Revolution 19 (23 page)
Authors: Gregg Rosenblum
Their mother squeezed her husband’s hand. “What’s happening, dear?” she said.
He nodded at her. “You’ll be fine,” he said. Doc led her into the bedroom.
“You okay, Dad?” said Nick.
“Better than you,” he replied. “You look like hell.” He raised his eyebrows. “Your eye … my God …”
“Present from the bots,” said Nick grimly. “Long story.”
Their father blinked hard, suddenly looking like he might cry. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “Of all of you. It’s incredible, what you’ve done.”
“Piece of cake,” said Kevin. “Nick was the muscle, I was the brains, and Cass played dodgeball.”
“Shut up, Kevin,” said Cass.
“Kids,” said their father with a smile, “be nice to each other.”
“Dad,” said Nick, “what next? Once we get out of the City?”
Their father shrugged. “We find another Freepost. Our best bet should be to the north. And then we start over.”
“So we just wait for the bots to come and destroy ‘Revolution 20’?” said Kevin. “Or maybe if we’re lucky we last a few extra years and become 21 or 22 instead?”
“We have to survive,” their father said. “It’s all we can do.”
“We can fight,” said Kevin. “Look what we did here.”
“In forty-five minutes the bots will be back online, and the City will be back under their control,” said their father. “Look, kids, it really is incredible what you’ve accomplished, but you didn’t do any lasting damage.”
“But we can,” said Kevin. “We can figure it out.”
“How?” said their father.
“Dr. Miles Winston,” said Nick. “The Consciousness. Does that mean anything to you?”
Their father frowned. “Miles Winston? Where did you hear about him?”
“Tech Tom,” said Nick. “Right before the bots executed him.”
Their father hesitated. “Damn … poor Tom. Dr. Winston … he’s the father of this whole mess. Famous man. Brilliant roboticist … he designed many of the early war bots, and created the first communications networks for them. That’s what he called the Consciousness.” He shook his head. “But he died in the Revolution, supposedly.”
“That’s not what Tom thought,” said Nick. “He said something about flock messages, and another Freepost.”
“First we have to get to safety,” said their father. “Then maybe we’ll talk about hunting down ghosts.”
Ghosts …
Nick was suddenly struck by a memory. “Dad …” said Nick.
“Yes?”
“A dog. Was there a black dog when I was a kid, the day we escaped?”
Nick’s father blinked, then nodded. “We saved it from the rubble. A poodle. It died a few days after we got out. An infected leg.”
“I remember,” said Nick. “I remember the dog.”
“You wanted to name it,” said Nick’s father. “I wouldn’t let you, because I knew it was going to die.”
“It still deserved a name,” said Nick.
“Yes,” said Nick’s father, looking away. “You’re right.”
TEN MINUTES PASSED, AND THEN FIFTEEN, AND THEIR MOTHER STILL didn’t emerge from the bedroom. Everyone in the room grew more and more nervous. Finally, their father said, “I’m going in.”
Just then Doc appeared in the hallway, supporting their mother, who was ghostly white and leaning heavily, almost in a full slump, against his shoulder. Their father rushed over to help. Nick pulled himself to his feet, and Doc and their father set their mother down in the chair.
“I couldn’t get it out,” said Doc. “I’m sorry. She lost a lot of blood, and the chip is too tangled in blood vessels—she’d bleed to death if I cut it out.”
“What do we do?” said Cass.
Their father bent down and held her hands. “Kids,” he said, looking back at them over his shoulder, “you’ll need to go without us.”
“Dad, no!” said Cass. “We can’t!”
“Yes, you can,” said their father. “Look what you’ve already done on your own.”
“Your chip is out,” said Kevin.
“I’ll be fine. You can put it back in, right, Doc?”
“Definitely,” said Doc. “Maybe.”
Their father nodded. “We’ll find a way to get Mom’s chip out, and then we’ll come find you. Head north. Find a Freepost. Get to safety.”
“Dad, we did all this work just to find you,” said Nick.
“We can stay and fight the bots,” said Kevin. “We can hide, and fight.... I’ll make more overloads …”
“Nick, kids, you need to go,” said their father. “Now, while you have the chance. I’m not leaving your mother, and she can’t leave the City with her chip.”
Nick nodded, taking a deep breath. He gave his father a hug. He fought hard to keep from crying.
Their father hugged Kevin and Cass and pushed them gently toward the door. “You don’t have much time,” he said. “Go north. We’ll find you.”
“No,” said Kevin.
“Kevin,” said Doc, “listen to your father. Get to safety. I’ll let the nearby Freeposts know you might be coming.”
“How …?” began Cass.
“The flock,” said Kevin. “You lied.... They’re not just City birds, are they? They’re true carriers!”
Doc smiled. “Guilty.” His face grew serious, and he put a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “Now listen to me,” he said. “You’re right, you can fight. Never forget that. Got it?”
Kevin nodded.
“Good,” said Doc.
“Now get out of here,” said their father.
“We’ll wait for Lexi and Farryn,” said Nick. “They can’t stay in the City once their chips are out. It’ll just be a few minutes.”
“No,” said Lexi. “There’s no time to waste. Go now, while you know you can. We’ll find you.”
