This sounds great, but the number they stomp doesn’t even make a visible dent in the frenzied pack of humanoids that are clawing on the ground to try and burst the force field around us. Unsurprisingly, all the miniature humanoids fail, but the hands of the giants that are the size of entire parking lots pick up their slack fine.
We are unable to fly past them before they can loom around the force field, the comparative size of our force field about what a baseball would be on the scale of an average-sized human. I have the same instinct as Jake and Ai.
They can try and stop us. They can smother the air around us with their hands and bodies, leaving no way out for us, but we will break through it anyways. Or so we think until the moment the force field connects with the dirty, hairy hands of one of the Li giants towering over us and a series of sparks fly in all directions. The point of impact the humanoid makes with the force field is so large that most machinery would be fried beyond repair.
Instead, the hand doesn’t even move.
As a result, the force field molds itself around the hand, the quantum computers inside it detecting the hand as nothing more than an erroneous wall in our way. This has a ripple effect. I try and redirect my weight downward to get the hoverboard to switch directions, but the movement is too sudden.
I end up smashing into the top of the force field along with Jake and Ai, the force of the electric shock throwing my body wildly throughout the force field. These uncontrolled movements in the air are only exasperated by the hoverboard, whose engines help to exaggerate any movement I make. The good news for me is that the force field follows my subsequent moves, making it easy for me to avoid being shocked in succession.
Jake and Ai aren’t so lucky.
From the loud screech that escapes from their mouths, I can tell that the shocks hurt even worse than the first. In a split second I analyze my surroundings and try to decide what to do. If they get shocked with electricity to the point that their heart is about to collapse, that is a price I will have to pay.
I can’t give up now. I can’t give Li Wang even one more second to make this force field impossible for us to escape from. So I redirect my weight to the side, causing Ai to be thrown into the side of the force field again as I swerve out of the way of another hand seeking to block our flight path and continue upward.
Watching Ai’s limp body fly across the force field is agonizing. The moment she collides with me at high speed is even more painful, but the one collision with me may very well save her life. Although it throws us off course slightly, it finally slows down her momentum so that she can stop being shocked by the exterior of the force field.
The entire interaction is only a split second that will soon be repressed so far down beneath the surface of pain from the trauma that by the time I wake up tomorrow, I won’t remember it. All that matters is that I continue forcing my way upward, dodging a few more hands as a number of giants try to grab us out of the air.
Everyone is unsuccessful.
We are now above them all.
I laugh, outstretching my arms as we increase in altitude even further above the height of the giants. The roof of the massive structure is now below us. From this height, the truly gigantic scale of the stadium is put into perspective. It is easily the size of an airport runway in diameter, the light glowing at its core penetrating the darkness for thousands of feet in all directions. We could fly over the roof and break into the inner area with the computer servers without even dealing with all these humanoids.
But Jake sees all of the mines the second I do. Hundreds of bombs line the existing roof, all likely triggered to explode the moment someone steps foot on it. We would have no chance at making it out of that alive.
Our only chance at winning is defeating the army of humanoids. When I look down, the sea of robot Li Wang heads taking on a life of its own in the city streets, I have no idea what to expect. I close my eyes, hoping to silence the madness around me, but the stupid high-pitched squeals of the giraffe Lis still manage to pierce through my consciousness. Thousands of bullets are still being shot at the force field as the giant Lis all chant in unison and attempt to jump up and grab us.
It would be funny to watch this scene play out for a few hours and see what the artificial intelligence inside these machines chooses to do. But I know that Li Wang is watching, and that in a few minutes he will have a plan devised that will kill us all.
I don’t waste any time in purging the humanoids.
My blood feels hot in my veins, my hand shaking as I place it on the Chimera Cube. Fighting fire with figurative fire didn’t work before, but launching literal fire at the robots might be our key to winning.
“Get ready to fly around like crazy!” I scream. Jake helps to knock Ai back into a state of semi-consciousness, the rush of electricity from the multiple hits to the force field enough to keep someone down for a long time.
“Collapse force field.” I tap the Chimera Cube, and the second that I do, the invisible electrical field around us disappears and dozens of bullets flood in. Of course, we don’t have to worry about any of this—the bullets bounce off our bodies like chunks of hail, not doing a thing to harm any of us. If Li Wang has any tricks up his sleeves or even missiles to launch at us, this could be a different story entirely.
But we have to take the risk.
We have no chance at destroying them if we stay in our little bubble. We need to fly all around this army, out of reach of the long arms of the humanoid giants, and unleash mass destruction upon them.
I keep my trusty backpack around my shoulders but pull the Chimera Cube out and hold it in front of me to ensure that my next command won’t leave me soaked in gasoline. The cube lights up underneath my hand, its glowing white exterior ready for my command. My palms are sweaty, but my grip on the cube is strong due to the protective outer layers I have on. I lean my weight to the side, the hoverboard easily shifting the direction of its exhaust to propel me around the circular cement structure.
