Machinations

by Hayley Stone

  The machines were supposed to solve those crises for us, without demanding a change in lifestyle or culture. They could fight our conflicts, produce our food, heal our sick and wounded, even perform as simple a task as ferrying us from one destination to another, pollutant-free. Of course, they also manufactured themselves—and if anyone raised a stink about the pitfalls there, I can only assume they were shouted down by corporations and governments getting rich off their happy clientele. Us.

  When the generator kicks back in and the lights return, a door shudders open to my left and another man enters the room, causing me to jump back. My hand goes instinctively to a weapon at my waist—but there’s nothing there. No gun, not even a holster. I feel more vulnerable than when I was naked.

  “Samuel, we have to go,” says the newcomer, his harsh German accent adding further gravity to his order. “Now.”

  Images are slowly floating back into my mind’s eye now, a swirl of memory. Samuel, I think. Finally, a name to go with the man’s face. It feels like blood is rushing to my head as I attempt to concentrate. I briefly wonder if standing upside down would help. Probably not.

  Samuel.

  Yes! There’s something. The faintest caress of remembrance.

  Samuel is laughter beneath warm rain. The source of answers in Chemistry class. Bad sci-fi movies. A funeral. Then later, a plan. He’s a friend. He’s my friend.

  How could I forget?

  And why can’t I remember more?

  “I just need a few more minutes,” Samuel says, back at the computer. “My latest data hasn’t finished compiling. I’m also having issues with the local servers; they’re not responding to my queries.” A careful pause. He glances at me. “And she’s still…acclimating.”

  The German’s been staring at me from beneath thick beetle brows as if I’m a meal he’s not sure he can easily digest. Once upon a time, he must have been blond, handsome even, but now he’s all gray fatigue and grimaces. It’s starting to unnerve me, his unblinking curiosity. It feels more like suspicion. Fine. I don’t trust you, either. There’s nothing friendly about his tired face, rigid posture, or the automatic rifle resting against his shoulder. But he’s still human, I remind myself. That counts for a lot more than it used to.

  “Leave it,” he says to Samuel, but keeps his eyes on me. What does he expect me to do? I weigh about 125 pounds soaking wet, and I’m not soaking wet. Anymore.

  “Seconds,” Samuel promises. “Just a few more seconds—”

  A dull rumbling cuts him off and sets the overhead lights swaying. Our shadows lean against the wall, veer toward the ceiling, growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking. Glass beakers on the steel countertops tremble, making an entirely too cheerful sound, like the clinking of champagne flutes. The sirens cut out. Then a whooshing sound blows through the facility, like flame ejected from a dragon’s throat—a loud and terrible inferno. Pieces of the ceiling begin to crumble, dusting us with plaster snowflakes.

  “No,” barks the German whose name I still don’t know. Even if he’s shorter than Samuel by a few inches, he’s certainly bulkier—a solid, square mass of muscle. He walks over and grabs Samuel by his dress shirt collar, giving him a hard shove toward what I assume must be the exit. “Now.”

  But Samuel won’t be bullied into leaving. He pushes past him, back to the computer. “Hold on. I just have to…” After another moment of pounding the keyboard, including attacking the enter key repeatedly, he pinches his eyes shut. “The machines must have reached our server room. I keep trying to copy files onto this drive”—he nods to a portable hard drive on the desk, connected to the desktop by a simple USB cord—“but the computer’s telling me they’re in a location that doesn’t exist.”

  “What files?” I ask, though I think I already know the answer.

  Samuel hesitates. “Important ones. Vital.” His gaze cuts to the German. “We have to go to the server room. Straight to the source. We have to—”

  “Impossible,” the German says, interrupting him. “It is on the other side of the base, close to the breach.”

  “We have guns,” Samuel says.

  “Not enough. The machines outnumber us, at least six to one.”

  “Then we get more.”

  “No.” The German’s voice is firm.

  “Ulrich, please,” he pleads. So his name is Ulrich. How very—well—German.

