Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
A rthur
“Where are you going?” Mila reaches out and holds my hand as I try to get out of bed. It’s been another week or so since she discovered she is pregnant, and I’ve noticed she’s been even more attached to me of late. I think it is a sweet shift in temperament, but it does make doing my job a little harder.
“I’m sorry,” I say, kissing her forehead. “I have work to attend to.”
She pouts at me. “I don’t like it when you go.”
“Clingy little thing,” I murmur affectionately. Ever since she fell pregnant, the hormonal changes have made her more sensitive in a lot of ways. She does not like for me to be too far out of her sight for too long.
I know this phase will not last forever. She is young, and she is scared. She wants her family with her; however, I do not wish to announce the news prematurely. Once she reaches three months, we will notify her parents and her mother and sister can come here and attend to her. But for the moment it is a secret shared between her and me, and Lydia, I suppose. Nothing is kept secret from Lydia.
“I will not be long,” I assure her. “Lance needs me to help him.”
She frowns slightly. “I don’t like Lance.”
“No? Why not?”
“I didn’t like the way he looked at me on the day I came here.”
“The day you fell into my office through the wall?”
She giggles a little. “He looks at me weirdly. Like, I’m… not like he doesn’t like me, but like he knows something about me that I don’t even know.”
“He looks at you because you’re gorgeous.”
“No, he doesn’t look at me like he thinks I’m pretty. He looks at me like I’m not a person at all,” she says. “He’s not a nice man.”
He isn’t. Neither am I, for that matter. We military types don’t tend to value niceness highly as a general rule. But she loves me, I think. She has not said the words, but the way she looks at me tells me that she has a rather intense fondness for me. I love her. I am absolutely devoted to her. I would do anything for her.
I have not said any of that to her, but I hope she knows I love her the same way I know she loves me.
“I will be back soon,” I say. “Have a nap, and I will be back before you know it.”
Lance has called a special meeting. I am hoping that there will be information on the rebellion that has entered New Boston clandestinely. We have been working our best spies over the last few weeks. They have not turned up anything of any real substance, which is frustrating. Since Mila arrived, I’ve become aware that the war I am used to fighting on the front has come to my front door and is being lost beneath my nose.
“Say congratulations to the new daddy!” Lance holds up a glass to me as I step into the private meeting chamber. Unlike most tactical meetings that take place at my home, this one is taking place in the Temple of the Artifice. It stands in the very center of New Boston, and acts as a center for commerce and justice. I can see my building in the distance from the windows of this one, which is several stories high.
“Thank you,” I say to the smattering of applause. The news of Mila’s pregnancy has spread quickly. It is the subject of much excitement and speculation in New Boston society. Even the men have their bets placed as to whether it will be a boy or a girl.
I take a seat, somewhat uneasily. There is an instinct tickling the very back of my brain, a draw to be at home. It’s probably just the urge of every new father to be.
Lance smiles at me. “Are you enjoying your bride?”
It’s an odd question. He is at my home most days. He knows exactly how I feel about Mila. I assume the question is for everybody else’s benefit.
“I am, yes. She has proven to be the perfect choice. I doubted her age at first, but I should have put more faith in the Artifice to begin with.”
There’s a ripple of laughter that doesn’t quite sync up with what I said.
“You see, gentlemen?” Lance smiles at the others. A dozen ranked military men are all regarding me with shark-like expressions that I do not like in the slightest. The hair on the back of my neck stands up as I realize something is happening. I am in the presence of something I do not know about, and that is dangerous.
“What would you say if I told you that you have Project Freedom to thank for her?”
“What is that? One of the new modules from the Artifice?”
The Artifice often issues new code packs for running various facets of life.
“Not exactly,” he says, looking too pleased by half. “Project Freedom is something we’ve been working on for years.”
“And who is we, exactly?”
I hate asking that question. I hate how stupid and uninformed it makes me look.
“It is a group of intelligent men of bravery and free will. I joined around the time of my injury. Others have joined for their own reasons. Whether it be when they were rewarded for their service to the Artifice with losing everything they had ever loved, or being forever physically maimed, each of us has his reason.”
Lance pushes back from the table and wheels around me. “I didn’t know how we’d get you on our side, Arthur. I thought there was no way in. You never complained about your wounds or scars. You have remained loyal even when it seemed you would not be given a match or mate.”
“I waited, and was rewarded.”
