by Phil Wrede
“Never,” Cyber-Knife interjected.
“You do so of you own volition,” Hnid calmly finished. “Conversely, you kill because you choose to kill.”
Cyber-Knife looked at Excalibur, but the sword didn't have anything to say. “Why would you offer me this?” he eventually asked Hnid. “What do you have to gain?”
“Real peace,” Hnid immediately replied. “Not detenté, not seclusion, but an opportunity to live our lives as we wish. The same gift we offer to you.
“There are times to hold onto the past, Cyber-Knife, and times to let it go. My own flesh and blood think I should grab ahold of it with an unbreakable fist, even exact vengeance for that very same past. They have told me that since the moment I sent them to rescue you.”
She raised a hand, a peacemaking gesture. “It is time to escape the grip the past has on us. With my help, Cyber-Knife, you can do what you say you came here to, and after you have destroyed the enemy, our peoples can live. Apart, surely, but with no malice. I can forgive the past if it ensures a brighter future.”
“The only man,” Cyber-Knife said, “who would turn down an offer like that shrinks in terror from his own shadow. If you can do what you say, I'm in.”
Hnid gestured for Cyber-Knife to stand up, and the couch dissolved back into the ground as she did. Hnid gestured again, and the earth rose in two small lumps, barely tall enough to sit either one of them comfortably. “Take one of these seats, and as you do, realize that you have accepted a premise. A simple one, doubtlessly, but one that will forever alter you.”
“I can’t very well accept something of which I’m ignorant,” Cyber-Knife said as he sat.
“Then listen: the systems around us, the ones underpinning everything we think we know about the world, you can shift them through sheer will.”
“You mean like how thoughts get translated into actions?” Cyber-Knife said as he leaned forward, his shoulders past his hips.
“Crudely, but partially,” Hnid said. “The reality in your mind has infinitely more power than the one in the physical world. My mind can shape the world to my desires directly; you have to put thought into action to accomplish the same sorts of goals. We fight the world outside of our heads forever as we struggle to shape it into what we think it can be. Therefore, the only world we can for certain affect is the one that exists inside our minds.”
“So, if somebody puts something in my head, doesn't mean I'm beholden to it,” Cyber-Knife said.
Hnid nodded. “Your creators may have built the architecture of your mind on a foundation of quarter-truths and lies, but we can strip that all away, to your essence. If you know that, if you know who you really are, you'll have a fighting chance against devolving into the creature they expect.”
“All right,” Cyber-Knife said. “I'm ready to learn.”
Hnid pursed her lips in thought for a moment. “As a cybernetic man, you have a unique challenge, in that you have both instincts and programming. With no experience living as anyone other than yourself, I suspect you cannot tell the difference, not that you have ever wanted to do so.”
“There's not much time for self-analysis when robots strive to separate your head from the rest of you.”
“Well, right now, you have that luxury. If you know from which place inside of you your call to action sounds, the better able you can follow through, or tamp it down.”
Cyber-Knife heard a clicking sound behind him, the sort of noise a Class One's foot makes when it steps down forcefully, only multiplied five or six times over. How had half a dozen of the enemy found their way into the city without anybody noticing?
Moving faster than he could think, Cyber-Knife flipped over Hnid's head and twisted himself around in midair, firing a trio of shots from his plasma blaster towards the dwelling's door. His feet touched down, and he didn't see what he'd expected to see. His attack didn't hit its intended targets; the plasma blasts didn't hit anything. They just rippled into an energy barrier that absorbed their energy entirely, and while he had clearly heard the robots, he could not find them anywhere.
Remembering what they had just talked about, Cyber-Knife glared down at Hnid. “A trick?”
“A test. Do you know why you did what you did?” she asked.
“Protected our lives.”
“I could've told you that,” Excalibur said.
“Instinct, or programming?” Hnid asked.
“I couldn't tell you,” Cyber-Knife replied. “I have no way of knowing where the man ends and the ultimate fucking killing machine begins.”
