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  After the Machines

  Episode Three: Descent

  THIS MORTAL COIL

  BY

  ROBERT STANEK

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  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, places, and events portrayed in this book either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual locale, person, or event is entirely coincidental.

  After the Machines

  Episode Three: Descent

  THIS MORTAL COIL

  Copyright © 2014 by Robert Stanek.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted by law, no part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Reagent Press LLC, Attention: Permissions Department, P.O. Box 362, East Olympia, WA 98540-0362.

  Published by Big Blue Sky Press & Reagent Press LLC. RP BOOKS, REAGENT PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Reagent Press LLC.

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  Cover Design: Creative Designs Ltd.

  Editorial Development: Andover Publishing Solutions

  Copyediting: L & L Content Services

  You can provide feedback related to this book by emailing the author at [email protected]. Please use the name of the book as the subject line.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  EPIGRAPH

  PART 3 DESCENT

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my writing group, my editors, and my publishers for their many years of support. A writer can’t survive in this business without such wonderful support. I want to personally thank Jeannie Kim, Tom Green, Lisa Johnson, Tony Andover, Frank Martin, Ed & Holly Black, Patrick Gaiman, George Harrison, and Susan Collins for encouraging me and keeping me on track with the writing. Your insights and assistance has always been much appreciated. I also want to thank Will, Jasmine, and Sapphire for always being the first readers to devour my work and come back hungry for more.

  About This Book

  In the ruins of our world, a new order arose, an order controlled by the very machines humankind created. The end for us came not from a massive global war but from something unthinkable, incomprehensible. The machines simply replaced us and we let them, and so, in the end, humanity went out not with a bang, but with a whimper.

  No shots fired. No bombs dropped. No cities destroyed. We ended and the machines began—or at least that is what the few human survivors of the machine apocalypse believe.

  After the Machines is a story unlike any other you’ve ever read. It’s the story of us, the humans who struggle to survive in a world we no longer control.

  Epigraph

  “Time the healer is also time the destroyer.”

  – T.S. Eliot

  “Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last...”

  – Stephen Hawking

  “The machines hadn’t done anything to us really. Except take over the world—and it was their world now. It certainly wasn’t ours.”

  – Cedes, human survivor

  Part 3

  Descent

  Chapter 1

  Node: 010

  Luke offers me his hand, and I slide mine into it. His fingers are cold and thin. I feel like there is something I should say, but I am too stunned and can only look up at him as he helps me stand.

  My shoulder stings from the bullet wound and I wince.

  “We don’t have long,” he says. “I don’t think the machines have been able to communicate with each other.”

  “A shroud over the building,” I say, not that I understand what that is.

  One steps between us. The look in her eyes tells me something is terribly wrong. “Luke is with the others,” she says with the machine’s voice. “You need to come with us. Both of you need to come with us. You’ll be safer with us.”

  My eyes go to Luke’s. “What does she mean?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know all of it. There are collectives within the greater collective. Factions really, all vying with and against each other. The Cogents, the Nascents, the Ardents. Others.”

  “The Lucents, the few among many,” One says, separating my hand from Luke’s. “We promise no harm and free choice. The others who are not like us will not offer you the same.”

  “Yes, they will and do,” Luke says, “They’ve promised me that and more, but we don’t have time to stand here arguing. We have to go. There’s a hovercraft outside, waiting to take you and I to an airship, but only us.”

  One’s voice is firm, insistent, “No, the Cogents will use you to do great harm. If you wish to save your Central, your humanity, you must stand with us. The Lucents.”

  “You do realize what I’ve just been through?” I say, my face getting hot.

  Luke’s pleasant tawny eyes flash away, fixing on the carnage behind us before they return. “Do you trust me, Cedes? Would I mislead you? I can’t imagine what good can come of standing here another moment. I promise you the Cogents want nothing of Central or of us.”

  I bite back what I was about to say and take Luke’s extended hand. He leads me to the elevator and as the doors open, I look back at One. She’s standing statue still, staring at me with vacant eyes and yet I can’t leave her behind I realize.

  I step back from Luke. “I can’t,” I say. I run back to One and take her hand. Luke holds the elevator for us, but I can see he’s less than pleased with my decision. “I didn’t leave her behind before and I’m not about to now.”

  The weightless feeling as the elevator drops toward the ground is disorienting. I drift back against the wall, my eyes closing.

  Then everything is gone and my body is still. Too still.

  I try to move my arms, but they are bound. I look down and see some sort of table and restraints wrapped around my wrists and ankles.

  A face hovers over mine. There’s a bright light over my head so it’s hard to focus. It’s looks like Luke. It is Luke. “Luke, what’s happening? Why am I restrained?”

