Robopocalypse (17 page)

“No, but they must be regrouping or something.”

“Remember flight forty-two? We almost died because of a
glitch
? I think this is bigger than Boston. This could be worldwide.”

“Dude, no way. It’s just a matter of time before—”

“Us. Cormac, this is us.
We
have to deal with this. We have to deal with what’s banging on that door down the hall.”

“No we don’t! Why do
you
have to do this? Why do you
always have to do this
?”

“Because I’m the only one who can.”

“No. It’s because nobody else is dumb enough to go directly
toward
the danger.”

“It’s my duty. We’re doing it. No more discussion. Now, suit up before I put you in a headlock.”

Reluctantly, I strip down and climb into the uniform. The clothes are new and stiff. Jack suits up, too. He does it twice as fast as me. At one point, he snaps a belt around my waist and tightens it for me. I feel like a twelve-year-old in a Halloween costume.

Then he presses an M16 rifle into my hands.

“What? Seriously? We’re going to get arrested.”

“Shut up and listen. This is the magazine. Just jam it in there and make sure it curves away from you. This selector is the fire-mode control. I’m setting it to single-round so you don’t blow your clip all at once. Put it to safety when you’re not using the rifle. There’s a handle on top, but never carry it by the handle. It’s not safe. Here’s the bolt. Pull it back to chamber a round. If you have to fire the weapon, hold it with both hands, like this, and look down the sights. Squeeze the trigger slow.”

Now, I’m a kid in a soldier’s Halloween costume armed with a fully loaded M16 battle rifle. I hold it up and point it at the wall. Jack slaps my elbow.

“Keep your elbow down. You’ll catch it on something and it makes you a bigger target. And get your index finger outside the trigger guard unless you’re ready to fire.”

“This is what you do on weekends?”

Jack doesn’t respond. He’s kneeling, shoving things into our rucksacks. I notice a couple of big plastic chunks, like sticks of butter.

“Is that C4?”

“Yeah.”

Jack finishes stuffing the bags. He throws one onto my back. Tightens the straps. Then, he shrugs on his own pack. He slaps his shoulders and stretches out his arms.

My brother looks like a goddamned jungle commando.

“C’mon, Big Mac,” he replies. “Let’s go find out what’s making that racket.”

Rifles ready, we slip down the hall toward the booming sound. Jack stands back, rifle leveled at his shoulder. He nods at me and I crouch in front of the door. I put one gloved hand on the doorknob. With a deep breath, I twist the knob and shove the door open with my shoulder. It hits something, and I shove harder. It flies open and I tumble inside the room on my knees.

Black writhing death stares back at me.

The room is teeming with scuttle mines. They climb up the walls, out of splintered crates, over one another. My opening the door has shoved a pile of them out of the way, but others are already crawling into the opening. I can’t even see the floor for all the creepy crawlies.

A wave of forelegs rises across the room, tasting the air.

“No!” screams Jack. He grabs the back of my jacket and drags me out of the room. He’s quick, but as the door starts to close it gets wedged on a scuttle mine. It’s followed by more. A lot more. They emerge in a torrent into the hallway. Their metal bodies smack the door as we back away.

Boom. Boom. Boom
.

“What else is in this armory, Jack?”

“All kinds of shit.”

“How much of it is robots?”

“Plenty of it.”

Jack and I retreat down the hall, watching the crablike explosives as they leisurely flood out of the door.

“Is there more C4?” I ask.

“Crates.”

“We have to blow this whole place up.”

“Cormac, this building has been here since the seventeen hundreds.”

“Who gives a shit about history? We have to worry about
right now
, dude.”

“You never had any respect for tradition.”

“Jack. I’m sorry I pawned the bayonet. Okay? It was the wrong thing to do. But blasting these things is the
only
thing to do. What did we come here for?”

“To save people.”

“Let’s save some people, Jack. Let’s blow the armory.”

“Think, Cormac. People live around here. We’ll kill somebody.”

“If those mines get loose, who knows how many people they’re gonna kill. We don’t have a choice. We’re going to have to do something bad to do something good. In an emergency, you do what you have to do. Okay?”

Jack considers for a second, watching the scuttle mines creep toward us down the hallway. Red circles of light glint off the polished floors. “Okay,” he says. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to get to the nearest army base. Make sure you’ve got everything you need, because we’ll be walking all night. It’s cold as shit out there.”

“What about the armory, Jack?”

