by Jones, Raya
Children, women, and men fell screaming into the bowels of crushing machines in a shower of their luggage.
The driverless train trundled on.
The cranes worked on, robot arms lifting and dropping, rising and falling.
I couldn’t speak for a long time after I stopped vomiting.
By the time we reached Fred’s bag, the train was long gone and we could cross the track. We scrambled over conveyor belts and dodged cranes to get near the crusher site. There were no survivors. The recycling plant was fully automated, not a soul in sight, no surveillance, no teleport signal. Human beings were not meant to be there.
‘The crushing inhumanity of human industry, crushed to death by recycled product,’ Fred mumbled. He was shaken as I was. ‘At least they died instantly. The bloody ignorant stupid fools, at least they died instantly,’ he kept reiterating as if to soften the horror. ‘Nobody cares, nobody will know about them.’
I croaked that my button was still transmitting to the CSG when it happened. He rasped, ‘Who’s going to sue anyone on behalf of dead nobodies? Not your CSG, the so-called Consumer Standards Group. These people are not consumers. You know, there used to be an old-fashioned idea called human rights, but it got in the way of exploitation.’
‘Your sister cares.’
‘Yes, Jane and her cronies are all bleeding hearts. They’ll say that those throwbacks shouldn’t have been on a freight train. They should be useful citizens serving the corporations.’
We walked seemingly forever around buildings and yards where recycling processes went on with no human intervention. Eventually we arrived at a parking area empty of vehicles. There was a rusty main gate, locked. We climbed over it. If a road once led to the gate, it had long been blocked and buried by makeshift dwellings. Those too were gone. Only mounds of building rubble remained.
We climbed over rubble and circled around weird spidery constructions that formed by architectural nano-mortar that sprouted to patch up brick walls that didn’t exist anymore. The air was thick with dust. The visibility was poor. Periodic explosions and the crash of buildings toppling down echoed all around. The colossal shapes of demolition robots were vaguely visible, their red warning lights moving slowly but steadily some distance away.
It felt as if we were the last men left on Earth taken over by machines.
Gloom descended long before sunset. We reached an area that was mostly intact, and walked through an eerie maze of abandoned buildings. The wind picked up again and its howl combined with the heavy whirr of the demolition robots, the periodic explosions, and crash of buildings.
Before it got too dark we found a building safe enough to stay in, and based ourselves in a room with a view of the demolition line. The robots veered in our direction but were still a long way away.
We sat on a dirty mattress in near-total darkness, ate some of the rations that Fred had brought, and drank sparingly the water we carried. I was sorely tired and my legs throbbed and ached. He said that he felt the same. He probably lied.
Neither of us was in a hurry to sleep. I asked him why he jumped on that train.
‘It felt like the right thing to do. It had dramatic correctness.’
‘Fred, this isn’t an action movie.’
‘I know,’ he said sombrely. ‘The accident was a reality shock.’
‘It wasn’t an accident.’
Safety precautions had to be deliberately compromised for a car full of people to be sent to the crusher. But the death of the pathfinders had no political or military advantage for anyone. Nothing made sense. Fred jumps on a train for no reason. Inexplicably, I follow him. Why? Nothing had been right since we entered the backroom in the Emporium.
Perhaps the pentagram sucked us into a hell dimension. This is the land of the dark sun. Fred has torn a gateway into it when he vaporised the hole in the wall. We stepped through that hole into a parallel universe. I mumbled tiredly, ‘I believe you now. There is a hell dimension and I’m living with its gatekeeper.’
‘No, you’re wrong, wrong as usual. You’re not living...’
‘Am I already dead?’
‘Son, leave the melodrama to me!’
We sat in silence until he couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Penny for your thoughts, sunshine.’ I was thinking about Fairweather, but said nothing. As if reading my mind, Fred softly advised, ‘Remember good things about Fairweather.’
Unable to hold back, I started talking.
