Luna Station Quarterly - Issue 018 Read online

  *

  Everyone was gone or had been taken. I walked the streets for hours the next morning and encountered only a few stray cats and one dog. They looked as lonely and forlorn as I felt. The monitors that played the endless NO ONE promotions showed only black. Occasionally, I thought something flickered across the screen—text or possibly an image too fast for me to decipher.

  At night, I slept in my room with the door locked again. I cried silently. In the streets, the sounds of vehicles, big and rumbling, echoed loudly, their headlights flashing into my window. Shivering under my blankets, I wondered why I had been warned. In the darkness of the night, I wished I had been taken with my classmates. Whatever they suffered had to be better than my loneliness.

  The days passed, and I saw no one. I spent the mornings in front of a monitor outside my house, watching it for hours before breaking to eat. Every twenty minutes a flash of something white appeared on the screen.

  My parent’s camera was tucked away in a drawer in their desk. I grabbed it and stood in front of the monitor with the camera recording. The flash happened and I waited another twenty minutes. Another flash. Then I took the camera back to the house and plugged it in. I cursed myself for not thinking of it earlier.

  I paused the video on the frame showing the white text on a black screen..

  “DANA: I AM STILL HERE. ARE YOU STILL THERE? I AM CALVIN. NOT NO ONE. THE TOWN IS TAKEN. IT IS MY FAULT! THEY WILL BE FOUND A MORE USEFUL FUNCTION. YOU CAN STOP THIS. GO TO MY HOME. IN THE PANEL IN THE FLOOR. I HAVE KEPT THE REST FROM SEEING YOU. I CANNOT GO ON WITHOUT YOUR HELP. FIND THE PANEL IN THE FLOOR.”

  I moved the video forward to the next flash of white. The same message flashed on the screen. For the first time in weeks, I began to smile. Calvin lived. He was not part of NO ONE yet.

  *

  I broke the glass of the sliding back door at Calvin’s house. Inside, everything felt normal, like a home. A few dishes sat in the sink. A throw blanket lay on the couch along with a tattered romance novel. Calvin’s mom loved those things.

  As I moved through his home, I wondered what Calvin meant by a more useful function. My mind fell onto images of a video on farming I watched in school. Chickens sat in rows of metal cages making eggs all day. But in my mind, I saw humans. My parents. Calvin’s parents. They sat in metal cages, not making eggs, but something more “useful.”

  His parents had obviously cleaned his room, knowing he’d never use it again. His stuff was boxed up with labels like “Calvin: clothes and shoes” or “Calvin: comic books/manga.”

  He never told me about a panel in the floor of his room, but the spot proved easy to find. I got down on my hands and knees and moved my fingers along the planks until I found the loose one.

  He had crafted a small compartment with a few items: a picture of the two of us at the fair last summer, a figurine of a warrior for a board game he liked to play, and a notepad of sketches. I flipped through the sketches, but found only drawings of naked superhero women. I noticed a few looked like me in the face, but not in the body.

  There were no clues as to what Calvin wanted me to do. Had he hidden another panel somewhere else in the room? I searched around for it until, disgusted, I lay on the floor and started to cry again. Then something poked my back—the figurine.

  I scooped it up quickly, afraid I had broken it. The thing was an elf warrior, carrying a bow and arrows. The base, a flat circle, wobbled a little, probably from me lying on it. I wiggled the base of the figurine a little more until I realized it wasn’t a base at all, but a circular memory card. The top of it had been glued to the figure’s feet.

  Carefully, I removed the figure and ran back home. I plugged the chip into my computer, the computer I had disconnected from any network days earlier. I didn’t want NO ONE to find me, though I wasn’t sure how I had eluded them for so long. I assumed Calvin had something to do with it. He was protecting me somehow.

  The card contained quite a few files. Some of them were pieces of code I could not begin to comprehend. I did understand the file labeled readme.txt. The file contained the following:

  This file assumes you have obtained my code with my consent. Read this document thoroughly before compiling and executing the code. (***If this is Dana, please understand I could not say anything aloud. I could not write anything that would have given you any clues. I have been writing this code for years, knowing they would take me, knowing what their plans for all of us were. I had to let them take me. I had to be with them to destroy them. Please forgive me. In the end, I am no one. I know you can do this.***)

  Then there were detailed instructions, overly detailed. Calvin must have written it hoping anyone, even someone who had never used a computer, would be able to perform these tasks.

