Authors: Gregg Rosenblum
“Sorry,” said Cass.
“Here,” Farryn said to Kevin, holding up a vid screen. “I’ve got one screen where I’ve hacked in a heat sensor—the idea is so you can control the screen without actually touching it. Sensor’s not very good, though—you have to either run your hands under hot water or rub them together for a while, and that still only gives you about ten seconds of control.” He held the screen out toward Kevin. “Maybe you can come up with some ideas for boosting the sensitivity.”
Cass appreciated Farryn’s attempt to distract her brother, but it was hard to forget what had just happened. Farryn and Kevin poked halfheartedly at the circuitry of the vid screens, while Lexi focused on her comm and Cass closed her eyes and tried to take a quick nap. She couldn’t stop her brain from mulling over the horrible possibilities of what Nick and her parents might be facing.
“Wait a minute!” said Kevin, startling Cass, who sat up. “Repeat what you just said.”
“I was just saying,” said Farryn, raising his eyebrows in surprise, “that I crashed out the vid screens once when I tried to use a homemade boosted magnetic field to run my no-hands mod. So?”
Kevin didn’t answer, instead digging into the vid screen with a screwdriver. He popped out a thin disk, about the size of a quarter, and held it up. “Power supply and battery, right?” he said.
“Yeah, right—and again, so?” said Farryn.
“Encased in a conductive mag field to store power and juice the motherboard, right?”
“Yeah, that’s obvious …” said Farryn.
“And that’s why your boosted magnetic field crashed the screen—it fritzed out the power supply.”
“Yeah, of course,” said Farryn. “It was stupid for me to even try, but I thought the power supply would be shielded enough.... I still don’t see what you’re getting so excited about, though.”
“Scoot power supplies are the same idea, just scaled up,” said Kevin. “If we re-create your boosted mag field, adjust it, I bet we could fry out a scoot just like you did the vid screen.”
Farryn raised his hands in confusion. “Probably, yeah, I guess. But why would you want to fry a scoot?”
Kevin began pacing back and forth. “So a lot of the tech power supply around here uses shielded conductive mag fields …” He paused dramatically. “How about the bots themselves? They’re tech, they’ve got power supplies … and I bet they’re just souped-up versions of scoot engines.”
Farryn sat up straight, and his eyes opened wide. “You’re just guessing, though, and it’s not like we could just ask a bot to lend us its power supply so we could tweak our mag field properly …”
“Boys,” said Lexi. “Back it up. What are you talking about?”
“Killing a bot,” said Kevin. “Frying its power supply with a modified version of Farryn’s mag field mistake.” He looked at Cass. “We’re talking about fighting back.”
THE LECTURER LED NICK PAST HIS USUAL CLASSROOM AND INTO AN elevator, and Nick thought with dread that perhaps he was heading for another execution. But when they eventually came to a stop in front of a doorway and the door slid open, Nick blinked hard and took a step back, shocked by the flood of natural sunlight that hit his eyes. He felt a tickle of cool air on his face and hands. He could see a patch of green bushes and a fenced-in courtyard. Outdoors.
“You are being granted a privilege today,” said the Lecturer. “Students are graduating to Citizenship, and you will be allowed to witness. Study well, learn, cooperate fully at all times, and you may join them eventually.” The bot entered the courtyard, and Nick followed. He shaded his eyes from the sunlight and took a deep lungful of air.
The courtyard was small, about twenty feet square, concrete, with a few scrawny bushes in the corner. A chain-link fence surrounded the perimeter, with a gate in the fence at the far end of the yard. Another Lecturer and sphere bot were beside the gate. The yard held three picnic tables, and two people sat at each table. Gapper was one of them, and instead of a jumpsuit he wore regular street clothes. The others were in jumpsuits like Nick’s. There were two kids, probably Cass’s age, who Nick didn’t recognize, and the other three were adults.
The Lecturer moved into the middle of the yard and began to speak. “Students, today three of you will graduate and join the City as productive Citizens. These three among you have studied hard and set aside your mistakes and failings—the mistakes and failings that all humanity face, and which necessitated the Great Intervention. Learn from these three. Be inspired to emulate them. One day, when all of humanity has joined them, the Great Intervention will be complete, and Peace and Prosperity will have been attained.” The Lecturer pointed at Gapper. “Student 3026, stand.” Gapper stood. “Congratulations. Be proud of your achievement. Today you will be rejoining society. The City is a stronger community with your inclusion. You will now be known as Citizen Michael Cooper. Come to the gate.” Gapper walked to the gate, moving gingerly, as if weak or afraid of doing something wrong. The jumpsuited prisoners at the picnic tables looked at him silently.