The woman we met wasn’t Fairweather. There was small-mindedness and cheapness about this Mandy. She had partial memories that belonged to Fairweather, but nothing that couldn’t be retrieved from digital records. She filled in the gaps in odd ways. Can you seriously imagine the future wife of Wye Stan Pan choosing an interior design out of a magazine? The real Fairweather had told me that Miranda wanted to commission Mu Tashi’s acclaimed designers, but their contract didn’t permit private commissions. Miranda wanted to buy the whole team off their corporation. Fairweather talked her out of it, advising that it would reflect badly on Wye Stan if his wife were to deprive Mu Tashi of their best designers for no commercial gain to Cyboratics. That’s what Fairweather was like.
Speaking, I was taken aback by the anger in my voice, as if Mandy’s existence insulted Fairweather’s memory.
Fred reminded me that Mandy was a real person, running scared and confused. People go to pieces under pressure.
Fairweather too was running scared when I knew her. She was desperate, but not confused. She would never offer to prostitute herself like Mandy did. ‘Come to think of that, why didn’t you take her? You wanted to. It was so plain to see. That dressing gown you wore for some bizarre dramatic effect didn’t cover you too well.’
‘Yeah, well,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I misinterpreted why you couldn’t take your eyes off her and I was going to… But now you’re my son. Al, I promise you this: if you ever find a woman who can put up with you, I won’t be in your way.’
I was surprised at his unselfishness.
He explained, selfishly, ‘I want grandchildren from you.’
A moment later he asked whether I thought that the pentagram beam had caught Mandy. I pointed out that there was no obvious sign that it had happened before. But we couldn’t tell for sure. He destroyed the evidence. He destroyed the whole building.
‘No, it collapsed because the structure was too decayed,’ he argued.
‘You threw in the vaporiser on self-destruct to make sure there’s nothing left for forensics.’
‘This is going to be a hell of a long night if you’re accusing me of something.’ He sounded quarrelsome, but then said tenderly like a parent, ‘Get some sleep. I’ll wake you up in two hours’ time.’
He moved to sit in a chair by the window.
In no time at all, it felt, he woke me up. It was two hours later. We exchanged places. Sitting on my watch, I recalled good things about Fairweather: our lovemaking, her scent and smile, her determination to save Surtr from Wye Stan, how skilfully she kept her brother’s true identity secret… ‘Bloody hell’s bells,’ Fred woke me up, yelling over the robots’ deafening din, ‘are you going to wait until they bring the house down on us?’
A nearby explosion went off. The house shook.
We ran out.
Running and then walking briskly, we soon put a safe distance between us and the slow demolition frontline. But we couldn’t linger anywhere for long. The robots were steadily advancing.
By midday we entered an area of labyrinthine alleyways that wound between densely packed buildings. Small homes and workshops were squeezed anywhere there was space to grow them. We kept walking into empty dead-end alleys and along desolate lanes that curved back on themselves. Many walls bore Kanji characters telling the names of nihonjin families who used to live there. This was where my mother and I lived when I was very young.
Fred had his men seek Suzie here, he told me now. Perhaps they got too close and that’s why we had to flee. He didn’t find
out what she used to call herself at the time.
‘Jiu,’ I told him. ‘Not after the deodorant. Jiu means freedom in Japanese.’
‘I’ll be dammed,’ he muttered, his eyes moistening.
It was late afternoon when we left the nihonjin ghost town.
The weather was calm and the air clearer, though it remained overcast. Behind us the only landmark was the line of robots towering over roofs, flattening everything in their path. We climbed a low ridge. It was part of the ring of mounds at the centre of the crater. Most of it had been flattened long ago, but here the ridge stood proud. From the top we could see ahead of us watery patches, the remains of the shallow sea. We descended to level ground, and crossed a broad wasteland with remnants of temporary shelters, debris, bonfire sites, and land-vehicle tracks. This was where pathfinders had gathered for their annual celebration of Apocalypse Day, nine days earlier. Birds and rodents scavenged for scraps.
On and on we walked, deeper and deeper into the abandoned land of the lost.
