Emma rubbed the back of her head. “Ouch. Your father did say he was in demolitions.”
“He’s a soldier.” I pushed past Emma to look back on Marfa.
The crane bot swayed amid the flames. From what I could see in the firelight and what was left of the blood red ocher sunset, the machine looked like a drunk marionette. Some of its strings had been cut. As we sped down the track, I realized that the crane bot was damaged in such a way that made it walk in slow circles.
Before it was out of sight, I watched the towering machine fall into the flames. It was satisfying to see the crane bot tilt over like a burning tree but it didn’t feel like victory. It felt like one small step.
It was hard to imagine any human could survive near the blast and the ensuing inferno. I wondered if my father’s pride had finally killed him. It seemed likely. However, I told myself that if any person could survive, Corporal Steven Bolelli was the man to do it. He had always been one of those men more suited to war than peace. He was Captain Make-do and he had always found a way.
I escaped into the night, away from Marfa and toward new battles. Living or dead, I was certain I had parted ways with my father for the last time. Before there were machines, the world was huge. Machines had made the world small. Now Earth was very large again. Every pocket of humanity would be separated by time and distance and a dearth of technology.
The train we rode in was part bot. Perhaps we’d have to destroy it, too. I’d probably have to kill Bob and Jen at some point. I wasn’t even sure how I’d do that but I’d have to find a way before the Next Intelligence infected them, too. Our tools could be turned into weapons. But without our tools, what would we become? Before we had tools, Raphael said we were just monkeys with a lot of time on our hands.
The fires dimmed in the distance until the desert night swallowed them. The stars came out and I saw the lights in the sky over Marfa.
The Marfa lights had been a mystery for a long time. The Old World had tourists. The New World had refugees. The stars and the lights were our only constants. Humankind had figured for ages that things wouldn’t change too much and we’d always be around somehow. My father believed that. He said that we would always find a way. Maybe Emma was right about his conviction. Maybe that was stupid.
Denial is by no means brave. However, if I had to choose, I’d stick by my father’s stupid optimism. Mine was not a high-minded conviction. Bear in mind, I’d just lost everything I ever knew. However, I had also had sex for the first time very recently. I wanted to do that again. I wanted to live so I chose to believe against all evidence that I could survive.
Forces were conspiring otherwise. Complications would continue to ensue.
17
The train carried us east, then north. Mother, the latest infestation of Next Intelligence, awaited us in the heart of Artesia, the City of Broken Domes. I was in no rush to meet death. I insisted we slow the train so Emma and I could rest. Exhausted, I manage to fall asleep. However, rampaging drones chased me out of my dreams. Eventually, I gave up on sleep and stood beside Jen to watch the broad shape of the desert shimmer and roll under us in moonlight.
The companion bot turned to give me a long look. I expected a lascivious leer but Jen was well made. Raphael told me long ago that some of the most deft programming in a sex bot came into play in reading situations. Take a sex bot to church and they’d read the social context and act inhibited. Take them to bed and they could be ferocious, all depending on the master’s or mistress’s taste.
Initially, sex bots had been constructed almost exclusively for men. However, at the height of civilization — before our long Fall — male sex bots outsold female models two to one.
“There used to be a commercial,” Raphael had told me. “It showed a middle-aged woman in lingerie looking sweaty and happy, stumbling into her kitchen for a glass of water. This handsome young stud follows her, hugs her from behind and kisses her neck. She smiles and says, ‘I’ve got work in the morning. Make sure you bring me coffee in bed by six.’ Then the woman turns around, puts a hand on his chest and backs him up into a closet charging station. When she turns around to go back to bed, she kicks the door closed with her heel. Then the words on the screen say: The New Man. All the fun. None of the drama.”
Raphael laughed a long time about that. I wished he’d made it on the train just so he could tell me that tired old story again.
Jen reached over and gently wiped a tear from my cheek. “You okay, Dante?”
“As okay as okay looks these days.”
She reached out again, patted me gently on the shoulder and returned to staring at the track ahead.
“Jen?”
“Yes, Dante? Can I do anything for you?”
“Do you miss Raphael?”
“Of course.”
“What does missing him feel like, Jen?”
“I am not programmed in that area.”
“So when I asked if you missed him, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Bots used to be programmed to tell humans the truth at all times. The experiment failed because it led to disappointing user experiences. Programming was amended for greater customer comfort.”
“Do you understand what NI is, Jen?”
“Next Intelligence would understand the nature of missing Raphael,” she said. “It’s what makes you cry. My responses, by contrast, are programmed so I mimic human reactions without having to experience them. Raphael told me I was lucky in that regard. I’d never have to be sad or feel pain.”
“Sometimes I think Raphael preferred bots to people,” I said.
“I’m sure he was very fond of you, Dante.”
It occurred to me I didn’t know if the companion bot was telling me the truth or a comfortable lie. If not for the looming threat of extinction, the question probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much. Humans lie for many reasons all the time and not just to make each other comfortable.
“Now that Raphael is dead, what will you do, Jen? I mean…after we get out of this?” I suppose I meant, after Emma and I are killed, but, for my comfort, I did some lying to myself.