Jack grins at me. He has this crazy look in his blue eyes that I’d almost forgotten about.

“The armory?” he asks. “What armory? We’re blowing the fucking armory straight to hell, little brother.”

That night, Jack and I trek through frigid mist, trotting down dark alleys and crouching behind whatever cover we can find. The city is dead quiet now. Survivors are barricaded inside their homes, leaving the desolate streets to be hunted by frostbite and lunatic machines. The growing snowstorm has put out some of the fire we started, but not all of it.

Boston is burning.

We hear the occasional thump of a detonation out in the dark. Or the tire squeal of empty cars sliding over the ice, hunting. The rifle Jack gave me is surprisingly heavy and metal and cold. My hands are curled around it like two frozen claws.

The instant I see them, I hiss at Jack to make him stop. I nod to the alley on our right, not making another sound.

At the end of the narrow alleyway, through the swirling smoke and snow, three silhouettes walk past, single file. They step under the bluish LED glow of a streetlight, and at first I assume they’re soldiers in tight gray fatigues. But that isn’t right. One of them stops on the corner and scans the street, head cocked funny. The thing must be seven feet tall. The other two are smaller, bronze-colored. They wait behind the leader, perfectly still. It’s three humanoid military robots. They stand metallic and naked and unflinching in the cutting wind. I’ve only ever seen these things on television.

“Safety and pacification units,” whispers Jack. “One Arbiter and two Hoplites. A squad.”

“Shh.”

The leader turns and looks in our direction. I hold my breath, sweat trickling down my temples. Jack’s hand tightens painfully on my shoulder. The robots don’t visibly communicate. After a few seconds the leader just turns away and, as if on cue, the three figures lope off into the night. Only a few footprints in the snow remain as evidence that they were ever there.

It’s like a dream. I’m not sure whether what I saw was real. But even so, I have a gut feeling that I’ll be seeing those robots again.

We did see those robots again
.

—
CORMAC
WALLACE,
MIL#GHA217

PART THREE
S
URVIVAL

Within thirty years, we will
have the technological means to
create superhuman intelligence
.
Shortly after, the human era
will be ended.… Can events be
guided so that we may survive?

V
ERNOR
V
INGE, 1993

1. A
KUMA

All things are born from the mind of God
.

T
AKEO
N
OMURA

NEW WAR + 1 MONTH

At Zero Hour, the majority of the world’s population lived in cities. Highly industrialized areas worldwide were struck hardest in the immediate aftermath. In one rare instance, however, an enterprising Japanese survivor turned a weakness into strength
.

A multitude of industrial robots, surveillance cameras, and Rob bugs corroborate the following story, which was told in great detail by Mr. Takeo Nomura to members of the Adachi Self-Defense Force. From the beginning of the New War up until its last moments, Mr. Nomura seems to have been surrounded by friendly robots. All Japanese has been translated into English for this document
.

—
CORMAC
WALLACE,
MIL#GHA217

I am looking at a security camera image on my monitor. In the corner of the screen a label reads: Tokyo, Adachi Ward.

The image is from someplace high, looking down on a deserted street. The road below is narrow, paved, and clean. Small, neat houses line it. All the houses have fences, made of bamboo or concrete or wrought iron. There are no front yards to speak of, no curbs on the street, and most important, there is no room for cars to be parked.

A beige box trundles down the middle of this narrow corridor. It vibrates a bit on the pavement, rolling on flimsy plastic wheels that were built for indoor use only. Streaks of black soot coat the surface of the machine. Attached to the top of the box is a simple arm I built of aluminum tubing, folded down like a wing. On the front face of the robot, just below a cracked camera lens, a button of light glows a healthy green.

I call this machine Yubin-kun.

This little box is my most loyal ally. It has faithfully executed many missions for the cause. Thanks to me, Yubin-kun has a clear mind, unlike the evil machines that plague the city—the
akuma
.

Yubin-kun reaches an intersection painted with a faded white cross. It purposefully turns ninety degrees to the right. Then it keeps going down the block. As it is about to leave the camera frame, I push my glasses up onto my forehead and squint at the screen. Something is resting on top of this busy machine. I make out the object: a plate.

And on the plate is a can of corn soup. My soup. I sigh, happy.

Then I punch a button and the camera image switches.

Now, I see a full-color, high-resolution picture of the outside of a factory building. In Japanese, a sign across the front reads Lilliputian Industries.

