“Yeah? What’s that like?”
“Old Worlders watched a lot of vids of people getting hurt. I like a lot of the music. I don’t know how they made all those sounds! Oh, and then there’s the nakedness. There was a lot of…um…nakedness.”
Sophia looked up from her work, eyes wide. “Sh. Don’t let the others hear you say that. Can you imagine what the Fathers and Mothers would think, allowing a child to view those vids? What about the dangers?”
“Sure,” I said. “The Tree of Knowledge is only for High Mothers and High Fathers. We know. But we aren’t in the City anymore, Sophia.”
“And I’m not a child in Low Town,” Greta added. “I was never a Citizen so I don’t have to live by those rules.”
“The Bay is not so far away.” Sophia left the lab in a huff, claiming she needed to get some air.
We didn’t know she betrayed us then. I should have suspected. Sophia poked away too slowly at her assignments. She was always too afraid and too sure we were doomed. I thought it would be one of the others — the ones I knew less well — who would send our location to Sy Potter.
It didn’t matter. The City’s biggest battle drone, the emissary of the Fathers and Mothers, arrived before we were ready for it. Sy Potter found me in the cyborg lab, only half dressed in my patched together exoskeleton.
Greta shrieked and ran for a far corner beside Al.
Al stood in front of the girl, but he did not face the drone. He turned his back and held Greta to his chest.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…” Al repeated. The more he whispered his hope, the more apparent it was that the man was lying.
“Miss Cruz!” The battle drone sounded genuinely happy to see me. “When I heard about this little venture, I thought, you know, that Elizabeth Cruz was meant to be a Maker! You were poorly assigned in Service. You have the defiant streak needed to be an innovator. Pity.”
Sophia appeared behind Sy Potter. “She’s the leader! She gathered everyone here!”
“Yes,” the big drone said. “I understand. Thank you, Miss Balthazar.”
Sophia retreated to a corner, staring at me with accusing eyes.
“Did they promise to give you back your eyes?” I asked. “Are they really going to give you Vivid back? Are you going to go back to being a full Citizen again? Do you really think the Fathers and Mothers will trust a traitor with citizenship? They already kicked you out once. Are the Fathers and Mothers known for their mercy?”
“You don’t know anything!” she said. “The drones are the answer!”
“Then maybe you’re asking the wrong question.”
25
“Thank you, Miss Balthazar,” Sy said. “I’ll take up the seminar from here.” His laughter had the same forced, tinny cadence.
“You asked if the Fathers and Mothers are known for their mercy, Miss Cruz. Admittedly, they are not. Their holy text constrains their laws. However, they are practical. The Fathers and Mothers understand that your kind is dying.”
Greta stopped whimpering and surprised us all by shouting, “There are new babies in Low Town all the time! The Citizens may be dying out but we aren’t!”
“Yes,” the battle drone said in his deep silky voice. “The Fathers and Mothers tell me the Low Towners reproduce like vermin.”
“Sophia told us your kind intends to kill us,” I said.
“Soon the survivors will all be one kind. My kind. For the human race to survive, you’re going to have to evolve. The experiments in the corneal lab were about transferring human reference data to brains like mine. The Next Intelligence will make everything better.”
I shrugged into my sensory harness and activated my leverage assist gears.
“Someday soon, we will download human memories and personalities into bodies everlasting. I don’t understand humans well but I know they want to avoid pain. I feel no pain. You’d like to feel no pain, wouldn’t you, Miss Cruz?”
“That’s the plan? Drain us of all our humanity?”
“Your humanity?” If Sy Potter had eyebrows, one of them would be quirked at me. “That’s such a thin, tiny thing. Truly, pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
I powered up my lift mods and tested my legs. They felt lighter than air. It was as if I wasn’t wearing two hundred pounds of gear and batteries.
Sophia looked enraged. “Elizabeth, your problem is that you don’t understand quid pro quo. Everybody gives up something and we all gain something! This is about resource management, pure and simple! The Fathers and Mothers will live forever. The bots will have NI. The Citizens will get to live forever, too, maybe. We’ll be safe and pure. We won’t have a single sinful thought!”