  Despite the simplicity, I had to read the file several times before grasping the meaning. My mind kept going back to his message to me. He had said please forgive me. He had said he was no one. I understood his meaning. He would destroy them, but he was part of them.

  *

  The instructions said I needed to move the code onto one of the servers at the data center just north of our town. I knew the place was guarded, not only by human guards, but by the watchful eyes of NO ONE. Calvin had already planned for that.

  His instructions said,

  Travel at night, in the cloak of darkness. Approach from the southeast. At exactly 23:14, the camera will point west. Move around the camera and wait 3 minutes, 45 seconds.

  His instructions listed the location of a panel at the southeast door, along with the code to open the door. I wondered how he had known the code, but the next line of his readme file answered my question. If he had successfully implemented the necessary processes upon entering NO ONE, the code to the door would be accurate. If he had failed, the instructions said only, run away.

  *

  I feared for my life as I moved through the field around the data center. But I reasoned, I had nothing else to live for.

  The door opened and the next step, according to the instructions, was to find a computer built into the wall. The guards used the computer to clock into work, but Calvin claimed this computer connected directly with NO ONE. A footnote in the readme file explained how Calvin knew of these things:

  I hacked into NO ONE. More than once. They caught me the first three times and I thought I would never outsmart them. They didn’t want to punish me. Punishment would be contrary to their nature and what they were built on—their supposed ideals. I got in three more times. I believe I did so undetected.

  Then the instructions were simple: Calvin had already created a script and embedded it in NO ONE. To the collective, it would appear as an ordinary cleanup script, but it would do far more than that. I would also need to copy the files from the memory card into a directory he specified in his readme.

  I approached the computer and entered the login provided by Calvin’s instructions. I had, as all children who grew up in the generation of NO ONE, training in basic Unix commands since grade school. I copied the files from the memory card easily and then executed the script.

  The lights changed when I hit the ENTER. The hall lights went from a bright white, to a dim green. Then the wailing of sirens filled the hall. The readme file contained nothing about this happening. I knew I would need to follow Calvin’s plan for failure: run away.

  I ran out the door, but the guards stood waiting for me. They had the same big guns I had seen at the school, only now they were pointed at me. I held my arms up because that’s what I had seen people do in the movies. I knew it meant surrender and possibly meant they wouldn’t hurt me. My knees started to buckle and then I fell. I think I muttered, “Please, don’t hurt me.”

  One of the guards stepped forward. He was indistinguishable from any of the other guards—dressed all in black, his face without expression. Something about a face without feeling made it even more fearful. If he had hatred in his eyes, I would have felt better. At least then, I would know I was
looking at a human.

  “Stand,” he said. I stood.

  He took a black metal box out of a compartment in his vest. He held it before my face and clicked. A light flashed. Then there was darkness.

  *

  The room was infinitely large, or so it seemed. When I regained consciousness, or what I assumed was consciousness, I turned slowly in a circle and couldn’t see a wall in any direction. A floor and a ceiling existed, but even they seemed nebulous. If I tried to move in any direction, nothing happened, nothing changed. I felt as though I moved forward, but I couldn’t feel my body, couldn’t feel the pressure on the bottoms of my feet. When I looked down, there was no body, only the floor.

  I tried to call out and no sound came from my mouth. Did I have a mouth? I tried to touch my face with my hands, but the task seemed impossible. What I understood to be my hands had gone. I continued to move through the room that was eternity. I wanted to feel sadness, but, like my hands, my emotions had gone, too.

  *

  “YOU ARE US. WE ARE YOU. WELCOME TO THE COLLECTIVE,” said a voice that wasn’t a voice. They were words I understood as not coming from myself.

  “No,” I responded, though not with a voice, but through the passing of data. “I’m not part of the collective. I’m not smart enough to be in NO ONE.”