I tell the Chimera Cube to create a hundred gallons of gasoline. I had hoped that by holding the Chimera Cube as far out as possible in front of me that I would be free from any of the yellow liquid from seeping onto my body. I was wrong.
The hundred gallons of gasoline take up the size of a large bathtub in front of me, and the moment that gravity causes all that mass to fall to the earth, I feel the liquid swathe my exterior. It covers every portion of my wingsuit and leaves the laser gun in my waistband impossible to grip due to the slippery liquid that coats its turquoise material.
I stumble midair as I nearly lose grip of the cube with the wave of gasoline passing over me. Although the nanoparticles in the fabric and cube repel liquids, causing the oil to stay far away from irritating my skin, it doesn’t stop the oil from flowing over me, the powerful river threatening to knock my grip from the Chimera Cube.
After the first wave passes, Jake hovering over to me, prepared to dive and catch the cube if it falls, I put the cube back in the backpack. I’ll have to suffer through living amidst thousands of gallons of oil for a few minutes.
I repeat the command for the cube to produce more gasoline while simultaneously flying above the crowd of robots, trying to coat the exterior of each of the humanoids in gasoline. I start screaming, the rush of adrenaline otherworldly as I fly through the air, oil constantly suffocating my body, making it hard to breathe, but I have never felt more alive.
The robots below continue shooting at me, the giants of Li Wang even grow angry and charge at me, trying to grab my body from the air. I laugh when one of the giant humanoids steps on the bobblehead one that is breathing fire, trying to extend its plume to reach me, and causes the head to explode upon smashing it. None of them can stop me.
Jake follows behind me as Ai regains her composure.
“Do explosives next!” Jake hollers above the sounds of the gunfire that have only increased intensity as more and more of the humanoid population below is coated in gasoline. The liqui
d has no effect on them at the moment. In fact, I am killing myself. With the fumes of the gasoline almost outweighing the amount of oxygen seeping into my lungs, I can already feel my chest aching from the toxins and my brain coated in a heavy fog.
If I keep allowing the gasoline to surround me, I am going to die. Right as my vision is encircled by a ring of blackness, I decide to finally let the fuel fuck them all up.
“One hundred pounds of explosives,” I command the Chimera Cube as soon as it glows again. The last round of oil falls off me and cascades through the sky in what is the most beautiful waterfall. It looks like I let a golden ray shine from my pants to be doused upon all of Li’s army, the robots screaming even louder as the gasoline crashes down on them.
Now, it’s time to shit on them—figuratively.
The first wave of explosives forms in front of me. Some of them rub against my body, the giant mass falling to the earth immediately upon creation. The humanoids below, including the giant Lis, run away upon the sight of the explosives.
But gravity has them fall to the ground fast, smashing into the pavement within a handful of seconds. None of the humanoids are fast enough to escape the blast wave. The ensuing explosion of fire and shrapnel reaches dozens of the werewolf Lis and giraffe ones.
Immediately their whole bodies are set on fire.
There are still thousands left to set ablaze, and no guarantee that the fire is going to work to fry the internal components of any of these robots. But we have to try.
I follow a similar pattern of dropping bombs on the army of Lis as I did with the gasoline. Except this time, instead of thousands of them screaming and trying to kill me, they are all running away, making the job of having the bombs explode harder but way more satisfying. The flames spread so quickly that it has the illusion that they are all magically spontaneously combusting.
I scream, the energy coming out of me in a battle cry as I watch what might be the world’s most fearsome force of fighters run away from me. This army was designed to protect inside, it wasn’t made to combat this show of force. It was designed to kill any covert operations to destroy the place, or scare away the rén if they ever discovered that hundreds of miles from civilization in the middle of an abandoned city was the place that house the hive mind of Li.
We caught Li off guard.
No one was supposed to come here. Beijing was supposed to be destroyed, and Li will happily let that happen, knowing that this place is safe from everyone and everything. He never had time to send his military here as backup, and he never got the chance to command his army of Li warriors to say disturbing shit that will haunt my nightmares forever.
Li may know almost everything there is to know in the world.
But no machine learning algorithm can prepare for a scenario like this, one where two teenage boys and a teenage girl happen to have the most powerful technology ever created.
The crackling of the fire and ensuing explosions as the internal components of the humanoids melt rings music to my ears. But I don’t stop there. Having a laser gun to shoot rays of photons at robots is one thing.
Bombing the crap out of them is another.
“Photon bomb,” I command the Chimera Cube. The bomb itself looks no different than a regular explosive, but once it hits the ground, it explodes into a massive ball of light that for a brief moment outshines that of the fire.
The bullets lessen in intensity as they ricochet off our suits. Some of the giant humanoids fall to the ground, the fire having spread over all their bodies, the pace at which they collapse to the ground increasing with every second.
