by Schow, Ryan
“I didn’t do this. I didn’t kill any of those people,” Carver said. “My life is in danger just being here.”
“Go!” Indigo barked.
Draven gave Carver one last look, then said, “I’ll come hang out with you. I can get food later.”
“No,” Rock said. “You eat with us and then we’ll talk to him together.”
“I’m not your enemy,” Draven replied. “Carver isn’t either.”
“Draven’s legit,” Fire said. “He saved our lives enough times for me to trust him. And if he trusts Carver, then—despite what happened—his word is good with me.”
Rock looked hard at his older brother, then at the dark haired Chicago native and then at Carver. “If you screw us—”
“My hand to God,” Carver said, interrupting him, “I have no interest in seeing anymore bloodshed.”
“Go sit in the truck,” Rex said, not as harshly as Indigo. Then: “The truck you stole from us.”
Carver moseyed up to the truck, climbed inside, rolled down the window and waited. A good hour passed, but he’d only been antsy for fifty-nine minutes of it. Beyond the bird shot smattered windshield was a world of lush, green trees. It was completely different from the concrete jungle he was living in, far more pleasing to the eye.
He wished Maria never did what she did.
Checking his face in the rear view mirror, he saw a mess of swollen, cut flesh. Where he’d been brutalized the day before, the wounds were still somewhat open, the skin inflamed around them. The new injuries did his face no favors. He needed ointment, some hydrogen peroxide.
Peeling back one of the scabs, a yellowish pus boiled out. Pressing the skin together, he squeezed out the discharge, then wiped it on his pant leg. When it started to bleed pure red blood, he realized he could be dealing with something deadly if he didn’t get these wounds cleaned. Plus there was a ringing in his ear that hadn’t gone away since yesterday. It didn’t bother him so much with other noises around him, but the utter silence of the day was pressing.
After an hour, Draven came to get him. He snuck him a cut of beef then said, “Eat it fast. To these people, until you tell them what’s going on, you’re the same as The Silver Queen.”
“Her name’s Maria now.”
Nodding his head, he said, “Yeah, I know. You ready?”
Getting out of the truck, he took a deep breath, then said, “Lead the way.”
They cleared the living room of kids and non-essential adults alike, leaving what amounted to a small council of hardened soldiers and “security.” Carver knew Indigo would be there, but he wasn’t really sure if people like Macy and Atlanta would be there, too.
“I don’t think they should hear this,” Carver said to Cincinnati, Macy’s mother.
“She’s fine,” the former nurse assured him.
“What about her?” he asked of Atlanta.
Neither girl looked like they were college age. In fact, the two of them looked more apt to be in cheer or high school yearbook than on the other end of a gun shooting someone.
“Have you ever killed anyone before?” he asked, looking at Atlanta to prove a point.
“Yes,” she said calmly.
“Who?” he said, surprised by her candor.
“The guys who killed her sister,” Indigo said. “They shot her in the head in their living room.”
“And you killed them?” he asked, astounded.
“I did.”
“What about you?” he asked Macy.
“Yes.”
“Well the last person Maria killed, she ripped his jaw off his face, left it hanging by a thread, and that’s before she kicked him so hard, his ribs broke and buckled out through the skin. He died on the spot. So that’s how she kills people.”
“You’re full of crap,” Rider said.
“I wish I was,” Carver said. “But she’s not like us. She’s a transhumanist’s wet dream. Part human, part quantum computer, reinforced bones for strength and density, altered DNA to up her metabolism and accelerate her healing.”
“What is transhumanism?” Eliana asked. “I don’t know this word.”
“It’s enhancing the human being both intellectually and physiologically. Think of it as merging the best of men with the best of artificial intelligence, and/or machine hardware. These super freaks in Silicon Valley, they did it. They finally built their AI god. But they didn’t know she’d turn against them and do all this.”
“How could they not know something like this?” Stanton asked. He was Macy’s father, Cincinnati’s husband.
“They were high on their visions, hopped up on drugs or creativity, or whatever. So anxious to make the next big leap they stopped giving a crap about the moment when quantum computers would surpass the quantum computing power of our brains.”
“And that happened?” Stanton asked. “The quantum computers became smarter than the humans who built them?”
“Earlier this year, yes,” Carver said. “These tech heads realized it long ago, published it in their white papers last year, and died from it only months ago.”
“Propeller-headed pricks,” Marcus grumbled.
“How do you speed up healing?” Macy asked. “Because I can understand computers, but I can’t understand how you make the body do something it wasn’t meant to do.”
“Evolution in healing has been happening off the books for years. It’s you manipulating the way the body heals. You want the body to heal itself as it always would, only you want it to do its job twice as fast, or faster.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Indigo said.
“Cement is cement, even if it’s fast drying, right? You’re just adding new properties to the body that weren’t there before.”
“Why haven’t we done this already then?” Rider asked. “And if we did, how come we didn’t have access to it on the battlefields, or in combat, or with law enforcement? This could have saved countless lives.”