“You don’t know a thing about surviving outside the City,” said Nick.
“I’m tough,” said Lexi. “Haven’t you figured that out by now?” She kissed him. He held on and didn’t let go until she pushed him away.
“North,” he said. “I’ll be looking for you.”
Lexi hugged Cass and Kevin, and then Farryn stepped forward to shake Nick’s hand. “Good luck, Nick,” he said.
“Thank you, Farryn,” said Nick. “Thank you for all your help.”
Farryn turned to Kevin. “The second most talented tech hacker I know,” he said, shaking Kevin’s hand.
Kevin grinned. “Same to you,” he said.
Then Farryn turned to Cass and smiled. “Well, Cass, be seeing you soon again, I hope.”
Cass kissed him on the cheek, then handed him the artwork she had been sketching. It was a portrait of herself, rough around the edges because she had been working so fast, but still obviously her.
Farryn stared at it, saying nothing for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, Cass.” His smile slid into a grin. “You still owe me something I can sell, though. This one I’m keeping for my private collection.”
“Find me, and we’ll negotiate,” said Cass.
They each hugged their mother and father one last time. Nick looked at everyone in the room one last time, burning their faces into his memory—Doc, Farryn, Lexi, his parents—in case he never saw them again. Then Nick, Cass, and Kevin left. They scooted north along the quiet City streets, reached the City limits, and continued on, heading back toward the woods.
THE SENIOR ADVISOR CAREFULLY CHEWED A SMALL PIECE OF STEAK. THE sensors he had recently installed in his mouth registered the salt content of the meat, the temperature, the exact amount of pressure required by his plastic alloy teeth to tear the flesh. He could even analyze the basic nutritional information of the food—the percentage of protein, fat, carbohydrates, iron, trace minerals.
But how did the steak taste? The Senior Advisor spit the chewed meat into a small china bowl set to the left side of his place setting. He couldn’t swallow. He had no esophagus, no stomach, no intestines—there was nowhere for the food to go. He stared at his plate, filled with a filet mignon, baked potato, and asparagus. He sighed—he had been practicing his sigh—set his fork and knife down, and pushed the plate away from him. It was yet another human mystery, this sense of taste, this “flavor” from which humans seemed to derive so much pleasure.
One of the two lieutenants in the dining room quietly removed the plate from the table. It left the room, and the other lieutenant stepped forward. Now that the “meal” was complete, it was time for the Senior Advisor’s debriefing.
“Sir,” said the bot, “City 73 is still without mainframe access. Backup will be complete in seventeen minutes.”
“Good,” said the Senior Advisor. “And the non-Citizen juveniles?”
“We can only assume they have left the City limits.”
“And their Citizen accomplices?”
“With the grid still down, we don’t know their exact status. Most likely they are attempting to remove their implants and flee as well.”
“Let them,” said the Senior Advisor.
“Sir, they can be easily apprehended,” said the lieutenant. “Even if they succeed in removing their implants, the grid will soon be back online, and we know the area they are in …”
“I have decided to let them go,” said the Senior Advisor.
“Yes sir,” said the lieutenant. “And the parents? Their status is unknown.”
“I am inclined to simply observe them, although a further round of re-education is also an option.”
“Yes sir.” The lieutenant hesitated. “Sir, to clarify, we are simply letting the juveniles escape?”
The Senior Advisor gazed at the lieutenant. “Lieutenant, are you questioning my orders?”
“No sir.”
“Good,” said the Senior Advisor. “No, we will not let the juveniles simply escape. Have them followed. Discreetly. They interest me. I wish to observe them in the wild.”
The lieutenant began to discuss other topics, but the Senior Advisor held up his hand and stopped it mid-sentence.
“Coffee,” he said. “I will try coffee again. I grow closer to understanding this sense of taste that humans so enjoy.”
THANK YOU TO HOWARD GORDON AND JIM WONG, WITHOUT WHOM THIS project would never have gotten off the ground. Big thanks also to the team at Alloy—Josh Bank, Sara Shandler, and especially Joelle Hobeika—and to Sarah Landis and Farrin Jacobs at HarperCollins, for their masterful editorial guidance. It’s a better book, and I’m a better writer, because of you all.
Writing this took many, many nights and weekends, and I want to say a special thank you to my wife and daughter: Wendy, thank you for helping me find the time, and knowing what I was going through, and Cadence, thank you for understanding, and for being the awesomest kid in the world.
Thanks to my colleagues at OCS for their friendship and support, and of course huge thanks to you, the reader, for taking a chance on my book.
Ryuji Suzuki
GREGG ROSENBLUM works at Harvard, where he wages epic battles against technology as an editor/webmaster/communications/quasi-IT guy. He graduated from UC San Diego and has an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. He lives in Boston with his wife and daughter.
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Revolution 19
Copyright © 2012 by Alloy Entertainment and Howard Gordon and James Wong
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rosenblum, Gregg.
Revolution 19 / by Gregg Rosenblum. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Twenty years after robots designed to fight wars abandoned the battlefields and turned their weapons against humans, siblings Nick, Kevin, and Cass must risk everything when the wilderness community where they have spent their lives in hiding is discovered by the bots.
