David Hanrahan - Archon of the Covenant

“Mom? Is that you?”

The sentinel had found a cognitive child. Her eyes widened and pupils constricted in the light. A future had been opened for man’s rebirth. A boulder moved from the tomb of Homo sapiens. The sentinel scrolled through its dialects, searching for a vocalization as she spoke again:

“Terrence? Berto?”

A soft, low inflection filled the air. An American argot of unknown gender — some mild provincialism at home in the dry, slow air of the desert. The sentinel spoke:

“I’m sorry, that is not me. But I’m here to get you out. Are you ready to go?”

The sentinel extended its hand down towards the child, who wriggled up and out of the pile of towels and rags. She stood up, her face level to the sentinel’s LED light, which now softened to a dull glow. She saw its tri-axel and trident frame construction for the first time, illuminated from behind by the column of light shining through the punctured ceiling. This glimmering leviathan in the aphotic space held its hand aloft. The child stood there, looking up at the machine, an expression of skepticism across her face.

“What about him?”

She looked over her shoulder at the Mexican Wolf who had backed into a corner, casting a glance back at the barricade that was being frantically torn down by the revins just outside.

“We have to get him out too.”

The sentinel couldn’t process what it was being asked to do, and so it responded with default logic:

“Okay. But we have to go now.”

The child put her palm in the humaniform grasp of its black, rubberized shadow hand. The sentinel led her, turning its trident frame, to the rear of its base platform. A series of panels slid open and an array of padded metal plates and prongs rolled out, clicking into the other, forming a small rumble seat. The seat sat elevated off the base like a sand yacht on the salt flats.

“Sit down and put the seatbelt on.”

She approached the small bench, moving awkwardly with the one shoe larger than the other, and stepped up on the sentinel’s axel, falling into the seat with a thud. She looked around her and found the 2-point harness, clasping it into the small lock at the base of the seat. As she clicked it shut, she looked up and the sentinel’s hand was before her, two earplugs in its open fist.

“Put these in your ear. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“That’s good. One more thing. Keep your eyes shut until I say you can open them.”

She nodded her head knowingly at the sentinel’s optical array, and then its big trident frame turned around and the hitch of the tri-axel unlocked. DDC39 sprang forth in the room, turning around in a tight radius. The Mexican Wolf skittered in the corner. The dogs kept barking and the other animals were whipped into a frenzy as the barricade came down. The two revins just behind it began to whoop and shout their babble — a distorted Wernickes Aphasia. One called behind it, motioning to some unknown audience. The other stepped into the dark from the sunlighted lobby. The sentinel leveled its railgun and fired two quick shots. The revins stood, silent, for a beat — frozen in the air — and then fell to the tiled floor. A single hole through their skulls. The sentinel sped into the light, the child clutching at the rumble seat handles. DDC39 paused, looking backwards at the Mexican Wolf, which stared back nervously and then dashed towards the girl and the machine.

They drove over the shattered glass of the lobby, past the fallen revin guards, and into the sunlight of the Flandrau courtyard. To the left, a large crowd of jostling revin men and women — naked, weathered, and jittery — were staring up at the Kuiper roof from where the sentinel had fallen earlier. Their vapid eyes turned from the roof and towards the sentinel and girl. The animals, trapped in the astral prison behind them, spilled out and disappeared in different directions. The revin’s faces twisted from confusion to anger as they comprehended this scene beside them — their livestock pens, emptied, and this intruder was the cause. They screamed and rushed at the sentinel. The girl clasped her hands over her eyes. The sentinel’s railgun traced on each of them. Too many. DDC39 backed up and escaped along the westward sidewalk, darting past fallen palo verde trees and into the rear parking lot of the Flandrau building. Across the street, in the dusty lot of the National Solar Observatory, was a mammoth, mobilized structure — a camouflaged military vehicle. It was an ECM jammer. A Russian-era Kvant SPN-12. Its expanded disruptor cluster nearly filled the entire lot, held aloft by stabilizers that tethered into the cracked asphalt. A thick power cord ran from its side and up the southern wall of the NSO building, carried to the roof and connected to a field of solar panels, just out of view.

The revin horde rushed into the Flandrau parking lot behind them, a cacophonous din carrying on the air. Their flaccid, withered parts crashing into each other as they ran, enraged, towards the sentinel and the girl. She started to remove her hands from her eyes and the sentinel softly admonished her:

“Not yet. Don’t look.”

The sentinel raised its railgun at the power cord base on the massive vehicle and fired — the cord panel exploding in a flash of sparks and steel shrapnel shards. The sentinel’s own radar and communication systems flickered. A signal — weak, then strong — washed over and DDC39 regained its digital omniscience. The ECM disruption was negated. A new frequency was detected and a series of coded messages downloaded from a satellite server. Its telemetry fanned out and new instructions were updating on its CPU. It had missed quite a lot in its binary slumber. With child in tow, the next stage of its mission materialized.

“Hang on tightly. We’ll be moving fast.”

They tore out of the NSO parking lot, bearing north. Ahead was the quarantine fence — the serpentine chain divide blocking access to Speedway. The sentinel turned hard right into an alley just after the Newman Center and barreled through the trash piled on each side of the alley. Flyers caught the draft of the sentinel’s vector and swirled behind them like contrails in the ether. The Warren exit would be just around the corner. As it rounded the bend and turned, they were there. A mass of revin men had gathered at the breach, blocking the way out. They stood there, panting, hunched forward and waiting. They saw the sentinel and didn’t move. Their nakedness unfurled in the air, tattered and dusty — a torn banner of defiance. They were silent, but a sound of rushing footsteps was getting louder. The sentinel turned its optics backwards. Coming north on Warren was another group of males. This group was familiar. They were striped with long nail scars across their chest and arms and their eyes shone with disgust. They raced towards the sentinel and the girl and, in front, was the pale apex creature — the revin from the summit of the stadium. These were the hunters. The revin raised its railgun at them but they numbered in the hundreds, and thousands more were behind them. The girl peeked out of her clasped hands at the seething swarm. The sentinel backed up and then turned to double back down the alley. It panned over to the apex revin who watched the sentinel ducking back into the side street. The scarred predator king smiled knowingly at the sentinel as it craned its optics forward and darted off.

DDC39 sped into the west, chasing the sun. It raced past fraternity and sorority houses. It slalomed around airdrop canisters and the girl grabbed tightly at the bracing bar. It crossed over Mountain and panned right — the fence was still there, running parallel on 1st St. To the left, the shouts and cries of an angry, pinball populace. The wingless wraiths of the ruined mind. Across Mountain, the way was blocked. The alley came to a halt before a drop-off that descended into a flooded, underground lot. DDC39 turned left and shot down towards 2nd St, closer to the nucleus of the horde. It crossed over 2nd and drove on through a tight walkway, adjacent to a descending ramp, which was flooded as well. It turned and entered the wooded, old campus. The massive, red brick Colonials rose up behind the dense line of palms and sycamore that had grown uncontrolled, enveloping the road in a thick canopy overhead. The sentinel sailed through fallen branches and came out onto 2nd St. Another gang of revins spotted them and were racing up on Park Ave. The sentinel sped forward on 2nd — the girl jostled backwards in the rumble seat, clutching at her seatbelt in a fright as the machine lurched forward. They came upon Euclid and a dead-end. The way forward was closed off by the western section of the concertina wire fence, reinforced with wrought-iron posts anchored into the ground. A mass of sandbags blocked the sidewalk heading north and south on Euclid. Behind them, a huge multi-level parking garage on one side of the street, and a Marriott on the other. The shouts of the revins on Park Ave. grew louder, closer. The girl spoke: