Don’t you understand? We saved them—human ingenuity and audacity, fearlessness in the face of the unknown. There was no God in this.
Arnon D’Bvaym
THE RED LIGHT scared Cortex. He knew it was bad, but he wasn’t certain what kind of bad—and Hannah didn’t stop to explain it. There wasn’t anything he could do about that, so he huddled close to Hannah’s legs and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes while her hands ran over the metal door that led to the surface. After a few moments of inspection, she turned around and picked Cortex up before walking back the way they had come.
“Where are we going?” Cortex asked. “I thought we were leaving?”
Hannah glanced at Cortex, her red camera eyes expressionless. “We are. However, the factory appears to be on lockdown, so we’ll need to do an override at the control room.”
Cortex thought about that. It seemed strange to him for Id’s factory to have one control room—after all, she had designed it so that she could do most things with mental commands, and the rest was automated. There were some aspects of the factory that Id couldn’t control mentally . . . Cortex preferred to ponder these contradictions rather than on the agonizing fear that bubbled in his stomach and kept stealing his attention—the red light, the cold atmosphere of the factory, and his memory of the body with the hollowed-out head on the table left him with an increasingly sick feeling as Hannah carried him downward once again.
“You look nervous,” Hannah said. “Do not fear. We represent Prophet—Id and her servants wouldn’t dare touch us.” There was an unusual tint of uncertainty in Hannah’s voice that Cortex didn’t fail to notice.
“Doesn’t Id control everything here with her mind? What if she’s gone mad—she could kill us easily, lock us in a small room and let me starve.”
“Even if she’s gone mad, I do not believe that’s likely.” Hannah held Cortex in one arm as she opened a door and walked through into the hallway beyond. “When Id was younger, she had full use of her body. Her factory had very little that was mind-controlled then, because she liked to work with her hands—and having things operate manually prevented competitors from hacking in and trying to kill her with her own building. She’s been transitioning the factory to be operated wirelessly, mentally, but it’s a slow process, particularly when her attention must primarily be on Prophet’s goals.”
Cortex eyed each door they passed with suspicion. Despite Hannah’s attempt to be soothing, he felt as if at any moment some fantastical trap would emerge from the walls, the ceiling, or burst out of a hidden passage: giant buzz saws, spinning electric cords, molten metal, and other horrible implements of death were realized in vivid detail by his imagination. He clutched Hannah more tightly.
Hannah reached another door, but this time the handle wouldn’t budge. She set Cortex down, planted her feet, and kicked the door next to its handle. It shuddered and made some cracking noises, but it didn’t seem visibly affected beyond the footprint that Hannah left on it. On Hannah’s second kick the door burst open, the handle and locking mechanism within ripped out of the door and left hanging on the doorframe. Hannah picked up Cortex and began jogging down the stairs.
“Why are you moving faster?” Cortex asked.
Hannah rounded a corner smoothly and picked up speed. “I am feeling less at ease as each moment goes by. If Id is locking down each floor, then she is truly concerned about something. Perhaps she learned that I am taking you away—perhaps she wants to ensure that she can mentally break you before you ever reach Prophet.”
“. . . Break my mind?” Cortex shivered and huddled in Hannah’s arms.
“It was Id that turned your time in the mental room from testing into torture. Id brought you to witness the enlightenment at one of its most gruesome parts. I do not know why she wishes to taint your mind with fear, pain, and uncertainty, but current events seem too coincidentally timed with our attempt to leave. Rats in the walls? Perhaps Id was referring to me. Perhaps Id has lost her faith and is falling into heresy.”
Rats in the walls? Cortex thought, confused.
Hannah reached another door and moved to open it, then paused. She stepped over to the staircase’s railing and looked down. Cortex did so as well, his heart hammering at the sight of the dizzying distance. But something else also grabbed his attention: several floors down, rozies scuttled like maddened crabs, in and out of doors and even crawling over each other in a crazed effort to get . . . somewhere.
“Interesting,” Hannah said. She then left the railing and kicked down the door to this level, holding Cortex in her arms as she did so this time, and jogged through.
“What’s happening down there?” Cortex asked.
“I would guess that Id has commanded her servants to destroy someone, and I fear that someone is us,” Hannah responded. “Id commanded me to visit the lower levels, expecting me to take care of some sort of problem for her. I had briefly considered doing so to keep Id complacent, but now I think acting quickly and directly was the better decision.” Hannah paused. “Or perhaps Id’s project down there escaped. She was given a special assignment by Prophet that could prove a great deal of trouble to her if she loses control of it. Last I heard, the project was recovering unexpectedly well in preparation for physical torture.”