This is my castle.

The squat cement walls of my fortress are peppered with pockmarks. The glass behind the barred windows has been shattered and replaced by strips of sheet metal welded onto the steel frame of the building. A rolling bay door dominates the front of the building—a modern-day portcullis.

The gate is closed tight. Though the world outside is still, I know that death lurks in the gray shadows.

Akuma
—the bad machines—could be anywhere.

For now there is no movement outside, only slanting shadows cast by the evening sun. The shadows sink into the gouges torn in the walls of my castle and they pool together into the muck-filled trench that surrounds the building. The ditch is as deep as a man is tall and too wide to leap across. It is filled with acidic water and rusty scraps of metal and refuse.

This is my moat. It protects my castle from the smaller
akuma
who assault us daily. It is a good moat and it wants to keep us safe. But there is no moat large enough to stop the greater
akuma
.

Next door, part of a destroyed yellow house sags in on itself. The houses are no longer safe. There are too many
akuma
in this city. With poisoned minds, they chose to destroy millions. The
akuma
marched a docile population off in columns—never to return. The houses they left behind are made of wood and weak.

Two weeks ago, my life nearly ended in that yellow house. Chunks of yellow siding still jut out of the moat and litter the narrow walkway around the factory. It was my last scavenging trip. I am not an effective scavenger.

Yubin-kun rolls into view.

My comrade stops in front of the factory and waits. Now I stand up and stretch my back. It is cold and my old joints are creaky. A few seconds later, I turn the winch to crack open the steel rolling door. A strip of light appears near my feet, rises to maybe four feet high. I slip under the door and out into this quiet, dangerous new world.

Blinking at the sunlight, I adjust my glasses and check the street corners for movement. Then I grab the mud-covered piece of plywood that leans against the building. With a push, the slab of wood falls over the moat. Yubin-kun wheels across the slat to me and I grab the can of soup from the plate, open it, and drink it down.

The convenience store machines—the
convini
—still have good minds. They are not under the evil spell that haunts so much of the city. I pat Yubin-kun on its smooth back as it wheels under the rolling door and into the dark building.

Licking my fingers, I lean over and pull on the plywood slat. The other end falls into the filthy moat before I drag it out and lean it back against the wall. When I am finished, the street looks the same as before except that the plywood resting against the building is now more muddy and wet. I slip back inside and winch the rolling door down until it is closed up tight.

I return to my camera feed, which sits on my workbench in the middle of the empty factory floor. A pool of light spills onto the table from my work lamp, but otherwise the room is unlit. I must ration the electricity carefully. The
akuma
still use parts of the power grid. The trick is to steal the electricity quietly, in small doses, and to recharge only the local backup batteries.

On screen, nothing changes for perhaps fifteen minutes. I watch long shadows grow longer. The sun dips farther toward the horizon, turning the light a bleak yellow.

Pollution used to make the sunsets so beautiful.

I feel the empty space around me. It is very lonely. Only my work keeps me sane. I know that I will one day find the antidote. I will wake Mikiko and give her a clear mind.

In her cherry-red dress, she lies sleeping on a stack of cardboard, half-shrouded in the empty darkness of the factory floor. Her hands are clasped over her stomach. As always, her eyes seem as though they could flutter open at any second. I am glad that they do not. If her eyes were to open right now, she would murder me with single-minded purpose and without hesitation.

All things are born from the mind of god. But in the last month, the mind of god has gone insane. The
akuma
will not tolerate my existence for long.

I switch on the light attached to my magnifying lens. Bending its arm, I train the lens on a piece of scavenged machinery lying on my workbench. It is complicated and interesting—an alien artifact not built by human hands. I pull on my welder’s mask and twist a knob to activate my plasma torch. I make small, precise movements with the torch.

I will learn what lessons my enemy has to teach.

The attack comes suddenly. I catch something from the corner of my eye. On the camera feed, an albino two-wheeled robot with a human torso and a helmetlike head wheels down the middle of the street. It is a lightly modified prewar house nanny.

This
akuma
is followed by a half dozen squat, four-wheeled robots whose stiff black antennae vibrate as they speed over the swept asphalt: police-issue bomb sniffers. Then a blue two-wheeled trash can–shaped machine rolls by. It has a sturdy arm folded on top like a coiled snake. This one is a new hybrid.

A motley collection of robots floods into the street outside my factory. Most of them are rolling, but a few are walking on two or four legs. Almost all are domestic units, not designed for warfare.

