“It was necessary,” Dr. Beck said.
Jamie’s expression was one of pure revulsion.
“You sacrificed us,” Jamie said. “Knowing we were going to die. Knowing the Bugs would come after us. The Rages and Reavers circling like vultures. You didn’t care. You knew we were struggling to survive. You knew we wouldn’t give up. It was a suicide mission from the start. You knew we were going to die.”
Dr. Beck shook his head and shifted his walking stick from one hand to another. He couldn’t look at Jamie.
“We needed the Bugs to think humans were still alive, still fighting the Rages,” he said. “We all had to make our own personal sacrifices.”
“What was your sacrifice?” Jamie said, eyes blazing. “Here in this Eden of yours?”
“I made my fair share of sacrifices,” Dr. Beck said, eyes growing steely hard. “We’re on the same team, struggling to survive. Without you out there, there was no way we would have had the time to build the ship. If I could go back, don’t you think I would have done things differently? There’s no changing our nature, no changing the past. It’s our policy never to interfere with the outside world, nor for them to interfere with what we’re doing. What if we gave you a helping hand? What if the Bugs saw us, tracked us, and destroyed the one hope we had of defeating them?”
“The City was destroyed anyway!” Jamie said. “The rocket, gone! What difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference,” Dr. Beck said, calming down, “because now we have the benefit of hindsight. At the time, we wanted to help. But how could we risk everything for a handful of people? Yes, they were people you knew, who you loved. But so were we. Humanity’s one hope versus a box of food. Does that sound like a fair trade to you?”
“You could have helped us,” Jamie said sadly. “Before, you mentioned you had to drug the people working here to get them to feel good about what they were doing. They didn’t need it for that. They needed a pick-me-up because they had lost hope. They saw us dying outside, being murdered right in front of their door, and they wanted to help, but you stopped them.”
Jamie could see he was hitting the right mark. Dr. Beck’s mouth worked but made no sound.
“When I rescued Lucy, I went with a close friend,” Jamie said. “A girl. She was my friend. A good friend. And she died. To rescue Lucy. If I could go back, I would have changed that. It should have been me who died. Not sweet Nester.”
Jamie looked away and braced himself on the desktop. Heavy silence hung thick like a blanket.
“I promise to do more in future to aid the communes,” Dr. Beck said.
“Good,” Jamie said. “Including letting them stay here.”
“Of course,” Dr. Beck said. “I’ll go to every commune in the area and invite them. But someone like you will have to come with me. They’ll likely burn me at the stake if I told them the truth outright.”
He put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder.
“I know things have been difficult for you out there,” he said. “But it made you into the man you are today. Whatever happens in the future, you’re going to need that. I’m sorry for the decisions I made in the past. I did what I did because I felt I didn’t have a choice. Lucy and our mothership was all I could see. The future of the human race was up for grabs if we won. Along the way, I lost sight of my humanity somehow.”
“I hope you rediscover it,” Jamie said. “Because it will be a hollow victory if we lose our humanity in the process of winning.”
“Regrets are a terrible thing,” Dr. Beck said. “I should know. I have more of them than most.”
“If I hadn’t insisted on leaving the commune, Nester never would have died,” Jamie said.
His shoulders shuddered, the stresses of the memory beginning to break him. He wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve. This was no time to lose control.
“And you never would have found Lucy,” Dr. Beck said. “I’m not saying one outcome is any better or worse than another. But you have to marvel at the universe’s balance. It gives with one hand and takes away with the other. There’s an ancient and powerful natural equilibrium at work, I think. We might die out, but the Bugs will prosper. We lose, they win. There’s nothing personal about it, except to us, of course. The universe doesn’t care what happens to us or what happens within its borders. It’s not alive. It doesn’t have preferences. If it did have a sense of justice it would have taken pity on us.”
He looked sad then, peering down at his knobbled fingers. Liver spots dotted his arms. He wasn’t long for this world, Jamie knew. No one could live forever, even with modern technology. Death could be stalled and put off for days, weeks, even years, but there was no stopping it from knocking on your door eventually.
“You said before that we’ve made sacrifices, to the Rages, to the Reavers, most of all to the Bugs,” Jamie said. “What were yours?”
Dr. Beck struggled with the words. They refused to form on his lips.
“Forgive me, my boy,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard to recount events of the past. It’s harder to relive events the further back in time they happened. I realize how weak that sounds. I do not mean to belittle your own tragic experience.”
Jamie nodded. He knew things from the past could be extremely painful in the present. It was that way for his father. He had never really come to terms with the death of his wife.
Dr. Beck used his walking stick to leverage himself up into a standing position. He moved for the door, then stopped. Turned.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said. “I truly am. I only wish time could be wound back so easily as that satellite feed. I can’t speak about my own woes, but perhaps I can tell you in another form. If you ever leave this place, and should you find yourself travelling east, you will come to a town called Jury. There, you’ll find a house with a black tiled roof in the suburbs, with red brick walls and a swing out front from an old tree with a single strong limb. Inside that house, in the main bedroom upstairs, you will find a loose floorboard poking out from beneath the end of the bed. There, you’ll learn my own sad tale and everything that happened in the months leading up to the Fall. You’ll learn of my experience, of my personal sacrifices. I can’t give them voice. I hope you will not judge me too harshly.”
