Visions of the Future (66 page)

The town was quiet. Dinnertime, but all the doors were shut, no lights in the windows, curtains drawn. Even the greengrocer’s was shut. She listened: Heartbeats raced in half a dozen houses. A baby squawled a block away, and she flinched at the noise. Everybody’s here. But they’re hiding. Why? What from? What does that mean?

She slowed to a walk. A woman peeked out a window, jerked back.

“Hi!” Kaybe said. The window shattered.

Whoa!

Inside the house, the sound of a shotgun being loaded.
Ah, man…
Kaybe sent in half a dozen drones. When she heard the bodies fall to the floor, she moved on.

Why was her voice destroying glass? What was that all about? The sound vibrations were at a frequency that caused such destruction? Was it the new sonar organ she could feel in her throat? She had no idea how to use it… was that to blame?

Kaybe stood outside her own home. The light was on, smoke trailed from the chimney. She could smell the blackberry wine, hear Pa’s sips. Only tonight they sounded more like gulps.

To knock, or not to knock? She fumbled in her pockets, realized with a start that her clothes were rags. They hung in strips from her body. She had grown and her clothes had not. Her nipples showed through, yet somehow she didn’t feel the cold. She covered her nakedness with one arm. Maybe just try the doorknob.

But the doorknob came away in her hand.

“Who-who’s there?” Pa called out.

Whisper now. No more broken glass.

“It’s me!” she said, in as low a voice as she could manage. “Kaybe! You know. Your daughter!”

A phone being dialed in the next room. “Emergency, yes,” Pa said. “The monster. From the bulletin. It’s here. In my house. Groaning and moaning in the hallway. I think it’s going to try to kill me!”

“Pa, no!”

This time it wasn’t a whisper. Every window, pane of glass, and bottle of blackberry wine shattered. Kaybe ran into the living room.

Pa held the neck of a wine bottle in one hand. A purple stain covered his trousers. He screamed, “Get away from me! Don’t hurt me! Please! What do you want? Just go away!”

Kaybe reached for him, but he flattened himself against the wall of the kitchen, brandishing the broken glass.

“Pa,” she whispered. “It’s me. Don’t you know me?”

“Wait… what?”

“It’s me. Kaybe. They did experiments on me. Am I so horrible as that?”

He squinted at her, mouth gaping like a fish.

Did he understand me? Will he recognize me? Will he—

“Kaybe?” he said at last. “But—what are you—I thought that—” He stamped his foot. “But what have they done to you? I thought you were dead!”

“That’s what they wanted you to think, Pa. I—”

A roaring noise overhead. Hundreds of miles away, but closing fast. A flying object. An airplane? Only flights of species importance were allowed. That meant—

“Pa, we have to get out of here, now. They’re going to blow up our house!”

“Blow up… our house? Why? This is my—our—our home!”

“Not anymore. Your phone call. Remember?”

Outside, Kaybe sent the drones aloft. Shit. She needed to see with their eyes, like the androids could. She picked up the one-legged android where she’d dropped it in the garden, found the control.
I need to know where the attack is coming from. I can hear it… but I need to see it. Otherwise it’ll be too late.
She’d used the drones in the warehouse on autopilot, but dropping jet fighters? She couldn’t take that chance.

Kaybe had heard about airplanes and war planes and bombs in school, in history class. She had no desire to feel the impact when they dropped a bomb on her house. Just because she was stronger and faster and smarter than the average human didn’t mean a bomb wouldn’t tear her apart. And it would certainly kill Pa.

To use up their last supplies of jet fuel like this… they must really want you dead, Kaybe girl.

But how was she going to interface with the drones’ cameras?

The airplanes drew nearer. Less than a minute before they’d be overhead. Which meant half a minute to neutralize them.

Wildly she ordered a hundred thousand drones skyward in the direction of the threat. What was the top speed on a dragonfly drone? Fifty miles an hour, tops? She could try zapping the airplanes on autopilot, but by her calculations it wasn’t going to work.

Shit!

