After The Fall (Book 2): The City

by Dalton, Charlie

  “To work together on a project unlike anything ever seen before. With the Bug craft parked right outside our front door, there could be no denying their plan: to eradicate the human race from the face of the Earth. We couldn’t let that happen. At least, not without a fight.

  “Each country was tasked with developing a single part of the greatest project ever conceived. A way for us to defeat the Bugs before they could eradicate us. We were fully aware the Bugs would take down our communications equipment. It would be communication blackout from that point on. We had to concentrate on our part of the warship exclusively. We defined the dates we would finish, when each project would liftoff and join together on the dark side of the moon.

  “We couldn’t take the chance the Bugs might be watching us, looking for communications. It would give the Cities away. We were left with no lines of communication, complete isolation to create each of our projects.”

  “What was everyone working towards?” Fatty said.

  “A ship,” Dr. Beck said. “One to rival the Bugs’ own warship.”

  “To fight them?” Lucy said.

  “To destroy them,” Dr. Beck said. “It’s the only way to stop them for good.”

  “How do you know the other Cities succeeded with their projects?” Donny said.

  “We don’t,” Dr. Beck said.

  “What if one of the other Cities failed to launch?” Donny said.

  “Then we would never know it,” Dr. Beck said. “We had to be successful in our mission or the human race was finished. That’s incentive enough, don’t you think? We had a failsafe. Even if some Cities were unsuccessful, those that were successful can be operated individually. It means that even if we couldn’t get the pieces to fit together, we could later engineer them so they would. The most important part was getting them built and in orbit around the moon.”

  “What were you working on here?” Jamie said.

  “We were charged with building the processing system,” Dr. Beck said with some pride. “The brain of the entire warship. The central nervous system that tied everything together. It was by far the most difficult part of the entire process. In fact, it proved to be a greater challenge than even we had anticipated.

  “We were coming up short when we designed our supercomputers. It turns out there’s a missing component when it comes to bringing the systems together. There’s a need not only for the system to compute information at a phenomenal rate, but to empathize and strategize, to consider the enemy the same way a human mind might.”

  Looking around, Jamie found that hard to believe—that people as advanced as the ones here could find anything impossible.

  “After years of work, we found we were still a long way off our goals,” Dr. Beck said. “It isn’t enough for our system to simply process systems. It also had to think for itself, to come up with strategies of war and overcome our enemy. We had to have a system that could think on its feet. We still know very little about our enemy. You have to be extremely flexible to defeat an unknown aggressor.”

  “You’re saying you failed to come up with the solution?” Donny said. “That there’s nothing in charge of whatever sort of ship you’re building in space?” He threw up his hands. “Well, that’s just great.”

  “We did come up with a solution,” Dr. Beck said. “A bridge between the technology we had and the technology we needed. It turned out to be far simpler than we thought. With just a sliver of the time remaining before the launch, we began down another avenue.”

  Dr. Beck used his security pass two more times before they got to the room he was looking for. Large glass tanks lined the walls, each big enough to hold a fully-grown man lying down. They were empty.

  “What have you been cooking up in here?” Donny said.

  “This isn’t where you’ve been making the mashed potatoes, is it?” Fatty said with a look of horror. “I knew this place was too good to be true. It has an unsanitary kitchen, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” Dr. Beck said with a chuckle.

  “What would you need these pods for if you’re making computers?” Donny said.

  Jamie felt an unwelcome sensation in the pit of his stomach like he’d eaten something that had been laying in the sun too long. His belly turned. He got a horrible feeling he wasn’t going to like what Dr. Beck was about to say.

  Lucy had become still too, focusing not on what Dr. Beck was saying, but on one of the tanks along the wall. She was paler than usual.

  “The first few incarnations were unmitigated failures,” Dr. Beck said. “We simply couldn’t get the two systems to work together as one. One system was the human mind, the other represented the software systems the mind would join with after docking with the ship in orbit.

  “No matter what we tried, they simply wouldn’t cooperate. Like we had two jigsaw pieces that simply would not fit together. And they should have. There was nothing stopping them from working together. And then we made the discovery we so desperately needed.

  “They were competing, each trying to take charge, fighting one another. If we were to use them both to the best of their abilities, they were going to have to learn to work together. One had to be subordinate to the other. The discussion took many hours, but we finally came to a decision. Which would dominate? The emotional nature of the human mind or the purely analytical nature of the computer system?

  “It was decided that, as it was humanity’s future on the line, so it ought to be a human entity that made the big decisions.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Donny said. “You’re saying you combined your computer system with a person?”

  “A biological entity, yes,” Dr. Beck said.

  “That has to break some kind of international law,” Donny said.

  “We’re at war,” Dr. Beck said. “The rules remain at the door until after the victor has been crowned. Until then, we’ll use every option available to us. Do you think our enemy cares about our code of ethics when they unleashed the Rage virus on us?”

  “Wait,” Fatty said. “I saw the movies earlier. The technology you’re saying the Cities developed looks far beyond what we were capable of even up to the Fall. I didn’t see any advanced human spaceships in the cinema.”

