CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 1999/AE 3999
John was silent for a moment, of necessity taking some time to digest the awesome amount of information that threatened to overload his mental processes.
"You kill them?" he repeated at last.
Adam nodded, wearily it seemed, and shut his eyes. "Yes. Try not to judge us too harshly for that. We are all that stands between the Fans and the end of humanity. So we can afford to take no chances with those who show signs of dementia or madness. Because when we miss one, like we missed Malachi, that person becomes just one more soldier in the crusade against our survival. Malachi went over to the Fans, and he’s been killing people in the domes and looking for our headquarters ever since."
"If he’s been doing so much killing, then why isn’t everyone dead?"
Adam’s eyes opened again, answering John’s question incorrectly, perhaps intentionally so. "Technology moved fast in the last year before Endwar. They could take a single atom and inscribe the words from an entire library on its face. They could take a man apart and put him together again." Adam paused, taking a deep breath. "And they could create life...or a reasonable facsimile thereof."
Again, John’s mind reeled with the implications of what had been said and what he sensed Adam was about to say. The older man stood and gestured for John to follow him. They went to another part of the wall that looked no different from the other surfaces around them, but when they approached it split open, creating a narrow door that allowed them to exit. Adam stepped through and led John down a series of corridors before going through yet another door. The new room they entered was a lab. Completely mechanized, lined by huge tubes with clear faces. Adam gestured, inviting John to look in the clearest tube.
"Recognize anything?" asked Adam.
"Gabriel," whispered John. "Oh, my God, it’s Gabe."
Gabriel reclined in the tube, eyes closed as though asleep. But he couldn’t be asleep, because from the waist down he was nothing but bone. Literally. The bones of his pelvis and hips emerged below the line of his waist, continuing down to attach to leg bones, patellae, and the small bones of his feet and ankles. Then as John watched, a slick substance built up around the bones. Soon it sheathed the entire structure, and began to darken.
"Tissue formation," said Adam. Then he said, "It’s not Gabe, it’s a robot. Another robot, like the first Gabe was."
John turned to Adam, aghast and horrified. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Your best friend was a biomechanical construct. This one is to replace him."
"No, he wasn’t, he couldn’t," said John. He didn’t like the voice he heard coming from his mouth, whining and frightened. "All the memories he had," he continued. "Everything he had done...."
"Were real. Within certain parameters. We permit them to live their lives out as they will, mostly, but there are certain requirements we have programmed into them," answered Adam. "He was real, and he led a real life, but he was just a machine. Like everyone else in Loston."
John looked at the other tubes. Mertyl lay in one, slowly being reformed, no doubt complete with her old memories and soon to be reigning supreme in the school office once more. Adam pointed at the tubes, all of which were full. "We have to remake the ones we’ve lost and reinsert them into Loston, because we hope that soon it will be safe enough for you and Fran to go back there."
John felt weak and fought to remain standing. His world spun around him as the implications of Adam’s words burrowed into his brain. He looked around the room and saw other tubes, other bodies. Some of them were incredibly tiny, like...
"Babies," said Adam, noting where John’s gaze had fallen. "That’s the one thing we could never create: a viable living form, one that could not only survive but reproduce. So we make them here and a few other places, then ship them to their domes. They grow normally but all their implanted programming parameters are already there, waiting to be activated at the appropriate times. And they can’t breed. That’s why you and Fran are so very important."
John stared at one of the babies. He reached out and touched the glass that separated him from the small form, and suddenly the body animated, the little chest expanding as breath was drawn into its lungs. John’s hand jerked away, and the thought that he had caused the baby’s movement gripped him. Then he realized that the baby was still unconscious, its body merely reacting to unseen directives given to it by the machines.
"They can’t breed," said Adam again, as if this was the most important thing about them, and then continued, "but if you can’t tell the difference, and they can’t tell the difference, then who’s to say there even is a difference?"
John’s gaze returned to Gabriel’s still form. The tissue around his legs was more formed now, growing incredibly rapidly. Above the tube a readout suddenly clicked on, reading 00:00:48:00:00.
