Ex Machina Read online

  Asima had been told…no, Asima had chosen to help Parvati because the Bot had been told something would happen to them. But told by whom? How was it even possible? Had someone developed the technology to see into the future? From what Parvati knew, technology was still fairly at a standstill–recovering from the setback that was the Night Terror Virus. Was there some secret society, perhaps a group of scientists, living in seclusion somewhere and continuing the work that had begun before the world nearly ended? It hardly seemed possible. But then again, the bundle she now held swaddled in her arms hardly seemed possible just a few hours ago…

  Parvati continued to follow the tunnel, her footsteps the only sound in the inky blackness. More than once those footsteps echoed back to her, and she was sure it was the sound of someone following her, but she would stop and there would be no other sound. She was getting paranoid. Eventually she felt the tunnel open up again at a cross tunnel, and she moved to keep following the straight path…when she walked headlong into solid wall. She heard a cracking sound from her nose, and felt the warmth of blood begin gushing down her face. She saw stars before her eyes and the pain overwhelmed her. She stumbled to the ground, jostling Andie in the process, and the baby began to wail. Parvati suddenly felt every emotion she’d kept bottled up since Andie’s birth well up to the surface, bursting forth like a tidal torrent.

  And she cried.

  When she was done, and her nose had stopped bleeding, she was able to console the baby. She rocked Andie gently, back and forth in the darkness, and she lamented not being able to see her daughter’s face in the murk. She longed to see her daughter’s face…

  A red light pierced the gloom.

  It wasn’t harsh or blinding, but soft and soothing, like the numbers on a digital alarm clock. It began as a small point within the swaddled bundle that was Andie, and slowly expanded outward, not getting brighter, but rather spreading, encompassing the tunnel in a sunset red. It was coming from Andie’s eye–the synthetic one–the one not covered in human flesh, an exposed and naked metal orb in the infant’s face.

  And she could see that face now.

  And it was beautiful.

  Parvati sobbed again, but this time with joy, for she’d had very little time to simply hold and enjoy her new daughter. She hardly saw the working metal gears or the ragged flesh where it was exposed; all she saw was a miracle.

  She saw her daughter’s face.

  A realization came to Parvati then, and she felt her emotions swell. “Andie,” she asked softly, smoothing the baby’s hair, “did you…did you just read my mind?” The baby said nothing, but her eyes never left her mother’s. “You knew I wanted to see your face, didn’t you? And you gave me light…” Andie made a series of mechanical coos, but that was all. Parvati sighed. “Or maybe I’m just going crazy. You are a Bot, after all. Maybe this is just one of your functions…providing light in the dark.” She leaned back fully against the wall then, and looked up, taking in the tunnel around her for the first time. She saw she was at a T-junction, littered with junk and debris, and she could no longer just follow a straight path; she had to choose–right or left. Hopelessness welled up inside. Which was the right way? Asima had not prepared her for this. Thoughts of people lost down in these tunnels, never seen or heard from again, reentered her mind–and fear along with them. Tears flowed once more. “What do I do?” she croaked.

  At that moment, in Parvati’s deepest despair, the light got brighter. She looked down at Andie, but had to immediately avert her gaze. The light of the infant’s mechanical eye intensified, becoming a localized beam, like a laser. Parvati could feel the heat coming off of it in waves. Andie’s eye shifted, and the beam trained onto the wall behind them, where it suddenly skittered across the smooth but cracked concrete in a pattern of sorts. Parvati had no chance of following it. It didn’t matter; in a matter of seconds it was over, and the red light went back to the way it was, soft but illuminating. Parvati studied the wall, her shock plain on her face, but she couldn’t make out what was now etched into it. In fact, the depressions Andie had made were so shallow, that the only testament to their existence was a smattering of concrete dust on the tunnel floor below the carving. She ran her fingers over it, feeling the subtle grooves, but still had no idea what they signified.

  “I can’t read it,” she said to Andie aloud, “what am I supposed to–” She cut off. An object on the ground had just caught her eye. It was a yellow box–or had been at one time–but was now faded and rotting. The box didn’t matter however; it was what was stored inside. Still cradling Andie, she pushed herself over to it and lifted up the flap on the front, which disintegrated at her touch, revealing the contents, which, she was relieved to see, were mostly intact. She selected the darkest color–she was pretty sure it was black, though in the red light it was impossible to be certain–and peeled away its paper wrapping. Then she scanned the floor for a piece of paper–this wasn’t hard, there was litter scattered everywhere–but finding a dry piece was another matter. She finally found one that was just a little damp. It had an advertisement on one side for some company called B.C.M., but the other side was blank, if smeared with dirt. She set Andie down gently, pressed the paper against the wall over the etching, then set to work, rubbing the crayon she had recovered over it, revealing the message Andie had made. When she was finished and examined her work, she dropped the crayon in shock and stared down at her daughter.

  How had Andie done this?