  “That’s right,” Dr. Beck said. “Very observant.”

  “Then how are we supposed to build this powerful warship in space?” Fatty said.

  “We had a little help,” Dr. Beck said. “We needed to advance quickly. That meant sharing everything we had with our enemies. Old grievances were put aside and forgotten. I don’t for a second believe every nation shared all their technological secrets with one another. Some would want domination over the rest of the human race should we be victorious. But they shared enough.”

  “And that was enough?” Fatty said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Beck said.

  He hesitated. Unsure whether or not to continue.

  “I didn’t expect to share everything with you today,” he said. “Or that you even needed to know all these details. But seeing as the topic has come up. . . The truth is, it wasn’t from us that we developed the key pieces of technology. We borrowed them from elsewhere. From the most surprising of sources. From the Bugs themselves.”

  17.

  “THE BUGS?” Jamie said. “They just gave you their technology? For us to beat them?”

  He knew it was wrong the moment the words were out of his mouth. He’d seen these Bug creatures. He couldn’t bring himself to believe there was a single one that had developed conscience enough to aid an innocent alien race his fellow brethren were mercilessly eradicating.

  “Of course not,” Dr. Beck said. “Some years ago, when I was a youngster—yes, hard to believe isn’t it? That I was once a young whippersnapper like you—stories circulated of a spaceship from an alien race. Roswell of New Mexico. It was quite a scandal. I was young enough to have fallen for it. Hook, line, and sinker. My friends and I used to play games on the girls, scaring them with our wil
d imaginations about what the aliens might look like. They were simpler times.”

  A sad smile turned his eyes sour.

  “It was only after the Rage virus, when I was permitted into Area 51, that I discovered the truth,” he said. “The stories we told to frighten each other weren’t entirely inaccurate. We were fortunate enough to have discovered the Bug spacecraft. Since then, we’ve been backward engineering everything we could from it. Every secret we extracted from it, every morsel of knowledge, we handed to our new international allies. A gift. Perhaps our only chance of defeating these monsters. We couldn’t afford to keep one another at arm’s length any longer.

  “If only we’d thought to bridge those gaps years earlier. We might have developed so much faster. But there’s no use in crying over spilt milk, I suppose. My mother was always fond of saying that. Strange, considering she never used to say it over spilt milk. Comes with spending your formative years growing up on a dairy farm, I guess.”

  He shrugged at his own private joke.

  “It turns out the Bugs have been observing our species for longer than we care to admit,” he said. “They came to research us, learn about our cultures and peoples. No doubt they did so using the very same method to infiltrate your ranks. They take someone’s skin and hijack their body. We also have evidence to suggest this is not the first time they’ve attempted to destroy us. It is merely their latest, and most successful, attempt.

  “There are many theories about how they might have gone about it in the past. Most likely, they used our fears against us. We suspect they were responsible for Hitler’s rise to power, ensuring the Germans developed the necessary rocket technology for their next plan, should Hitler fail. Which he did. It gave birth to their next project of secret extermination. Nuclear weapons. During the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. What they busied themselves with during the interim years I can only speculate. We have so many questions left unanswered. Not least of all why they decided to torture us with the Rage virus as opposed to some kind of ray gun.”

  “You mentioned you were successful in developing the central control system,” Donny said. “What happened to it?”

  “You’re referring to Mother,” Dr. Beck said. “That’s the name we gave our processing system. We were about to launch, send her into space, to meet up with the rest of the ship, but then the Rages came. They tore through our defenses and sabotaged the mission. I can only assume the Bugs had learned of us somehow. Maybe one of the other Cities tried to contact us? Or we were seeping a signal of some sort the whole time? I don’t know the reason. But whatever it was, it gave us away. They got in and ripped us to pieces.”

  “What happened to the rocket?” Donny said.

  “We launched it,” Dr. Beck said.

  Jamie breathed a sigh of relief.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Fatty said. “If a rocket were to launch, we would have heard it. The commune isn’t far from here.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Dr. Beck said. “We developed cloaking technology to ensure there was no sign whatsoever of it taking off. We couldn’t let the Bugs know we were launching. It was too important.”

  “But they discovered what you were up to anyway,” Donny said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Beck said, hanging his head. He ran his hands through his sparse hair. “All that hard work, all that effort. For nothing.”

  “But you said you launched the rocket,” Jamie said. “Mother is up there now, fighting for us?”

  Dr. Beck’s eyes moved to the side. Uncomfortable with the truth.

  “Was the Mother program onboard?” Donny said.

  Dr. Beck only stared into space, gnawing on his fingernails.

  “Doctor?” Donny said in a gentle voice. “Was the Mother program onboard the rocket you launched?”

  “No,” Dr. Beck said. “The Rages attacked just when we were prepping her.”

  “The rocket made it into space?” Fatty said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Beck said. “But with no Mother onboard, it’s a fruitless exercise.”

  “Where is this Mother program now?” Donny said. “Do you know where it is?”

