Machinations Page 4

  “All right. I’m in.”

  As if there were any doubt.

  —

  I don’t know how long or how far we walk to get to the forest, but by the time we reach the tree line I’m somewhere beyond the pain and cold, crouched down inside my head where the memories of heat and comfort are. My nose is bleeding again, dry and cracked. Samuel looks half-asleep on his feet. There’s no telling how Ulrich’s holding up since his back is to me. He’s become a permanent landmark in my line of sight, and half the reason I’m so grateful for the pines. At least they’re something new to look at.

  We move deeper in among the tall trees, where they grow close enough together to be a fence. They are like dark sentinels wearing robes of white, their spindly limbs laden with snow. Here, the wind is weaker, its force disrupted by trunks and branches and brush.

  I look around, anticipating movement from the shadows, but apart from the occasional animal noise, it’s quiet. The silence magnifies the volume of each crunchy step, our boots pressing into brittle pine needles.

  Then something drops behind me.

  I whirl around to face it, weapon raised—

  —and slip backward into Ulrich, who instinctively turns his gun on me. I continue falling, landing on my rear just before the sound repeats itself.

  “Easy,” Samuel says and points to an intersection of tree limbs nearby, relieving itself of a heavy burden of snow, plunking mushy piles on the ground. The relief is palpable. We all share a brief chuckle and try to overlook the fact that Ulrich and I nearly shot each other.

  As exhausted as I am—my legs weighty as blocks of stone—it’s not until I notice Samuel repeatedly stumbling in the drifts, beginning to lag behind, that I speak up. “We have to stop,” I announce.

  Ulrich pauses.

  I press on with a grim smile. “I’m dead on my feet, okay? If we continue like this, I guarantee you someone is going to end up tripping and breaking an ankle or leg or something. At this rate, not one of us will be any good in a fight if the machines catch up to us.”

  “When,” Ulrich corrects.

  “Right. Look, let’s just make camp for the night. Get some sleep. Recharge the batteries.” Samuel winces at the metaphor. Okay, bad choice of words. “This is as good a spot as any. We can alternate shifts so someone’s always got an eye out, but we need to rest or we’ll just end up dying tired.”

  Ulrich lets his pack drop into the snow as his answer. “I will take first watch. Two hours.”

  “Three.” I’m pushing my luck, and I’m fairly certain I don’t have much to begin with. “I’ll keep watch with Samuel during the next shift, and then we can get moving again. Six hours.”

  “Stubborn.” I take it as a compliment. He nods, conceding.

  With a steep embankment three-quarters of the way around us, and sheltered by a pine-needle canopy above, we hunker down for the remainder of the night. Between the three of us, we have one small, portable tent and a pair of sleeping bags. It’s not much against the fury of an Alaskan winter, but it might be enough to keep us alive—so long as we continue wearing our thermal layers. We can’t risk a fire, no matter how cold it gets. Given the options of freezing to death or being abducted by the machines, I’d take death as a popsicle any day.

  Everyone knows what happens if the machines take you alive. Labor camps, if you’re lucky. Slowly being worked to death in one of the machines’ factories alongside other humans unfortunate enough to be skilled at a trade. Otherwise, torture, brainwashing…I seem to recall a story of the machines chipping people like dogs, the subdermal implants delivering an electric shock each time they failed to obey an order. But that might just be fear recirculated in the form of rumor. What isn’t rumor is what happens after these captives are turned loose. Always they manage to find pockets of resistance, like bloodhounds scenting a wounded fox. Sometimes they integrate long enough for the other members to drop their guard—and then massacre everyone in their sleep. Other times, the machines swoop in before that point, doing their own dirty work.

  It’s amazing how much I remember about the war, the resistance, the machines and their impersonal cruelty—yet I can’t remember how I got the tiny, sickle-shaped scar I just discovered a minute ago on the underside of my chin.