  To my surprise, Ulrich’s eyebrows buckle in a moment of sympathy. But then he grabs Samuel by the arm and urges him again toward the door. This time, Samuel doesn’t fight him. His shoulders slouch in defeat. He gives his computer one last, longing look, snatches up the portable hard drive, and motions me to follow.

  The three of us move from the windowless room into a long, windowless corridor. Nice change of scenery.

  Eventually, we reach an intersection with two hallways jutting off in separate directions. The German starts to head down one, but Samuel stops him.

  “Ulrich! Where are you going?”

  “The armory,” Ulrich replies.

  “Weren’t you just there?” I look at his rifle.

  “I was rushed.” Ulrich glares at me, like it’s my fault the machines infiltrated the base so quickly, not leaving him enough time to be thorough. “We will need more guns. More Imps, more ammunition…”

  I don’t know what he means by Imps, but Samuel seems to understand the shorthand. “Okay. What about supplies?” he says. “If we’re abandoning the base, we’re going to need some basic equipment.”

  “In storage near recreation. Already set aside.” Ulrich cradles his rifle in his arms. “I will meet you there in five minutes. Take the long route, avoiding the interior halls. Watch around corners. Five minutes.” He gestures like he’s going to give me a high five, then jogs off.

  As we walk, Samuel explains that while the facility spans several miles, it’s not very large in any one section. This is mainly to avoid detection by the machines’ sensors.

  “They’re always looking for us,” he says with a drained look, “systematically combing the planet for pockets of human resistance, for people holed up in remote locations like this one.”

  From what I recall of our strategies, that means we’re somewhere in a northern mountain range. Alaska, maybe. The scaling equipment I find in the storage room suggests as much.

  “Grab some warm clothes and whatever food will fit in one of those backpacks there,” Samuel tells me as he secures the external drive in a hardcase, and then puts on a jacket twice his size. After he’s all zipped up, he begins stuffing the insulated canteens and foodstuffs Ulrich set out into a blue pack.

  I’m still adjusting to movement. My limbs feel rather sleepy, but I manage to contribute. I can’t help glancing at Samuel as we’re packing. He’s attacking the task with a single-minded focus. I know he has the answers to my questions. I also know right now probably isn’t the time to interrogate him, but I have to ask. I’m going crazy with speculation, and there may not be a chance later, depending on how all this pans out. The machines are efficient killers. I can personally attest to that.

  Besides, we have five minutes. Plenty of time for a quick Q & A.

  I try to think of a gentle question to test the waters, then quickly decide against it. “Where are we, Samuel? And how did I get here?”

  He stops what he’s doing to look at me. “Alaska.” Knew it. “Just south of the Brooks Mountain Range, although there are sections of the facility that stretch beneath the mountains.”

  I notice he’s craftily avoiding my second question. We stare at one another, wasting precious seconds in uncomfortable silence. Samuel looks like a suffocating fish, opening and closing his mouth. He’s trying, but he can’t find the words to explain.

  I find some for him. “I’m dead, aren’t I?” I’m proud of how calm I sound.

  “It’s difficult to…I wouldn’t say…It’s a matter of perspective?” He shoulders the pack and makes for the door. “I’m sorry. Maybe this conversation shoul
d wait until we have more time—”

  “We have two minutes,” I say, maneuvering into his path. “Talk.”

  “Rhona…”

  “Rhona. You said that before. I’m guessing it’s—my name? So why don’t I feel like it belongs to me? Why can’t I remember you properly?”

  He smiles sadly. “Maybe because I’ve never been very proper?”

  “You know that’s not what I was asking.”

  To his credit, Samuel looks genuinely distressed on my behalf. “I don’t know what happened, exactly. That’s the truth, I swear it. And you, you are Rhona Long. In a sense. You have her DNA, coded identically right down to the most obscure mutation. Her personality and her experiences and her memories are yours, too. Or they should have been. Something must have interfered with the transference, or it could have been the premature birth sequence. I can’t know for sure until I run some tests.”

  “That’s all nice and clinical, but what does it mean?”

  “It means…” he says, swallowing again. Stalling, I think. “It means you’re a clone.”

  A clone. It sounds like a joke. I want to think of some clever response, a witty retort, but nothing comes. No words seem adequate to describe the confusion, the panic, the blind mess of emotions charging through my system, urged on by adrenaline. I know it’s the truth. Only truth could feel so damn terrible.

  Finally, I manage to stammer, “How? I mean, why? Who would do this?”

  “You would.”

  He’s still wearing his “I’m sorry” face. I kind of want to punch him in the nose.

  Then Ulrich shows up and shoves a gun into my hands, tempting fate. “What is taking so long?” he says, frowning at our progress.

  If I had thought of the German as armed before, he’s doubly so now. Around the mesh fabric of his trousers are several holsters, each occupied by a gun. Higher up at his waist are another pair of pistols, a few knives, and some expensive EMP grenades. Oh! Not Imp—EMP. That’s one mystery solved. I recognize the EMP grenades by the little blue lights going around their circumference like carousel bulbs, identifying them as inactive. For now, at least. And that doesn’t even take into account the automatic resting against his shoulder, and whatever else he’s packed into his black duffel bag.

  When Ulrich notices me eying his arsenal, he gives me a partial smile. “I don’t believe in half measures.”

  “I see that.”

  My own firearm isn’t nearly as impressive as Ulrich’s hardware. Just your average electromagnetic-pulse gun. It’s about the size of the old safe-action pistols from a few decades ago, before our technology became our own worst enemy and bullets were rendered antiquated in the field. I test my familiarity with the weapon by ejecting its cartridge, checking its energy levels, and successfully sliding it back in with a click. It’s weird. I remember a host of combat strategies, how to disassemble and reassemble an EMP-G, things about the war, but I can’t recall lyrics to my favorite song, or what my favorite vegetable is, or if I even like vegetables.

  For the first time, I wonder what sort of person Rhona Long really was. I wonder if I’m any different now. Something more—or something less.

  Another explosion puts my growing identity crisis on hold. It’s a direct hit, or very nearly, because the lights give one last, valiant flicker, then everything goes dark. The force of the impact nearly knocks me over. I save myself by latching onto a table. My fingers slip against the metal, but I manage to steady myself at the last second. For a few scary seconds I worry the ceiling has caved in, burying us alive.

  “Samuel,” I say, starting to move toward where I remember him standing.

  “Hold on,” he says. “Almost got it…there!” A narrow beam of light suddenly illuminates his face, highlighting the valleys. “Everyone okay?” He sweeps the arc of light in my direction.

  I blink rapidly before getting my arm up as a shield for my eyes. “Yeah.”

  Samuel moves the beam over to the hulking shadow that is Ulrich in the dark.

  “Boo,” Ulrich says sarcastically. “Now we leave.”

  It isn’t until we’re moving again that something occurs to me: I haven’t seen any other people in this whole facility. Granted, I’ve not had a thorough tour of the place, but from what I’ve seen so far, it seems like a lot of space for just a soldier and techie/scientist/doctor/whatever Samuel is, even given the wide berth most normal people would want to give Ulrich.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I ask Samuel as we navigate the labyrinth of hallways and corridors. I feel like a rat in a maze. I don’t know where we’re going, or what’s waiting for us when we get there. Ulrich’s taken the lead, so I’m forced to rely on his sense of direction. He’s set the pace just below grueling, muzzle and scope at eye level, ready.

  Samuel gives me a strange look. “There is no one else.”

  “You mean, they’ve already been evacuated?”

  “No. I mean, sort of. The scientists who used to work here transferred to McKinley before we moved in. It’s just been Ulrich and me. Alone here for the past…oh, two or so years now.”

  It’s my turn to give him a funny look. “And where was I that whole time? I mean, me-me. Not clone-me.” Dang, that’s going to get confusing.

  “Back at McKinley base.” His tone implies the answer should be obvious.

