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  After the Machines

  Episode Two: Transition

  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 Two: Transition

  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 Reagent Press LLC. RP BOOKS, REAGENT PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Reagent Press LLC.

  Cover image licensed from ThinkStock.

  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

  EPIGRAPH

  PART 2 TRANSITION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  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.

  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 2

  Transition

  Chapter 1

  Node: 001

  Pain. It’s the last thing I remember before I wake up in a new place awash in white and a new world is revealed. One unexpected.

  Closing my eyes and opening them several times doesn’t change what I see. But what I see cannot be. The wired humans are all around me in their metal boxes, stacked in endless stacks to endless heights. The boxes have their canvas curtains drawn back so I can see them dangle like puppets on strings. Empty spaces around each individual stack let me see rows and columns spreading out and on and on.

  The ceiling and floor are lost somewhere in the expanse, a space flooded with bright white light from sources unseen and not just from above. My heart beats faster and faster. Sucking at the air doesn’t help, for I can’t catch my breath even though I gasp and gasp.

  Suddenly, I realize there is something in my mouth, extending down my throat. I gag and cough, trying to find calm, trying to drink in the air, but I can’t.

  All I can think about is breathing. Finding air and breaking free.

  Pulling at the chains doesn’t help to free me regardless of how hard I twist and writhe. No matter, I continue to fight, to struggle, to will myself free.

  Going limp to test how well the chains on my wrists hold my weight does nothing. Trying to kick with my feet does nothing.

  Closing my eyes, my thoughts shift to the chains. How they are attached. Where they are attached. How they are clasped. Where they are clasped.

  Remembering isn’t as easy as it should be. It’s as if I look back through a thick fog. The images swim and shift even as they try to come into focus. It’s not me. It’s something else.

  In one of our gatherings, we found bottles of a liquid that looked like water but wasn’t. Drinking it burned our throats and made our heads swim, much like my thoughts swim now.

  Trying to remember clamping the chains about my ankles, fixing the chains on my wrists, I catch a glimpse of one image. One image that matters.

  It’s of me, holding on to the right chain and using my fingers to flick the final clamp into place. It’s one of the last things I did before nothingness found me. That image I fight to hold onto, even as a twist and writhe.

  Oh, Luke, what have I done? I tried to follow in your footsteps, to find you. I found nothingness instead.

  Is this what you found?

  Is it why you never returned?

  Why none have ever returned?

  I see flashes of sunshine through transient clouds. I feel wind fluttering on my cheeks. I hear receding laughter, bare feet on wet stones. I want to follow, to see who is with me.

  The rain is soft at first, then a steady drizzle.

  No matter, I run on. Is that a tree? Is someone standing there in its shadow?

  “Luke, Luke,” I call out, but it’s not Luke behind the tree. It’s me. Me reflected in a looking glass. In my reflection, I see a narrow face, wide, round eyes, and long, straight hair the color of sunshine.

  Looking at my reflection isn’t something I do often. In fact, it has been a long time since I last looked. A lot can happen between looks I know. My cheeks are thinner. I’m a little taller and my hair is longer, but it’s me. Me and my blue, blue eyes.

  I frown a little. I’m plain I realize, not pretty like Sierra or Celeste.

  “There,” I say, catching a glimpse of something in the looking glass. I turn, expecting to see Luke, but it’s not Luke. It’s me, reflected in another looking glass.

  I stare into my own eyes for a moment. I realize the tree’s gone, that there are looking glasses all around me. Nothing but looking glasses as far as I can see.

  Chapter 2

  Node: 011

  Losing consciousness isn’t something I remember, but I must have. When I awake, I expect everything to be different. I expect to open my eyes and see Central. To see, Linc and Chevy, Austin and Dakota. To hear, Celeste’s melodious voice and Luke’s magical laughter. Instead I find to my great horror that I’m still in the white room with its endless stacks of metal cages.

  The lights are flashing. It frightens me as the room shifts rapidly from white to black and back again. I close my eyes and try to hide from it, focusing on Luke’s laughter helps.

