Once, the utopian vision of the future was of a world post-scarcity. Now, such dreams are hilariously reserved. The E10 unit promises a world post-injury, post-illness, post-disability, post-weakness. All people will have the same resources, physical strength, beauty. And when the cognitive enhancers are working properly, all will be equally intelligent.
Arnon D’Bvaym
THE SMELL OF earth greeted 64Bit’s nostrils when he awoke. He reached above himself and stretched, almost forgetting that he wasn’t in his own room until his hand touched the dirt floor. 64Bit sat up, turned on his eye screens, and looked around. Richard was missing, but Khalil sat on one of the wooden supply boxes nearby, staring at the ceiling. When he noticed 64Bit moving, he smiled and signed, About time. I told Richard that I was going to dump some cold water on your head if you weren’t awake soon. Mush? Khalil held out a cup. 64Bit took it and looked inside—a brown, sludgy substance pooled at the bottom of the cup.
“What is this?” 64Bit asked.
Mush, Khalil responded. Water mixed with some of the stuff they use for travel rations. Incredibly bland, and doesn’t leave you feeling very full, but you’d be surprised how much energy it gives you. Stores pretty well, too.
64Bit eyed the substance suspiciously, and suddenly missed Cortex’s cooking. He placed a hand over his heart, then realized he hadn’t really prayed, not from his heart anyway, since just after his particle battery attempt had destabilized. His hand remained in place as he stared at his breakfast for a moment, then he forced himself to start. His prayer was short and awkward.
Khalil was right—the mush was as bland as chalk, but thankfully it wasn’t as dry. About the same time that 64Bit finished choking it down, the trapdoor opened. Richard stuck his head down through the trap door. “Let’s go.”
Take the cup with you, Khalil said before climbing up the ladder. He signed with one hand as he climbed. Might need it for lunch. 64Bit pocketed the cup and followed Khalil out of the trapdoor and into the bright morning. 64Bit’s eye screens adjusted to the light piercing the tree cover immediately; while Khalil blinked and rubbed his eyes, 64Bit watched Richard spread branches and dirt over the trap door to disguise it. As they then walked to the ATV, 64Bit stepped on something sharp hidden in the dirt and hopped the last few yards to the machine.
Khalil and Richard prepared the ATV for travel by cleaning off its natural disguise and releasing its pressure valve. Richard was just as focused as he had been the night before, while Khalil wasn’t chatty at all; both wore very serious expressions and kept careful watch on the forest around them. 64Bit wondered if they were thinking of the potential dangers of the day, or if they rightly distrusted his ability to sense unseen rozies in the vicinity. He tried to ignore his paranoia but found it difficult.
When the two finished preparations, Richard turned to 64Bit.
“You and I are going to travel by foot, sir,” Richard said. “The trees beyond this field are a little tight for the ATV, let alone the trailer, so Khalil is going to take a longer route around. We went over the map pretty carefully—he’ll find us easily.”
“Why aren’t we driving with him if the ATV can get there anyway?” 64Bit asked. His foot was still smarting and, based on the breeze he felt on his foot, his slipper was torn.
“If you prefer to, you can, I suppose.” Richard kept his voice respectful, but 64Bit could tell he felt what he was saying was obvious. “I’m going by foot because it’s easier to check for tracks and other signs of activity that way. Khalil and I both felt that everyone would be safer if you came with me—if there are rozies, you can drive them away from us while Khalil escapes on the ATV, provided he sticks to clearer parts of the boneyards.”
64Bit tried to look nonchalant as he leaned against his staff and white-knuckled it. He still had no idea how to use the staff and no idea how to sense rozies without it; at least Richard had effectively confirmed that he and Khalil weren’t questioning 64Bit’s abilities as a technomancer. The illusion was secure. Hopefully it would remain unchallenged. He took a deep breath, then said, “Well, let us start, then.”
Richard nodded and motioned for 64Bit to follow. The scout hiked quickly and quietly through the brush, taking game trails where available, and 64Bit found it difficult to keep up. The foliage caught on his robe, making snapping and scratching noises as he passed, and his feet were quickly bruised by hidden branches, rocks, and roots. Richard occasionally stopped and gave 64Bit suggestions on how to move more quietly, how to place his feet more effectively, but after an hour of hiking, Richard’s instructions fled from 64Bit’s mind as he focused on just keeping his rubbery legs moving.
As 64Bit lagged, Richard took advantage of the more methodical pace to thoroughly check their surroundings as they traveled. No bent branch or torn leaf went unnoticed, and several times Richard pointed out animal tracks or feces. 64Bit wished that he’d grabbed a water pouch from the trailer; after wiping his sweating face on his sleeve for the hundredth time—and 64Bit kept count—he postulated that he may die from sweat-related dehydration before they reached wherever they were going.