  The images in the rubbing were depicted by a series of horizontal lines, encompassed within a large circle. Parvati understood that the circle was meant to symbolize the dome of the city. The central image within the dome was of a clearly feminine figure, holding a swaddled bundle–Parvati holding Andie. The figure was standing before a series of lines that depicted a maze–starting at a T-junction–as they were now. A dotted line wound through the maze, showing Parvati where to go, which tunnels to take. The tunnels eventually came out into what seemed to be a large open area, where Andie had drawn a series of triangles all over. Parvati had no idea what they meant. Beyond the open area–beyond the edge of the dome circle in fact–was a symbol Parvati recognized immediately–and fearfully–for it was something she wished never to see again in her life.

  A scarecrow.

  The scarecrow was out beyond the edge of the dome…and the dotted lines that signified her path led right out to it…

  “I have to go outside!” Parvati blurted aloud, staring at Andie wide eyed. “Outside the city?” Andie bubbled happily. “But…how? I, I can’t…it’s impossible! We’d die! No one’s been outside the domes and survived for years. Decades! It’s just…not…” She trailed off, looking her daughter in the eye. Andie couldn’t speak, but Parvati felt her saying something nonetheless; she felt it in that terrible, mechanical eye.

  “You better be right about this,” Parvati said, but Andie only smiled.

  VIII

  It might have been hours later, it might have been days, but Parvati thought she was finally beginning to see light. It was barely perceptible, at first, then Parvati realized there was an element of whiteness to the red that Andie already provided in the dark. It slowly got brighter, until Andie’s light was no longer needed, and the infant retracted that light back into its eye. There was a freshening breeze flowing its way down the tunnel, and though it brought with it a mild stench of decay, Parvati was glad of it; it whistled sweetly in her ears. She walked a little further, and it came to her attention that it wasn’t just the wind that she was hearing–there was a soft murmuring too–and every now and then she could almost swear there was a spoken word among it… The tunnel took an abrupt downward turn then, and its concrete surface became slick with the runoff that seeped through the walls here and there, becoming an actual flow. More than once, her nearly soleless shoes slipped…

  Parvati screamed as she felt the world give way beneath her, her ass striking the slimy concrete as she rode it down into the unknown…r />
  IX

  “Who is she?”

  “She has the look of the upper city about her.”

  “Never mind that…find out what she’s got in that bundle there…”

  Parvati opened her eyes.

  When she did, she immediately wanted to close them again. She lay on her back in a filthy pool of water…and a group of monsters surrounded her. She saw ghostly pale skin, gaunt and hanging loose off of skeletal human frames; thin, scraggly black hair that was missing in clumps; and dark, soulless eyes that were red around the fringes.

  They were lower city dwellers.

  They reached for her and she screamed, but there were too many of them, and she felt clammy hands pin her down and wrest Andie from her grasp. “No, you can’t!” Parvati pleaded, but the only response she received was pitiless laughter. A hideous woman in a hooded, dirty cloak held Andie, but the woman clearly didn’t know what she had, for when she pulled back the swaddling that covered the infants face, she screamed. And Andie screamed in return. The wail was mechanical, high pitched, and ear splitting. The dwellers around Parvati had to cover their ears from the pain of it, but amazingly, Parvati felt no discomfort at all…

  She knows me… My daughter knows my body…she can read it…she knew this wouldn’t hurt me…

  Parvati stumbled to her feet, pushing past the lower city dwellers that writhed in agony and over to the crone that still held Andie, on her knees now. She gingerly took her daughter from the woman’s withered grasp and stepped away from her…only to knock headlong into someone else, who was also screaming. Parvati looked about, and for the first time was able to take in her surroundings. There were people everywhere. Hundreds of them. They were scattered about a massive open area, lined on either side by massive square columns, all filthy, all pale, and all screaming. A series of strange, conical dwellings were dotted haphazardly about the space, and Parvati was dismayed to see many children among the crowd.

  This is the open space on the map Andie drew, with the triangular symbols…

  Parvati looked down at her still wailing daughter then, and made a few soothing sounds, stroking the baby’s copper wire hair out of her face. The wailing stopped immediately. The people of the lower city reluctantly pulled their fingers out of their ears, but were clearly still wary and dazed. They moved away from her, some going so far as to fork the symbol of the evil eye at her, and yell things like “Devil child!” and “Demon!” Superstitious nonsense. Parvati had met lower city dwellers before–she was a reporter, and had done her share of stories on them–but none that were as squalid and decrepit as the ones that stood before her. There did seem to be a sense of community here however, judging by the arranged huts and family groupings she was seeing–something that was lacking in other crime infested lower city settlements she had visited. This seemed to be a lost world of the lower city…

  THWACK!

