Apocalypse Machine (38 page)

“Are you grandpa?” she asks.

“I think I am,” I say, and I’m dive tackled. I fall back, remembering vaguely what it was like to be a father of young children. And then more faces appear, smiling and laughing, trusting me outright. The ages range from maybe seven to two. I’m overwhelmed by joy and look up to see Bell in the clutches of more children, these even younger. They’re an interesting mix of nationalities. Black, white, Asian and hints of other things. I look up at the throng of military personnel and government advisors. To my relief, I see tears in most of their eyes. Control or not, they know what they’re seeing: the future. And maybe for the first time in a long time, it looks good.

Two smiling young women I don’t know stand behind the kids, watching the unfolding scene with teary eyes and wide smiles. One looks Arabian. The other is white. Neither of them are dressed for work.
The mothers,
I guess, and offer them my best smile. I mouth the words, ‘Thank you,’ and get nods in return.

I look back at the kids, now wrestling and tickling and kissing and laughing. Though I’ve never met any of them before, I recognize pieces of me in each of them. In their hair. Their eyes. Their bone structure. Each one of them carries a piece of me.

I’ve seen this before.

Grains of sand.

On a beach.

In a vision.

40

“While I’m enjoying family fun time, there might be other things even more pressing.”

All eyes turn to Mayer. She’s her usual direct self, but I don’t miss the glisten in her eyes. She’s not a sap. Never was. But she knows what this moment means for me. She might not love me the way she does Graham, but she does love me. We’re family. And the people swarming around me are now her family as well. There will come a time when this gaggle of children call her auntie.

But that time might never come if we don’t do something about
it
.

If we don’t stop the Machine.

And for the first time, we have a way to learn something about it.

Graham clears his throat and lifts the backpack holding the now plastic-bagged ice ax, still smeared with red from the very tip of the Machine’s still ice-locked spine.

The kids dance around for a few moments more, slowing to a stop as they sense the shift in tone.

“What is it?” Mina asks.

I grip Ishah’s sleeve, fighting against the urge to hug him again and again. “You’re a scientist now?”

He shrugs. “I know a lot about a lot.”

A laugh leaps from my throat. His twist on my constant claim to know a little about a lot makes me happy, mostly because it means he remembers me. Really remembers me. Despite my frequent absences.

“And
he’s
not joking,” Mina adds. “He’s our lead scientist now, and that has nothing to do with me.”

Swelling with pride, I reach out to Graham, who hands me the backpack. I put it on the floor between Ishah and me. The kids swarm around for a closer look, like I’m opening a gift on Christmas morning. Do people still celebrate Christmas? I haven’t in fifteen years. Not Christmas. Not the Fourth of July. Not a single birthday.

To my surprise, the mob of advisors, military personnel and Secret Service crowd around, too. This moment might carry the historical impact on par with the nativity scene that Bell put up every year, and they recreate the feel of it by encircling us, eyes on the backpack baby Jesus. I unzip the pack, reach inside and pull out the sealed plastic bag. There’s an audible sigh of disappointment as the group sees the ice ax. But not Ishah. I was an absentee father much of the time, and though I did not share Bell’s beliefs surrounding the holiday, I always gave the best Christmas gifts.

“What is it?” the oldest of the children asks.

I carefully turn the ice ax around, so Ishah can see the smear of red. “When we first encountered the Machine—”

“The Machine?” Ishah asks.

“The monster,” I say, and then I search my memory for the term used by the White House and the military fifteen years ago. “The aberration.”

His eyes widen with recognition. They’re still using that initial non-descript name, which also tells me they know nothing more about it than they did all those years ago. “You call it ‘the Machine?’”

“
It
calls it the Machine. Also ‘the Ancient,’ but ‘Machine’ struck me as more authentic, given its lack of emotion and relentless progress.” I wave my hand, shooing the subject away. “All that can wait.” I pat the ice ax and continue, “When the Machine was still encased in ice, when—”

“A man from your party, Kiljan, stepped on it.” Ishah grins. “I’ve read the report. More than once.”

I nod, wondering if he was trying to glean information about the Machine or his father. “I struck the exposed spine with this ax. And I scratched it.”

Grumbles erupt all around us. They don’t believe it. One of the men in a military uniform says, “It seems to enjoy nuclear warheads, and you expect us to believe you scratched it with an ice pick?”

“I don’t care what you believe at all,” I tell the man, and I turn back to Ishah. “I think it was still waking up. Or it could have been a dead outer layer, like skin. The scratch healed in seconds. It doesn’t matter how it happened, only that it did, because scratches are formed when material is removed.”

I turn the blade around and lift it close to his eyes.

Ishah takes the bagged ice ax from me, holding it with religious reverence. “Is that?”

“A sample,” I say. “From the Machine. It’s been at the house all this time. I didn’t remember it until after our second encounter with the Machine.”

“When you died,” Ishah says. “We all believed it.” He glances at his mother. “Most of us.” He frowns. “I’m sorry.”

“I should have never gone.”

The frown transforms into a smile. “What matters is that you’re back, and you’ve brought another gift from your travels. Let’s just agree that your life leading up to your death was all preparation for this moment.”

“That sounds good, hon,” Bell says, leaning her head on my shoulder.

Ishah stands, sample in hand, and looks down at me with a grin. “Would you like to see the lab?”

