Rebirth (Archives of Humanity Book 1)

by Justin DePaoli

“I’m sure there was something in it for you.”

  “Oh, of course. I was an investor. That’s neither here nor there. To summarily and explicitly answer your question: I did not convince anyone to transfer their consciousness. That was the dreadful work and malice of Mattias Varugus.”

  I’ve got to give it to him, thought Leon, hooked on Ivan’s every word, he knows how to spin a story.

  “Once the Machines descended upon Washington D.C., Mattias convinced President Gilliad that Illythia was humanity’s best hope of preservation, and so the president’s plane made for Illythia.”

  “Hold right there,” said Leon. “Why were the consciousness servers in Illythia to begin with? They were Rebecca’s creation. You can’t tell me she was on board with that.”

  Ivan sighed. “Mattias had long been a friend—I suspect romantically—of Rebecca. He’d convinced her—there’s a pattern here, don’t you see?—to restart her efforts on the project when the Rise began. Servers had been placed in several locations across the globe, in case of the immediate evacuation from D.C.”

  Leon clutched his thighs to the seat as the ship veered left. “I’m not following, Ivan. What good are consciousness servers if Machines still exist in a hundred, three hundred, three thousand years?”

  “They were to be a last resort. The plan was to deploy the EMP shield and continue work on a solution named the Governor.”

  “I know of it.”

  “Good for you.” Ivan looked up with a forced smile. “My apologies. That wasn’t very nice, was it? I am, despite my cheery disposition, prone to fits of melancholy. Particularly when looking back on suffering that could have been prevented.”

  Leon couldn’t be sure if the wistfulness in his voice was an act or not. Ivan was an enigma that he hadn’t come close to cracking.

  “The Governor couldn’t have been completed in Illythia,” explained Ivan. “Five humans couldn’t have possibly located the Core. But. But! Over twenty, thirty, fifty years—however long it took for our bodies to show signs of submission—we’d improve the error injection system. Instead of turning ten Machines a day rogue, we’d turn a hundred. A thousand. Ten thousand.”

  Listening to Ivan talk and following along was like trying to follow the North Star on a cloudy night. But now the clouds had finally broke, and a wink of light shined through. “Turn enough Machines rogue and they’d essentially die out,” he said, a nod of understanding.

  Ivan winked. “Big Brain Leon. A joke, but you always were a clever one. Always too damn far in your own head, though.”

  Leon ignored that, continuing to pursue the star while it still shone. “If the Machines wouldn’t go extinct before the end of your lives—”

  “Our lives,” corrected Ivan. “You were part of this illustrious group. But yes, to finish your postulations—oh, I do love when I can use that word—even if the Machines hadn’t been eradicated before old age took us, we could wait for the extinction event by transferring our consciousnesses to the servers for, say, four hundred years or so.”

  “That clearly didn’t happen.”

  Ivan laughed quietly, his face turning deadly serious. “Mattias pulled a gun on us all once we arrived in Illythia. He disarmed you of your weapon and shot the president in her leg when she attempted to intervene.”

  Leon foresaw this conversation going a number of ways, but this wasn’t one of them. He wished for the ship to surface so he could see the sky and sun. The ocean suddenly seemed darker. Lonelier.

  Deadlier.

  “That bastard forced everyone into their respective preservation chambers and turned on the servers. The last thing I remember him saying, as I panicked and screamed and pleaded like a man being buried alive, was that there must always be a Rogue Hunter. Oh, and he said ‘sorry’ as well. But I don’t believe he was sorry. Do you?”

  “Why does there always have to be a Rogue Hunter?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Mister Imus. Now, tell me. Surely you took a peek at the server that was to hold Varugus’s consciousness. You cannot possibly think me a liar; you’ve seen the evidence!”

  “Why’d he do it?”

  Ivan snorted. “I’d love to know.”

  A hush fell over the cabin, punctuated by the sloshing of seawater against the windshield. Leon stared at a screen, watching the ETA drop from one hundred and forty-five minutes to one hundred and forty.

