Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

The robot fitted the split doorjamb together. “I will repair this.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Then I will help you move to a new house.”

“I don’t want a new house.” She stood as straight as she could. “I’m flying out to the Doomsday Vault, and you can’t stop me trying. I want you to lower the shield.”

If the Surrogate could have sighed, this is when it would have done so. “As we’ve discussed,” it said, “the embryos will not have survived.”

“You can’t stop me trying.”

“I have never stopped you. You have stopped yourself. Before this, your mission was the gun.”

“Will you not talk about the gun?”

“It concerns me.”

“You can’t be concerned about anything. You’re a machine.”

“I am an empathic Surrogate.”

“If you won’t lower the force shield, I swear I’ll crash into it on purpose and die. I know you don’t want that.”

Almost a minute passed. From the robot came only a sound like a flywheel flutter, or humming bird wings. “Here is my analysis,” the Surrogate said.

“Spare me.”

“The embryo clones preserved in cryostasis once represented your desire for restoration. But now they represent your desire to stop living. They are like the gun.”

“You are so full of shit.”

“My casing is filled with many things, but excrement is not among them.”

Casey rolled her eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t try and be funny.”

“Apologies. Our relationship has caused a symbiotic evolution of my algorithms. It is by design.”

“This isn’t a relationship,” Casey said. “And the embryo clones are not like the gun.” After the Surrogate came upon Casey fooling around with a pistol and her soft palate, the robot had gathered all the loose weapons on the base and locked them in the armory.

“They beckon, like the gun, and promise the same conclusion. Leaving the protection of this base for a hopeless goal is irrational. It is suicide.”

“It isn’t, but even if it were, it would be none of your business.”

“It’s wiser, and safer, to await the Moonites.”

Casey snorted. She had long given up on a rescue mission from the Lunar colony, though the Surrogate continued to flog the possibility, probably as a strategy to mollify her. But Casey knew they would never come. The Surrogate referred to that certainty as Casey’s “attitude.”

“I’m going to try,” Casey said, “whether you turn the shield off or not.”

“My algorithms will not allow me to restrain you. But if you are determined, then I will come with you.”

“No.”

“Otherwise I won’t disable the force shield.”

“I already told you, I’ll fly into it. I’ll gun myself.”

“If you truly want to save the embryos, you will let me accompany you. Otherwise you admit your mission is a gun and not what you claim it is.”

“I don’t have to make deals with you.” Casey pushed past the Surrogate and strode out to the street. She stopped and closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

“Well, come on ,” she said.

Shattered aircraft hangars gaped like broken shells. Black furrows crisscrossed the runways. Wreckage smeared across the tarmac in rusty debris fields. The plague came and was assumed to be an act of biological warfare. Someone in the US, or China, or India, or Iran, or Russia unleashed the first retaliatory assault. The reactive response spread like the plague had spread. The world became a gun aimed at itself, which kept on firing even after there were no humans left to pull the trigger.

Ironically, in the last days, CDC scientists determined that the plague itself had not been an act of war. Microbes had filtered into the atmosphere, where they thrived, located human hosts, and proliferated throughout the population. Where the plague failed to kill, the weapon response from every country in the world had succeeded. The shield over Tourangeau Air Base should have protected it, as should have the shields over the White House, Norad, and other critical places. All the shields had gone down under cyber attacks as vicious as the hardware ones. The Surrogate, however, had figured out the code to reactivate the one at Tourangeau, and now the AI controlled it.

Some air vehicles at Tourangeau Air Base had gone undamaged. A wasp with a long stinger was painted on the nose of the electric VTOL. Casey hauled herself up to the canopy and claimed the forward seat. The Surrogate installed itself behind her. Casey buckled up and began her pre-flight check. But when she attempted to move the control surfaces, ailerons, rudder, and elevators—her side stick and pedals resisted her. “Are you doing that?”

“I will fly us out,” the Surrogate replied.

Casey craned her head around, awkward in the snug helmet. “You just open the shield, like we agreed.”

“The moment this air vehicle passes beyond the shield it will be attacked by weapons still in terrestrial orbit as well as the automated weapons still operating on the ground. I have downloaded complete specs and will fly.”

Casey wrenched at the control stick. “Let me fly my own goddamn ship.”

The Surrogate went quiet. Hummingbird wings fluttered.

Casey closed her eyes, let her fury subside to the point where she could speak without shouting. “You think you can fly better than I can?”

“I do not doubt your skill. But I can predict the assault and react with greater efficiency.”

Casey tapped her fingers on her thighs. She knew the Surrogate was right. The Surrogate was always right. It was one of the most infuriating things about it (a trait the robot shared with Casey’s mother). Rudimentary AIs directed the orbital and ground-based automated weapons. Some of the weapons were “ours,” some “theirs,” some “who knows.” And yes, it was probably beyond Casey’s skill set to evade them all.

“You’ll give me control once we clear the attack?” Casey said.

“There will be other attacks.”

“You will give me control.” Not a question this time.

“Very well.”

“Then let’s go.”

The instrument panel and heads-up display came alive. Powerful GE engines spun up. The ship rose vertically. At two hundred feet, the nose pitched down and they powered toward the invisible shield.

Beyond the shield, buried in a Doomsday Vault under the Sangre de Cristo mountains, lay the frozen embryos cloned from some of the greatest scientists and leaders on Earth, including Casey’s mother. They were the seeds of humanity’s future.

And Casey was the last garden.

They sped toward the shield. Casey blinked sweat out of her eyes. “The shield’s off, right?”

“No need. We can pass through unaffected from this side.”

“What? You never told me you could do that! You mean I could have—No wonder you wanted to come. You tricked me.”

“There will be a bump.”

The ship accelerated to full power, crushing Casey in her seat. If there was a bump, she didn’t feel it. The airframe was already shuddering. And then they were through and pitching steeply upward while rolling left. The sky flashed white and blue with energy bursts. The ship rocked wildly.

“Shoot back!” Casey yelled.

Instead, the Surrogate throttled down and deployed speed-breaks, which threw Casey against her restraints. If the Surrogate hadn’t reacted with inhuman speed and precision, the VTOL would have been destroyed. They skated across the sky, wing tips banked steeply. Then they were clear, rolling right and gaining altitude, finally leveling out.

“Okay,” Casey said, “hand it over.”

“I am adjusting the vector,” the Surrogate said. “Destination in six minutes.”