Hugh Howey - Machine Learning

Montana held Billy in her arms that night while he had another fitful dream, and she watched the stars fade and the sky brighten. She wondered which of those pinpricks up there held Earth in its orbit. The view blurred as she thought of the friends and family she would never see again, the sounds of the waves on Venice Beach, the horns blaring as lights turned green, the wind in the palm trees that shrouded her small home in the Springs, the simple torture of deciding what she would eat that day, every day, three times a day.

There were things she wouldn’t miss, but many more of them she would. And it took this to realize her life wasn’t so bad as she had once thought. She felt an impulse to go back to school, to study this time, to read more, to make herself better. Because it wasn’t right that they had the two of them on display here, that this was all the Tralfamadorians would know of Earth. Not these two to represent them. She and Billy, two broken souls. This was not their kind. It made the zoo a lie, and this frustrated her the most.

Billy whimpered, and Montana wiped her eyes. The sky brightened, and the zoo opened, grotesque aliens sidling by beyond the glass. These creatures covered their eyes with their fingers; they made fists of joy; and Montana could hear their thoughts leak into her mind. But as loudly as she screamed in her own head, no one moved to save her. They just clapped and clapped.

Billy disappeared later that day. Montana had stretched out on the sofa for a nap—she liked to sleep when the Tralfs were watching; she spent her waking time when the zoo was closed and they weren’t around. When she woke up, Billy was gone. Back to Earth, she caught herself thinking, envious of his deluded voyages. Back to his youth or forward to his death. But that was impossible, however much she liked to dream it wasn’t.

She rose and took a shower and used the bathroom, every movement on display, and the crowds outside grew dense as the Tralfs shuffled to a leering stop. She could feel them probing her mind. A thousand hands pawed at her head like bodies stuffed into the same crowded train. A thousand unblinking eyes bored through her flesh. She could hear them. Their language was gibberish, but she knew they could understand her. She begged them to let her go, to take her home, that she wasn’t an animal for a zoo. She repeated this in her mind like a mantra. She remembered chanting something similar as the cameras looked on and men twice her age were rough with her. She remembered thinking that if she froze and sat real still, Uncle Chip would know that she was uncomfortable, that he would stop.

Montana toweled off and pulled on one of the robes that cycled back and forth through the food chutes. The robes had come after much begging. The Tralfs could talk back to her by means of a musical organ with a humanlike voice, but she never knew when they might respond and when they might simply go on ignoring her pleas. It was maddening, this. The inconsistency. It was back to living with a drunk.

It was Stained who explained why their responses didn’t make sense. Stained was one of the zookeepers who cleaned the domes at night. He had a red blotch on his palm, and since Tralfs didn’t have names, Montana had given him one. Stained explained that Tralfs saw in four dimensions, and so sometimes they answered before a question was asked, and sometimes they waited until years later to answer, and so you had to listen carefully. He told Montana this two days before she asked about it. It took some piecing together, talking to Stained.

Stained also explained how the universe would end. He cleaned the glass by dunking a large fleshy finger into a bucket of suds, and between the sounds of squeaks, he told Montana about a test pilot trying out a new type of fuel and how this would blow up the entire universe one day. Montana asked, “If they knew it was going to happen, why didn’t anyone stop him?” She said the question out loud, even though Stained could read her mind.

Stained went on cleaning the glass for a few hours, and Montana busied herself with making the bed. She knew rushing Stained or repeating the question wouldn’t make any difference, so she kept herself busy. She had a system for making the bed that took four and a half hours, but she had additions in mind that might stretch it out to five. Finally, Stained answered her last question. At least—she thought it was her last question. It could’ve been the answer to one she would ask tomorrow.

“Because,” Stained said, his voice musical and sonorous through that great pipe organ over her head.

Montana nodded. It was the answer she had expected.

I am about to die. It is September 11, and every cell in my body is acutely aware of my looming demise. The certainty of it. The inevitability. Not years from now, not weeks or days. Moments. Like how a Tralfamadorian knows.

The first plane hitting a skyscraper was an aberration, an accident, something to gaze upon and wait for things to get better, wait for the sirens to arrive. The second jet, however, brought the promise of a third and a fourth. Here was a pattern. Jets are falling out of the sky. The world has gone amok. A GPS malfunction, an EMP detonation, solar flares, a dozen disaster films, and science fiction plots. My brain is misfiring with all the possibilities but the real one. Trapped between a cliff wall of burning buildings and the Hudson River, I look around for my best friend, Scott, but he went off to investigate the fire, the report of bodies. I feel the impulse to run after him, to push through the crowd that’s heading the other way. I start up the metal ramp toward the wharf and away from the yachts.

“We have to get the boats out of here,” Kevin tells me.

Kevin is my boss, and he’s right. We need to get the boats away from these burning buildings, away from the next impact and the one after. I look to the wharf for Scott. He’ll be back at any moment and help me cast these lines off. He saw the second plane disappear into that building, and he’s running back my way. I try not to think of the bodies Leslie saw or the debris raining down. I try not to think about that. He’ll be back.

I scamper onto the boat. The starboard engine has been having problems—it won’t crank from the helm or the flybridge. I have to go down into the engine room to start the mains. This is where I’ll die. This is when the surety of my last breath seizes me. It’s when I lift that heavy hatch of stainless steel and teak decking and gaze down that steep ladder into the darkness of the engine room. Down there, I won’t be able to see the sky. I won’t spot the next jet hurtling in at hundreds of miles an hour and be able to… to dodge, to know that this is the end, to witness my destruction, to do anything about it. I turn my back on that loaded gun—that bright blue sky—and descend below deck.

The engines crank one by one, slowly, starter motors whining, diesel firing under pressure, kicking up into that throaty rattle of an idle that sounds as though it could stop at any moment, that sound like a weakened heart.

Scrambling back up the ladder, feet clanking on rungs, I find chaos outside. People are running across the wharf, away from the buildings, looking to the sky for the next plane. A man asks if I’m leaving. People can hear the engines, can see the exhaust, are watching me scramble around the decks to make ready.

“C’mon,” I tell the man. Others are looking at me expectantly. “Anyone who wants to go, c’mon,” I say. I have people to help. Somehow, this helps me.

I loosen the spring lines as strangers dash onboard. Someone offers to get the bowline and runs up the dock before I say yes. “No shoes,” I tell a man. This reflexive bark comes as quickly as the realization that such rules are now ridiculous. But there are habits. And my body is calmer now with something to do. I have a responsibility to this boat, to its owner, to these dozen or more strangers onboard.