He pondered over his words a few seconds, considered whether or not to add to them, before turning and leaving Jamie to his thoughts once more.
26.
LUCY WAS walking. She had nowhere in particular she wanted to end up, no end point in mind. She wanted to let her mind wander, let herself think. She had a lot to think about.
She didn’t much like the way the others looked at her. They never voiced their thoughts, never asked her questions. But they acted differently around her now. They were quieter, less jovial. More than once, she caught Fatty staring at her. He was slow to pull away. It would have made her laugh if she didn’t feel like a freak. Even Jamie was acting strangely around her.
Couldn’t they see she was the same Lucy as before? A lot had happened in that time but nothing had really changed between them. Then she realized that perhaps they weren’t really acting strangely around her. Perhaps it was her own issues that made her think that way.
She didn’t yet feel comfortable with herself. Just when she was beginning to get a feel for who she was—what she was—Dr. Beck had thrown her a curve ball. And yet, somehow, it hadn’t been a complete surprise. He’d only voiced the thoughts she’d already had whispering at the back of her mind. The probing questions about how she could do the things she could. How she had known the Reaver leader wasn’t who he pretended to be, that he was something else. How she had known how to get inside the City—
Lucy paused. That was it. She’d managed to get inside the City before by inputting a code into the keypad. She’d been working on instinct, her subconscious somehow holding the information. It had bubbled up to the surface right when she needed it. Much like the flashbacks she’d experienced. Right when she needed them,
she remembered. And right now, she needed to—
She turned to the doors on her left. The place her feet had brought her through no intention of her own. She needed to get inside this room. The one with the tanks Dr. Beck had brought them to before. Perhaps it would spark another memory in her mind. It lay right behind these security doors. She pressed randomly on the buttons.
The red light blinked. NO ENTRY. She didn’t have a passkey like Dr. Beck had. She tried to recall the code she’d typed to enter the City.
The lights flashed red. NO ENTRY.
She tried again. No good. She concentrated hard and tried one more time. The light flashed that awful crimson again.
Lucy screamed, balled up her fist and prepared to hammer the keypad into oblivion. She sensed she could smash this console to pieces if she wanted. Perhaps even tear the door open with her bare hands.
“You’re trying too hard.”
Lucy started. Spun around. Dr. Beck stood behind her, leaning on his walking stick to remain upright. She backed away.
“You need to relax,” Dr. Beck said. “Let it come to you naturally.”
“What are you doing here?” Lucy said.
“It’s my facility you’re attempting to break into,” Dr. Beck said. “It should be me asking you that question.”
He said it with a smile on his face but Lucy couldn’t see the funny side.
“Sorry,” Dr. Beck said. “Humour isn’t my strong suit. I want to help you. Of course, you’re curious about where you came from. It’s only natural. It’s what every human being spends his or her time thinking about. Who they are, where they came from. Their future. But you don’t need to hide, don’t need to creep around.”
“I wasn’t creeping around,” Lucy said, poking her chin out in defiance.
“Let me remedy that now,” Dr. Beck said. “You’re entitled to your own keycard. This place is as much your home as it is mine.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his keycard.
“No,” Lucy said, blocking his hand. “Teach me. I want to remember.”
“All right,” Dr. Beck said, returning the keycard to his pocket. “First, you need to relax. Let your subconscious take over. Let it feel the keys and press the ones that feel most natural. You can close your eyes to make it easier.”
Lucy began with her eyes open. She stared at the wall and let her fingers feel the keys. Feel, not press. They had little bumps on them, each one different, identifiable to the blind. She had no idea what any of the little symbols meant, though she supposed they could only be referring to the numbers underneath them.
“Good,” Dr. Beck said. “Relax. And press the buttons that feel right.”
Lucy pressed the buttons one after another, moving slowly but surely. She paused only once—after taking herself out of the situation by growing excited that she was actually remembering.
Bleep! The light flashed green. A whooshing sound as the twin doors slid open.
“Well done,” Dr. Beck said with a proud smile. “I knew you could do it.”
Lucy stepped into the room. The tubes remained as they had before—empty. That was not how Lucy remembered them. In fact, Lucy could only recall one capsule. The one she had been inside.
The liquid had been thick and tinted green. She could hardly see through it. It had emptied while she was still inside it. Her breath hitched in her throat at the memory. She had been scared, frightened. The moment she’d been born.
Lucy moved toward the tube and pressed her hand to it. Immediately, a memory sparked to life. A hand on the outside had pressed against the thick glass. She, on the inside, had put her own hand against the hand’s shadow.
“It was you,” Lucy said. “On the other side of the glass. You put your hand to it.”
“Yes,” Dr. Beck said. “I wanted to say hello. What else can you remember?”
“A corridor,” Lucy said. “I remembered it the first night we came here. On the way to the ward. You were there. And so was another scientist. You were both wearing long white coats. You turned and saw me. Then you smiled and called me ‘L’.”