  I help Samuel set up the tent. It’s slow going—embarrassingly slow, even with his smarts and my resourcefulness. Ulrich is doing exactly what he volunteered for: looking out—and not much else. I think I even catch him smirking, like he’s enjoying the entertainment of our struggle with the tent.

  While I’m busy fighting to strap down one side, Samuel says, “Thanks for this,” in such a small voice I almost miss it.

  “You can thank me once we’ve finished.”

  “No, I mean…what you did back there. You covered for me when you didn’t have to.” He looks at me, sincerity stretched across his face, eyes shining with gratitude. “Thank you.”

  “Oh,” I answer lamely, feeling a little shy in the face of his appreciation. “Don’t mention it.” I think about giving him a friendly knock on the shoulder, but somehow that feels wrong. I wish I could remember the nuances of our relationship, to know how to behave around him.

  By the time we conquer the tent, I’ve worked up the courage to ask one of the questions only he can answer. “Samuel? Am I—like myself?”

  “What do you mean?” He’s rolling out his sleeping bag.

  “You said I was supposed to have my—Rhona’s personality.” It’s still weird to think I’m two different people. “Do I act like her? Am I still…me?”

  “That’s not really a question I can answer for you.”

  I snort. “Oh, no. Nice try, but you’re gonna have to be less cryptic.”

  “Then you’ll have to be more specific,” he says and slowly rubs his tired face with hands numbed by the cold. We’ve removed our gloves temporarily, trying to flex feeling back into them. “Genetically speaking, you’re identical. Psychologically speaking, there’s no way of knowing until I run some tests. And even then, the results may be inconclusive.” Penitence pushes the fatigue from his face. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not the answer you were hoping for, and I wish I had a better one for you, but this is uncharted territory. Cloning isn’t exactly textbook science.”

  “So I’m a guinea pig. Comforting.”

  “No! No, that’s not what I meant…”

  “I know.” The wind whines as I crawl into my sleeping bag, curling up with my back to Samuel. “But it’s still true.”

  I’m asleep minutes later, my body welcoming the break from reality.

  —

  I dream in black and white. I see myself talking and laughing with a handsome man. There is no sound. It’s like watching ancient home-movie footage with the volume off.

  Yet even without sound, I still understand the conversation somehow. He’s asking me what I wanted to be when I was a little girl. I tell him I wanted to be the first female president of the United States. I’d have voted for you, he tells me, if I was an American citizen. But he’s not. He’s British. I hear his accent in my head, although the rest of the world is nothing but static and the distant roar of thunder. A storm is coming, and neither of us is prepared. I want to warn us, shout until I’m hoarse, but I’m standing outside my body. I’m nothing but the helpless gazes of passing strangers.

  We’re sitting at a little café both familiar and completely foreign. I know we’re somewhere near Trafalgar Square, but the view in every direction fades into a mirror image of us. A dozen different paths that all turn into a pretty couple having brunch. This isn’t our first date, or our second. It’s much later in the game, though I can’t recall how much later. Five months? Six? The semester is nearing its end. College students pass us on the sidewalk, wearing baggy clothing and the sleepless, haunted look of having pulled a few too many all-nighters in preparation for finals.

  Even this early in the relationship, a shadow lies over our happiness, leading me to ask him how t
he scholarship process is going. I don’t know what I’m talking about, despite asking the question gracefully.

  “Surprisingly well,” he answers. “There’s some serious competition for the Fulbright this year, particularly in the exciting arena of British literature, but I think my chances are good. I’ve exchanged a few emails with UNM, and they seem eager to have me, if the scholarship money comes through.”

  “Why wouldn’t they jump at the chance to employ a finalist for the National Poetry Prize?”

  “Because a finalist is not a winner.”

  “It’s not exactly losing, either, and now you have some neat qualifications to put on any future poetry submissions.”

  He smiles warmly. “Your optimism never fails to fascinate me.”

  “That’s because you’re a glass-half-empty type. But don’t worry. I’ll fix that.”

  He laughs, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, then returns to our previous topic.

