Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

by Hugh Howey

  First she had her own orders to write, her own instructions. This included how to open the great crypt gates, in case there was no one else. She spent her days and nights in the workshop command room, helping Dmitry with the pod, pestering him with questions that he didn’t know the answers to. The cryo-pod had been designed for one person. And once they’d realized what it was, it had gone untested. Tracy squeezed inside for a dry fit while Dmitry modified the plumbing.

  “Maybe one head over here and the other down there? Legs’ll have to go like this.”

  Dmitry muttered under his breath. He wrestled a piece of tubing onto a small splitter, was having trouble making it fit.

  “You need help?” Tracy asked.

  “I got it,” he said.

  “What if . . . something happens to you all and there are no descendants? What if there’s no one here to open it?”

  “Already working on that,” Dmitry said. “The antenna that taps into the mesh network. I can rig it up so when their timer shuts off, the pod will open. So if it’s twenty years from now or twenty thousand, as long as this place has power . . .” He finally got the tube on to the fitting. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. I have time.”

  Tracy hoped he was right. She wanted to believe him.

  “So what do you think it’ll feel like?” she asked. “You think it’ll be . . . immediate? Like shutting your eyes at night, and then suddenly the alarm goes off in the morning? Or will it be dream after dream after dream?”

  “I don’t know.” Dmitry shook his head. He started to say something, then turned quietly back to his work.

  “What?” Tracy asked. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  “It’s . . . nothing.” He set the tubing aside and crossed his arms. Then he turned to her. “Why do you think nobody is fighting for their place in there?” He nodded to the machine.

  Tracy hadn’t considered that. “Because I asked first?” she guessed.

  “Because that thing is a coffin. People have been putting their loved ones in there for years. Nobody wakes up.”

  “So this is a bad idea?”

  Dmitry shrugged. “I think maybe the people who do this, it isn’t for the ones inside the box.”

  Tracy lay back in that steel cylinder and considered this, the selfishness of it all. Giving life without asking. Taking life to save some other. “For the last two days,” she said, “all I’ve thought about is what a mistake all this was.” She closed her eyes. “Completely pointless. All for nothing.”

  “That is life,” Dmitry said. Tracy opened her eyes to see him waving a tool in the air and staring up at the ceiling. “We do not go out in glory. We leave no mark. What you did was right. What they did was wrong. They’re the reason we’re in this mess, not you.”

  Tracy didn’t feel like arguing. What was the point? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. And maybe that’s what Dmitry was trying to tell her.

  She crawled out of that coffin-within-a-crypt to check the supplies one last time, to make sure the vacuum was holding a seal. Inside the large storage trunk were her handwritten instructions, a set of maps, two handguns, clothing, all of Remy and April’s camping gear, and what extra rations would fit.

  Five hundred years was a long time to plan for, almost an impossible time to consider. And then it occurred to her that she was wrong about something: She was wrong about the great doors that led into that mountain. This was not a crypt. The dead were on the outside. Here was but a bubble of life, trapped in the deep rock. A bubble only big enough now for fifteen people. Fifteen plus two.

  Before waking her sister, Tracy stole into her father’s room and kissed him quietly on the forehead. She brushed his thinning hair back and kissed him once more. One last time. Wiping tears away, she moved to the neighboring room. Igor and Anatoly were waiting outside the door. They had agreed to help her, had been unhappy with her decision, but she had traded her one precious spot for two questionable others.

  They stole inside quietly. The Russians had syringes ready. They hovered over Remy first. It went fast, not enough kicking to stir her sister. April was next. Tracy thought of all she was burdening them with, her sister and Remy. An accountant and a schoolteacher. They would sleep tonight, and when they woke, what would they find? Five hundred years, gone in an instant. A key around their necks. A note from her. An apology.

  Igor lifted April, and Tracy helped Anatoly with Remy. They shuffled through dark corridors with their burdens. “Carry on,” Tracy whispered, that mantra of theirs, the awful dismissal of all they’d done. But this time, it was with promise. With hope. “Carry on,” she whispered to her sister. “Carry on for all of us.”

  In the Woods

  A sliver of light appeared in the pitch-black—a horizontal crack that ran from one end of April’s awareness to the other. There was a deep chill in her bones. Her teeth chattered; her limbs trembled. April woke up cold with metal walls pressed in all around her. A mechanical hum emanated from somewhere behind her head. Another body was wedged in beside her.

  She tried to move and felt the tug of a cord on her arm. Fumbling with her free hand, April found an IV. She could feel the rigid lump of a needle deep in her vein. There was another hose along her thigh that ran up to her groin. She patted the cold walls around herself, searching for a way out. She tried to speak, to clear her throat, but like in her nightmares, she made no sound.

  The last thing April remembered was going to sleep in an unfamiliar bunk deep inside a mountain. She remembered feeling trapped, being told the world had ended, that she would have to stay there for years, that everyone she knew was gone. She remembered being told that the world had been poisoned.

  April had argued with her husband about what to do, whether to flee, whether to even believe what they’d been told. Her sister had said it was the air, that it couldn’t be stopped, so a group had planned on riding it out here. They’d brought them in buses to an abandoned government facility in the mountains of Colorado. They said it might be a while before any of them could leave.