  McKinley base. McKinley base…It rings a bell—like a fairy tripping on LSD in my brain, but I decide to set it aside for the moment.

  “We were apart for that long?” I ask instead. It makes me feel weird, knowing the last months of my previous life were spent without my best friend. Did I miss Samuel? Did we exchange regular communications? How did he receive the news of my death?

  Samuel focuses on Ulrich’s back. “Yeah…” he says slowly, drenching the word in regret. He throws on a smile before I can interrogate him on how he felt about our separation. “Ulrich’s not such bad company, though. He plays a mean game of Texas Hold’em. As you can imagine, his poker face is unreadable.”

  I can’t tell whether he’s joking or not. “Oh? And what do you wager?”

  “Candy, mostly.”

  The image of Samuel and Ulrich sitting at a table, playing a game of cards, and exchanging Skittles instead of money is almost too much to bear. Or believe. Yet I don’t detect any deceit in his tone. I shake my head. “Okay, then. But that doesn’t explain why there aren’t any other people here. Shouldn’t there be some lab assistants or…something?”

  Ulrich shushes me before I can pry another answer out of Samuel. He turns off the flashlight. At the same time we come to an abrupt halt, flattening our bodies against the wall. No one needs to tell me what to do; I just do it. Call it instinct, or self-preservation, or whatever.

  There are some sounds you can’t forget, even if you want to. The motorized whir-whir-whir of a machine is one of those sounds, so ingrained in my consciousness my heart could beat out its staccato rhythm. As I listen to it now, it triggers a respiratory response, my chest closing in panic as I wrestle with whether to run or stay and fight. I hold my breath and imagine a serene place—a trick I learned from my father. Or Rhona learned from her father, I guess.

  Whir-whir-whir. It’s getting louder, coming closer.

  I adjust and readjust my hand on the grip of my gun. I pray I still know how to use this thing.

  Samuel is breathing loudly next to me. I know he can’t help it. He’s not trained for this. He belongs in a lab, fighting on an intellectual battleground, his mind his weapon of choice. But knowing that doesn’t do us any good right now. And it doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s going to give us away. Get us all killed.

  Whir-whir-whir-whir-whir.

  That’s it. Someone has to take the initiative here. Ulrich might be content to let the enemy come to us, but I’ve always preferred offense to defense. I remember briefly how the element of surprise has won mankind countless battles throughout history—we’re talking ancient, medieval, and modern times. So when I p
ush myself off the wall and round the corner, I have no choice but to trust in the time-tested stratagem. I’m dimly aware of Ulrich shouting in what sounds like German, and Samuel calling my name, but neither stops me. It’s too late anyway. I’ve already committed to the attack.

  In the split second I have to survey the scene, I count three of them. Even with dilated pupils in the dark, I identify their hulking figures. Red optics peer at me from the black. They’re like the eyes of the monsters I feared would emerge from my closet when I was little. The sight provides a shot of adrenaline, keeping me mobile. My senses are so heightened by fear that I imagine I hear every creak of their hydraulics systems as they move closer.

  Regardless, this is the best-case scenario since, for whatever reason, the machines like to operate in multiples of three. No one knows why. Although we’ve managed to capture and dissect some in the past, their overall programming remains a mystery. We know how they work, just not why they work in the manner they do, or why the switch got flipped against us. But more important is the knowledge we do have: we know how to destroy them.

  I take a knee before I start firing, making myself a smaller target, harder to hit. It’s not exactly guerrilla warfare, but then, they’re not expecting an ambush.

  WHIR-WHIR-WHIR.

  Before they can react, I exhale and squeeze the trigger. Once, twice, and again. The darkness lights up in three distinct flashes of blue white as the machines’ processors short-circuit from the violent surges of power. The light show is brief, but satisfying. They don’t give a shrill cry of protest, or emit even the slightest hint of pain or emotion; they just shut down.

  I lower my weapon, feeling slightly light-headed and more than a little winded. Samuel and Ulrich push past me. They’re still yelling, only now it seems to be at each other, and it takes me a moment to catch up with their conversation.