“Because the biology in every individual is different,” Rex said.
“He’s right,” Carver replied.
“So how did she know that she could heal the body?” Cincinnati asked. “And who put the computer in her head?”
“She had robots do it,” Carver said.
“Yeah, right,” Marcus grumbled.
“Let me tell you something, Sasquatch,” Carver said to Marcus, irritated because he was tired, hungry and hurting. “You’re a grunt, clearly the muscle and maybe not too bright, but the world was on its way to a technological takeover long before this happened. Robots and robotics were about to put a huge part of the nation’s workforce, and military, out of work. So if you think robots doing surgery is the most unbelievable part of this whole equation, you’re not paying attention.”
“Don’t talk to him like that,” Cincinnati said, harshly.
“Perhaps you’d like to host this conversation then, Mrs. McNamara.”
“We are not from your world, just like you wouldn’t understand things from ours,” Marcus said, “so maybe you could not be such a condescending prick when you talk about this.”
“Perhaps a bottle of water and something to eat might help,” he said. “It’s not like your hospitality is the bee’s knees or anything.”
“No,” Indigo said again. “Not until you’re done.”
He sucked in a deep breath, looked around at all the faces staring back at him, then blew it out and said, “I hate having to explain to you technological Neanderthals that just because you don’t see something with your own eyes doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I mean, are you really so arrogant as to think the knowledge in your head is all that’s out there?”
“Keep it up and you won’t get anything from us,” Indigo said. “You’re lucky we haven’t killed you yet.”
To Indigo, Draven turned and said, “Put your dick away for a minute and let him speak.”
Carver felt Rex stiffen up, but Draven wasn’t scared of any of them and Carver saw that. It gave him con
fidence knowing someone was on his side.
“First she was selected genetically from a large pool of candidates,” Carver began.
“What pool?” Macy asked.
“Doctors have been taking blood from every newborn long before you came into this world,” Carver told her. “All this data is stored on hard drives somewhere. The Silver Queen had access to all this data. To everything. It had everything on everyone.”
“Who’s The Silver Queen?” Stanton asked.
“That’s what the quantum computer’s AI program called itself. After it turned the drones against the people—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jagger said. “Are you saying she did this? That a rogue AI program is what turned every drone on us?”
“You’re the pilot, right?” Carver said.
“I am,” Jagger answered.
“So you saw it first hand. These things targeted people, high population density centers, civilians and military personnel alike.”
“We all saw it,” Cincinnati said.
“I’m betting you didn’t see it like he did,” Draven challenged.
“It’s true,” Jagger said. “They could not have been operated by humans doing what they did. It was too tactical. Almost like every single drone had its own operator and every single operator was of a hive mind. Meaning they all thought exactly the same and were working in perfect concert together.”
“Maria is The Silver Queen. She’s the one who orchestrated the hit on America to cripple the nation, to slaughter people wholesale,” Carver said. “If she did this, she could force the President’s hand, make him detonate the EMPs. It was the only way to stop the drones.”
“But it killed the infrastructure,” Rock said, breathless from the revelation.
“That was the point. She got the killing started, but the President was phase two. He took out the machines, but like you said, he killed the infrastructure.”
Carver let everyone sit with that for awhile. The ender of worlds was teaching their kids, eating their food, sleeping in their midst.
“After she did what she did, we began slaughtering each other in the streets just to survive,” Eliana added. “I suppose that was phase three.”
“More will die in the next year alone of thirst, starvation, disease, illness, suicide,” Indigo said, calming down. “So yeah, it was set up perfectly. The drones, the EMP, and then us.”
“Exactly,” Carver said.
“Not Neanderthals,” Marcus grumbled.
For a second, Carver felt bad for saying what he did to Marcus. He knew the man was smart, but tortured somehow—maybe by his past, or by this, or maybe both.
“I’m sorry for what I said to you,” Carver offered.
“I know,” Marcus said with a rare grin. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“Why is she doing all this?” Fire asked.
“If she can make herself in to the ultimate human/weapon hybrid, if she can give herself ‘magical’ healing powers and ‘magical’ strength, then she can mesmerize us and ultimately take control of…what?” Indigo asked.
“Everything,” Draven said, speaking for Carver.
“She wiped out the robots because she had no need for them,” Carver said, “and she’s killed most of the population, or at least insured most of us will die. After that she’ll rise up to save us all and we’ll be none the wiser. Meanwhile, for her, there will never again be an off switch. Like us, she’s only trying to live, to insure her survival.”
“So this woman whom I walked next to, talked to and strategized with, fought side-by-side with, she’s the one responsible for what happened to our world?” Indigo asked. “She did all this?”
“Yes,” Carver replied, the dark revelation creating yet another moment of silence.
“I’ve never seen anyone move like her,” Macy confessed. “I was there, at Lone Mountain. All of you were.”
“Yeah,” Rider said. Rex, Marcus and a few others nodded in agreement.
“You’d all be dead without her,” Atlanta said.