“Those were your first steps,” Dr. Beck said like a father recalling his newborn. “You developed fast. Much faster than the others.”
“Others?” Lucy said. “What others?”
27.
“THE MORE complex something is, the longer it takes to develop,” Dr. Beck said. “I assume that’s not much of a revelation. A lesser-known fact is it also requires a greater number of errors.”
He was talking as he led Lucy back into the main room of the same research centre and turned right. This door had a large sign above it, stencilled with letters proudly pronouncing: DEVELOPMENT.
“This is where the concept of you was born,” Dr. Beck said. “Before you, we were developing more and more powerful supercomputers. One of our first errors was in not working on you from the beginning. Then we could have developed your understanding and development much faster.”
The room had a single large table in the middle, and a bunch of desks around the outside, each sporting a powerful computer terminal.
“How am I different to the others that failed?” Lucy said. “Why did I succeed where they didn’t?”
“Basic trial and error,” Dr. Beck said. “Gradual improvements from one model to the next, until we created you.”
“You said I’m enhanced,” Lucy said, asking the question she had dreaded ever since Dr. Beck had revealed the truth about her past. “How have I been enhanced?”
“You wish to know?” Dr. Beck said, eyebrows rising.
“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” Lucy said, biting back.
“I know,” Dr. Beck said. “I didn’t think you would want to know the truth. Not so fast. Especially when there might not be any need to know any longer.”
“Tell me,” Lucy said.
“It’s actually easier to show you than to tell you,” Dr. Beck said. “Sometimes words fail us.”
He moved to a terminal on the centre table and typed on the keyboard. A large folder opened. Millions of files tucked inside it. Dr. Beck found the one he was looking for and opened it.
“Let me bring it up,” he said.
The image floated onto the screen behind them. It showed a skeleton. From a distance, it looked normal. Then Dr. Beck clicked on it. The camera zoomed in, travelling from one foot, to the hips, up the spine, to the skull. Hundreds of tiny holes along the base of every bone.
“You are identical to any other human being, save one,” Dr. Beck said. “Your skeleton is made from a bone-like material we created utilizing the latest in quantum technology. Just as electrons can exist in two places at once, so it is with information processing. The instant the information is created, it’s received by your mind. You can send information just as quickly. Its purpose is to allow connections and messages to pass easily from you to the ship.
“The human mind is capable of processing data at an incredibly fast speed. The problem has always been the interface between humans and machines. Within your skeleton are hundreds of connection points. Any one of which can connect to a computer terminal. On the ship, you were going to be hooked up to the most advanced system in the world. Every movement of your body would issue a command. Every thought that passes through your mind is instantly understood by the ships, the droids, everything. Your body and mind would be connected to machines in a way no human has ever experienced before.”
“I’m Frankenstein?” Lucy said, hanging her head.
“A monster is out of control,” Dr. Beck said. “You are very much in control.”
He tapped on his remote control. The back of the room spun around on a turnstile, revealing a set of monitors and control terminals. In the middle was a single black chair.
“Would you like to give it a test drive?” Dr. Beck said.
Lucy approached the chair. There were strange holes in the arm, leg, and headrests.
“It’s nothing to be frightened of,”
Dr. Beck said. “Please, take a seat.”
Lucy took a step forward, then another back.
“Tell me what it does first,” she said.
“It’s a crude version of the one up on the ship,” Dr. Beck said. “It’s just for fun. This was designed as a kind of simulator. Much like the flight simulator your friend tried earlier. Only, this is much more advanced. It will replicate the functions at your command had you become Mother. It was meant to be a training system. It would be a shame to waste all our effort completely. Come, sit.”
Lucy placed her hand on the armrest. As she did, something came out of the chair. A series of needle-like spikes, up to an inch in length, rose like snakes being charmed. Lucy started back.
“It’s nothing to be afraid of,” Dr. Beck said. “Please.”
Lucy held her hand over the armrest again. The spikes slid out like the teeth of a hideous monster. They moved slowly, calmly. As Lucy moved her hand over the rest of the chair, more spikes rose to meet her. The ones that rose up from the chair’s legs were the longest, having to penetrate deeper into her body to reach her bones.
“What are the spikes for?” Lucy said.
“Link-ups,” Dr. Beck said. “For faster connection speeds.”
He could see she was hesitant, perhaps even a little afraid. That wasn’t good.
“Would you like to see the ship?” Dr. Beck said.
He pressed a few buttons on the kiosk. The ship was so large it couldn’t even fit on the entire bank of monitors. It had the appearance of a dagger’s blade, pointed at the bottom, with a flat top.
“This is only a mock-up, of course,” Dr. Beck said. “The original plans looked like this but we really don’t know what each project might look like individually.”
It was a beautiful thing. And obviously powerful.
“This is on the other side of the moon?” Lucy said.
“With any luck, yes,” Dr. Beck said. “You were meant to be Mother, in charge of it all.”
“All of it?” Lucy said.
“Everything,” Dr. Beck said. “Hop into the chair and get a glimmer of the power you were meant to have.”
After The Fall (Book 2): The City Page 8