Once you catch the vision, it will never let you go.
Arnon D’Bvaym
“BIT!” WESTLEY HELD 64Bit’s shoulders and pushed down, shushing him. “Bit! It’s okay!”
64Bit slowly pulled out of the deluge of sensation, becoming aware of what he could actually see, touch, hear, and smell. He was lying on his back on hard dirt, looking up at branches and leaves. The darkness that surrounded him was nearly complete, but as he looked around, he saw the silhouette of the ATV nearby. “Where . . . what . . .” 64Bit found it hard to think coherently.
Westley spoke slowly. “We were talking earlier today when you suddenly had a seizure or something—you looked horrified and began shaking and moaning. You were really loud—Kayla almost tried to knock you out to shut you up, but I fended her off. Then, you started making noise again, so I’ve been trying to wake you.” Westley looked up and scanned the area around him. “Anyway, we tried to follow the directions you gave us earlier and hugged the mountain range. I don’t know where Kayla is right now—said something about securing the area. It’s been a few hours since I’ve seen her.”
64Bit focused on breathing slowly and regaining control of himself. He nodded his thanks to Westley and sat up, then leaned against a tree trunk and sighed. He felt drained, body and spirit. What had happened to him?
“What do I know,” 64Bit muttered, leaning his head back and turning off his eye screens as he did so. “What do I know? I tried to sense rozies around me. That capacity was proven in Fort. But there were too many. I felt like I was being pulled downward. Which means there could be . . . an order of magnitude more than we found in Fort . . .”
“What are you saying?” Westley whispered, leaning forward.
64Bit shook his head, then spoke normally. “We’re above the rozie factory. We have to be. It’s underground. And it’s absolutely crawling with them, even after all the rozies we destroyed in Fort.”
“Oh,” Westley said. 64Bit couldn’t tell if Westley paled or if he just looked pale in the dying light. Regardless, the moment passed quickly before Westley donned his eternal, genuine smile and said, “You must be hungry. Let me get something from your pack.” Then he walked over to the ATV and started rummaging around.
As Westley opened 64Bit’s bag, 64Bit’s stomach grumbled. He was ravenous. He tore into the food that Westley brought him. As he ate, he opened the maps he’d received from the Binary and growled at their lack of details. He found a note of one possible side entrance where they might slip in unnoticed, but now that 64Bit knew the factory was sprawling underground, he saw little chance of matching the basic map with local features to find that entrance. “I have no idea how we’re going to find a safe entrance to this place,” 64Bit said, leaving or survive once inside unspoken.
“Well, I don’t know how Kayla thinks she can see well enough to be our lookout tonight, with her one eye and all,” Westley said. “I was scared that she was going to drive herself over a cliff at first, but maybe she’s gotten used to the lack of depth perception already.”
Darkness actively deepened as Westley spoke. 64Bit activated his eye screens’ night vision and cast his gaze around. They were in a copse, perhaps hidden from view by the bushes and a line of trees around them a little denser than the rest of the forest. He could see the sky fairly well, but it was a cloudy, starless night. A strange scent tickled 64Bit’s nostrils.
“I just hope she’s not lost. I don’t know how we’d ever find her,” Westley said.
“If she gets lost tonight, she’d find us in the morning.” 64Bit was more concerned about Kayla leaving them or stumbling upon an entrance to Id’s factory and deciding to explore herself without alerting them than he was that she might get lost.
Leaves rustled, but otherwise the forest remained eerily quiet.
“So, what was that earlier? What happened to you?” Westley asked.
64Bit shrugged. “I wish I knew. I tried to sense for rozies, like I did in Fort. I’m not . . .” He swallowed, finding it hard to push the words out. “It’s not a skill I’ve practiced very much, so there’s a lot I don’t know. I assume that what I sensed was simply overwhelming. But there could be other explanations. Maybe Id has set up devices intended to overload that sense and incapacitate enemy technomancers. I might still be twitching on the side of the road if it weren’t for you two, after all. I don’t think we’ll get much use from my rozie sense, for now.”