A rough chuckle ripples through the room.
“You were rewarded, but not because you waited. Tell me, Arthur, what would you do to keep your bride, now that you have known her?” He wheels a few feet away and turns to face me with a smooth rotation.
“I would do whatever I had to.”
“And what if the Artifice were to take her from you, assign her to another man?”
“That would not happen.”
“It has happened to an unfortunate few. An electronic intelligence doesn’t really weigh emotional connections the way we do, does it? The Artifice makes the most practical decisions possible, prioritizing the good of the collective over the interests of the individual.”
I let out a sigh. I can tell he is going somewhere with this, but I do not know where. What I do know is that I am unlikely to like it. There’s a particular deviously pleased look in his eye that I know does not bode well for any of us.
“Yes, we know this. Children are taught this in their classes.”
“What children are not taught is how to influence the Artifice.”
I laugh. “There’s no way to influence an all-knowing artificial intelligence.”
“There’s changing the name Maraline to the name Mila,” he says.
I stare at him as a slow horror creeps over me. My mind flashes back to the day Mila arrived. She kept talking about how they thought it was her sister who had been selected. I dismissed that as incompetence on their part. Now I am starting to wonder if it was not stupidity at all—at least, not on their part.
“You tampered with the Artifice?” The outrage in my voice makes several of Lance’s little group of insurgents lean away from me. I look around at them all, committing their faces to memory. I will arrest and execute every single one of these people. This is treason.
“You were going to marry an old woman. I changed it so you could have the sweet little thing. I wanted you to see the advantage of influencing the machine that runs our world like tyrannical clockwork.”
“Her older sister is not old. She’s twenty-seven, still too young for me, but almost a decade older. Why would you think I would want the younger one?”
“All men want the younger…”
I’ve never hit a man in a wheelchair before, but today I make an exception. The sentence is lost as his head snaps sideways, blood spurting from his nose. He takes the blow like a man, his head turned to the side for a long moment as he tries to recalibrate his rattled brain.
He pulls a white kerchief from his pocket and staunches the bleeding, not skipping a beat.
“You liked her, Arthur. You liked what we chose for you. You were happy. Are happy. And you’re happy because people made a good choice for you. We made a good choice for you. You’ve been a loyal soldier all your life, but it is time that you understood where your blessings come from. The Artifice scarred you. We gave you reason to live again.”
The arrogance is astounding, though maybe it should not be. Lance always was a reckless bastard who thought more about himself than anybody else. We can’t blame him for what happened to him. A rebel artillery shell took his ability to walk. But his being where a rebel artillery shell happened to land, that was an act of disobedience in the first place.
“You tampered with the Artifice,” I repeat. “The penalty for that is death.”
“And the penalty for you telling anybody what we did is you losing your pretty little pregnant bride. She’ll be removed from your home and sent back to hers, and that is best case scenario. The baby will be classed as an aberration, and very possibly destroyed. Don’t forget, the Artifice is ruthless. It does not care about what we want, or what we love. If the infant is not supposed to exist, the Artifice will not allow it to.”
I want to punch him again, but there is a limit to how many times one can hit a man in a wheelchair. I look for someone else to beat, but I see expressions of fear on all of their faces. They have not come here to gloat. They have come here with trepidation, as well they should. I may have fallen into their trap, but they know what they have caught remains dangerous. I am not their victim, but they may very well shortly become mine.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to know what you owe your happiness to. I want you to stop living in this blind, blinkered way, where you think everything is handed to you because you are faithful. I want you to understand that Artifice or not, mankind has always been its own salvation. You have been rooting through good society for weeks now, Arthur. It has to stop.”
“Oh. Alright. So we’re just being outright blasphemous now, are we?”
“The Artifice was never meant to be a religion,” he says. “You turned it into one. You, and men like you. It was a tool, but we elevated it into a god. It’s time we took responsibility for ourselves again. It’s time we thought for ourselves. Fought for ourselves…”
I thought Lance had done something dumb for his own amusement, and because he thought he was better than everyone. But that is not what is going on at all. What he just said… the thought for ourselves, fought for ourselves part… that is a rebel slogan.
The very heart of our government has been infiltrated. Our upper echelons have been invaded. The enemy is inside the walls of my very home.
“What do you want?” I repeat the question, gritting it out between my teeth.
“I want you to join us, and I want you to act in the interest of mankind, not machine kind.”