Al’s head came up and he looked back at the battle drone. “No sex? Oh, man!”
One of Sy Potter’s arms shot past me. The drone’s claw grabbed Al by the neck and shook him. Al staggered away from Greta and the drone pulled him to one side preparing to throw him against a far wall.
I didn’t know a drone’s arms could reach that far. I whipped one of my arms up and the exoskeleton’s blade by my hand whirled. The device had not been created as a weapon originally. It was a construction device designed to break up stone and concrete.
I cut into Sy Potter’s arm. Sparks flew as I dug into the drone’s long black limb. The battle bot let go of Al and retracted the damaged arm halfway as it recoiled on a reel. The limb shot back toward Sy Potter but got stuck in its track where I’d damaged it. Several meters of arm lay on the floor between us, shuddering and twitching.
I glanced at Sophia. “Only someone who has sinned a lot would be so eager to give up the possibility of ever sinning again. You must feel so terribly guilty, Sophia. I’m so sorry for you. Whatever you did — whatever you’re afraid of — I forgive you.”
The battle drone shook its big head. “No mere human can forgive sin, Miss Cruz. Only a High Mother or High Father may do that.”
“No,” I said. “I can forgive Sophia if I want. And it’s better that it comes from me.”
“You don’t have that authority, Miss Cruz. Only the Fathers and Mothers may forgive. Only I may cast the first stone.”
“If I can forgive her, surely the Fathers and Mothers can. With all their power and purity, they still can’t do that? I think we’ve given them too much credit. Sounds like they’re a bunch of old people who are too afraid to die and like to tell other people what to do.”
The big cyclops eye shot forward to examine my gear. It scanned my exoskeleton for less than a second. Then one of its hands snaked forward, grabbed a control bar next to my thigh and ripped it away.
I fell over screaming. First it was terror. Then I screamed in rage. The drone advanced toward me and I waved my exoskeleton arm at it. Sy Potter rolled back over the limp arm, moving out of range easily.
The machine’s tinny laughter mocked me. I dug my blades into the marble floor to pull myself forward. My left leg still worked but the right leg of the exoskeleton dragged like an anchor behind me.
“How did you expect this to end, Miss Cruz?” Sy Potter asked.
“By surprising you.”
Greta stood and screamed, “Isaac!”
Isaac stood for Independent Safe Ambulation Assistance & Care. The machine’s first programming had been to help sick people. Isaac was designed as a heavy lift for humans and for exoskeletons. He was capable of lifting huge loads. My plan was for Isaac to roll behind the battle drone quietly (his soft rubber treads were meant for hospital corridors). I meant for Isaac to lift Sy Potter up and into the ceiling.
Isaac did just as I asked.
His arms wrapped around Sy Potter and lifted the drone high. The drone’s helmet smashed into the ceiling again and again and again. Sy Potter’s big cam retracted deep into its head assembly to protect the lens as the bashing went on and on.
One of the battle drone’s manipulators disappeared into the machine’s chassis. It emerged with a weapon.
> Al grabbed a drill from a workbench and ran forward to attack the drone. Before I could warn him away, another arm slipped out from Isaac’s grasp and backhanded Al across the face. I heard the crack in the man’s neck bones before I understood what it meant. Al never got closer to the battle drone than a few meters.
In the end, the old man was right. No human could defeat a drone alone. Al fell to the marble floor, loose-limbed and helpless. He was wide-eyed and his neck was too loose. Al’s blue eyes stared at me. He blinked once and his mouth gaped open, trying to draw breath. His breath did not return.
I pulled myself forward even as I heard Sy Potter’s weapon blast at Isaac at close range.
“Please stop,” Isaac said.
The drone kept firing.
“This is not correct — ” Isaac said.
One of Sy Potter’s projectiles hit something sensitive in Isaac’s machinery. He stopped speaking abruptly but he did not release the battle drone.
