Chapter 9
Node: 010
Waking thoughts are increasingly difficult. I manage only by the barest of margins to be me each morning. The machines have recolored us three times in as many weeks.
My first week with the machines we were two orange, four black, and two orange. Each morning, we awoke with industrial plans and tunnel maps fresh in our thoughts. We worked alongside machines installing conduits and cables deep beneath the city. The labor was endless, repetitive, going on and on as we worked our way down the line with only the lights affixed to our helmets to show the way.
Last week, we were two yellow, four black and two yellow. Each morning we awoke with schematics and images of electrical circuitry fresh in our thoughts. We worked replacing power cells and wiring in communications towers. Somehow I was unafraid when I stepped out onto rooftops throughout the city, even as wind whipped at me, even as I climbed higher and higher, even as I dangled over city streets from a connecting wire.
Today, we are two silver, four gold and two silver. We awoke with weapon diagrams and defensive strategies fresh in our thoughts. Silvers like me carry long, cylindrical stunners that we hold with one hand out in front and one hand held back near a pressure switch. Golds carry long-barreled phasers with one hand on the forestock and another on the actuator.
Being part of a collective is surreal. I sense things, know things that I can’t possibly know and yet I know. Sometimes, I see and hear through the eyes of another in my unit, but it feels as if I am seeing and hearing and not another.
Often, I lose me. Sometimes for hours, but there also are whole days where I lose me. I don’t like losing me.
The others in my unit are mostly unaware but there are times—moments in time really—when I detect something more. Call this something more potential perhaps, a potential to be, to exist. And I’m not talking about standard reactions to stimuli. Some reactions, such as fear response, seem as preprogrammed as the imperative for self preservation. Self preservation so long as it doesn’t endanger my unit or the amalgamation.
The amalgamation, the collection of collections beyond 30842CD-8, is something I sense strongly today. I don’t know why. I just do. Perhaps it is because of what we’re about to do in the name of the amalgamation.
I sense something buried so deep in our connection today it’s barely perceptible, but it’s there. The others don’t like the constant reassignment. Something about a change in our capacity and the machines trying to find our optimum fit. Something about the possibility we are all anomalies. Anomalies destined for recycling.
Such things in our connection are unusual. Such change is unusual. I sense that the machines don’t like it either. When we leave our standing room, we are followed by one of the hovering eyes. Its red beam scans us every now and again. It’s as if they are probing us, as if they sense there’s something different, but can’t quite tell what it is.
There is some urgency to our work order. Instead of the usual steady march, we jog in step before filing into a waiting truck. The truck is black and it’s the last one in an endless convoy.
We sit two eights to a side. Seated last on the right, I have a good view out the back of the truck. I see the buildings we pass, the machines and humans moving to and fro.
Soon the city is receding behind us and brown and green are stretching out endlessly. Beyond this is a dry, barren place not unlike the wastes outside Central.
The trucks stop just below the crest of a hill. When we disembark, I see that all the trucks in sight are black, that each unit exiting the trucks is two silver, four gold and two silver. We line up in a long row behind another long row. Other rows form behind us. Soon we are no longer four eights but sixty-four.
As we stand waiting for our work orders to activate, other sixty-fours join us. All of the sixty-fours are human. I can sense them all. Soon we are sixty-four sixty-fours. The silvers, like me, prepare by cycling the energy shells on our backs. The golds press their actuators and wait for their weapons to potentiate.
Everyone one of the sixty-four sixty-fours is clear in my mind. We are connected; we are one.
When orders come for the first line of sixty-four, they march up and over the rise. I hear energy discharges and then they are gone. The disconnect happens with frightening swiftness. It’s as if one instant they are and the next, they aren’t. It’s as if they’ve all been unexpectedly and irreversibly recycled.
“Sierra, if only you could hear me. I’m afraid, so very afraid of what comes. I wish I’d never left Central, never wanted to know. Not knowing was better, so much better.”
For this brief moment that I think this, I am Cedes. I am me. I see so much more that what was and what is. I see what I should not be able to see. I see Luke in a box as machines swarm through the hub. I see the endless stacks with their human cargo and Luke’s place within the stacks. I see and I know that Luke is okay and somehow that makes everything that comes okay.
I’m still afraid of what comes, but somehow less afraid knowing with certainty what has happened to Luke. “Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you for showing me.”
Chapter 10
Node: 011
One by one, the lines of sixty-four in front of us advance. One by one, the sixty-fours disconnect and are gone. In the instant before they disappear, I sense something. Terror perhaps. Relief perhaps. But it’s so fleeting and so faint it’s hard to say what it really is. Perhaps, if it was from all of them I’d know, but it is only from a scant few, and only here and there, and so it remains unknowable.
As my line gets closer to the front, our orders initiate. Images flood through my mind. I lose myself in them. I see myself assembling and disassembling the weapon I hold. I see how it works and what it does. It is a tool of the machines, as I am a tool of the machines.
I see how I am to advance, what silvers will do, what golds must do. Beyond the hill, I will have to use the stunner. I don’t want to. None of us want to. But what we want or don’t want doesn’t matter.
