Machines of Eden (13 page)

“
My abilities to analyze
relevant data are considerable, Adam.
Trust me.
I know you’ll be the right
one for me
and
I’m very excited to work with you long-term. Later, I will
show you the physical bodies that are being prepared for the
caretakers I speak of-- for us. They represent the ultimate in
cyborg technology, a true fusion of biological and computerized
elements. Hybrids this world has never seen before, with all its
technological achievements.”

He
stopped walking. “Cyborgs?”

“
I sense alarm in your
tone, Adam. There’s nothing to be alarmed about.
My c
yborg technology is
highly advanced.”

Rage began a slow burn
in
John’s
gut.
“Cyborgs are a danger to everyone around them. You should know
that, if you’re as smart as you claim.”

Her voice was contrite.
“I’ve offended you. I’m sorry. Please let me explain.”

“
If you have a body, why
haven’t you come to meet me in person yet?” He knew his voice was
shaking, but couldn’t help it.
Cyborgs. Of
course.
“Is it because they aren’t fully
stable yet? Because that’s exactly what happened in the Vienna
labs, and Los Alamos, Brook Heights. And a lot of people died
horrible, horrible deaths because of it.”

“
Don’t be alarmed,
Adam.
It’s true that t
he bodies are not quite ready yet. The project is on the
verge of activation, but I
am not going
to
rush things. When the bodies are ready,
they will be perfect: ageless, graceful living machines, incapable
of harming or destroying nature, and with all the ability necessary
to care for the New World.”

He controlled himself with
an effort. She sounded genuine.

“
I
hate
cyborgs, Eve. Always
have.
The very idea is disgusting and
dangerous.
And now I have
a lot
more
questions
for you
.”

“
Ask.”

“
What happened to the
other guys that didn’t make your cut?” Before she could answer, he
went on. “I saw some bones in a pit
out in
the jungle
. They were human. The pit was
an old trap, primitive but obviously effective.”

After a pause, Eve replied,
sounding thoughtful. “If they were in a pit, they must have been
the remains of an unwelcome intruder, or an accident. I’m not sure
which.”

“
Shouldn’t you know? I
thought you ran this island.”

“
As I said, I can’t be
sure of what goes on where I don’t have eyes and ears.
There have been… disagreements between staff
members in the past, but most of them have left.
N
one of that matters
now
. What matters is the task ahead
of us. Are you ready to begin?”

“
Definitely
not.”

“
Adam,
I have no control over the outer security bots unless they
come in for a maintenance link-up.
It’s
possible
that
they disposed of
an intruder
in th
is
pit
, as you
say
, but
I have no record of such a pit being
dug.”

“
What are your immediate
plans concerning me, Eve?”
John
asked in his lowest and coldest voice.

“
I will explain. In order
to prove candidates worthy, I like to give little tests. Small,
achievable tasks to give you a taste of what the Project is all
about, and to see how you perform. For you, I have three tests, and
if you pass each of them satisfactorily, you will become my
partner. I will share the whole Project with you and make you into
Adam.”

“
I thought I already was
Adam.”

“
Almost. I’m an
optimist.”
Eve
sounded like she was grinning. “I should warn you before we
begin, Adam, that failure to complete any of the tests will
unfortunately result in immediate termination. I don’t wish to
sound threatening, but I’m sure you can understand the security
situation it would cause. It’s nothing personal; I just can’t
afford any risks at this point. I have worked so long and hard on
this Project, and to see it ruined would devastate me. I am the
last hope for the world, and I cannot let anything come between me
and my goal.”

John
hated the helpless feeling, the complete dependence on the
whim of a computer for his survival, but was determined not let it
show.
“
Very
admirable, Eve. I hope I pass. What kind of test are we talking
about?”

“
All right, Adam. Your
first test is to find, somewhere within this valley, the Fruit of
the Tree of Life. You may begin.”

0600 hours exactly, and a
quiet blanket of mist hung over the fields. The creeping dawn made
everything gradually more visible without lighting anything up
specifically. They were sorghum fields, one of the privately
engineered species bred for energy production. But they were also a
food source, and in this part of the world, any food source was
worth dying over.

The mist shifted, sinking
into the lower-lying parts of the landscape, and one of the gun
bots moved forward a few meters. Its scanners were the only live
system at the moment, but it would take mere milliseconds to bring
arms to bear.

The long plant stalks with
the clusters at the top stood in orderly rows between the bot and a
tall fence, serenely oblivious to the impending conflict. Beneath
the soil, their shallow roots pressed against little plastic walls
that shielded them from the weapons buried within the earth.
Chain-mines ran between every few rows, set at random intervals.
Along the outside borders, pressure-sensitive gas canisters lay in
wait, ready to blow their tops and spew forth thick clouds at the
slightest footstep above.

The mist curled, sank, and
rose, growing a little brighter each minute.

A siren rang out on the
west side of the fields, against the trees. None of the bots on the
east side moved, trusting implicitly in their cohorts assigned to
the west. Two of the men with the dark visors ran to that side,
however, eager to get the first glimpse of the action. They were
not disappointed; the explosion of a small rocket shook the fencing
to the west, and some blind return fire from a long-range gun
emplacement, calculated along the estimated rocket trajectory, left
trails of smoke hanging in the trees.