  Laughter was rare and so I know I was ever fascinated by it, even i
f I didn’t quite understand it those many times I heard it before Luke left. Still, it was in those moments when I knew for certain Luke was the one I wanted to follow and not Matthew. Later, it was Luke’s laughter that told me what I was doing was right and that Luke was right about it all. To know is better than to not know. To remember is everything.

  Of that laughter, I can recall its every rise and fall, its every joy-filled hue. That laughter carries me away to a place where I neither dream nor feel. A place where I float in nothingness, in darkness.

  It feels like I’m on an island, surrounded by dark waters and dark skies. I stand on the island and look out. I turn around and look back. And there’s my entire world, a tiny patch of land floating like a star against the dark of the sky.

  In the nothingness, I catch a glimpse of a figure with a fine, tanned face and short, brown hair. He’s far off and away, but I’m sure it’s Luke. At least, I want to believe it’s Luke.

  It’s like there’s a light behind him as he floats in the nothingness. His head is down and his eyes are closed. He’s hugging his knees and it’s as if he’s asleep.

  “Luke, Luke,” I call out and my voice echoes off unseen walls.

  “Luke, it’s me, Cedes!”

  When he looks up, my heart feels like it skips a few beats and without realizing it I hold my breath. “Breathe,” I whisper to myself.

  Something is wrong. There is a focus to his beautiful tawny eyes that hardens them to points and the whites of his eyes shine eerily.

  It’s Luke, but not Luke I realize. “Luke, you found the machines, didn’t you? Oh, Luke, what have they done to you?”

  I want to run to him. I do but I run and run and I get no closer. It’s as if I’m tethered in place or as if he moves away from me with every step I take.

  I struggle to reach him. Running. Running.

  “Luke, Luke!”

  His light winks out and I’m back on my island surrounded by dark waters and dark skies. I look out. I turn around and look back. There is nothing to see.

  I’m alone. My entire world, a tiny patch of nothingness.

  Chapter 3

  Node: 110

  The nothingness is peaceful, so peaceful. It’s where I want to be, but there at the back of my mind is a flickering flame. A flame in darkness that burns so bright it hurts.

  Countless images float in the flame. Pictures of things I’ve done, seen. Focusing brings the images to life, but they are so small, so far removed, that they might as well not be.

  Straining, yearning, willing, I bring an image out of the flame. Instead of seeing the living image before my eyes I see the white room. Its endlessness. Its nothingness. It takes a moment but I realize this is not memory. That my eyes are open. That I see what is, not what was.

  The metal cages are there, everywhere, whether I look up, down, left or right.

  The chains hold me. The wires wrap around me.

  There are more wires than before. But why?

  What is happening? What do the machines want?

  Why do the machines want us? If they are nothing to us, what are we to them?

  The lights flash. It’s terrifying.

  White. Black.

  White. Black.

  Everything. Nothing.

  Everything. Nothing.

  Pain. Freedom.

  Pain. Freedom.

  I want to close my eyes. To hide. To hide and be nothing.

  Everything within tells me the nothingness will be forever. That I will never know anything ever again. That I will succumb. That I will be nothing. That I’ve always been nothing.

  Being nothing is easy. Being myself is hard. Hard? No, not hard. Impossible.

  Impossible to be, to think, to be me. Impossible to believe in anything but the nothingness.

  Freedom. Pain.

  Nothing. Everything.

  Black. White.

  My eyes keep closing but I try to keep them open.

  The lights flash. I’m terrified.

  Why do the machines want me to sleep?

  Why do the machines want me to be nothing?

  Why can’t I just be?

  “Luke, it’s me, Cedes! Luke, are you out there? It’s me, Cedes.”

  The island beckons. The darkness waits. Sleepy, so sleepy.

  What if I close my eyes just for a moment? A moment, nothing more. A moment of peace. A moment of quiet. Isn’t the nothingness where I want to be?

  Chapter 4

  Node: 111

  Slack in the chains, I fight to hold on, to ignore the urge to sleep. In the back of my mind, I see the clasps binding me forever in this place.

  I kick. I pull. I thrash. The grasping fingers on my slack hand can almost feel one of the clasps.

  I yearn, I strain. My hand finds the clasp, slips across its surface, but can’t undo it.

