Part 3 (2/2)

They hated us. Unrest became a nervously muttered byword of sarcastic humor, it was such an understatement. In millions they marched, sometimes beginning peacefully with protests and pet.i.tions, but always turning in the end to Violence, the last tool of the disenfranchised ma.s.ses that was too often the first and only.

We weren't listening, we didn't need to listen. We were first-world, they were third. We carried out a few mercy missions and food drops to a.s.suage our collective conscience, and then we dropped them cold and let them fight it out amongst themselves.

”It's not our fight”, we said. ”Let them resolve their own conflicts”. As if we weren't at the root of each and every. Eventually, in country after country, starting in the Middle East and Africa and all those far-away places and then cropping up in places frighteningly close, desperation reared its head. After desperation came the point of no longer caring, and beyond that was madness. Rioting en ma.s.se, with entire regions burning away in chaos and mindless plunder.

Responses could be swift and deadly, cutting the head from the snake-but it always became a hydra. They could be aloof and restrained, holding the borders from behind mirrored shades and denying access. In the end it never mattered. Hundreds of thousands would die, leaving the survivors even more wretched and desperate, and new generations would rise up in hate. They never stopped breeding, which societally we could not grasp in the first-world. The nine-billion-plus of the earth kept coming.

In the end, they would always keep on coming. Gradually, we found ourselves partic.i.p.ating in the long-feared Apocalypse.

The world men once knew and trusted in no longer applied. New rules had to be written, and textbooks, where they were still bothered with, had to throw out much of the past. History didn't provide answers for what the world now faced. History didn't know about warfare on this scale, not after all its plagues and World Wars and genocides. We went past mechanized and computerized warfare and paused for an ugly decade on biological war, until the scientists foresaw where that would end up and convinced the policy-makers to put a stop to it. Then it was back to the way wars were always fought, except this time with profoundly new tools of destruction on our side.

The early robots were a supplement to our human-controlled machines, providing the manpower which we lacked and had no desire to field. But after years of fighting and researching and manufacturing and more fighting, the robots became the defining force in battle. In some cases, they were even the reason for the battle. The nightmare of Old Brasilia was perpetrated simply to verify some theories the eggheads behind the curtain had come up with.

The main problem with combat 'droids was the inability to adapt. They slaughtered people hundreds to one, but then other people would seek out ways to get behind them. Blinding the sensors, trapping them, tricking them, swarming them. A bot could only dispense so many rounds a minute, and could only carry so many total.

Children were used to get past them and disarm them, so they started shooting children that got too close-what other choice was there? Failure was unthinkable: a multi-million-dollar machine destroyed by a naked eight-year-old? It was ugly, no one denied that, but it had to be done. Didn't it?

It was all ugly and always had been. Everyone admitted that. And after all, they had been warned. Our bots blared warnings in native tongues six times a minute while they dealt death. For some reason, it didn't keep the children away.

The wars progressed, the situation devolved, and over time the ma.s.ses gained the ability to build their own tools of death. They saw what worked and they adapted. There were devious minds among the millions of howling mobocrats, and they took and dissected and replicated. Soon it became not a hundred machines against ten thousand Wigglies, but a thousand machines against five hundred machines and five hundred thinking men and women. Later, after much bloodshed and experimentation and sub-national coalescence, the playing field leveled into a chessboard of autonomous machine destruction.

Conscience eased on both sides after that, when conscience was still considered at all. It became a battle of wits, but always with the shadow of Desperation lurking on the edge of the battlefield. Because when the bots had all been vanquished, there were still the Wigglies to deal with. They'd hide behind their machines just like us as long as they could, but when it came down to it, the difference between us was that they turned into wild animals while we retreated behind more mechanized cover.

After years of this, things had to change. People had to change, and they did. People left the supreme arrogance of the Grays, disgusted and sick, infused with their own desperation to find and do what was right, not what was expedient. They were worse than traitors, less understood than madmen, more hated than the worst sociopaths.

I was one of them.

6.

The tunnel was too low to allow John to stand erect and his lower back began to ache from running bent forward at the waist, but he didn't dare to stop with the sounds of pursuit echoing up the shaft behind him. The floor and walls of the tunnel were ribbed for architectural strength, and made the way forward difficult. There was no way to tell if he was putting distance between himself and the bots due to the distortions caused by the tunnel.

As he half-ran, half-hobbled, he considered the consequences if the tunnel ended in a giant fan or furnace or was simply grated off. There would be nothing left to do except rest his feet until the bots arrived and mowed him down.

He stumbled abruptly as the tunnel rose at a forty-five degree slope and T-boned with another tunnel. He looked down the corridor right and left, but they were identical, dimly lit with small plasma lights set into the ceiling. The intersecting tunnel was larger and he could stand upright. He chose left at random and began to jog, conserving his strength for a sprint if needed. The walls and ceiling were a half-dome that barely cleared his head. The air was dry and stale.

