Architect (Last Resistance Book 3), page 28
“And did you get a clean bill of health for this excursion?” I ask. It wasn’t that long ago that he’d been shot. Not long enough for him to have made a full recovery.
“A little exercise would be good, I think,” he answers.
He didn’t answer the question, but I’m so glad that we’re speaking again, I choose to overlook it. “In that case,” I say, “we’ll be happy to have you along. Isn’t that right, Benji?”
Benji narrows his eyes, making no attempt to hide his dislike of Samuel. A strange, mostly one-sided animosity has developed between them in the past few weeks. I don’t know what it is that Benji distrusts about Samuel, or if he simply feels threatened at the amount of time Samuel’s spending with Sanjay trying to figure out what’s going on in my head, but I hope Benji can be professional enough not to let it get in the way of the mission. “Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”
Sanjay gives me an apologetic look before following after his boyfriend.
“I don’t want to be a problem,” Samuel says as we start away from the boat.
“You’re not. Though I’d be interested to hear your side of this feud.” Samuel appears merely baffled. “Really? Nothing comes to mind? I thought for sure you must have said something to get on Benji’s bad side.”
He shrugs. “We’ve barely talked.” In fact, I’ve noticed Samuel barely talks to anyone outside me and Ulrich. Every day he seems to be retreating more and more into himself, spending most of his time alone. He must be going in mental circles trying to work out how to rescue Ximena—an impossible task to accomplish in the middle of the ocean.
Maybe this brief foray will be good for him. Fresh air and friends—a cure for anything. “Well, don’t worry. I won’t let him push you around.” I playfully nudge him with my shoulder, but Samuel’s too busy watching where he’s walking to see my smile.
“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.”
It takes us the better part of the day to reach Oakland’s Technology Park, the East Bay equivalent of Silicon Valley. I don’t recognize the names of most of the companies listed on their individual buildings. In the leadup to the Machinations, everyone and their sister were trying to get in on the AI market. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of these companies had some involvement with the autonomous robotics sector.
“A lot of these places should have some form of virtual imaging equipment and on-site medical facilities,” Sanjay explains. “All of these tech parks were transitioning to fully operational centers for advanced technology and robotics development completely divorced from the outside world.”
“They sound like prison complexes,” Benji says.
“More like college campuses,” Sanjay says, “but… yeah. A lot of corporate heads didn’t seem to understand that people want to go home to their family at the end of the day. Food, a place to sleep, and healthcare isn’t enough.”
“People need connection,” Samuel finishes.
Sanjay nods. “The bottom line doesn’t really care about that though, until it starts to interfere with work. Even then, a lot of these places started discriminating against people in committed relationships. Which sounds insane, but the idea was that single individuals would become married to their job and suffer less from the isolation.”
“That’s really messed up,” I say. For a split second I think maybe it’s a good thing the higher echelon burned down this whole system. Maybe we’d reached a point where a hard reset was necessary to stop the abuse.
But the higher echelon didn’t punish the abusive wealthy elite alone. It targeted all of us indiscriminately.
“Well,” I say. “Let’s start looking for what we need.”
“Should we split up?” Sanjay offers.
“No,” I say at the same time Samuel says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Glad to see we’re on the same page. If I never hear the suggestion to split up again it’ll be too soon.
The searching takes longer than I’d like, full of moments where I doubt we’re going to find what I need. At one point Samuel suggests looking for a hospital, but Benji shoots that idea down immediately.
“Hospitals are a no-go,” he says with such finality I have to ask why. “Half the nursing machines in them are still active, operating off on-site auxiliary power. Other times, you’re looking at communities of squatters who don’t exactly like strangers. Also, needles. Those places are full of goddamned needles.”
“Benji hates needles,” Sanjay says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I got that. I think we can avoid needles, though.”
“Oh, you think?” Benji says. “Just avoid the needles. Like it’s that easy! Did I mention the nurse machines? What do you think they have on hand? It’s not guns.”
Actually I hadn’t considered that, but now I can’t stop imagining a predator dressed in a nurse’s outfit coming at me with a hypodermic needle. No part of that scenario is likely, but still. Maybe Benji has a point. There’s certainly something nightmarish about the idea of machines prowling around a darkened hospital, looking for something to stab.
Thankfully, a short time later we find what we need inside the home of a company entitled TruTech Futures. Looking at a company map posted just inside the main lobby, I notice tiny illustrated pins all over the continental United States detailing other campuses and offices, including one in Montana not far from where the militia I sent Rash to join is based. Small world, indeed.
“All right, we need someone to keep watch,” Benji says. We all look at him, and it still takes him an inordinate amount of time to take the hint. So long that Sanjay tries to help him along with a friendly, “Babe?”
“Oh!” He perks up then deflates. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Okay, Glas, you’re with me then.”
I notice Samuel visibly relax as Benji departs. I’m sad they can’t seem to get along and confused. Everyone usually loves Samuel. Mostly because he goes out of the way to make everyone feel cared for.
As Samuel and Sanjay perform tests and scan my brain to see exactly what’s going on with my implant, I can’t help but feel like my life is going in reverse. For a moment I travel back in time to when I first arrived at McKinley, when Samuel shoved me into one machine after another. When I raise this memory with Samuel, he explains how the implant is largely plastic and titanium, which is why the MRI machine didn’t harm me. As a paramagnetic material, titanium isn’t affected by magnetic fields to the same dangerous degree. Since Samuel knew I’d likely need such scans to monitor my health, it made sense to use titanium over metal.
“Glad one of us was thinking that far ahead,” I say, actually earning the first real smile from him in a while.
When they finally finish I expect to hear them discussing the results, but instead Sanjay just tells us we need to leave. Benji appears a minute later bearing the same message.
“Jo wants us back at the ship,” he says.
“Did we get everything?” I ask the pair of science heads.
Sanjay consults Samuel with a glance, and he nods. “As much as we could have hoped for,” Samuel says.
“I still don’t get why you don’t know what’s up with her hallucinations,” Benji comments to Samuel. “I mean, you made her, right? Seems like you should know all the parts.”
“Benji,” Sanjay says in warning.
He holds his hands up. “I’m just saying, it’s odd. Right? Odd that you don’t have even an inkling of what’s going on with her. Unless you’re lying.”
I look at Samuel, waiting for his defense, but none comes. “Samuel?”
“I have theories,” he finally says. “But that’s all they are. And I don’t want to influence the study by making wild claims.”
The study. Like I’m a high school science project. “I’m not just a study though,” I say. “If you know something…”
“I know you’re not just a study. God, Rhon, don’t you think I know that?”
“You’ve kept secrets before.”
His expression crumbles. “It’s not a secret. The device was ancillary to the mapping of Rhona’s memories onto your mind. She had one too. The only reason I didn’t remove it was because it would have required brain surgery, and I didn’t think the risk was worth it. I’m not hiding some mad scientist scheme. I genuinely don’t know why you’re suddenly corresponding with machines.”
“I have a theory,” Sanjay pipes up. “I mean, if we’re bouncing theories around.”
Glasgow ushers us out of the building, and I listen to Sanjay’s theory, glancing sidelong at Samuel throughout for his response.
“This device presumably connected to a progenitor brain, right? The original Rhona, let’s call her,” Sanjay says. “So maybe she’s actually still alive and these hallucinations are just further memories?”
That’s horrifying to think about. That Rhona could have been alive this whole time, in the custody of the higher echelon…
“No,” I say definitively, speaking over Samuel’s own protests. “Not a chance. Rhona is dead.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I felt it when she died.” This quiets the discontented murmurs of the group and eases the nail of fear out of my heart. Unless the higher echelon was able to miraculously bring back Rhona’s brain function without transmitting through the implant, there’s no way that Rhona is still alive. Not in any way that matters. “And anyway, these can’t be memories; they’re happening live. I was able to control machines in real time.”
Sanjay considers this. “Could you be wrong about that? Maybe the higher echelon just wanted you to think you’re controlling the machines.”
“That…” I cut off. I hadn’t considered that possibility. “No,” I decide. “What would be the point?”
Sanjay shrugs. “Who knows? I’m just throwing theories out there.”
“Maybe you should stop,” Samuel says, sounding more serious than I’ve ever heard him. “It’s not scientifically sound to speculate without evidence.”
“I thought it was a good theory,” Benji assures Sanjay, who responds with a shake of his head, indicating he’s not in need of comfort.
“Actually,” I say, my mind racing almost as fast as my heart. “Maybe Sanjay’s on to something. Rhona’s body was never recovered. We assumed the higher echelon took it, right?”
“Ooh! What happened to her device?!” Sanjay jumps in excitedly. “Sorry. You were saying.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that if the higher echelon took Rhona’s body, it was for a good reason. I’ve never let myself consider it before, but it’s likely the machines dissected it, trying to understand more about the woman causing them so much trouble. And perhaps that’s when they found the device. The higher echelon is extremely intelligent. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for it to put two and two together with the research and clones found at Brooks.
“There’s just one thing that doesn’t add up,” I say. “They would have had this device for years. Why am I only now experiencing these… side effects now?”
Samuel murmurs something, so quiet I can’t make it out.
“What?”
“Proximity,” he repeats more clearly. “It’s easy to think everything is by grand design. But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s just coincidence. Bad luck. You only started corresponding when exposed to that signal, right? The higher echelon moved satellites into place in order to organize its own—the wardens—not to communicate directly with you. You just got caught in the net.”
“Bad luck,” I repeat. Could the explanation really be so simple as that? “But what about Prim? That scavenger said she was talking to herself. Could she have been receiving this same signal? And if she was, why not the others?”
“Who’s Prim now?” Benji asks.
“Another clone.”
“How many of you are there?” From anyone else this would sound like an accusation, but from Benji it comes across as idle curiosity.