Richard glanced back, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Thirsty?”
64Bit’s tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth, an awareness that felt oddly disturbing. He nodded.
Richard knelt, scuffed his hand in the dirt, and then tossed something. 64Bit caught it and found himself staring at a gray, round pebble in his hand. He looked up at Richard with a raised brow. Richard popped a pebble in his own mouth and shrugged. “Keeps your spit active if you suck on something. Helps keep your mouth wet, and then you don’t feel the urge to drink as much. We’ll rehydrate when we reconnect with Khalil.”
64Bit grimaced at the pebble, wondering what had broken down to make the dirt it was dusted in, as well as how many strange bacteria coated its surface. He stuck out his tongue and dropped the pebble on it, then slowly brought the thing into his mouth and began sucking. It wasn’t tasty by any means, but it wasn’t as bad as he had imagined, and he found his daydreams of stumbling upon a running fountain and drinking himself turgid beginning to fade away.
They travelled in a northwesterly direction, moving over land that began rolling aggressively and was mostly empty of old-world buildings and roads, but thick with brown-barked trees. Richard skirted around the hills rather than travelling over them. 64Bit guessed it was because many of the hills had bare crowns—they’d be easier to spot from the top of one. As they traveled, 64Bit took a few moments to stare at the mountains around him. They felt so much bigger from up close! It was hard for him to comprehend something so grand that he couldn’t see it all at once. But it also grew harder and harder for him to appreciate the vista as his legs transitioned from feeling like rubber to feeling like the mush he had eaten that morning.
“I . . . can’t . . . keep up!” 64Bit gasped, falling to his knees and spitting out the pebble. Any embarrassment that he would have felt was swallowed up in the sweet release of getting off his feet—his heels felt as if they’d been attacked by a mallet. Resting on his hands and knees was heavenly in comparison.
“Good thing we’ve just arrived, then.” Richard said. “Let’s see if Khalil beat us.”
64Bit looked up. The ground rose ahead of him, rising steeply to a peak bare of trees but studded with the occasional boulder. “The one . . . where Kayla was attacked?” he asked.
“The same.”
They both heard a soft clap sound and looked to the side. Khalil had somehow gotten within ten feet of them without 64Bit hearing anything, although Richard didn’t look surprised. Khalil smiled and signed, Our technomancer friend made it easy for me to find you two. I just had to follow the huffing and puffing! Good thing my ears work. I left the vehicle a ways back, where the trees aren’t so dense.
64Bit felt his ears burn. He focused on normalizing his breathing—maybe the medkit had been right. He was out of shape, at least for this kind of work.
“Bring some water with you?” 64Bit asked Khalil.
He heard a water skin get tossed around, then Richard pressed it into his hands. 64Bit began gulping it down.
Khalil gently clapped his hands again, then pointed down. I see you two did manage to find something on your hike, and 64Bit is kneeling on them. 64Bit wiped his mouth and looked down. Below him was a line of prints made by bare feet, several following each other in a line, which had previously been obscured by a low-hanging fern. He pressed his lips together and crawled to the side, unintentionally crunching twigs and leaves as he did so, while Khalil observed the tracks and began walking along them. Richard matched pace on the other side. 64Bit, with effort, stood and followed the two up the hill, keeping his distance from the footprints. He didn’t know anything about tracking, so he stored the water skin and fiddled with his staff.
At the top of the hill, Richard pointed at a boulder surrounded by a conspicuously bare patch of dirt. “That’s where Kayla found the head.” He crouched and ran his fingers along the ground. “The ground isn’t revealing much—the tracks are headed in that direction but disappear before getting there.”
Khalil waved 64Bit over and pointed at the footprints they had been following. He stomped a boot into the earth beside them and wriggled, leaving the barest impression. You see that? The dirt is hard-packed here, so we don’t sink very deep or leave much of a mark. Whatever did this was very heavy. Probably exactly what we’re looking for. He grinned. Think we’ll find them any time soon? Maybe just on the other side of this hill?
64Bit glanced around, almost expecting to see a rozie burst through the brush and rush them at any second. It amazed him how relaxed Richard and Khalil seemed; 64Bit felt ready to jump out of his skin.
Richard knelt next to the footprint Khalil had pointed out. He shook his head. “Don’t let Khalil scare you. These tracks, look—they have rounded edges. The definition between the toes has begun to fade away, and they’ve collected dirt and leaves. These tracks are probably a few days old.” He then signed to Khalil, The little barbarian and I left too quickly to do a full canvas of the area. Starting now, I’m treating this area as if I had no experience with it.