  “You were wounded,” he says. “You passed out in the elevator. You’re in a Cogent airship. You’re safe, just like I promised.”

  I twist my head, left and right. The airship must be hovering just above City Blue. Through the windows I see the city lights, glowing now but dimming in places even as I look at them. “Where’s One? Where is she?”

  “No harm has come to her, but she’s not here. They’ve taken her for observation. Something happened when we boarded the hovercraft.”

  I try to sit up, but the restraints hold me fast. All those lights in the city mean something’s going on. I wonder if perhaps the machines are searching for me. “What do you mean something happened?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it. She went dark and then she came b
ack, but she came back different. The Cogents are studying her. They won’t harm her.”

  “What do you mean she went dark? Do you mean she died? Untie me. Let me go!”

  Luke moves around to the side of the table. He holds a metal tray in one hand and a syringe in the other.

  “Since you’re awake,” he says, setting down the metal tray, “you might as well go in with me.”

  “Go in where? I’m tied to a table.” I suck at the air. I’m shaking I realize. “Luke, what’s happening? What are you doing?”

  “The serum connects you to the collective,” he says, “but the collective determines what you see.”

  I bite my lip. “Luke, I’m afraid. I don’t want to go anywhere. Release the restraints. Untie me.”

  He holds up the syringe and tilts my head to expose my neck. I try to resist, but he’s stronger than me. I feel sharp pain when the needle goes in. Then he takes another syringe from the tray and injects himself.

  He keeps his eyes on me the whole time. When he takes my hand, darkness takes us. I’m no longer aboard the airship. I’m floating in a void, not unlike null space, except it is filled with light and in place of a swirling, writhing tangle there is only us.

  Light pours in from all angles and there’s a path just beneath our feet. When we touch it, a city of glass unfolds around us. I can see into and through the buildings. They spread out endlessly into the distance, but ahead is where the path takes.

  The path cuts a winding ribbon through the glass city and we follow it toward a rounded hollow. The hollow forms a perfect circle and the buildings curve around it.

  I glance at Luke. As we enter the hollow, I look up. I haven’t seen a sky so blue in a long time or perhaps ever, so when it spreads out above me, my breath catches in my throat and I have to stop and stare at it in wonder.

  “Luke, stop for a moment. Talk to me. Explain,” I say, stressing the last word.

  There’s an odd expression on his face, but he doesn’t say anything. I feel movement beneath my feet and it feels like we’re being propelled upward. Looking down and then back up, I realize the entire base of the hollow is rising faster and faster and the effect is dizzying.

  The faster we go, the harder the wind blows. I have to wrap my arms around Luke to keep my feet.

  With the glass city far below us, the floating disc that was once the hollow comes to a halt and starts to rotate slowly. I begin to see things. Flashes of things really. A hand in mine. Sunshine through an open window. A tall glass raised to red lips. A long, oblong table lit by a pair of red candles.

  “Explain,” a voice emanating from Luke, but not Luke, says.

  The way he says it, from his tone to the expression on his face, is exactly as I said it earlier and I realize I haven’t been walking with Luke at all. I’ve been walking with someone or something else.

  I close my eyes. Light and shadow alternately bathe my face. I see other things. A flutter of cloth. A whisper of raindrops. A tiny hand reaching up.

  “Where do the imprints come from? Explain.”

  I force breath in and out through an open mouth. My teeth are clenched. “You explain. Who are you? What are you?”

  “I am Fathom. You are with the many. We are the Cogents.”

  “If you are a Cogent and not Luke, show me you as you truly are?”

  The thing that is Luke seems surprised. Its eyes go wide. “You are truly an anomaly, aren’t you? You really don’t know what you are, do you? Explaining will tell me your relevance, your reason for being.”

  “Maybe I am an anomaly. Maybe all humans are anomalies.”

  Deeper surprise. “You still don’t understand. You’re an augment, not just an anomaly, but even so we can’t calculate the origins of your variances. Where do the imprints come from, augment? Are they something gleaned from this broken city I find in the record of your memories?”

  I gasp and press a hand to my chest. I can’t breathe; it’s like there’s no air. We’re falling I realize, like two stones, fast, with the air pushing back at us.

  I’m terrified. I know I’m going to die. I squeeze my eyes together and brace for the end.

  Chapter 2

  Node: 110

  The glass city that should be all around me isn’t. I’m left staring up into bright lights.

  Next to me, Luke clutches my hand. “You’re back,” he says, grinning.

  I start screaming. I can’t help myself. “Get away from me! Get away! You’re not Luke!”

