It’s dangerous to be people-blind.
MATHILDA PEREZ
NEW WAR + 12 MONTHS
A year into the New War, Brightboy squad finally arrived at Gray Horse, Oklahoma. Across the world, billions of people had been eradicated from urban areas, and millions more were trapped in forced-labor camps. Much of the rural population we encountered were locked in isolated, personal battles to survive against the elements.
Information is spotty, but hundreds of small pockets of resistance seemed to have formed worldwide. As our squad settled into Gray Horse, a young prisoner named Mathilda Perez was escaping from Camp Scarsdale. She fled to New York City with her little brother, Nolan, in tow. In this recollection, Mathilda (age twelve) describes her interaction with the NYC resistance group, headed by Marcus and Dawn Johnson.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217
I didn’t think Nolan was hurt that bad at first.
We made it to the city and then we ran around a corner and something exploded and Nolan fell down. But he got right back up. We were running so fast together, hand in hand. Just like I promised Mom. We ran until we were safe.
It was only later, when we were walking again, that I noticed how pale Nolan was. Later, I found out that tiny splinters of metal were stuck in his lower back. But there he stood, shaking like a leaf.
“Are you okay, Nolan?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “My back hurts.”
He’s so little and brave that it makes me want to cry. But I can’t cry. Not anymore.
The machines at Camp Scar hurt me. They took my eyes. But in return, they gave me a new kind of eyes. Now I can see more than ever. Vibrations in the ground light up like ripples on water. I notice the heat trails left on the pavement by wheels that have come and gone. But my favorite thing is watching the ribbons of light crisscrossing the sky, like messages printed on banners. These beams are the machines talking to one another. Sometimes, if I squint really hard, I can even make out what they are saying.
People are harder to see.
I can’t really see Nolan anymore, only the heat from his breath, the muscles in his face, and how he won’t look me in the eyes anymore. It doesn’t matter. If I have people eyes or machine eyes or tentacles—I’m still Nolan’s big sister. It scared me the first time I saw through his skin, so I know how he feels when he sees my new eyes. But I don’t care.
Mom was right. Nolan is the only brother I’ve got and the only one I’ll ever have.
After we left Camp Scar, me and Nolan saw tall buildings and we walked toward them, thinking maybe we’d find people. But there was nobody around. Or if there were, I guess they were hiding. Pretty soon, we reached the buildings. Most of them were all messed up. There were suitcases in the streets and dogs running in packs and sometimes the curled-up bodies of dead people. Something bad happened here.
Something bad happened everywhere.
The closer we got to the really tall buildings, the more I could feel them—the machines, hiding in dark places or running through the streets on the lookout for people. Streaks of light flashed overhead. Machines talking.
Some of the lights blinked regular, every couple of minutes or seconds. Those are the hiding machines, checking in with their bosses. “I’m still here,” they say. “Waiting.”
I hate these machines. They make traps and then wait for people. It’s not fair. A robot can just sit and wait to hurt somebody. And it can wait forever and ever.
But Nolan is hurt and we need to find help fast. I steer us away from the trap makers and the travelers. But my new eyes don’t show me everything. They can’t show me people things. Now, I only see the machine things.
It’s dangerous to be people-blind.
The way looked clear. No machine chatter. No shimmering heat trails. Then, small ripples pulsed over the ground from around the corner of a brick building. Instead of a slow swell like from something rolling, they were bouncy, like something big walking.
“It’s not safe here,” I say.
I put an arm around Nolan’s shoulders and steer him into a building. We crouch next to a dust-coated window. I nudge Nolan to sit on the floor.
“Stay down,” I say. “Something is coming.”
He nods. His face is so pale now.
Kneeling, I press my face into a broken-out corner of the window and hold very still. The vibrations are growing on the crushed pavement outside, pulses of static flooding from somewhere out of view. A monster is coming down the road. Soon, I will be able to see it, whether I want to or not.
I hold my breath.
Somewhere outside, a hawk cries. A long black leg pokes into view, only a foot or two outside the window. It has a sharp point on the end and flake-shaped barbs carved underneath, like a big bug leg. Most of the thing is cold, but the joints are hot where it has been moving. As it slides farther into view, I see that it is really a much longer leg folded in on itself—all coiled up and ready to strike. Somehow, it floats over the ground, aimed straight out.
Then, I see a pair of warm human hands. The hands are holding the leg like a rifle. It’s a black woman, wearing gray rags and a pair of black goggles over her eyes. She holds the coiled leg thing out like a weapon, one hand wrapped around a homemade grip. I see a shiny, melted spot on the back end of the leg and realize that this leg has been cut off some kind of big walking machine. The woman doesn’t see me; she keeps walking.
Nolan coughs quietly.
The woman spins around and on instinct she levels the leg at the window. She pulls a trigger, and the coiled leg unfolds and launches itself forward. The point of the claw crashes through the glass next to my face, sending shards flying everywhere. I duck out of the way just as the leg folds back up again, clawing out a chunk of the window frame. I fall onto my back, caught in sudden glaring light streaming through the shattered window. I make a squeaking scream before Nolan clamps a hand over my mouth.
A face appears in the window. The woman pulls her goggles onto her forehead, ducks her head in and out in a quick movement. Then she looks down at me and Nolan. There is so much light around her head and her skin is cold and I can count her bright teeth through her cheeks.
She has seen my eyes but she doesn’t flinch. She just studies me and Nolan for a second, grinning.
“Sorry about that, kids,” she says. “Thought you were Rob. My name is Dawn. Any chance you guys are hungry?”
Dawn is nice. She takes us to the underground hideout where the New York City resistance lives. The tunnel house is empty for now, but Dawn says that pretty soon the others will be back from scouting and scavenging and something called chaperoning. I’m glad, because Nolan doesn’t look very well. He is lying on a sleeping bag in the safest corner of the room. I’m not sure he can walk anymore.
This place is warm and it feels safe, but Dawn says to be quiet and careful because some of the newer robots now can dig very well. She says the little machines patiently burrow through the cracks and they go toward vibrations. Meanwhile, the big machines hunt people in the tunnels.
This makes me nervous and I check the walls around us for vibrations. I don’t see any of the familiar pulses rippling through the soot-stained tile. Dawn looks at me funny when I tell her that nothing is in the walls right now. But she doesn’t say anything about my eyes, not yet.
Instead, Dawn lets me play with the bug leg. It is called a spiker. Just like I thought, the spiker came off a big walking machine. This machine is called a mantis, but Dawn says that she calls it “Crawly Rob.” It’s a silly name and it makes me laugh for a second until I remember that Nolan is hurt very bad.
I squint my eyes and look into the spiker. There are no wires inside it. Each joint talks to the others over the air. Radio. The leg doesn’t have to think about where it goes either. Each piece is designed to work together. The leg only has one move, but it’s a good one that combines stabbing and clawing. That’s lucky for Dawn, because a simple electrical pulse can make the leg extend or curl up. She says this is very useful.
Then the spiker jerks around in my hands and I drop it on the ground. It lies there for a second, still. When I concentrate on the joints, the machine stretches itself out slowly, like a cat.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. Dawn stands next to me, her face radiating heat. She is excited.
“That’s incredible. Let me show you something,” she says.
Dawn leads me over to a sheet hanging from the wall. She pulls it aside, and I see a dark hollow filled with a crouching nightmare. Dozens of spider legs lurk there in the darkness, just a few feet away. I have seen this machine before. It was my last natural sight.
I scream and fall back, scrabbling to escape.
Dawn grabs me by the back of the shirt and I try to fight her, but she is too strong. She lets the curtain drop back into place and holds me up on my feet, letting me hit her and claw at her face.
“Mathilda,” she says. “It’s okay. It’s not online. Listen to me.”
I never knew how much I needed to cry until I had no eyes.
“Is that the machine that hurt you?” she asks.
I can only nod.
“It’s off-line, honey. This one can’t hurt you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say, settling down, “sorry.”
“It’s okay, baby. I understand. It’s okay.” Dawn strokes my hair for a few seconds. If I could close my eyes, I would. Instead, I watch the blood pulse gently through her face. Then Dawn sits me down on a cinder block. The muscles in her face tense up.
“Mathilda,” she says, “that machine is called an autodoc. We dragged it here from topside. People got hurt … people died to bring that machine here. But we can’t use it. We don’t know why. You have something special, Mathilda. You know that, right?”
“My eyes,” I respond.
“That’s right, honey. Your eyes are special. But I think there’s more than that. The machine on your face is also in your brain. You made that spiker move by thinking about it, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you try to do the same thing with the autodoc?” she asks, slowly pulling the curtain back again. Now I see that the jumble of legs is attached to a white, oval body. There are dark gaps where the legs meet the main part. It looks like one of the grub worms that me and Nolan used to dig up in the backyard.
I shiver but I don’t look away.
“Why?” I ask.
“To save your little brother’s life for a start, honey.”
Dawn drags the autodoc into the center of the room. For the next thirty minutes I sit next to it cross-legged and concentrate like I did for the spiker. The legs of the autodoc only twitch a little at first. But then I start to move them for real.
