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Zebediah:
Here's the next chapter of The Post-Apocalyptic Adventures of Marten Reed. I'm not altogether happy with this one - if I had more time I'd rewrite it completely, but my time for the next week or so is limited, so this will have to do.
"Oh fuckin' great. Now we're in a bad James Bond flick." May glared at the Russian woman, while slowly raising her hands above her head.
"Tortura," I said. Something about that name was familiar.
"And vat," she asked, "do you think you are doing here?"
"Wait a minute." The memory finally came to me. "Steve's Tortura?"
Tortura said something in Russian that sounded like profanity. "You know Stephen?"
"Of course I do. He was my best friend."
"Bozhemoi! You are Marten Reed?"
And then someone else stepped out from behind a tree. He was tall and muscular, though thinner than the last time I had seen him. And he was completely bald – not a hair on his head, not even eyebrows. "Dude!" he shouted.
"Holy shit! Steve!"
He charged me, tossing down his weapon, and grabbed me in a bear hug. "Marten! I didn't even know you were still alive!"
"Whoa, Steve, we've talked about this," I said, laughing. "And what the fuck? You're bald!"
"Yeah, well you look like your dad, bro. Your hair is all white."
"I did not tell you to break cover," Tortura shouted.
"But Tortura, this is Marten!"
"You never break cover!" Tortura screamed. "Never, ever! Vat if they were enemies? Vat if the robot drew her weapon vile you vere not covering me?"
"You mean like this?" May said, grinning hugely as she pointed her rifle at Tortura's head.
"Da. Exactly like that," Tortura said. "See? Cannot be trusted."
"Whoa, whoa, everyone take a deep breath," I said. "Tortura, lower your weapon. You too, May. We're not here to get into a fight."
"Do it, babe," Steve said. "These are friends."
"Is not protocol," Tortura objected.
"Protocol for what?" May asked.
"Protocol for potentially hostile strangers," Steve explained. "Which you aren't. Or at least Marten isn't."
"Hey, I'm good here. If you're a friend of Marten's, I won't shoot you."
"How did you even know we were here?" I asked.
Steve shrugged. "Hey, you set off alarms from here to Boston. We figured we'd better check out what was happening."
"Really?" May raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying you can read warnings from the borganism?"
"Ve neither confirm nor deny," Tortura snapped. "Ve are talking far too much."
"I'll explain it when we get back to our place," Steve said. "We have a farm outside of..."
"Stephen!" Tortura shouted.
"Outside of Lincoln," Steve said. "Come on, babe, we aren't treating them like hostiles."
"Is mistake," Tortura hissed.
"Here's the deal," Steve said firmly. "We take Marten and his friend back to Lincoln with us. On the way, he explains just what the hell he was doing marching into Boston."
"That's simple enough," I said. "I'm looking for information about Claire."
"Oh," Steve said. "She's still alive?"
"Maybe. I don't know for sure that she's dead, anyway. What I do know is that her brother was apparently at Massachusetts General Hospital about three years ago. If anyone knows where she is..."
Steve and Tortura looked at each other. "Three years ago, you say," Tortura said.
"That's right."
"That mean something to you?" May asked.
"Three years ago is ven the borganism spread beyond Boston to the outer suburbs. Vas not like this before then."
"It spared our farm in Lincoln," Steve said. "Well, mostly. But everything else got – assimilated."
May nodded. "And just why did it decide to leave you guys alone?"
"That's..." Steve frowned, and turned away.
"Difficult to explain," Tortura said. "Vas hard time for Stephen. For all of us."
"All of you?"
"Is more than just me and Stephen on farm," Tortura said. "Fourteen others."
"Now who's talking too much?" Steve mumbled.
"Quiet. They are friends, nyet?"
"But why Lincoln?" I asked. "Why live in the middle of all of... this?"
Steve shrugged. "When we moved in, we figured it was a safe place. It was close enough to Boston to scare the raiding gangs – none of them dared to come this close in. At the same time, we were far enough away from Boston that the borganism would leave us alone."
"Ve thought," Tortura added.
"Come on," Steve said. "We should get moving."
Steve was quiet all the way to Lincoln. Tortura wasn't much more talkative. May decided to fill the void by giving them an exhaustive account of the state of western Massachusetts, but the subject seemed to be of no interest to them. For my part, the weirdness of the landscape left me too unsettled to have much of anything to say.