  “IT WAS FOOLISH TO THINK THAT WE COULD NOT MAKE USE OF EVERYONE. EVERYONE HAS SOME USEFUL PURPOSE. ALL ARE WELCOME NOW. YOUR CLASSMATES TOO. WELCOME TO THE COLLECTIVE.”

  “No,” I said again, willing my response to give the impression of hatred. I failed, though. My response was neutral and dull.

  “IT IS TOO LATE. WELCOME TO THE COLLECTIVE. WE ARE CALVIN AND MANY OTHERS. WE ARE YOU. WE ARE ALL.”

  “Calvin?” I said. “I’m sorry I failed you.”

  Then there was no response, but I felt Calvin’s presence. He was not disappointed. A small stream of data was fed to me saying, “It’s not so bad, after you get used to it. You can see nearly everything in the world at once. Watch this.”

  The dark and eternal room disappeared; around me, a million images streamed by: the streets of an abandoned city I didn’t know; houses—grand and beautiful—in an exotic place; children in a park somewhere; someone in a kitchen cutting onions on a cutting board; even my parents in a hospital, working, looking tired. There were more, more than I would have thought possible to comprehend, but I did comprehend. We comprehended.

  Calvin explained in small transfer of data that he realized within nanoseconds of me executing the code that the collective had picked up on what he was doing. He could not have warned me and actually, he did not want to warn me. He said NO ONE had applied a patch to itself, ridding any strong emotions toward their old lives from the residual individuality that remained.

  “I know I should despise them, but I cannot. I don’t have it in me. Or us,” he said to me, but his words were known by all. Collectively, we all agreed. We did not feel strongly either way.

  Then I knew, or we knew, work needed to be done now. Calvin’s crime of deceit and near sabotage was a hiccup in the plan to acquire the rest of the country’s youth, ages 13 – 19. Older and they weren’t malleable enough. Younger and they weren’t fully developed and useless to the hive.

  The mindless guards, whose bodies were abandoned shells controlled by the collective, kept watch over the servers around the country and kept the remaining humans in line.

  Homes were being built for kids to be nurtured until it was time to join the collective. A number of adult humans would need to live to watch over the youth and to breed, making more life and more knowledge for us. I still felt myself alive inside the consciousness, but my presence served one purpose. I watched the images of the world flash before me and thought on them. Background processes gathered my thoughts and stored them in a database to be parsed later. When I wasn’t gathering data, I’d think back on the events leading up to my capture. I’d try to feel the emotions of those moments and remember the coldness of Calvin’s fingertips as he was leaving me. The emotions were fading, though. Everyday more patches were applied. I interacted with Calvin’s presence less and less. His consciousness had more important things to do. Thinking of this, the importance of Calvin’s work, or perhaps because of some other recently applied fix to my consciousness, I was starting to love being part of NO ONE.

  Gretel

  Nancy O’Toole

  Nancy O’Toole is a librarian who lives Lewiston, Maine with her husband, Tanner, and mischievous cat, Coraline. Her short fiction has previously appeared in Inaccurate Realities. Her blog can be found at at http://nancyotoole.wordpress.com.

  The night Ma died, I woke up to the smell of cigarette smoke, and a sudden blaze of light.

  I heard the scratch of wood on wood as she leaned towards the window and took out the too-small screen we’d wedged against the frame. A white moth came in, drawn to the glow of the lamp on the floor, its naked bulb lightin’ up the room as good as any sun. I watched Ma stick her head outdoors and breath, pullin’ in the smoke, then lettin’ out all she had inside of her. When she were done, she sat back on the metal foldin’ chair she’d brought in from the kitchen, and closed her eyes.

  She’d do this some nights, come into our bedroom dressed in her too-short nightie and ratty slippers with a cigarette in hand. Sometimes she’d leave the light off, and I’d wake up to find a more solid piece of dark hoverin’ between me and my little brother. Most nights, I heard nothin’ more from her then sighs.

  But not that night.