Khalil chuckled. Well, lead out, lovebird.
Richard rolled his eyes but signed his agreement. He walked across the hilltop, Khalil at his side, scanning the ground long and slow as they moved. 64Bit followed behind them as they delved into thicker brush, his robe catching branches as he did so. Before too long, on the other side of the hill, they found several broken branches and some partial footprints leading away.
Khalil and Richard stopped and looked back at 64Bit, then turned toward each other. Eventually Richard said, “Since these tracks are fairly old, and moving away, the odds of rozies being in the immediate area seem slim. Still, we’d like to follow these quickly and quietly . . .”
64Bit stared at them a moment. “You want to leave me behind.”
Richard’s brows raised. He coughed and said, “Well, I wouldn’t put it—”
64Bit nodded, staring past Richard. “No, you’re right. I slowed down our hike here significantly, and I am not yet fully recovered, despite feeling better. Which also doesn’t change how much noisier I am than you two. In a low-risk environment, I can understand why you would want to make your work faster and easier. Go. I’ll shout if I sense any rozies.”
The two scouts looked at each other, then Khalil gave a thumbs-up. Before they turned away, 64Bit saw Khalil sign, This would be a bit easier if these tracks weren’t marred by what looks like yours.
Richard responded, You tell me that your first priority would be to watch your feet if your trainee sounded like she was dying, and I’ll tell you that you’re a bad liar. Then they were facing away, kneeling down, signing avidly to each other and pointing at things as they moved quietly into the brush. Once he lost sight of them, 64Bit sighed and trudged to the top of the hill, figuring it was the best spot to keep an eye on things. He inspected the area around the boulder at the hill’s peak to ensure that no other rozie parts were lying around, then sat down on it.
A gentle breeze flowed by, cooling 64Bit and helping his robe to feel less sticky. He began massaging his feet, wincing as he did so. “You’d think—oof—you’d think being able to build a computer from scraps and then code its software from nothing, I would have put together that these slippers would be useless,” 64Bit said. He held up one, noting many holes in its sole and a plethora of twigs and burrs stuck to it, then threw the thing down the hill and continued massaging his feet.
As he massaged, 64Bit tried to pray, but after stumbling through a few words decided to just talk. If the Creator was listening, He would understand. “I’m grateful that nothing has happened thus far.” He glanced at his staff. “And I wish I knew how to work this stupid thing. I hope we don’t need it—but I’d rather be prepared for an eventuality that doesn’t happen than unprepared for one that does.” He tapped his palm over his heart, not a true ending to a prayer, then he sat cross-legged, laid the staff on his lap, and turned off his eye screens.
The stillness of the forest flowed through 64Bit. After a few moments, he placed a hand on the staff, turned every atom of his being to concentrate on it, then mentally commanded the staff to activate.
Nothing happened.
Disgusted, 64Bit pushed the staff off his lap and wrapped his arms around his legs. The staff had come alive when Cortex had touched it, in a way that 64Bit could not seem to replicate ever since getting loaded into Khalil’s trailer, despite his best efforts. He’d poked, prodded, whispered, begged, and scanned every speck of the thing, not even finding so much as a seam to try and pry open—it was as if the staff had somehow been forged in one piece.
“The irony would be,” 64Bit whispered to himself, “if it was just a rod of metal all along, exaggerated in the master’s stories.” He shook his head. The staff wouldn’t have electrified under Cortex’s touch if that were the case, but 64Bit almost wished it were.
64Bit felt goose flesh rise on his arms, like he was being watched. He looked around. The hill was high enough that, thanks to its bare peak and lightly wooded sides, he could easily see the ocean of green that extended across the valley. His view was level with the forest top: this somehow made the forest seem even larger, extend even farther, as it rolled with the uneven valley floor.
“Strange geography,” 64Bit said. He wondered if any of the master’s histories of the old world could identify this place and give him an idea of what life had once been like.
A cloud scooted by. A raven carked in the distance.
“We’re not going to find anything,” 64Bit grumbled to himself. He grabbed a stick and began scratching at the dirt. “I’ve been posturing to myself, too. If we wanted to find anything, we should have headed toward the mountains. That’s what I saw in my vision. The rust on the rozie neck, it must have been sitting here . . .” 64Bit’s brows narrowed. Despite the condition the rozie head had been in, the one description 64Bit couldn’t use to describe it was dirty. Its hair had been greasy, and its mouth smelled of rotten meat, but if it had been sitting on the top of this hill for weeks or months it should have also had a fair amount of dirt built up in its eyes, teeth, and the cuts in its synthetic skin— not to mention dirt or leaves in its hair, or bird poop on its ears.