Westley took a long, slow breath. “That’s good to know. That’s . . . yeah.”
64Bit looked at Westley and noticed him looking at the ground. “You are nervous?”
“Of course. You can mess with rozies with your staff. Kayla killed a rozie. Sure, it took a gun, but I can’t even hold one of those things without my hands shaking terribly. Once I distracted a rozie with my voice, but I can’t do much else. It makes following you two . . . daunting. I know who carries the weight. But it gets scarier to know that we don’t have a tool that protected us.”
Westley looked toward 64Bit—not directly at him, as it was too dark for Westley to see any longer. 64Bit wondered if Westley expected him to respond to that—how could he? 64Bit felt like he was barely keeping his head above water as it was.
The silence was broken by a loud cracking sound.
64Bit began grabbing at the ground next to him, trying to locate his staff with his gloved hand while keeping his eye screens peeled around him. Westley couldn’t see anything in the dark—if they were being ambushed, only 64Bit would know what was happening.
More cracking, then the screeching of metal. 64Bit glanced over and saw Westley crawling toward the ATV, then rolling under it. 64Bit pressed himself tighter against the bark of the tree he had his back to and held his staff pointing forward. The noise had come from beyond the ATV, thankfully, rather than behind him. Still, 64Bit glanced over his shoulder to ensure that nobody was sneaking up on him.
Memories of the scarecrow rozies rushing through the forest, almost keeping up with Khalil’s ATV, flashed through 64Bit’s mind. 64Bit pushed his back against the trunk and used it to push himself to his feet, then ran to a nearby bush and hid behind it. Some more cracking, some rustling, a metallic clatter. 64Bit tried, and failed, to control his breathing as he looked around.
The unnatural stillness of the forest returned.
After a few moments, Westley crawled out from under the ATV. “That was close,” he whispered.
Then a body flew through the air, flying over Westley, just missing clipping him before crashing into the dirt face-first. It slid for a few feet, then stilled. Westley stayed frozen where he was, not moving or visibly breathing.
64Bit stared at the body. He could see its eyes, open and unblinking, staring forward. They didn’t glow—either this was a regular corpse, or a dead rozie. 64Bit waited a few moments longer, until Westley could apparently hold his breath no longer and exhaled loudly, and then trained his staff on the body and commanded the staff to repel.
It didn’t move.
64Bit looked around the forest, then crept forward, eyes on the body the entire time. As he changed position and saw more of its head, he noticed that the back had been caved in and torn open, the edges bent, and liquid was dribbling out.
“A rozie. Westley, it’s a rozie,” 64Bit whispered.
“Why isn’t it moving?” Westley said.
“It’s dead.”
“Can you be sure?”
64Bit tried commanding the rozie with his staff again. Then he poked its head with the tip of his staff. The dirt on the staff left a discolored spot on the rozie’s forehead, but nothing else changed.
“Yes.”
Westley let out another long, low breath, then stood and began looking around. “Where did it come from? Are there any more around? Are we in danger? Did it find Kayla first?”
64Bit almost sought out his rozie sense to scan the area, then remembered the feeling of being dragged into the earth earlier. He pressed his lips together and began walking around the copse, staring out into the forest as he did so. Once he did a full circle, he said, “I think we’re alone.”
“Oh, good. Oh good.” Westley collapsed onto the seat of the ATV, shaking.
64Bit looked at the rozie again, fear now married with revulsion. Rozies were abominations—he’d seen far more evidence than he’d ever needed at Fort to know exactly what this rozie would have done to him and Westley given the chance. But why was it dead? And why and how was it thrown into their little camp?
“Someone else has to be out there,” 64Bit whispered. And it couldn’t be Kayla.
“Should we . . . should we get rid of it? Is it safe to keep it here?” Westley asked.
64Bit said, “Um . . . couldn’t hurt, I don’t think. Maybe we should move it.”
Westley closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled, long and slow, then stood. “I can’t see it. But if you bring me to it, I will help you drag it away.”
64Bit walked sideways, unwilling to put his back to the rozie body, and took Westley’s arm. He guided Westley to the rozie’s feet, putting Westley’s hands on one, then his own on the other. “Pull toward me so we’re dragging it away first, then pull it backward,” 64Bit said.
“Okay,” Westley whispered.
The rozie was large and very heavy—64Bit felt his arms shaking as they dragged the rozie along. The synthetic skin of its ankles was very sophisticated, almost natural to touch, but it had a slightly rubbery feel to it that was noticeable on the knuckle of the ankle, where the skin created a very thin padding over the metal beneath. 64Bit tried not to shudder as he imagined sliding the fake skin off the rozie’s metal foot like a sock, but it held in place as 64Bit and Westley dragged the rozie to the edge of the camp. 64Bit then tapped Westley’s shoulder and whispered, “We’re done.” The rozie was far enough, and 64Bit didn’t want to stray very far.
64Bit then led Westley back to the ATV. They didn’t talk much after that—64Bit didn’t know Westley’s reasoning, but for him, he worried their talking had alerted the creature to their presence earlier. 64Bit did his best to stay awake and keep watch, but as the hours wore on, he found his tiredness overpowering his fear, until he felt he had no choice but to lean against one of the ATV’s large tires and drift away into restless dreams.
#
“WHAT THE HELL happened here?”
64Bit flinched, then breathed deeply and stretched. His body felt cramped from being pressed against the ATV wheel. He rubbed his neck and turned on his eye screens, quickly appreciating one of the perks of having artificial eyes: no blurry morning vision. As soon as his eye screens turned on, he could clearly see Kayla’s diminutive figure, standing behind the rozie, made threatening by the raw frustration that leaked out of her. She had a dark bag under her visible eye, her face wore a scowl, and she had her knife in her hand.
64Bit’s gaze followed the furrow left in the ground by the rozie; he shook his head as he remembered the events of the previous night. Patches of synthetic skin on the rozie were missing, revealing silvery metal and wires underneath. Dark, dried liquid stained the rozie’s eye sockets and sides of its head from the caved-in skull.
Westley spoke first. “Where were you? I thought you were keeping watch?”
Kayla knelt and poked the edges of the hole in the dead rozie’s skull. “I was. But I can’t be everywhere at once. I heard some noise, but I was pretty far off. Why is there a dead rozie here?”
“Far off?” 64Bit said. “How far did you go?”
Kayla stared at 64Bit, then looked away. “Farther than I should have. It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”
Silence reigned for a few moments. Then Westley said, “We don’t know what happened. Or I definitely don’t. It was too dark to see anything. But it was thrown at us from over there— the rozie. Whatever did it ran off.”
“If you couldn’t see anything, how do you know the other rozie ran off?”
“We’re still alive. That’s a critical bit of data,” 64Bit said. “And I looked around as best as I could. I didn’t see or find anything. I didn’t go beyond the trees, though.”
Kayla nodded, her eyelid drooping as she did so, and mumbled, “Well, I ought to check on that, then.” She started walking in the direction they’d said the rozie had been thrown from, passing the ATV and Westley.
“Stop!” 64Bit shouted. Kayla paused, so 64Bit added, “Get some rest.”
“You’re worried about me?” Kayla asked, still facing the forest.
“Yes—and you’re no good if you exhaust yourself, anyway,” 64Bit said.
Kayla shook her head, then slipped into the tree line, soon disappearing. 64Bit pressed his lips together. Tired, probably hungry, and missing an eye, but Kayla could still slip through the forest like she was a ghost. He hoped she wouldn’t get herself into trouble.
Westley offered 64Bit some food, then set Kayla’s breakfast of bread and water on the seat of the ATV before eating his own. 64Bit slowly munched on his breakfast despite his growling stomach’s clamor for him to inhale it. The hard trail bread was dry, but he only took small sips from his waterskin to help preserve its contents. Beyond the mountains, there would be no bolt-holes for them to escape to and resupply at.
Sitting and staring at the dirt as he ate seemed a waste of time to 64Bit. He pulled up one map the Binary had sent him and scanned through it once again. The map of Id’s factory was little more than a three-dimensional image composed of colored rectangles and squares. 64Bit assumed that the larger cubes were rooms, the long, thin boxes hallways, elevator shafts, and so forth, but nothing was labeled, so he couldn’t be certain. The map was taller than it was wide, and many corridor markers left the overall body of the map, moving like tendrils to flatten out along its bottom, suggesting many different entrances in various locations. 64Bit sighed and flipped the map over in his mind, positioning it so it would match an underground factory. He had wondered why the Binary had originally sent it to him upside down before flipping it himself, but it turns out they were right about that, too.
“If only they had provided more information,” 64Bit muttered. The other map, which led to the Blight, hadn’t proved very useful, as 64Bit already knew the general direction to get there, and Kayla knew of the mountain trail that brought them up out of the valley.
As he pondered, 64Bit tried looking around again to match terrain features to the map, but quickly gave up. Surrounded by trees as they were, matching the terrain to the map was a futile exercise. He glanced over at Westley, who was standing over the rozie body and poking at it, then shifting his position and poking at it again. It almost seemed he didn’t really believe the rozie was dead.
Leaves crunched as Kayla marched back into camp. Without a word, she grabbed the rations on the ATV, gobbled them up, then sat down and looked around, clearly trying to keep an eye on things. Moments later, however, she had nodded off, head resting on her arm on the handlebars of the ATV.
Westley looked up when Kayla’s breathing evened. “Well, I don’t think she’d do that if she found any signs of rozies nearby,” Westley said.
“Maybe,” 64Bit said. “Was she too tired to find them, or did whatever threw that rozie just leave no tracks? I don’t like either answer.”
Westley kicked the rozie. “Shouldn’t this thing lock up when it dies? You turn off the ATV and it doesn’t just start rolling around all over the place.”
“That’s because the ATV has to be braked to turn off.”
“Well, how does this thing work? Do you know?” Westley knelt down and turned the rozie head so he could see its eyes better. “Kayla managed to kill a rozie by shooting through its eye—it took a few shots with her handgun, point-blank, but it worked. There must be some sort of metal barrier behind the eyes that protects the brain from being easily accessed that way, but it isn’t impenetrable.”
“If blowing through a rozie’s eyes were an easy way to kill it, I don’t think the Fall of Man would have ever happened,” 64Bit said. “But I don’t know. It wasn’t just rozies that ruined the world.” And since we made the rozies, maybe it’s not ultimately their fault, anyway.
“Teach me how this thing works,” Westley said, pointing to the rozie.
64Bit blinked. “What?”
“You know—how does it stay powered? What’s the range of motion? How were its joints built? How is the synthetic skin attached and made so lifelike? I want to know. And the more I know, hey, maybe I’ll come up with an idea to stop them. You know—my talent for sharing dumb ideas and all.” Westley looked up and smiled.
Blood rushed to 64Bit’s face. “The master . . . I am not a dark technomancer. I did not study how to make rozies—I wouldn’t even know where to go looking for such information!”
Westley looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled again. Using both arms and lifting with his legs, he flipped the rozie onto its back, opened its mouth, and began tugging at its jaw.
64Bit didn’t want to get involved, but he couldn’t help himself. “What are you doing?”
Westley gave up on the jaw and began tugging at the rozie’s fingers. “Trying to take this thing apart. We probably need to wait until Kayla wakes up before we go anywhere. And if you don’t know anything about rozies, well, here’s my chance to be useful. I need to learn everything there is to know about these things. Starting with how to take them apart.”
64Bit watched Westley tug at the finger some more, then winced as Westley pulled out a knife and began cutting through the synthetic skin where the finger met the hand: despite there being no flesh or blood underneath, it still reminded him uncomfortably of when his finger had been bitten off by Zed. Westley tugged at the finger for a few moments longer, bending it in every direction to try to pop it off.
64Bit sighed and rummaged through his backpack. “Stop, stop—if you destroy it while taking it apart, you won’t learn anything. I brought some tools. Let me help.”
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 