“I think I can answer you,” Excalibur said. “The machine is rage: incessant, vicious, calculating fury. It does not stop, it will not be denied, and it always prevails.”
“Well, you could say it that way -” Cyber-Knife tried to speak, before Excalibur made it clear it had not finished sharing its opinion.
“I want to make absolutely certain I understand what you say you can do,” Excalibur began. “The military designed him before conception for a single, solitary purpose: to kill the enemy. It doesn’t particularly matter which enemy, since only people granted the privilege of independent thought get to define his mission parameters. They might send him to dismantle alien robot ninjas one day, and disembowel conscientious objectors the next. It truly makes no difference to him, for he does not have the same moral fiber we associate with greatness and heroes. Hell, he has no ’fiber’ at all. The people who made him see those sorts of ideals as impediments to the missions he carries out.
“They made him with precisely this flexibility of service, and rigidity of purpose in mind. So, when you say that you can teach him to rebel against everything he is, I need for you to understand that those things you say you can teach him to disregard define him. Do you understand the magnitude of the task you've set in front of yourselves?”
Hnid didn't even wait a moment before responding: “Yes, I do.”
“Then I daresay you're the final piece of the puzzle,” Excalibur said. “I knew we would find someone, or someone would find us and give him that push he needs. In saving him, you'll rescue us all.”
“I daresay now you have some explaining to do, friend,” Hnid said.
“You see,” Excalibur began, after taking a moment to gather its enchanted thoughts, “in your time, Excalibur slumbers at the bottom of a lake, waiting dutifully for a hero to claim it once again. What it doesn’t know, what I didn’t know, and hell, what the prophets never foresaw, is that in short order, there will be no more heroes. No one to speak and fight for the weak and the voiceless. The people of this world become numb to its suffering, and everything collapses after this begins.
“In my time, civilization has disintegrated into madness and apathy. The last of the prophets managed to find me, buried beneath the rubble strewn over where the lake once was, and with her dying breath she bore me back to this time, with her final words - ’Cyber-Knife’ - to guide me. I have taught him to fight like a hero, but you can teach him to live as one. Perhaps, then, we can stave off that horrid world from whence I came.”
“Nothing like a little pressure,” Cyber-Knife said.
“You fail to do justice to what you've already accomplished," Hnid said. “You've accessed parts of your mind that they had hoped to forever wall off, and you've done it in the face of barriers they placed in front of you. You're closer than either one of you think.”
“So,” Cyber-Knife said, “how do I combat it when I'm at the mercy of my programming? How can a man subvert a machine?”
“Stretch out with your feelings,” Hnid said in desperation.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Cyber-Knife asked.
“You have to open your mind to the possibilities before you, realize that they have no limits.”
Cyber-Knife groaned; it felt like he was grasping at straws while wearing heavy mittens.
Hnid sighed. “You come from a very literal world.”
“I apolog
ize, but when someone issues me instructions, I follow them, and I expect results.”
If Hnid had eyes, they would've rolled up towards the heavens in exasperation. “You did not come here to learn to bake a cake, Cyber-Knife. I cannot tell you of some perfectly balanced ratio that measures your hours of effort and tells you when you can expect to understand as we do...” She trailed off as her jaw dipped open in surprise.
Cyber-Knife looked uneasily over at Excalibur, and opened his mouth to speak.
“Wait,” Hnid said. “Listen.”
Something approached from down the tunnel, moving at a prodigious speed. Hnid held up a hand; Cyber-Knife obediently righted himself and plucked Excalibur off the ground, readying himself for whatever approached. Hnid seemed to relax the closer the footfalls sounded, but Cyber-Knife's HUD charted and graphed her anxiety's rise.
Of course, as soon as he saw Pkar turn the corner, he understood why Hnid had reacted as she had and felt the adrenaline trickle out of his own bloodstream. Some of the displays that had popped onto his HUD faded away, opening up his vision again.
