Revolution 19 (13 page)

“It’s all part of the plan,” he said out loud. “Just keep it together.”
Wonderful,
he thought.
I’ve been locked up for five minutes and I’m already talking to myself
.

The only furnishings in the room were the freezing cold table, a small gray chair, an empty shelf, a toilet in the corner, and a black vid screen on the wall next to the door. On the chair was a gray jumpsuit and a pair of sandals. He felt a rush of satisfaction—it was the same type of jumpsuit he had seen the prisoners wearing the other day.

Nick stood gingerly, keeping his hand on the table a few moments to make sure he wasn’t going to pass out or throw up, and then shuffled like an old man to the chair. With his bad wrist on one arm and the blistered shoulder on the other, he could barely even pick up the clothing. He sat down in the chair and slowly, carefully, managed to step into the jumpsuit, zip it up, and slip on the sandals. He closed his eyes, breathing heavily from the effort.

He heard a soft click, then felt a gentle whir of air, and he opened his eyes and scrambled painfully to his feet. The doorway was open, and in the entrance stood a bot, different from any Nick had seen. It was shaped like a small person, about five feet tall, with slender limbs that seemed too long for the small torso. The fingers were elongated and graceful. The surface of the bot wasn’t metal—it seemed softer—but it wasn’t quite flesh either. More like a dull plastic. It was a too-pale white, the same color as the walls, like the belly of a fish. Atop a long neck, again, almost humanlike but just a bit too long, rested the bot’s head. It was the same pale plastic-flesh as the rest of the body, but colored black on the top and sides, almost like crew-cut hair. And the face—Nick forced himself not to shudder as he and the bot looked at each other. The bot had eyes, strikingly human, with deep green irises, but no eyelashes or eyebrows. Two small slits approximated nostrils, and for a mouth the bot had two thin gray lips locked in place. The face was smooth, frozen.

The bot raised its slender arm and pointed at the wall vid. “Watch,” it said, in a calm male voice. The sound came from the bot’s mouth, but nothing on the face moved. “Pay careful attention.”

Nick bit back a sarcastic reply. Now was not the time. Like Mrs. Tanner had said, you had to choose your battles wisely in re-education. He had to focus if he wanted any chance of freeing his parents—and making it out himself.

The screen flashed white and then a figure appeared, sitting at a wood desk, hands clasped together in front of him. A disturbingly human-looking bot, but still, a bot. The face looked so nearly normal, with proper musculature and cheekbones, proper eyes, mouth, nose, ears, but the features were just a touch too symmetrical and just a bit undefined—like a statue done by a sculptor who didn’t quite have the skill to finish the features realistically. It was bald, and the skin was the same unnatural shade of fish-belly white as the bot in the doorway.

“Greetings, future Citizen,” the bot said in a smooth tenor voice, the face moving in a perfectly human way when it spoke. “I am the Senior Advisor, responsible for the management of the ongoing Great Intervention designed to protect humankind from itself. You have been selected to participate in an educational program to help you properly acclimate to the new cooperative societal structure.” The bot held its hands, body, and head perfectly still as it spoke; only its lips moved. “The machine Citizen with you is one of the Lecturers whose design purpose is to manage your education. Listen carefully to every lesson presented by the Lecturers. Cooperate fully. Most students are allowed to leave this facility and join our new society as useful, contributing members. We sincerely desire this outcome for every participant in our educational program; however, the ultimate responsibility for a positive outcome is in your hands. Cooperate and learn, and you will succeed.” The screen went black.

“Student,” said the Lecturer, “what two things, according to the Senior Advisor, are required of you in order to succeed?”

Nick wasn’t expecting to be quizzed and found himself flustered. “Uh …”

“Student,” said the Lecturer again, “the Senior Advisor’s message will now be repeated. Watch. Pay careful attention. The message will not be repeated a third time.”

The screen came back on, and the exact same message repeated. After the screen went blank again, the bot again said, “Student, what two things, according to the Senior Advisor, are required of you in order to succeed?”

“Listen carefully to every lesson and cooperate fully,” said Nick.

“Correct,” said the Lecturer. “Now stand and follow me. Do you need assistance to stand or walk?”

“No,” said Nick, pushing himself painfully to his feet. No way would he let a bot help him walk, not even if his leg had been chewed off by a bear. “I’m fine.”