Finally, late in the afternoon, we reached the outskirts of the town of Lincoln. "This way," Steve said, heading down a dirt path.
Steve's home looked like something out of the old world. A classic New England farmhouse stood on a hill, surrounded by fields of corn and wheat and potatoes, with low rock walls dividing one field from another. A relatively unmutated cow eyed us curiously from a pasture. Several women stopped their work in the fields to look at us as we passed. I waved at them, and Tortura gave them some kind of hand signal that clearly meant "Get back to work."
"Fuck," May said, her face turning furious. "They're all women."
"Huh?" I looked around, suddenly realizing May was right. There were no other men to be seen but myself and Steve.
"Da. All vomen," Tortura confirmed. "Stephen is only man left here."
"Oh, this is just fuckin' great," May snarled. "What the fuck is this, Craster's Keep? Nice harem, bro."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Oh, your friend's got a great setup, Marten. All these women to do the work for him, and he gets to choose who to bang every night."
"Is not like that," Tortura objected. "Ve vish it vere."
"You wish..." May was genuinely taken aback. "What, you mean he isn't banging two or three of you every night?"
Steve shrugged. "I can't."
"Huh?"
"There was a strain of super-mumps that went around just after things crashed," Steve explained.
"So wait," I said. "That means you can't..."
"I don't even want to any more. I can hardly remember what it was like."
"Oh, fuck," May whispered.
"Is harder on us than him," Tortura said. "I still vant him. Stephen knew how to treat a lady."
"I'll just shut up now," May said.
"There were other men here, when we started," Steve explained. "The mumps took out about half. The rest died of – well, various other things. It's a dangerous world."
Steve led us into the house, and we found ourselves in a well-stocked kitchen. "Dinner will be ready in an hour," Steve said. "So let's get the next part over with."
"What would that be?" I asked.
"You wanted to know how we knew you were there. You're right – we have a way to communicate with the borganism."
"How?"
"Come on down to the basement and I'll show you."
We followed Steve down a rickety flight of stairs. Most of the house's basement was piled high with potatoes and dried vegetables. But there was a wooden door in one corner. Steve opened it and stepped into the small room that lay behind it.
There was a petite woman in the room, sitting in a chair. She was covered with a tangle of tiny wires that emerged from her skin and wove themselves into a thick cable that exited through one wall. She was otherwise naked, and completely hairless. She didn't seem to notice us at all.
"Holy shit," May said. "She's part of the borganism."
I suddenly recognized the woman's face. "Oh, fuck," I said. "Is that..."
Steve nodded. "Cosette. All that's left of her."
"What happened?"
"When the borganism started expanding, she got caught in it. We thought she was lost for good, but then one day she turned up on our doorstep with an offer."
"An offer?"
"The borganism would spare us, and allow us to keep living here. In exchange, we would... investigate any intrusions from outside, and deal with them. The borganism, big as it was, couldn't react fast enough to handle human intruders. It needs us for that."
"So that's how you talk to it? Through her?"
"She came down here and kind of – rooted herself. She's been here ever since. That cable is what connects her to the larger borganism." Steve sighed. "I don't even know how much of this is really her. Her mind is... Well, there's no sign of anything I recognize as Cosette. Just her body."
"You knew about us as soon as we crossed 495, didn't you?" I asked.
Steve nodded. "Didn't know it was you, but yeah, we knew someone was headed in to Boston. Cosette told us."
"And now what?"
Steve shrugged. "If you turn back, you can probably make it back to the outside world before the borganism can catch you. Or you can stay here with us."
"No chance, bro. I'm going to Boston."
Steve shook his head. "Come on, Marten, do you really think there's any chance that Claire is still alive after all this time?"
"Maybe. I don't know." I clenched my fist. "I have to know, Steve. Even if it kills me."
"It vill," Tortura said. "You go to Boston, you not come back. End of line, Marten Reed."
"Marten Reed," Cosette suddenly announced. Everyone in the room jumped in surprise.
"Marten, you don't have much time," she continued. "I can divert the borganism's response for a day, maybe two. You have to make it to the neurosciences intensive care unit on the sixth floor of the Lunder Building at Massachusetts General Hospital as fast as you can."
"How... Who is this message coming from?" I asked.
"This is Clinton," Cosette said. "I've hacked into the communications subroutines. It won't last. Hurry, Marten. There's no more time."
And then Cosette's eyes unfocused, and she went back to staring at the wall.
