Tesla: A Teen Steampunk/Cyberpunk Adventure (Tesla Evolution Book 1) (23 page)

“No. Impossible.”

“Could it do something like tune or synchronize with a mind?”

“The complexities of the mind are impossible to replicate in a machine. There are a hundred billion neurons in the human brain, interconnected via trillions of synapses. A single firing neuron might communicate to thousands of others in a single moment. So no, a machine cannot have what we call a mind. But some machines can imitate or pretend within a reduced set of operations to have the
appearance
of having a mind.”

Nikola ran his finger down the page. “It’s always been our dream—mankind’s dream—to make a replica of ourselves, either like a god … or just so we can have a friend who won’t be mean to us. But it’s been an impossible dream.”

Sebastian looked at the drawing. It looked similar to the ones he had drawn himself, terrifying and unstoppable. “How long have we been fighting?”

“How long has mankind been fighting itself? Forever. How long has mankind been fighting the cyborgs? A thousand years, on and off.”

“Have we learned anything after all this time?”

“No. Other than fighting is bad.”

“But why is it still happening? Surely there must be some reason why the cyborgs are continually attacking.”

Nikola shrugged. “If only we knew. We could meet them at some kind of diplomatic table and talk peace. But they never want to do that. There’ve been attempts but they’ve always ended in disaster. Our representative would often end up dead. And now you can’t convince anyone to go. So we hide hoping they’ll give up one day.”

“But there’s always hope.”

“But after a thousand years, it would appear not. There’s only endurance. And the cycle goes around, decade after decade, century after century, until no one can remember why. It’s what we’ve always done. And I’m sure the cyborgs are the same. They probably don’t know why they attack us either, other than it’s what they’ve always done.”

Sebastian listened, but he felt it was all wrong. Someone had to hope for change. Without hope, there would never be any change unless something dramatic happened. “Can’t we use the war machine to stop it once and for all?”

“Part of me would like to say yes. But if we invoke our machine who’s to say they don’t have their own? Do we really want weapons that destructive roaming the world? And part of me understands that we don’t know how the machine works. Not even how to give it power.”

“It has batteries. Do you have any of those?”

“I refer you back to my first point.”

“What if we were on the edge of extinction?”

“We’ve been there before and it didn’t help. It would be best to let sleeping dogs lie, Sebastian.”

*

It was quiet around the town. Those who had returned were either in hospital or being debriefed in an attempt to ascertain what had gone wrong. The cyborgs had been ready and waiting. The cyborgs had known they were coming. Did they sense their approach? Did they have some new flying beast that could not be seen?
 

Gavin was the most valuable link they had. After all the arguments and the blaming, he had been called in and questioned for days.

Sebastian was dying to find out what had happened. He
knew
they shouldn’t have gone without him. He had taken to walking around the streets trying to calm his emotions. And that’s when he first noticed it. The familiar pain crept up on him slowly, except that instead of being a single point of pain it now felt like a wide band encompassing a vast area of geography. It was unlike anything he had felt before and it scared him.

He ran back to Nikola’s office, taking the stairs two or three at a time. He paused briefly to knock before charging in. “Nikola, I think there—”
 

To his distress, Nikola wasn’t there. Over by the window was his antique telescope. Sebastian swiveled it around and pointed it at the distant horizon. The blurred images swam in front of him as he desperately tried to focus on something. Then he caught a glimpse of a light. Then more. He finally pulled focus on a line of advancing cyborgs. There must have been hundreds of them. He needed to get word out.
 

He ran down to the second level and pounded on Albert’s door. There was no answer. Where was everyone?
 

He ran down the stairs and out onto the quiet streets. He sprinted over to Melanie and Mr. Stephenson’s quarters. Both were gone. He racked his brain, trying to think of where they could be.
 

He ran down to the town center, into the middle of the square. The statue of the city founder stood looking proudly toward the east. Sebastian sat underneath it, calming his thoughts. He had only sat here a few times while waiting for someone to turn up and he had never noted the name before. He wiped his hand over the plate, scraping off a layer of dirt. He read: JOSHUA RICHARDS, WHO SAW THE LIGHT. HE LISTENED.

Sebastian took a couple of deep breaths. In the quiet of the square he sat motionless, and on the wind drifted the voices. Melanie was shouting. And he knew that where Melanie was, there would be Gavin and everyone else.
 

He turned around. The voices were coming from the clock tower. He never knew there were rooms in there.
 

He ran over to the tower and tried to wrench open the door. It was locked. He concentrated and felt the lock mechanism. The pain in his mind was getting stronger. He played with the magnetic fields, rocking the large cogs back and forth until they rolled over. He heard the click as the lock aligned.
 