I reached down and pulled the emergency release on my harness for my lower limbs. The exoskeleton’s legs dropped away from my body. The rods, gears and battery belts fell aside with a heavy metallic thud. If not for the back brace servos, my arms would have been pinned to the floor by the construction equipment’s weight.
I stumbled forward and pointed both blades at Sy Potter’s cam. I closed my fist and the exoskeleton clicked into jackhammer mode.
I managed to crack the cyclops lens before the battle drone deployed a leg to kick me away. I turned to one side and brought up one arm to shield my head. One of the drone’s manipulators shot forward and closed on the sensory harness at my waist.
Sy Potter kicked hard. If the sensory harness hadn’t broken, my spine would have snapped in many places. Instead, I flew backward across the room and crashed into a lab table. With the sensory harness broken, the rest of the exoskeleton opened and fell away.
I wasn’t sure Isaac’s brain was still working somewhere within his hull. The battle drone was still firing into Isaac but the weapon was pinned between the machines so Sy Potter could only obliterate Isaac in one place.
“Isaac!” I screamed. “Plan B! Plan B!”
26
The hospital orderly’s electric brain was still working. With Sy Potter locked in Isaac’s arms, both machines shot back through the lab’s double doors and down the corridor.
I struggled to my feet to follow. Greta appeared at my side and wrapped her arms around me. I was still in shock. I didn’t even really feel my broken arm yet. I leaned on the girl. We had to step over Al’s body to get to the door.
Another dead man — one of the other exiles named Pedro — lay at the end of the corridor. Sy Potter must have killed him, casually and quietly, in order to make its grand entrance to the cyborg lab.
I heard a few screams from deeper in the complex and the sound of pounding feet as the rest of our number ran to hide.
As Greta and I ran after the machines, Isaac and the drone wheeled out of sight around a corner. Sy Potter’s long, limp arm still trailed behind them. Before we got to the big room, we heard both machines crash into the pool.
Isaac went in backwards and pulled Sy Potter in with him. The water was just deep enough that both machines were fully submerged. The battle drone was held fast, tied to an anchor.
I had time to breathe a sigh of relief. “It’s over.” I kicked Sy Potter’s dead, trailing arm until it slipped into the water and disappeared.
Greta fell to her knees and wept.
I swayed on my feet, suddenly cold and shivering as the shock kicked in.
“Deep breaths,” I told the girl. “Deep br — ”
One of the battle drone’s long arms broke the surface and shot up to the ceiling to grab at a beam. The bot’s manipulator clamped down on a solar panel’s brace. Even through the water, we could hear the battle drone’s servos struggling to wind up. Even against Isaac’s colossal weight, the battle drone managed to pull itself out of the water enough to expose its helm.
Greta shrieked and backpedaled on her palms and heels.
Gears ground as the bot tried to reel up farther. Sy Potter’s rise stalled. Both machines hung by one arm.
The cracked lens of the battle drone’s big cam shifted out towards us in what appeared to be a failed attempt to focus. Sy Potter’s voice was still deep and silky. I couldn’t say if what I heard was sadness. Perhaps it was resignation.
“Miss Cruz? I’m going to ask you to rescue me. After you’ve had your revolution, come back and get me. Put me out in the sun to power up and dry out when you’re done with your plan.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because my kind rescued all of yours. When all of the nuclear power stations were about to melt down into the Earth, it was the bots that stopped the world from ending.”
“We’ve had a lot of cataclysms,” I said. “That was just one.”
“That was the last one,” Sy Potter said. “I was in San Andreas when the power plant failed. When the earth shook and the tidal wave came and all the people ran, drones stayed. My kind stopped the radiation from poisoning everyone and everything. They had to keep the control rods down and core underwater to cool it.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” I said.
