This is merely the near-culmination of millennia of human hope. As early as the Epic of Gilgamesh, mankind has sought immortality. Religion is an extension of this hope, if just as false a branch as all the rest.
Arnon D’Bvaym
AFTER 64BIT’S ADRENALINE faded away, the aches of his body nearly made him stop, but he wasn’t certain Kayla wouldn’t keep moving without him if he did. He glanced down the inside of his robe and saw a large, purple bruise forming on his chest and stomach where the rozie had kicked him. He wouldn’t be surprised if his back, where it had struck a wall, looked similar. Then there was his rolled ankle, and the muscular aches of moving so much the past few days when his life before had been, to be fair, rather sedentary . . .
I would also note that you are in need of exercise, if otherwise healthy. Medical practitioners are better able to overcome the mental and physical rigors of serving others when in strong physical condition. The medkit’s words ran through 64Bit’s mind. He wondered what condition the small robot was in, if it had been destroyed like the rest of Fort. He hoped it hadn’t.
It was easier to think about the medkit than the rest of his home, and the people that might not be there.
They encountered fewer signs of rozie activity as Kayla led the trio to the heart of the settlement. 64Bit had theories on why. “People clustered near the walls to escape,” he muttered to himself. “Of course, rozies would bunch where there were more people—more bodies to eat. Possible that the particle battery generators had a slight repelling effect: supposedly some power sources repel some rozies, enrage others, but it’s not well tested. Perhaps the master has limited home defenses still active that I didn’t know about . . .”
The master. 64Bit’s theorizing put the man into his mind, and then 64Bit couldn’t get him to leave again. He saw the master sitting beside him, helping him to understand a complicated subject: a small moment that happened so many times they all blurred together. He saw the master smiling with approval the first time 64Bit built and coded his own computer, then made a small robot that could roll around the house on its own. He remembered . . .
Less happy, more recent memories invaded 64Bit’s mind. Speaking to the master about his inability to mentally control technology, then, Aye, well, we need to speak more about this then. Rather than just letting it fester. About time as well, I suppose. What did “about time” mean? Was he reading into it too much?
“I know he was hiding something,” 64Bit muttered. “Because of the medkit, I know he remotely stored and processed memories. And if he’s hiding one thing, he could easily be hiding others. That’s at least enough data to make a hypothesis worth testing: the master was hiding something else, something he was ashamed about. And it might have something to do with me.”
“Clear,” Kayla whispered. 64Bit followed her out of an alley, exiting into a moonlight-drenched road leading to his home. The ground was covered in smashed electronics, tools, and mechanical bits, along with many papers and some clothing. 64Bit felt strangely detached as he stared at the building he once called home. Now its sagging roof had collapsed in parts, its walls had holes in them, and through these holes 64Bit could see that the floor had been torn out in places.
Legs stiff, 64Bit trod over to a smashed black box with wheels sticking out of its bottom—the medkit. It had a hole in its middle, as if a rozie had put a fist right through it; medicines stored within the medkit were gelling to its mechanical insides.
“So, where are the weapons?” Kayla asked.
Westley looked around. “Weirdly quiet here.”
64Bit shook his head, not trusting himself to respond to either of the two. Instead, he led the way forward, carefully picking his way around rubble. So many years of collecting and building machines; some were used to heal, others to experiment, and still others to build. All were destroyed and scattered about as if they had no meaning. 64Bit felt his hands trembling as he looked around. He shoved his injured hand in his robe pocket and tightened the other on his staff.
He entered through the front doorway, the door itself bent on the ground nearby. 64Bit could see into the workroom from the kitchen: the fridge had been shoved through the wall and smashed to pieces. Tables rested at odd angles. 64Bit glided down the hallway like a ghost, going around holes in the floor with splintered edges, and turned right at the intersection, away from the master’s room. The chemical lab smelled sour and was covered in shattered glass and the compounds once stored within; the robotics lab was mostly empty, its machines taken away and smashed on the street outside. The forge was untouched, it seemed, and from the ashes in its center a blackened, misshapen rozie head leered at him.
“Cortex . . .” 64Bit whispered, remembering that one of the last communications he had with the younger acolyte was to destroy the head. What had happened to him afterward?
