Technomancers, despite obstinate opposition by most, only prove my case. This stage of human technological transcendence would not be possible without their contribution— unwitting by many, direct by some.
Arnon D’Bvaym
64BIT SLOWLY AWOKE, his vision blurry—an unusual experience, as his eye screens were normally either on or off—only catching columns of brown and blankets of green, of four-limbed shapes lurching around. Where am I? he thought groggily. Why am I alive?
Then the smell hit him—paralyzing dread in the form of rotten flesh. Wherever he was, it smelled like a meat market in the summer. He turned his gaze upward and his eye screens finally focused properly as he watched puffy clouds scoot across a blue sky, partially obscured by branches and leaves—an idyllic image that contrasted terribly with the assault on his nostrils.
64Bit tipped his head down and took in the rest of the view. The two scarecrow rozies staggered across a small clearing, the ground churned to mud from constant walking. Their face-coverings were stained red, their mouths open as they walked, and their bellies turgid and leaking gore; there was no visible purpose to their movement. As he watched, sometimes one of them would look at 64Bit and take a step toward him, then look off to the side and move away. At the far side of the clearing sat the ATV, the trailer missing.
64Bit tried to shift but realized that he was bound. He looked down and discovered that he was tied to a tree, his legs tied with thick rope, along with his chest and upper arms; he could wiggle his hands and forearms freely, for what it was worth. He didn’t see his staff anywhere.
“When I saw that you were young, I hoped you were a prodigy. After all, you have a different sense than others; I thought you were unique.” The bloody-mouthed, intelligent rozie, sitting on the walking trunk, came into view. “But you’ve given me reason to believe you were a waste of time and resources.” The trunk walked on eight black legs that rolled forward in waves like a spider, leaving its top stable as it moved. It had a carving on its front, a very detailed face of an elderly woman, her expression severe. The eyes were carved in such a way that they seemed to stare at 64Bit no matter the angle of the trunk as it moved. 64Bit also noticed, now, that the rozie’s mouth was not actually bloody—its lips and cheeks were messily stained a rust color, but the rozie did not appear to actually have blood on it, at least currently. Despite his imperiled circumstances—or perhaps because of them—64Bit found his attention more drawn to the mysterious walking trunk than his captor.
The talking rozie slid off the trunk. “Still, I’ve captured more pathetic technomancers than you and found things to learn anyway.”
The metal trunk’s lid opened and shut with a loud clack. The copper clasps moved with the lid—they were either ornamental or torn from their anchors by prior opening and closing of the trunk lid.
“I am being careful—don’t tell me how to interrogate,” the rozie responded to the trunk. Then the rozie stood in front of 64Bit and looked him in the eye.
Now that it was close, 64Bit could not help but notice that it was disturbingly clean, despite the tattered condition of its clothes and its uncombed hair, as if it took great care of itself but also didn’t care what it looked like. Still, its irises were like chips of ice: if anything, the rozie’s self-care gave 64Bit more reason to fear. The master spoke once of intelligent rozies and the tortures they inflicted on victims before devouring them. 64Bit was almost glad he was bound upright; he would have surely collapsed otherwise.
The rozie reached out and touched 64Bit’s eye screens, then grabbed his jaw and poked and prodded his chest and arms. 64Bit shuddered at the touch; he felt like an animal being inspected by a butcher.
“Please . . . just kill me,” 64Bit whispered, shying away. “Or let me go. I’m useless to you.”
“It finally talks! I was starting to wonder if I had just imagined it earlier.” The rozie moved closer, pressing its face to 64Bit’s, looking at him eye to eye. “You know you should have listened to me earlier. I don’t have full control over the damned, you see, but that’s the company I’m reduced to. Your friend could be alive now.”
64Bit turned his head, trying to get as far away from the rozie as possible, but the rozie just pressed closer to him. A sob escaped his throat.
The rozie spoke directly in 64Bit’s ear. “I am in total control. I decide if you live or die—and how long it will take. No one knows you are here—there will be no rescue. I am your god now. Do you understand?”
A small fire flickered in 64Bit’s heart. He sniffed, then turned his head slightly and spat on the rozie’s shoulder. “There is only one God, devil.”
The rozie stood absolutely still for a moment as spittle dripped down its overalls strap. Then it slowly moved its head down 64Bit’s neck, shoulder, and arm, lightly brushing its nose against robe and skin where 64Bit wasn’t covered by rope; as the rozie moved, the spiderlike trunk clattered and clicked its lid. 64Bit groaned and thrashed his body as best he could within the restraints, slapping at the rozie with his hands until he realized that, with a slowly opening mouth, the rozie was moving toward his hands. 64Bit clenched his fists and held them as far from the rozie as he could, but his struggling did nothing; with fingers like iron, the rozie easily opened his fist, slid its teeth and dry mouth over 64Bit’s little finger, and slowly, slowly bit down.