“We’d all be alive if she was never created, or let loose on us,” Indigo countered. “Don’t try turning her into a hero.”
“But why?” Stanton asked. “Why would she do this?”
“A computer needs a reason to compute,” Carver said. “There were forces working to scale back the technological revolution, counter-security measures being built into big tech. Like I said, she didn’t want an off-switch because an off-switch meant she wasn’t useful. To be useful, she’d need human problems to solve. If she could create the problems, erase the fear of artificial intelligence and the threats posed with quantum computing and machine learning, she could walk among us. She just needed the right circumstances and the right body. Antoinette was that body.”
“You mean Maria?” Marcus asked.
“I met the woman before you met the hybrid,” Carver said. “She was sweet, with kind eyes and an infectious smile. The Silver Queen turned her into Maria, and she blanketed this world with blood and ash.”
“If she’s so bad,” Eliana said, “why are you having sex with her?”
He knew the question would come up. He was already prepared with an answer. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” he said. “I know it’s cliché to say that, but it’s the truth. I’ve kept her close. Now I need you to help me find a way to stop her because I clearly can’t.”
“You hit her,” Indigo said. “You knocked her out on our way here.”
“It was the only sucker punch I’d ever get,” he said. “She didn’t think I’d hit a woman.”
“But you did,” Indigo said.
“That’s not a woman,” he said. “I struck the thing that destroyed our world, Indigo, so save me your self-righteous crap and start using your head to figure this out. I hear you’re smart. Start acting like it.”
Cincinnati slammed her fist on the table and said, “I said stop talking to her like that!”
Everyone fell still.
Carver nodded his head, solemnly and said, “I’m sorry.”
“So now she wants to come here and kill us all?” Ice asked. “Does she want to take the homesteads, too?”
“Yes,” Carver said, trying to slow the blood pounding behind his eyes. He felt the cut above his eye start to bleed again. He let the blood roll. He didn’t care.
“She thought she could just turn the power on, that magically we could put this world back together. But you need experts to do that. And tools. High tech machinery building precise parts that require electricity to both form and run. That’s all dead. Along with the technicians she needed to help her. We have solar power now, but even I know that won’t be enough. She’ll need more. She’ll want more.”
“So what do we do?” Fire asked. He looked like hell from the trip to California—he, Ice and Eliana.
Carver didn’t know them before this, but being Rock’s brothers, he knew they’d come from Chicago. Did they come with Draven? Did Draven come with them?
“I still want to know how she heals herself,” Rex said.
Rex was a former soldier, strong as hell, and capable, but rumor had it he was a softie at the sight of his own blood. It was his kryptonite. Smiling at the thought of how different everyone was from each other, marveling at it for a moment, Carver said, “Mrs. McNamara, you used to be a nurse, right?”
“I did.”
“So you know how the body heals, right?” he asked.
“I do.”
“What’s the body’s process of healing wounds?”
She took a deep breath, seemingly calmed down from her previous outburst, then said, “The first stage is rapid hemostasis. The body stops the bleeding through a process called vasoconstriction. Your blood vessels basically close up.
“After that, the body induces inflammation. This is a beacon for the rush of healthy cells, mostly white blood cells. Think of this as the body marking the target.
“Next you have proliferation and migrati
on. There isn’t just a random flood of healing components unleashed within the body. It’s internal troop movements. There’s a carefully coordinated process that involves moving the blood cells in a specific order. That’s migration. Proliferation is part of hemostasis. This is how the body further constricts the damaged blood vessels.
“After the bleeding is under control, your body starts to rebuild tissue. This is angiogenesis and it’s basically the body forming new blood vessels. Veins and arteries that were damaged are now getting put back together. This is chemically induced and it’s extremely complicated, so I won’t go in to specifics.
“Once your body begins to regrow the veins, it’s time to regrow the layers of ruined skin, or the epidermis. This complex chemical process is called reepithelialization. From a functional standpoint, this allows the body to protect itself from infection and contain fluid loss.
“All along the way, synthesis occurs. This is the body creating proteins to build blood clots, which further protect the body from infection. This is done while new skin and veins are regrown. And that’s basically it. That’s healing in a nutshell.”
“So can you genetically alter this process, hypothetically?” Ice asked.
“I don’t see why not,” Cincinnati said.
“So then this could all be real?” Rider asked. “She could do this to us? This walking abomination?”
“The healing process, yes,” she said. Then, looking at Carver, she asked, “But where do you house the computer?”
“Elon Musk already figured that out. There is useable space in the brain, certain layers of tissue you can pierce while not losing functionality of the entire system. The cooling was always the problem with quantum computers, but the propeller heads learned to cool them through miniaturization. And even though they compressed everything for size, much of the computing power remained.”
“How is it powered?” Marcus asked.
“Your body is a huge power source,” Draven said. “And your brain operates off electrical signals. You only need the right biology and integration to occur. With added healing properties, it would stand to reason that, given the ideal physiological and genetic setting, the body could function with the computer and achieve symbiosis. But that’s a big ‘if.’”