Feed the Machine (44 page)

The bomb would be ready now. The blocker too—if Silver dropped the three cubes in when it asked.

If not, the oncoming waves of bugs would eat Cago down to nothing. Everything would be lost and they’d spend another fifty years just building a stupid hidden room. Not her. The next one, upstairs girl, having to snoop around until she found a hint of a hint where they could hide it safely.

Ella went back to Cago and measured the gap around it. More bugs meant faster chewing, faster chewing meant more bugs… she did the calculations there. If nothing stopped her, Silver would clear the entire Scour in two days.

Ella wondered if she’d told the bugs to leave the cities and people alone. Or were they programmed to consume everything outside Cago?

She stared at the growing gap and wondered if Silver would see it and understand.

Print some bugs to kill her.

Ella shook her head. A stupid idea. It was far too late for that.

The only pile of junk that remained was the one covering Silver’s room. Perhaps to stop a missile dropping from the sky.

The crow dived, following its basic programming. It skimmed low over Cago, almost touching the rooftops before spiraling up again. Ella saw a flash of silver surrounded by people out the front of Fat Man’s palace. She flicked the image back. Fat Man’s stripped body. That had been a surprise. The viciousness of it.

The crow floated high on an updraft, taking in the view. In the distance towards Char a faint blur appeared on the horizon.

The idea came galloping out of nowhere and smacked her in the mind. She started typing, instructing nanites to build a hasdee as fast as they could.

Chapter 71

Ash

The agony had been unbearable and he’d spent the first ten minutes screaming as his hands grew back.

Eventually the pain had subsided and his mind cleared. He was sitting in a pile of dead bugs. His mother was next to him. Kin beside her. He walked over and pushed his head against Ash’s new hands. The skin tingled at his touch.

“You fought the hazel?”

“Stupid hazel,” Kin purred. He was muddy and streaked with dried blood.

“I’ll find you some water to wash that off,” Ash said.

Kin looked alarmed. “No you won’t,” he replied and stalked away to sit next to the dead Machine.

“A voice told me to bring heal to you and Kin. I was underground… I think Silver drugged me.”

His mother wasn’t sure she was drugged but there was a mark on her arm and she’d slept without intending to.

Ash pulled himself off the ground and hugged her. They both smelled terrible—sweat, blood and mud.

“Fat Man is dead,” Dia whispered. “He was metal inside like Hefnan. What does that mean?”

“Silver will know.”

His stomach rumbled and a sudden weakness in his legs. His body had cannibalized itself to grow new hands and flesh.

“I need food,” he said, swaying on his feet.

Dia made him sit. She went to a hasdee near the Machine, joined the queue in front of it. People were printing tempcubes and bugs like crazy. She printed some food—warm porridge with berries—and brought it back.

Ash gulped it down, the sugar reviving him.

Near the edge of the crowded square angry voices arose. The crowd parted and a group of women appeared, their arms laced through dull silver collars.

“These are from Fat Man’s palace!” one shouted. They dumped the collars in a pile.

As he watched, people picked up collars and took them over to the Machine. But it was dead. The screens were black and unresponsive. The collars were labeled with small strips of paper tied with cotton. People started calling out names and any family members present rushed forward.

Ash stood, his legs feeling better now, and looked around. There were dead bodies everywhere. People were covering them with sheets and blankets. Others were walking around with black heal, administering it to anyone injured.

Raj appeared from a side street, a grin on his dirty face. He rushed over to Ash and hugged him.

“Motherfucker, it’s done! Fat Man is dead and your sister, the little one not the—” Raj glanced at Dia “—I mean, Silver, she’s cracked the cubes or something! Her bugs have cleared the Scour!”

He held a bluish tempcube.

“This is unlimited bugs, heal and food! Infinite duplication! We’re fucking rich!”

“Silver did it? What do you mean she cleared the Scour?”

“You gotta get out more and like, not spend so much time being dead and shit. Silver went down the mine and now there are like a thousand zillion bugs running out. She sent an unlocked heal cube to your mother. The Scour is gone. In the distance.”

Ash looked to his mother for confirmation.

“A bug gave me a cube and spoke in Silver’s voice. Told me to put it in the hasdee she was building. It can make unlimited heal and be copied unlimited times.”

He was about to ask more when a fight erupted at the hasdee. A man started yelling and swinging a long sharp sword around.

“This is mine! Get back!”

The crowd gave him space. Some of the ones further back hefted bricks.

The man reached behind him to the hasdee and tried to eject the sourcecubes but nothing happened.

“Put it down! There is enough for everyone!” someone in the crowd yelled.

“This is mine!” he screamed back. The tip of the sword gleamed in the sunshine.

A brick flew past his head. He ducked it but then another hit him in the face. He staggered and held up his sword.

“Mine!” he roared but then his voice died. He dropped the sword, swayed and collapsed in a heap, blood trickling from his ears.

“Fuck,” Raj said.

The crowd moved in. The man was dead. They dragged him away and covered him with a sheet. Someone dropped the sword next to him, unsure of what to do with it.

“Silver is down the mine—where’s Nola?”

“Last I saw her she was with that deputy washing the blood off herself.”

Raj realized what he’d said.

“She was okay. It wasn’t
her
blood. Oh, and Fat Man was like that drunk—all metal bones inside.”

“How did he die?”

“Not well. People are saying Nola and Silver did it. His body is hanging on the front of his palace.”

Ash rubbed his face and tried to think. Silver drugged their mother? Silver hacked the cubes? They had unlimited food now?

The Machine was dead and so were the bugs that had been intent on killing them all. How did Silver know they would do that? How did she find the underground room that so happened to have a bomb waiting in it? It all led back to her.

“We need to speak to Silver right now.”

“The bugs aren’t letting anyone in. I tried to go down there. The bugs don’t like that.” Raj lifted his foot—the front of his shoe had been bitten away.

Something burst on the now-dead Machine. Gray liquid splattered. Ash and everyone else looked into the sky. Birds were circling, as usual, but there seemed to be a lot more of them. As they watched, one of them dropped something. It plummeted down and burst apart on a roof nearby. The crowd gasped and started to move away from the open area.

One woman wasn’t quick enough. Whatever it was hit her on the back, covering her head and shoulders. The gray liquid immediately soaked into her skin.

“Silver, bring the bomb and blocker to me!” she yelled in a strange accent. She stopped in place. Black liquid trickled out of her nose. Another man was hit and more in quick succession.

“Silver I can tell you all the answers!” he called out before toppling over. The black liquid streamed from the corners of his eyes.

“Silver, I promise—”

“Silver bring the bomb and—”

“Silver!”

“We have to get to the mine,” Ash yelled. They bolted, along with the crowd. Some people remained in front of the hasdee, waiting for it to print a bug and sourcecube for them.

The birds above continued dropping the liquid bombs over Cago. As they ran they heard people calling out Silver’s name, pleading with her. They reached the edge of the city and walked out through the holes in the fence. At their feet a river of white liquid flooded back and forth from Fat Man’s warehouses down the hole. Ash only glimpsed it as they passed—the liquid covering everything, dissolving bars of gold and platinum, eating the materials down to nothing.

They stopped outside the mine and the last remaining pile of junk. Ash couldn’t believe it. The ground around Cago was teeming with bugs running back and forth. In the distance the edge of the pile glimmered and appeared to be moving as it was chewed down by thousands of mouths. The ground between the city and the edge was pockmarked with deep canyons and sloped up and down. From where they stood, Cago sat on a plateau, the bare earth sloping away.

The entrance of the mine was choked with bugs in shades of red and blue. They were the size of Kin and hissed, clacking their teeth together.

Ash got as close as he dared.

“Silver!” he called out. He heard his voice echo back from the mine, faintly repeating. It was hard to hear over the noise of the bugs. Each one added a whisper of sound which was growing into a roar.

“Silver, we need to talk with you!” he yelled.

Dia moved beside him and added her voice.

“Silver, please come out!”

Out, out, out echoed back from the mine.

The noise of the bugs increased in volume until they had to cover their ears. Then it died as every bug stopped moving all at once.

“Everyone please hide in Fat Man’s palace. Bugs are flying to attack us. I will defend you.”

Silver’s voice coming out of nowhere. It was all around them, seeming to speak from the air itself. It echoed over Cago.

“Silver I need to talk with you! Please!” Ash shouted.

Her voice again, not echoing over Cago now, localized to them.

“Ash take everyone to the palace. It will be okay.”

Her voice vanished. The bugs outside Cago began moving again. The ones closest split off from the group and rushed forward, snapping their jaws, driving them back into Cago to avoid being bitten.

They spread through the city, herding all the people towards Fat Man’s compound.

Before he rushed into the palace, Ash looked back at the horizon from the top of the stairs. The silver bugs covering the pile had leapt into the air, a swarming cloud. There was another cloud of silver approaching.

Bugs. Hundreds of thousands of them.

Chapter 72

Silver

She paced, shouting instructions at the screen on the wall.

Everything was moving too fast.

The cubes she’d pulled from Fat Man’s head were some kind of miracle. Computers, immensely powerful and fast and absolutely dedicated to serving her. They’d found a design for a new tablet and replaced her cracked one in ten seconds flat. The hasdee on the bench was upgraded, spitting out silver liquid which formed into whatever she desired.

They’d repaired the screen in three-fifths of a second and she’d spent an entire minute seeing she could zoom around Cago, seeing even inside people’s bodies thanks to her nanites which saturated the area. As they grew outward, her view expanded.

The bugs she was making were durable but light, using limited materials. They ate and birthed new bugs. Some built hasdees to speed production.

She had three hundred and ninety-one thousand bugs and the total was climbing every second.

Close to a million bugs were rushing down on Cago from all directions.

The two walls of bugs had collided and hers were better, stronger, faster. They destroyed 2.1 bugs on average before being ripped apart. But as more bugs joined the fight from outside, the average dropped. Already it was down to 1.8.

When it dropped below 1.0, she would be losing. Then it was only a matter of time until the bugs overwhelmed her and ate Cago down to nothing.

Silver had split the screen into squares. Nola and Jarrah were in one, safely inside Fat Man’s palace. Ash was in another, looking through a bedroom for something. Their mother was distributing food. Ed and Michael were in one of the warehouses, both with their hands over their ears to block out the sound of too many people.

Below those was a loop of the man with the sword she’d killed.

Even with endless food they are violent.

She couldn’t argue with that. The proof was looping in front of her. They had unlimited food, heal and bugs and yet he’d still tried to steal it all for himself. To take what he could duplicate.

Selfish and brutal. Kill anyone like that.

Silver had watched the fight erupt out of nowhere, had zoomed into the man’s body and found he was not drunk or drugged or ill in any way. He was flooded with adrenaline, his heart beating fast, his brain bathed in dopamine.