"Recognize anything?" asked Adam.
"Gabriel," whispered John. "Oh, my God, it’s Gabe."
Gabriel reclined in the tube, eyes closed as though asleep. But he couldn’t be asleep, because from the waist down he was nothing but bone. Literally. The bones of his pelvis and hips emerged below the line of his waist, continuing down to attach to leg bones, patellae, and the small bones of his feet and ankles. Then as John watched, a slick substance built up around the bones. Soon it sheathed the entire structure, and began to darken.
"Tissue formation," said Adam. Then he said, "It’s not Gabe, it’s a robot. Another robot, like the first Gabe was."
John turned to Adam, aghast and horrified. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Your best friend was a biomechanical construct. This one is to replace him."
"No, he wasn’t, he couldn’t," said John. He didn’t like the voice he heard coming from his mouth, whining and frightened. "All the memories he had," he continued. "Everything he had done...."
"Were real. Within certain parameters. We permit them to live their lives out as they will, mostly, but there are certain requirements we have programmed into them," answered Adam. "He was real, and he led a real life, but he was just a machine. Like everyone else in Loston."
John looked at the other tubes. Mertyl lay in one, slowly being reformed, no doubt complete with her old memories and soon to be reigning supreme in the school office once more. Adam pointed at the tubes, all of which were full. "We have to remake the ones we’ve lost and reinsert them into Loston, because we hope that soon it will be safe enough for you and Fran to go back there."
John felt weak and fought to remain standing. His world spun around him as the implications of Adam’s words burrowed into his brain. He looked around the room and saw other tubes, other bodies. Some of them were incredibly tiny, like...
"Babies," said Adam, noting where John’s gaze had fallen. "That’s the one thing we could never create: a viable living form, one that could not only survive but reproduce. So we make them here and a few other places, then ship them to their domes. They grow normally but all their implanted programming parameters are already there, waiting to be activated at the appropriate times. And they can’t breed. That’s why you and Fran are so very important."
John stared at one of the babies. He reached out and touched the glass that separated him from the small form, and suddenly the body animated, the little chest expanding as breath was drawn into its lungs. John’s hand jerked away, and the thought that he had caused the baby’s movement gripped him. Then he realized that the baby was still unconscious, its body merely reacting to unseen directives given to it by the machines.
"They can’t breed," said Adam again, as if this was the most important thing about them, and then continued, "but if you can’t tell the difference, and they can’t tell the difference, then who’s to say there even
is
a difference?"
John’s gaze returned to Gabriel’s still form. The tissue around his legs was more formed now, growing incredibly rapidly. Above the tube a readout suddenly clicked on, reading 00:00:48:00:00.
"That’s the Calibrator," said Adam. "We’re bringing everyone – all Loston robots - online with the memories they had 48 hours ago, so that in Loston none of this will have ever happened."
John sank to the floor. He felt as though a vision of hell had opened up before him, and the worst thing about it was that he was already there.
"Everyone?" he said. His voice was small and weak. Training had given him the skills to overcome physical threats, but this was more. This information threatened not just his body, but his mind and soul.
"Everyone," replied Adam. He was looking at the tubes with the clinical expression of a doctor or a computer engineer: disassociated, dispassionate. "The ‘bots are completely undetectable, completely
human
, unless we put them on alert or their sensors indicate a threat to their primary functions. Then they change. They can withstand all but the most violent deaths, have extreme strength, and even resurrect themselves."
John jerked slightly, Adam’s words bringing to vivid recollection the events of the past hours, the strange night of reanimating corpses and living dead.
"There’s a supercomputer - a biological networking computer - at the base of each ‘bot’s thalamus. It regulates the organism, makes sure everything’s going smoothly. The physics and biology that are involved wouldn’t make any sense to you, but in times of need the computer triggers a series of electro-chemical changes that keep the organism alive."
"That’s why they went for the heads," whispered John.
Adam nodded. "Malachi knows that to destroy the computer you have to destroy its networking center. Kill the thalamus."
