Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

Nimrod stepped forward, and gripped the platform’s handrail as he looked out into the space. The metal was cold against his palms, and as he looked out he gripped them tight enough to feel the cold against his bones.

The space was truly cavernous, as big as the largest Air Force hangar he’d seen above ground, hidden in the desert. It was lit from above by large white floodlights, but they did little to dispel the orange glow coming from the center of the room, where a huge torus was held in mid-air by a framework of silver struts. Above the torus was another black metal platform, perhaps octagonal, around the edge of which looked to be control panels and instrument banks. Two twisting black staircases led from the platform to the floor.

The torus was the source of the light. The entire object was glowing orange, like iron in a fire: darker around the edge and almost white in the center. A brighter light moved around the ring, anti-clockwise, throwing the orange light around the hangar, and across the robots assembled on the floor — robots surrounding the central structure from one side to the other, filling the room wall-to-wall, end-to-end.

Nimrod gasped. Robots. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands . Each identical, tall and silver, row upon row upon row. Nimrod counted fifty units from one side of the room to the other, then lost count as he tried to count the rows going back.

The robots were vaguely man-shaped, but huge; from his elevated position, Nimrod estimated each was at least seven feet in height, with rectangular torsos that were wider at the shoulders than at the waist by a considerable girth. The worst thing was the heads — each had a face, each identical, a toy-like parody of human features: triangular eyes, and a mouth that stretched across the square face. The mouth was a black plate, angled and vicious, a separate piece that could clearly open and close like the robots could… eat something.

Each robot had a black circle in the center of its silver chest; as his eyes adjusted to the orangey gloom, Nimrod could see the discs shine, like dark glass portholes.

Nimrod squeezed the handrail and shook his head, trying to understand what he was looking at, remembering the Director’s talk of war.

And here was her response. Atoms for Peace were indeed preparing for war. They were building an army. An army of robots.

The robotics laboratory was one thing; this was entirely another. The Secretary of Defense be damned — this was going straight to President Eisenhower.

There was a sound as Nimrod turned, like a button of his jacket clicking against the platform railing, an innocuous sound he barely registered before a black bag was yanked over his head and his arms were pulled back sharply.

He cried out and got a mouthful of dry cotton. He spat the fabric out and struggled, pulling his shoulders around, trying to break free, but the needle that entered his neck was thin and sharp, and the last thing Nimrod felt was pain and then numbness and the last thing he heard was the roar of the ocean, far away.

The night in Harlem was cold, the world frosted with ice, the air heavy with freezing mist.

The streets were empty, the buildings too: empty shells staring with empty black eyes out onto deserted streets. It seemed the very fabric of the place was rotting away, brick crumbling, concrete fracturing like wet chalk. If the Empire State was an imperfect copy of Manhattan island, then the Pocket universe’s Harlem was where the data degradation was worst. The cold wasn’t helping, nor the tremors. The whole world shook as it fell apart; here in Harlem, the quakes loosened mortar and pushed stones, making cracks, weakening everything.

The people stayed inside, huddled in small communities that gathered around fires to keep the dark away, to keep the creeping cold out. Some areas were better than others; here people could move around, try to continue some semblance of normal life, with shops and bars and businesses struggling onwards as the endless night drew on and the temperature dropped, and dropped again.

The area around 125th Street was not one of the good places. Here the night was stained a violent green when the lamp atop the tower at the back of the King’s theater was lit. Other times the shadows were deep, the darkness a perfect place to hide. Nobody walked these streets, not anymore, because the King had gathered his faithful from all over the city to this one spot, and here he kept them in darkness until they were needed.

So they waited, in small groups and sometimes ones larger. Their numbers fluctuated as the King took them inside his operating theater, where they were saved.

He was a great man, they said. A great man, blessed with miraculous skills. He would save them all, return them to their old lives, the ones they had before they marched willingly into the robot yards downtown, before answering their conscription papers, or, for some, before they were snatched in the dead of night and woke to find themselves in the middle of a slaughterhouse, waiting their turn for their limbs to be separated from their bodies and their hearts removed and replaced with rubber pumps to push machine oil around their internal mechanisms.

Tonight, the green lantern flicked on, bathing 125th Street and the surrounds of the theater in a deep, sickly haze.

It was necessary. The King said so himself. The green light kept enemies away, kept them safe. And it would not be long now; the King had said so, many times. When the green light came on, when the pain started and the robots scurried to the shadows to escape its hellish glare, the King and his servant would appear, on the veranda that jutted out from the front of the theater, out over the main entrance. They would stand on this platform, this stage, and the King would tell them that everything would be fine, that everything was going to plan, that soon they would be saved, all of them, from their torment. Just a little while longer, just a little more time, and then they would be ready.

Because, he said each and every time, the city owed them. The Empire State had taken their lives away, stolen them. It had treated them like machines, like just more tiny cogs in great wheels, sending them off into the fog, never to return. Feeding them to the Enemy, to keep it complacent, satiated.

And when the time was right, when the work was complete, the King would lead them back downtown, where they would liberate the Empire State from itself, and take back what the Empire State had stolen from them.

Then, after he had spoken, the green light would turn red, and the relief would be a blessing. The robots could come out and bathe in the light, the light that healed, energized, the light that gave pleasure, not pain. And then the King would be on the street, within reach of the pawing hands and claws and clamp and servo units. And with the help of his servant, he would administer the nourishment, the magical green elixir that kept them alive while they waited to be called into the theater.

But tonight was different. The green light had come on, but there was no appearance, no speech. Robbie and the others hid in the shadow of a stairwell close to the entrance; it was a good spot, and his group had fought hard to claim it, and every night defended it as best they could. It was difficult, dangerous, and soon Robbie’s gang had been reduced to the strongest — Robbie, with his telescopic arms and domed head filled with stained glass; Ratings 112363 and 112463, two soldiers nearly intact; and a small man who refused to give his name, who appeared to be more human than robot but when he moved — and move he did, so very quickly — there were flashes of silver beneath the ragged blankets he wrapped himself in.

The green light had come on, and they’d waited, but there was nothing. Robbie sat with his back against the stairs, facing away from the theater. He waited, ignoring the rambling conversation of the two Ratings, each repeating the words of the other, not quite in time, over and over until it became too much for Robbie’s ambient microphone to bear and he turned the input volume down. With his telescopic arms wrapped around his legs, he sat and rocked his curved carapace against the cement of the stair block.