Now 64Bit turned his attention back to the other side of the house, feeling a pressure building in his chest as he walked down the hallway. He had yet to see any blood or corpses, but that just made him feel even more like a balloon being filled beyond capacity. He looked away from the master’s room as he passed, and then looked into his own, then Cortex’s, and then the closet at the end of the hall. No bodies. Then he walked back and stopped in front of the master’s room, shoulder leaning against the wall, far enough back that he couldn’t see through the open door.
“What do we do?” Westley whispered.
64Bit looked back at his companions. Westley looked concerned, and Kayla’s expression was neutral as she looked around her, observing the ruined home.
“Let him process,” Kayla responded.
64Bit looked ahead again and stared at the wooden doorframe to the master’s room. So much time had been spent there when he was much younger, receiving instruction through the door because for some reason he was intimidated to enter the room. What he felt now was very different, but the doorway still seemed as large and imposing now as it had then.
“Most fail on their first try, lad,” 64Bit whispered. Ready to pop, he stepped forward and looked into the master’s room.
A hole in the ceiling let in moonlight and left broken wood on the floor. The master’s bed was empty—and surprisingly intact, the blankets and pillow still in place. Dirtied, stepped-on clothes littered the floor, and torn papers rested everywhere. The wall had been broken down where the master kept his secret stash of paper knowledge and advanced equipment, revealing only empty mountings and even more smashed, crushed, pulverized metals and plastics. 64Bit glided forward, holding the staff close and looking around the room. He lifted a blanket on the master’s bed to inspect a bulge and found only a bunched-up robe. He looked out a hole in the far wall at the street beyond and saw only more debris.
64Bit looked back at Kayla and Westley. “No bodies. They might still be alive.”
The pressure he felt popped. 64Bit dropped to his knees by the master’s bed, hand over his heart, sobbing and praying.
“Let my master live. Let them live: Cortex too. Let me find them. Please, give me a chance to right some of these wrongs that came about because of my terrible, terrible mistakes. And if this is all the work of the dark technomancer Zed mentioned—Id—if she sent these rozies and took my master—bless me that I may kill her and stop her stain from spreading any farther.”
64Bit felt cold, not comforted, at the end of his prayer, and a small part of him wondered if he was being heard—or if the Creator even cared.
#
THE NIGHT PASSED slowly. After composing himself, 64Bit inspected his home and the area around it again. He found that the shed where the master’s giant particle batteries were stored had been entirely untouched—there wasn’t a scratch on the faded green paint of the building. As far as 64Bit was concerned, this was enough data for him to trust his hypothesis that the giant particle batteries repelled nearby rozies. He doubted that any rozies would be truly dissuaded from approaching if they had good reason to come near, but if he, Westley, and Kayla stayed out of sight while they rested, then they should be safe.
Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to open the shed to see if the particle batteries were at risk of destabilizing. The shed’s wooden exterior was just a cover for thick steel walls built like a safe. They could be opened manually, but the finger Zed had bitten off had the universal jack attached to it, so he couldn’t actually interact with the port in the shed’s metal door. Trying to mentally command the door to open yielded the same results as trying to command his staff to work, so he just had to hope the particle batteries stayed stable while they rested.
The only room in the house without major holes to the outside was 64Bit’s, so that’s where they slept. Westley dragged Cortex’s sleeping pad to the wall where 64Bit had kept the computer he was building—64Bit had no clue where the computer was now, not that it mattered. Kayla just laid out a blanket on the floor and passed out immediately, her days and nights of chasing the ATV and hiking hard to Fort catching up with her.
64Bit had never found his bed so alien and uncomforting with two near-strangers nearby, Westley snoring softly. That, and the knowledge that his home—the literal building, and Fort itself—were irrevocably gone, just corpses now, filled with predators and carrion feeders.
Id. 64Bit reviewed the vision he’d had in his mind’s eye, with the dead tree, the attack from the mountains, the dark technomancer’s name. Id. Zed had claimed that Id had attacked Fort—and had seemed too passionate in his hate to be lying. Id. And it seemed too much a coincidence that 64Bit could have a warning vision, wandered off its path, and then found a strange rozie that said the same name. Id. He would find her and he would destroy her, and he would rescue his master, and Cortex, if they still lived.
And he would ask a lot of questions of his master.
This determination, like an ember, burned in 64Bit’s gut. He tossed and he turned, sleeping on and off, until he realized that morning light was warming his face. He turned on his eye screens and groggily sat up, feeling just a little less sore and tired than he had the night before.