64Bit’s little finger came off with a wet pop. He screamed.
The scarecrow rozies became agitated, stepping toward and away from 64Bit, bumping into each other as they did so. Their mouths opened and snapped shut, one grunting, “Empty . . .”
Blood poured from 64Bit’s hand. His skin felt clammy, his vision blackened. He didn’t remember when he stopped screaming, but his throat hurt. The spiderlike trunk clattered some more, and the talking rozie said, “He’s in shock. If he comes out of it, we’ll talk.”
The trunk clicked a few times.
“Does he look useful to you?” the rozie said to the trunk. “We’re wasting our time. The only reason he’s still alive is because he can lead us to his master; if his master can give me the blessing without the price, or offer anything better than the mad prophet, then this will have been worth it.”
More clacking. 64Bit’s vision began to blur.
“I’ll be the judge of that. I don’t care if his sense is different if he can’t do anything.”
#
64BIT DIDN’T KNOW how long he shifted in and out of consciousness, but it was dark when he awoke. He had dreamlike memories of watching the mindless scarecrow rozies wander about, of the rozie with the bloodstained mouth watching him; he thought he heard a feminine voice whisper something he didn’t understand. The stump where his little finger used to be throbbed endlessly.
He hungered and his body ached far worse than from the longest fasts he’d ever taken. 64Bit shifted and groaned. He wanted water—his throat felt like a desert.
As if it had been standing there all along, waiting for him, the intelligent rozie materialized out of the darkness. Its eyes opened and dull light came out. They settled on 64Bit’s face.
“I’m impressed that you lived,” the rozie said. 64Bit could only groan in response; the rozie smirked. “Just barely. Impressive how quickly your finger clotted all on its own, but you still lost a lot of blood, and you might still be in shock. Anyway—I think we’ve established our relationship, don’t you?”
64Bit nodded.
“Good.” The rozie turned around and looked over the clearing, the light from its eyes only barely illuminating the tops of its cheeks and the bottom of its brows. 64Bit’s vision switched to night, turning the world shades of green, black, and gray; the rozie looked like a ghostly apparition in such vision. It continued, “Tell me what you know about the blessing.”
Shrugging weakly, 64Bit said, “What blessing? The word is so vague. I can tell you about the Creator—I know of no greater blessing.”
The rozie threw its head back and laughed, a harsh sound that 64Bit almost mistook for a cough. “You think to be funny, don’t you! Well, if you want to play games, I’ll play. No—I know of your Creator, and I’ve seen the waste he’s allowed his world to become. The blessing I seek, the mad prophet refers to it as enlightenment—he lies, of course. But I want the real thing.”
Despair washed through 64Bit. What did this miserable rozie really want? To speak of strange things 64Bit had never heard of until he was driven mad? It seemed a strange way to torture someone. Biting off 64Bit’s finger had been much more effective.
The rozie grabbed 64Bit’s chin and lifted his head, staring deeply into his face. After a few moments of searching its brows furrowed and something in its eyes shifted. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.” Its face twisted, becoming savage, then it slammed a fist into the tree 64Bit was bound to, spraying his ears with splinters. It punched a second time, shoulders shuddering as it did so, then pulled back, head bowed. 64Bit saw metal where the synthetic skin on its knuckles had been cut by the tree.
The spiderlike trunk approached the intelligent rozie and rubbed its face against the rozie’s leg, then began drumming one of its own legs rhythmically. Its lid clacked a few times.
The rozie nodded. “Just another disappointment in a long line. Let’s see what we can salvage from this . . . misadventure.” The rozie snapped its head up and stared at 64Bit for a long moment. Then it smiled, showing a natural charisma that jarred with the demon it had been just moments before, a charisma only somewhat dampened by its bloodstained mouth. “Forgive me. It can be . . . very difficult to control myself, sometimes. My name is Zed.” It held a hand out.
64Bit stared at the hand dumbly, then looked up at Zed. “You’re completely insane.” He found himself saying aloud. “That’s a prescription, not a judgment.”
Zed barked a laugh again. “It took you that long to figure out? Well, what is your name?”
64Bit weighed his options, then decided he was as good as dead whether the rozie knew his name or not—and if talking delayed the inevitable, that was more time he could try to figure out some way to save himself. “64Bit.”