Fred carried enough rations for a week, and we had water to last a couple of days if we drank sparingly, but there was no point being there. When I told him that every muscle in my body ached, he retorted that the exercise was doing me good. The man was tireless. When I suggested that he called someone to fetch us, he said in no uncertain terms, ‘Oh no, no, I’m not that desperate yet.’
‘I am.’
‘My Al could endure a little discomfort. My Al grew up in the Edges. I want my Al back!’
Towards evening, we spotted telecommunication masts and solar power towers on the horizon. Night fell before we got near those. Again we found a building to shelter in, with fat rats and scrawny cats for neighbours. Somehow it made me feel better to have living creatures around.
I thought about Montezuma. When stroking it, finding the socket, I inserted a pin that downloaded a copy of its mind to one of my sites. The pet was a gift from Surtr to Hans Klaus. It transmitted everything it saw back to Cyboratics. Hans probably suspected as much. He was careful not to let Montezuma pick up anything that might compromise 1Step. But he had no reason to conceal his own interactions with Surtr from the dog. Hans called him after our encounter in the park. Montezuma heard only Hans’ side of the conversation. Hans reported that Freedom Cordova was intimate with Akira Kato, and that we inquired about his sister. ‘I didn’t tell them anything, but I think they suspect something. They asked about a PertNet operation,’ he said. After listening to the response, he answered, ‘Very well. I’ll do that if I see them again.’ Shortly afterwards he checked Montezuma and found my pin. It immediately obliterated itself, but he probably suspected that the pin was mine.
During the night, the robots too had crossed the ridge. The next morning we headed towards the industrial area, but the robots realigned themselves again. Soon they were unmistakably advancing after us, regardless of the telecommunication and power plants ahead. Security vehicles frantically circled overhead, but the colossal machines marched on unstoppably.
It felt as if a malevolent intelligence of immense power was after me.
Fred muttered darkly, his eyes on the robots, ‘Do you believe me now that an ancient evil is homing on you?’
‘No, it’s technology. Someone is picking up a signal.’ It dawned on me what it might be. I took out Mandy’s scarf and set the anti-nano on it. The scarf dissolved in seconds.
The robots realigned themselves and retreated to the designated demolition zone.
We were immensely relieved. But I was none the wiser as to who had tracked the signal transmitted by Mandy’s scarf. Was she the target? If not, who would know that I carried the scarf? More intriguingly, who would choose to come after me with slow demolition robots? It didn’t make sense.
Except to Fred, to whom it made dramatic sense.
We strolled along a dirt road between the telecommunication and power installations. A bus landed further ahead and was gone by the time that we reached the bus stop. The stop consisted of a landing square, a few benches, and a closed kiosk. An information board indicated that another bus was due in an hour’s time. I was grateful to sit down for the long wait. Fred was restless, but sat down too. ‘Do we really want to take this bus? A couple of hours’ walk will get us to where people still live,’ he coaxed.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of. Thanks to your sister’s Social Inclusion Initiative, they’re at war with your town. You go ahead, have your adventure. Don’t count me in. My mother has made me work hard on my education so that I won’t be stuck in the Edges. I have no intention of staying here a moment longer. I’m taking the bus.’
‘Alright, alright, you’ve made your point. Is there any reason to stay in Ground Zero?’
‘No.’
‘There might be a chance that Mandy is still alive. You keep comparing her to Fairweather. But she’s a woman in her own right who’s been messed up big time. What do you think has happened to her?’
‘I have a theory. But you’ve destroyed the evidence.’
‘You’ll never let me live that down, will you? I saved your life there.’
‘True, but you didn’t have to blow up the place. Still, it had dramatic correctness.’ He nodded enthusiastically. ‘I can see the movie trailer, Fred. The two of us running out, silhouetted against red flames, black smoke, masonry collapsing, parts being vaporised in white plumes…’
‘Yes! Yes! That’s us!’
‘No, Fred. It’s you,’ I corrected tiredly, and told him my theory. Mandy was an android. Android bodies could be destroyed with enough anti-nano. That would account for the scorch marks on the floor of that room.
Fred contended that it could be where she was zapped by the pentagram.
