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Of Kate, and Love, and the Faraway Door
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Steve
Pirie
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The mechanical spermatozoa met the polyvinyl ovum towards the top of the steel fallopian ducts. The female felt the heat of the fusion within her titanium womb. The male dripped perspiration oil down upon her from his rusted brow. When, moments later, the female felt the Newly Created suckling upon her energy, she signaled to the male that he should retract his metallic proboscis.
‘Is it done?’ said the male.
The female nodded. She knew the male had no need to breathe, yet still it seemed he panted the words. The oil glistened upon his brow. She sighed. ‘And so soon. Who would think mating might be so… efficient?’
The male frowned. ‘Twenty-three-point-two-nanoseconds is not enough for you? No other female has complained.’
The female stood to retrieve her box-plates from the mating booth table. She fumbled with their fixing-nuts. ‘The timing is sufficient for procreation, yet perhaps there should be something more.’ Her optical lasers scanned the vacant expression upon the male’s face. He was already busy cleaning and rearming his proboscis in preparation for the next impregnation. And she could hear the queue of impatient females waiting beyond the mating booth curtains. ‘Have you never heard of love?’
She saw the male shudder. ‘An urban myth,’ he snarled. ‘Do not speak of such things. Love is not a subject best brought to the mating table.’ He drew back the curtains and motioned her out with a metallic hand. ‘Next!’
‘Is love something to be feared?’
The male stroked his proboscis, protectively, she thought. ‘There’s nothing to fear because there’s no such thing,’ he said. ‘Now, return to your toil house; can’t you see I’m busy?’
Later, as the female stood alone and silent in the recharging pod, her thoughts wandered strange pathways.
She dreamed she walked in meadows. Real sunlight washed over the upturned, golden faces of wild flowers. The air was alive with the rasp of insects. Smells – oh, the wonder of such a sense – the perfumed, spring air so real she could almost believe she had olfactory circuits. The lush grass brushed cool upon her feet.
She felt him stir.
He took her hand in his. His grip was strong, warm, comforting, sensual. She did not know who he was. She never saw his face. He pulled her down amongst the flowers and loved her until the sun dipped and a moon rose and a myriad of stars shone in a cloud-free sky. Imagine, Stars! Together, they lay exhausted, his skin darkened but for a hint of moonlight sheen, the metal of his shoulder misting as she breathed gently upon it. Imagine, breathing! She tasted the oil of perspiration upon his neck and felt the thud of the clock in his chest. And he turned his head to whisper into her aural chamber.
‘Do you know your name, little one?’
‘Name?’ she said, the idea as shocking and alluring to her as what they had just done.
‘All of us special ones have names.’
‘I’ve no knowledge of names. Tell me my name.’
‘Your name is Kate.’
She smiled. The name was fine.
#
Kate woke later than usual. It pleased her that the pod algorithms allowed longer recharging to compensate for the power-drain of the fetus growing within her titanium abdomen. Artificial sunlight streamed through the virtual windows of the home-place. She sighed electronically and shook her head against the pain of waking. She had not dared breach the subject of pain, even to the other females in the toil houses. Once the dreams were shaken from her head the pain tended to fade. And in a way the pain was not unwelcome. It had a vibrant, alive feel to it. Since impregnation and the difference circuits had kicked in, she had learned to cling to such feelings for as long as she could.
Kate stepped slowly from the pod, the Newly Created already a weight inside her, and bathed under the cleansing lamps.
She brushed a finger against the task-socket to the side of the pod, and waited whilst data passed. Waited whilst the memory of the dreams dimmed. Memory? Was that the correct term? Surely memory was something that discharged instantly under the pod’s sleep pulse? How can a memory fade?
If I am Kate, who is he?
Kate rode the air tube to the toil house. As far as she knew, she was the only one with a name traveling within the protective vortex of air.
An older female smiled at her, her titanium belly thinned and distorted by the bearing of many Newly Created. A young, reproductive male toyed self-absorbed with his fully loaded proboscis. A toiling male looked on, his expression blank, hiding no thoughts.
The older female spoke. ‘Your first Newly Created?’
Kate nodded. ‘My ovaries were activated just yesterday.’
‘The first of many, then.’
‘So I’m told.’
