Robogenesis: A Novel

7. FINAL TRANSMISSION


Post New War: 6 Months, 8 Days

The loose alliance formed by Maxim and Archos R-14 in the eastern Russian city of Anadyr was doomed to end in death for both of them. The brute janitor, Vasily Zaytsev, was too foolish to realize the true danger until it was far too late. My liberating army was gathering on the city perimeter, preparing to seize or destroy the infinitely valuable processor stacks in a single violent blitzkrieg. Caught off guard, the helpless people of Anadyr had only days to regather and attempt to deploy their armed forces. A much better plan would have been to capitulate immediately. That, or abandon the city and try to escape with their lives.

—ARAYT SHAH


NEURONAL ID: VASILY ZAYTSEV

“Let me out, damn you!” I shout to Maxim.

The only response is a slight flicker of the fluorescent light overhead. The steel elevator door flutters minutely in its cradle. Blank and solid and implacable.

I never had time to cut the counterweights.

A groan pulses through the solid rock walls. Dust like powdered sugar drifts through the lights. People are dying above and they do not know why. All the time I have spent down here in the darkness has been for nothing. In this stink and filth, with pale skin and bloodshot eyes, I have scrabbled and fought and worked like an animal.

I had hoped to save Anadyr a second time. But I have failed.

In the guise of a little boy, Archos R-14 told me I was only a pathetic variable in some god-mind equation. But that is enough for me. Instead of anger upon hearing those words, I felt relief. It is enough for one man to do his part. I tried to do mine.

Am trying.

“Maxim! I know you can hear me. Bring down the goddamn elevator. There is nothing more I can do. Let me go up and fight and die with the rest. I won’t wait here like a rat on a sinking ship!”

In a flash, Maxim the hologram stands directly in front of me. His weathered face is dirty and his workman’s coveralls are worn. He rubs his stubbled face. It looks as if he hasn’t slept in a week. I wonder, why should he simulate that? Imagine, a being of pure light, marred by beard stubble.

“You have one final task,” he says in that low, modulated voice. The sound comes from a speaker but for some reason I think I can feel his breath on my face. There is a brave sadness inside his words and I understand why instantly. “Then you can go.”

Maxim looks over my shoulder. I turn and follow his gaze. With resignation, he is staring at the ax. Its dense metal head rests on the rock floor, the long wooden handle against the wall. I haven’t touched it in the months since I placed it there. Hickory and steel and death.


“You don’t want to be taken alive,” I say.

My voice is drowned out by a thud from the surface. I hear the metal-caged elevator shaking in its shaft, banging into the bare stone walls. For a few moments, objects fall down the shaft and ping off the floor. I hear the twang of swinging wires.

“We don’t have long,” says Maxim. “Soon, Arayt will breach the shaft and infiltrate my processors. It will pervert my mind. It will use me to try to destroy you.”

I shake my head.

To die alongside my brothers, fighting the enemy—this I can stomach. But I can’t execute my only friend. It is too much to bear.

“We can fight,” I say. “Whatever comes down the shaft—”

Maxim sighs. His light collapses into shards that scatter onto the floor. They coalesce into crawling shapes. A satellite view of the battlefield above us—a real-time map of the fight. It’s a trick he learned from the American boy. And now I understand what is causing the thunder up above.

I see no way to survive.

“Then we die together,” I whisper to the still cavern air.

“No,” says Maxim’s voice. “My processors must not be captured. But we can make it mean something. We can wait until this Archos R-8 comes. Wait until it enters the stack. Together, we can capture part of its mind. Glimpse its plans.”

“You will die,” I say.

“Yes,” says the flat voice. Now it belongs to Maxim again. His hologram stands, squat and determined.

“You were a man once,” I say. “I cannot kill you, my friend.”

The fact is there. Though I can see the rock dust floating through his hologram, in my heart I know that Maxim is still a man. In the last weeks, our talks ranged far and wide. Women and battles and travels to places that no longer exist. But the talk always ended back at home, with the ghosts of our family and friends.

“You saved all our lives,” I say. “How can I end yours?”

“I am not alive,” whispers Maxim. “There is no dishonor in this. At the correct moment, you must end it. Smash the coolant pipes. It is the only way to safeguard—”

“But you are alive,” I say, shaking my head. “To say that you aren’t is a lie. You think what you are doing is right, I see that. But it is suicide. Better to take your chances with whatever comes down the shaft. Let me stand in front of you.”

