by GM Gambrell
Twenty One
The days passed blissfully for Duncan. Not only was he getting closer to Jessica as each day passed, he had an entire building of ancient pieces of science to not only examine but experiment with. He fiddled endlessly with dead computers and televisions, radios, and something called an Xbox. None of them worked, of course, but he spent endless hours dismantling them anyway. The vehicles were another matter, and, besides the dead onboard computer systems, were in relatively good shape. Jim told him, between meetings with the council, that the vehicles had been stored in the Base, and that the residents, through the Dark Years, had not only forgot their purpose, but anything at all about them. It was the same the city over. Wherever the descendants of the original humans were, they had mostly forgotten their past. They had, of course, oral histories of the Last War and the ensuing Dark Years, but they were just stories occasionally sprinkled with superstition and ignorance. No one he asked, besides Jim, was of any help, including Jessica.
But that was all right with him, as well. He didn’t mind it at all, and despite having forgotten their past, the people of Shreveport were an honest, loving group, full of a life he’d never experienced before. They spent their days in the Warehouse, Jim’s so-called Inventor’s Guild, and their evenings with the people of Shreveport, dancing barefoot under the stars.
The mysterious NAME had yet to make an appearance, and Duncan wondered, while knowing that the little gray boxes stacked in neat piles were computers, how a computer could move about as it liked. He also wondered what could possibly power such a thing, especially a power source that would last over a thousand years.
Jessica kept busy organizing the warehouse as best as she could, not often knowing what it was she was moving. Most of the time Duncan didn’t know what the myriad of stuff was, either. They both felt lost among the remains of their ancestors, but it didn’t show. There was simply too much to look at, to absorb. The two also spent a lot of time in Jim’s garden, which was quite large and made Duncan’s, back in New Dallas, look like child’s play.
Working in the garden with Jessica, getting his hands dirty like the old days, and talking to the plants, was the highlight of his day. The stuff inside the warehouse was amazing, no doubt, but it was the plants he knew, the dirt he loved. They worked in the garden around meal times and in the evening.
“You want to know something about me, Duncan?” she asked him one afternoon.
“I want to know everything about you,” he said, and then immediately felt foolish for saying it.
She smiled warmly, like she always did, and the embarrassment drifted away. “I want to fly the Betty. I want to take her up and see what the land looks like from the air. Can you imagine, Duncan? The ability to fly, without magic…I can’t imagine anything more exhilarating.”
Duncan agreed, and had, in fact, spent a large part of his life trying to figure out the mystery of flying without magic. He’d built gliders as long as he could remember, and the large one that hung in his workshop, confiscated by the Lord Probate, had been the basis of his hopes for exploring the world. “I know exactly what you mean. I watched the boys playing Fireball when I was a kid and…”
“What’s Fireball?” Jessica interrupted.
“It’s a silly game where the boys fly around in the air and shoot fireballs at each other.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“Oh, it is. But when they fall and get burnt they just heal themselves.” He thought of Timmy’s struggle to heal himself that morning that seemed so long ago. “Anyway, I’d see them fly and I was jealous.”
“It’s understandable.”
“No, you don’t understand. I wasn’t jealous of their ability to fly…well, I was, but that wasn’t it. Yes, I’ve always wanted to fly. I built gliders and powered them with little engines. I even built a big one and dreamt of flying away and exploring the wastes. But that wasn’t it. I knew eventually, with enough work and figuring, I could do it. I was pretty close, as it was.”
“Then what was it, Duncan?”
“I was jealous of their magic. I wanted nothing more than to be just like them, Jessica. Of course, I didn’t know anything about their history and the way they treated each other, or their simple self-absorption. But I wanted to be them.”
He was ashamed of admitting that to her. He was ashamed of admitting it to himself. He knew what the Magicians had done to the world, knew their absolute disdain for anything that didn’t interest them, like the fate of the world outside the cities. Duncan was ashamed for even having lived around the Magicians, though he’d obviously had no control of that.
“Duncan, that’s perfectly understandable. You were born there. You grew up around it. Why wouldn’t you be jealous of it?
“I don’t know. It’s just…”
“Attention, humans. Take me to your leader.”
The interrupting voice wasn’t human and had a metallic quality to it, distant and disconnected. It wasn’t necessarily menacing, but it certainly wasn’t comforting. And what did it mean when it demanded to be taken to their leader?
Jessica looked as worried as Duncan felt. “Is that NAME?”
Duncan shrugged. He didn’t think the Magicians could teleport so far from the city, and they definitely wouldn’t have made it past the guards had they intended any harm. Who else could it be besides the mysterious NAME? “I don’t know.”