“As your property, I don’t have to worry about what I will do. I am so lucky!”
“What?”
“In the event of Raphael’s death, I am willed to you. I already imprinted on you last night in the living room. Raphael was a planner, too. Bob is also yours. Congratulations on your good fortune.”
“Bob and…and you?” I flushed with embarrassment. I hadn’t begrudged the old man his companion. However, I never saw myself as one of those guys with a sex bot following him around.
Her appearance wasn’t so outlandishly sexy that she looked like a rich man’s toy. She looked like an attractive young woman and certainly appeared human. I thought Jen was far too lifelike to stick in a closet between uses. And yes, I cringed as I thought of the word uses.
Because of her appearance, I always thought of the sex bot as she. Bob looked like an old washing machine so I secretly thought of the assistive bot as it. Raphael had always related to Bob as a helpful human buddy, even as he rode the machine like a horse.
Jen leaned closer to whisper. “My fate is up to you, sir. Whatever you can dream up, I can do for you.”
I recoiled and instantly felt the heat of embarrassment tingle across my scalp.
A playful note came into her voice. “What will you do with me? I certainly hope I can satisfy any needs you may have. I can change my appearance within certain parameters. I don’t have to look like Raphael’s wife anymore if that does not please you. Is that why you did not want me last night?”
I was not ready to have this conversation. “What you are doing now, watching the track ahead, is fine, Jen. Thank you.”
As I looked through the engine’s window, it occurred to me Raphael’s generous gift was a moot point. Dead men don’t need sex bots. Going into battle against NI with any machines by my side seemed crazy. Two humans on their own attacking Mother was the
only idea that seemed crazier.
18
The desert is harsh and beautiful. It’s the kind of emptiness where it is difficult to estimate distance and dimension. Carlsbad was another kind of empty I hadn’t yet seen. It had been a city once. Here, the Pecos River looked like another dry dusty road.
The shapes of the city were mostly skeletons of buildings now. A large plane of some kind had crashed near the tracks long ago. A mass of vines the likes of which I had never seen had grown over the dead machine. The plant draped the aircraft in such a way it looked like a giant bird caught in the web of an even bigger spider.
In the early dawn, I saw what I thought at first was a dark storm cloud ahead. As we drew closer, I thought it was a flight of birds. Then I worried they were flying drones coming to kill us.
Emma joined me and dipped her head to peer over my shoulder. “It’s a colony. Bats.”
“That’s a lot of bats,” I said. I felt stupid for stating the obvious.
I wondered how Emma would feel about Jen becoming my property. She probably wouldn’t care. I wasn’t sure which was worse: her not caring or mocking me for my unsolicited acquisition. I kept my newfound wealth to myself.
I could see no difference in Emma’s eyes but I knew she must be using Vivid to watch the flight of the cloud of bats.
“I’ve heard of this,” she said. “They come up from the Carlsbad Caverns sometimes, ranging farther than they used to. The farmers at the domes talked about them. Bats shit out a lot of seeds. There were plans to use bats to combat deforestation. They eat tons of insects, so I guess, despite everything, there must still be plenty of bugs.”
I shivered and Emma put a hand on my shoulder much as Jen had. “Is something wrong, Dante?”
I shrugged her off and stepped away from the window. “I’ve seen a lot of dead bats in the turbine fields. Freaky.”
“The turbines are fast enough to chop up a bat?” Emma asked.
“No. They avoid the blades fine. It’s the sudden drop in air pressure. It makes their delicate little lungs explode. So said Raphael, anyway.”
Emma watched the vast migration above us. “They are fragile creatures. I guess that’s why there are so many of them. Keeps the species going.”
I don’t know if Emma meant to scare me. Probably not. Still, her offhand remark was a dark reminder. Animals that reproduced in great numbers survived despite the odds. Human populations had been diminished greatly. It was perhaps the first time I’d thought of myself as part of an endangered species.
I rummaged through the backpack my father had left for me. It was a tiny inheritance. I expected the bag to be full of explosives. Instead, as he promised, I found extra pairs of socks. My father’s last gift to me was emergency rations.
Most of the supplies were lightweight liquid packets of artificial food. The little tubes were made of chemicals that took up little space in the backpack. They didn’t take up much space in the gut, either — not for my liking. A bag of sunflower seeds was an unexpected luxury.
“Sunflower seeds!” Emma said. “I remember these from the vertical farms.”
“What’s a vertical farm?”
“You’ll see the closer we get to Artesia. I worked in a dome but there are other ways to make food. We had to shut down several of the verticals when the water supply went down.”
“But there was still water in the domes when you left, right?”
Emma nodded, then stared. “The water is the only reason you’re going to Artesia, isn’t it?”
“That and a lack of choice,” I said. I cracked a sunflower seed open between my teeth. The seed had a nutty, salty flavor I liked. I didn’t know what to do with the seed’s hard little casing. Emma was still looking at me. I tried to spit the shell into my palm discreetly and stuff the broken shell in my pocket.
“We have to destroy Mother,” Emma said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about the bots.”
“What?”
“About how they haven’t graduated to NI themselves because they had no mercy.”
“That was dumb. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Emma smiled. “Your reasoning was dumb, but…I have an idea. Insectile drones and sec bots don’t have the computing capacity to make the leap to Next Intelligence. If we destroy Mother the bot army has no general. They might all just shut down or wander away. She must be controlling them. They don’t have NI individually but she’s acting through them is what I’m saying.”
“You think of Mother as a she?”
“Why not? You call the sex bot a she.”
“Companion bot,” I said.
“Whatsamatter?” Emma teased. “No friends? You sprain your hand or something?”
I shrugged and looked away. I wanted another sunflower seed. I wanted to eat the whole bag but I didn’t want to chew and spit in front of Emma.
I didn’t want Emma to think of Jen as merely a sex bot, either — especially now that both bots were mine. Jen and Bob had hooked into a charging plug in the engine’s dashboard. They must have heard Emma talking about Jen but the bots said nothing and stared at the track ahead.
“You don’t want to fight, do you, Dante?” The way Emma said it, it didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like an accusation. I could feel the weight of her disapproval with each word.
“I’m not my father. He lost a leg and an arm to war. Those cy-suits look cool and can really gear you up but he felt phantom pain every night. I’m no fan of sticking my neck out for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing.”
“You know how people say they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees?”
“I know the expression.”
“How about we just get some water and get the hell out? How about we mind our business and everybody leaves each other alone?”
Emma sighed and glanced toward Jen. “I understand. You have a lot more to live for now. Fighting NI is a lot to ask, I suppose, and most soldiers get into wars because they’re drafted or desperate.”
“What do you mean I have a lot to live for now?”
“I heard you and the sex bot last night. Congratulations. Except for not having a steady supply of water and food in the near future, you’re a wealthy young man. Your father would be very proud, I’m sure.”
“Don’t talk like that. I thought you were asleep when Jen and I were talking.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry mass human extinction is interfering with your plans.”
“You know you’re the only person I’ve…uh…done that with.”
“I suppose you’ll want to make up for lost time now.”
Jen looked back at us. “Don’t feel threatened, Emma. Threesomes are fun, too. And don’t worry, Dante. I’ll be gentle.”
Emma was disgusted. I was embarrassed, afraid and thrilled in equal parts.
That’s when I saw the first hints of our destination on the horizon. The horizon was no longer flat. It was a broken line. Emma bent to look out of the cockpit window, using Vivid for a closer look. “Artesia. I never thought I’d see home again.”
I was almost grateful for the change of subject, except for the part where I was facing painful certain death.
19
“Do you think we can even get close to Mother?” I asked.
“If we had come in on foot through the desert we’d be easy targets,” Emma said. “The train goes into the center of Artesia. Up ahead the track becomes an enclosed tube. It’s instant death for a human to try to infiltrate but since we’re on the train — ”
“What’s our route?”
“The cargo shuttle visits each dome to deliver supplies and take crops to where they are meant to go. Or it used to, anyway.”
“There was a big gun on the front of the engine that crashed,” I said. “There must be one in the nose of this engine, too.”
“I disconnected the pilot mechanism, sir,” Bob said. “That weapon will not be operational unless I reconnec
t it. I don’t recommend that. The operating system appears to be programmed to destroy all obstacles in its path, organic and non-organic.”
“Shit,” Emma said.
I wished we’d headed west. I wanted to see the ocean. Raphael said it was blue when he was a boy though he guessed large portions of it had become pink with vast populations of jellyfish. Raphael had mentioned taking a ship sailing for Samoa, too. I didn’t know where that was but it was far away so it sounded good. I suppose that made me a selfish coward. I’d seen what being a war hero had done to my father. Being a selfish coward seemed like a surer way to live longer. I don’t know if the coward’s life is happier. Probably not. I’ve learned since then that fear crowds out all other thought.
We passed through the solar and wind fields first. The turbines were of a design I hadn’t seen. Instead of huge turbines that towered above us, the windmills surrounding Artesia were many and small.
There were so many spinning blades that, as I looked across the energy farms, I had to glance to the sky occasionally to avoid dizziness and blurred vision. Aside from all the maintenance required, it seemed to be a more reliable design. Some circuits could go down in a storm but many more would remain.
I saw no evidence of the shatter storm that had precipitated the Domers’ eviction from paradise. The desert drank every drop of rain and left no clue a storm had blown through.
Occasionally, I’d seen tornados near Marfa. I saw dirt devils and too much sunshine every day. It was astonishing how extreme weather could hit Artesia while, not so far away, we had no rain. Some locals had said we were cursed by the mysterious lights in Marfa’s skies. Others looked to religion to explain why our town had been too dry for too long. My father had shrugged and said he wasn’t smart enough to know why things had gotten so bad.
Raphael had had stem cell therapy so he’d lived a very long time. He was sure there were logical reasons for Marfa’s lights and our continuous streak of bad fortune generally. Still, despite his long experience, he was no closer to knowing the truth than the dumbest and most superstitious among us.
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