Daniel Wilson - Robopocalypse

A face appears in the window. The woman pulls her goggles onto her forehead, ducks her head in and out in a quick movement. Then she looks down at me and Nolan. There is so much light around her head and her skin is cold and I can count her bright teeth through her cheeks.

She has seen my eyes but she doesn’t flinch. She just studies me and Nolan for a second, grinning.

“Sorry about that, kids,” she says. “Thought you were Rob. My name is Dawn. Any chance you guys are hungry?”

Dawn is nice. She takes us to the underground hideout where the New York City resistance lives. The tunnel house is empty for now, but Dawn says that pretty soon the others will be back from scouting and scavenging and something called chaperoning. I’m glad, because Nolan doesn’t look very well. He is lying on a sleeping bag in the safest corner of the room. I’m not sure he can walk anymore.

This place is warm and it feels safe, but Dawn says to be quiet and careful because some of the newer robots now can dig very well. She says the little machines patiently burrow through the cracks and they go toward vibrations. Meanwhile, the big machines hunt people in the tunnels.

This makes me nervous and I check the walls around us for vibrations. I don’t see any of the familiar pulses rippling through the soot-stained tile. Dawn looks at me funny when I tell her that nothing is in the walls right now. But she doesn’t say anything about my eyes, not yet.

Instead, Dawn lets me play with the bug leg. It is called a spiker. Just like I thought, the spiker came off a big walking machine. This machine is called a mantis, but Dawn says that she calls it “Crawly Rob.” It’s a silly name and it makes me laugh for a second until I remember that Nolan is hurt very bad.

I squint my eyes and look into the spiker. There are no wires inside it. Each joint talks to the others over the air. Radio. The leg doesn’t have to think about where it goes either. Each piece is designed to work together. The leg only has one move, but it’s a good one that combines stabbing and clawing. That’s lucky for Dawn, because a simple electrical pulse can make the leg extend or curl up. She says this is very useful.

Then the spiker jerks around in my hands and I drop it on the ground. It lies there for a second, still. When I concentrate on the joints, the machine stretches itself out slowly, like a cat.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. Dawn stands next to me, her face radiating heat. She is excited.

“That’s incredible. Let me show you something,” she says.

Dawn leads me over to a sheet hanging from the wall. She pulls it aside, and I see a dark hollow filled with a crouching nightmare. Dozens of spider legs lurk there in the darkness, just a few feet away. I have seen this machine before. It was my last natural sight.

I scream and fall back, scrabbling to escape.

Dawn grabs me by the back of the shirt and I try to fight her, but she is too strong. She lets the curtain drop back into place and holds me up on my feet, letting me hit her and claw at her face.

“Mathilda,” she says. “It’s okay. It’s not online. Listen to me.”

I never knew how much I needed to cry until I had no eyes.

“Is that the machine that hurt you?” she asks.

I can only nod.

“It’s off-line, honey. This one can’t hurt you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I say, settling down, “sorry.”

“It’s okay, baby. I understand. It’s okay.” Dawn strokes my hair for a few seconds. If I could close my eyes, I would. Instead, I watch the blood pulse gently through her face. Then Dawn sits me down on a cinder block. The muscles in her face tense up.

“Mathilda,” she says, “that machine is called an autodoc. We dragged it here from topside. People got hurt… people died to bring that machine here. But we can’t use it. We don’t know why. You have something special, Mathilda. You know that, right?”

“My eyes,” I respond.

“That’s right, honey. Your eyes are special. But I think there’s more than that. The machine on your face is also in your brain. You made that spiker move by thinking about it, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you try to do the same thing with the autodoc?” she asks, slowly pulling the curtain back again. Now I see that the jumble of legs is attached to a white, oval body. There are dark gaps where the legs meet the main part. It looks like one of the grub worms that me and Nolan used to dig up in the backyard.

I shiver but I don’t look away.

“Why?” I ask.

“To save your little brother’s life for a start, honey.”

Dawn drags the autodoc into the center of the room. For the next thirty minutes I sit next to it cross-legged and concentrate like I did for the spiker. The legs of the autodoc only twitch a little at first. But then I start to move them for real.

It doesn’t take long to feel out all the legs. Each one has a different instrument attached to the end, but I only recognize a few: scalpels, lasers, spotlights. After a little while, the machine starts to seem less alien. I understand what it feels like to have a dozen arms, how you can be mindful of where your limbs are and still focus on the two that you are using right now. As I flex the spider legs again and again, it starts to feel natural.

Then, the autodoc speaks to me: Diagnostic interface mode initiated. Indicate preferred function .

I flinch, concentration broken. The words were in my mind, as if they were scrolling across the inside of my forehead. How could the autodoc put words into my mind ?

Only then do I notice the crowd of people. About ten survivors have come into the tunnel. They stand together in a semicircle, watching me. A man stands behind Dawn with his arms wrapped around her, and she holds his arms with her hands. I haven’t seen so many people since I got my new eyes.

A wave of red-orange pulses radiate toward me. The bands of light come from their beating hearts. It is very beautiful but also frustrating, because I can’t explain how pretty it is to anyone.

“Mathilda,” says Dawn, “this is my husband, Marcus.”

“Nice to meet you, Marcus,” I say.

Marcus just nods at me. I think he is speechless.

“And these are the others I told you about,” says Dawn. The people all murmur their hellos and nice to meet yous. Then, a young guy steps forward. He’s kind of cute, with a sharp chin and high cheekbones. One of his arms is wrapped in a towel.

“I’m Tom,” he says, crouching down beside me.

I look away, ashamed of my face.

“Don’t be scared,” Tom says.

He unwraps the towel from his arm. Instead of a hand, Tom has a lump of cold metal in the shape of scissors. In wonder, I glance up at his face and he smiles at me. I start to smile back before I get embarrassed and look away.

I reach out and touch the cold metal of Tom’s hand. Looking into it, I am amazed by how the flesh and machinery come together. It is as intricate as anything I have ever seen.

Looking harder at the other people, I notice occasional bits of metal and plastic. Not all of them are made of meat. Some of them are like me. Me and Tom.

“Why are you like that?” I ask.

“The machines changed us,” says Tom. “We’re different, but the same. We call ourselves transhuman.”

Transhuman.

“Is it okay if I touch?” asks Tom, motioning at my eyes.

I nod, and he leans down and touches my face. He peers at my eyes and lightly brushes his fingers against my face where the skin turns to metal.

“I’ve never seen this,” he says. “It’s incomplete. Rob never got to finish. What happened, Mathilda?”

“My mom,” I say.