I continue dropping photon bombs on them, Jake and Ai flying over the humanoids right next to me as we watch the destruction of thousands of clones from hundreds of feet in the air. This may mean the world has totally turned me into a sick fuck, but instead of finding this show of destruction horrifying, it is the most awe-inspiring thing I have ever witnessed. The ear-piercing screams from the giraffe Lis that are melting to the ground, and the way in which the ginormous Lis crush dozens of tinier ones when they fall to the ground, play out beneath us like a beautiful natural wonder.
Jake and Ai are at a loss for words.
And after dropping an additional thirty photon bombs on the humanoids, I am too. I am out of breath, my body hurts, and everything feels numb.
My eyes don’t even believe what we are seeing below. As one humanoid is destroyed, it’s a chain reaction of death as one explosion leads to more fire and more destruction of this army.
In a matter of minutes, the thousands of humanoids are all on the ground, a sea of fake blood, computer components, and metal lining the city streets. The fire will likely rage on for hours as it burns through all the fuel inside each humanoid and the oil still covering the streets.
The fire has spread to the surrounding buildings, all of them erupting into flames even easier than the robots. The smoke fills the sky and the smell of battery acid and gasoline permeates the air, giving me a splitting headache even from inhaling it hundreds of feet above the epicenter of the blasts.
My entire body shakes as the realization hits me that we just won. We killed all the humanoids. There is nothing stopping us from walking inside this massive cement structure and exploding everything. On all sides of this massive structure, the fallen army of Li humanoids lays swathed in fire and blood, the one thing Li adds to all his humanoids to make him feel human.
In reality he is a monster. And we are about to kill him for good.
We all descend to the city streets. I watch in both awe and horror as the city erupts into flames on all sides of us. The fire is so intense in some of the buildings that within seconds parts of them crumble. By the time the sun rises tomorrow, this entire city will be nothing but ash.
“This doesn’t feel real,” Jake says as we all land on the ground, our hoverboards taking us smoothly to the edge of the cement structure. We have to step over the bodies of humanoids, the fumes from the fire and burning computer components singing the hairs in my nostrils.
I don’t doubt that I am going to suffer permanent brain damage after tonight. But it is worth it. We are about to save this country. We are about to save the world.
“Let’s move fast,” I say, repressing the intense urge to vomit and hack at the terrible smell. “We don’t know how much longer we have until backup comes.”
“There’s an entrance right here.” Ai points to two large hinges in the cement wall a few dozen feet to our right. Her voice sounds groggy, the amount of toxins we have all inhaled hitting a lethal level.
We all run over to the section of the wall, leaving our hoverboards behind in a pool of blood and battery acid. We have to run through a tiny flame on the edge of the cement wall to get there, but whatever burns I suffer in the process can easily be healed by the Chimera Cube.
This is the moment we have been waiting for.
I do the most logical thing, and before commanding the Chimera Cube to use any of its special powers to open the door, I push in the middle of what appears to be two large doors designed to fit in with the look of the cement wall.
They are extremely heavy, but they budge a bit as I push as hard as I can against them. Jake and Ai push all their body weight onto the door as well, and after a few seconds of pushing, my groin on the verge of snapping in half, the several-foot-thick concrete door slides out of our way.
Rays of light hit our eyes as we push the door all the way back to reveal the massive room in front of us.
I would have never expected to see something like this in my life. The stadium isn’t full of thousands of halls of computer servers like I thought it would.
The stadium is home to a mini city. Immediately as I see the faces of the people who are staring at us with both fear and shock, I know who they are.
The stadium is home to the Uyghur people. Thousands of them.
I thought they were all dead.
But now I’m not sure about anything.
Chapter 24
This all feels like one big joke.
And if you can’t tell, I’m not laughing. I’m shaking and reaching for my laser gun that is covered in oil as the dozens of people in the middle of the path in front of us hold up their hands in fear.
Jake reaches for his laser gun too and so does Ai, all of us not sure if there are thousands more humanoids inside this stadium or whether we have broken into a camp of the final surviving Uyghurs. From the panicked reactions they all have when we raise our laser guns at them, it’s more likely it’s the latter.
I scan the part of the stadium that is visible to us before proceeding any further. From the inside it looks even more massive than the outside. The walls are painted in all sorts of different colors, some murals spanning hundreds of square feet on what would otherwise be dull, gray cement. The walls are so high and so large in circumference that the second we step into the stadium, it feels like we have entered a new world.
Hundreds of wooden shacks are scattered throughout the interior. Some of the makeshift structures are rather tall, some reaching over ten stories, while the majority are simple one-story homes, all with minimal windows and colorful fabrics draped along the outside. All of the homes are shielded from the outside elements by the sheet of glass that hangs on the top of the cement stadium, the structures pressed so tightly up against one another that just looking at the crowded quarters makes me feel claustrophobic. On the front door of each of the homes, large turquoise flags with a white crescent-shaped moon and star are hoisted into the door handles, and at the top of the larger buildings the same flags are mounted onto the roofs.
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