RoboNomics

Chapter 90 - 2016

The door creaks open and Shari walks in. Her eyes blaze on seeing us together. 

"Hey, what are you doing?" She yells at Matt. "Sit down."

Joe comes out from behind her and escorts Matt towards his seat.

"Get back to work," Shari tosses a plate of food onto the floor between us. 

It's a mixture of meat and lumpy brown sauce with two buns accompanying it. I look at the metal plate. It's a blue tin speckled with white. There was a time, back on Earth, when I would have done just about anything to get a plate of food so decadent.

But I'm unaccustomed to it now that I have fresh fruit, now that I have caviar if I want it. My jaw clenches at the sight of the food.

"Or what?" I ask Shari's retreating back.

She slowly turns back to face me.

"I think you know what. Your husband is out there worrying about you, isn't he?" She points above her head. "It must get pretty lonely for him, all by himself in Donald Anderson's old house."

"Get Chris in here," I bark at Shari through my rage. "I want to tell him something."

"He's not here," she says. "Anything you need to say to him you can say to me."

"Fine." Her reply fuels the fire rising in my chest. "You can tell him he's as bad as them. He's worse. He's a bastard - putting us down here. Locking us away to work. Pro-labor? What a joke. He's a slave driver. Just a bloody, goddamn -"

"All right," Shari raises her hand. "I get the point. Now eat. You're no use to us if you faint."

She turns to leave and Joe follows. I scream a noisy, wordless howl at her back. I tear after them, but the door slams in my face. I claw at it.

"Andy, Andy!" Matt clasps my arms. "You're going to hurt yourself."

When I finally calm down, I slump into my chair. The adrenaline drains away, leaving me an empty shell.

"Andy, you have to eat. Here," Matt hands me a chunk of bread soaked in stew.

I stare down at it in my hands.

"You sure it's going to work?" I ask as I indicate the electronic machinery with a nod.

"Yeah, no worries," he says. "They won't know what hit 'em."

#

For days, we keep up the pretense of working. Every time the door to our dim dungeon cracks open, Matt and I face the machines and mime our manipulation of them.

But what we're really doing is waiting patiently as the interconnected artificial intelligence that runs New Rome comes to its own conclusions.

Then one day, it happens.

The computer servers make a series of clicking sounds. There's a spark like a static shock, and my fingers recoil from the keyboard that disappears from the slab of wood in front of me. The entire room goes black as the electronics all shut down.

"Is this it?" I ask the darkness.

"Think so," Matt replies.

The door flies open and the dark space is flooded with light. Matt and I look directly at each other.

In the light, Matt's face is drawn and dusty grey. There are sweat stains on his clothes. I wonder how I look after so many days in this hole. We both glance at the door as Chris rushes in with Joe and Shari following.

"What's going on?" Matt asks as Joe hauls him to his feet and begins to drag him out of the room. Shari has me and makes me follow them out through the door.

"Hope you could help us with that," answers Chris as we follow him.

We're pushed up the stairs and up towards the alley. Chris opens the door to the street and the sun pours in. My eyes take a moment to adjust. I squint into the sunlight. Before I see anything, I can hear.

The city is silent. The absence of motors creates a bubble of quiet that is disconcerting. The fans that constantly circulate air to keep electronics cool, the fans of the climate control systems. The whir of motors, pod car wheels on pavement. The buzz of automata that continuously clean and prune. The bleeps of FlexPhones, and the artificial voices of the service industry bots. The obtrusive noise of personally tailored advertising billboards. It's all gone.

In its place is nothing. That is, until I notice the real sounds of New Rome: sounds I've never heard before.

The wind of this desolate planet howling around the domes of the city. Human voices, magnified by the silence as they echo in the streets. I can't hear the words, but I can hear their confusion and their panic.

Finally, I let my arm fall and blink into the pink light of Martian winter.

"Did you do this?" Chris asks Matt and I as we hustle down the alley.

"No," Matt says as I shake my head.

It's not as though we're lying.

Chris grimaces at the reply. But as we reach a wide boulevard, he shrugs it off.

"Doesn't matter. I couldn't have planned it better if I tried."

He looks back at the four of us, Matt and I still held tight by Joe and Shari.

"Hope you're ready. It's our time now. Time for the revolution."

(Continued in Chapter 91...)