CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 1999/AE 3999
"You people are monsters," said John, and Adam’s eyes filled with tears as the statement stabbed him to the core.
"Please," whispered Adam. John’s words caused a pain in his heart that was reflective of the self-doubt he felt, of the belief that John might be right. "Please don’t think that. We’re not monsters, just people doing what we have to to keep humankind alive."
"What about you?" asked John. "Are you human?"
Adam picked up a small box that lay near Gabe’s tube. He held it next to John’s head, and a panel on it glowed green. "Human," he said, then handed the box to John. "You can scan me if you want. I’ve never done it. I believe I’m human, but that could be the programming. You hold my soul - or if I don’t have one, then my sanity - in your hands."
John looked at the box, obviously tempted to use it. "You’d go crazy if you knew?"
Adam nodded.
"What about the guy I saw in Iraq? Hell, what about Iraq?" asked John.
Adam felt relief at the question, one he was actually prepared to answer. "The man - Devorough - was what we call a bit."
"A bit?" repeated John.
"Short for bit player," explained Adam. "It’s a robot model we use over and over again. It saves us a lot of time and difficulty, because each new face is made from scratch, basically. So there are thousands of recycled templates we use, and most people won’t notice the face in the mall that they also happened to see thirty years ago in the movie theater. Or if they do notice, they chalk it up to déjà vu or indigestion or a strange dream or any of a thousand other things. You, on the other hand, did notice, so we tried to transfer him out."
"But he was in his house when I went looking."
Adam’s brow furrowed, though he tried to hide his expression from John. This was one of the things that most concerned him: not only had Devorough shown up at Loston with a daughter, which his programming wasn’t designed to support, but to all appearances the bit either hadn’t responded to its directive to leave Loston, or it hadn’t received the order. The former alternative meant that the bit had somehow resisted its programming.
And the latter meant that, somewhere, there was a traitor among the Controllers.
***
Jason watched the monitors. Sheila stood beside him, also watching through Loston’s eyes as the Cleanup Crew replaced everyone, putting them into the positions they had occupied forty-eight hours before.
It all had to be perfect.
But Jason watched with only half his attention. The rest of him was turned inward, thinking through the plans he’d made over the long years, beginning when he finally realized that the Fans were winning, and the Controllers destined to utterly fail in their self-appointed task. Today would be the day. The final day.
Today the Fanatics would come. He had to be ready to welcome them appropriately.
He felt at his side for Sheila’s hand, and felt it curl around his. It was warm, soft, everything that real flesh should be. He wondered if he could kill her to fulfill his mission, and realized that he had come to love her.
But he also realized that, yes, he could kill her if it became necessary to do what he had to. Just as Adam would kill him, if he discovered Jason’s plans, if he were to find out that Jason had betrayed them all.
The Fans were coming.
The end was at hand.
***
"But he attacked me," said John. Something in what Adam had told him wasn’t making sense, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
"Yes," answered Adam. They were back in the older man’s office now, back in the place where John had awakened. He hadn’t been able to handle looking at the "new" bodies of his friends any longer, so Adam had brought them back here. "When you mentioned seeing him before, it triggered a mode we call shut down. He tried to keep you from spreading the idea around."
"By killing me. Tal attacked me, too, when I told him I saw Devorough before."
"Those were automatic reactions. They had to keep Loston intact, especially with Fran coming in."
"Fran," John breathed. He had almost forgotten about her in the all but overwhelming crush of ideas that had pounded into him in the last hours.
"Fran," said Adam, "Is quite possibly the most important person in the world."
"How so?"
"To explain that, I have to tell you a bit more about us, about the Controllers. We are all recruited from dome life. All of us were born in one zoo or another, and the then-Controllers observed us and noted that we had characteristics that would allow us to be good Controllers in turn. So after a formative period, we are taken from the domes and brought to headquarters for training. But doing that exposes us to radiation, and sterilizes us within a short time. No babies from our ranks."
"None?" asked John. Once more, he didn’t know where this strange conversation was headed, but once more he felt fear’s clutching hands tightening around his heart.
"None," said Adam. "We continue our existence by harvesting our members from the inhabitants of the domed zoos, like Loston. But none of us can reproduce. Not one of us is a viable, fertile organism."
"Wouldn’t that mean that you are all machines? If all of your lives are bent toward making sure the human race continues, would it make sense for you to come out of the domes if you’re human?"
Adam winced as a spasm seemed to run through him, a shudder that could have been pain or fear. "We certainly hope we are human, and merely chosen to sacrifice our reproductive future for the greater good of humanity."
"But you don’t know?"
Adam shook his head. "No. No one really does. Only a few computers that have been around since all this happened have a complete database of who is real and who is not. So though the odds are completely against it, although it is more likely than not that each and every one of the Controllers is a robot, a machine called into existence by other machines, each of us hopes that we are, in fact, human. We know that Malachi is, for instance. And it could be that others among us are also human. After all, as I said, only the computers know for sure who is who. We ourselves are kept in the dark about each person’s nature. Only when a threat emerges are we informed as to the nature of the threat and the nature of the life that is threatened. That’s how we became aware of you. It’s also how we became aware that Fran was so important: a computer monitoring Denver took note of the threat when she was attacked by Fans, the night her husband was killed."
"But if you don’t know who is real until they’re threatened, how do the Fans know?" asked John.
"The reason we don’t know is that we don’t want to know, because knowing would threaten our sanity and our existence. And by extension, the existence of humanity. But the knowledge is there, if someone knows how to look."
"Someone like Malachi," guessed John.
"Exactly," agreed Adam. "He knows. He knows where the real people are, or at least he managed to find out their names and dome locations before he left us. The real people are the ones who can carry us forth, who can hopefully bring humanity back from the brink."
"And Fran is one of them," whispered John, guessing how this would turn out. He guessed half of the truth.
"Fran is," agreed Adam, nodding. "She’s also the fertile last fertile female alive in the world. If she dies before reproducing, then so does humanity. And all that’s left is a world of machines."