  “I saw you on a video,” he finally said. “When the evacuation orders came in at Washington.”

  “Hydra?”

  Leon grunted.

  “Well, bend me over and slap my ass! That old hag of a computer is still around? Vaunton cubes hadn’t been raided by the Machines?”

  “They had been, but… that’s a long story. You showed the council an EMP shield. What happened to it?”

  Ivan gestured with his hand. “Look under your seat, will you? See that drawer? Yes, yes. That one. Pull it out.”

  Leon opened the drawer and stared in silence at the contents inside. “There are like a hundred packs of gum in here.”

  “I know. Chewing gum was the only way I could stop smoking. I’m craving one now—a cigarette, not the gum. But a stick of spearmint will help.”

  Leon tore the plastic off a green pack with a spearmint leaf on the front. He reached in for a stick, but it crumbled into pieces in his hand. “Uh… I don’t think this is good anymore.”

  “Gum doesn’t expire, dummy. Its texture simply becomes undesirable and the taste fades.”

  “That sounds like it expires.”

  “Just give it to me, will you?”

  Leon dropped silver wrappers into Ivan’s hand and watched with a scrunched-up nose as he shoveled grounds of gum into his mouth. He chewed like a squirrel gnawing at an acorn.

  Ivan sighed. “Better.” He clapped his hands and said, “EMP shield, right. Do you want the long of it, or the short of it?”

  “Knowing you? The short.”

  He laughed and punched Leon in the shoulder. “Smart man. I’m going to tell you both. I’ll hook you in with the short, then beat you to death with the long.” He winked. “Orissa Servoni—she’s a good girl. Too suspicious for her own good, and too smart. But she means well. Means something to you too, doesn’t she?”

  Leon feigned ignorance about as subtly as a hammer striking a nail. “What?”

  “Please, Mister Imus! I saw the way your eyes lit up when you said her name. O-riss-a. It rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? A little tap, tap, tap—I believe that’s what Nabokov might say.”

  “You’re not Nabokov, and she’s not Lolita.”

  “Have you read the book?”

  “No.”

  “Shame. Neither have I. I’m a man of quotes myself; it’s like collecting news headlines, only even more useless.”

  Leon frowned. “This is the short of it?”

  “I get off track. Forgive me. The short of it is that your lover or friend or acquaintance—whatever you deem her—is probably dead. For our sake—that is, humanity’s sake—I do hope not. But doubtless the facility she has visited is crawling with Machines.”

  “Mister Kravst,” said Clovis, “we were prepared for such defenses. The haais—”

  “The what?”

  “Human associated artificial intelligence.”

  Ivan puffed a strand of blond hair from his eyes. He looked at Leon. “What the hell is that?”

  “Would you just shut up for a minute?” said Leon. “Let the drone speak.”

  Visibly annoyed, Ivan gestured for Clovis to continue.

  “The haais have a stockpile of mylosynicide warheads at our disposal. With their help, we launched missiles at the Atlas Mountains and Florida. The warheads were empty. It was just to scatter potential Machines gathering there.”

  “Very good,” said Ivan dismissively. “They will return in short order once they realize the deception. Trust me. They have waited nearly five hundred years to take that facility. They will stop at nothing.”

/>   “Why’s it so important?” Leon asked.

  Ivan casually crossed one leg over the other. “Somewhat ironically, it is the savior of both humanity and Machines. I told you this five hundred years ago when we stood in a line, Mattias’s pistol waving about our faces. I said our only hope of survival lies with the cloning facility in Florida. I said let’s charge him. Let’s tackle him. He can’t shoot all of us at the same time. You cowards just stood there. You let humanity rot.”

  Staring at his feet, he tongued his cheek. “And so did I.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Well?” said Orissa, impatience creeping into her voice. She kept looking back as Droll analyzed the lock to the embryonic holding chamber.

  Finally, the drone reared around, lens facing her. “The lock appears to be connected to the Machine Network. It receives a code which refreshes every few seconds. If a key is inserted and the code on that key—also obtained by connecting to the Machine Network, I would imagine—matches the code possessed by the lock, the lock then disengages.”