Both men looked at Gabriel. The man looked so peaceful from the waist up, and so frightening and alien from the waist down. His tissue continued to generate, and John could see the individual strands of ropy muscle begin to form. Soon skin and hair covered them, and Gabriel was complete. A pair of cables, glistening with some kind of lubricant, snaked into the tube and inserted themselves into Gabe’s ears. His eyes jerked open and his mouth rounded in a silent scream.
John almost screamed himself before Gabe’s eyes closed and he resumed his peaceful position. Adam gripped John’s arm. "It’s just downloading," he said. "We have to give him the memories he needs to be Gabe again."
"He won’t be Gabe," said John.
"Oh, but he will. He’ll be everything Gabe ever was up to two days ago. We build them well. In fact, the only thing we could never beat was the fact that they go insane if they find out the truth about themselves."
"How can a robot go insane?"
"How would you feel, John, if one day something triggered you - triggered something inside you that you didn’t even know was there? And all of a sudden you’re doing things you know are impossible and your body has become something different than you’ve known. You realize that all your most cherished memories are lies. Not only are you not
you
, you’re not even a real person." Adam nodded at Gabriel’s body. "As long as they live the lie, they’re fine. But when they realize it for what it is...rather than face that bleakness, they go mad. We make them too well, perhaps. Undetectable. Human."
Both men were silent for a moment, staring at Gabriel’s body, which slept in its strange and macabre way, an analog to the life that John now knew was forever beyond the coach’s grasp.
"Do you think," said Adam, "that God loves them as His own, or do you think they are anathema to Him?"
The tubes in Gabe’s ears crackled, and Gabe drew a deep breath, beginning to breathe regularly as the tubes withdrew.
John turned his head and vomited.
***
Fran’s eyes fluttered, but all was a mist of gray and confusion, as though someone had padded her brain in cotton batting like the kind her grandmother had used once long ago to make quilts that reminded one of a gentler time, a time when people were good to each other and didn’t die and then stand up again, but had the good sense and courtesy to stay dead.
What does that mean? she wondered to herself.
A light appeared in the mist, and she realized that her eyes were open. She was trying to see, but for some reason resolution and clarity were evading her. The light grew bright, then was blocked by a pair of forms, like two dense clouds traveling through a lighter fog that hung over a fairy land.
Her thoughts were muddled. Where’s Nathan? she thought. And why isn’t John here, either?
One of the clouds spoke. "She’s coming out of it."
The other cloud moved, and Fran thought she felt something touch her arm. Immediately the mist that surrounded her thickened into a more impenetrable darkness.
"Keep her down," said another voice. "Adam wants her under for as long as she’s here."
CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 1999/AE 3999
"You people are monsters," said John, and Adam’s eyes filled with tears as the statement stabbed him to the core.
"Please," whispered Adam. John’s words caused a pain in his heart that was reflective of the self-doubt he felt, of the belief that John might be right. "Please don’t think that. We’re not monsters, just people doing what we have to to keep humankind alive."
"What about
you
?" asked John. "Are you human?"
Adam picked up a small box that lay near Gabe’s tube. He held it next to John’s head, and a panel on it glowed green. "Human," he said, then handed the box to John. "You can scan me if you want. I’ve never done it. I believe I’m human, but that could be the programming. You hold my soul - or if I don’t have one, then my sanity - in your hands."
John looked at the box, obviously tempted to use it. "You’d go crazy if you knew?"
Adam nodded.
"What about the guy I saw in Iraq? Hell, what about
Iraq
?" asked John.
Adam felt relief at the question, one he was actually prepared to answer. "The man - Devorough - was what we call a bit."
"A bit?" repeated John.
"Short for bit player," explained Adam. "It’s a robot model we use over and over again. It saves us a lot of time and difficulty, because each new face is made from scratch, basically. So there are thousands of recycled templates we use, and most people won’t notice the face in the mall that they also happened to see thirty years ago in the movie theater. Or if they
do
notice, they chalk it up to
déjà vu
or indigestion or a strange dream or any of a thousand other things. You, on the other hand,
did
notice, so we tried to transfer him out."