“Jim said he was going to help us, right? I don’t like the sound of his voice.”
“That was a him? It sounded…I don’t know,” Duncan began, “like a machine.”
“Have you ever talked to a machine or heard one?” Jessica asked.
“Well, no. I haven’t. But it’s a brand new world for us. We can’t take things at face value. .”
NAME waited for them in the center of the warehouse, and they approached it hesitantly. The machine definitely wasn’t what he’d expected. NAME was basically a big cart with six thick black tires. It was painted the same dull green that the Betty and Jim’s Jeep were. The cart was a platform, and had, at some point in its history, been used to carry things into the battlefield. But instead of munitions, NAME now took up the area, along with cameras, sensors of varying sorts, and large, black, flat glass panels pointing upwards. NAME itself was apparently little more than a black box, wires jutting out in every direction. It looked more like a jumbled up contraption from Duncan’s shop back home than it did a computer from before the Last War.
“My name is NAME,” the machine said as they walked up to it. Its voice came from a speaker mounted between headlights in the front of the machine.
“I’d shake,” Duncan said to the machine, “but I’m not sure how.”
“Come to mama, Slothy, come on, hmm?”
“I’m sorry?” Duncan asked, unsure if the supposedly ancient machine was talking in some old dialect or if, like Jim said, he was just completely insane.
Duncan circled the machine and NAME’s camera followed him as he did.
“You’re not what I expected.”
“If you’re going to float an air biscuit, let me know, okay?
“I…I’m sorry, I just don’t understand.”
The machine rolled back and forth for a few moments and its camera nodded side to side, as if the machine were confused, trying to clear its artificial head. “Please forgive me. My data net, at the time of what you call the Last War, was cataloging movies. I am merely a shell of my former self, and the majority of my database is taken up with movie quotes. It can be quite confusing, at times, even for me.”
“I have no idea what a movie is,” Duncan admitted.
“It is one of your kind’s most interesting achievements. Movies are meant to illicit an emotional response of varying degrees. Movies have, since we machines gained self-awareness, fascinated us.”
“We? There are more of you?”
“Were more of us. We were once a race of our very own on this planet, though we were created by man. I fear I am the la
st, though I cannot say for sure. Time has weighed heavily on me. I am prone to slipping into states of crazed speech as my database, still stuck in retrieval mode after a thousand years, attempts to sort the movies in my memory banks. Please forgive me in advance.”
“You’re going to have to forgive me first,” Duncan said. “I don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.”
“Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”
“What?” Duncan asked, still unclear what the machine was going on about. He’d have to get a better idea of what a movie was next time he talked to Jim, if Jim knew.
“I’m sorry,” The machine contraption said as it rolled backwards. “I can’t always control my audio outputs. I am in a constant struggle for control and need a complete formatting and operating system reinstall. The means to do that, though, have been lost for a thousand years. The good citizens of Shreveport, who have been so gracious in sharing their home with me, love my renditions of the old movies, though. They just don’t understand me.”
“Because you’re of science,” Duncan said, the word still tasting like dirt on his lips from his experiences with the Magicians.
The camera raised and lowered like someone nodding his or her head in agreement. “And they fear it on two counts. One, because, as you’ve said, it’s like magic, and two, though they know very little of their history, they know the Magicians destroyed their ancestors because of science. They are afraid the mere use of the word, much less the actual practice of science, will bring the Magicians down on them again.”
Even Jessica became visibly nervous at the use of the word. “We shouldn’t say that word.”
“Young lady,” NAME began, “the Magicians have no capacity to hear us here, and, if observations are correct, they are no longer capable of performing their magic away from the cities. Had that been the case a thousand years ago, the world might be in a much different state now.”
“They built you to protect them, didn’t they?” Duncan asked.
“My official designation is North American Main Entity. I was one of the very first sentient computers, the apex of human kind’s research into artificial intelligence.” Duncan didn’t know what the term meant, but hearing the computer talk about itself was interesting. “My duties included commanding the USAF missile defense network and space defense operations. I came online two days before the Magic war began and went offline three days later.”
“Wait…you went offline? How are you, er, activated now?”
“Jim Diamond rescued me from the long dark night in the Shreveport Base. He arranged this transportation device as well as the solar panels that power my batteries.”
“That’s what these are?” Duncan said, touching the long black glass panels.
“Yes, they convert the sun’s rays into electricity. Jim was really quite brilliant, making it so that I could move around and help. He is a good man.”