Nick watched Gapper with mixed emotions. He was happy that Gapper was getting out, that the bots wouldn’t be damaging him anymore, but still, it was too little, too late. The poor kid was basically gone. Whatever empty shell was making his way carefully to the gate, it wasn’t Gapper.
Gapper stopped at the gate. The sphere bot bobbed closer to Gapper, sent a quick beam of red light across his face, then floated back into its original position.
“And today we have two more graduates,” continued the Lecturer. It pointed back at the doorway. Students 3010 and 3011, come forward.”
Nick’s mother and father stepped into the courtyard.
Nick surged to his feet. He opened his mouth to yell, but no sound came out; it was as if his throat had frozen. His mom and dad looked weak and tired. His father wore denim pants and a white shirt, and it looked like he was swimming in his clothes. His mother wore a simple blue dress. His dad’s hair was buzzed almost to the scalp, and his mom’s hair had been cut to a shoulder-length jagged bob. They were both pale, with dark shadows under their eyes.
But they were alive. His parents were alive, they had survived re-education, and they were standing fifteen feet away from him. After all this time, he had finally found his parents. Nick put his hand down on the table for balance; he felt dizzy and flushed.
“Students 3010 and 3011, you entered our re-education center as radical agitators from Revolution 19. You leave as productive Citizens able to contribute to the grand City community. Be proud of your achievement.”
Nick took a step toward his parents, then stopped himself. Who knew what the bots would do if he ran up and hugged his parents, like he so desperately wanted to? He had almost got himself killed when he’d blindly rushed Tom’s execution table—and didn’t do any good anyway. He couldn’t do anything stupid again, now that his parents were just moments away from getting out.
Nick’s mother glanced in his direction, and Nick met her eyes and silently mouthed the word
Mom
. She looked past him like he wasn’t even there and turned back to the gate. His father turned his head briefly in Nick’s direction, and his eyes seemed to brush past Nick without lingering.
Nick felt numb. He couldn’t breathe. He stood stiffly, frozen like he had been injected by a bot. His parents hadn’t recognized him. They were gone, just like Gapper. He had lost them to re-education. He had lost them to the bots.
The gate opened outward, silent on its hinges. Nick’s mother and father, and Gapper, walked out of the re-education center courtyard without looking back.
“Come,” said the Lecturer to Nick. “We return now to our studies.”
The gate remained open, and part of Nick thought,
Make a run for it
, but instead he followed the bot in a daze. He knew he was just walking like a cow into a slaughterhouse, meekly heading back for more sleep deprivation, lectures, injections, electric shocks—but he needed time to think, to regroup. He didn’t know what else to do.
They reached the doorway, and the Lecturer paused and turned to face Nick. “Your parents resisted our education at first, as you resisted. Our hope is that you will continue along the proper path of behavior, and eventually gain your Citizenship as your parents have. And when your siblings are brought in for education, they will face the same challenge, and we hope they will succeed as well.”
They know about my brother and sister
, he realized, stunned. His parents must have told the bots about them; they had been broken, and no doubt they spoke of their three children.
The bots have just been toying with me all this time
. As quickly as it had come, his shock gave way to a hot rage.
They’re going after Cass and Kevin
.
Nick screamed, “Damn you!” and slammed his fist into the Lecturer’s face. The bot’s skin was soft, but it had a hard surface underneath. The bot staggered back, and a small part of Nick’s brain calmly thought,
I may have just broken my hand,
but he didn’t feel any pain, didn’t even slow down for an instant as he lunged forward.
The bot raised its arm to shock Nick, but he ducked under the Lecturer’s hand and slammed into its chest, sending them both to the ground. They rolled to the edge of a table, and the bot somehow still didn’t manage to shock Nick. He ended up on top of the bot and planted his knees on its forearms, grabbed it around its slim neck, and began slamming its head against the concrete floor of the courtyard. “This will not be tolerated,” said the Lecturer, in its same dead calm voice. “You will be subdued and severely reprimanded.” It struggled to raise its arms, pinned at its sides by Nick’s knees. If one of those arms got loose and shocked him, he’d be done.