  Parvati cried out in pain as something hard struck her in the back. She whirled, pulling Andie into her body protectively, just as another object rocketed toward her and struck her shoulder, blossoming with pain. The object clattered to the ground and she saw it was a ragged chunk of concrete. The dwellers still kept their distance from her, but now they were picking things up off the ground, whatever they could find, hurling them at her…

  “No! Stop!” a voice echoed across the space, and it took Parvati a moment to realize it wasn’t her own. The people in the mob stopped their assault immediately. In stunned shock, Parvati wheeled about once more, and there was a man, standing upon a low gallery, lined on either side by a pair of crumbling stairs. Behind the man, another set of stairs led up off the balcony to an arched doorway. Above the arch, words had once been inscribed in the stone, but the only one that she could make out clearly was “VANDERBILT”. The man himself was tall, skinny, and just as sickly as his brethren–but there was an air of authority about him that was undeniable and somehow…familiar. He was the one who had ordered the halt on her assault.

  “Miss Kane,” the man spoke in a loud, clear tone, “is that you?”

  Parvati squinted her eyes at him, though she had no real reason to–her vision was just fine. This man recognized her? She approached him cautiously.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t recognize me,” the man insisted. “You are nothing but a spoiled upper city brat, after all.”

  At these words, Parvati felt her heart lift as if it were filled with helium and she smiled, running up the stairs to join him on the balcony. “My god Jares,” she said with glee, “is it really you?”

  X

  “What are you doing here Parvati? This is the last place in the city I would expect to find you.”

  “I could reasonably ask you the same thing,” Parvati rebutted, and Jares smirked.

  “Fair enough,” he said, and sighed. “Things got out of control in Loxias. I tried my best to make life better for the people there…but it wasn’t enough. The Deus gang controls everything now…but you wouldn’t know that–I haven’t seen you down there in years.”

  Parvati sneered. “Hey, I moved up in the world, what can I say?” Jares laughed. Despite everything, it really was good to see him. When she’d first started as a field reporter for Capitol News, Parvati had been assigned to investigate the protest movement that was growing in the lower city settlement of Loxias at the time. The movement was a response to the growing squalor that the people of the lower city were forced to live in, while the rich and prosperous sipped tea and had Bots serve to their every whim in the upper. Of course, life wasn’t actually like that in the upper city–Parvati had never owned a Bot herself–but the steadily increasing gap between the rich and poor could hardly be ignored. Well, actually, it would have been ignored, if not for news coverage; people in the upper city would hardly know the lower existed if not for that. Jares had been a leader in the movement at the time, and one of Parvati’s first interviews had been with the man, and it had gone fairly well…that is until he called her a “spoiled upper city brat” when she refused to comment on her own living situation in the upper city. She hadn’t backed down though, calling Jares out on the violent way in which they were going about the protests, and he quickly learned Parvati Kane couldn’t be pushed around or bullied…and respected her for it. They had developed a wonderful working relationship after that, lasting a year, before Parvati was promoted and hadn’t been to the lower city since.

  Until now that is.

  “Yeah,” Jares replied, “I guess it’s easy to forget where you came from once you leave it behind.”

  Parvati scowled. “Hey, I never forgot you guys. I thought about Loxias almost every day. I just had other assignments to deal with.” And it was true.

  “Okay, fine, whatever,” Jares quipped. “You’re just lucky I was here.”

  “Duh,” Parvati quipped back.

  “Hey, don’t get cocky Kane, I could just as easily order these people to keep stoning you to death…”

  Parvati gave him a fake look of fear. “Sorry, I’ll be good.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question Kane: What are you doing here?”

  Parvati sagged then, and lowered the bundle she had wrapped in her arms against her chest. Andie’s half-human face stared up at them with wide-eyed wonder. “My daughter,” she replied with emotion, and Jares’ face seemed to melt into a look of half revulsion, half wonder.

  “God,” he said. “When I heard the noise that thing, uh…she made, I thought you had some sort of sonic weapon under there, but this…”

  “I know,” Parvati said. “She’s a little much to take…at first, but she’s mine. I love her Jares. The NDI is after her and…I fled. That’s why I’m here.”

  Jares nodded his understanding. “Of course, Parv. You’ll get all the support you need from us. We’ll protect you here, as best we can. Few in the upper city know where we are…even the NDI.”

  Parvati shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t stay here. I’m
really just…passing through.” She gave him a sheepish look and he laughed.

  “Parvati, this is the edge of the city. Where are you going to go, outside the dome?” He gave another hearty guffaw, but stopped himself when he saw the look on her face. She was holding something out to him–a piece of paper. He took it, studied it, and immediately his eyes widened. “Where did you…how did you know about…”

  “The scarecrow?” Parvati asked, finishing his sentence. Jares just nodded his head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But I have to get there. Can you help me?”

  “Yeah,” Jares replied. “But I almost wish I couldn’t.”

  XI

  She stood before a massive steel bulkhead door.

  Jares had just led her through the archway that said “VANDERBILT” above it and down a short, dank corridor. The bulkhead was part of a larger steel wall that cut the tunnel off completely, and Parvati gaped at what was stenciled on the door in tall, red letters: