commissioning girlfriends f
rom the anthrobot academy to use as house-cleaning sex slaves, but not him. He thinks he fell in love with Vega the first time he saw her in virtual class. His feelings were so strong that first meeting he lost his usual shyness and asked her if he could meet her IRL. Since then they’ve been practically inseparable, but he’s turned down every sexual advance of hers—apart from kissing and some light fondling—because he doesn’t want to treat her like an object. He loves her superintelligence, her skewed humour, her spirit. He loves the spark in her eyes, the way they learn from each other all the time, and the way they just get each other in every way.
Net, he loves her, Mally thinks, as she starts to pull down his cooljox.
And she’s right. Who knows what’s happening out there, or what’s going to happen tomorrow? Will there even be a tomorrow?
He doesn’t know, but what he does know, now, and the knowledge surges inside of him, feeding his desire, is that it is time. They’ve waited long enough; it’s the perfect time to consummate their relationship. He sits up and starts to tug off Vega’s shirt, and she one-handedly snaps her bra off behind her back. The sight of her naked breasts makes his heart swoop, and he’s light-headed for a second as he moves his mouth down to kiss them.
The doorbell rings, and they both jump. His parents, perhaps, or an errant Silver. Would Kate ring the doorbell instead of using the biopad? Possibly. The front door has been giving problems. Either way they sigh, smiling, and pull their clothes back on.
“Purest human,” Vega whispers, buttoning up her shirt as Mally leaves to answer the door.
Arronax has beaten him to it.
“… here as a representative from the National Android Safety…” a stranger is saying.
Arronax senses Mally behind her and turns to include him in the conversation.
The man looks at Mally, as if sizing him up. Beady eyes. Twitching fingers. He’s wearing a cheap blue suit so new it makes Mally immediately suspicious. How does he not get egged in the street wearing that? He could at least fray the edges a little.
“Good morning.” His holotag flashes with the NASP logo. Govender is his name. “I was just saying … that I’m here to interview Miss Alpha Lyrae about the incident last night.”
“Why?” asks Mally.
“It’s regulation,” says Arronax. “All anthrobot assaults need to be reported.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore,” says Mally.
The man nervously adjusts his mandible. “Why do you say that?”
“Let’s just say … the creep responsible for the attack won’t be doing it again.”
“We know,” says Govender. “A man is dead and Miss Lyrae’s roscoe bullets were found at the scene. I’m sure you can appreciate how this needs to be investigated.”
Arronax frowns. “What are you saying?”
“Vega’s in trouble?” Mally can feel his cheeks colour. “For defending herself? For saving my life?”
“Not in trouble,” says the man. “Not unless she did something off-protocol.”
“Well, she didn’t,” says Mally, and tries to close the door, but Govender jams his foot in the way.
“I’m going to have to interview her,” he says.
“She’s been through enough,” says Mally.
“It won’t take long.”
“Then you’ll leave?”
“Then I’ll leave.”
They set up in the open plan kitchen. The ‘interview’ comprises Govender downloading Vega’s memory of the assault. Arronax is busy on her SnapTile while they complete the transaction. The rep watches Vega’s version of the attack and flinches with every shot fired. Once he has a copy of the video, he inserts his diagnostic key into the back of her neck and it flashes red.
“This is bad,” Govender says. “This is worse that I thought.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we’re going to have to take her in.”
Vega stands up, dusts the creases in her outfit, ready to go.
“Hell no,” says Mally. “You’re not taking Vega anywhere.”
“I’m afraid it’s not up to you, Mister Lovell,” says the man. “Alpha Lyrae has undergone significant damage, both on a hard- and software level. She needs to be tended to.”
“Tended to?”
“She’s not safe as she is, but don’t worry, we’ll be able to help her.”
“No,” says Mally. “No way.”
He’s seen the news. Seen how the Special Task Police are rounding up bots of all kinds and keeping them in electric wire-festooned concentration camps.
“We’ll fix her up. Reboot her. She’ll be as good as new.”
“I’m not going to let you do that,” says Mally.
“With all due respect,” says Govender, “it’s not up to you. Under section 17C of the NASP act we’re to claim all damaged bots and—”
“Don’t speak about her like that. Like she’s someone’s property.”
“But … she is,” he says. “I realise you’re young and—”
“It’s got nothing to do with age,” Mally says. “It’s about being decent.”