But the worst is yet to come.

The camera image shivers as a shaft of dark red metal slides into view. I realize it is an arm when I see the bright yellow claw that hangs from the end. The claw snaps open and closed, trembling with the effort of moving itself. Once, this machine was a deep-forest logger, but it has been modified almost beyond recognition. Mounted on top is a sort of head, crowned with floodlights and two hornlike antennae. A stream of fire jets from the claw, licking the side of my castle.

The camera shakes violently, then cuts out.

Inside my castle all is quiet except for my plasma torch, which sounds like paper tearing. The vague shapes of the factory robots lurk in the darkness, mobile arms frozen in various poses like scrapyard sculptures. The only indication that they are alive and friendly is that the darkness is perforated by the steady greenish glow of dozens of intention lights.

The factory robots are not moving but they are awake. Something shakes the wall outside but I am not afraid. The metal struts in the ceiling dimple beneath an enormous weight.

Pock!

A chunk of ceiling disappears and a finger of fading sunlight reaches through the gloom. I drop my plasma torch. It clatters to the floor, echoing throughout the cavelike room. I lift the welder’s mask over my sweating forehead and look up.

“I knew you would come again,
akuma
,” I say.
“Difensu!”

Instantly, dozens of mobile factory arms spring into life. Each of them is taller than a man and made of solid dirty metal designed to survive for decades on the factory floor. In synchrony, the industrial robots race out of the darkness to surround me.

These arms once toiled to build trinkets for men. I cleaned their minds of poison and now they serve a greater cause. These machines have become my loyal soldiers. My
senshi
.

If only Mikiko’s mind were equally simple.

Overhead, my master
senshi
shambles into life. It is a ten-ton bridge crane festooned with hydraulic wires and trailing a pair of massive, cobbled-together robotic arms. The thing grinds into motion, gathering momentum.

Another
pock
reverberates through the room. I stand by Mikiko, waiting for the
akuma
to show itself. Without thinking, I take her lifeless hands in mine. Around me, thousands of tons of speeding metal rush into defensive positions.

If we are to survive, we must do it together.

A construction-yellow claw drags itself screeching through the ceiling and wall, and fading sunlight floods into the room. Another claw reaches in and spreads the fissure into a wide V shape. The machine shoves its red-painted face into the hole. Spotlights mounted on its head illuminate metal shavings dancing in the air. The giant
akuma
peels the wall backward and it collapses over the moat. Through the rip in the wall, I see the hundreds of smaller robots massing.

I let go of Mikiko’s hands and prepare myself for battle.

As the huge
akuma
shoves its way through the destroyed wall, one of my waxy red factory arms is knocked onto its side. The poor
senshi
tries to push itself back up, but the
akuma
bats it away, snapping the
senshi
’s elbow joint and sending its half-ton frame bouncing toward me.

I turn my back. Behind me, I hear the fallen
senshi
grind to a halt a few feet from my workbench. From the clashing sounds I can tell others have already rushed in to replace it.

Knees creaking, I lean down and pick up my torch. I slide the helmet down over my eyes and see my breath condense on the dark-tinted faceplate.

I hobble toward the fallen
senshi
.

There is a noise like the roar of a waterfall. Flames lick down on me from the fist of the monstrous
akuma,
but I do not feel them. An enterprising
senshi
is gripping a yellowed piece of Plexiglas, lifting it to block the flames. The shield droops beneath the heat but I am already at work repairing the shattered joint.

“Be brave,
senshi
,” I whisper, bending a snapped strut toward myself and holding it in place firmly to make a clean weld.

At the breach, the great
akuma
rolls forward and swings one of its massive arms toward me. Above, the bridge crane’s brakes hiss as it rolls into position. A bulky, hanging yellow arm catches the
akuma
by the wrist. As the two giants grapple, a ragtag wave of enemy robots rolls and crawls in through the gap in the wall. Several of the machines with humanoid upper bodies are carrying rifles.

The
senshi
converge on the breach. A few remain behind, their solid arms hovering over me as I finish mending the broken one. I am concentrating now and cannot be bothered to pay attention to the battle. Once, there is the sound of gunfire, and some sparks strike off the cement a few feet away. Another time, my protector
senshi
moves its arm a precise amount in space to intercept some piece of flying wreckage. I stop to check its gripper for damage but there is none. Finally, my damaged
senshi
is fixed.