He means he wants me to follow his orders, rather than the Artifice’s orders. He wants me to become a traitor to the entire enterprise of society as we know it. And he thinks my wife and my unborn child are enough leverage.
“I need to think about this,” I say.
“Of course. Take all the time you need.” Lance waves his hand. “I will need you to perform a mission tomorrow, though.”
“What kind of mission?”
Lance smiles at me. “We’re going to turn the Artifice off. Once and for all.”
He’s insane.
I nod, turn on my heel, and walk out of the room. As I walk, I wonder if they will let me go. If they were smart, they’d shoot me in the back of the head as I leave.
The bullet never comes.
They are far too arrogant. They’re not afraid of what I will do when I walk out of here. They’re so absolutely convinced that they are sufficient steps ahead they don’t need to worry about me.
There is nobody I can trust now. It suddenly makes complete sense how Soma has been flooding the aristocratic set. The rebels have been making us stupid and compliant. They have been shipping their ideology into the very core of our society for years. And now I will have to pay the price.
The house feels quiet as I step into it.
Then I hear a ragged, gurgling breath that immediately snaps me out of this dark sanctum and to a bright and terrible place a long way away. I would know the sound of someone dying anywhere.
I rush toward the sound, into the bedroom where I find Lydia bleeding out on the floor.
“They… took her,” she gasps. “I’m sorry. I tried to stop them, but they cut… me… down.”
“Shhh. It’s going to be okay,” I say, my voice dipping into tenderness. There is too much blood. This is not okay. Nothing is ever going to be okay again. I can feel the corners of my vision starting to cloud over, my sight concentrating on a single point.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You did well. You did so well.”
I am trying to staunch the bleeding, but there are more holes in her body than I have hands to cover them. Yelling for help is pointless. I have seen too many people die to believe there is anything I can do for her now. I don’t want her to pass to the sound of my shouting. I hold her bloodied body to my chest and I wrap my arms around her.
“You were a good girl,” I reassure her. “You did your job, and you can rest now. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”
“I failed. I let her… they… took her.”
“You didn’t fail. You protected her. You were the best.”
I feel the moment life leaves her. The tension in her body fades and she becomes a heavy weight against me, warm, leaking and absent of animating spark.
A tear traces down my scarred cheek.
I thought this was a day like any other. I did not sense the danger coming. My wife did. My missing, pregnant, teenage wife knew better than I. There is no excuse for this failure. It is mine, and mine alone.
I could fall into misery and despair right now, but I harden my heart.
As I release her body gently, I see a note all too late, crumpled in Lydia’s hand.
The bastards left it with her to give me.
“Come to the Wastelands. Do not alert the garrison. If you try to hunt us down, you will lose your wife and unborn child.” — L
I pick up Lydia in my arms. Her blood covers my clothes, but I do not care. I carry her out of the house like the bride she never got to become. There were dozens of lives she never lived because she chose to dedicate herself to the protection of my family. I wish I had rejected her application. I wish I had discharged her against her will. I wish I had not been so selfish, knowing she would have done anything for me.
The first soldier I encounter looks at me with wide eyes.
“Archon-General, what has happened?”
I hand her to him, carefully. He takes her with the same reverence, not understanding how this terrible thing happened. I will not tell him, either. I cannot bring myself to utter the words that would serve as an explanation.
“If I do not return in three days, ensure she is buried with full honors.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” he says.
“Thank you.”
I go down to my vehicle in the same clothing. I am not going to change. This blood is the last essence of the woman who sacrificed everything for me. I will not wash her away, nor do I have time. My bride is in the grips of absolute madmen who will do anything to wrest power away from the Artifice. They do not care how foolish and indeed, impossible their quest is. They’re following human folly, the same stupidity that led our species into war after war time and time again. The Artifice is the only chance for peace, and I will sacrifice everything for it.
I drive to the Wasteland in something of a haze. I am armed, of course, though I know it will do me little good. They are not stupid enough to kill my personal guard, take my wife, threaten her life and the life of my child, and not think that I will come to them armed with a vengeance.
They are not hard to find. There is a militia clearly visible among the ruins. It was not there last time I was here with Mila. This is a quickly built mobile installation, purposefully constructed to greet me.
As I get out of the vehicle, I see that Lance is waiting for me. He is no longer confined to his chair. Instead he is wearing an exo-suit that allows him to stand seven feet tall. I know he is much stronger than before, even at his peak as a soldier. The technology he is wearing gives him the grip strength and crushing power of a hydraulic machine.
