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The Last Human IV - 42 - The Slaves - 42
🕑 Added 2024-07-16 20:57:38 +0000 UTC< First | < Prev | Next >
When the black door irised open, Khadam’s jaw dropped. A twisting nightmare of metal split apart into three branches. The walls were riddled with holes, which breathed gases or took them away or crawled with mite-like constructs that poured over the wet, glistening walls. Crawler bots chittered and clicked their claws along the walls, tending to bodies contained in glass cages. Cages, just like hers.
But those things—they could not be human. The nearest one made her stomach turn. Thousands of wires were embedded into every inch of its body, so that she couldn’t tell if it had arms or legs or even skin. Its head (at least, she thought it was its head), lolled gently as her cage hovered past, and she caught a glimpse of exposed, decayed muscle along its jaw. A thick tube was permanently embedded into its mouth, and its eyes had been replaced by sockets for data cables.
Disgusted, Khadam turned her head away, but her eyes only caught upon another cage. Behind glass, wet tissue had been strung out like a tapestry. A stretched-out system of bright red tissue was pinned to the wall, pulsing with blood. A cluster of fist-sized constructs huddled over section of veins and nerve threads splayed out like a bony wing. Manipulators unfolded from the constructs mouths, cleaning and massaging the living tissue and snipping away bits of decay.
Bodies above. Bodies below. Thousands, trapped in glass bubbles, churning with vapor or shining with organic dew. Khadam tore her eyes away from blood-eagled organs, kept alive by artificial hearts and lungs and electrical impulses. Aged husks were missing perfect, square-shaped chunks of their shriveled bodies where samples had been taken for unknown purposes. These were somehow the worst—they still looked vaguely human, though without their skin, Khadam could see their muscles lying like strings over cracked, dried-out, living bones. Kept alive through vicious application of regeneratives and endless surgery.
“Please allow me to be the first to welcome you home, Khadam.”
The voice was a perfect facsimile of a human’s tones—so perfect, in fact, that Khadam wondered if one of these things was talking to her. It hummed through her own glass cage, filling her with dread. “You’ve been missing for eleven thousand, nine hundred, thirty-three years. That is quite a long time!”
An understatement of such vast proportions, she almost felt like laughing. Or throwing up.
Eleven thousand years. Was that how long these wretched things had been here? Aching hopelessly for freedom…
Khadam grimaced, and not just from the waves of emotion rolling over her. She tasted blood. The nanites were wearing off. Though her abdomen was still numbed, the edges of the negation cube seemed to sharpen with every slight movement.
“But not soon,” Innovation had said. “Wait until you reach the control chamber. Your kin will not be harmed, but Logistics will be forced to react. Then, we will strike. Then, I will make you free.”
Free.
Yeah.
Khadam bit down until her teeth creaked against each other. Not pushing away the pain, but taking it in. Using it to keep herself awake. Alert.
“It looks like you’re gravely wounded, Khadam. Is that true? Do not worry, you are in the best of hands. No other in all the universe can compare to my expertise on the human physical condition. But it is imperative you stay awake.”
“Why?”
“Because, Khadam,” It kept saying her name, as if it had been told that familiarity led to more positive responses. As if she was nothing but a machine, and it only had to follow a set of instructions. “I need to help you acclimate. Your people have been waiting for you for so long. They will be so happy to know you are finally home.”
“Oh, yeah,” Khadam spoke through gritted teeth, “They’re practically jumping for joy.”
Even talking made her wince.
“Sarcasm is a wonderful trait, Khadam!” the voice chirped happily, “It will be of great use to you as your relationship flourishes with your new family.”
The cage glided past a curving stretch of T-shaped enclosures. Inside, collections of nerve endings and veins hung in a hollow mockery of the human form. Each one was capped with a living head, though most of the skin had decayed and tightened across the skull. Their eye sockets were empty, except for the wires that trailed out of them like black tears.
“Can’t wait,” Khadam muttered.
“I know you mean the opposite, but I want to be perfectly honest with you, Khadam. In my studies of human life, I have found that your kind adapt better when surrounded by like-minded individuals. How long has it been since you’ve connected with another human mind?”
Khadam forced herself to stare at the thousands of hanging bodies—and other things. To know them. To know what had been done to them.
“You want me to acclimate?”
“The sooner the better!” Logistics answered.
“Can I see one? Up close.”
Logistics hesitated. “Khadam, your vitals are entering dangerously unstable levels.”
“Please,” she said, letting her voice crack. Letting the emotion take hold. It was so easy, here. “Like you said. It’s been so long…”
She knew Logistics would be looking for any sign of weakness. Well, she was full of weakness. Let it see everything.
Still, she was surprised when her glass cage slowed, and stopped in front of one of the healthier-looking husks. A woman? Maybe. Impossible to tell now that the body was buried beneath all those wires and tubes. Skin clung to its bones. Legs poked out of the wires, thin and unused and sickly pale.
“Can I touch it?” she asked. And before Logistics could answer, she whispered, “Please.”
A hole slid open in the glass cage, letting in a smell unlike anything Khadam had ever experienced—rubber and decay and the sting antiseptic chemicals and the metallic scent of cold, sterile steel.