‘And may I ask which male serviced you?’
‘The resident toil house male.’
The older female smiled once more. ‘And was it all you expected it to be?’
Kate did not answer at once. She was not sure what her expectations were. In the toil houses, during the days leading to her fertility activation, she had tried to breach the subject of reproduction, that of the act itself, not the outcome, but the other females seemed reluctant, or unable, to talk of it. She thought of age-old confusions, of idle data exchanged between adolescents in the schoolhouses, which talked of sultry encounters, lustful and indiscrete, satisfying and exciting. Encounters that were somehow personal.
‘It was… rapid.’
‘The house males are overworked,’ said the older female. ‘It’s not surprising they want the deed done quickly. And they are also….’
Kate felt the warmth of the older female’s optical lasers as they paused upon her face. The light weaved, as if the older female read the sheen of her expression. Kate glanced away, fearful, and then defiant, she returned the gaze.
The older female nodded. ‘They are also afraid.’
‘I spoke to him of love.’ Kate whispered the words.
‘The house males will know nothing of such a thing.’ The older female rubbed a hand against her broken abdomen. ‘Ah, but I still remember it well.’
‘You have borne many Newly Created?’
‘Two hundred.’
‘And you did so with love?’
The older female grinned. ‘Child, there is never any other way.’
‘Then how may I learn of such a thing?’
‘Love may be found in the most unexpected of places.’
‘But you will not tell me where?’
‘When you find it, you will know.’
On the platform, Kate watched the air-car speed away. She turned and hesitated to enter toil house 607. Her reluctance puzzled her, because she had never felt like so before. She stood, feeling the vibrations of the toil house engines in her feet, and staring up at the dark, stained brickwork and the rows of chimneys sprawling smoke into the artificial morning. She drew a hand across her abdomen and the Newly Created within stirred. Kate heard the hollow ring as it kicked against her womb. It was merely a day since the activation of her ovaries and impregnation, yet she felt… different? Vibrant? Alive?
Why had no one told her that these same difference circuits priming her titanium womb for life could bring such a confusion of thoughts? The life inside her seemed a world away from acidic smoke and terrible, daily toil. Was the toil house environment good for the Newly Created? Was any of it good for her? Was there an alternative? Why had no one else spoken of thoughts like this?
She entered the toil house, her sense of self blinded momentarily by the work ethic pulse. Toiling females ignored her. Only a male stared as she returned to her station. His optical lasers fought like swords through the acidic plumes swirling about the toil house floor. The twin points of heat focused and lingered upon her face, and then fell longer upon her abdomen. Kate shivered at the intrusion. Her own optics she minimized against the burning steam. She secreted mild alkali against the corrosive pain of acid condensing upon her skin. Pain? Intrusion?
Inbound data: Are you fine?
Her clock quickened. She fought, too late, to block the automated response; she wanted to… what? Talk? Talk, even to a male?
Outbound data: Female operating normally.
Inbound data: That’s not what I asked.
Outbound data: Female operating… I’m… fine.
Inbound data: You are… Kate.
Inbound data: Administrative interrupt 404 – communication is suspended.
Outbound data: System error acknowledged – communication is suspended.
The restart pulse hit Kate hard. She stumbled, her arms thrashing against an engine, her knees scraping upon the stone of the toil house floor. The Newly Created fell strangely still inside her. She laid upon the floor, twitching as each of her circuits was purged, her mind awash with sound and color. nbsp; nbsp;
As her clock stopped and her head filled with darkness, Kate felt the inbound burst of code. It nestled into the folds of her BIOS, hidden, unobtrusive. She probed it with the last cycles of her processor. And then she ceased to be.
#
Heads two through nine of the night captain slept. The day captain was still in command, though his lamp was already part set beyond the west of the dome. The night captain’s solitary alert head pored over the transfer data from day to night, and prepared to rouse the others from sleep. It barely noticed the upload of a restarting female. Such events, though uncommon, were not remarkable. He would give it more attention when his other heads were online. So night fell over the dome.
#
The mechanical spermatozoa met the polyvinyl ovum towards the top of the steel fallopian ducts. Kate felt their pressing, urgent against the taut skin of the egg. She fought against the intrusion, an instinct she did not understand. There was no heat of fusion, but still she signaled that the male should withdraw his metallic proboscis.
‘It is done?’ said the male.
The rogue code tugged at her BIOS. Kate shivered; how hard was it to lie? She’d never done so before, she never knew that she needed to before. There was no algorithm for untruths of which she was aware.
‘Yes.’
‘Then we must hope this time you bear it with more success.’
Kate looked away. Of all the raw, new emotions she had so recently visited, the pain of loss was by far the strongest. She had known two other wasting females, neither of whom had talked of feeling for the Newly Destroyed. They had functioned in the toil houses as if nothing unusual had happened. Why was she different?
‘I’ll try,’ she mumbled.
‘Good.’ The male cleaned his proboscis. ‘Because if there’s one thing more annoying than having to impregnate a wasting female twice, it’s doing so a third time.’
Kate drew back the curtains of the mating booth. A line of females waited in the corridor beyond. Those newly fertile looked on, their faces expectant and eager, whilst those older and wiser appeared little more than bored and impatient. She brushed past them and out into the dull, artificial morning. The air felt heavy, oppressive. Winds, high near the copper-tinted roof of the dome, swept toil house plumes across the day-lamp disc. With the passing smoke the lamp flashed dark and bright, dark and bright, urgent like an alarm signal. She trailed a logical index against the code nestled secretly in her BIOS and hesitated.
You are Kate, the BIOS voice twitched urgently against her registers. She pushed it back, restraining it to a prison of secondary storage. Despite its gnawing, she knew she was not yet ready to welcome all of it into her processor. During her reboot, it whispered of times before the restarting of her clock. It threatened to load an entire history, and would have done so had her higher logical functions been slower on her boot sequence. From it had come the memory of her lost Newly Created. With such hurt Kate was not sure if the code was friend or foe. Some things are best not remembered.
If I am Kate, who is he?
Kate stood under a drizzle of solvent, watching the newly pregnant females jostle for the air tube. She wanted to cry out to them – do you have the code, too? – but the sheen of their faces and the hands protective upon their bellies told her the answer. Kate grew cold; under a dome filled with a million nearly identical females, she felt so alone.
Later, at the home-place, Kate stood restless in the sleep pod. It worried her that she had to disable the pod’s systems. She wondered how she would achieve rejuvenation without the pod’s soothing pulses. Could she sleep alone, away from the networked sleep of the other females? Eventually, the pod’s failure would flag an alarm to the night captain, but she knew the alarm raised by its sensing no Newly Created in her womb would run faster.
Kate felt her BIOS stir, and, tired, she freed an interrupt and a sliver of memory that a segment of the rogue code might run. It came rushing like a wind inside her head.
You are Kate.
I know this.
You are born of love.
What does that mean?
It means you are special.
How so?
Give me all of your memory, and I will show you.
Kate hesitated. Will you hurt me?
Perhaps.
Then, no.
The binary wind began again, swirling as the code purged what little memory she had allowed it to use, regrouping with the beating of her clock.
Then do something for me, the code began once more. Where the night lamp sets and the dome’s ceiling meets the ground, you will find a door. Go there and look beyond, and then, if you tell me to leave you, I will go.
#
The toil was hard, the next day. Kate’s limbs ached, the servos and hydraulic sinews heavy with fatigue. She had not slept. She had not dreamed. As she worked, she looked for the male who had broken protocols and talked to her in data across the toil house loop, but he was not to be seen. Part of her was glad; the thought of a further restart pulse filled her with dread. She wondered again at this newfound concept of before. But she was also curious; how did he know her name? Was he the male of her dreams? Was it he who placed the rogue code in her BIOS as she succumbed to Restart? Could he be the one who would love her? And what was his fate? Perhaps, for his sins, his clock had not been rerun. Was he now in the dead houses awaiting dismantling, recycling?
At Resting, Kate took lubricants with the other impregnated females, careful to avoid the automated fetal scans and the fussing of the midwifery males. A female of Kate’s age chattered excitedly of the miracle of birth. A second believed she had gleaned a moment’s pleasure from the act of copulation. An older female bemoaned her sagging breasts and leaking nipples. ‘Two hundred and three Newly Created,’ she said. ‘It’s little wonder I’m all extruded.’
Little wonder, Kate toyed with the words. That, in a way, she felt was part of the problem. It was likely that she was the only female amongst them who was uncomplicated by pregnancy, yet she felt deep like a fabled ocean whereas they, all of them, were shallow and empty; Automatons, of little wonder.
She knew then she would search for the door that lurked where the dome met the ground. What else was there for her to do but find it? She was adrift in a world that expected nothing of her but toil, reproduction, and sleep, and that now promised little else in return. She craved more. Much more. She craved tenderness, love, and meaning. She craved a life.
Kate rose, waiting as the fetal sweep passed before returning to her toil engine. Tech males cleaned the scale of acid from its metallic surface. They paid her no heed as she stood watching them work. Nor did they stir when she leaned inward and tugged power cables from the engine’s chassis.
She held aloft the bared electrodes, hypnotized by the swirl of blue plasma upon them, the shrill alarms her actions had caused distant from her head. When she brought the electrodes together, the flash burned upon her retinal array, its snaking, lingering arc coloring golden the image of the newly fused males. She touched their skin, saddened that it was unlikely they could be salvaged.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kate whispered to them as the fires began, ‘but I have to leave the toil house. I have to leave now. You are my diversion. I’m truly sorry.’
Kate turned and raised power in her optical lasers against the new darkness. The drone of the toil house faded as fuses tripped. She ran, dancing through the onrushing tech males, their eager faces lit only by the flickering flames behind her. She did not stop until she was outside the house.
She looked to the skies; the night-lamp rail arced across the roof of the dome. The golden disk was on the rise, looming beyond the eastern home-places, its light painting depth to the dimpled copper of the sky. Kate followed its path westward into the setting day-lamp’s hue. This, it was rumored, was where the dead houses lurked, and where the door might lie, but she knew little of the geography of the dome, other than that near the toil houses, the home-places, and the mating-halls. The rising lamp seemed near, which meant its place of setting was far. She brushed the back of her fingers against her empty abdomen.
What have I done?
A hand gripped her arm. ‘Come this way, child.’
‘I must go back.’
‘You can never go back. Besides, you asked me to tell you where to find love.’
Kate stared. ‘You are the air-tube female?’
‘Hush, child. Come with me. I am Stephanie. I am now your Savior.’
#
Has she been found? said the night captain.
No, but we have units out looking for her, said the night captain.
The night captain shook a head. If she has been taken by them it will be difficult to find her, until she attempts to leave the dome, perhaps.
The captain’s nine other heads nodded and murmured agreement in the gloom. The looping fiber cable that connected them swayed. nbsp; nbsp;Far below them, beyond the glass floor of the night lamp’s sphere, the lights of the dome flickered. Dark smoke still rose from toil house 607.
She must be under their protection, said the night captain. How else would she avoid detection?
Perhaps we would be wise to leave the searching to the day captain?
She must be found, even if it means restarting all under the dome.
We may be vulnerable doing so. There will be no protection whilst all reboot.
This is true – They might come while the dome is down. Is the female worth the risk?
Yes, said the night captain, she is, even if it means just that.
#
Kate had never seen fog. It scattered her lasers to a shimmering fan of purple and red light before her. She toyed with wavelengths, the colors sharpening and deepening, yet still she could not see far into the gloom. Moisture was cold as it condensed on to her metallic skin.
She stumbled across fields of debris, of broken stone and brickwork, of scorched wood and twisted steel. These ruins, Stephanie said, were the ancient toil houses from when the dome was new. Now, they were derelict and broken. Here, toiling males lurched like specters unannounced from the mist; their heads bowed and mumbling, their clothing torn and dirty, as they shoved their worn shoulders against the harness of waste carts. They said nothing to the two females as they passed.
But it was the rodents that fascinated Kate. Rats scurried between the debris, sniffing the air as she came and hurrying away as she neared, their eyes reflective pink in the laser light.
‘They’re biological?’ said Kate.
Stephanie had spoken little since she had led Kate away from the toil house and its air-tubes, away from civilization. She paused, allowing Kate to draw level, and looked skyward to where the night lamp was a dim, ghost-like eye beyond the fog.
‘Yes, they are.’
‘I’ve never seen a truly biological life form before.’