“You shouldn’t have pushed us to this, Arthur,” he says, instantly defensive as I confront him.
“You killed my guard. And you told me I had time to think.”
“She killed herself. She could have stood aside. We gave her plenty of chances to submit. We even tried to subdue her without hurting her. She fought so fiercely we had no choice but to kill her. As for time to think? I knew you’d never agree. We gave you a chance, and you blew it.”
His words are stupid, arrogant, and above all, cruel. These men like to call the Artifice terrible, but they are capable of so much worse. The Artifice never does anything to be evil or to cause suffering on purpose. But these men, they concocted a plan that would only ever end in tragedy.
“You destroyed someone more honorable and valuable than you could ever be.”
“We needed your wife, because we need your obedience. Nobody else needs to die, except if you decide to make that necessary.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Oh, it’s very simple. And it’s something that should have been done a very long time ago.”
“Tell me.”
“Go to the Artifice,” he says, spreading his hands wide in a sort of perverse invitation. “And turn it off.”
The notion of turning the Artifice off strikes me as ridiculous as turning off the sun. “That can’t be done.”
“Of course it can be. It just needs someone the thing trusts, as well as someone who has advanced military training and can be relied upon to get past the thing’s defenses.”
Calling it the thing is dehumanizing. The Artifice isn’t a person, but it has earned personhood a thousand times over. Lance is reveling in this disrespect.
“I want to see my bride.”
“You will see her when you are done.”
“I want to ensure she is alive, so I don’t do this task for no reason.”
“Oh, there is a reason,” Lance laughs. “You are going to free humanity, Arthur. You are going to…”
“Shut up,” I snap. “I don’t need your braindead rebel philosophy spouted at me. I’ve put my sword through people blathering the same nonsense you are thousands of times.”
“Yes, you are a killer, aren’t you,” he says. “One who feels so very offended that someone he cared about was killed in her turn. You’re a hypocrite, Arthur.”
“Where is Mila?”
“She is safe, though she will not be for much longer if you keep wasting my time,” Lance growls, his mood and visage darkening. This is the problem with going up against old friends. I know precisely what he is capable of, and that falls into two categories: anything and everything.
He won’t let me see my bride before I do his bidding, and he will absolutely kill her without remorse if I do not do what he wants.
“Fine,” I growl. “I will travel to the Artifice, and I will cut the power sources.”
“There will be traps, you know that. There will be shielding and guards. But you may be able to leverage your hero status to get close enough to avoid most of those defenses. That’s what we are counting on, anyway.”
What they are counting on is me being prepared to do this regardless of whether or not it is possible to actually do it. They don’t care if I die, as long as I die trying to do what they want me to do.
Lance throws a radio walkie-talkie at me. “Let me know when it is done.”
Mila
“He won’t do it.”
“Shut up.”
“He won’t do it. He loves the Artifice more than anything.”
“Shut her up!” Lance looks around for someone who wants to deal with me. This place is full of very uneasy unfaithful men and women who are now part of something they wish they weren’t. Arthur always described the rebels as being reckless, wild people. I think they’re addicts who have no idea what to do with themselves when they’re not high on Soma.
“Touch me, and the consequences will be far-reaching,” I say. “What you’ve done so far is already unspeakably stupid.”
I have been crying almost without stopping since they killed Lydia. I have never seen violence before. I never knew what it looked, sounded, or smelled like when a man pushes a steel blade through the body of a woman. Lydia fought them off for long minutes before she went down. She killed three. But in the end, she could not save me, and I could not save myself.
“He’s not going to rescue you,” Lance says. “He’s going to either die in the attempt to turn off the Artifice, or I’m going to kill him, and then you. Or perhaps you, then him. I haven’t decided which will be worse for him, being forced to watch you die in front of him, or dying in front of you, knowing he cannot protect you from me. It’s a real head-scratcher.”
“What is your problem?” I screw up my face. I know he wants me to be scared, but I have complete faith in Arthur.
“My problem, right now, is that you won’t shut up.”
I fall silent, but not because I want to make him happy. I’ve just run out of things to say. He’s a brutal, stupid man. I know he’s more intelligent than the others who are following him, but he is not smart enough to realize that what he is trying to do will never work. Even I know that the Artifice won’t just be turned off.