  The body in the dark by April’s feet stirred. There was a foot by her armpit. They were tangled, she and this form. April tried to pull away, to tuck her knees against her chest, but her muscles were slow to respond, her joints stiff. She could feel the chill draining from her, and a dull heat sliding in to take its place—like the tubes were emptying her of death and substituting that frigid void with the warmth of life.

  The other person coughed, a deep voice ringing metallic in the small space, hurting her ears. April tried to brace herself with the low ceiling to scoot away from the coughing form, when the crack of light widened. She pushed up more, grunting with the strain, and even more light came in. The ceiling hinged back. The flood of harsh light nearly blinded her. Blinking, eyes watering, ears thrumming from the sound of that noisy pump running somewhere nearby, April woke with all the violence and newness of birth. Shielding her eyes—squinting out against the assault of light—she saw in her blurry vision a man lying still by her feet. It was her husband, Remy.

  April wept in relief and confusion. The hoses made it hard to move, but she worked her way closer to him, hands on his shins, thighs, clambering up his body until her head was against Remy’s chest. His arms feebly encircled her. Husband and wife trembled from the cold, teeth clattering. April had no idea where in the world they were or how they got there; she just knew they were together.

  “Hey,” Remy whispered. His lips were blue. He mouthed her name, eyes closed, holding her.

  “I’m here,” she said. “I’m here.”

  The warmth continued to seep in. Some came from their naked bodies pressed together; some came directly through her veins. April felt the urge to pee, and her body—almost of its own volition, of some long-learned habit—simply relieved itself. Fluid snaked away from her through one of the tubes. If it weren’t for the too-real press of Remy’s flesh against her own, she would think this was all a dream.

/>   “What’s happening?” Remy asked. He rubbed his eyes with one hand.

  “I don’t know.” April’s voice was hoarse. A whisper. “Someone did this to us.” Even as she said this, she realized it was obvious, that it didn’t need saying. Because she had no memory of being put in that metal canister.

  “My eyes are adjusting,” she told Remy. “I’m going to open this up some more.”

  Remy nodded slowly.

  Peering up, April saw a curved half-cylinder of gleaming steel hanging over them, a third of the way open. She lifted a quivering leg, got a foot against the hinged lid, and shoved. Their small confines flew open the rest of the way, letting in more light. Flickering bulbs shone down from overhead. The lamps dangled amid a tangle of industrial pipes, traces of wire, air ducts, and one object so out of place that it took a moment to piece together what she was seeing. Suspended from the ceiling, hanging down over their heads, was a large yellow bin: a heavy-duty storage trunk.

  “What does that say?” Remy asked. They both squinted up at the object, blinking away cold tears.

  April studied the marks of black paint on the yellow tub. She could tell it was a word, but it felt like forever since she’d read anything real, anything not fragmented amid her dreams. When the word crystallized, she saw that it was simply her name.

  “April,” she whispered. That’s all it said.

  Before they could get the bin down, she and Remy had to extricate themselves from the steel canister. Why had they been put there? As punishment? But what had they done? The IVs and catheters were terrible clues that they’d been out for more than a mere night, and the stiffness in April’s joints and the odor of death in the air—perhaps coming from their very flesh—hinted at it having been more than a week. It was impossible to tell.

  “Careful,” Remy said, as April peeled away the band that encircled her arm, the band that held the tube in place. It tore like Velcro, not like tape. Were they put away for longer than adhesive would last? The thought was fleeting, too impossible to consider.

  “What’s that around your neck?” Remy asked.

  April patted her chest. She looked down at the fine thread around her neck and saw a key dangling from it. She had sensed it before, but in a daze. Looking back up at the bin, she saw a dull silver lock hanging bat-like from the lip of the bin.

  “It’s a message,” April said, understanding in a haze how the key and the bin and her name were supposed to go together. “Help me out.”

  Her first hope was that there was food in that bin. Her stomach was in knots, cramped from so deep a hunger. Remy helped her pull her IV out and extract her catheter, and then she helped with his. A spot of purple blood welled up on her arm, and a dribble of fluid leaked from the catheter. Using the lid of the metal pod for balance, April hoisted herself to her feet, stood there for a swaying, unsteady moment, then reached up and touched the large plastic trunk.

  It’d been suspended directly over their heads, where they would see it upon waking. A chill ran down April’s spine. Whoever had placed them there had known they would wake up on their own, that there wouldn’t be anyone around to help them, to explain things, to hand them a key or tell them to look inside the chest. That explained the paint, the thread, the pod cracking open on its own. Had she and Remy been abandoned? Had they been punished? Somehow, she knew her sister had been involved. Her sister who had brought them into the mountain had locked them away yet again, in tighter and tighter confines.

  Remy struggled to his feet, grunting from the exertion of simply standing. He surveyed the room. “Looks like junk storage,” he whispered, his voice like sandpaper.

  “Or a workshop,” April said. Or a laboratory, she thought to herself. “I think this knot frees the bin. We can lower it down.”

  “So thirsty,” Remy said. “Feels like I’ve been out for days.”