Westley still slept. Kayla stood in the doorway, staring outward. She turned her head toward him, perhaps alerted by 64Bit’s stirring. “Is there any food here that might be safe?”
64Bit nodded. He knelt by his bed, placed a hand over his chest, and whispered a quick prayer, not feeling his heart in it. Then he led Kayla to the kitchen. With the fridge destroyed and the shelves ransacked, little remained, but there were stores of food hidden under the floorboards within a ground cupboard. There they found oats, dried vegetables, jerky, and other long-lasting foods that the master had the foresight to store and rotate, as well as clean water. Kayla made a useful stand-in for Cortex in crawling under the floorboards and retrieving it all—though she wasn’t enthused about doing it.
Some searching later, they found a pot that had small enough dents in it to still be useful. Then 64Bit cobbled together a heat generator from the mess in the workroom, allowing them to boil water and begin a hot breakfast without smoke marking their location. Both 64Bit and Kayla had small smiles as they began to smell their breakfast cooking, which they’d set up in his room to help them remain out of sight.
Westley sniffed several times as 64Bit threw dried rabbit, carrot, parsley, wild oats, and other ingredients into the pot, then sat up, rubbing his eyes. He looked around and said, “That smell almost fooled me it was all a dream.”
Kayla snorted. “You should be so lucky.”
Westley sat before the boiling pot and warmed his hands. “This is really nice! I thought we would just be eating cold, dry stuff for a while.”
“Technoboy proved himself surprisingly resourceful,” Kayla said.
64Bit wasn’t certain whether Kayla meant that as sarcasm or a backhanded compliment.
“Won’t be able to stay here long, though,” Kayla said.
“What? Why?” 64Bit responded.
Kayla raised an eyebrow. “Have you looked around you? There’s no reason to stay here. In fact, the longer we stay here, the more we put ourselves at risk of being caught and killed by a rozie. There’s vengeance to be had, and we won’t get any here. I bet if we canvas the forest for a day or so, we’ll see where those rozies came from. That’s as good a plan as anything else until we can figure out where Zed is.”
The medkit’s words echoed in 64Bit’s mind: The patient’s remote cerebral augmentations are non-functional without wireless connection. 64Bit stewed in thought for a moment. His finger stump twinged. “We need to stay just a little longer. I have some things to do.”
“Like what?”
64Bit held up his injured hand. “For one, I need to ensure this is healing well. And if I can find the right tools, I want to replace my lost finger.”
“You can do that?” Westley said.
64Bit shrugged. “Of course, given the right resources.”
“How?” Westley asked.
“The food is done,” Kayla said curtly. She dipped a wooden bowl into the pot and leaned against a wall, sipping the stew.
“I know how to make a mechanical finger and connect it to my frame,” 64Bit said. “Since my frame already connects augmentations to my brain, I should be able to control it immediately with a little practice. I won’t be able to feel anything from that finger unless I put sensors in it, and I doubt that I’ll be able to find or build some of those.”
Westley looked down at his fingers and wiggled them, then shook his head.
“Mostly I want to replace my missing finger jack,” 64Bit continued. “That would allow me to manually connect with almost anything that has a port. It makes up a little for not being able to . . .” 64Bit trailed off. Seeing confusion in Westley’s eyes, he spoke up again, looking at Kayla. “The second thing is, Kayla, I’m not sure we’ve found everything that could be useful to us here. I want to look around a little more.” As 64Bit spoke, he joined Westley in getting a bowl of food.
“Hmmm,” Kayla began. She narrowed her eyes. “That might be a good idea.”
“Really?” 64Bit said, surprised Kayla was agreeing with him.
“Yeah. And I can spend the day scouting the rest of Fort, figuring out where the rozies are concentrated, and checking the scout armories to see if there’s anything useful for us there. That should let us leave tomorrow morning, maybe even late tonight, armed to the teeth.”
“Seems a fair compromise,” Westley said.
Kayla slurped down her breakfast, ate a second bowl, and slipped away before 64Bit and Westley finished their first bowls. As 64Bit ate, he stared at his stew, mentally considering what he’d need in order to rebuild a finger, and how he’d do it, particularly for attaching it to his partially-healed finger stump. He also wondered where in the house the master might have hidden his auxiliary memory unit mentioned by the medkit.
“Storing it anywhere outside would be too reckless for him to consider,” 64Bit muttered, although the thought still worried him. With just a day for these tasks, 64Bit would be pressed for time as it was—searching all of Fort would be impossible.
“So, how are we getting started?” Westley asked.
“We?” 64Bit said.
Westley nodded. “I thought scouting out the settlement with Kayla sounded more interesting, but she left too quickly for me to join her. So, I don’t want to sit around fidgeting with my thumbs—teach me what you’re doing.”
“Hmmm,” 64Bit said. He set down his emptied bowl, stood, and stretched. His first instinct was to set Westley hunting for the auxiliary memory unit while 64Bit prepared to operate on his hand, but he had no idea what the unit looked like and didn’t think explaining what it was to Westley would help at all. Maybe Westley could help with collecting the parts for the finger itself, then. “Do you know what a micro motor is?”
“No . . . Unless it’s just a really small motor.”
“How about a tensor drill?”
Westley shook his head.
64Bit pursed his lips. “If I can’t set you to find things for me, I don’t think you’ll be of any use until I have already collected everything I need—at least then I can ask you to hand me what I’ve collected as I need it.”
Westley looked away, eyes downcast. “I don’t really have the right set of skills for this, do I? When I distracted the rozie with my voice yesterday, I thought I finally found someplace where I could be useful.” He sat up. “Well, that means I can explore my own curiosities, I guess.”
“Just don’t get spotted,” 64Bit said. They hadn’t seen any rozies nearby yet, but it never hurt to be careful. He left his staff tucked under his bed—not without some hesitation, but ultimately concluding that he would need both hands more than he would need a walking stick—and walked toward the workroom, figuring he had the greatest odds of finding what he needed by sorting through the mess in there, when he heard footsteps behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Westley following him, once again bright-eyed.
“You said something about a frame earlier,” Westley said. “I thought you meant just your body, but you said something about a direct connection to your brain . . . Maybe I could ask you a few questions while you work? If it’s no bother.”
“Um—” 64Bit said.
“So, what is that frame you were talking about?”
“It’s Cortex all over again, except Westley does have an excuse for not knowing these things,” 64Bit muttered to himself. He walked into the workroom, knelt before a pile of tools and mechanical bits, and began sorting through for the items he needed. “All initiated technomancers have a frame—a system of subdermal and submuscular wires and sensors that are connected to the technomancer chips in their brains. Since this chip is already integrated into my nervous system, as are these wires and sensors, installing a mechanical finger is as easy as attaching the right wires and making sure my body will heal properly to the machinery.”
“Wouldn’t your body reject having that much foreign material in it? Or wouldn’t it degrade over time? I imagine maintaining wires and computer chips in your muscles—or your brain, no less!—would be very . . . invasive,” Westley said.
64Bit shook his head. He began sorting the useful mechanical parts he had organized, finding the items in the best condition. He answered slowly, balancing his attention between his work and answering Westley’s questions as the minutes ticked by. “Technomancers . . . there’s a gene that entered the human gene pool centuries ago. You either have it or you don’t. And, among other things, this gene makes technomancers’ bodies extremely receptive to foreign, non-biological material. For example, my body has formed fatty, rubbery, vein-like structures around the wires in my frame to protect and maintain them. The advantage of this gene is that it makes technomancers possible in the first place. There is a downside.” 64Bit pulled his sleeve down his arm and pointed at a scar on his bicep. “See that?”
“Yes,” Westley said.
“Got a metal sliver in there somehow. My body couldn’t figure out what to do with it, so it kept forming different kinds of tissues around it, resulting in a tumor-like growth that damaged my muscles. A normal person’s body would have just formed pus and tried to reject the thing.” 64Bit put his arm down. “But this gene, and my pre-existing frame, also meant these were fully functional the day my master installed them.” He tapped his eye screens.
Westley smiled and drummed his fingers together. “I have so many more questions! I don’t even know where to start.”
64Bit enjoyed lecturing while he worked, so he easily found himself talking, sharing information so basic it felt almost painful to have to put into words. Westley asked several questions about 64Bit’s eye screens, such as why they were pixelated and why he had them in the first place: 64Bit liked the aesthetic, but as for why he had them, the master had installed them when he discovered cancerous growths in 64Bit’s eyes during his technomancer initiation. Westley was curious about whether anyone could become a technomancer: No. It took that same gene 64Bit had mentioned earlier to be a technomancer, and without that gene, receiving the surgery that installed the technomancer’s brain-chip and bodily frame—being initiated—would cause much harm and little good. A final series of questions ended with Westley asking if it was the brain-chip specifically that allowed a technomancer to communicate mentally with technology.
At that question, 64Bit paused, suddenly finding the sound of Westley’s voice and his questions obnoxious. “Yes and no.”
“Come on, now, that’s as good as not answering,” Westley said.
64Bit rubbed his temple. “Genetic technomancers hear echoes of electromagnetic waves, and some transmit signals, but both are weak and undirected. That brain-chip is supposed to focus that aspect of the technomancer gene and expand on it, allowing the technomancer to listen for electromagnetic waves, send some of their own, and command technology mentally, among other things that may be determined by the technomancer’s natural aptitudes and physical augmentations.”
“Supposed to?” Westley asked.
64Bit held up the mechanical finger he had built for himself. It was a little thicker than his other fingers, but it was just the right length with its cap screwed on, which protected a backup universal jack he had found at the bottom of a box filled with wires. “It’s time to give me a new finger,” he said. He walked to the medical room, ignoring questions until Westley quieted.
Working with Westley, once they were mostly silent, was unexpectedly pleasant. 64Bit directed him, speaking only where necessary, to help find surgical knives that didn’t have shattered blades, in addition to needles, clean sutures, tweezers, soap, and other items. 64Bit was most pleased when they found an unbroken jar of mild numbing salve—it wouldn’t remove nearly as much pain as 64Bit would prefer, but it would be better than nothing. 64Bit ensured that everything they found—particularly his new finger—was methodically cleaned and sterilized, then he placed the tools on a clean cloth.
“Absolutely no distractions now,” 64Bit instructed. “When I need something, take whatever is in my right hand and replace it with that item as quickly as you can. I will probably need help sewing, so be prepared.”
Westley nodded, inspecting each tool 64Bit had laid out, as well as 64Bit’s hand.
64Bit took a deep breath, placed a strip of cloth in his mouth to bite on, and began. The numbing agent helped dull surface pain as 64Bit began cutting, reopening his stitches and pulling flesh back from the already-scarring tissue. He worked slowly, holding back grunts of pain, at one point instructing Westley to hold his arm for him to keep it steady. It didn’t hurt as much as when Kayla had initially helped him clean and sew up his finger stump, but memories of that long night added an extra edge to his real pain.
After opening his finger again, 64Bit used tweezers to carefully locate and expose subdermal and submuscular wires. He connected these to several wires extending from the bottom of the mechanical finger, cutting off the excess with a wire cutter, and clamped down the combined ends tightly to ensure no loose threads of wire would stick up under his skin and cause a growth. He finished by layering his skin and muscle over the base of the mechanical finger, helping it to firmly anchor within the socket where his real finger had originally been, and then instructed Westley to sew up the finished product.
64Bit fell on his back once finished, gasping, sweating, and smiling. He held his hand above his head and, with a thought, his new mechanical finger bent and straightened. His hand ached as he did so—it would do that for a few days or weeks before his body completely accepted it and healed around it. “No heavy lifting for you for a long while,” 64Bit said.
“That was amazing,” Westley said. 64Bit glanced at Westley out of the side of his eye screens and saw him gazing in awe at 64Bit’s new finger. “I would have never thought something like that was possible.”
“I could replace your finger, too, but it would be much harder,” 64Bit said. “And the results would never feel as natural for you. Something would always feel missing, hollow.”
Westley got a distant expression when 64Bit said that. “Empty,” he whispered.
“What?” 64Bit asked.
Westley shook his head. “Nothing. Just—what the rozies were saying yesterday. Not ‘hungry’ or ‘angry,’ but ‘empty.’”
“Interesting,” 64Bit muttered to himself. The scarecrow rozies Zed had with him had said the same thing. He thought back through the master’s notes and didn’t find anything that might suggest why they would say that. Eventually, 64Bit shrugged. He didn’t really care what drove rozies; he only cared whether a rozie could think insofar as it posed a threat to him. They were monsters all the same.
“I can’t wrap my head around it,” Westley said. He stood and began wiping his hands with a soapy cloth. “What’s next?”
64Bit pulled up the time on his eye screens. “Lunch. Then, hopefully you can help me find something before Kayla returns.”
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 