"But he was in his house when I went looking."
Adam’s brow furrowed, though he tried to hide his expression from John. This was one of the things that most concerned him: not only had Devorough shown up at Loston with a daughter, which his programming wasn’t designed to support, but to all appearances the bit either hadn’t responded to its directive to leave Loston, or it hadn’t received the order. The former alternative meant that the bit had somehow resisted its programming.
And the latter meant that, somewhere, there was a traitor among the Controllers.
***
Jason watched the monitors. Sheila stood beside him, also watching through Loston’s eyes as the Cleanup Crew replaced everyone, putting them into the positions they had occupied forty-eight hours before.
It all had to be perfect.
But Jason watched with only half his attention. The rest of him was turned inward, thinking through the plans he’d made over the long years, beginning when he finally realized that the Fans were winning, and the Controllers destined to utterly fail in their self-appointed task. Today would be the day. The final day.
Today the Fanatics would come. He had to be ready to welcome them appropriately.
He felt at his side for Sheila’s hand, and felt it curl around his. It was warm, soft, everything that real flesh should be. He wondered if he could kill her to fulfill his mission, and realized that he had come to love her.
But he also realized that, yes, he
could
kill her if it became necessary to do what he had to. Just as Adam would kill
him
, if he discovered Jason’s plans, if he were to find out that Jason had betrayed them all.
The Fans were coming.
The end was at hand.
***
"But he attacked me," said John. Something in what Adam had told him wasn’t making sense, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
"Yes," answered Adam. They were back in the older man’s office now, back in the place where John had awakened. He hadn’t been able to handle looking at the "new" bodies of his friends any longer, so Adam had brought them back here. "When you mentioned seeing him before, it triggered a mode we call shut down. He tried to keep you from spreading the idea around."
"By killing me. Tal attacked me, too, when I told him I saw Devorough before."
"Those were automatic reactions. They had to keep Loston intact, especially with Fran coming in."
"Fran," John breathed. He had almost forgotten about her in the all but overwhelming crush of ideas that had pounded into him in the last hours.
"Fran," said Adam, "Is quite possibly the most important person in the world."
"How so?"
"To explain that, I have to tell you a bit more about us, about the Controllers. We are all recruited from dome life. All of us were born in one zoo or another, and the then-Controllers observed us and noted that we had characteristics that would allow us to be good Controllers in turn. So after a formative period, we are taken from the domes and brought to headquarters for training. But doing that exposes us to radiation, and sterilizes us within a short time. No babies from our ranks."
"None?" asked John. Once more, he didn’t know where this strange conversation was headed, but once more he felt fear’s clutching hands tightening around his heart.
"None," said Adam. "We continue our existence by harvesting our members from the inhabitants of the domed zoos, like Loston. But none of us can reproduce. Not one of us is a viable, fertile organism."
"Wouldn’t that mean that you are all machines? If all of your lives are bent toward making sure the human race continues, would it make sense for you to come out of the domes if you’re human?"
Adam winced as a spasm seemed to run through him, a shudder that could have been pain or fear. "We certainly hope we are human, and merely chosen to sacrifice our reproductive future for the greater good of humanity."
"But you don’t know?"
Adam shook his head. "No. No one really does. Only a few computers that have been around since all this happened have a complete database of who is real and who is not. So though the odds are completely against it, although it is more likely than not that each and every one of the Controllers is a robot, a machine called into existence by other machines, each of us hopes that we are, in fact, human. We know that Malachi is, for instance. And it could be that others among us are also human. After all, as I said, only the computers know for sure who is who. We ourselves are kept in the dark about each person’s nature. Only when a threat emerges are we informed as to the nature of the threat and the nature of the life that is threatened. That’s how we became aware of you. It’s also how we became aware that Fran was so important: a computer monitoring Denver took note of the threat when she was attacked by Fans, the night her husband was killed."