“Technomancers always have terrible names,” Zed said. He looked back at the scarecrow rozies behind him and pointed. “Can you see them? I can’t, really, but I know they are there.”
“I can see them,” 64Bit said. With Zed looking away, he wriggled a bit, testing his ropes, and found them very tight everywhere, to the point where breathing was laborious when he strained. Loosening them and slipping out would be very difficult.
“So those fancy eyes aren’t just for show.” Zed looked back at 64Bit, his eyes so cold that they burned. “I don’t want to turn into one of them. Ever. In fact, I want my humanity back. That’s the blessing—to be freed from this horrible hunger, this entropic emptiness. To feel alive again. To be me. That—that filthy liar, the false prophet, claims that he can grant this blessing, but the cost is too high. Worse than this undeath.” Zed shook his head. “Rozies and technomancers that follow him lose their very wills. That is one price I won’t pay.”
The spiderlike trunk clacked a few more times. 64Bit looked down at it and furrowed his brows. The way Zed looked at the thing, talked to it, Zed clearly believed the trunk was speaking to him. And the way it acted . . . there was something intelligent about its movements. 64Bit set his translator chip to work.
“So, I need you to help me accomplish this, little technomancer, and I’ll let you live,” Zed said. “Do you hear me?”
64Bit looked up from the trunk. “Pseudotech?”
Zed raised an eyebrow. “What?”
64Bit pointed at the trunk. “That, your pet. What is it? Pseudotech?”
“She . . . is the Lady. And you will treat her with respect,” Zed growled. He leaned in. “Stop getting off topic.”
64Bit licked his lips. He felt too tired, hungry, and thirsty to maintain the fear that had gripped him earlier. Instead he leaned his head back and considered what Zed had asked for. Making a rozie human again? Bizarre—not something that 64Bit hadn’t at least considered, that most likely every technomancer had considered, then rejected as fantasy. But if the alternative were death . . .
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” 64Bit said slowly, trying not to slur his words as he forced his stalling brain to work. “I mean, I don’t know of any such process or procedure. But I can try. If you return me to Fort—the valley settlement, I swear I will speak to my master, and we will figure something—”
“Oh, now you’re being really funny. I could never trust you enough to just let you go.” Zed waved a hand. “Besides, your master is dead anyway. Or will be, soon enough. The Lady is sure of it.”
64Bit felt as if what blood he had left just drained from his body. How did Zed know that the master had been injured? 64Bit turned off his eye screens and berated himself. It couldn’t know, not unless it had somehow been inside Fort, which was impossible with the wall suppressors . . . which had been damaged when 64Bit’s particle battery had destabilized.
“How did you know . . . about my master . . .”
“Your whole settlement has been destroyed. Wiped out. You can smell the smoke—or could if it weren’t for my stinking companions. Your master, if he isn’t dead, is certainly being tortured, or will be, soon.” Zed looked off toward the mountains, his expression angry.
“I don’t understand,” 64Bit said. “Fort is strong. My master, he’s just injured.”
Zed shook his head. “Oh no, Id sent an army of rozies the night before this and wiped the place out. I could hear the explosions as if I were right next to the place. And the screaming . . . It took a lot of willpower not to rush down there and join in the carnage. You have nothing left.” Zed’s face flickered, then became blank. “I’m sorry.”
64Bit slumped, staring at the dirt and his bruised feet. Eventually he said, “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe. Reality is reality.”
“You’re LYING!” 64Bit screamed. “My master is powerful! He can handle anything! I’m going to return and he’s going to be awake and he’s going to fix . . . fix everything . . .”
“Well, he’s dead, or Id has him,” Zed said.
Id. The mountains. The dead, upside-down tree. The branches piercing the walls of Fort.
“I keep hearing that name.” 64Bit whispered, poison lacing his words. “Id did this. Id is a dark technomancer,”
Zed nodded, his expression darkening. “You’re not the only one who has reason to hate her.” Then he cocked his head. “When are you going to try to control me?”
“What?” 64Bit asked.
Zed grabbed 64Bit by the head and pressed him against the tree. “Command me!” Zed shouted.
“I can’t!” 64Bit wailed. “I can’t do anything! I can’t . . . I never could . . . control anything . . .”
Zed held 64Bit’s head up a moment longer, staring into his eye screens, then grinned. “We got the next best thing to what we wanted.” He looked down at the spiderlike trunk and rubbed her top. “Praise the dead gods of the old world, this is perfect! An unexpected gem. You’re going to live another day, meatborg.”
