I am Automaton 3: Shadow of the Automaton Read online

  You don’t perceive us as enlightened? We are higher order beings. No question about it.

  “You are a virus.”

  Once again, Peter, you are viewing us as a species from your very limited understanding of a virus. A virus, according to the understanding of humans, is a contradiction. It is life, yet it is not. It can carry on many of the activities of life, yet it is lacking in some important areas. Most importantly, it lacks the machinery to reproduce. The only way a virus can proliferate is to infect a host.

  This is why your species cannot wrap its brain around the state which you call ‘undead.’ Your zombies and vampires, for example. They are not alive, yet they are not dead. They carry on certain activities of life, namely feeding, yet they cannot reproduce without infecting another host.

  “Yes. Yes. I get it. What we call zombies, vampires…you guys…you are the virus and the virus is you.”

  Finally, some progress. Perhaps you aren’t as dense as I originally thought.

  “But how can you be higher order beings if you are limited in things like reproduction? We humans have no problem reproducing.”

  So I’ve noticed. And you wonder why we consider you the cockroaches of the universe. I forgot you Texans don’t believe in evolution, let alone comprehend it. Your understanding of what you call evolution is incorrect as well. In fact, your Charles Darwin never referred to it as “evolution.” He called it descent with modification. He never referred to species as higher or lower ordered. Some species were just better adapted to their environments. It had nothing to do with intelligence or culture.

  Look at reptiles—cold-blooded, relatively less intelligent fauna on this planet. Yet, in the climates in which they live, they are perfectly adapted because they do not waste energy generating their own body heat—they absorb it from their surroundings, they have more energy for more important activities. They have volition over their own heart rate, and can slow it down at will, allowing themselves to be submerged underwater for long periods of time to evade predators. Can you do that?

  “What does that have to do with us?”

  Remember we share a common ancestry going back eons. Don’t you think we made the same mistakes as you humans? Using up the resources around us until there were none left. Succumbing to degradation of our bodies—famine, disease.

  “Oh, great. A tree-hugging race of warlord aliens. What, is your mother ship a hybrid? Like a Prius mother ship? Now I suppose you’re going to tell me that it’s not too late to reduce our carbon footprint or some bullshit like that. Did Al Gore send you? My father always thought he was an alien life form.”

  You can make jokes all you want, Peter, but I’m not going to preach to you about conservation. In fact, we are all about consuming everything around us. We are viruses, remember? But we have devised a way to survive the exhaustion of resources.

  “Your digital representations.”

  Ah, very good. That’s right. Who needs a body when your digital “soul” or “software” can live on? It only needs to be transported to a new world with new resources to be consumed.

  “So as long as you can send copies of yourselves to new worlds, you are pretty much immortal.”

  Not so much immortal as having a long life span. Immortal implies that we can’t be killed.

  “You can be killed, if you cannot get your digital copies to new hosts on a new world.”

  Silence.

  “Oh, what, is the topic of your mortality making you uncomfortable?”

  We do not die. We simply become dormant. Unactivated code sitting on a shelf somewhere in the universe. You would call it Purgatory, but that is not a worry. Your world has plenty to offer in the way of hosts and resources, and we have just begun to consume.

  “For now, anyway. If you’re not immortal, does your species believe in a God or gods?”

  We do not have any use for religion. We travel and we consume.

  “Don’t you wonder where you came from? Who wrote the original code for your digital souls?”

  Does a virus contemplate where it came from? It lives to infect. When the host dies, if there is no other host available it dies. There is no virus heaven or hell.

  “As far as you know, anyway.”

  You Texans, clinging to your bibles and your guns. You always need a purpose and you fight to protect it.

  “Don’t you feel empty without a purpose?”

  Our purpose, much like yours, is to reproduce. Since you reproduce via sexual intercourse, evolution has given you a sex drive. Since we reproduce through infection, we are given a lust to infect. To infect and murder is like an orgasm to us.

  “That’s why when Carl planted thoughts of murdering my father in my head it was arousing. I never felt anything like it before.”

  It was what your brother felt when he fantasized about murdering Captain London…and even you.

  “But he didn’t murder me, and that bothers you.”

  We wanted him to, and he almost did after what you did to his girlfriend in Italy…

  “Hey, in my defense, she was trying to KILL me, but hey, why let the truth get in the way of a good story?”

  …but his sentimentality towards you, because you tried to protect him from your government, changed his mind, and now I’m trapped as a voice in your mind, never able to fully realize my destiny.

  “You can always kill yourself. End your suffering now, because it isn’t going to get any better than this. I’m a lousy roommate; I don’t play well with others…”

  Believe me, at this point if I could, I would, because there is no point in remaining in this state indefinitely.

  “But you can’t kill yourself.”

  I can only die if you die and there is no other host to infect, but that is no longer an option because the serum prevents you from infecting others.

  “So you’re trapped.”

  In a matter of speaking.

  “Good. So there is a hell for viruses.”

  Your mortality has been altered as well. Other than being dismembered, your body and mind will age slowly and your natural lifespan will lengthen.

  “How long?”

  Generations.

  “My brother, too?”

  Yes, even more so. To the other humans you will appear to be immortal.

  “Like vampires.”

  That is what your species has perceived us to be. Over the ages, through countless contacts and attempts at invasion, humans have constructed this mythology about us. It was a way to make sense of what they couldn’t possibly understand.

  “So why are you telling me all of this? Why not keep me in the dark?”

  What’s the point? You are going to live through your own hell, in time. If we win, you’ll get to witness the mass conversion of humanity. You’ll be a half-human living in a monster’s world and then you’ll wish Colonel Betancourt never gave you the serum.

  “And if you guys lose…”

  Then you’ll be a half-monster in a human world, a pariah among men. All who you care about will die as you live on. You’ll witness loss after loss until you decide to end your live or live out the rest of your long lifespan in self-seclusion.

  “So either way, I’m screwed.”

  We’ve been defeated before, but we always pop back up, and perhaps you’ll be so lonely that you’ll not only welcome our reintroduction into this world…you’ll facilitate it. So you see, all we have to do is wait.

  “But it won’t benefit you. You’ll still be trapped in my body unable to jump to another host.”

  The others will find a way. Corrupted data can sometimes be salvaged, transferred to new hardware.

  “So you do pray for something. How human of you. My species calls it hope.”

  There’s no need to get insulting.

  “So, now you have to find a way to pass the time inside me while you wait for your unlikely salvation. We’ve got a long time to get to know each other.”

  I have some form of entertainment while
I wait.

  “Oh yeah, and what’s that?”

  Suddenly Peter felt a rush through his body, and it shuddered in the matrix with bloodlust.

  You might say I can press your buttons.

  “Wh-what are you doing?”

  More specifically, I can press the buttons on your amygdala.

  “Oh shit, no!”

  Elicia wasn’t sure if she drifted off, but she suddenly saw Peter sitting straight up in bed. But there was something wrong with his face…with his features.

  He suddenly leapt out of bed and lunged for Elicia, hands reaching for her throat. She screamed, but she didn’t have time to fend him off. He had her hands around her throat and they both toppled over with the chair.

  Betancourt came running up the stairs and into the room. He grabbed Peter around his neck in a kind of headlock and pulled him off of Elicia.

  “Stand down, son! Stand down!”

  Peter looked up at Betancourt with wild eyes, but he went limp in his arms. In a matter of moments, his features went back to normal and Betancourt released him.

  Peter sat on the rug in the middle of the floor panting, as Elicia was backed into a corner trembling, her eyes wide in horror.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” She was rubbing her tender throat.

  “Elicia, I’m…sorry.”

  Betancourt was sitting on the bed panting from his exertion as Elicia ran out of the room. Peter heard her sister talking to her, asking her what happened.

  “I see you’re stronger,” said Betancourt.

  “Yeah, it would appear so.”

  “You need to control whatever that is that’s got a hold on you.”

  Peter looked down at his socked feet in shame. “I know.”

  “You know, she stayed up all night with you.”

  If Peter didn’t already feel like shit, this guaranteed it. “Christ. I didn’t mean to…”

  “I know,” said Betancourt. He lost the commanding officer tone in his voice and replaced it with something that sounded like compassion. “She’ll be all right.”

  “I feel awful.”

  “She’s a tough girl. She’ll get over it.”

  However, that wasn’t what Peter wanted to hear. He didn’t just want her to get over it. It pained him that he hurt her. He didn’t want forgiveness. He wanted more. Did he want her to like him?

  “Well, there’s no time to feel awful. We have work to do.” There was the old Betancourt that he knew and resented.

  Peter stood up deftly. “First, I want to brief you on my…dream.”

  “I’m not Sigmund Freud, Major. We have more important…”

  “It communicated with me, sir. In fact, we had a whole conversation. It has weaknesses.”

  Betancourt appraised him for a moment. Peter knew he was calculating whether or not he should devote serious time to Peter’s dream encounter. “Okay. But bullet points. Time is of the essence.”

  “Yes, sir.” Peter looked at the wall and felt Elicia’s rapid heartbeat as she sought comfort with Brittany in the other room.

  “There’ll be time for that later, Major.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s leave them alone for a bit. We’ll go downstairs and you can tell me about your dream.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 13

  Kojic opened his eyes and he was in the middle of a street at night. The buildings around him, stark, looming, metallic structures, were on fire and there was screaming all around him.

  He stood up, brushing himself off, and he saw that Ehsan and Adnon were standing there with him, along with three wraithlike, four-eyed, silent figures. He looked up and saw three moons in the night sky.

  “Where are we?” asked Adnon, frightened.

  “I do not know,” answered Kojic. He turned to the one wraith standing next to him. “Where are we?”

  It didn’t answer. It only pointed a finger.

  Kojic, Ehsan, and Adnon, all looked in the direction that it was pointing and saw a throng of diminutive figures running towards him. They weren’t human, but they looked like…children.

  He saw Marina, in her current zombie state, pick one up. She turned it over in her hands as it struggled to break free. There were larger figures bounding down the street in her direction…the parents.

  You must protect her. It was the figure standing next to him. It didn’t speak, yet Kojic heard its voice in his head.

  Kojic didn’t hesitate. Desperate to protect his bride, he rushed forward and lunged at the larger figures as they descended upon Marina. In an unnatural fury, he reached out and slashed at their throats with elongated claws on the tips of his wispy fingers.

  The parental creatures grabbed at their torn throats as others wrestled with them. Kojic pleaded for the others to join him. “Help me, Ehsan! Adnon!”

  They looked at each other and then their own four-eyed monsters, which nodded in answer to their unspoken question.

  They rushed forward, bodies twisted, fangs bared, and bit and slashed away at Kojic’s antagonists. Marina opened her mouth wide and chomped down into the flesh of the youngling she held as it squirmed and screeched in terror.

  When they silenced all of the figures around them, Kojic stood tall amongst all of the blood and bodies, feeling powerful and aggressive, like a predator at the top of a food chain. He looked around as legions of zombie creatures, like the ones he just killed, flooded the streets killing and destroying everything in sight.

  Kojic looked around for his four-eyed shadow, but it was nowhere to be found. As if wondering the same thing, Ehsan and Adnon looked around for their shadows as well.

  Marina grinned horribly, her mouth slick with the youngling’s juices, and pointed at a reflective metallic surface next to Kojic. He looked and was startled by the reflection looking back at him.

  It was wraithlike, had four eyes, and fangs protruded from its mouth. It reached up, as he did, with long, razor-sharp claws, and felt the accentuated ridges on its face that lent it a demoniac quality.

  Ehsan and Adnon stood next to him, gazing at their reflections, which were in kind with Kojic’s.

  “What have we become?” asked Adnon.

  Although we are many, we are one.

  ***

  08:56 HRS

  Outside Kafka’s Headquarters

  Four OIL operatives from Bushaj and Murati’s cell waited in an unmarked van across the street from a large, abandoned building with a fenced in back area.

  A man named Bejko produced his mini-com, sent out a unique pulse, and waited for a response. There was a unique tone transmitted back within seconds.

  “I’ve got tone. We go in,” said Bejko. “Petrela, I need you in a sniper position on the rooftop next door. Be careful not to be seen.”

  Petrela nodded.

  Vllasi checked the explosives under his long coat. The air conditioner in the van was not working properly and he was sweating from the heat and the fact that he might have to meet his virgins if the meeting went awry.

  They were briefed about this Kafka, but largely based on Kojic’s account, which they had difficulty believing in its entirety. They had all heard of Kafka, but none had ever met him or seen him in person before. He was a legend in the Order, and legends had a way of falling victim to hyperbole, often in their favor.

  Bejko was certain that all they were going to find was a very regular man who was cunning and resourceful. Whether he was a friend or enemy to the Cause was another matter entirely, but Bejko had been given authorization to use lethal force if necessary.

  They exited the van, save Petrela. They crossed the street casually and strolled up to the old building. Petrela pulled away and around the corner, where he was going to park and enter the building next door from the other side. He had a tracker to follow the signal of Bejko’s mini-com.

  Bejko and Vllasi stopped in front of a rusted, windowless front door. Bejko sent out a second tone and the digi-lock disengaged. The two men look
ed at each other and Bejko opened the door. They both stepped inside.

  They waited in the dark for a brief moment when an unearthly voice croaked over a PA system.

  Greetings. Please stay where you are. I will send someone to get you.”

  Vllasi looked nervously at Bejko, fingering the detonation switch he ran up his right coat sleeve to his hand.

  “Calm down,” snapped Bejko, “or you’re going to kill us both over nothing.”

  Vllasi nodded and released his grip on the detonator switch, but he wiped a hefty amount of sweat from his brow. Although he was a true believer, walking around with thirty pounds of C4 strapped to one’s chest was hell on anyone’s nerves.

  They heard the echo of shuffling coming down the hall at some distance. Before long, a dark shape appeared whose gait matched the shuffling. As it passed by windows and was briefly illuminated, Bejko hoped that what he saw for only a moment was only a trick of the shadows.

  He looked over at Vllasi, and the look on Vllasi’s face confirmed what Bejko thought he saw and prayed wasn’t real. At last, the shape stopped in front of them, its face concealed by the shadows. It gestured for them to follow it.

  They trailed behind it, squinting their eyes at the sickly sweet odor of death, which reminded Bejko of a killing field in Albania where they shot captives in cold blood and left the bodies to rot. The communists called them dissidents. Bejko called them poor bastards who never stood a chance.

  He put out a hand and touched Vllasi’s arm to still his fidgeting, which had only gotten worse as they followed this shadowy figure into the bowels of the decrepit building. Vllasi’s uneasiness was making Bejko nervous, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it really wasn’t Vllasi making him nervous. He was picking up on something unexplainable that made his palms sweat and his skin go cold. Vllasi was picking up on it, too.

  They reached the end of a long corridor and stopped in front of an elevator. The figured gestured for them to wait, and then it made its way down another dark corridor until it vanished from sight.