“The devices weren’t identical,” Samuel says. “I didn’t originally develop that technology. I was working off someone else’s design, so you could say I was still working out the, um, kinks.”
The more I learn about my origins, the more it seems a miracle I ever came to exist at all. And I haven’t forgotten about the many failed versions that came before me either. Bad luck, indeed.
“When you think about it,” Sanjay says, “it’s almost like you’re a spy. The higher echelon has no idea you’re tapping into its broadcasts. Or that you can manipulate its soldiers.”
“We hope,” Samuel murmurs.
Sanjay doesn’t seem to hear him. “That’s got to be useful for something,” he finishes.
“We should be focusing on how to make these correspondences stop,” Samuel says, speaking to be heard now. His gaze softens as he looks at me. “You said you felt pressure when it happened, and your nosebleeds have gotten more frequent. I’m afraid of what will happen if this continues. The physical effects could get worse.”
“Could it kill me?” It’d been painful, but only for a moment before usually. Not so much after. But he’s right about the nosebleeds. “Is that something I should be worried about? Do I need to buy a pair of ear plugs or something?”
He frowns at my joke, and no one else laughs either. Not even a smirk. Tough crowd. “If I had all the answers, we wouldn’t have needed to come here,” Samuel says shortly. “You’ll know as soon as I do, but maybe don’t intentionally listen to any open channels. No telling what the higher echelon is broadcasting these days, especially with the resistance channels so quiet.”
“Roger that, Doc,” I reply, but even as I say it, I know it for a lie.
I’m willing to do whatever it takes to beat the higher echelon. I don’t want to sacrifice myself in the process, but I haven’t come this far living in fear of a little pain.
Back onboard the boat, Jo waves me over to the wheelhouse.
“There’s been something of a curious development. One I think you’ll be interested in hearing firsthand. Glasgow, playback last message if you please.”
SNOW
PALO ALTO, CA
Hunger and fear turn my belly into a restless nest of eels as I start my final broadcast.
This is how it ends, by going back to how it started.
The food stuffs Orpheus and I brought with us lasted a month, and since then we’ve relied on what we could scavenge, hunt, and occasionally fish—though neither of us was great at fishing, and hunting wildlife came with its own risks.
Most machines vacated this area, heading north, but the few that stuck around weren’t lightweights. One snapped off a round at us a week ago and caught Orpheus in the arm. That slowed us down. He started watching me more closely after that, something showing in my eyes to make him worry. If not for him, I think he thought I’d abandon this god-forsaken place.
He was probably right.
At least before we received that message from Rash, the one with coordinates for the bunker. By all accounts this place should have been wiped out in the attack. For the most part, the building leading to the underground facility in Menlo Park wasn’t left standing, but the universe has a sick sense of humor, since the thing the New Soviets were probably trying to destroy seems to have survived. How Rash figured out its location I can only theorize, though it seems she’s saddled up with some machine-loving freaks who know a lot more than any of us. Any port in a storm, I guess.
When the New Soviets struck again with that latest missile—or whatever the hell it was, a laser, maybe? —we were deep in the facility. Lucky turn, seeing as the nearby city of San Jose was cleared right off the face of the map. There had been a small resistance faction there that we’d been in brief contact with—well, Lefevre, anyway. I’d hung back to avoid being recognized, albinism notwithstanding.
Now they’re gone, and with them our last safety net. It feels like the whole world has gone dark, so many channels now silent. When the Machinations first began it was like this too. You don’t realize how much noise you take in until everything vanishes. Television, social media—every form of connection snapped. Even our attempts to reach out to Rash’s group have failed, and I don’t know if it’s because they’ve had to move on from wherever they were broadcasting from or if they’re dead. Terrible as it sounds, I’m not sure which I’d prefer either. It’d certainly be less competition for my own identity in the long run.
Worried about possible radioactive fallout, Orpheus insisted we spend most of our time underground. I wasn’t about to argue. In that time we’d just begun to scratch the surface of what this facility is. Orpheus also told me why it was targeted by the New Soviet forces, along with Calgary, Detroit, and some other major cities. Something about the coordinates being found in a machine’s head.
“And Zelda didn’t find that at all suspicious?” I ask. “Why would the higher echelon send such valuable info to the enemy?”
“The machine was meant to sow chaos,” Orpheus explained. “It didn’t intend on being caught.”
I shrugged. “Or maybe that’s exactly what it was supposed to do. Get caught. Give up the coordinates. Make humanity do the machines’ dirty work.”
Orpheus was silent for a time, considering this possibility. We’ve debated the idea ad nauseum, and the more we’ve uncovered in the facility, the more I became convinced the machines had good reason to want this place destroyed. What I didn’t understand was why the higher echelon would goad us into destroying the facility when it could have done so itself.
I couldn’t make the logic work unless the machines didn’t have the resources they claimed to or didn’t want to spare them. They must have been working on the other technology they used to destroy San Jose and, I suspect, other larger factions too.
McKinley has fallen silent. We both have assumed the worse, but we don’t talk about it. Talking makes it real.