64Bit shrugged. “Why?”
“Because if you can’t try to control me, you might actually be worth keeping. You won’t be near the trouble of any other captive technomancer.” Zed’s eyes took on a distant expression. “This opens a world of possibilities. We can keep you working while we hunt down other technomancers. Maybe even try to steal something from the Binary. This is the closest I’ve ever been—”
Behind Zed, one of the two other rozies made a low growling noise. Zed turned and stepped away from 64Bit, which gave 64Bit a clear view of the ATV and the two scarecrow rozies. They were fighting over it; the small rozie was sitting on top of the ATV while the large rozie pawed at its companion, trying to pull it off.
Zed growled. “I told you two to stay away from—”
64Bit’s vision went white; then the explosion blasted his ears. The ATV went up in an enormous white and green orb, expanding quickly, but not instantly, before dissipating. In a thirty-foot radius around the ATV, everything was scorched black or incinerated: the small rozie sitting on the ATV was gone, while the ATV itself and the large rozie were reduced to blackened metal frames. Steaming, the large rozie’s head suddenly cracked open, releasing more steam and cooked brain fragments. Zed walked into the explosion radius across the clearing, shaking with fury. Then he stumbled and pressed a hand against his head. “That . . . hurts . . .” he groaned.
The ropes binding 64Bit suddenly fell away; he collapsed to the ground, groaning. A voice whispered, “Come on!” and pulled him to his feet before dragging him into the forest. A ringing sound filled his ears, and his eye screens showed some static; though he could see trees and bushes as he rushed past them, he wasn’t truly aware of them and would have stopped running if he weren’t being pulled.
“Stop—slow down. I need . . . I need to rest . . .” 64Bit mumbled. Whoever it was kept pulling him forward.
Minutes or hours might have passed before he began to regain an awareness of his surroundings. He shoved his injured hand into his robe, then realized he wasn’t being pulled along anymore. He looked up and slowly recognized the person before him.
“Hey! Hey! Wake up!” Kayla said. She snapped a finger in front of 64Bit’s nose. 64Bit shook his head, still feeling as if he were coming out of a dream, and focused on Kayla’s hand. It was brown, had a fair amount of dirt on it, and was well-calloused. Kayla snapped again. “Idiot! If you’re not going to lie down, at least sit down! Get some cover!”
64Bit sat down, the ringing still in his ears. He might have been under a bush or a fern or low-hanging branches from a short tree; he tried to focus just on his hand, his uninjured hand, and once it began to feel real again tried to widen his awareness.
“I’m . . . alive,” 64Bit whispered. His throat tightened, but he choked out, “Alive!”
“Not for long if you don’t shut up,” Kayla growled. She punched 64Bit’s arm; 64Bit relished the sensation. He looked down at Kayla, who was on her belly, eyes squinting as she stared off into the dark forest.
64Bit said, “We should keep moving.”
“I’m trying to figure out where Richard and Khalil are. We can’t leave without them,” Kayla responded.
“Khalil ran off when we were attacked. I don’t know what happened to him after that,” 64Bit began. His mouth suddenly felt very dry. “Richard . . . Richard is dead. They ate him.”
Kayla stared up at 64Bit, eyes warring anger and disbelief. He was surprised to see tears glistening at the corner of her eyes. Before any tears could fall, Kayla wiped them away and growled, then pushed herself to her knees, “I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them all. Right now. Here.” She fished around in the foliage next to her, then produced 64Bit’s staff and handed it to him. Her eyes burned as she looked him in the eye screens. “So, how do we do this?”
64Bit shook his head. “We’re not killing them.”
Kayla scowled. “No peace or nonviolence or some other crap right now. These things should be dead already, but they ambushed you, right?”
“I can’t use this.” 64Bit took the staff from Kayla. He patted it a few times, then shrugged. “I never could. I never learned how to use this. I never learned how to fight rozies like . . . like a real technomancer.” The words felt like a knife in his gut. “I’m not even sure I’m able to, for . . . reasons.”
Kayla’s scowl deepened. “You’re the reason he’s dead?”
“I—” 64Bit said, then out of the corner of his vision he spotted movement. He scanned for the source and saw the trunk with the spider legs stalking through the trees, headed in their general direction, but not right toward them. 64Bit grabbed Kayla’s hand and began to pull her away. “We need to go, now.”
Kayla resisted for a moment, then allowed herself to be pulled to her feet as 64Bit led them through the dark, away from the trunk, away from Zed, but not fast enough to escape 64Bit’s shame.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 