Cortex wondered what that project was but wasn’t curious enough to suggest that they get any closer to the crowds of rozies below.
Another door. Hannah paused just before it and looked down at Cortex. “Id uses the control room as her personal room as well. I may need you to protect my mind from her influence.” Without waiting for Cortex to respond, Hannah kicked the door down and stepped through into a spacious room that, unlike the rest of the factory, was brightly lit.
Any complaint that Cortex had about not knowing what Hannah meant died as they stepped into the control room. Cortex could finally see the ceiling, and his eyes were immediately drawn up there. Metal tracks, tubes filled with colored liquids, and multicolored wires crossed each other above Cortex’s head, creating a loud pattern of color and disunity. It was easy to recognize, now, how Id moved around; the column of wires and tubes that extended from her back must attach to some sort of cart above. That also probably explained the slithering sound she made as she moved around.
Cortex looked back at the door they had passed through. This one didn’t appear to be able to lift into the ceiling or fall into the floor.
“She performs many of her labors through rozie servants, therefore it wasn’t necessary to modify the factory so that she could travel to every corner of it,” Hannah said. “She’s not trapped in this room, though—in fact, she comes and goes regularly. We will need to move quickly.” As she spoke, Hannah pointed at a far elevator door that lifted all the way to the ceiling. Cortex was impressed—it almost seemed that Hannah had read his mind. Cortex let his gaze wander through the rest of the room as Hannah began walking again.
A single, large screen dominated much of one wall. Its glossy, black surface contrasted with the rough, matte stone beside it. Below the screen was a busy desk covered in switches and buttons and a thin sheet of dust. Nearby sat a strange depression in the ground that appeared to be filled with tiny metal cubes— Cortex couldn’t imagine what that was for. The rest of the room was bare, save for one corner that had potted plants arranged in a semi-circle. Though wilted, this one spot of life sitting within Id’s enormous factory of stone and death warmed Cortex’s heart just a little . . . and made him wonder why it was here.
Hannah approached the desk and pressed a few buttons with her free hand, disturbing the layer of dust that covered the thing. She looked up at the screen, frowned, and set Cortex down before pressing more buttons. Despite her stiff expression and movements, Cortex sensed hesitation as she carefully scanned the table before interacting with it again. Cortex looked up at the screen, which remained dark. Did Hannah know what she was doing? Cortex felt an immediate familiar desire to jump in and begin helping—to explore and see what would happen if he began pressing buttons, but another feeling held him back— he remembered the last time he had jumped in and began exploring. He’d accidentally destabilized a particle battery and killed his master. The thought made Cortex feel as if a large anchor were hanging off his heart, and he turned away, knowing that his desires were—
“Can you turn this on?” Hannah asked, frustration creeping its way onto her face. “I don’t even know if this desk works anymore. It might just be superficial at this point.”
A spark of excitement lit in Cortex’s heart. Not willing to let this moment go to waste, Cortex hastened to the desk and began scanning it over. Not a single button, as far as he could see, was labeled in any way. He recognized what looked like a keyboard in the front and middle of the desk—though the letters weren’t marked on the keys, the series of small, square buttons were placed together in a pattern identical to the keyboards the master had. Cortex pressed several buttons, but the screen didn’t turn on.
But nothing broke, either, which was also exciting for Cortex.
A soft whirring sound filled the air. Hannah’s head jerked to the side, camera eyes wide. Cortex followed her gaze and saw the imposing elevator door at the end of it. Hannah turned her attention back to the desk. “We need to move quickly. She may be coming. She often returns here between Enlightenings.”
Cortex’s heart began to pick up pace. He wasn’t certain how dangerous Id was on her own, but Hannah’s urgency filled him with a sense of dread. What if Id took control of Hannah the way she took control of the other rozies? A horrible image of Hannah kicking a door to splinters flashed through Cortex’s mind, but Cortex was the door. The boy shivered and tried to focus on the task at hand.
If the computer wouldn’t turn on manually, Cortex decided that he’d need to connect with it mentally. Other than rozies, Cortex had only interacted with a Therexe Cube mentally before—the master had told him that he wasn’t old enough to operate the computers that way yet—but how different could it be? He closed his eyes and imagined his brain reaching out toward the control desk, just like he did with the cube. He felt a little resistance, like a door that was slightly stuck, but with some pushing he felt himself pass through. Cortex’s mind’s eye opened, and he froze. Before him was a large, red, wet room, almost like the inside of a mouth or a freshly-emptied chest cavity. Tubes and wires emerged from the fleshy walls, then disappeared back into the wall elsewhere. Portions of the wall and floor were metal, but even the metal parts of the room were covered in a shiny membrane of mucus or blood. When Hannah had told Cortex that the factory and Id had been partially merged, he never would have imagined something so close to literal—but Cortex reminded himself that he was in a computer, not literally Id’s brain, and that this was an interpretation made by his own brain and technomancer chip.
The room was also filled with row upon row of filing cabinets, most crafted of a dark metal and partially submerged in the floor, while a few appeared to be made of bone or other materials. Despite knowing that he wasn’t physically present, Cortex covered his nose with a sleeve to protect it from the stale, humid air and walked forward carefully, avoiding puddles of mucus or blood, though soaking his slippers was inevitable: Cortex shuddered as warm, semi-solid liquid made his feet feel like they were surrounded by gelatin. He tried paying attention to the cabinets instead of his discomfort, noting different labels as he passed by: “Operation Rooms,” “Detention Rooms,” “Waste Disposal,” “Printing,” “Assembly,” and so forth.
Hannah’s voice drifted into Cortex’s mind, sounding like it was coming from a long distance. “The screen is on.”
“I think I’m in the computer’s operating system,” Cortex said loudly, wondering if he was speaking through his actual mouth or just thinking the words. He cringed as the sound echoed wetly. “But I’m not sure what I should do to open the entrance to the factory.”
“I see a file labeled ‘Central Functions.’ Try to find that— down and to the left.”
There was a distant whirring sound. It took a moment, but Cortex realized what it was: Id’s elevator.
Cortex dashed through the fleshy filing cabinet room, his heart beating faster and faster as he did so. How close was Id to discovering them? What would happen if Cortex couldn’t move fast enough? These scary thoughts and others whirled through Cortex’s brain, forcing him to pause and breathe slowly. I’ll never do this if I keep thinking about failure, he thought. Hannah needs me.
Someone needs me.
Following Hannah’s vague directions, Cortex found the cabinet he was looking for, a tall one made of bone with “Central Functions” carved into it. Cortex opened the first drawer with effort—it was heavy and wasn’t on a track—and found a series of folders inside. After flipping through several of them he found a promising one labeled “Security” and opened it. Inside were many documents.
“You are doing this, right?” Hannah asked. “The computer looks like it’s operating itself. That one, in the middle!”
Cortex didn’t respond to Hannah—he was too absorbed by his task. He found the document Hannah was referring to and pulled it out of the file. The top of the page said, “Lockdown Measures,” and the rest of the page was filled with commands.
“This—the program—I don’t know how to interact with it! I feel like I’m holding a piece of paper!” Cortex poked at the paper several times, then frowned. The text on the page rippled whenever he touched it.
“The elevator stopped!” Hannah growled.
There was no time for experimentation. Acting on instinct, Cortex shoved his hand into the paper, amazed that he was able to pass through it without seeing his hand go through the other side. He felt his mind become drenched in data. Off . . . off . . . turn off! Cortex thought forcefully, not caring what specifically he was interacting with. After repeating himself multiple times, he pulled his hand out of the paper and held it close. He looked around, heart beating fiercely—had things always been that silent? Was Id in the control room with them?
Something dripped wetly. Cortex looked around and, in the eerie quiet, thought he heard quiet machinery running in the background. Was that happening around him, or was that sound filtering in from the real world?
Cortex looked around himself again, feeling his heart quicken as he saw row upon row of cabinets, membrane-covered steel plates, and fleshy walls and floors. How did he get out?
Cortex shoved the file cabinet closed and ran in the direction he hoped he had come from. His footsteps slapped against the ground, but he tried to ignore what he felt and saw as he tried to visualize his brain disengaging from the computer. Something felt like it was holding him back. Cortex realized he was still holding the security file in one hand and the lockdown document in the other—he opened a random filing cabinet nearby and shoved them both in, slammed the cabinet shut, and continued running. He felt like he was running slower and slower as the fleshy room began to fade around him.
“What are you doing in here?”
Cortex froze. He had never heard this voice audibly before, yet he knew who she was immediately—her snaky, hissing voice crawled into his very bones.
“Look at me. Hurry, now. I might make this painless for you.”
