Feed the Machine (37 page)

He was at the front line of the battle when the collar around his neck exploded, ripping his head from his body.

A quick series of explosions followed across Cago, streets apart as Fat Man flexed his power.

Nola turned towards her and Dia saw her own fury mirrored in her daughter’s face. She knew it well, knew it was hard to tame and impossible to pull back once set free. Only age and weariness had tempered her own fury.

“I’m not leaving,” Nola said.

Then her eyes widened. Dia turned around to see Kin peeking out from around the nearest building. He saw them and walked over.

“Ash and Silver need to see you at the mine. They’re making a bomb,” he said. He turned tail, walking away. The very essence of sulk. Sent to deliver a message. Get the stupid bird to do it.

“Wait!” Dia called out but Kin didn’t listen. He vanished around the corner, heading to the front gates.

“Please, come with—”

Nola held up her hand.

“I’ll go. Jarrah, tell everyone about the slow push through the invisible shields. Get knives and bolas. I’ll be back soon.”

“I’m going to find my son. I’ll come to your house tomorrow if I can,” Narissa told Dia.

Their group burst apart as quickly as it formed. Dia followed Nola away from the fighting, towards the gates, both of them clutching their guns, ready to fire.

Chapter 58

Silver

You can use hugs and tears to manipulate them.

Silver nodded, watching Ash cut through Cago’s inner fence with the green gun. She’d given it to him when he asked and they’d discovered a half-pull of the trigger produced a weaker but longer burst. He was using it to melt a large hole through all three fences.

Hello shuffled around near her feet, grumbling to himself and stepping his foot closer to the circle Ash had drawn.

“I’ll go where I want,” he muttered, letting the tip of a wing brush the line in the dirt. He hadn’t been told off specifically but he’d been told to stay in the circle just like Silver.

Hug him and cry some more then!

Silver considered it but was holding back on any action until her brother’s attention faded back to normal levels. Normal wasn’t zero. Her family talked to her about what she was repairing or what interesting thing she’d discovered about a circuit but there was only so far those conversations could go. Between exhaustion, hunger and the quota grinding down at them, most of the time they let her be. She moved between her workshop and the house like a ghost and sometimes only a few cubes of pap on a plate were proof they’d come to see her at all.

Ash was
definitely
not at this level right now.

She’d hugged him, the package of pain she’d distanced herself from rushing back and then vanishing. It was like when a mystery took hold of her: one moment she was walking out of the mine, the next she was crying and holding her brother as tight as she could.

Then he had turned into an unshakeable questioner.

The voice said he was angry but Silver wasn’t sure. Ash was quiet and calm but relentless. He had information he laid out to her and she could not escape.

He knew the tablet was still working and she’d lied.

He knew she’d told Kin and Raj about the bombs and to plant them.

He knew there was something down the mine.

Ash hadn’t asked her why she lied or why she did any of these things. He told Kin to find Nola and then they’d gone down the mine to the blocker room.

Ash looked at the map and the instructions, looked at the hasdees and the bugs crowding nearby. He’d touched the screen on the wall and found it dead.

Then came the questions.

Who made this room? I don’t know. Was it you? No. What is the bomb? An electromagnetic weapon that will kill all the bugs in the white block. Why do we want to kill them? Because there is a countdown and when it ends the bugs will kill everyone. How do you know this? Someone told me. Who? I don’t know. Where did you speak to them? Down a hole, through a speaker. Can you take me there? Bugs came out and destroyed it. What is the blocker? I don’t know. Perhaps it allows you to cross the Gap without dying? What is the other bomb? Something powerful. Nuclear or fusion perhaps. Why are we cracking Fat Man’s head open? To get his cubes. Why do we want them? Because the message says to get them. Who is
her
? I don’t know. Is she the voice you spoke to? I don’t know.

He was relentless, circling around and back and jumping from point to point. The voice kept howling to only tell him enough to shut him up. Silver could feel the lure of it—the desire to do what she always did and hoard the information.

But the hug.

Something had broken there. Perhaps a crack only, a slight change. She’d moved from Silver 1.0 to Silver 1.1.

The voice was shouting fear and destruction, pain and terror, he’ll use it all against you!

The lingering echo of the hug kept her answering.

Although she did not volunteer information. She did not tell him of the dead Silver and dead Hello down the hole. Hello for his part kept his beak shut. He had been stunned silent after finding his dead duplicate but had eventually recovered. Silver thought he was pretending they had never been down that hole in the ground at all.

She didn’t tell him about them, fat, rich and laughing walking down the streets of Cago. Something that had never happened—at least to them.

Back to the countdown, the bugs and the bomb. Will it destroy Cago? No, just things electrical in nature. Hasdees, pets, weapons? Yes. The Machine? Don’t know. Sourcecubes? Don’t know.

Ash had seen the shocksticks—guessed they’d come from the stolen junkcube. The green gun was more proof.

He’d looked at the map and the hasdees and clapped his hands—crack!—and they’d rushed back to the surface. Ash drew a circle in the dirt and told Silver and Hello to stay inside it. Then he started cutting the fence.

“Too many variables,” Silver whispered. Ash was finishing on the inner fence. A few more shots and they’d be able to walk right through.

A hole through the fence meant they could take materials down the mine, feed them to the hasdees. They could make the bomb, the blocker and the second bomb. Ash hadn’t said this was the plan but the voice seemed certain.

But all the fighting in Cago was making it hard for her to think. Too much chaos. Too many things changing all at the same time. Fat Man’s guards could print better weapons and they would be killed robbing his warehouses for pure materials. The fighting could rush like a fire across Cago. Hazels might sneak in through the holes in the fence.

The EMP might kill every pet within kilometers. It would destroy every hasdee and bug. What would happen then when starvation rippled back through the people?

You’re not in control. Running out of time.

“I know,” Silver said. The voice had whispered that Raj was susceptible to the lure of wealth, that Kin could be swayed by the promise of food, freedom and reuniting with Ash. Nola’s weakness was her anger. Find a terrible crime (hoarded collars) and direct her towards it. Their mother wanted safety, to survive another day.

But all the people of Cago? They had too many motivations, too many drives and desires. Silver wanted them to follow her directions. Please open the warehouses and carry the materials down to the hasdees so we can make the bomb. It’s for your own good!

Now storm the palace so we can crack Fat Man’s head open!

If she had ten thousand bugs to do her bidding she wouldn’t need the people to help her. She’d send a wave of them to chew his guards to pieces and return with Fat Man’s head.

If she had as many tablets to study the writhing mess of variables, pressures, desires, hungers and whims then perhaps she could understand it all.

Ash cut through the fence. The mesh fell to the ground with a clang. He ducked his head and walked outside Cago, back to Silver. It was getting late, the afternoon wearing on and soon darkness would creep up on them.

Hello was standing
on
the line, glaring at Ash.

“We’ll make the bomb and those other things too. We’ll destroy the bugs and capture Fat Man but we’re not cracking his head open.”

Silver nodded. Not a yes, not a no.

“Ash!”

Nola in the distance shouting. Their mother’s voice alongside it.

Ash looked away from Silver and smiled. He walked towards their approaching family.

Silver stepped out of the circle.

“C’mon Hello, he’s not watching now.”

Chapter 59

Ella

The pizza slice in her hand forgotten, she stared at the white box towering over Variko. One had appeared in every city twelve days ago. An incredible new change.

Change means new pressure. New cracks will appear.

The first Feed, some eight months after she awoke, was a shocking spectacle. The wallscreen had turned on by itself, displaying every city, every Machine. She watched twenty-six mayors give twenty-six speeches (some identical), the clock struck twelve and silver bugs tore some people apart. People screamed in terror then feasted while new electrical generators and water pumps were installed; the old ones eaten down.

The voice had howled with glee.

A year later it happened again but this time she knew it was because of the quota. She’d been studying the people, listening to their conversations. She could move the viewpoint of the screen to any position. She followed men sneaking to the shower to scare their wives before dragging them away to bed. She watched babies being born, all blood and screaming. She studied children playing and pets arguing with their owners.

She’d discovered the metal men by chance, exploring blood vessels one day before hitting metallic bone. A few days of searching and programming and she’d found them in every town. There was always one in power—like the so-called “Fat Man” in Cago—and there were others in various roles. The father, the drunk, the dedicated wife.

They all had cubes in their heads instead of brains.

One of the hypotheses was this was all a giant experiment being run over and over again. The variables changed and the metal men and women were agents of the experimenter, tweaking things to be the way they wanted. She didn’t have enough evidence to come to a conclusion.

There was no limit to what she could see or understand. She could even display information about people on the screen as she watched them. Their age, their weight, their quantity of white blood cells. She could zoom into their bodies and watch the pulsing of a single blood vessel. Every conversation, every moment was captured. She could search and watch again and again if she so chose.

Some she followed for only a few days. Erika, a six-year-old, who was upset because her mother was ill. Their father traded some goods to a bastardo and bought some blue heal. Erika’s mother recovered.

Others she watched for months and years.

An old man, Morris, rich beyond belief, doddering around a mansion as big as Ella’s. He died in year seven, losing his balance on flat marble flooring and toppling over. He broke his ribs, arm and hip and lay there for two days until he expired. She’d watched his death at least ten times, looking at his numbers sliding out of alignment, seeing his blood pressure dropping, his body sliding towards death. She tried to pinpoint the moment, the trigger but there was no one cause. His death was a cacophony of cells rupturing and potassium jolting and chemical reactions crackling away.

A baby girl, Jada. Her parents hovered on the thin line between poverty and middle wealth. They dipped and rose according to the finds the parents made in the Scour. Jada grew from a long but chubby baby into a blonde toddler who laughed at everything. Every year she grew larger and happier, resilient to the fortunes of her family. She seemed unaffected, even when they didn’t have any food to eat.

There were others, spread across the entire Scour, living in every city. She watched them and learned about their world. The never-ending roiling junk pile was the Scour. The yearly ritual called Feed. The quota enforced by the Machine.

The Machine, hated and loved alternatively. Source of food and money but also collars and bugs. It recorded the quota, administered it, assigning value to anything dropped inside it. It provided the generators and water pumps for every town.

Ella patched together the stories they told of their own beginnings. A war between those who worked hard and those who wanted to take without contributing. Great and terrible weapons that destroyed their cities, obliterating them. The Scour was the ruined remains of the last city. The only one to survive. A great shake had hit them and everything toppled. Nothing survived outside its bounds. Some weapon had destroyed all the plants, rendered the earth infertile so that nothing grew. The glow over the horizon, the great pillar of light a mystery.

She could not go there on her screen. The images all stopped on the edge of what the people called “the Gap”.

She heard the story of the fall again, twelve days ago and now a woman was whispering to her friend that perhaps the box of bugs was a weapon from hundreds of years ago. She was scared of it.