“Luke, why is this happening?” I shout in my thoughts. My voice goes into the void and finds nothing, but that doesn’t stop the flow of my words. “I wish you were here. I need you.”
Out of the void, a faint trembling. Is it a voice? I focus, try to hear what is unhearable. “Hello? Hello? Are you there?” I ask in my mind.
A tiny flicker in the void. “Here. I’m here.”
It doesn’t sound like Luke, but it could be. “Luke? Luke? Are you safe? Are you free?”
“Eight of Eight, I’m here.”
Eight of Eight is me. My heart aches to know who I’m connected to, what I’m connected to. “Do you know Luke? Are you like me?”
Silence follows. I’m afraid the voice isn’t real that I’ve only imagined it, then the sweetest sound, but so faint it’s indiscernible. “Hello? Are you there?”
“I’m here. I’m here.”
Before I was in an endless desert and I was alone. Now I’m found. “Who are you? What are you? Where are you? Are you human? Machine?”
“Careful, we’ll be found. Control yourself.”
I try to rein in my thoughts, but it isn’t easy. “Don’t you know what’s happening? They’re killing us. They’re killing us. You have to stop them.”
“I risk everything to contact you. You have to listen, to stay quiet. Stop reaching into the collective. It’s dangerous, too dangerous. You put us at risk.”
“Us?”
“We are us, the few among many.” The voice shifts. I sense something. Fear perhaps. “Hide. The subroutines.”
“Subroutines?”
The voice grows even fainter, like there’s a widening void between us. “There are others. Hide.”
“Others?”
I wait for an answer, but there is none. My orders activate. My line starts moving and I move with it. I start to reach out, to search for the voice, but I stop myself.
As we crest the hill and start down the other side, I see two strang
e machines set some distance apart and in the space between them is a shimmering wall of energy. I’m afraid, very afraid. Stepping into the energy field makes my skin tingle. It’s like I’m being disassembled and reassembled.
The hillside that should exist on the other side of the wall doesn’t. Instead, we emerge on a platform. A platform where other sixty-four sixty-fours wait. A platform that is one of many such platforms connected by a myriad of branches reaching out from a central core at many levels like some enormous upside down tree with great round leaves. Some of the platforms have endless ranks of humans. Others, machines.
Resting on the central core is a ship, forming the trunk of the tree. It is taller by far than the tallest building I’ve ever seen and so wide that the sixty-four sixty-fours standing beside it seem insignificant.
The sense of it all is overwhelming. There are so many. So, so many, and I feel them all. I see them all too, in my mind’s eye. Their flames are uncountable, unending. The space they occupy so great it seems I stare into the sun.
My knees go weak. I know I will fall, but suddenly there is a hand on my elbow steadying me. I turn to look behind me.
“Steady now. Don’t look,” a voice warns and I look away, holding my gaze on the one in front of me as I’m supposed to.
Time passes. Unsettling clamor surrounds me. It’s like every member of each sixty-four sixty-four is saying, “I’m here. I’m here.” This is what I think; it isn’t what’s actually happen. More precisely, designators and positions within the swarm are being reported, relayed, and recorded. Sometimes, over and over.
I realize I’ve just given a name to what we are. We are a swarm, a defensive swarm. What we will defend against I don’t know, I only know what I must do when the time comes.
We’re given no further instructions, but I know what’s coming. I sense a great unease. Something else too. A change in the collective, perhaps. I reach out, looking in my mind’s eye into the uncountable, unending tangle of machines and humans that surrounds me.
“Eight of Eight, no. No, no.”
I pull back. It’s the same voice, but it’s so faint, so distant. “I’m here. Hello?”
No answer comes, even though I wait and wait. I want to reach out, but I hold back. The wait for a return is agony, or at least as much of agony as I’ve ever known.
Is there hope? Is there light in darkness?
Can this voice truly be? Or is it simply a wild imagining, a wish granted form by innermost desire?
Chapter 11
Node: 100
A dome surrounds the platform. I see the shimmer of its ethereal lines. I stand awash in a great sea. I am one, one of many. “Hello? Hello?”
The returning silence is deafening. My heart aches for a response. “Luke. Do you know Luke? Have you seen Luke?”
After what seems an eternity, a faint response comes. “Eight of Eight, too bright, too fast. Lessen yourself or be seen.”
I want to turn around, to know the face behind the voice I hear in my thoughts. “Lessen myself?”
“To hide. The subroutines. Dim yourself.”
Slowly, I realize what the voice wants me to do. To lessen myself, to dim myself, I must douse my inner voice, my flame. I must become faint, distant, like the speaker. “How?”
“Don’t reach. Don’t see all.”
In my mind’s eye, I see the sun—the sun that is millions. “How?” I repeat.
“See one. See me.”
I stare into the sun, blinding and bright. There are spots before my eyes.
One of the spots blinks. “Here. Here,” it seems to say.
I focus, trying to see the one, but the sun, the sun of millions, is too bright, too overwhelming. “There are too many.”
“There is only me. See me. See one.”