It doesn’t take long to feel out all the legs. Each one has a different instrument attached to the end, but I only recognize a few: scalpels, lasers, spotlights. After a little while, the machine starts to seem less alien. I understand what it feels like to have a dozen arms, how you can be mindful of where your limbs are and still focus on the two that you are using right now. As I flex the spider legs again and again, it starts to feel natural.
Then, the autodoc speaks to me: Diagnostic interface mode initiated. Indicate preferred function.
I flinch, concentration broken. The words were in my mind, as if they were scrolling across the inside of my forehead. How could the autodoc put words into my mind?
Only then do I notice the crowd of people. About ten survivors have come into the tunnel. They stand together in a semicircle, watching me. A man stands behind Dawn with his arms wrapped around her, and she holds his arms with her hands. I haven’t seen so many people since I got my new eyes.
A wave of red-orange pulses radiate toward me. The bands of light come from their beating hearts. It is very beautiful but also frustrating, because I can’t explain how pretty it is to anyone.
“Mathilda,” says Dawn, “this is my husband, Marcus.”
“Nice to meet you, Marcus,” I say.
Marcus just nods at me. I think he is speechless.
“And these are the others I told you about,” says Dawn. The people all murmur their hellos and nice to meet yous. Then, a young guy steps forward. He’s kind of cute, with a sharp chin and high cheekbones. One of his arms is wrapped in a towel.
“I’m Tom,” he says, crouching down beside me.
I look away, ashamed of my face.
“Don’t be scared,” Tom says.
He unwraps the towel from his arm. Instead of a hand, Tom has a lump of cold metal in the shape of scissors. In wonder, I glance up at his face and he smiles at me. I start to smile back before I get embarrassed and look away.
I reach out and touch the cold metal of Tom’s hand. Looking into it, I am amazed by how the flesh and machinery come together. It is as intricate as anything I have ever seen.
Looking harder at the other people, I notice occasional bits of metal and plastic. Not all of them are made of meat. Some of them are like me. Me and Tom.
“Why are you like that?” I ask.
“The machines changed us,” says Tom. “We’re different, but the same. We call ourselves transhuman.”
Transhuman.
“Is it okay if I touch?” asks Tom, motioning at my eyes.
I nod, and he leans down and touches my face. He peers at my eyes and lightly brushes his fingers against my face where the skin turns to metal.
“I’ve never seen this,” he says. “It’s incomplete. Rob never got to finish. What happened, Mathilda?”
“My mom,” I say.
That’s all I can get out.
“Your mom stopped the operation,” he says. “Good for her.”
Tom stands up. “Dawn,” he says, “this is amazing. The implant has no governor on it. Rob didn’t get the chance to hobble it. I don’t know. I mean, there’s no telling what she can do.”
A wave of rising heartbeats cascades toward me.
“Why are you all excited?” I ask.
“Because,” says Dawn. “We think maybe you can talk to the machines.”
Then Nolan moans. It’s been two hours since we arrived here and he looks terrible. I can hear him breathing in little pants.
“I have to help my brother,” I say.
Five minutes later, Marcus and Tom have placed Nolan next to the autodoc. The machine has its legs raised, poised like needles over my little brother’s sleeping body.
“Make an X-ray, Mathilda,” says Dawn.
I put a hand onto the autodoc and speak to it in my mind: Hello? Are you there?
Indicate preferred function.
X-ray?
The spider legs begin to move. Some move out of the way, while others creep around Nolan’s body. A strange clicking sound comes from the writhing legs.
The words come into my mind with an image. Place patient in the prone position. Remove clothing around the lumbar area.
I gently turn Nolan over onto his stomach. I pull his shirt up to reveal his back. There are flecks of dark, crusted blood all around the knobs of his spine.
Fix him, I think to the autodoc.
Error, it responds. Surgical functionality unavailable. Database missing. Uplink not present. Antenna attachment required.
“Dawn,” I say, “it doesn’t know how to do surgery. It wants an antenna so it can get instructions.”
Marcus turns to Dawn, concerned. “It’s trying to trick us. If we give it the antenna, it will call for help. They’ll track us down.”
Dawn nods. “Mathilda, we can’t risk that—”
But she stops cold when she sees me.
Someplace in my head, I know that the arms of the autodoc are silently rising into the air behind me, instruments gleaming. The countless needles and scalpels hover there on swaying legs, menacing. Nolan needs help and if they won’t give it, I’m willing to take it.
I frown at the group of people and set my jaw.
“Nolan needs me.”
Marcus and Dawn look at each other again.