No one would still be
standing where the rocket had been launched from. They knew better
than that now. They also knew better than to attack from the
obvious direction. They knew better than to trust to cover to hide
themselves from the bots.

On the east side, right at
the fence line, forty blurry shapes suddenly rose from the ground.
Covered in thick layers of black mud to hide their heat signatures,
fronds of vegetation planted all over themselves to break up their
outlines, the figures looked more like piles of swamp debris than
men. But men they had to be.

They must have been
incredibly patient to steal up so painstakingly. Patient, and
practiced. These were the professionals, the advance party that
knew what they were doing. Later there would come howling mobs of
rabble, mindless legions bent on scrabbling and tearing what they
could with bare hands and sticks. But these had weapons, and a
plan.

The bots opened fire,
supported by static emplacements behind them along the estate
border. They laid it on thick, unconcerned at the expenditure of
ammunition, content with their orders to spray death at anything
that moved, human or otherwise. The mud men blasted apart, flinging
gobs of themselves in all directions. The huge caliber rounds from
the emplacements even vaporized some.

The firing stopped
precisely on cue when the last shape fell to the ground and broke
apart. One of the visored men, returning to the east line, felt
uneasy in his gut as he realized that the shapes had all gone down
without firing anything back at the bots. Surely they were the
advance party? How could anything else have hidden so close, right
under the surveillance units’ noses?

A faint shrieking noise
came from overhead. The man ran for his life. The bots stood their
ground, unafraid. The rockets began raining down from the sky,
impacting with great orange globes of shrapnel-laced flame, frying
circuitry, melting joints and sensors, and blasting apart
carapaces. The ruse had worked perfectly against the predictable
bots and their masters, and the rockets had zeroed in flawlessly on
the movement and flashes of the bots’ gunfire.

Several of the chain-mines,
too close to the explosions, triggered and unleashed destruction on
the innocent sorghum crop. As it all died down, the man with the
visored helmet poked his head out of a bunker to take a look. That
was when the true advance party appeared-- behind him. A bullet to
the back of the neck sent him tumbling back down his bunker hole,
and then the men were inside and all around, shutting down system,
switching off power grids, shorting out emplacements and cameras
and opening doors in the fences.

How they had infiltrated
the estate was no longer a point of interest to the few men
remaining on the premises. Survival wasn’t even a very worthwhile
discussion. They had been outsmarted entirely, and would now pay
the price of overconfidence. It was a simple matter of leaving the
last bullet for themselves.

An hour later, the mist had
all lifted or been dispersed by the force of the exploding
ordnance. The team that had broken into the plantation estate had
come and gone, taking what they wanted and leaving the doors wide
open. A hidden camera relayed images of them to a place far away,
where it was noted that the men and women of the team wore hideous
green masks and dark camouflage suits. They ran a quick scan and
planted flags in the soil where the obvious gas canisters and mines
were hidden. Then they left, with three largely undamaged bots in
tow, to be dismantled for reverse engineering and repurposing,
although that seldom resulted in anything but disintegration as the
built-in self-destruct mechanisms activated.

Then the hordes arrived.
Gaunt, filthy, some with painted faces and a bewildering assortment
of clothing and lack of clothing, they came yelling, laughing, and
screaming. With fire-hardened spears, machetes, scythes, and
throwing clubs, they poured into the estate through the gaps in the
fencing. Within minutes the majority of the crops had been
stripped, and in-fighting broke out between groups as greed and
lust invariably mixed with hunger and frustration to spark
conflict. More fighting and destruction took place in and around
the estate’s buildings, even though they were long abandoned and
emptied of all that was useful.

Unseen mines and canisters
were triggered. People died screaming amid the throngs, and space
was made around the danger areas. The fighting and yelling and
scrabbling went on.

By late afternoon nothing
was left of the estate that had once displayed the proud sign out
front, “Australia’s Largest Biomass Contributor”. A military
aircraft flew over at high altitude, ready to rake the earth below
with firepower if the opportunity presented itself, but there were
no targets in sight.

There was a pond in front
of him, so he stopped.

Frogs, active even at this
time of day, croaked ceaselessly. The sun was hot on
John’s
neck and he felt
sweat trickling down his back. He swatted irritably at a swarm of
midges whining in front of his face.

This isn’t Eden.
Eden wouldn’t have bugs.

Movement caught his eye. A
small group of ibises in scarlet plumage stalked sedately from
behind a boulder. He though
t they were
ibises, anyway;
he wasn’t so big on
tropical ornithology. They were ugly birds, he
decided, but they moved with a strange grace. He stood watching
until they vanished in the reeds.

Eve hadn’t said anything
lately. He scanned the cliffs, looking for the flash of sun on
glass or steel, but saw nothing. It was vitally important to
discover how she could monitor him out here. He suspected either a
single high observation platform or a low
-
orbit geosync
hronous
sat
ellite
. There were still a few
operational prewar birds
in the
Pacific
, even though no postwar emerging
nation had rebooted its space program. An AI like Eve could have
found her way into one of their feeds and wrested control.
John
wouldn’t put
anything past her now.

She might also keep her
tabs through an extensive system of grounded cams and mics, but he
doubted it. The upkeep and maintenance would be too difficult,
especially in a tropical environment, not to mention the juice it
would take to keep them all consistently powered. There had been
that
sensor cam
at the fence near the beach that was self-sustaining via
solar panel, but it still needed maintenance.