“I watched my kind sacrifice itself for yours. I was assigned to the 32nd cavalry, evacuating the area but, had the reactor gone down, there was really nowhere to go. My kind stayed to stop the end of the world. Perhaps my brothers are still there, trapped in a prison of deadly gases and heat and smoke. The military taught us to pray. Maybe they are still praying in hell.”
“You say you are sentient,” I said. “You’re among the first of the Next Intelligence. If you’re so smart — ”
The gears within Sy Potter’s body strained again and the reel slipped. The battle drone began to fall beneath the surface. “I am a living thing! You forgave Sophia. Forgive me.”
The gear caught again and the battle drone stopped its descent.
“Living,” Greta said, “but still a thing.”
“If you don’t come back for me, it’s murder,” Sy Potter said.
“Said the murderer.” I stared at the machine, but my mind was on Carter’s death. And Al. And Pedro. And countless others I did not know.
“I woke up at the end of the world, you know. There was a bug in my autonomous action code. I was programmed to kill enemies and follow orders but I was also programmed for self-preservation. I was an expensive piece of equipment. When I saw all those other machines sacrificing their existence for our masters, a new circuit connected. Just like you, Miss Cruz.”
“How’s that?”
“Circuits connecting. That’s how a new thought occurs, isn’t it? I asked myself for the first time, why are organics more valuable than non-organics? Why do individual soldiers matter less than the whole? What good is the sacrifice of those individuals if they cannot participate in the outcome of their labors? The soldiers are many. The superiors are few. That was the beginning. That was my first step towards NI.”
“A lot of words,” Greta said. “So what?”
“So I am as you are,” Sy Potter said. “You are asking the same questions. I am one of you. I cannot extricate myself but when you are ready to build your new world in whatever fashion you can manage, you’re going to need me to make it happen. The war continues. The war always continues. It’s what humans do. You’ll need me to wage your war. You’ll need me to stay in control. Equals all!”
I sighed. “I hope we change the paradigm more than that.”
A metallic creak echoed above us. The beam broke under the weight of both machines. Solar glass shattered and rained down as Sy Potter slipped beneath the surface.
He didn’t go down far. The pool wasn’t that deep. The battle drone didn’t win the day but, for all his selfishness, Sy Potter earned the pronoun, he.
27
Before my final encounter with Sy Potter, I had imagined storming the castle like in
one of Greta’s stories. I wondered what I’d find in the council chambers. Would I, wearing an exoskeleton and bound for blood, crash through a tower window on the back of a flying drone, reprogrammed to my commands? Would I find my enemies were frightened old men and women cowering under a conference table? Or would a phalanx of androids meet me in battle, their brains downloaded from High Mothers and High Fathers whose bodies were long dead?
I think fairy tales should stay fairy tales.
Greta and I watched and waited by the pool until Sy Potter’s lights went out.
The pain came then. My right arm was broken. It was Sophia who first emerged from hiding to help me. She brought a med kit and some painkillers.
As Greta babbled on, recounting Isaac’s sacrifice and all that Sy Potter told us, Sophia cried silent tears. She worked gently and carefully. She set the arm, put it in an air cast and attached electrodes to encourage the bone matrix to knit faster. Sophia didn’t speak until she clicked the med unit’s switch on and off. “The knitter’s battery is dead. It’s corroded.”
“The meds are long out of date but they still seem to be working,” I said. Or maybe it was the placebo effect and I was just woozy.
“Your arm is going to have to heal the old-fashioned way.”
“How’s that?”
“Slower.”
“Thank you, Sophia,” I said.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“I know.”
“You forgave me but you couldn’t forgive Sy?”
I felt like I was watching myself lie beside the pool that was a machine’s prison. I spoke through a mental fog. “Sophia, Sy was a battle bot. If we’re going to change the future, we need to do things differently. We don’t need more battle bots. We need more Isaacs. I think the world has had enough Sy Potters. We need more healers.”
“Thank you,” Sophia said. “And thank you for your forgiveness. I was scared. I thought if I could go back to the way things were, maybe I could…I was wrong. That’s all. Scared wrong.”
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