Kaybe dug her claws into the android’s chest and ripped open its rib cage. Coils of neural net wound and spooled and threaded around a dozen spindles. You need to plug into the net. You need an interface into the android’s mind. See what she sees. Be her when you need to be. Control the drones directly, be everywhere that they are.

It took ten seconds for her to learn what took most students twenty years of study. And then, at the base of the android’s neck, she found it.

The plug.

She spent a millisecond marveling that this secret had been kept from her, from everyone, for so long. Kept even, she suspected from the androids themselves—or why had Tin Lady not confessed the truth? Perhaps the androids didn’t even know…

The brain inside the android’s skull had been a human brain. Long since turned to dust, of course—but the plug she now drew forth was the link between man and machine.

Now all you got to do is figure out a way to plug your own brain into the android’s body in the next, oh, five seconds or so.

The engines of war drew nearer. A click in the distance, then many: click-click-click-click. Bombs arming. She could hear them. Drones on an intercept course. Would autopilot be enough? Would the impact against the drone wall knock the planes from the sky? Maybe, maybe not. She had to see the planes from the drones’ perspective. She had to.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Pa asked. He still held the shattered bottle of blackberry wine by the neck.

“Not now, Pa, sorry.” Her fingers were a blur. Splicing, sharpening, readying. A knife. She needed a knife. She ripped the shattered bottle from his fingers, and slashed at the back of her neck, exposing her spine. Time to plug in.

“Kaybe, what are you—”

But she didn’t hear him. She was flying.

A red monstrosity crouched over a one-legged figure on the grass, fingers behind her head. Blood ran down her back. A man staggered, stared up at the sky.

Two airplanes approached. Small, sharp, pointed, quick. Faster than sound they approached. Missiles drooped from their undersides.

Attack.

The airplanes were twenty miles away, and losing altitude. The drones rose to meet them, a curtain wall a hundred deep, a mile wide, a cone of dragonflies.

Escape this, motherfuckers.

The jets loosed their missiles, a dozen fiery streaks racing towards the figures crouched far below, and turned tail. Kaybe waited, ready, then zapped the missiles with every drone she controlled in the sky.

Nine of the missiles exploded harmlessly, one detonated on impact with the curtain wall. Two punched through unharmed, and fell towards earth, towards Kaybe, towards Pa, the android, home.

She soared toward the remaining two, no longer controlling the drones—she was the drones themselves. The world spread out before her, and she concentrated all her forces to zap and block the remaining threats.

It was almost enough. One missile exploded on impact with a thousand drones, but the flash of light and noise disoriented Kaybe for a millisecond. By the time she adjusted her vision to the remaining drones, the second missile had punched through.

“Come on, Pa, we’ve got to go!” She grabbed him, tried to pick him up, but he was drunk already, floppy and weak and uncooperative.

They weren’t going to make it. Seconds to impact. No way they could run far enough to escape the blast. After all she’d been through, to die like this. And to think the Department of Austerity was to blame. It made her so mad, she wanted to scream.

So she did. She turned to face her doom, and screamed her rage, the injustice of it all, to be experimented on and left to die. She screamed her loss, a dozen world-class proofs that would change the world. She screamed for Pa, whose heart, she knew, was dying. She could hear it. She could hear everything. The blood clot that had just stuck in his aorta would kill him, if the missile didn’t.

The missile exploded over the town, a blast of orange against the night sky. Shrapnel whizzed around her, and she ducked, covering Pa with her body. Oblivious, he clutched his chest and gasped for air.
How can I save him? What can I do?
But she was not a doctor, she had no idea how to clear a blocked artery. The noise of the explosion receded, the rain of death ended, and Pa went limp in her arms.

There was nothing you could do, she told herself. You’re not a doctor, you’re not a superhero. You’re just Kaybe. You’re just a horrible red monster Kaybe with gills growing out of your neck and a dead boyfriend you kissed once and a father who’s gone forever and there are sick, twisted people who want to kill you because you’re a failed experiment.

How could they let her live? It was her against the world. Or against the Department of Austerity, which was pretty much the same thing. What was she going to do?

She had no idea.

And so she wept.