For several minutes he followed the tunnel, sensing that it curved to the right in a long, gradual loop. He wondered if the right hand tunnel would meet up with the one he was in, forming a huge circular track. If so, all the bots had to do was send one after him, and another down the right hand tunnel. Sooner or later he'd be caught between them.

Then he came to another T-intersection and stopped. The tunnel continued to his right into the distance, but to his left it immediately began to slope steeply upward and he could see a grid of light at the top. He stared at it, uneasy. It looked like an exit, but the hill he was traveling through was much too large for this to be the far side.

John hadn't heard any sounds of pursuit in the last five minutes, but bots were capable of surprising stealth when needed. One could appear behind him any minute. He took a running start and got about halfway up the slope before sliding back down. It was more of a shaft to be climbed than a ramp, but much narrower and with a lower ceiling than the large one below. By going backward and pressing his hands overhead against the ceiling, he got enough traction to inch up the slope to the grate.

It was about half a meter square, a stainless steel grid bolted into the walls of the tunnel, forming a grillwork of perhaps six-centimeter squares. He hooked his fingers through them to keep from sliding back and peered through the grate, attention riveted by what he saw.

The room on the other side of the grate was well-lit and s.p.a.cious, but deserted. Industrial grade metal cabinets, tables, and rolling chairs were pushed against the walls, piled with machinery and equipment, only some of it familiar. It looked like a workshop or production lab.

He felt a gust of hope. If he could get inside, he would be in his element. No more jungle. He didn't like the jungle too many variables, too much he didn't know. But inside, with walls and lights and tools...

He examined the grate, darting a look behind him every few seconds for bots. He could detect no security apparatus visible to the eye. Slipping a hand inside his trousers, he brought out his emergency toolkit. He kept it in a small case strapped to his left thigh, almost in his groin undetectable to all but a thorough frisk. He selected a screwdriver and set to work.

Three minutes later the grate was off and John was inside. He blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the brighter light, and examined his surroundings. It was indeed, as he had suspected, a small manufacturing lab. The only entrance, other than the grate, was a door set in the far wall. There were no windows. Energy coils and fuel cells were scattered across a dusty countertop to his right, a big soldering table stood at his left, and small rails on the floor led from the room's only door to the grate he had entered through. A large metal ventilation hood surrounded the grate on the inside.

The equipment was expensive, but dated ten years old or more. It puzzled him. A thick layer of dust covered all surfaces and there was no sign of any activity. If anyone was controlling the bots, they weren't doing it from this room.

I'd bet a jar of real pre-war strawberries that this place is much, much bigger than this room. I smell ma.s.sive technology.

A familiar shape off to the side s.h.i.+fted his attention from the door. Behind a large autoclave, lying p.r.o.ne on a table, was the armless torso and head of a bot, an old pre-war android with bare wiring protruding from its eye sockets. Dust covered this one as well. He stared at it, questions crowding in, until he shook his head.

First things first.

The Sergeant was muttering in his brain, but he already knew what the Sergeant wanted, so he ignored him. On a nearby bench lay a lightweight ratcheting ring spanner with a flat screwdriver on the other end. John felt silly holding it as a weapon, but it was better than his bare hand for now, and could come in handy against hardware beyond the scope of his emergency pack.

Now he approached the door. To his surprise, it slid upward with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a long hallway to his left, a short one ahead ending in a door, and to his right a small alcove with an array of monitors and digital readout screens. No one was visible, and he dodged quickly across the hallway to the other door. An observation window was set into the door, and staying clear of the motion sensor that would actuate this door, he peered through.

The room beyond was much larger, and clearly an android production facility. The lights were on and he could see several body parts and trays of old bot pieces, but again the place looked like it hadn't seen heavy use in some time. He waved his hand across the motion sensor, curious to examine the bot remnants in closer detail, but the door remained shut.

”Welcome to Alpha Facility.”

It was a woman's voice, echoing from somewhere down the long hallway. John spun, eyes darting, and then peeked cautiously around the corner into the hallway.

Nothing.

”Please come to Level Two.”

The voice was perfect. Cultured and s.e.xy; the rich tone of a professional speech artist. Regular women seldom spoke like that; at least none John had had the pleasure of meeting. Despite the uncertainty of the moment, he found himself wondering what she looked like, and grinned at his own intrepidity.

”Just follow the hallway to your left.”

This time he traced the voice to a small intercom mounted in the ceiling, snugly nested in a hidden alcove alongside what looked like a camera. There were no cams at his end of the hallway, so it must have picked him up from that distance. Either someone with very good eyes was monitoring that exact screen at the time he darted across the hall, or they had some technology that he had underestimated. Stealth was out of the question.

”There's no need for apprehension. I am pleased that you are here. Any concerns you may entertain will be addressed when you reach Level Two, where we can get better acquainted with each other.”

No need for apprehension? A few steps brought him directly underneath the intercom.

”Who are you?” John asked.

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