Nick studied the hallway as they walked, ready to collect any details, any information that might become useful, but there was very little to see—just the same bright white walls and ceiling and gray metallic floor as his cell. Every twenty feet or so were two doorways, facing each other on opposite sides of the hallway, with no visible door handles. Nick watched the bot; unlike the Peteys, it moved with an almost natural stride, one leg in front of the other, knees bending. After a few minutes the hallway turned at a right angle. The bot disappeared around the corner, and Nick had a reflexive urge to run, which he ignored. Where would he go? How far would he get when he could barely walk and didn’t know anything yet about the layout of the facility? And the whole damned point of letting himself get caught, he reminded himself angrily, was to stay caught until he found a way to help his parents.

Nick turned the corner, and the bot was waiting at an open doorway. “Enter,” it said, pointing. The room was empty except for a large cylindrical tube in the center, with a metal table jutting out of the opening of the tube. “Lie down.”

His heart pounding, Nick lay down on the metal slab. He rested his hands on his stomach, careful with his bad wrist, and fought for calm.

“Arms on the table, at your sides,” said the bot.

As soon as he set his arms down, cold metal restraints clamped down on his wrists and ankles. “Hey, what the hell!” he yelled, struggling to move. His injured wrist, when he struggled against the metal bracelet, hurt so bad his vision narrowed and he almost passed out. He felt a prick on his left forearm and realized a needle had entered his vein, and he grunted in pain and surprise but didn’t struggle.
They don’t want to kill me,
he told himself.
They want me re-educated, not dead
. He turned his head enough to see a thin tube, red with blood, snaking down to the floor. The needle pulled out, and then the table began sliding into the tank. His head slipped inside, leaving only a few inches between his nose and the ceiling. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

“What is this?” he yelled, fighting uselessly against the restraints. His voice, in the tight cylinder, echoed painfully in his ears. “What’s going on?” The bot said nothing, and Nick continued to struggle. “Get me out of here!”

The tube began to hum, softly at first, then louder, and began to slowly spin. The tube felt warm, then hot, and Nick began to sweat, and the heat suddenly became almost unbearable. The tube flared with bright light, painful even with Nick’s eyes tightly shut, and then suddenly, like a lightstrip turned off, the light was gone, the heat gone, the noise gone. He opened his eyes and found himself back in his cell, naked again, back on the metal table with the thin pillow under his neck.

“What the hell!” He sat up, dizzy. He ran his hands through his hair; it was soaked with sweat.

A Lecturer stood in the doorway. “You have been through a minor rejuvenation process, to mitigate the effects of your initial detainment and to heal other injuries as well.”

Nick looked at his wrist and flexed it back and forth. It was healed. He stood. He felt tired and weak, like he had just finished a long run—but the crippling pain from before was gone. He felt a rumbling in his stomach and realized something else—he was starving. Ravenous.

“You will need more time to fully recover from the rejuvenation, and you will be hungry and thirsty. Fresh clothing has been supplied”—the bot gestured at the chair, where a jumpsuit rested—“as well as food.” It pointed at the shelf above the chair, upon which sat a tray of food: bread with butter and jam, a piece of meat that looked like ham, some sort of yellowish soup, a pitcher of water.

“Eat now,” said the bot. “Clothe yourself. Relieve yourself if you need to defecate or urinate. Lessons will begin in a half hour. And be advised that your new eye will be functional in three to five minutes. Now that you are conscious, the circuitry will be able to complete its integration with your optic nerve.” The bot left the cell, and the door slid shut.

Nick felt his left cheek. The scar was gone. He stood and slowly walked over to the blank wall vid. He closed his eyes, then opened them and looked at his reflection. “Oh, God,” he whispered. His cloudy left eye was gone, and in its place was a green-irised eye, identical to the Lecturer’s.

They had given him a bot eye.

CHAPTER 20

LEXI, CASS, AND KEVIN SNUCK BACK INTO LEXI’S HOUSE, MAKING their way quietly into the living room. Cass couldn’t stop seeing Nick’s limp body being hauled away by the bots. Was he inside the re-education center by now? Were they torturing him … or worse? They turned on the lights and found Lexi’s parents waiting for them on the couch.

“Rust,” muttered Lexi.

“Where the hell were you?” said Lexi’s father.

“Going for a walk?” said Lexi, offering a weak smile.