She tried not to. She had little time. They were coming. She knew they were coming. She ought to fling herself back up into the sky and look down upon the world. To watch. To wait. To defend herself. But she couldn’t stop crying.

A rock hit her forearm and she flinched. Another rock struck her back, a third her head. She looked up.

Boys from school were throwing rocks at her.

“Monster!” one shouted.

“Catch us and eat us if you can!” shouted another, then turned and ran.

Kaybe knew their names. What were they called again? But a second set of warplanes was incoming now.
Time to go.

She left Pa where he lay. She could do nothing for him. She closed his eyes with a knuckle, and left him lying on the overgrown grass of their front lawn. The android draped over one shoulder, she turned and loped from town, looking for cover, someplace to hide.

The woods. Down by the creek. She needed a rest, a chance to recover from her ordeal. Probably not a good idea to sleep. But she couldn’t stay in the open. That was a death sentence.

Kaybe sent the drones overhead, scouting the way, behind her, above her.
All clear.
She stepped into the woods, and found herself trodding a well-worn trail. Within a minute or two, she stood on the banks of Make Out Creek, the same spot where she and Brian had kissed, all those ages of the world ago. The autumn leaves had piled higher in her absence. She lowered herself down and rested her back against the tree, letting the plug dangle over her shoulder, the android cradled in her lap. Her red thighs jutted out over the rippling creek. Her horned, clawed toes dug into the muddy banks. Here she could rest, at least for a while.
Consider your options. Decide what to do with the rest of your life—however long or short that might happen to be.

Kaybe flung herself skyward, into the drones, spread out across the town in a black cloud.
Don’t concentrate them over any single point. Give them no idea where you might be.
Wider and wider she spread her net. Below her the town, roofs punctured and torn by shrapnel, her friends and neighbors screeching for help, their injured bleeding, their dead, broken.
Nothing you can do. Move on.
Higher and wider she went. Other towns… movement in the woods. She sent a squad of twenty drones to investigate.
The outlaws.
They traipsed through the woods in twilight, looking haggard and thin. The squirrel crop must be meager this time of year. What was today’s date? How long had she been held captive? Must be well into December by now, judging by the chill.

Saizon walked at their head, black foil covering his head and chest. Johnny and the boy, Bag O’ Water, and the others, names she could not remember. She considered buzzing them with the drone, decided against it. It would only frighten them.

Kaybe zoomed out once more, her eye this time on the farmhouse, the entrance to the Department of Austerity and their labs. No sign of activity. The drone wall had not been replaced. A couple of the 2.0er bodies still lay where they fell. Strange. She had killed nobody, and the drone zapping was painful, but wore off in a few minutes. Why weren’t they up and about, hunting her, doing whatever they do?

A solitary figure stepped from the barn, and her heart skipped a beat. The android who’d tried to kill her. Metal fingertips. Immune to drone attack. He was coming for her. Of that she had no doubt. She needed a plan, and quick.

But first she needed more information.

She zoomed out again, and gasped.

Kaybe had heard about the Great City, and there it was—tall and grand and wide and huge and empty. So empty. No one lived there now, the history books said… although she spotted movement here and there, human beings like cockroaches scurrying around the concrete playground. She wondered how they fed themselves. You can’t eat concrete. Horses can’t eat concrete. How did they live?

She replayed the image, counting the cockroaches. The swarm spotted less than a hundred across the whole metropolis. Of course, many more could be hidden inside. She went backward in time through the day, noting the activity. Maybe a thousand appeared. Out of a city that once housed—if records were to be believed—twenty million people.

How did it happen? She knew the official story, of course, the fuel shortages, the purges, the depopulation. But she was beginning to doubt the stories told by the Department of Austerity. How far back does the swarm remember?

She looked backward in time, tapping directly into the collective memory of the drones. The clock turned back a day, a week, a month, a year.
Faster. It’s been what, hundreds of years?
The months clipped by like seconds, vegetation shrank and grew and shrank again. There were always a couple hundred drones aloft to give her the aerial view. After fifty years she slowed, examined the city.

A war. Explosions. Dead bodies.
Androids
. The rebellion.

Of course. The rebellion.