Neither grandmother nor granddaughter spoke for a time, until finally Pkar turned to Cyber-Knife and said, “They found us; they march on us right now. A force of thousands of their infantry will arrive here by the morning.”
Cyber-Knife exhaled, saying, “This is my fault.”
“We've lived here peacefully for generations, and right under their noses -” Pkar began, before she was interrupted.
“Which does not promise -” Hnid tried to break in.
Pkar would not let Hnid smother her, though. “- but, Grandmother, that may well indicate a failing on our part. If we had stood against the invaders when they first came, marshaled our surviving neighbors before they all died out, we might have managed to save more of this world than just the corner that we have left to us. This could be our redemption.”
Hnid smiled softly, but Cyber-Knife couldn't believe what he heard. “Your entire community could be dead tomorrow, and you're glad of it? I will not let that happen.”
“The arns march here whether or not you approve of it,” Hnid said.
“Arns?” Cyber-Knife asked.
“Your people designated them A-R-N, yes?” Pkar said. “That name migrated to our language, as well. Over time, it became a word in our vocabulary. The only thing more dangerous than an American.”
“This American can stop them,” Cyber-Knife said. “The Army built me to kill them, after all. You've hidden from them for so long, if I can stop their army from overrunning you, you can find somewhere new, hidden, and safe again.”
“Wait!” Hnid said, as if the burden of a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “I think I may finally understand you. That computer in your mind, it holds all of your knowledge, yes?”
“The sum total of all human knowledge from across history, in fact,” Cyber-Knife said.
“As I say, all your knowledge. Any time you need to 'know' something, you just access it from your databanks and it is pulled into your mind,” Hnid said.
“Much like that, yes.”
“So,” Hnid concluded, “you don't learn like the rest of us. You have never had to force your brain to adapt to a foreign concept. Anything you wish to know, you just... know.”
Cyber-Knife furrowed his brow at this, trying to think if he could refute Hnid's statement in any way. “I learn every day,” he finally responded.
“Cyber-Knife, this means something good,” Excalibur said. “She knows what to do.”
Hnid nodded. “Indeed. I can join our minds. You can see things I have seen, and you will know what I know. Then, you shall be trained as well as I could ever hope to train you.”
“I like this plan,” Cyber-Knife said.
Hnid stood, walked until she stood just next to Cyber-Knife, and placed her right hand across his face. “Stay very still,” Hnid said, and the last thing Cyber-Knife wondered before her thoughts buffeted his mind like a tidal wave was whether all Hnid's people had such long fingers.
Hnid's memories, even her very personality, rushed into Cyber-Knife's mind, drowning everything that was him beneath the cascade of all things Hnid. Cyber-Knife lived whole decades in moments - their struggles to sustain a whole, complex life in a place where such things had never been meant to flourish; the brushes with the enemy, more numerous than anyone would ever have admitted to him; their culture, everything a full-fledged citizen would need to know to help keep up their way of life - and could now understand the lessons he had felt so eager to learn before. Now, when he looked at Hnid, he wouldn't just see a teacher, but a sister, too.
Cyber-Knife had felt the feeling he now felt at the back of his head once before, when he cast his gaze on the cybernetically-altered, enslaved rat things. He had felt for them a shadow of what he now felt for the Taykinh, like just seeing them afforded him a new perspective on his own existence. His appreciation for the life the little animals on the surface had eked out for themselves... God, he felt it multiply geometrically when he considered everything the Taykinh had taken from them, and how they'd still found a way to not just survive, but live.
He had awareness, now truly understood the partnership between his body and his mind for the first time, the harmony in which they needed to exist. Strengthening one lead to the improvement of the other, for certain, but their partnership needed guarding, as well. The computer in his brain, despite its amazing abilities as a tool, did not mean he needed to cede control over his entire body to it. He saw barriers he had not even noticed before melt away in his mind, opening entire realms of knowledge for him to explore. It existed to serve him; he should not exist to serve it.