  “Provided I’m awarded the scholarship, and as long as there are no complications with acquiring my J-1 visa—that would be the scholar’s visa I mentioned before—I should be able to join you in the States as early as next year.”

  He accepts a cup and saucer from the waiter, whose face is a blur. My date’s the type of man I initially figured for black tea, but instead he always orders herbal teas that smell strongly of hibiscus or jasmine or chamomile, then administers several packets of honey. I’m the one who orders black. I need the caffeine.

  “Hopefully, they won’t decide to shut down air travel first,” I grumble. “Did you hear about what happened to that Asiatic flight?”

  “Which one?”

  The fact that he has to ask leaves me chilled.

  “Sacramento to Seoul.”

  “Yes,” he says, brows drawing together. “Horrible.”

  I keep trying to drink my own tea, but never quite make it. It eludes my hand every time I go to grab for its handle, the dream twisting what I believe with certainty is otherwise a memory. “They’re saying it was sabotage. The Koreans are blaming us; we’re blaming them…”

  He holds his cup in both hands, warding against the early autumn chill, and blows softly on the surface of the tea. “It sounds like you think there’s another explanation.”

  “Remember the incidents with the self-driving cars? How some of them keep swerving into oncoming traffic?” He nods once, takes an experimental sip of his tea. “What if there’s something wrong with the programming itself? What if the AI is malfunctioning?”

  “Have you been surfing internet conspiracy forums again?”

  “Only in my spare time, and that’s beside the point.”

  “If there’s an issue, doubtless the designers will correct it, given time. I don’t think they’ll suspend air travel in the meantime, and even if they do, I’ll take a boat.”

  He leans forward to kiss me, but I never feel his lips touch mine.

  And then I’m inexplicably somewhere else.

  A frozen beach. Time is literally standing still, and although I hear birds crying and waves crashing, nothing moves. The sky looks pasted on—impossibly, brilliantly white. Cloudless and maybe endless. I stand at the edge of a cliff, the black ocean miles beneath me.

  “Rhona.”

  I turn at the sound of his voice. Alive. He’s alive?

  “Come away,” he says. He thinks I’m going to jump. And I realize that’s exactly what I’d planned to do.

  Impossible. They’re all gone. He’s gone. The knowledge infects me, as it always does in a dream, where you know more than you possibly could of the situation, despite entering a scene midway through. Like a whole world existed before you laid down your head and closed your eyes, and will continue on without you once you wake up. Not unlike dying.

  But this—they’re all gone—isn’t some nightmarish fantasy, but a persistent fact. My extended family, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, all of my friends, their families. It’s like someone mutilated a photograph of the world, cutting out the faces of everyone I love. Only my mother remains, a distant, blurry figure sharpened by purpose, by the will to continue fighting, but it’s only a matter of time until the machines take her, too. I can’t bear another loss. I can’t. Not after—

  “Samuel’s dead,” I murmur numbly.

  He takes a careful step toward me. “How do you know?”

  “He was rounded up by some government officials, taken away to some secure research center in Tulsa. But the city’s been overrun. They’re reporting no survivors. The machines went in groundside, and just—they killed everyone. He’s dead. Oh, God.” I shudder, weeping, and he finally dashes toward me, grabbing me back from the edge, wrapping me in his arms.

  Gasping for air, I take fistfuls of his shirt in my hands, and I swear holding on to him is the only thing keeping strength in my legs. I touch his face, smoothing fingers over his cheeks and across the facial hair that isn’t normally there. “I thought you were dead, too. London—”

  “I was on one of the last flights out. We made an emergency landing in Iceland when news arrived that AI were hijacking commercial flights. Apparently, more than one has gone rogue. It’s not just the American-created systems. I was seated beside a programmer on the plane, and he thinks the AI are in a cyber war against one another, competing for dominance.”

  Just then, I don’t care about what the machines are doing, or how they’re doing it. In hindsight, it’s irresponsible, but at the time, I was ready to jump off a cliff because nearly everyone I’d ever known was dead. “Why didn’t you call?”

  He frowns. “Do you still have cell service here? I haven’t been able to call anyone.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Iceland? Then how—”

  “I told you before. I’d take a boat, if I had to. And then, as it turns out, a car, a bus…” His smile removes me from my deep pit of despair, like dangling a rope down to a trapped spelunker.

  I wipe the tears from my cheeks, suck in a shaky breath, and find laughter for the first time in a week.

  “I have an idea,” I tell him, finally able to think solidly, around the enormous cavern my heart has become. “Mom was making arrangements for us to get out of the state, maybe out of the country. You can come with us. You have to come with us.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “At the capitol building. Another emergency session. There’s some big meeting planned for tomorrow morning, as well.”

  Behind us, the ocean finally crashes against the rocks, exploding with bright foam.

  Then I think, This is wrong. That conversation didn’t take place beside the ocean. There is no ocean in New Mexico. Was there even a cliff?

  I wake in an unfamiliar place, warm and safe between arms I know, a familiar name on my tongue. “Camus,” I whisper, calling him from my past, and from the heart Rhona and I must share. I knew you’d come back, he tells me, over and over, his face pressed into my hair—

  And I wake a second and final time.

  It’s such a shock that I can only lie there unmoving for a few moments, pretending I’m still asleep as Samuel tries shaking me awake. My eyes shut tight to contain the tears. This isn’t real, I think childishly. This can’t be happening.

  I take a deep breath and manage to pull myself together.

  A part of me knows I should mention my dreams to Samuel; they might be important indicators of my mental condition. But the other part—the winning part—wants to keep them to myself, safe in my head.

  To cover my emotions, I give Samuel a good shove back as I climb out of my sleeping bag, saying, “I was having a good dream, thank you very much.”

  My act must work, because he offers a sheepish smile.

  “Sorry. It’s our turn for the watch.”

  “Three hours never felt so short.”

  “Actually, it was four. Ulrich and I felt you should get the most uninterrupted rest time.”

  I give him a sideways glance. “By ‘Ulrich,’ you mean you, right?”

&n
bsp; He shrugs. “After the first year, I just started taking his silence as agreement.”

  I smile despite the pain in my chest. Samuel has an easy way of making me feel…normal, enough that we can exchange jokes like this. Right now, it’s exactly what I need.

  Once outside, I take a seat on an overturned log that’s seen better days. That makes two of us.

  But it’s not all bad.

  Sunlight filters through the canopy, catching particles in the air like fairy dust from a children’s story. Below, the forest floor has transformed into a wonderland of colors, from the midnight blues lurking in the shade to the cotton-candy pink of the snow, blushing from dawn. It’s unbelievably beautiful, and for some reason that irks me. I’m having a difficult time reconciling the world I know—a world overrun by machines—and this place, untouched by the trauma of war.

  I don’t have to strain to get at the memories of Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Albuquerque—an endless list of cities, their populations eradicated one after the other. Images of the machines advancing on the city, as well as unarmed suburbia, just ahead of the reporters and cameras, have been burned into my brain, like afterimages from staring too long at the sun. People lost shoes when they fled for their life; bullets ripped and tore apart their clothing, dark jackets unfurling like bat wings; one mother released the hand of her four-year-old son to run, survival trumping motherly instinct; militia members went down in bright flurries of gunfire, honoring their commitment to the Second Amendment. News stations broadcast the war and devastation as long as they could, feeding these snapshots of terror to panicking civilians hungry for answers—everyone asking Why? and What do we do? and Where do we go?

  The answers, of course, being: Because we made a mistake and Nothing and Nowhere.

  A noise like a running faucet disrupts my thinking. I can just see a corner of Ulrich’s shoulder from behind a tree, a couple of feet away.

  “Guten Morgen,” he says casually, as if I know German. He knows I don’t.

  “Right back at’cha,” I say, pretending I do.