“Alpha Lyrae is government property.” Govender starts to approach Vega, puts a hand out to take her arm. “And as such, she’s—”
“You leave her alone!”
“It’s okay, Mally,” says Vega. “It’s protocol.”
“I don’t give a fuck about protocol,” Mally says. “I’m sick of hearing about fucking protocol. He’s not taking you anywhere.”
“I’m going to have to arrest you for obstructing reclamation,” says Govender.
“No,” says Vega, giving the NASP representative her best smile. “There’s no need for arrests. I’ll come with you.”
Mally blocks the man’s way. “There’s no way I’m going to let that happen.”
Arronax looks up from her device, and Mally watches as her face drains of colour. She flashes her eyes at him and grabs Seth’s Vektor gun from behind the instakettle. It won’t fire without his bioprint, but Govender won’t know that.
“Get out,” Arronax flicks the weapon in the direction of the door.
Govender shoots up with his hands in the air. “What are you doing?”
“Get out,” Arronax growls. Her hair changes from silver-lilac to deep purple edged with black.
Vega looks confused. “What is happening?”
“Now is your last chance to walk out of here,” says Arronax.
The man keeps his hands in the air and stumbles backwards, towards the front door.
As he crosses the threshold he says “She’ll kill you too, you know. There’s no such thing as a good robot.”
“Bullshit,” says Mally. “You don’t know who you’re talking to. You should show some respect.”
This catches Govender off guard. He looks from Mally, to Arronax, to Mally again.
“Keep quiet, Mally,” says Arronax.
Mally ignores her. “This is Doctor Arronax.”
“Shut up, Mally!” says Arronax, but Mally can’t help himself.
“She’s lead engineer on 7thGen robosapiens and the founder of the RoboRights movement.”
Govender’s eyes widen, and he stumbles as he backs into a cabinet. “Well, then,” he says, when he’s regained some composure, “Doctor Arronax. Maybe you deserve to die at the hands of one of the monsters you’ve created.”
Mally moves to punch him in the face, but Vega holds him back. Govender doesn’t need any more encouragement to get out. As he leaves, he narrows his eyes and says, “My advice is to kill the robot. Kill her before she kills you.”
“So much for NASP being around to protect anthrobots,” says Mally.
“That man wasn’t from NASP.” Arronax shows Mally her screen. She’s deep in the NASP intersite, and there’s no such staff member.
Now it’s Mally’s turn to be confused. “Then who was he?”
“I don’t know, but his agenda’s clear. And by now he would have broadcas
t this address and our identities to all his Bot Hunter mates.”
“Oh, shit,” says Mally. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry. You didn’t know. The important thing is to get out of here as soon as possible.”
Arronax is packing her cardigan and Tile as she talks. She opens a few kitchen cupboards and grabs crackling packets of food: mango biltong, butter popgrains, and protein pretzel stix, and shoves them into her backpack. The Vektor goes into her lab coat pocket.
“Where will we go?”
“I have a safe room. In the city. We can stay there till—”
Till what? Till the danger’s passed? Probably not going to happen. Till we run out of food? Till we die?
He can’t see a positive outcome. He doesn’t even know if he’ll ever see his family again. There’s a hand on his back and he turns to look at Vega. Her eyes are electric. “Let’s go,” she says.
Chapter 74
You Are Excused From Your Daily Grind
ChinaCity/Sandton
Johannesburg, 2036
Kate, Zack and Bernard rush through the city, tram-hopping and skirting the worst of the flash civil war zones. Kate’s head is still bleeding from the hit she took at SkyRest. As they hurry they grab a pack of hotwipes from a vandalized vending machine so they can at least clean their faces of the blood and dirt that covers them. Kate’s arm is glowing with pain. She can’t help but stare at Zack’s grey face.
What did they do to you? she wants to ask, but it’s not the time.
On the southbound solartram they zip past pedestrians: shell-shocked, angry, bewildered. Some people look as if they’re on their way to work, but they’re not quite convinced they need to go in. It’s not like there’s a Doomsday memo, thinks Kate. An apocalyptic announcement.
DEAR CIVILIANS. TODAY IS THE END OF THE WORLD. YOU ARE EXCUSED FROM YOUR REGULAR DAILY GRIND. ENJOY THE DAY.