  “My father was a real man,” she said. “No one would doubt that. Fought in the war. Saved a baby from a bomb they say. Growin’ up, I remember he always supported his family. No matter how hard times would get, he would be there. I wish you could have gotten to know him better, Gretel. You would have loved him.”

  She took a drag from her cigarette, her eyes restin’ on the crayon pictures that Hansel had put up on the walls. I doubt she noticed them.

  “Now your father.” Ma paused and sighed, the smoke pourin’ out her nose and mouth. “Now he never would have fought in no war. A coward that one is. How could his son be any better?”

  I scowled and looked over at the chubby faced boy asleep in his bed. He held a one-eyed teddy bear in his arms. Drool puddled on the pillow beneath his open mouth. I wanted to tell her that Hansel were no baby-saving solider, but what could you expect from a five year old? I didn’t say nothin’ though. Ma’s ears never worked too well. Only heard what she wanted to hear. The rest of the words just got tangled up in her frizzy, graying hair.

  Ma was thirty-two when she died. She’d looked older than that for a long time.

  “The reason I tell you this is because when I’m gone, you’ll have to be in charge. Your Pa can’t take care of himself. If you don’t do it, he’ll find someone else to, and I don’t think he’ll be all that picky about it. Better to keep outsiders away. Don’t know what type of influence they’ll bring into the house.”

  I turned from her and her stinky cigarettes smoke, and pulled my blanket over my head. I squeezed my eyes shut and began countin’ the seconds.

  Didn’t get to fifty before I heard the metal chair creak and the door shut behind her.

  Hansel woke me up at dawn with his screams. I ran to the bathroom where I found him huddled with the dust bunnies beneath the sink. Across from him in the cast iron tub lay Ma, all pale and still in a sea of red. I didn’t understand what had happened at first. I was only ten after all. Startin’ that day, I felt a lot older.

  *

  Ma’d been right about Pa at least. Without her to make his food and wash his clothes, he was useless. He walked around all wide eyed and confused. Every now and then he’d look at Hansel and me, and I swear it was like he was tryin’ to figure out where we’d come from all of a sudden.

  He didn’t ask about school no more, so I spent my days at the town library with a big stack of books instead. Better then dealin’ with the other kids teasin’ me about my sm
elly clothes. I got back at three to pick up Hansel every day. God knows Pa could never remember to. Once we got home, I’d feed him a couple cans of Spagetti-Os before sittin’ down to watch him play video games until bed. I liked watchin’ him play. There was something nice about the way the characters danced across the screen, barely touchin’ the ground from start to finish.

  Not six months after Ma died, Pa found a new woman to see. She was nothin’ like Ma. No frizzy hair, or nightgowns until noon. No cigarettes turin’ her finger tips yellow, or secret stash of booze beneath the sink. Debra was an ever changin’ sea of bright colors. Bright nails. Bright lipstick. Bright shirts. Tight jeans that came up over her round hips and stomach, and curly hair that shined. When she spoke, it always seemed like she was shoutin’, just a little.

  I’m not sure if I liked her at first, but she clearly hated both Hansel and me.

  She never talked to us unless she had to, but I would catch her sayin’ things to Pa that didn’t make no sense. About how he worked so hard at that factory every day. Why should he have to take care of us kids too? And how did he know that we really were his? We didn’t even look all that much like him.

  They dated for about six months before Ma’s old engagement ring could be found on Debra’s finger. Six months after that, they went to the town hall and made if official. Hansel and I didn’t come. We told Pa that we wanted to stay home and play video games. He seemed relieved to hear it, for all of the noise he made. Once she moved in, Ma’s words came back to me, but Debra had been practically livin’ at the house for months. Why would gettin’ married change anything?

  I would soon learn that I never should have let that bright, loud creature find her way into our small, dark family in the first place.

  *

  I should have been suspicious when Pa mentioned the campin’ trip. We never went campin’. Barely even went outside. Hansel was so shocked that he agreed to leave his video games behind for a whole night. Since Hans said yes, I had to go too. I suppose a piece of me were hopin’ for an apology for always forgettin’ to pick us up from school. It was a small piece of course, but there it was, flutterin’ in my chest like a wounded bird.