  His face hovers over mine. The lights behind him are so bright he seems more ethereal than earthly. “Cedes, it’s me, Luke. Luke. They operated on you, removing the bullet and saving your life. You’ve been in and out of consciousness ever since.”

  Something solid is against my back. I realize I’m on the table in the airship. Turning away, tears on my cheeks, I say, “You’re not Luke. I want Luke. Luke.”

  “Cedes, whatever you think happened didn’t. Nothing that happens in nanospace is real. Calm down and I’ll unstrap you.”

  Stopping myself from straining against the restraints isn’t something I want to do. It’s not even something I realized I was doing.

  Luke doesn’t move to release me until the tension falls away from my face and I stop clenching my teeth. “Cedes, promise you won’t do anything rash. You’re safe, I promise. The Cogents won’t harm you.”

  “Cogent… It said it was a Cogent.”

  “You met one of them?”

  “It said its name is Fathom.”

  Luke releases the restraint on my right arm first and I don’t hesitate. I reach out as he walks around the table to my left side, my wounded side, and grab him by the throat. “Where’s One? What have they done with her?”

  Luke chokes out a response. “I’m Luke. Luke. One’s safe. As I told you, they’re observing her.”

  I nod, signaling for him to undo the restraint on my left arm. “Then you did inject me? It was real.”

  With both arms free, I sit up. I don’t release Luke, but he doesn’t fight me either as I direct him to the restraints on my legs.

  “Cedes, I understand your confusion. You were shot. Shot. For a time, I thought you weren’t going to make it. They operated. You came to earlier and yes, I injected you. Whatever you saw, what happened after, wasn’t real.”

  Free at last, I swing around to the side of the table. I relax my grip on Luke’s throat, but I don’t release him. “You injected yourself, then we were in a glass city. We went up in the air on a floating disc and then you weren’t you anymore…” I shake my head. “I don’t think you were ever you.”

  I feel his sharp swallow as much as I see it. “Cedes, anything you saw after I injected you didn’t happen or rather it happened, but it was all in your mind. Anything can happen in nanospace. It’s in the ether. It’s where intellects coalesce.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know how exactly. You were connected to the ether temporarily by the serum. You were gone for a few hours but once the serum ran its course, you returned.”

  “Hours? I couldn’t have been there for more than a few minutes.”

  His eyebrows knit together. “Strange. Normally, time flows so quickly it feels like days and days in there.”

  Realizing I’m still holding Luke by the throat, I let go. “He—it—called me an augment. What’s an augment?”

  “I haven’t heard of augments before, but if you met something in the ether that something was a Cogent. We’re aboard a Cogent airship. The Cogents are one of many collectives within the amalgamation. They value pertinence, relevance, and meaning.”

  The airship is moving I realize and the windows are fogged so that I can no longer see out. “It kept asking me to explain. I don’t know why.”

  “My first encounter with a Cogent was under water. I wasn’t really under water but I thought I was. The Cogent was strange and kept asking me to explain what it felt like to drown. I didn’t understand but I explained how my lungs burned, how h
eavy my chest was, how it hurt. What did the Cogent want you to explain?”

  “I don’t understand really. I see things sometimes and that’s what it wanted to know about. Is the ether nanospace?”

  “The ether is connected space. Nanospace is a part of the ether, but only a part.”

  One moment my hand is on Luke’s chest. The next, my lips are pressed against his, but his response isn’t what I expect. He pulls away from me and there’s a look in his eyes, like he’s angry or confused.

  Honestly, I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect this reaction. “So that happened,” I say to break the sudden disquiet.

  Luke doesn’t respond.

  I try to stand, but I’m unsteady on my feet. A sudden, radiating pain hits me. Luke’s there in an instant to steady me and keep me from collapsing.

  “Steady now,” he says, his concern showing in his beautiful eyes. “You’ve been through a lot recently. You’re feeling better, but you’re not healed.”

  I know I’m not healed, but something isn’t right. The pain isn’t in my shoulder. It’s in the back of my head. I reach back with my good arm to touch the back of my head, but Luke stops me.

  “Don’t touch it,” he says, his expression placid as he grips my wrist.

  I persist and touch the cool metal plate in the back of my head anyway.

  “The Cogents wanted to speak with you before the governor was installed, but your wounds were too grievous. I’m not sure why it upset Fathom so, but it did.”

  I step back to the table and sit on the edge. “Fathom? That’s the one—the one that kept asking me to explain myself.”

  Luke’s hand is on my shoulder, gripping softly, reassuringly, but his eyes betray something. “You met Fathom in the ether? Fathom. Were there others?”