‘We’ll never know. You destroyed the evidence.’
She didn’t behave like an android, but almost any behaviour can be faked. Androids are equipped with pleasant facial expressions because that’s what customers like. Expressions of confusion, anger, sadness, and fear can also be digitised. The hotel surveillance showed her eating, but the food could have gone into a special compartment. ‘It’s called a stomach,’ Fred interjected. There were no cameras in the bathroom to see her—or it—dispose of the food. Mandy avoided teleporting. It seemed like a phobia, but it could be because the teleport pattern would expose its true nature.
The proof of Mandy’s true nature would be in teleport records. It’s easy to check whether someone teleported somewhere, but to analyse users’ patterns I’d have to contrive some legal pretext.
‘Leave it with me,’ said Fred. ‘Swift can retrieve the pattern. The girl has asked me for asylum. I want to make sure that Mandy is who she says she is. Swift can surprise me with the finding that she’s an android if it turns out you’re right. But you’re wrong.’
‘My theory explains everything.’
‘She’s too sophisticated for an android.’
‘It could be linked to a cyber-mind.’
He burst out laughing. ‘I should have known! I saw the sparkle in your eye and spring in your step when we met her. For a moment I thought that the spell in solitary confinement with me has done a world of good to your libido. But no, you saw algorithms and source codes. So Mandy is an andronet?’
I doubted it. Mandy behaved like a sprite—a naïve sprite, a malevolent intelligence childishly lashing out with slow mechanical giants that an able-bodied man can easily outpace.
People were approaching. Fred took out a handgun from a leg pocket, and placed it discreetly in his lap, his bag on his knees. It wasn’t Marrakech’s gun. He still had that one too. I asked what else he carried. He grunted evasively, ‘Nothing, only little things.’
‘Poison darts, capsules of deadly germs, tactical missiles the size of pencils, a pinhead nuclear bomb?’
Three people arrived at the bus stop. They wore blue uniforms with the logo of the energy company, and sat as far away from us as possible. Fred relaxed and stashed away the gun. ‘Let’s get off the bus at the first pla
ce with an airport and take the first flight anywhere on Earth,’ he suggested.
The bus’s first stop was Pheonix-2.
The first flight out was to a Cyboratics coastal town, Inverness.
Fred wanted to change the plan, but I insisted on sticking to it. I couldn’t think of a nicer place than that coast. It didn’t matter whether we were across moors or oceans away from Version 7.
Fred rented a chalet in a secluded hollow by the sea at a resort called Torquay north of Inverness. The chalet was outside public teleportation range. When he didn’t use the ‘free’ taxi service that was included in the premium holiday package, he walked a few miles along the coast to get to a gym, swimming pool, dancehall, or theatre at Torquay Bay, the resort’s centre. He took to the role of the Retired Jolly Professor with enthusiasm, and was soon bringing home ‘girls’ older than him. He introduced me as his nephew Al. If anyone commented on the lack of family resemblance, he told her about a fictitious sister who had run off with a Chinaman. My real name was Luigi Li Po, he said, and told them that I was an accountant on account of being so boring. It was easy enough to stay out of his way. There were two bedrooms. The chalet also had a living room with a glass wall and a view of a rocky cove and beyond it the ocean. When we kept the window open, the ceaseless murmur of the waves filled the interior.
One evening he came home alone, switched on the light, and was disconcerted to see me sitting on the floor in front of the open window. ‘Good grief, how long have you been sitting in the dark?’
‘Since the sun went down.’
‘You scare me when you sit like that.’
He turned on the evening news. It was dominated by a disaster in a Nanotronics factory in the tropics. He turned it off moaning that we’d hear endless media analyses of it for days on end. At least the new disaster put a stop to endless analyses of the demolition robots going haywire in Ground Zero. The robots’ erratic behaviour had been traced to a quirky coincidence of signal failures. It was nobody’s fault. Nobody except Fred and I saw a pattern in the robots’ movements—and even we didn’t suspect yet any connection with the Nanotronics disaster.