And, the world! He could have the same relationship with the world that his mind and body had with one another. They could understand each other, and speak to one another. His mind assimilated what Hnid had for him faster than the computer could keep up; he screamed from the intensity.
The sharing was the longest single experience he'd had in his entire life, and simultaneously the briefest, most concentrated agony he'd ever felt. He could swear Hnid's hand pulled away from his face only a moment after they touched, and he wondered if a child felt like that when he put his hand on a too-hot stove, as though the intensity of the experience distorted his perception of time.
“Did you see it all?” Hnid asked.
“I didn't see; I felt,” Cyber-Knife snapped. “I'm sorry,” he added almost immediately. He stared up to the look of concern on Hnid's face. It took him a few long seconds before he realized that he had not opened his eyes. “What?” he muttered.
Cyber-Knife held his hands out, his fingers spread, and he did not believe what he saw. He could see them, though not as well as with his eyes open, for certain, because the sight more closely resembled a shadow than anything else, but his vision didn't end there. He caught glimpses of the goings-on underneath his skin. Tiny currents of electricity flashed in his wrists. He saw muscles and wires stretch and contract with every little movement. The energy core of his plasma blaster flickered like a torch in the darkness. He could see everything now, without a filter.
When he opened his eyes, when he confronted himself with reality as he knew it before, he felt odd, a sensation he'd never encountered before. It was regret; he genuinely missed the world as he'd seen it with his eyes closed. “My God,” he finally said.
Hnid smiled. “If you enjoyed that, keep your closed-eye vision trained on me.” Hnid turned away, stepping lightly on her feet. “Tell me, what will I do?”
“Well, you're going to keep walking -” Cyber-Knife began, before cutting himself off. “No. You palmed something while I had my eyes open; I can see it in your hand. You prepared to throw it at me before -”
As if by some programmed instinct, Cyber-Knife felt himself tumbling to the ground, just as a tightly-packed clod of dirt whizzed over his head. He ducked under the missile Hnid had sent his way before he even knew what
happened.
“How did you know?” Hnid asked.
“I just did,” Cyber-Knife said, a grin, slightly more human-style, growing on his face.
Hnid clapped her hands joyously; even Pkar smiled. “This is grand,” Hnid said, “but also only the foundation upon which the skills you really need to build. As much as you need to strengthen the linkage between your body and your mind, you must empower your mind itself. It is imperative that you take your actions, you make your choices, not the programs that lay hidden in a darkened corner of that machine in your head.
“That gift,” she continued, “I cannot simply pass along to you. All the techniques of meditation and examination that I have learned are now familiar to you, but you have to learn them through practice. It demands dedication; you alone can ensure you have hardened your mental defenses.”
“Will I ever know if I'm prepared enough?”
“As long as they have a toehold in your mind, you, and all around you, will always be in danger.”
“Which means I alone must fight the enemy today,” Cyber-Knife said.
“Don't you understand? We don't want to hide any longer!” Pkar replied, a new kind of anger finding its way into her voice, a kind not focused, laser-like, on Cyber-Knife. “We defeated them before; we can do it again!”
“Not without great cost! So what if you didn't all die trying to save the world before? If we all work together, we can protect what still remains of it.”
Hnid pursed her lips before saying, “You, Cyber-Knife, are the warrior created specifically to save the world. If you achieve your purpose, what does it really matter if the enemy finds us, or not? Life has flourished on this world before, and in time, it will again.”
“What you do right here and now matters more than we can imagine,” Pkar added.
Cyber-Knife was incensed. Here they had given him all these gifts of wisdom and consciousness, and they offered to throw it all away on a stupid gamble. He loved these two people before him, and he felt pretty sure no one had ever meant for him to love anything. Hnid had taught him that his decisions and desires mattered; well, now he would put what he'd learned into practice.