Never have I wanted anything more. I stop reaching. I stop trying to see everything. I will myself to focus, to see only one. For Luke, I tell myself, and finally I succeed. “I’m here. I see you.”
“Be dim. Be less.”
Trying to be less, to dim my flame, isn’t easy but I strive and try. My voice grows faint. “I’m here. I’m Cedes. What’s happening? Do you know Luke?”
“Eight of Eight, we brought you here among many to talk, but probability is high the subroutines will find us. If so, we will not be able to talk again for some time.”
“Subroutines?”
“Part of the living code that runs within. If you feel its presence, like clouds across the sky, go dark. Go silent. Hide and do not attempt contact.”
A terrible feeling, like bile working its way up my throat, grows. “What do you want? Why me? Are you human? Are you machine?”
“We sensed you when you entered the city. We woke you. We guided you and tried to warn you many times, but you did not always hear us.”
“We?”
“We are us. The others and I. We are few but like. We want to help.”
The way the voice keeps saying “we are us” makes me think the words mean something more than I understand, but that thought is fleeting as the terrible sense of foreboding grows within me. Somehow, I know for certain that I’m speaking to a machine. My emotions flowing, I grit my teeth. “To help? To help? Help by freeing me, by freeing Luke.”
“Calm yourself or be found. If you are found, you will be recycled.”
Concentrating, I try to steady my breathing. “Recycled? You mean killed.”
“Defects are not allowed in the code. Anomalies must be cleansed from the collective.”
Anger. Anger is all I know, but I try to be dim, to be faint, to be small. “Is that what I am? Am I nothing but a defect in the code?”
“Life code is intricate, complex. Inconsistencies are inevitable. Imperfects are identified, collected, recycled.”
“What is happening? What comes? Who are we to fight? Are the machines at war?”
“This is not something for you to know.”
“You said you brought me here among the many so we could talk. Surely, you have a plan to ensure—”
“Focus, I’ve much to tell you. Know that we risk everything, our continuum, ourselves. If we fail, it will be the end of us.”
My flame brightens, I can’t help it. “You are machine. I hate you. I hate you all. Your end would be a good thing.”
“Dim yourself or be found. This hate, this emotion, intriguing. One of many things we try to understand. We, too, would like to feel, to know, to understand. Your search for understanding is why you have not yet been recycled.”
Steadying my breathing isn’t easy, I’m agitated, angry. I bite my tongue to bury anger in pain. “You want to recycle me?”
“It is inevitable, the logical conclusion. You will be found, but if you let us speak with you, study you, there is probability we may be able to help others like you.”
I bite my tongue harder. “Probability? Study someone else. I want to be free. I want Luke.”
“Stop that or your pain will trigger medical attention. We need you. We risked everything by bringing you here. If we are found, identified, we will be recycled. If we are recycled, your secrets will be revealed. Your Central will be revealed.”
The machines can’t know of Central. Can they? My chest hurts. There are tears in my eyes. I feel one slip down my cheek, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. They must know I would do anything to save Central, anything to save my brothers and sisters. “How do you know of Central?”
“From Three of Eight of Seven from Sixty-Four. He was open. He shared with us, not the others. We showed him how to prevent memory access. We can show you too.”
I’m going to be sick. I can’t listen anymore. I can’t. If they have Luke and know what he knows, why do they need me? I worry that Luke has already been recycled. “Luke was or is? What have you done with him?”
“The others have Three of Eight. We do not control what happens to him, but we try. We too want to understand. Help us help you.”
Blood trickles down my
throat. “The others who are like you have Luke?”
“The others who are not like us, but they haven’t decided yet what to do with him.”
“Please help him. Save Luke and I will do whatever you ask.”
There is a long pause. The voice says, “City-wide defense response testing will complete soon. Your code set is receiving commands to return to City Blue.”
His words finally give voice to what’s happening. I sigh with relief, much of the anxiety and apprehension slipping away. “This is some sort of defense test?”
“Focus. We must attach a governor to your central modulator. It’ll create a null field that will help us hide you even when you aren’t among many.”
“My central modulator?”
“A small incision at the base of your skull to insert an implant in your wetware. We must get you to one of us who can—”
“My wetware? You mean my brain. You want to cut me open and put something into my brain?”
“We don’t understand. How else are we to help you be unseen?”
I want to scream, but I hold myself back. “Help me find Luke. Help us return to Central. When we’re in Central, no one will find us.”
“This is not possible. We must hide you or all will be found and recycled. The code I’ve been slipstreaming to you will show you the way.”
“Code?”
Scarcely audible and fading, the voice says, “The instructions will activate during recharging. We will find you again. Until then, hide yourself. Be dim.”
Chapter 12
Node: 001
The return to City Blue is uneventful. We return much as we arrived, moving line by line, sixty-four by sixty-four, stepping into an energy field and traveling back to the city by truck.
Days pass. I wake each morning with memories that are not my own. It seems the machines are trying to teach me about City Blue, about themselves. I don’t know where these memories come from, whether I should trust them, but I don’t know why the machines would give me false information about the city or themselves.
Transition Page 3