  Orissa heard a noise. She pointed her gun in that direction, aiming down the sights. Nothing moved in the narrow, darkened hallway.

  “It took you that long to figure out we’re dealing with two-factor authentication?”

  “I was attempting to expose a flaw, but I cannot.”

  “Ignoring proxy and phishing, without access to the system during authentication—man in the middle or endpoint attacks—you’re not breaking through a 2FA very quickly.”

  Droll rotated himself like Leon cocking his head. “Orissa, you seem more knowledgeable of technical applications as of late.”

  She made no response. Long forgotten knowledge had been seeping into her mind since she and Leon made landfall on the haais island. She didn’t know why, but it had unsettled her.

  Much of the knowledge that was returning to her was confusing and non-contextual, or inapplicable without a firmer foundation. Bits of random information. She knew, for instance, how to cycle through an array in a variety of programming languages, but the reason for doing so was a mystery.

  “Given the tools and time,” said Droll, “we could create our own entrance.”

  “That’s lovely. Tell me again how many Machines are on their way here and how long we have until they arrive?”

  “Over five hundred and less than two minutes.”

  “And how many tools do we have?”

  “Limited. Might I suggest you deploy the EMP shield to buy yourself approximately four hundred and ninety-five years, while also eliminating all Machines in the nearby proximity?”

  Orissa didn’t even chew on the thought. She threw her backpack to the ground and rifled through it, producing the sphere of metal in her closed fist.

  “You’ll have to forgive my stupidity, Droll. I haven’t had much sleep.”

  “Forgiven, Orissa.”

  She studied the shield, turning it over in her hand. The same question that needled her in RayTech’s laboratory pricked at her here. “Droll. I don’t know how to activate it. There’s no button or switch.”

  The drone’s light passed over the sphere. “Perhaps by impact.”

  “As in I should drop it?”

  “It doesn’t appear fragile,” Droll noted.

  “I hope not. I’ll never live it down if I destroy the only thing that might be able to save humanity.”

  Droll spun around to her other shoulder. “Would it be an appropriate time for dark humor?”

  “No.”

  “Understood. The first Machines will arrive within fifty seconds. There are sixty Primes among them.”

  Orissa nearly choked on her spit. Taking in a deep breath and holding it in her lungs, she dropped the electromagnetic pulse shield and prepared for an explosive, electromagnetic blast that would ripple out in a kaleidoscope of shockwaves.

  That did not happen.

  Nothing happened, except for the clink of metal hitting a concrete floor.

  Orissa bent down and scooped it up. “Droll, any other ideas?”

  “Drop it harder.”

  She let loose a snort and threw the shield to the ground. It clanked and rolled but did not deploy.

  Maybe it was a dud. Maybe it required a biometric handprint from none other than Ivan Kravst himself.

  Maybe the maybes didn’t much matter right now, for in the distance clattered an army of murderous Machines.

  Orissa grabbed the shield and took off down the hall, urging Droll to follow. Her plan was to duck into the embryonic hatchery and hide among the countless systems and devices and instruments.

  A plan that was cut short by gunfire.

  Plasma hissed by, globs of energy that hit walls and ceilings and floors, leaving char marks at the points of impact.

  “I have one more idea,” hollered Orissa, turning around and shoving Droll back the way they’d come.

  She bolted for the embryotic chamber and threw herself against the door. Lifting the shield high up over her head, she yelled out to the approaching Machines.

  “This is an electromagnetic pulse shield,” she announced. “Stop shooting at me or I’ll fry every last one of you.”

  Surprisingly, the Machines’ guns spun down and the rifles quieted. Judging by the blackened holes where plasma had eaten into, the Machines hadn’t been attempting to take her out, only frighten her.

  Orissa had never known Machines that didn’t wish to kill—except for haais.

  Questions raced in her mind. What if they wanted to “reintroduce” her into the ranks of Rogue Hunters? What if they’d take her back to the Red Room and keep her there till she succumbed to the torture?