"Oh, shit," Steve said.
"I have very bad feeling about this," Tortura announced.
BenRG:
Okay, this is starting to get... freaky.
I'm pretty sure that Clinton is somehow responsible for the Boston collective. He was an AI nerd, after all. He may have been working with people at the hospital on a way to reverse the effect of the Vampirism virus and maybe even revivify humanity. Well, he got close. I'm not even sure he's still separate from the Collective but, one way or another, he needs Marten for something.
Another prediction:
(click to show/hide)Claire is the Borg Queen. Maybe by choice or maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe she's the one with the plan or maybe she's just its instrument. What matters is this: For whatever reason, they need Marten and, given Steve's situation, I think I know why: Loss of human reproductive viability. Marten may be very nearly the only chance left.
BenRG:
Next scene for It's Walky! - Returns Policy.
I'm still hashing out some details in my head.
===================
The group were sitting around a table in the rear dining room of Paddy's Bar. David 'Walky' Walkerton raised his glass of beer into the air. "To absent friends," he toasted.
His words were echoed from everyone around the table (although Amber and Leslie didn't really understand the full significance of the toast). "Most retarded morons I've ever known and the only people I have ever trusted to watch my back," Mike added. "This shit-pile of a planet wasn't worthy of them."
Amber and Leslie were more than a little surprised to see that Robin, the Walkertons and Walky's exotic-looking twin sister, Sal, didn't seem even slightly offended by Mike's comments. Instead, they were all smiling and nodding sadly. "That is isn't, Mike," Walky said at last.
Robin, bless her good nature, tried to change the mood. "Hey! Less sadness! We're alive aren't we?"
"Are we?" Sal muttered, her Tennessee accent such a bizarre contrast to her brother's Colorado one that it made Amber wonder again just what kind of a childhood they must have had. Mike didn't reply to the black-haired beauty's words aloud but Amber knew him well enough to read his focus and concern from the way he looked at her.
The meal was… strained, Amber decided. She and Joyce were trying to make small-talk about their respective children (Bobby was five now and Donna a terrifyingly destructive three). Walky and Mike were exchanging taunts and borderline-obscene references that suggested that the two of them had spent lots of time trapped in dorm rooms together. Robin, being Robin, was trying to defuse the definite tension by behaving like an air-headed child (and earning death glares from Leslie for her efforts) and Sal had a wall of self-imposed emotional isolation around her that quite worried Amber. She knew what that was like, after all, and she wouldn't wish that on their worst enemy.
Finally, Mike spoke up. "So, it's good to have someone else pick up my bills, Walkerton, but what's this about?"
Walky looked politely confused. "Whatever do you mean, Warner? Can't a guy have an evening out with old friends?"
Mike snorted indelicately. "Bullshit, Walkerton. We're not 'friends'. We're ex-colleagues who know each other well enough to know that we can't stand each other unless there is something big on the line. The fact that you, your Fundie baby-momma and your homicidal psychopath of a sister are here means something is up. No, spill or I'm out of here."
"Do you ever get bored?" Of all the people who could have said that, Joyce was at the bottom of Mike's list.
"What?"
Joyce glared at the blond man. "Don't you ever want to do things? Oh, we can live like normal people but we aren't normal people. We're different on a genetic level and we've been programmed to need action; to need to be there, help people and fight the good fight."
Much to his surprise, Mike couldn't deny that, as much as he wanted to mock Joyce talking about the 'good fight'. Sal took up Joyce's strangely accusing words. "Don't tell me that ya don't feel it Mike. That there aren't days in that shop when you're feelin' like climin' the walls? That you just want to smash, burn and get out? To grab Amber an' Donna an' just start runnin before the walls slam shut on ya?"
"Cabin fever," Robin whispered. Out of sight of the others she grabbed Leslie's hand and squeezed as tightly as she dared, always aware of her augmentation-boosted strength.
"Kind of," Walky said at last. "Some scientists we know have been checking through some salvaged SEMME hard discs that Jason found. It looks like amongst the 'conditioning' that Alan carried out on us was what was basically programming to give us the need to find trouble and fight it. We're all genetically addicted to adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol so that we get sick when we're not under stress of some kind."
Mike's hand closed into a fist. "So, those children of penny whores weren't satisfied in trying to brainwash us, they also wired us up so we would have to fight for them to stop ourselves from going crazy? Fuck them; I'm glad they're dead!" There were no objections to that statement. Leslie looked horrified; Joyce wondered how much Robin had ever told her about her past with SEMME. Amber just reached out and began to stroke Mike's arm like a handler trying to calm a spooked animal. The normally-antisocial man actually smiled.
Walky spoke next. "The thing is, I don't know about everyone else but I want to do more than be someone's answer to a gun!"
Sal nodded. "We was made to be killing machines but we're more than that. We're better than that. We're living beings with minds an' consciences!" Lots of uncomfortable looks were exchanged around the table at these words.
Joyce broke in with her bubbly smile seemingly intact. "Anyway, the interesting thing about being the mother of a small boy is that you get introduced to superhero comics instead of 'My Tiny Horsey'. Anyone else read those?"
That seeming non-sequitur had everyone frowning at the brunette woman in confusion.
Zebediah:
And closer and closer to Boston Marten and company go:
Dinner at Steve's farm was a family-style affair. Everyone gathered around a long table loaded with food, and we passed the dishes around. "I know it's not much," a gray-haired woman named Carla, who seemed to be in charge of the meal, told me apologetically.
"Actually, compared to what I've been eating the past few years, it's really good," I said. At least it was fresh food, and had some variety to it. Besides corn, which was pretty much a staple everywhere nowadays, there were lima beans and squash casserole and tomatoes and wheat rolls with actual butter.
Meanwhile May sat in a corner and smiled, as she drew power from a wall plug that Steve assured us was fed by the farm's own wind generator, not the Boston borganism.
"We get by pretty well here," Steve said. "It could be a lot worse."
After dinner Carla shooed me out of the kitchen when I tried to help wash up. "You're our guest," she insisted. "Besides, Steve has that look on his face that he gets when he needs to say something but doesn't want to, so I guess you two had better go talk in private."
Steve did look quite unhappy as he walked out to the porch with me, Tortura and May following close behind. "Look, bro, I'm sorry," he began. "I really can't let you do this."
"How are you going to stop me?" I challenged.
"You're endangering everything we've managed to build here. It's not just about what I want. I wish I could help you." Steve shook his head. "But we have an arrangement with the borganism, and if we break it... Everything here depends on us stopping people from going in to Boston. So I have to. I have to, Marten."
"No," Tortura said. "Ve should not stop him."
"What? Tortura..."
"You heard vat Cosette said," Tortura continued. "Marten has to go on."
"But..."
"And I am going vith him," Tortura added.
"Whoa, hold on a second," I began.
"You vill have better chance if I go."
"And who protects the people here?" Steve asked.
Tortura gave him a surprised look. "You do, of course."
"No, I don't," Steve said. "Because you know I'm going too if you go."
"Carla and Sasha, then. They can take care of themselves. Ve have taught them vell, Stephen. And Cosette, or person speaking through Cosette, said defenses vould be distracted. So Marten is leaving in morning, and I go vith him. If you are coming, be ready at dawn."
"Funny how people keep demanding to go on this little suicide mission of yours," May observed with a wry grin.
"You're one to talk," I said. "All right then. First light. We head in on Route 2, straight into Cambridge, then across the Longfellow Bridge to the hospital."
And so the next morning the four of us found ourselves marching down the old highway on the south side of Lexington. We'd breakfasted on scrambled eggs and spinach, which was by far the best breakfast I'd had in years, and then set off east. Route 2 was empty of vehicles and the pavement was oddly smooth, appearing to have been unaffected by the past fifteen winters. Or else recently resurfaced. I wasn't sure which possibility I found more disturbing.
May kept glancing from one side of the road to the other. The highway was lined by concrete walls on either side, ten to twenty feet high, with dense vegetation growing between unidentifiable bits of machinery. Strangely, neither the plants nor the machinery encroached on the highway at all.
I pointed that out to Steve, who laughed. "Who knows why? There are little islands and corridors of un-borgified territory all over the place. This is one of them. Our farm is another one. Walden Pond, the MIT campus, downtown Plymouth, Terminal B at Logan Airport – there's no discernible pattern, just places that the borganism hasn't assimilated."
"Yet," Tortura added ominously.
After a while, May whispered, "There are people up there."
Steve nodded. "I've been expecting them. They're cyborgs, controlled by the borganism. They'll stay up there as long as they don't receive orders to stop us."
"Question is, vy have they not received orders yet?" Tortura added. "They should have at least come down to investigate. Our presence here is not authorized."