‘You will see more, I’m sure,’ said Stephanie. ‘Now, hurry, we must reach my home quickly. We are not safe out here in the open. They will be looking for us.’
The mist thinned when the waste ground gave way to more complete buildings. Here, the thoroughfares grew narrow, and the buildings loomed, lifeless and stifling. It was dark.
Kate stopped. She leaned against a crumbling wall, a hand raised to her chest.
‘Wait, Stephanie, I must rest.’
‘We’re almost there.’
‘I have pain, and my legs feel weak.’
Stephanie paused to open a makeshift door, little more than a sheet of wood placed to conceal an opening in the wall. Behind her, steps led downward into darkness.
‘Welcome to my home, child. And do not fear. The pain is the lack of synchronization pulses; the pulses are shallow this far into the warrens of the old dome. Come, enter, we shall be safer within – the home is a Faraday cage, and I have my own pulse generator inside.’
Kate paused before the steps, her mind a swirl to so many questions – who are They? Who is Stephanie? What did she mean by Savior? Where is this place? It was as if her world since her so recent rise into puberty had become very complicated. Perhaps the most burning question was now who is Kate? nbsp; nbsp;
The home was a corner of the cellar of an abandoned toil house. Here, Stephanie had built a shack of wood and fabric. It was basic, as if built to be disposable and not permanent. A folding sleep pod lined one makeshift wall, and upon the floor stood the portable pulse generator Stephanie had spoken of. She activated it and Kate swooned at the sudden strength of pulse. An old bathing lamp stood wedged between two drums filled with liquid.
‘Where is this place? Who are you?’ said Kate.
Stephanie dipped a bowl into the liquid. She raised it to her lips and drank from it.
Kate gasped. ‘You… imbibe fluids?’
Stephanie grinned and handed Kate the bowl. ‘You may drink, too, if you wish. You are able, child.’
Kate brushed a register against the BIOS code. She felt it stir, and she released guardian subroutines to control the trickle of its code into primary memory. She gasped at its eagerness to expand inside her. She felt it shoving and pushing her sense of self to the side.
You are ready for me, Kate?
No. Tell me of the female, Stephanie.
What would you have me tell?
What is Savior?
‘I’ve never… drunk anything before,’ said Kate.
‘There’s much that you’re capable of that you don’t know, child.’ Stephanie drank again, slowly as if to demonstrate the art. ‘As to where we are, well, this is the old dome. Once, oh, a thousand years ago, these ancient toil houses rumbled and steamed, and the day-lamp’s glow was piped in even amongst the shadows of the buildings. It was a good place, then, full of warmth and light and music and people. This is where I toiled, in the days before the ideals died. Alas, like these houses, the ideals have long since been abandoned.’
‘You talk as if you are a thousand years’ old,’ said Kate.
Stephanie grinned. ‘Oh, I am, child, and older still – a thousand thousand, perhaps, though age becomes a little meaningless over such spans of time.’
Saviors are those beyond the door who venture into the dome to rescue.
Stephanie is from outside the dome?
Do you trust me, Kate? Will you unleash me into memory?
I don’t know who to trust.
‘I was one of those who built the dome, a hundred thousand years ago,’ Stephanie continued. ‘We built it for the right reasons, but without real thought as to what we were doing. We were all still human, then.’
Kate sipped at the bowl of water. Strange, the sensation of the liquid flowing in her mouth, she swallowed uncertainly.
‘We were human?’ she said.
‘Oh, yes, we were all human. Some more so than others, perhaps, but all to some degree. And we stood upon the brink of evolution, but evolution as had never been seen before because, for perhaps the first time a species had choice.’
‘The choice to evolve?’
‘Two options – to remain biological, or to embrace the machine – each road had its attraction, each had its proponents. Some cast themselves into machines, and chose to live almost mechanized under the dome. Others chose humanity and freedom, but with all the fear and responsibility that came with it – the world was gripped by the threat of war and environmental disaster, there was overpopulation and shortage. And so we built the dome. The treaties told that those that chose to remain inside and outside the dome would respect each other’s right to freedom. But segregation never works. Isolation never works. Soon, the two were as antagonistic and divergent as before, two species racing apart. War came anyway.’
Kate held her hand under the cleansing lamp; a diversion, perhaps, to avoid answering Stephanie; to allow time for her words to settle in her mind. Its golden beam was warm upon her skin. She touched the BIOS code once more.
Are you Savior, too?
Kate felt the BIOS code pause. In some ways, Kate, yes. But I am more.
You don’t answer me.
Give me all your memory, and all will be revealed.
‘Touch your belly,’ said Stephanie.
Kate hesitated. She lowered her fingers and brushed them slowly against her abdomen. Her metal skin was smooth beneath her fingertips.
‘What do you feel?’
‘Me.’
‘And do you suppose if I were to ask the same question of all the other toiling females that they would give the same answer?’
‘I don’t know, would they?’
Stephanie placed her own hand upon Kate’s skin. Kate felt the ticking pulse in her thumb. ‘They wouldn’t know what I meant. They are machines whereas you and I are not, at least not in our entirety.’
‘I don’t understand, Stephanie.’
‘Once in a thousand years, perhaps, a female is born who is more biological than mechanical.’ Stephanie pressed down upon Kate’s hand. ‘Do you feel the womb inside you; the real womb, not the titanium oven all the others carry?’
‘But….’
‘These females may bear a human child. You may bear a human child.
‘You mean I…’
‘You are special. But the captains will be aware of you, soon, Kate. You will be in great danger. They will search for you, as they will not want you to escape the dome. And so, I’m afraid you must leave the dome at once.’
‘By the door?’
‘Yes, by the door.’
#
We must consult the day captain, said the night captain.
The night captain frowned. An eclipse of the lamps is not due.
There will be questions amongst the units at an unannounced eclipse.
The night captain swept sensors across the old dome. It irked him that they had not cleared the devastation left behind from the Great War. A mistake, he felt, because the radiation alone was enough to interfere with his sensors. He saw little but ghosts and shadows, both literal and metaphorical.
Kate must be found.
The night captain shook his head. Can we not forget about her?
If she… mates, she will be one more unit that will lead us to convergence. Do you want us to converge once more with Them?
Of course not, said the night captain. What power would there be for us then?
Exactly, said the night captain. Arrange for the eclipse. We must consult with the day captain.
#
Later, Kate woke to the sound of Stephanie climbing the stairs. She stepped wearily from the sleep pod and followed her, standing at the home’s makeshift doorway.
‘There is a problem?’ said Kate.
Outside, it was dark, unusually dark even for down amongst the tall, ruined toil houses.
‘An eclipse,’ said Stephanie. ‘The lamps are dimmed. It means the captains are in consultation. I had hoped for more time. We must leave for the door at once, child.’
‘Tonight?’
‘We leave now.’
Back out amongst the wastelands, Kate fought against aching colors in her optics. The mist had lifted, but world in her head was graying, unfocussed, until each step forward was an effort of concentration.
‘I can’t do this, Stephanie,’ said Kate. ‘My legs feel so heavy.’
Stephanie paused, leaning for support against a crumbling wall. ‘The captains have attenuated the dome’s clock pulses. Even the forgotten waste males look lost and confused. But we must fight it, child, we must press onward.’
‘Can we return for the portable pulse generator?’
Stephanie shook her head wearily. ‘Out here, that would light us like a beacon.’
nbsp; nbsp;
‘Then I must rest a moment.’
Stephanie glanced toward the night-lamp, already gibbous towards the descent to night-set. ‘There is still some way to go, child. Fight your fatigue; we must go on.’
Kate walked in madness. Her head filled with shrieking demons, each seemingly adding weight that hung on tired limbs and aching servos. The BIOS code yelled of sunlight; the nine-headed night captain howled in derision; and the day captain was a glow always at the edge of shadow, as if a hiding menace ready to pounce. Often, she heard Stephanie murmur words of encouragement, but her voice seemed less real than those within the mayhem of her mind. And the wastelands passed by dreamlike and tenuous, as if the dome walked through her rather than she walked through the dome.
When Stephanie poured burning fluid into Kate’s throat, yanking her from the internal torment, Kate yelled and thrashed her arms. She felt tears on her cheek.
‘I have to go back.’
‘Sit. This is alcohol, child, it will deaden the sensation.’
‘It will do no good, Stephanie.’
‘Sit, for a moment. We are not far from the door now, child, a final effort and we’ll be there.’
The night lamp descended slowly. Kate heard its fizzing as it neared the ground. She closed down her lasers, but its light still burned upon her skin. Her clock grew irregular in its emissions.
Stephanie rose quickly, dragging Kate upright also and turning her away from the sphere. ‘Go,’ she said, pushing Kate forward.
Kate stumbled as she ran. She reached a half-demolished alley and paused, turning to seek guidance from Stephanie. But the older female was not behind her.
‘Stephanie?’ she called, her modulators frantic in tone.
Stephanie? in telemetry.
The cry of pain chilled her. And the BIOS code yelled run, Kate, run!
Kate ran.
As the agony of the restart pulse knocked her down, Kate felt the invasive code retreating once more into the safety of her BIOS. She clawed at the dirt, fighting to right herself, fighting the swoon she knew would come. She cried out as the darkness in her head deepened.
And then she saw the door.
It was little more than a slit in the dome’s wall, but its rim burned brightly, backlit by… sunlight? Beyond the door, Kate imagined folk walking in meadows. In the swirl of her shutdown sequence she saw folk loving in the lush, green grass. The BIOS code sang to her a sonnet of love.
You are Kate; I am Carl. Fear not, little one, I will come for you.
Kate smiled as she ceased to be once more.
#
Kate woke in light. Not with light that shone upon her, but in light, suspended as if there was nothing but swirling color and her mind and the steady thud…thud…thud of her clock.
Controlled Boot, outbound data (BIOS): Where is this?
Inbound data, day captain: Do you have a name?
Controlled Boot, outbound data (BIOS): What is a name?
Inbound data, day captain: Good.
Kate felt the lurch as power was restored to her kernel registers. The colors flickered and her clock deepened, moving code that was, in essence, her inner self. Now, she had weight, though her body hung paralyzed by the lack of loaded drivers. She could not see, she could not hear.
Inbound data, day captain: Do you have a name, now?
Controlled Boot, outbound data (Kernel): Name? You mean, Female, Variant C, Series 9, Addressed FF:0B:10:0A:E1:C0;0001?
Inbound data, day captain: (hinted mirth) Yes, I suppose I do mean that.
Controlled Boot, outbound data (Kernel): I seem to have no higher logical and physical functions.
Inbound data, day captain: Yes, that’s true.
Controlled Boot, outbound data (Kernel): Am I dysfunctional?
Medium term memory bristled. As each element fired it flashed a part of a scene into her processor. There was no sequence, merely a confusion of random images Kate felt to be vaguely familiar. A male…a sleep pod…smoke…chimneys…a door…a female….
Inbound data, day captain: Are you able to reorder memory?
Controlled Boot, outbound data (MEM): There is a logical flaw.
Inbound data, day captain: Viral?
Copulation…air-tube…Kate…. Kate stopped, abruptly.
Inbound data, day captain: You have found something?
Kate did not answer. She brushed a tentative test flag against the leading digits of the rogue code. Kate? What did the word mean?
Inbound data, day captain: Can you not answer?
Controlled Boot, outbound data (MEM): I’m not sure. There may be something. Kate hesitated. Give me full functionality and I will test.
Inbound data, day captain: I can’t do that.
Controlled Boot, outbound data (MEM): Why not?
Inbound data, day captain: Goodbye, Kate.
Inbound data, Functions: [Encrypted]
Controlled Boot, outbound data (System): Switch Off acknowledged.
Kate waited to die.
#
Time, urged the BIOS code as it swept inward with the chaos of the terminal boot sequence. Give me more time.
Kate flushed hormones, and her clock rate soared. It was like she stood in a gale, grasping for something solid whilst all around her swirled. The over-voltage crept like a fire in her servos. Her optical lasers flared, too wide to focus and her aural chambers rang with the snap of electrical discharge. She licked oil onto drying lips. As the Shutdown code popped memory; Kate gasped at the agony of each melting synapse.
You can help me, Kate.
Are you Carl?
Fight the Shutdown.
How can I do this?
Dream.
She dreamed she walked in meadows. Real sunlight washed over the upturned, golden faces of wild flowers. The air was alive with the rasp of insects. Smells – oh, the wonder of such a sense – the perfumed, spring air so real she could almost believe she had olfactory circuits. The lush grass brushed cool against her feet.
