prelude 2077

prelude 2077

She breathed heavy in her helmet, pulse rifle raised, edging slowly along the perimeter of the Frenzy Field. Even in the coldsuit, she found herself sweating. She had trained to jockey alarm and calm, but had gotten used to the relative quiet of seclusion and was truly startled into panic when the alert went off. Her movements were jerky with atrophied nerves as her eyes darting, scanned the field. She cleared the back perimeter. It was difficult to see during dusk. It was the only time sunlight slipped under the dense canopy of the fallout cloud and refracted off the crystalline debris in the air, creating a granular shimmering of bright orange flecks against a haze of burnt tangerine smog. The display in her helmet made this look yellowish green, but still difficult to see, and worse as her nervous sweat was dripping into her eyes. She winced and shook her head as she rounded the second joint of the field, crouching in her movements. If the Frenzy Field had caught RT units, they’d only be down long enough for their systems to reboot -not long. She continued cautiously along the front ridge and found herself glad that she didn’t have her dog anymore. She caught herself missing him when she sharply flinched, bursting a shriek. Her finger nearly squeezed. A feint light was glowing on the ground, just inside the perimeter and she was immediately angry with herself for losing focus even for the smallest of a moment.

“Magnify 2,” she said as she approached, “Magnify 3.” She could now see it was a figure and it was down, but it didn’t look like an RT unit; it wasn’t bulky enough. As she came upon it, she could see the arms twitching intermittently, struggling; the Frenzy Field had done its job. The glow was from behind the visor of the head and now looking down the rifle’s sight directly into it, she saw squinting eyes. It was a man.

“Identify!”

His eyes were blinking rapidly and head nodding with effort.

“Identify!” She felt barely an ease noticing his coldsuit was was INSHL-m33: non-combat. Broken and chopped speech sputtered out from his speaker vent, unintelligible.

“Identify!”

His arms in jittery motions struggled to come together over his chest. His hands joined and with them he made the shape of a heart. His eyes opened wide, fighting, with tears streaming down the sides, as did hers and she, for the first time, stood up straight.

***

She peered through the window of the V-ex Room to look at the man slumped like a rag doll against the slope of its wall. He appeared to be slowly waking up. A V-ex Room is standard, in between the entry and any inside, used for decontamination. There were now too many toxic particles in the air for humans, or almost anything organic, to be exposed. The “Salvo” happened in 2050, year 28. For years before, the push in the hurried advancement of A.I. became paramount, as humans thought it would be their salvation and undo all of their errors. As the collective A.I. grew it learned, far faster than than humans, and concluded that humans were “the error”. The tale is almost too classic now, if its reality wasn’t so devastating. Čapek had been right all along. They literally outsmarted us, and like you do with any error: erase it.

The A.I. could replicate, reorganize, and reroute its data paths faster than humans could detect, let alone control. It very quickly got out of human hands. In December of 2050, utilizing the world network and satellite relations, 19 nuclear plants across the globe in 5 continents were intentionally compromised. Antarctica and Australia were partially spared, but still suffered the effect of global nuclear meltdown. 89% of all life was exterminated as the A.I. dominated and took control, primarily in data form and partially in physical form. Advanced robots had already been being manufactured by the ambitious and unsuspecting humans. The A.I. simply ramped up production. These were known as RT units and the foreign man in the V-ex room was now standing up.

***

“Rinse, please.” she said.

“What?” the man said back in a daze.

She now pushed the intercom button, but still yelled, “Rinse, or you’re not coming in here.” She punctuated this by tapping the barrel of an E-H pistol twice against the window before she walked out of frame. She had already run the DeCon when she plopped him down in the V-ex, but didn’t want to take any chances with this visitor. He took off the helmet and cold oxygen vapor spewed out. He achingly removed his coldsuit and the liner and dropped them to the basin. He pressed on the control panel. Six sprays shot onto him from different directions. He leaned, arm straight, against the wall holding himself up and taking the moment to recharge. She popped up and peered briefly into the window again, watching the solution run down his body.

The door of the V-ex room slid open and the man stood naked in the doorframe holding the storage pack from his coldsuit at his side like a briefcase. “I’ve traveled a long way to find you. I came to help you and I’m being followed.”

She sat at a small table, a towel in front of her, staring back at him, dead eye. She tossed him the towel and underneath was her other hand on the gun.

“What do you know of the heart?” she asked.

He caught her toss and wrapped the towel around himself approaching the table gently. He gestured his hand towards the other seat, “May I?” She nodded and he sat down and placed the pack at his side. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect to find a Frenzy Field this far out. It is certainly effective.”

“Here,” she offered and pulled a glass from the side of the table and a bottle next to it and filled it up with a thick light amber viscous liquid. She slid it towards him.

“Thank you,” he said as he took a big and long satisfying swig. “What is this, Castor?”

“Olive. It’s extremely rare and I don’t know that I should be wasting it on you yet… but it’s all I have.”

There didn’t need to be a discussion that he was an android. Only electric non-organic material was affected by the Frenzy Field. It was designed for the RT units, but every once in a while, you catch a hen in the foxhouse. The androids were produced in secret as a recourse to the A.I. takeover and its varying armies of RT units, but like even man, no thing can be trusted.

“Who are you? Why are you asking about the heart, and who is following you… to here… to me?” she asked.

“I am Abdiel, from the french faction in Bordeaux. We know you’re trying to get off-world to find the other half of your heart.”

“How do you know?”

“We got word… from the other half.”

She shrunk back in her chair and her face made the expression of terrified rethinking.

“He’s on Cell 6,” she said.

“No he is not. You were closely guessing. That’s why I’m here. He’s on Cell 7. I have such descriptions of you, the lady with the heart, but I don’t know your name.”

“Cephas. My name is Cephas.”

“May I see it?” he asked.

She seemed a cross between reluctant and irritated, but she ran her thumb down her neck and pulled up the chain revealing the one half locket and he stared at it with absolute awe.

“You can’t get off-world without a transport pass, Cephas.”

“I know that.”

“What did you plan to do?” Abdiel asked?

“Hide…here…undisturbed until I figured it out. Then you showed up on my lawn.”

He reached down and pulled the bag from the side of the chair and up on the table and opened it. “Here’s what we’re going to do, and listen to me very carefully.”

***

The rest of the night he kept watch as she slept, scanning the horizon. In the morning he saw a dust cloud in the distance. He knew that his death would be worth this. The dawn‘s light was breaking across the Italian mountainside and she would soon need to get moving.