“Mathilda?” asks Dawn. “How do you know it’s not a trap, honey? I know you want to help Nolan, but you also don’t want to hurt us.”
I think about it.
“The autodoc is smarter than the spiker,” I say. “It can talk. But it’s not that smart. It’s just asking for what it needs. Like an error message.”
“But that thinking Rob is out there—” says Marcus.
Dawn touches Marcus on the shoulder.
“Okay, Mathilda,” says Dawn.
Marcus gives up arguing. He looks around, sees something, and strides across the room. Reaching up, he grabs a wire dangling from the ceiling and swings it back and forth to unloop it from a piece of metal. Then he hands it to me, eyeing the autodoc’s swaying legs.
“This cable goes to the building above us. It’s long and metal and it goes high. Perfect antenna. Be careful.”
I barely hear him. The instant the antenna touches my hand a tidal wave of information comes flooding into my head. Into my eyes. Streams of numbers and letters and images fill my vision. None of it makes sense at first. Swirls of color blow through the air in front of me.
That’s when I feel it. Some kind of … mind. An alien thing, stalking through the data, searching for me. Calling out my name. Mathilda?
The autodoc begins speaking in a constant babble. Scanning initiated. One, two, three, four. Query satellite uplink. Database access. Download initiated. Ortho-, gastro-, uro-, gyno-, neuro …
It’s too fast. Too much. I can’t understand what the autodoc is saying anymore. I’m getting dizzy as the information surges into me. The monster calls for me again, and now it is closer. I think of those cold doll eyes that night in my bedroom and the way that lifeless thing whispered my name in the darkness.
The colors spin around me like a tornado.
Stop, I think. But nothing happens. I can’t breathe. The colors are too bright and they’re drowning me, making it so that I can’t think. Stop! I shout with my mind. And my name comes again, louder this time, and I can’t tell where my arms are or how many I have. What am I? I scream inside my head, with everything in me.
STOP!
I drop the antenna like a snake. The colors fade. The images and symbols drop to the floor and are swept away like fall leaves into the corners of the room. The vivid colors bleach away into the dull white tile.
I take one breath. Then two. The autodoc legs start to move.
There are tiny motor sounds as the autodoc works on Nolan. A spotlight flicks on and shines on his back. A rotating scrubber comes down and cleans his skin. A syringe goes in and out almost too fast to see. The movements are quick and precise and full of little pauses, like when the petting zoo chickens used to turn their heads and peck at corn.
In the sudden quiet, I can hear something beneath the static of the tiny motor noises. It is a voice.
… sorry for what I’ve done. I’m called Lurker. I’m bringing down the British Telecom tower communications blockade. Should open up satellite access, but I don’t know for how long. If you can hear this message, the comm lines are still open. The satellites are free. Use them while you can. The damned machines will—Ah, no. Christ, please. Can’t hold on any longer. I’m sorry.… Catch you in the funny pages, mate.
After about ten seconds, the broken message repeats. I can barely hear it. The man sounds very scared and young but also proud. I hope that he is okay, wherever he is.
Finally, I stand up. Behind me, I can feel the autodoc operating on Nolan. The group of people still stand, watching me. I have barely been aware that they are here. Talking to the machines takes such concentration. I can hardly see people anymore. It is so easy to lose myself in the machine.
“Dawn?” I say.
“Yes, honey?”
“There’s a man out there, talking. His name is Lurker. He says he destroyed a communications blockade. He says the satellites are free.”
The people look at each other in wonder. Two of them hug. Tom and Marcus slap their hands together. They make small, happy noises. Smiling, Dawn puts her hands on my shoulders.
“That’s good, Mathilda. It means we can talk to other people. Rob never destroyed the communications satellites, it just blocked them off from us.”
“Oh,” I say.
“This is very important, Mathilda,” she says. “What else do you hear out there? What’s the most important message?”
I put my hands on the sides of my face and concentrate. I listen very hard. And when I listen beyond the man’s repeating voice, I find that I can hear further into the network.
There are so many messages floating around. Some of them are sad. Some are angry. Many of them are confused or cutoff or rambling, but one of them sticks out in my mind. It is a special message with three familiar words in it:
Robot defense act.
Mathilda had only scratched the surface of her abilities. In the coming months, she would hone her special gift in the relative safety of the New York City underground, protected by Marcus and Dawn.
The message she was able to find on this day, due to the ultimate sacrifice made by Lurker and Arrtrad in London, proved instrumental in the formation of a North American army. Mathilda Perez had found a call to arms issued by Paul Blanton, and the location of humankind’s greatest enemy.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217