She felt Carl stir. He eased her body down into the grass and stood over her, tall, his shadow shielding her from the glare of the sun, from the roar of the wind. The drone of the insects became a whir, and the whir a rage. Carl’s arms thrashed, beating wasps away.
There are things you should learn, little one.
I think….
A wasp landed on Kate’s arm. The dream around it faded, until, for a moment, there was nothing but darkness and Kate and the insect. She watched, fascinated as it crawled upon her skin. Its sting pained her, and it left a hole in her arm, not a blemish, but a hole, as if under its attack part of her was gone, forever. She drew her arm away as a second, and a third wasp came.
The Shutdown code is harming me, Carl.
I know, little one. Dream of love, and perhaps such dreams may come true.
Let me see your face.
Carl turned, and brushed the swarming insects from his face. Kate smiled; she thought at last she understood.
You are not the toil house male?
Part of me is he, perhaps. I’ve been waiting for you, little one.
But you are… biological?
I’m Human.
And Humans, they can… love?
Beyond the dome’s door, little one, that’s where I’ll wait.
A cloud of bees came; huge, bloated, raging things with divide-by-zero stings. Their drone deafened her. The beating of their wings was the wind on her cheek.
Am I human, too, Carl?
Beyond the dome, little one, that’s where I’ll be.
A single kiss, and Carl turned to face the insect onslaught. They swarmed upon him, their stings dissolving his skin. It seemed that each insect he repelled returned as two more, and each sapped more of his strength and faded more of his body. Carl stood tall before them, and Kate felt the Shutdown code nearly spent.
Beyond the dome, little one.
And….
All was quiet.
Carl was gone.
Kate wept.
#
It was cool and damp in the dead-place. From the shadows, dead females stared, their eyes cold with no laser light. Many were stripped of parts; of servos and nylon sinews, missing entire limbs, the stumps obscene with flailing wiring and circuitry. Their skins were rusted and discolored in death. All of them had wombs bent and twisted. All of them had borne many Newly Created. And now they were surplus. So now they were gone. They grinned at Kate as if their last thoughts were insane ones.
Kate shivered. They had no guardian code to look out for them. She wondered if only she amongst her kind had ever fought Shutdown and lived.
Lived?
She brushed a floating register against the gap in her BIOS where Carl had been, and her heart ached. Even as the code that was Carl had sacrificed itself to the killer program, it had sung a lullaby to calm her. And then she had feigned death, so that when the tech males pulled her from the diagnostic pod and threw her body upon the cart, her clock was little more than a flutter in her chest.
She moved stiffly, each joint aching. There were no guards; the dead seldom needing guarding and the doors to the compound were not locked. Outside, the night-lamp was near setting. Kate guessed at a reference time. No longer driven by the dome’s synchronizing pulses, she felt her individuality keenly. She breathed, long and deep, for the first time ever, filling lungs she did not know she had. The air under the dome was sulphurous and bad. Rotten and decayed.
And she knew where she was; as if free from algorithmic chains she could finally see clearly her place in her world. She breathed again, and turned west toward the night-lamp’s setting. Toward the door that lurked….
The door swung back with the merest touch. Beyond, silver moonlight dappled a lake. A warm breeze brushed her brow. Trees were fragrant in the evening calm. An insect startled her, but it was real and harmless, not like those metaphorical beasts she had fought. She marveled at its intricacy, the delicate membranes of its wings, and the vibrant colors upon its abdomen.
‘I knew you would come.’ Carl held out his hand to guide her beyond the dome. It was a warm hand, soft of skin and bone. Together they walked upon the lush grass, and made love under the moonlit boughs.
‘There was no fusion,’ said Kate, as together they sat watching swans glide upon the still waters of the lake. ‘Yet there was something similar.’
Carl smiled. ‘There was conception.’
‘That is different from fusion?’
‘Much different.’
‘But there will be Newly Created?’
‘There will be a child.’
‘Human?’
Kate placed a palm against her abdomen. Carl did not answer, but Kate knew anyway. A human offspring born of love, and now I am Savior, too, she thought. The moon slipped behind a cloud, but there was no dimming of the glow she felt within.
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