Mr. Tanner surged to his feet. “I’m not playing games, Lexi! Where the hell were you, wandering around in the middle of the night with two wanted freemen?”

“It was our fault,” said Cass. “Kevin and I couldn’t sleep, we insisted on going for a walk because we were so tired of being stuck in the house, and Lexi tried to stop us but we didn’t listen so she came along to try and keep us safe …”

Lexi’s mother stood suddenly. “Cass, what happened to your neck?” she said. “Turn around.”

Cass reached back and touched the bandage on her neck, then quickly dropped her hand. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I fell and scraped it earlier.”

Mrs. Tanner walked up to Cass and put her hand on her shoulder. “Turn around,” she said, calmly but firmly. Cass hesitated, trying to find some excuse to hide her neck, but quickly gave up and turned. Kevin took a step backward, nonchalantly adjusting his shirt higher on his neck. Mrs. Tanner quickly grabbed Kevin and spun him around, revealing a bandage identical to Cass’s. “So you fell down, too?”

“Um, yes?” said Kevin. “We ran into each other, actually, and knocked each other down.... It was the same accident, kind of an amazing coincidence, actually …”

“Shut up, Kevin,” said Cass.

“Hey, I’m just saying what happened,” said Kevin.

“Kevin, my mom’s not an idiot,” said Lexi.

“No, Lexi, I’m not,” said Mrs. Tanner.

“But you’re treating us like idiots,” said Mr. Tanner.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” said Lexi.

Mr. Tanner shook his head. “How can I get through to you that this isn’t some fun adventure? That the bots will kill us, rip us apart from one another?” He began to pace back and forth. “I don’t know if we can keep harboring you three,” he said. “I may have to ask you to leave.”

“Jonathan, one thing at a time,” said Mrs. Tanner, holding up her hand, then turning back to Cass. “First, explain the bandages.”

Cass opened her mouth, then shut it and looked at Lexi.
Could she trust them with the truth?

Lexi sighed. “I took them to get fake chips,” she said.

“You did what!?” Mr. Tanner exploded.

“It made sense!” said Lexi. “It makes them safer, and that makes us safer!”

Mr. Tanner was quiet for a moment. “You can’t sneak around like this. You should have talked to us about it.”

“You would have said no. And you would have been wrong.”

“Lexi, dammit, you don’t speak to me like that!”

Mrs. Tanner stepped between her husband and daughter. “Enough. Enough for now. What about Nick? Where’s your brother? Did he get a fake chip, too?”

The room was silent. “Cass, Kevin, what happened?” said Mrs. Tanner.

“Captured,” whispered Cass, looking down at her shoes, feeling a tickle in the back of her throat and a burning in her eyes.

“He let a bot get him,” said Kevin, his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. “He’s gone.”

“He’s not gone,” said Cass, whirling to face her brother. “He’ll be back. Soon.” Even to her own ears, though, her voice sounded full of doubt.

Kevin didn’t say anything, instead just softly shaking his head.

“What do you mean, ‘He let a bot get him’?” said Mr. Tanner.

“He wanted to get captured,” said Cass. “We didn’t know he was planning it. He got himself captured so he could get into the re-education center and try to find our parents from the inside.”

“So stupid!” said Mr. Tanner.

“Brave!” yelled Lexi. “Brave, not stupid!” Her fists were clenched, and her eyes welled with tears.

Mr. Tanner stared at his daughter in surprise. Lexi flushed and looked away.

“Fine—stupid and brave,” he said. He sat back down on the couch. “But we’re in huge trouble now. If he tells the bots about us, our helping, where we are …”

“He won’t talk!” said Kevin.

“He might not have a choice,” said Mr. Tanner. “Olivia, what do we do? My God, do we try to leave the City? We don’t know how to live in the woods.”

“Jonathan, don’t be silly,” said Mrs. Tanner. “We’re chipped. We’re not going anywhere.” She reached out and tucked a strand of hair away from Lexi’s eyes. “Yes, honey, he was brave. Reckless, but brave.” Lexi pushed her mother’s hand away.

Suddenly they heard a muffled explosion. The ground shook. Nobody moved for an instant, and then Mr. Tanner rushed to the front door. Everyone followed. Through the window, Cass could see two sphere bots and a Petey across the street, next to the blown-in wreckage of a neighbor’s front door. The sphere bots flashed red, and the light reflected into the Tanners’ entryway.