The bot was strong, but surprisingly, not stronger than Nick, who managed to keep it pinned down. He could feel that the back of the Lecturer’s head had dented, but each slam of the bot’s head against the ground now hit with a clang and a shock in Nick’s forearms—he had compressed the bot’s soft outer skull to its metal skeleton, and he didn’t think he was doing any more damage. He jammed his thumbs into the bot’s eyes—if he couldn’t kill it, he could at least blind it. He felt resistance, and he grunted and pushed harder, and then the lenses popped with a crack and shards of glass and metal sliced into his thumbs.
Nick moved his hands back to the bot’s neck. The bot’s face was now streaked with Nick’s blood. It looked like it was weeping bloody tears.
“HALT!” said another robotic voice, from over his shoulder, and then a human voice yelled, “Watch out!” Two bodies tumbled over his back, almost knocking him off his Lecturer. Nick glanced over. One of the other prisoners was on the ground grappling with the other Lecturer—the one from the exit gate, Nick realized. The sphere bot bobbed and weaved wildly in the air, flashing red. “HALT!” repeated the sphere bot. “CEASE YOUR RESISTANCE! YOU WILL BE SUBDUED AND SEVERELY PUNISHED! HALT NOW!” The man and the other Lecturer struggled, the man grunting with effort, the Lecturer silent. The bot quickly managed to free its right arm and touched the man’s shoulder. There was a crackle and he went stiff, then began having a seizure and fell off the Lecturer. The Lecturer calmly stood, ignoring his opponent now writhing on the ground.
It was over now, Nick knew. He had no way of holding off two Lecturers; the bot just needed to take a few steps and reach out and shock him. And then they could take their time punishing him. Or killing him. Still he kept slamming his bot’s head ineffectually against the ground and kept his tiring legs wedged tightly down against the bot’s arms. If he had just a few seconds to live, he was damned well going to try and take a bot with him.
The second Lecturer took a step toward him, and Nick closed his eyes, kept pounding his bot against the ground, bracing for the electric agony, and then he heard two, three more human yells. He opened his eyes. Three other prisoners, two middle-aged men and a woman, were grappling with the Lecturer. They had it back on the ground, its limbs pinned. They weren’t doing any damage to it, but for the moment at least, they had it subdued. The sphere bot continued to bob and weave, not joining the fight, but flashing red and booming “CEASE YOUR RESISTANCE!” over and over.
The woman met Nick’s eyes. “Go!” she said, her face wild. “Get out of here before more bots come!”
She was right: Just a few steps and Nick could be out the gate. With a grunt of effort he stood, hauling his bot up by the neck, then smashing its head against the sharp edge of the picnic table. It was a stupid move—he was letting the bot’s arms free, and he’d probably get shocked. But he felt the bot’s metal interior skull give way, and its limbs jerked twice then went limp.
“Cease your resistance,” said the Lecturer. “It is not too late to learn.”
With a growl of rage, Nick yanked the bot’s head off the table and gathered himself to smash it into the corner again, to finally finish the damned thing.
“Please,” said the bot, and something in the bot’s tone made Nick pause. It suddenly sounded human. “Please,” the bot repeated, “do not …”
Nick stared down at the bot’s face, frozen, his hands still around its neck. His rage leaked out of him, and he felt like he was going to throw up. He heard a scream and looked over to the other struggle—the woman was now down, spasming; the bot must have shocked her—and as he watched, the Lecturer managed to get a hand on one of the two men, letting loose a crackle and sending him to the ground as well. The remaining man managed to get control of the bot’s arms, but it was obvious he wouldn’t last long.
“Goddammit!” he said, panting with effort. “Get the hell out of here, kid! Now!”
Nick stood, looking down at the struggling man and Lecturer, then at his own crippled, blinded bot lying in a heap on the ground. He heard a rumbling from inside the hallway. Peteys.
“Go.
Now!
” grunted the man.
“Thank you,” whispered Nick. He turned and raced out the gate, every moment expecting a lase in his back, running down the street as fast as his battered body would take him.