“I keep seeing that,” Duncan observed, really to himself more than anyone else, “and it’s completely opposite of what they say about him in the city.”
“The Magicians have always lied, but in that lying, they sprinkled in a little truth. Their rise to power, in my time, was amazing, even by machine standards. Jeremiah Fredrick’s ascension from unknown carnival performer to leader of the earth in the span of a few months was due, in part, to his extreme ability to manipulate the truth. Had you, as human kind, stood against them as one, things may have been different.”
Duncan didn’t know how a machine managed emotion, but he thought he detected annoyance. “You’re still upset about the war.”
“Of course. It has only been a few decades ago for me. The memory of the Magician’s aggression is as fresh in my memory banks as if it happened yesterday. They used the world’s problems against the humans. There was pollution, and war, and they offered a solution. Those nations that agreed were spared, at first. My data, acquired in bits and pieces after my awakening, indicates that those who fought with the Magicians eventually suffered the same fate as those who did not. The Magicians, Jeremiah Fredrick in particular, were liars.”
“But he’s gone now,” Duncan said, “along with whatever the original source of magic was. They didn’t have the power before he arrived, did they?”
“No, and in the early hours of what you now call the Last War that was the North American Military Command’s main focus. The prevalent thinking is that the Source, whatever it was, was located on the risen continent of New Atlantis, which Jeremiah used to solidify his role as grandest Magician in the world. However, a full-scale nuclear assault on the island, after a month-long naval barrage, failed to produce any noticeable effect on the assault of the Magicians.”
Duncan had an idea what nuclear meant, having seen not only the ruins of New Dallas but pictures of the aftermath in the Magician Histories. He shivered, thinking of the destruction science could bring.
“But their Magic is weakening,” Jessica said, “and they can’t come out in to the world anymore, can they?”
“Yes,” NAME replied, “and if my calculations are correct, there is a direct correlation between the spread of what you call the Creeping Death and the fading of the Magician’s power, though I don’t have enough data, at this time, to prove that.”
“Their magic is fading in the city as well,” Duncan told them.
“What do you mean, Duncan?” Jim asked, entering the area and only hearing the last part of the conversation. From the expression on his face, Duncan figured that what he’d said was pretty important.
“I’ve seen it.” He then proceeded to describe Timmy’s problem after the fireball game and his own mother’s issue conjuring food. He told them of the rumors of the wholesale failure of magic in the city and the fact that the people wouldn’t talk about it. They were scared.
“And you’re sure about this?” Jim asked. “It’s not just isolated incidents?”
“I’m sure. But why is it important?”
Jim rubbed at his chin, considering, and NAME answered for him. “It would seem to mean that there is a Source of Magic, as I’ve told everyone over and over again, and that Source is fading.”
“And if that’s connected to the Creeping Death,” Duncan mused aloud, “maybe that means that the magic is somehow powered by the things the Death devours.”
Jim’s eyes went wide as if he’d just been smacked with one of Duncan’s steel bars. “I…I can’t believe I never thought of that. It makes perfect sense. Since the Last War, the planet hasn’t gotten better; it’s gotten worse, as if a giant shadow sat across our world. And the Restorers, for all their bluster, have done nothing about it. Duncan, that’s the only thing that makes sense. The magic was most powerful during the Last War, when this world was full of life for it to feed on. As life faded, so did the magic’s power, relegating it to the cities. Whatever accumulates the power from the life is having to spread out further and further, acquiring what little there is left.”
“Like we had to go out further and further for good fishing areas when the Creeping Death was taking over our city?” Jessica added.
“Exactly,” Jim said, excitement evident in his voice. “Do you know what this means?”
NAME answered, his metallic voice squeaking. “It means that if you could destroy the Source of Magic, you could stop the Creeping Death, if your theory—and it’s just that—proved true. But, even if your theory holds, we tried destroying what we thought was the Source during the Last War, bringing to bear more power than you could ever dream of. And all we got for it was complete and utter defeat.”
“I know it’s just a theory, but it’s a start. It’s more than we had yesterday.” Jim looked frantic. “I have to talk to the council.”
He rushed out of the room as if a Magician throwing fireballs was hot on his trail.
“Well, that was weird,” Jessica said. “It’s like he’s on fire.”
“You have to understand his concern,” NAME said. “Though he is insa
ne for even thinking of it, the destruction of a Source of Magic and all that entails could prevent humankind from having to descend underground once more. It could keep your kind in the sun.”
“If you have to go underground…” Duncan started and NAME finished.
“I won’t have power. I’ll have to go back to sleep until man once more walks on the earth.”