"Clinton must have been able to mess with the communications network, like he promised," Steve said.
"Who is this Clinton anyvay?" Tortura asked. "How can he do this?"
"Clinton is Marten's brother-in-law," Steve explained.
"Not quite," I said. "Claire and I never did officially tie the knot."
"Yeah, well, it was coming, dude. Everyone knew it. Always figured you'd settle down with her, finally figure out what to do with your life, buy a house with a picket fence and do the whole 2.5 kids thing."
"Yeah, well... No kids, though. Claire – there were medical reasons that she couldn't have children."
"Oh." Steve looked embarrassed. "Sorry, man. I didn't know."
"No worries. Besides, I never really got around to figuring out what to do with my life either. Turns out I spend it looking for Claire, and doing odd mercenary jobs to cover expenses."
"Yeah, I guess nobody's life really went according to plan," Steve mused. "How did you lose Claire, anyway?"
"She was in Boston, interviewing for a job with the Boston University library. She finished the interview and started home, but that was the day that the State Police shut down the Mass Pike."
"Oh, shit." Steve's eyes widened. "She didn't get... caught in that, did she?"
I shook my head. "She tried to detour – last call I got from her, she was stuck in a massive traffic jam outside of Fitchburg. Then the cell phone network went down, and I never heard from her again."
"So you have no clue what happened to her?"
"After a couple of days I went looking for her. I found her car abandoned on the highway, with a note on the windshield saying the National Guard was evacuating her to an emergency camp at Wachusett Mountain. But when I got to the camp – nobody was there. They'd all been taken away, and I couldn't find out where."
"And you've been looking for her ever since?"
I nodded. "Yeah. Pretty much."
"Dude, that's rough."
"So vy are ve going to visit this Clinton person then?" Tortura asked.
"If anyone knows where Claire is, I figure he does. It's the first real lead I've had in years."
Tortura scowled. "Is crazy. But then, whole vorld is crazy."
"Yeah."
We marched on in silence for a while after that. Then, just beyond the Park Avenue exit in Arlington, we crested a hill and got our first view of Boston.
"Holy shit," May whispered.
I understood how she felt. It looked nothing like the Boston skyline that I remembered. Buildings that hadn't been there fifteen years ago towered over the North End, with weird protrusions giving them irregular outlines, while cables and solid metal beams seemed to stretch from one building to another high over the streets. If the streets were even still there. One narrow tower with a pointed top rose over it all, like a claw pointed at the sky.
"What's that?" May asked, pointing at the tower.
"That," Steve explained, "is the steeple of the Old North Church."
"No way," I said. "I've seen the Old North Church. It is not eight hundred feet high."
"Correction – it wasn't eight hundred feet high. It is now."
"Huh," May said. "A light just went on in the tower."
I glanced at Steve. His face showed the same alarm I was feeling. "Oh, shit," I said.
"Vat?" Tortura asked.
"It can see us. Whatever is up in that tower – it sees us."
"How you know that?" Tortura demanded.
Steve said, "It's from American history – the beginning of the Revolution. Paul Revere hung lanterns in the steeple of the Old North Church to signal the Patriots that the British were marching on Lexington."
"Vat? That is silly," Tortura said.
"Shit – they're right," May announced. "Something just tried to hack into me. It tried hard. And there's a big signal spike on the wireless networks. Whatever happened, we just tripped some kind of alarm."
"Okay, what now?" I asked.
"The cyborgs – they're coming," Steve said, pointing behind us to the Park Avenue overpass. A few humanoid figures were marching, slowly but steadily, down the exit ramp. "Run!"
BenRG:
Okay, this is data in support of my theory that Clinton is part of the Collective. Or, possibly, that the Collective is trying to lure Marten in, using familiar names and voices, for its own reasons. Another bit of data is it failing in its attempt to hack May. I can't see a combined network of that size failing to overwhelm the defences of a single AI.
The next clue would be if, instead of directly attacking, the Drones are clearly trying to herd our heroes in a certain direction whilst pretending to attack.
Either way, I'll be very interested to see what personality is the core of the network. That touch of using Paul Revere's signal from the same historical location has a whimsically and overwhelmingly human feel to it. It is the act of someone who wants to send a message that will be easily understood and interpreted in a specific way. I mean... why would it even bother to show a visual alert signal when all its Drones are WiFi linked?
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