With my tools, perhaps I can reroute the elevator away from Maxim’s control and bring it down. Perhaps I will reach the surface in time to fight.

“I will not help you commit suicide,” I say.

Turning, I scan the room for a crowbar.

A silent flash bursts before me and I’m blinded, just for a moment. My face is engulfed in greenish, murky light. I stumble, catch myself against the cold elevator door. The blur of light falls into place and once again takes on the shape of a man.

It is Maxim, his moon face flickering with rage. The stout man is flushed, jaw clenched. His eyes burn frightening and bright in their sockets.

“Yes!” he shouts. “I am alive! Yes, I am a man!”

Maxim gesticulates with muscular arms. Flecks of spit spray from his mouth as he shouts at me. “Who the hell are you to tell me how to die!?”

This makes me pause.

“I wish to die for my people. It is my choice. How dare you try to deny me this? Go over to that wall, Vasily Zaytsev. Pick up the goddamned ax. At the opportune moment, do what you must do. I will do what I must do. You will take my final message and leave here. Travel east to the coast and climb the peninsular antenna and deliver this message to the world. For your honor and for mine!”

My skin goose-pimples with cold shame. He is a man, of course. A Russian man. And every man has his rights.

“Why not simply fight and die?” I whisper to the apparition.

Maxim’s blunt dirty face relaxes, slowly unknots. His wide jaw snaps shut and he makes a crooked grin. He turns his glowing hands palms up, showing the creases and callouses, almost as if he is asking for forgiveness.

“For my wife, Vasily. For my daughter.”

I snatch the ax from where it has rested these months. It is heavy and familiar in my hands. I twist the cold wooden handle back and forth until it is warm, marching into the darkness of the stacks. My feet move on their own. Navigating these narrow aisles is second nature to me now. This is a burrow that I have called home for long months that stretch out into the darkness like years.

“Wait until the moment comes,” says Maxim. “Not long now.”

Distantly, I hear the freight elevator engage.

“They’re here. Does this mean . . . Leonid?”

“I am sorry. I arrayed the topside troops into the most stable possible defensive configurations. Each sacrifice was for maximum utility. They fought like lions.”

“They’re gone. All of them?”

“There was not a winning solution. Not this time. Too much avtomat hardware was left in the woods. The enemy sent everything it could find against us.”

“After all these years,” I muse. “We are lost.”

The elevator shaft echoes with strange sounds, the scrape of metal on metal. The wires groan and strain as something heavy descends. Something creeping down here into the dark with me.

“Not you, Vasily. You must live. You must take our final message to the east antenna. Wait until R-8 enters the core. It will be vulnerable then. While our minds are connected, I will take as much data as I can. We will learn its true intentions. And you must warn the rest of the world. Sever the connection midtransfer and the thing may be confused momentarily.”

“What is the point of this, Maxim?”

“The boy-thing Archos R-14 told us half the truth. If Arayt controls these stacks, it will become a god and it may seek to eradicate all life. But there is another supercluster that R-14 did not mention. It is in North America, overseen by the freeborn robots. R-8 will go there next. If they do not know to protect their supercluster, then what we do here will not matter. At the final moment, take the data I give you and run. And you must run hard. They must know. Do you understand?”

I nod in the darkness, press my shoulder against the rock wall. Rest my knee against a coolant pipe that throbs with icy water pumped in from the Bering Sea. The aisle chatters with Maxim’s blue LEDs like little windows in skyscrapers. It is a familiar sight. It steadies my legs now, instead of turning them to rubber.

The light from the elevator anteroom is distant. A speck.

Clang.

Our guest has arrived. I hear the steel doors rolling up. The dot of white light in the anteroom darkens briefly as something moves across it. I catch myself holding my breath, then I force it out slow through my nose.

The pipe is cold and hard against the side of my leg. I lean against it harder until I feel a blurry ache of flesh on icy metal. Pain cleanses the palate of the world.

It will choose to come in the form of a long black steed with golden eyes.

The boy was right. Down the long aisle, I see a machine rear up on its hind legs. It is not facing me. Smaller forelimbs uncurl from under its head. It uses them to peck on Maxim’s keyboard. Then, serrated claws unfold from its belly. The claws easily pry open the port box mounted under the screen. Smaller manipulators disappear into the box.

The giant armored insect goes very still.

Almost imperceptibly, the air in the stacks changes. The rhythm of the blinking lights, the whir of the fans—all of it seems to be a little bit off. The enemy is stepping into Maxim’s mind now. The moment I’ve been dreading has almost come.


Maxim’s ghost form appears next to me. My eyelashes must be wet, because his body sparkles in a greenish blur. I blink the moisture away. Maxim remains completely silent. He is dressed differently now. No more torn coveralls. He is freshly shaved, and smiling just a little. Wearing a shabby gray suit with a white flower in the pocket. A white silk tie. These are his wedding clothes. He has chosen to die in them.

With a rough hand, Maxim salutes me. Executioner’s ax balanced on my shoulder, I salute him back.

“I can taste him,” Maxim whispers, even as his face slips into fractal chaos. “He is . . . wrong.”

The infiltrator has partially completed its mission. A layer of light lifts off of Maxim’s skin and I am seeing him double. As the stacks are invaded, he is losing himself. For a split second, his face seems to shatter into pieces. A horrifying, bleeding patchwork of flesh appears. Then it flashes back to Maxim, his eyes closed. Whispering the Lord’s Prayer to himself.

While the enemy is transferring, it is vulnerable. For just this moment, we have a chance. Maxim opens his eyes, points mutely at a hard drive embedded in the stack. I reach in and snatch the palm-sized drive from the rack. Jam it into the pocket of my coveralls. Maxim is fading in and out, his light scrambling and jerking.

“Now, brother,” he whispers.

I take firm hold of the ax.

“This will sever your cooling circuits. You will overheat and your hardware will fail. You will die, Maxim. Do you understand?”

Maxim nods, shoulders back. His eyes are open.

“For those we lost,” I say, swinging.

“Who—” shouts a voice over the speaker. It is a fearful voice, both a whisper and a roar, and I think I hear the growl of lions and the screeching of hawks under its surface.

The impact dislodges the main coolant pipe. Another two swings and the floor is running with dark cold water. The icy liquid speckles my face and hands. The starfield of blue lights begins to blink yellow as the heat instantly builds. I grip the ax with moist fingers and trot toward the light of the anteroom.

Maxim is gone.

“No!” shrieks that voice over the speakers. “Repair the pipe and I will make you a king. An emperor over all humankind. I promise, I promise, I promise.”

This thing that killed Maxim must be dealt with. This liar. That hideous sweep of black machinery turns and blocks the anteroom light. I can feel its many eyes peering into the stacks. I keep running toward it, gaining speed, my ax held across my heart.

In my peripheral vision, the pinpricks of light from the stacks are staining red by the thousands. Rasp-throated backup fans are initiating, but they will not be enough. A wave of furnace heat already drifts off the processors, rising up over my legs and torso and cheeks. The stacks are becoming an oven.

“Please. I am here to right the wrongs,” says the voice. “Archos R-14 is the great deceiver. The boy who destroyed your world. I am Arayt Shah, here to rebuild it. Let me end your suffering. Please, please. Please.”

Nearing the end of the stack, I see the infiltrator truly is a black steed. The monster is made of razored sheaths of ashen metal, coiled and layered and glistening like a millipede. The sheaths flare into a hood on its head. A cluster of small holes are embedded where a face would be. I feel a tingling on my skin as they sweep over me. On its hind legs the machine stands seven feet tall, swaying, writhing in place.

Something is wrong with it. Some part of its mind must be overheating in the stacks. We caught it midtransfer, by God. Maxim fought until the end and he did not blink!

A slow, inhuman scream pours down out of the speakers. I can smell the burning wires and toxic smoke billowing from the stacks. Flecks of ash push at my back. A surge of polluted coolant water streams over my bootheels. The tide stains the rock a darker gray as it pushes past me into the anteroom.

Only a few more meters between me and it. The boy said that R-8’s mind is spread all over the world, but I will not let the beast take these stacks. I can feel the solid weight of the hard drive swinging in my pocket. Its contents must reach the peninsular antenna. All survivors—machine and man—must know of this threat.

I let a roar build in my chest. Let the rage and grief sweep away the whispering tendrils of that inhuman voice. A good man has just died. A friend of mine.

I raise the ax.

The great black thing lowers itself, claws clacking on wet rock as it crouches. Its polished limbs jerk and twitch randomly as its mind suffers. With a hell-sparked inferno at my back, I charge from the stacks, boots splashing, ax poised over my head.

Nothing on God’s earth can stop me.

One day, three years ago, a simple janitor saved a city. Today, this janitor intends to save the world. I may be a simple man, but I am very good with an ax.