Cortex slowly turned around, expecting to see a column of wires and tubes rising into the blank ceiling with a disturbing tumor of human flesh at the end, but instead he saw a woman, young and healthy, with a small glass port in her forehead. Her face wasn’t sagging, she wasn’t missing an eye, and she was standing firmly on her own two legs. Her expression, however, was unmistakably bitter, transforming an otherwise beautiful face into a hideous mask.
“As unexpected as I find it for Hannah to directly betray me, I still have to wonder: is she acting on her own volition, or did the Divinity see fit to remove me? Was I not quiet enough about my discontent? I suppose I prefer this to being incorporated with the Hive.” Id waved her hand and Cortex felt himself sucked into the floor beneath him; he was dragged through a wet, claustrophobic darkness until he suddenly realized that he was lying on the ground, staring at the rails set in the ceiling above him. Id had booted him out of her computer. As Cortex regained his senses, he realized that Id was speaking to his mind. —too convenient that she wants to leave early, attempting to do so just before these interlopers steal my prisoner. But I can’t imagine why such direct, uncoordinated action would be preferable to killing me in my sleep. Perhaps I was right—perhaps he finally went mad. He couldn’t maintain his farce forever, even with a compelled audience.
Cortex rolled over and tried to push himself to his feet, but a foot struck him in the side, sending him rolling across the floor. Tears sprung into Cortex’s eyes as he clutched his side, gasping.
Did I give it permission to stand? Id’s thoughts burrowed into Cortex’s mind. It does what it’s told and doesn’t think for itself. It is mine now and forever.
Lying prone, Cortex turned his head and looked at Id while holding in a sneeze brought on by the dusty floor. He had a disorienting moment where it looked like Id’s column of wires extended from a wall, holding her sideways in the air, before he oriented himself. Id spoke some more, but Cortex’s spinning head didn’t register her words. He looked to the side and saw Hannah, motionless, with her foot in the air. That was right—Id couldn’t have kicked him. Hannah did.
Why? Cortex felt a brief stab of betrayal that hurt worse than the kick to his side. Before his mind could run through all the reasons why Hannah would choose to hurt him, Cortex noticed something. Her face—she wasn’t wearing her usual emotionless expression. Though he couldn’t read her camera eyes well, there was something about the set of her eyebrows and jaw that made her expression blank, a subtle difference. It dawned on Cortex: Hannah hadn’t kicked him. Id, controlling Hannah’s body, had.
Regardless, the interlopers will be dead soon. You’ve officially become more of a liability than an asset—I’ll have Hannah dispose of you. But if this is just a misunderstanding, it’s very unfortunate that I’ll have to inform the Divinity that a terrible accident destroyed his pets. Either way, it will buy me some time in blessed solitude.
Hannah’s foot stomped to the ground, ringing through Id’s control room. Dread bled through Cortex’s being as he watched Hannah stalk toward him. “Stop!” he cried. “Hannah! Please!” Id’s lips twitched into a wicked grimace behind Hannah as the rozie advanced. Id’s personal rozies stood at her side, staring forward just as blankly as Hannah.
Hannah knelt on the ground and placed a hand on Cortex’s neck, then began to push into the ground. It took only a moment for Cortex to begin choking, but he knew that his neck would be crushed well before he would have the time to suffocate if Hannah kept pressing. Unable to speak, his neck shooting electric pain throughout the rest of his body, Cortex reached out with his mind to Hannah and cried, Stop!
Cortex could breathe.
Cortex gasped in and out, never so grateful in his life to breathe stale, circulated air. Cortex wriggled and thrashed, slipping out of Hannah’s grip and writhing away until he reached a nearby wall. His neck ached and twinged as he moved and looked at Hannah. Her expression was one of agony as she remained kneeling, staring at the ground, stuck in place, making twitching movements toward Cortex and then returning to her current position.
Id glared balefully at Cortex. Her personal rozies fixed their gaze on Cortex, yet somehow Cortex felt that all six eyes on him belonged to the same person. Id slid closer to Hannah, her mostly limp limbs twitching with greater energy than Cortex had ever seen before, as her rozies stepped in place beside her. She focused her attention on Hannah. It has no sway over you, useless tool! Destroy it, now!
Hannah’s arm slid to the side and she looked up at Cortex again.
“I’m sorry,” Cortex whispered, guilty to be commanding Hannah, to wrest away control of herself. Stop, he commanded. Destroy Id.
Cortex stood and fled the room, tears running down his face as he heard Id groan with rage behind him and felt the crash of rozies slamming into each other. As he ran out the door to the control room, he heard the heavy steps of rozies in pursuit.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 