It takes us
an hour to actually reach the lab. Mina has returned to her duties. Graham and Mayer are being officially debriefed by a collection of generals who Graham would have outranked by now. The kids and their mothers, who I’m looking forward to spending time with, have returned to their quarters, where homeschooling is the norm. There are a few other families in Raven Rock, but not many. With space at a premium, procreation isn’t exactly encouraged.

That hasn’t slowed down Ishah and his wife, though. From his perspective, our chance to successfully repopulate the planet began when the Machine started killing people. He’s been hard at work since he was sixteen, filling his every waking hour with two things: family and science. In many ways, he’s a lot like me, but smarter and a better father. He’s the man I should have been, and I don’t think I could have asked for anything more in a son.

On our way to the lab, with just myself and Bell clinging to his arms, he told us a bit about Ike. He hasn’t seen his brother in more than a year, but they remained close. Ike, in Ishah’s eyes, is something like an action hero. Strong, brave, noble and deadly. His description sounds a lot like how I would describe Graham, so I was surprised when Ishah said, “He’s a lot like you.”

Our arrival at the lab ended the conversation and sent me into full on nerdgasm. They have everything, absolutely everything, a scientist—of any field—could need. From gene splicers to supercomputers. There’s even an observatory atop the mountain above us, projecting the images it pulls to a screen in the lab. The large warehouse-sized space is partitioned into sections by clear glass walls, etched with the name of the field and a list of the equipment found therein. Within each partition are rows of long worktables, peppered with equipment. Between each work station are low shelves holding an array of equipment, some of which I don’t even recognize. I could play in here for years and never get bored.

The immaculate space is also very empty. Through the rows of glass partitions, I see just a few lit work lamps and even fewer people. “A little understaffed?”

“More than a little,” Ishah says. “Most of us don’t specialize, either. There are a few experts left over from the Old World, but most of us are young, and focused on ways to undo the damage done to the Earth.”

As Ishah leads Bell and me down an aisle, I say. “Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way.”

“How do you mean?”

“You can’t undo what’s been done.” I say it as a fact, not a theory. “We need to adapt. To evolve. Not resist. All of this happened because we bent the natural world. We warped it. The Machine is setting the world back in order.”

This stops both Ishah and Bell in their tracks.

“By destroying it?” Ishah asks.

“Not all of it.”

Ishah looks disappointed in me for the first time since our reunification. I don’t think it will be the last. “The human race is almost extinct.”

“Almost. But not quite. Look at it from the Machine’s perspective. We don’t know what it is or where it came from, but we do know why it’s here.”

“We do?” Bell asks.

“To something as ancient and vast as the Machine, humanity is insignificant, no more or less important than all the other species living on Earth. And yet, we were pushing all species toward extinction as fast as any mass extinction in the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on this planet. And we were doing it in a way that prevented new life from evolving. We weren’t just wiping out species, we were killing the Earth. All of it. The only way to prevent that from happening was to usurp the mass extinction started by the human race, and finish it the way it has before.”

“You’re saying the Machine is responsible for the previous mass extinctions on Earth?”

“Maybe not all of them, but I’m guessing the hole left by the Machine’s emergence in Iceland is going to look a lot like an asteroid impact in a few hundred years.” I put my hand on Ishah’s shoulder. “I’m not saying I like what it’s done, or that I’ll be opposed to destroying it if we find a way. But I understand its rationale, even if I don’t appreciate its methods.”

“It’s a forest fire,” Ishah says.

I snap my fingers and point at him. It’s the same example I used when explaining this to Graham. “Yes!”

The fire burning in his eyes shrinks down to a flicker.

“That’s why it’s changing the world,” Bell says, “not just destroying it.”

“It’s reseeding,” I say, “using radiation to accelerate adaptations and mutations. It’s treating our impact on the planet with the same aggressive tactics we use on cancer.”

After a moment, he nods. “I get it.” He strikes out once more, moving deeper into the lab. “C’mon.”

We turn into an aisle labeled Microbiology. I’m about to question the choice when I see his destination. A microscope. He’s starting simple, getting a closer look before we try to break the sample down and figure out exactly what it’s made from.

He sits down at the work station, dons a pair of binocular loupe magnifier spectacles that look like sports glasses with two high powered lenses mounted on the front. They’re similar to the kind worn by surgeons and dentists. He carefully removes the ice ax from the bag, laying it down on the counter. After preparing a glass slide with a small water drop, he leans in close and uses a scalpel to scrape the tiniest fleck of red away from the ax and into the drop. He seals the miniscule sample with a clear cover slip, flattening the water drop and finishing his preparation.

I let out the breath I was holding and step a little closer. He moves the slide into position beneath the microscope lens. Then he looks through the eyepiece, adjusts the focus and leans back.

“What is it?” I ask. “What did you see?”

He smiles at me. “I was just making sure it was centered. I haven’t turned it on yet.” He flicks a switch and the microscope lights up, illuminating the sample. He then turns on a flat-screen monitor beside the scope. The image on the screen is out of focus, but soon resolves into an angular red shape, like a fractured scale.

“It’s still out of focus,” Bell observes.

Ishah sighs, making minute adjustments that only make it worse. He stops after a few tries, confounded by his inability to clean up the edges.

“It’s not out of focus,” I say as the epiphany slams into my mind. “It’s moving.”