The head couldn’t have been left on this hill for very long at all before Kayla found it.
The hair raised on the back of 64Bit’s head. He grabbed the staff and jumped to his feet, looking in all directions. Every forest shadow suddenly seemed a deep cloak that could hide anything.
“Focus,” 64Bit whispered, remembering the master’s directions. “Focus. Direct your senses. Choose what you focus on. Sort through the data your body gives you. Find the hidden patterns.” He took a deep breath, shut off his eye screens, and tried to just feel, pushing away sensations that didn’t matter. His feet still felt a little sore—ignore it. His head felt a little cold in the breeze despite the hot sun overhead—push it aside. Bird cries, bug chirps, the weight of his clothes, the dryness of his mouth, the smell of soil and sap—box it all up for later inspection. What was left?
He felt, ever so slightly, that he was being pulled in a certain direction. Careful not to lose the sensation, 64Bit shuffled his feet until he was facing the direction of the feeling, then turned on his eye screens. He was looking down the hill, the direction they had come from. Starting low, he slowly looked upward, taking in the dirt, the tracks, the grass, the man with the bloody face . . .
64Bit dropped to the earth in shock. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly as he processed what he saw.
At the bottom of the hill stood a man in torn clothing. He wore overalls and a button-up shirt and his feet were bare. His face, mostly around the mouth, was stained with splashes of rusty red. Most terrifying of all, a cold light shone from his eyes—not a literal light, but the calculating light of frigid intellect without empathy. A light that gave 64Bit the feeling of being doused in ice water with a shark. The man stared at 64Bit, then smirked and held a finger to his lips.
64Bit’s hands scrabbled at the earth beside him. Where was the staff? When had he dropped it? Briefly, 64Bit looked away, found the staff a few feet off, and grabbed it. He looked up, pointing the staff, and . . .
The man was gone.
#
CORTEX GASPED AS he pulled, tightening the stitches holding together his forearm, then began wrapping a soft bandage around it. Moving the fingers and hand on his bitten arm felt strange—he had to think about moving them now, rather than wanting to do something and just having his fingers do it. The medkit had told him that they may heal with time, but that there may be permanent damage to the nerves, tendons, and muscles of his right hand. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else he could do without help—he had nearly passed out several times while stitching himself.
The wound had been infected; eating raw, presumably human flesh without washing its mouth out left the rozie head a haven for bacteria. Cortex felt a tingling, burning sensation from his arm, like a bad sunburn; he lifted up the bandage a little and pushed more antibiotic ointment underneath.
“It would be significantly more effective to apply antibiotics through a needle,” the medkit reminded him.
Cortex suppressed a shudder. “I don’t like needles. These stitches took all that I have right now. The master had to knock me out for the technomancer surgery—I kept panicking. Well, maybe I would have gotten knocked out anyway—is that required for brain surgery?” Cortex fingered the scar on his scalp and frowned: the memory wasn’t pleasant. He didn’t have a lot of specific memories from when he was eight, but he clearly remembered the cold feel of the table underneath him, the chemical smell of the air, and feeling scared as the master slid a needle into his vein. The last thing Cortex remembered seeing, then, were medical instruments laid out on a table in a neat row: silvery pliers, scalpels, saws . . . and more needles. Cortex’s mouth went dry. He looked at the medkit and forced a smile. He liked the medkit—it was friendly, and it listened to him. “64Bit can help when he gets back.”
The AI’s holographic head bobbed in a way that resembled a shrug. “A wise medical practitioner counsels with its patient, considering requests and fears. Besides, my arms would be too weak to force you to accept the needle anyway.”
The medkit’s comment made Cortex laugh nervously. He felt a little better. “That was a weak joke, but I appreciate it.”
“A joke?” the medkit responded.
Wait, had the medkit been serious? Cortex hoped not and decided to act as if the medkit had been joking. “I thought you weren’t equipped with conversational functions?”
“It takes limited conversational programming to keep a patient from being on edge. I am running some basic psychology programs with the hope to keep you calm—I will try praise now. You did very well cleaning and caring for your arm. Now feel comforted.”
Now Cortex really couldn’t tell whether the medkit was being serious. Unless he was mistaken, it wouldn’t have humor programmed into it. Was that even possible? He stared into space and wondered. The master had taught him that sapient, self-aware AI didn’t exist, and Cortex didn’t see how a computer could be programmed to be funny. And yet, the deadpan way that the medkit said everything almost made it hilarious. After a few moments, Cortex said, “So, is praise important, specifically?” He had to admit, even if it was coming from a robot, it felt good to be praised.