  She glanced at the trigger of her gun. Her stomach cramped with gnawing anxiety as she envisioned a solution to all of those problematic questions.

  Droll’s light intensified, a beam of pure white barreling down the hallway and illuminating row after row of Machines. Their numbers looked endless. They stood in tight formations, guns across their torsos as if awaiting orders.

  “Any idea what they’re doing?” whispered Orissa.

  “I am being actively blocked from tapping into the global Machine Network.”

  “So, no.”

  “No indeed, Doctor Servoni. It has been a pleasure, whatever our fate might be.”

  Of all things to bring a tear to her eye, it was this silly, stupid ball of floating metal with a voice.

  And Leon. She blamed him for the next tear and the ten after that. She sniffed, licking away the salt from her cheeks.

  She held out her hand and nodded at Droll, who put his wing into her palm. “Better to die together than alone,” she said.

  The Machines parted like a viscous roux drawn down the middle with a spatula. A singular set of footsteps echoed down the hall. A steady march.

  “Orissa Servoni,” said a man with a gruff voice.

  The face that came into view against a backdrop of Machines made Orissa go shaky in the knees. She’d seen that face before, most recently on a screen in an underground facility in Washington D.C. But she saw it in her memories too, locked-away recollections finally cracked open by glimpsing it in the flesh.

  Dread overwhelmed her. Panic sunk its talons into her spine.

  Orissa swallowed.

  “Doctor Varugus,” she croaked.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Leon had been staring at the screen for what felt like hours. The numbers in the corner counted down, but they might as well have been in ancient, illegible numerals, for he couldn’t comprehend the passing of time.

  So it was quite the surprise when Clovis announced they would arrive at their destination in twenty minutes.

  “Look alive, Mister Imus,” said Ivan, hand on the wheel as it moved without his input, steered by an all-seeing computer.

  Looks aside, Leon felt alive. More alive than one man ought to, and more than one could handle. Anxieties sawed away at his insides, a burning erosion of his guts.

  The things that
Ivan had said, the truths he’d revealed… they showed a detestable and deplorable man who had the blood of billions on his hands.

  Of all the tyrants whose iron fists had swept over this world, none were more evil than Mattias Varugus.

  “Have you,” Ivan had asked, “ever found human remains?”

  Leon told him he had, in the vault Orissa had taken him to after severing his Rogue Hunter chains.

  “Ah, the bones of those who’d rather starve and go stark raving mad without sunlight than face the harrowing consequences of being found by the Machines. Fortunate ones, I’d say. But have you ever seen a corpse above ground, Mister Imus?”

  Leon supposed he hadn’t. Although that wasn’t entirely surprising. “Nature has a way of making things disappear,” he said. “Especially after five hundred years.”

  Ivan had a chuckle at that. “Billions of voices silenced, four hundred million in this country alone. And you think nature could hide that evidence? Piss on you, Mister Imus! Think! Ah, I shouldn’t blame you too much. The truth is one of those things that’s hard to believe, harder to accept.”

  I can believe anything, thought Leon.

  As it turned out, he could believe anything. But he learned that maybe he didn’t want to.

  “Humans were massacred, but the Machines took their corpses like squirrels retrieving buried acorns,” explained Ivan. “Human blood to Machines is like oil to a car. Without it, they cannot persist. They cannot function. It was a supposed failsafe—and a good one at that—by their creator, but one that wasn’t quite safe and ultimately did fail.”

  “And who was their creator?”

  Ivan’s eyes brightened. “Now you’re asking the right questions! Let me throw one back at you. Who do you think their creator was?”

  Leon had a name in mind, but it seemed absurd. An outrage to even propose.

  “Come. Say it. I’ll spot you the first name.” He leaned in close and whispered, “Mattias. He was an ambitious man. Not, I don’t think, evil. Not at the beginning. But ambition and power are intertwined, and the latter—well, Mister Imus, I’m sure you know that it leads to very bad things much of the time.”