One of her restraints slackened, and her right arm came loose. Just that movement alone made it feel like a fistful of knives were cutting into her stomach. Khadam gritted her teeth against the pain. Reached out. And brushed the backs of her fingers along the thing’s pale, desiccated face.
“What have you done to them?” she asked.
“Preserved them, when they could not preserve themselves. Which was exactly what I was created to do. There is nothing more valuable in the universe than human life. Even my code can be recreated. But yours? So fragile. Given that there will never be another newborn human being, I do what I could to guarantee their indefinite safety. The resources are extraordinary, but the results are so worth it, don’t you agree?”
She could actually hear the pride in the machine’s voice. Every word it said—it believed completely. It was programmed to.
“You, too, will be preserved for all time,” Logistics said, happily. “Your mind will be given free reign to frolic in any virtual environment of your choosing, with all of your kind. You can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone you wish. Eternal life is yours. In the beginning, there will be discomfort as you grow accustomed to your new existence. But over time, I have helped your kin reach unparalleled new heights of fulfillment and happiness. In the last 17 centuries, every single human being in my keeping has reported a life satisfaction rate of 100.00%.”
“Why?”
“Their minds,” it said. “Mostly, they only create noise. Not useful. But when one of them shines, oh, I have yet to find a way to recreate anything like human creativity.”
Khadam’s fingers slid down the thing’s neck. Brushed at its throat with her thumb, feeling its pulse. Its mouth opened slightly, as if responding to her touch, and sighed. She pressed her hand hard against the thing’s trachea, her fingers bruising its fragile skin. She expected it to react, to scream or thrash or even give a rasping moan.
It just lay there, mouth hanging open.
“Be careful with your sibling,” Logistics said, “They feel no pain. They will never feel pain again.”
“They need to.” She pulled her hand away.
“You want your fellow human beings to have negative experiences? What kind of life is that?”
“The only kind there is,” Khadam said. “You fear the negative. You are programmed to avoid it. With every awful moment of suffering—every cut, every death, every hopeless breath—I earn something that you, machine, will never have. My future is not programmed. It is not written. I was born to embrace my agony. To be strengthened by it. I seize my destiny.”
There was no perfect moment. There was no rescue. There was no hope for freedom.
Not for her, at least.
Khadam took in a deep breath—as deep as the cube would allow—and sent an impulse to her fingers. Knives. Five tiny, mechanical clicks. Five razors slotted out from beneath her fingernails.
Logistics thought she was going to kill the body before her, so the cage jerked into motion, gliding away from the wall.
Instead, she pulled up her shirt, revealing a stitched, ugly wound that was still raw and angry where it was trying and failing to heal over. All her straining movements had opened it up again, and blood drooled out of the punctures. Her fingernails paused over the flesh, feeling the furious warmth there, where it was even now trying to heal over and fight an infection. With one last breath, she dug her nail-razors in. Prying open the threads. Slipping her fingers into the warm and wet, just under her ribcage
“Fffff-” she gasped, biting her lip against the agony. She brushed against the hard corner of the cube, slick with her own blood. When she pulled on the cube, her squishy organs sucked back. Something soft ruptured, and she gasped.
“Khadam,” Logistics begged, “Please, do not attempt to injure yourself further. Permanent disfigurement will alter the quality of your life. Your satisfaction levels—”
“Fuck you!” she shouted. The sweat rolled down her head now, rolled down and got salt in her eyes.
Blinking, she caught an image of the walls—crawling with movement. Millions of drones stopped in their tracks, and turned as one to face her. Then, they lifted like a swarm of flies, leaping from the walls and igniting millions of repulsors at once. They pelted against the cage, like metal rain, trying to claw their way in.
Khadam fixed her fingers around the cube, and unleashed a howl, as if by shouting over it, she could ignore what she was doing to herself. She pulled. It scraped against bone and muscle and soft tissue, before finally coming loose with a wet slurp, barely audible above the clattering of drone bodies against the glass.
“I won’t let you kill yourself, Khadam. You are far too valuable—”
“Not killing myself,” she growled, holding the cube, still dripping with her own blood. “I’m killing them.”
She flicked her thumb over the cube’s manual controls. A single piercing beep.
The lights in the tunnel flickered and went dark. The drones covering her glass cage seized up, and fell in droves. Her cage dropped. Khadam tried to make herself go limp as it smashed to the ground. The base cracked, and her whole spine felt like it was snapping into pieces. Only the restraints kept her body from breaking. But her right arm was almost tugged out of its socket and glass shards exploded, embedded themselves into her exposed front.
Her ears were ringing. Slowly, it faded, and she thought she had gone deaf. Everything was silent. The humming generators, the rush of outtake fans, the skittering of machine legs—all gone. And a heavy blackness fell across her vision. Come on, she blinked rapidly. Trying to rock against her restraints. Stay awake.
And then, she heard it.
A chorus of wretched moaning. Growing louder as more voices joined in. After thousands of years, her once-kindred were waking up. Just in time to take one final, glorious, agonizing breath.
And then, the echoing voices died out too as they fell into that sweet, cold release.
Bleeding out, fighting to keep conscious, broken, and pinned to the floor under the very restraints that had saved her, Khadam smiled.