  Months, April stopped herself from suggesting. “Help me steady this. I think . . . I have a feeling this is from Tracy.”

  “Your sister?” Remy held on to April, reached a hand up to steady the swaying bin. “Why do you think that? What have they done to us?”

  “I don’t know,” April said, as she got the knot free. She held the end of the line, which looped up over a paint-flecked pipe above. The line had been wrapped twice, so there was enough friction that even her weak grip could bear the weight of the bin. Lowering the large trunk, she wondered what her sister had done this time. Running away from home to join the army, getting involved with the CIA or FBI or NSA—April could never keep them straight—and now this, whatever this was. Locking thousands of people away inside a mountain, putting her and Remy in a box.

  The bin hit the metal pod with a heavy thunk, pirouetted on one corner for a moment, then settled until the hoisting rope went slack. April touched the lock. She reached for the key around her neck. The loop was too small to get over her head.

  “No clasp,” Remy said, his fingertips brushing the back of her neck.

  April wrapped a weak fist around the key and tugged with the futile strength of overslept mornings.

  The thread popped. April used the key to work the lock loose. Unlatching the trunk, there was a hiss of air and a deep sigh from the plastic container, followed by the perfume scent of life—or maybe just a spot of vacuum to stir away the stale odor of death.

  There were folded clothes inside. Nestled on top of the clothes were tins labeled “water” with vials of blue powder taped to each. Remy picked up the small note between the tins, and April recognized the writing. It was her sister’s. The note said: “Drink me.”

  A dreamlike association flitted through April’s mind, an image of a white rabbit. She was Alice, tumbling through a hole and into a world both surreal and puzzling. Remy had less hesitation. He popped the tins with the pull tab, took a sip of the water, then studied the vial of powder.

  “You think your sister is out to help us?” Remy asked. “Or kill us?”

  “Probably thinks she’s helping,” April said. “And’ll probably get us killed.” She uncorked one of the vials, dumped it into Remy’s tin of water, and stirred with her finger. Her sister wasn’t there to argue with, so April skipped to the part where she lost the argument and took a sip.

  A foul taste of metal and chalk filled her mouth, but a welcome wetness as well. She drank it all, losing some around the corners of her mouth that trickled down her neck and met again between her bare breasts.

  Remy followed suit, trusting her. Setting the empty tin aside, April looked under the clothes. There were familiar camping backpacks there, hers and Remy’s. She remembered packing them back at her house in Maryland. Her sister had just said they were going camping in Colorado, to bring enough for two weeks. Along with the packs were stacks of freeze-dried camping MREs; more tins of water; a first-aid kit; plastic pill cylinders that rattled with small white, yellow, and pink pills; and her sister’s pocketknife. It was Remy who found the gun and the clips loaded with ammo. At the bottom of the case was an atlas, one of those old AAA road maps of the United States. It was open to a page, a red circle drawn on it with what might’ve been lipstick. And, finally, there was a sealed note with April’s name on it.

  She opened the note while Remy studied the map. Skipping to the bottom, April saw her sister’s signature, the familiar hurried scrawl of a woman who refused to sit still, to take it easy. She went back to the top and read. It was an apology. A confession. A brief history of the end of the world and Tracy’s role in watching it all come to fruition.

  “We’ve been asleep for five hundred years,” April told her husband, when she got to that part. She read the words without believing them.

  Remy looked up from the atlas and studied her. His face said what she was thinking: That’s not possible.

  Even with the suspicion that they’d been out for months or longer, five hundred years of sleep was beyond the realm of comprehension. The end of the world had been nearly impossible to absorb. Being alive out along the fringe of
time, maybe the only two people left on the entire Earth, was simply insane.

  April kept reading. Her sister’s rough scrawl explained the food situation, that they’d miscalculated the time it would take for the world to be safe again, for the air to be okay to breathe. She explained the need to ration, that there was only enough supplies to get fifteen people through to the other side. She could almost hear her sister’s voice as she read, could see her writing this note in growing anger, tears in her eyes, knuckles white around a pen. And then she came to this:

  The people who destroyed the world are in Atlanta. I marked their location on the map. If you are reading this, you and whoever else are left in the facility are the only ones alive who know what they did. You’re the only ones who can make them pay. For all of us.

  I’m sorry. I love you. I never meant for any of this, and no one can take it back—can make it right—but there can be something like justice. A message from the present to the assholes who thought they could get away with this. Who thought they were beyond our reach. Reach them for all of us.

  —Tracy

  April wiped the tears from her cheeks, tears of sadness and rage. Remy studied the gun in his hand. When April looked to the atlas, she saw a nondescript patch of country circled outside Atlanta. She had no idea what it was her sister expected her to do.

  “Did you hear that?” Remy asked.

  April turned and stared at the door that led into the room. The handle moved. It tilted down, snapped back up, then tilted again. As if a child were trying to work it, not like it was locked.

  “Help me down,” Remy said. He started to lift a leg over the lip of the pod.

  “Wait.” April grabbed her husband’s arm. The latch moved again. There was a scratching sound at the door, something like a growl. “The gun,” April hissed. “Do you know how to use it?”