"That’s the Calibrator," said Adam. "We’re bringing everyone – all Loston robots - online with the memories they had 48 hours ago, so that in Loston none of this will have ever happened."
John sank to the floor. He felt as though a vision of hell had opened up before him, and the worst thing about it was that he was already there.
"Everyone?" he said. His voice was small and weak. Training had given him the skills to overcome physical threats, but this was more. This information threatened not just his body, but his mind and soul.
"Everyone," replied Adam. He was looking at the tubes with the clinical expression of a doctor or a computer engineer: disassociated, dispassionate. "The ‘bots are completely undetectable, completely human, unless we put them on alert or their sensors indicate a threat to their primary functions. Then they change. They can withstand all but the most violent deaths, have extreme strength, and even resurrect themselves."
John jerked slightly, Adam’s words bringing to vivid recollection the events of the past hours, the strange night of reanimating corpses and living dead.
"There’s a supercomputer - a biological networking computer - at the base of each ‘bot’s thalamus. It regulates the organism, makes sure everything’s going smoothly. The physics and biology that are involved wouldn’t make any sense to you, but in times of need the computer triggers a series of electro-chemical changes that keep the organism alive."
"That’s why they went for the heads," whispered John.
Adam nodded. "Malachi knows that to destroy the computer you have to destroy its networking center. Kill the thalamus."
Both men looked at Gabriel. The man looked so peaceful from the waist up, and so frightening and alien from the waist down. His tissue continued to generate, and John could see the individual strands of ropy muscle begin to form. Soon skin and hair covered them, and Gabriel was complete. A pair of cables, glistening with some kind of lubricant, snaked into the tube and inserted themselves into Gabe’s ears. His eyes jerked open and his mouth rounded in a silent scream.
John almost screamed himself before Gabe’s eyes closed and he resumed his peaceful position. Adam gripped John’s arm. "It’s just downloading," he said. "We have to give him the memories he needs to be Gabe again."
"He won’t be Gabe," said John.
"Oh, but he will. He’ll be everything Gabe ever was up to two days ago. We build them well. In fact, the only thing we could never beat was the fact that they go insane if they find out the truth about themselves."
"How can a robot go insane?"
"How would you feel, John, if one day something triggered you - triggered something inside you that you didn’t even know was there? And all of a sudden you’re doing things you know are impossible and your body has become something different than you’ve known. You realize that all your most cherished memories are lies. Not only are you not you, you’re not even a real person." Adam nodded at Gabriel’s body. "As long as they live the lie, they’re fine. But when they realize it for what it is...rather than face that bleakness, they go mad. We make them too well, perhaps. Undetectable. Human."
Both men were silent for a moment, staring at Gabriel’s body, which slept in its strange and macabre way, an analog to the life that John now knew was forever beyond the coach’s grasp.
"Do you think," said Adam, "that God loves them as His own, or do you think they are anathema to Him?"
The tubes in Gabe’s ears crackled, and Gabe drew a deep breath, beginning to breathe regularly as the tubes withdrew.
John turned his head and vomited.
***
Fran’s eyes fluttered, but all was a mist of gray and confusion, as though someone had padded her brain in cotton batting like the kind her grandmother had used once long ago to make quilts that reminded one of a gentler time, a time when people were good to each other and didn’t die and then stand up again, but had the good sense and courtesy to stay dead.
What does that mean? she wondered to herself.
A light appeared in the mist, and she realized that her eyes were open. She was trying to see, but for some reason resolution and clarity were evading her. The light grew bright, then was blocked by a pair of forms, like two dense clouds traveling through a lighter fog that hung over a fairy land.
Her thoughts were muddled. Where’s Nathan? she thought. And why isn’t John here, either?
One of the clouds spoke. "She’s coming out of it."
The other cloud moved, and Fran thought she felt something touch her arm. Immediately the mist that surrounded her thickened into a more impenetrable darkness.
"Keep her down," said another voice. "Adam wants her under for as long as she’s here."