  Dr. Beck nodded.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He was unable to look any of them in the eye.

  “Where?” Donny said. “Where is it? The fate of the world rests on us finding it.”

  “There’s no need,” Dr. Beck said. “You already found it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Donny said.

  The hair rose on the back of Jamie’s neck. This was it. The moment he’d been dreading. Somehow he already knew what the next words out of Dr. Beck’s mouth were going to be.

  “You brought her with you,” Dr. Beck said. “She’s sitting right here.”

  “Where?” Donny said.

  “There,” Dr. Beck said.

  His finger shook as he pointed at Lucy.

  18.

  IT WAS so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Jamie was the first to shake his head.

  “No,” he said. “You’re wrong. It can’t be her.”

  Lucy stared, eyes wide as saucers at the shaking finger.

  “You know the truth, don’t you, L?” Dr. Beck said with a small smile.

  It wasn’t evil or sinister, but understanding and consoling. The kind of smile a caring uncle might give a favoured niece.

  Lucy’s chest rose and fell with panicking breaths.

  “Excuse. . . Excuse me,” she said, leaving the room.

  “Lucy!” Jamie said, getting to his feet and jogging after her. “Lucy!”

  “Leave her alone,” Donny said. “She needs to come to terms with it.”

  “You don’t honestly believe what he said?” Jamie said. “She’s Lucy. She’s just a girl.”

  “She’s not just a girl,” Dr. Beck said. “She’s the one hope of the human race.”

  Jamie shook his head. No. It couldn’t be right. It didn’t make sense. A mist of denial had descended before his eyes. He couldn’t see the truth.

  “It fits,” Donny said. “You found her in the desert, chased by Rages. They could have been chasing her since she escaped from the City. You kept talking about how strong she was at the commune, dragging heavy ammunition boxes without sweating.”

  “She’s strong for her size, that’s all,” Jamie said.

  “She knew the Reaver leader wasn’t what he appeared to be,” Donny said. “The flashbacks and dreams she’d experienced. She couldn’t remember anything beyond escaping from the City because she hadn’t existed then. She’d been created.”

  Jamie couldn’t accept it. Wouldn’t accept it. He turned to Dr. Beck.

  “Why was her memory scrambled after she escaped?” he said.

  “She was an empty vessel,” Dr. Beck said. “All programming would be done in the warship upon arrival after she docked. Everything would be uploaded and programmed, plugging into her core system. I have to say, it’s ironic that you called her Lucy. We referred to her as L. In Roman numerals, she’s number fifty.”

  “Fifty?” Fatty said. “You made forty-nine Lucys before you made her? Man. That’s a lot of sisters.”

  “They didn’t survive,” Dr. Beck said. “I told you. It was a difficult process.”

  “Fifty?” Donny said. “Why did it take so long?”

  “Do you think what we do here is easy?” Dr. Beck said. “Or that anyone else has ever done anything remotely like it before? We’re working on the absolute cutting edge of technology, decades beyond anything we were capable of in the past. Even leading up to the Fall.”

  “So, like, what is she?” Fatty said. “Some kind of spy ninja? I have to say, I’ve been thinking that for a while.”

  “She’s not a spy,” Dr. Beck said. “She’s a girl. And she’s Mother.”

  “If she’s only a girl, why did it take fifty attempts to make her?” Jamie said.

  “Because she’s not only a girl,” Dr. Beck said. “She’s enhanced. After she docked with the other sectio
ns, she was going to plug into the mainframe.”

  “You were going to make her a slave to your cause,” Jamie said.

  “No,” Dr. Beck said. “She is human in every way that you are. We just made her with a few small adjustments. She maintains her own sense of free will. No one can force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. We hoped she would serve us, yes. For the greater good. But never as a slave. She would have had more power than any human being in history.”

  “What power?” Donny said.

  “The combined power of every nation on Earth,” Dr. Beck said. “She would have been the general of our intergalactic forces. No human nation could have stood against her. Her only real challenge could come from another alien species.”

  “You would have given a girl that much power?” Donny said.

  “I would have given her more,” Dr. Beck said. “I would have given her the heavens and the stars if it meant she would protect us from the Bugs.”

  “It’s too much power for one person,” Donny said.

  “Which is why we gifted it to a special girl,” Dr. Beck said. “No one can interfere with her control. No one can breach her command. She was meant to be the best of us. To fight and defend us.”

  “But now that chance is gone,” Donny said. “We’re doomed.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Beck said. “I’m afraid we are.”

  19.

  JAMIE FOUND Lucy in their shared dorm room. It was just as well. If she wasn’t there, he never would have found her. The City was too massive. Which meant she likely came here in order to be found. She didn’t want to be alone.

  Jamie approached slowly, sitting on the end of her bed.

  “How are you doing?” he said.

  “Fine,” Lucy said.

  She sat with her knees curled up, hugging her legs.

  “It doesn’t change anything, you know,” Jamie said. “You’re still my friend.”

  “Maybe not for you,” Lucy said. “You were born. You’re a normal person.”