  Shifting my weight, I pull in the other direction and try to free my right hand. My fingers dance as they find the clasp. They dance until they are bloody, but I’m unable to get free.

  Panic tries to take me, but I don’t let it. Calm is what I need. I shift my weight again, try again, working carefully at the edge of the clasp. The fingers on my right hand throb as my left hand works.

  I dig in with the edge of a fingernail until I’m certain, until I know I can flick and twist and open the clasp. Soon my left arm is free and I’m opening the clasp on my other wrist. Afterward, I try to free my feet but can’t. The wires don’t let me. I rip and pull wildly, with passion and persistence.

  My breathing is irregular, shallow. I rip the tube out of my mouth and pull it out from unknown depths within me. When the tube is gone, I cough and sputter, liquid froth coming from my mouth.

  I cough and sputter until there is no more of the thick, syrupy liquid within me. And then, finally, I can breathe. Truly breathe. That first true breath I take is like the only breath I’ve ever taken. The air rushes in and then out.

  The fog in my mind starts to clear. My thoughts go back to the wires. Some few of them are still attached to my chest, my legs, my arms. I remove them.

  I try to bend down to free my legs from the chains, but something behind me prevents this. I reach back with both hands and find a mass of wires at the base of my skull.

  I pull at these, but they are not simply attached to my skin like the others. They extend deep within me. Every tug at them sends a wave of pain through me, arcing out in a wave that extends to the tips of my fingers, to the tips of my toes.

  Luke found living wires like this once in a high space within the stone ghosts. Touching the wires knocked him across the room. When he came to, he said it was as if he was being burned alive. That’s what each pull on the wires is to me: My body being doused in flames, emerging only when the pain touches every part of me.

  Curling into a ball and weeping is all I can think about. But I can’t do that. Or can I?

  The wire goes taught instantly as I let my body go slack. Pain follows. I feel myself dangling, with only the wires at the back of my skull holding me up. Nothingness comes with the darkness that swallows me.

  Chapter 5

  Node: 001

  When the nothingness fades, I find myself in darkness, in a place where my thoughts race. I want to open my eyes, but images of Luke, of Sierra, of Celeste, wrap themselves around me and lull me.

  Other images swim in my thoughts too. I see the stone ghosts, the wastes and the empty expanse beyond. I see endless convoys. Trucks coming from all directions.

  I’m certain I’m in one of the trucks, in a metal box, in a cage really. A cage for humans.

  When the trucks stop, my cage starts moving. I know not how. I don’t see anything or anyone, except myself hanging in empty air as the cage moves first into a large open room away from the back of the white truck, then down a long white hall, and finally into its place within the endless stacks.

  It’s as if the container floats by itself and perhaps it does. The movement is smooth, fluid, with the box always moving
in one direction, never astray.

  But there’s something wrong with what I see. Something missing, even when I replay the images in my mind.

  I know I should open my eyes. I want to, but I can’t. It’s like I’m in an endless dream from which there is no waking, no escape.

  “Wake up,” I shout at my sleeping self. “Wake up and see the world or dream forever. Luke, where are you?”

  Opening my eyes is possibly the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, accomplished only when I shake my sleeping self violently in the dream.

  I awake in a corner of the metal box. The thick cord of wires from the back of my neck hiss and spark near the floor. Crawling around them isn’t easy as they dance and flash, but soon I am staring over the lip of the box, looking down into the endlessness of the stack.

  The latch that opens the bars I stare through is on the outside. I reach for it through the bars. My fingers catch its edge. It’s difficult to flip up and slide across, but I manage it.

  Like a spider, I crawl out of the box and work my way down. When a thick tube zooms down and encases a stack, I know why there are empty spaces between the stacks. Somewhere deep beneath me, the tube meets the floor with a resonant thwack. A whooshing sound follows and abruptly the metal containers are sucked up and away.

  As I continue climbing down, one by one, other stacks are encased and whooshed away. The empty places left behind are refilled one cage at a time and aren’t empty for long. The metal boxes seem to come from all directions, always converging on a stack at the height where they are needed. It’s a strange dance, with constant movement all around me.

  When I find the floor, I do not believe what my eyes see. Belief only comes when my feet touch the cold floor, where I rest for a moment after collapsing onto my backside.