“Your heart rate is lowering to rates that indicate you are growing comfortable again. You also aren’t staring nervously at your arm. So, yes, that praise had a positive impact on your health, probably mental as well as physical. Now, let’s have one more scan.”
Cortex inserted his control jack into the medkit. It went silent for a moment, then green letters appeared on its surface: contained.
The AI woman smiled, but her voice was still monotone. “Congratulations. The bacterial petri dish from that rozie’s mouth shouldn’t do more harm. That doesn’t mean the bacteria are all destroyed, but we caught the infection in time. As long as you continue applying that salve, I predict that all bacterial traces will be gone in about a week. It will take longer for your arm to heal from the bite, and full recovery is not guaranteed.”
Cortex nodded and pulled down the sleeve of his robe. The AI continued to jabber about Cortex’s condition, but if there was one thing Cortex had learned from the master’s lectures and 64Bit’s monologues, it was how to tune out background noise. Instead, his gaze moved across the forge room to a shadowed corner. From the darkness, the head stared at him, flat eyes unblinking, as it slowly licked its lips. The fact that it lay upside down did nothing to diminish its sinister aura.
Why am I not afraid of you? Cortex wondered, unable to piece apart the complicated web of emotions that played through him. The head had obeyed him, both when he had commanded it to play dead and when he had commanded it to let go of his arm. Intellectually, he felt that should be exciting. Something to feel proud of, even. If rozies could be controlled, rather than just driven away, Fort could fight fire with fire, turn rozies into assets rather than dangers. He could be a hero, not a nuisance!
But the excitement was swallowed up in the maelstrom: guilt for not taking care of the rozie head; embarrassment for letting it bite him; curiosity about why the head acted the way it did; and, perhaps most powerfully, a strange sort of detachment that briefly fell upon him shortly after commanding the rozie head again. Cortex couldn’t guess whether that was a symptom of shock or something else.
But above everything else, Cortex’s mind kept returning to one thought: the head had obeyed him.
“Excuse me?” medkit said, almost breaking Cortex’s train of thought. Cortex shook his head and waved the medkit away, and it obediently rolled out of the room.
Cortex approached the head, eyeing it warily; inexplicably not feeling afraid didn’t mean that he planned on getting bitten again. The head watched him predatorily as he approached.
“I don’t know what I want to do with you,” Cortex whispered. “But you’re interesting.”
The head began to move its mouth. Tinny audio played, the rozie’s lips and tongue poorly matching the sounds. “Oh! I’m going to die here. I’m sorry if I scared you! Please, help me! Don’t leave me!”
Cortex furrowed his brow and tried to think through it. The head hadn’t tried to answer his questions even once. He didn’t believe that asking why it needed help would get any results. He also wondered if the head’s audio had been recorded by someone else and somehow downloaded into the rozie.
“They left me to die. They left me to die,” radiated from the rozie head.
Cortex was out of ideas. Maybe it was time to incinerate the rozie head—he couldn’t think of anything else to do with it. He reached toward the head and knocked it over with a slap; the head stopped talking and bit violently as Cortex did so, but Cortex was careful to keep his fingers away from the thing’s mouth. He considered picking it up by its hair again but rejected the thought. Cortex looked around the forge room and noticed the towel that he’d covered the rozie head in earlier—he could carry the head in that.
The head resisted being rolled onto the towel. It proved to have surprising mobility when its jaw rested on the floor, as its jaw could move unnaturally far in any direction, allowing it to almost roll itself over. While the head couldn’t quite roll itself off the towel, it did surprise Cortex with sudden movements, but Cortex kept his fingers safe by moving the head with a metal poker instead of his hand.
The head bit onto the towel and began shredding it with its teeth when Cortex tried to lift the two.
“Hey!” Cortex shouted. He lifted the towel up using the end farthest from the head and attempted to swing the head into the forge, but the head let go with its jaw. It rolled on the ground before bumping against the forge’s base, then it sat on the floor, staring sideways at Cortex, and resumed licking its lips.
“Just stop,” Cortex cried.
The rozie did. It froze mid-lick.
Cortex cocked his head. A third time the rozie head obeyed him.
“Open your mouth,” Cortex said. The rozie head remained frozen. Cortex took a deep breath and focused all of his attention on the rozie head—as he did so, he felt a slight tingling sensation around the glass port in his forehead. “Open your mouth,” Cortex commanded, feeling the sense of detachment return.
The rozie head opened its mouth and remained there.
Cortex smiled. This head wasn’t destined for an incineration cycle in the forge—yet.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 