He pulled the door open, charged in and ran up the stairs. The first two floors were empty offices. The third floor had a closed door. He could hear the voices. He kicked open the door and burst inside.
 

Nikola and Mr. Stephenson were sitting at a table, opposite Gavin, who was strapped into a chair. Melanie was sitting next to Gavin holding his hand. An old woman was pouring steaming liquid into various mugs. There were several other people Sebastian had not seen before. Military types.
 

In the corner, although he later came to question this, he swore he could see a cyborg. Or part of a cyborg. Beaten and bloodied.
 

The pain in his head amplified. Above, he could sense a dragon soaring silently by.
 

The military men looked furious. Nikola and Mr. Stephenson jumped up in surprise.
 

“Sebastian! How did you get in?” Nikola said.
 

“They come,” Sebastian said. And the wall opposite him exploded.

30

A DRAGON SWOOPED in through the wall. The pain in Sebastian’s head forced him to his knees. The agony felt eternal. Fire boiled away the wall, leaving a molten gap into the darkness outside. With his head swimming, Sebastian staggered to his knees.
 

Melanie slashed at the bonds tying Gavin down. Sebastian pulled himself up, ran over and wrenched the bonds off Gavin’s feet. He helped Gavin stand, but then Gavin staggered, falling into Melanie’s arms. She leaned into him, picked him up and hefted him over her shoulder. Then she turned and ran through the narrow doorway.
 

Everyone else followed Melanie, squeezing through the doorway after her. Sebastian wedged himself into a corner just as another fireball hit the opening and fire engulfed the room. As he was forced out into the thick-walled corridor, he saw the last moments of whoever, or whatever, had been tied up over by the wall. The charred, blackened mess fell out the hole and into the street below.

Screams erupted from the houses. People streamed onto the streets, full of panic and distress. Fire rained down from unseen enemies above, searing into the buildings. Walls exploded and buildings tumbled to the ground, collapsing into morgues of rubble.

The dragons crisscrossed the city, laying down long rivers of fire through the streets. Panicking and screaming, people ran hysterically through the alleyways. Where streets intersected, they crashed into each other, with the strong knocking over the less nimble and trampling them. Then they charged off in a new direction, until another wall of fire steered them down yet another alley.

In the town center stood two unmovable figures. Around them, buildings were crumbling and toppling over as their foundations melted in the fierce inferno.

“Everyone’s down on the west side,” shouted Thrown above the sounds of destruction.
 

“Everyone?” said Nikola.

“Yes. People are being herded down that way by the GSFBs.”

“How many are there?”

“Five.” Thrown held up his hand with each finger extended. “But one’s putting out more than double the power of the others.”

“What are our options?”

“We can possibly take out two of them with the tesla towers, maybe we can be lucky with the cannons, but chances are slim. We miss, we end up destroying more of the city. Did you learn anything from your interrogation?”

“Water. Water is a weakness,” Nikola said.

“You plan on offering them a drink?”
 

“That is not helpful at this time.”

“What are your orders, Commander?”

“If we have the power, unleash the towers. Fire the cannons. Pray for rain. It’s everything, and all, we can do.”

Thrown saluted and ran off to carry out the instructions while praying for rain.

*

Sebastian had taken refuge under the great statue in the center of the city square. It was solid graphite and he was sure it could survive a direct hit. If not, it would turn into the world’s biggest diamond and he would die the richest person in the world.
 

Melanie had told him to wait while she disappeared with Gavin into a small, very low building, which had them both stooping as they entered. Mounted on the building’s facing wall were a series of vertical, interconnected cogs, placed for reasons of decoration. There were no windows, and the edges of the building were reinforced with double bricks.
 

A few terrifying minutes later Melanie reemerged on her own. She ran over to him. “Nikola says I have to get you out of here.”

“Where’s Gavin?”

“He’s under the city, recovering.”

“
Under?
What’s down there?”

“A great underground river that flows under the city. They’ve placed huge turbines in the water to generate hydroelectricity.”

“What else is down there?”

“Stuff. It’s not important at the moment. Enough of this, we’re heading east.” She reached out for him.

“Wait, I need to get some stuff from the school.”

“No, we don’t have time.”
 

She lunged after him but he twisted out of her grip.

“No!” he shouted and took off down the street.

She swore and ran after him. She caught up and kept pace along beside him. “There’d better be some important stuff in there or I’ll never speak to you again. Mainly because we’ll both be dead.”

“It’s important to me.”
 

He zoomed around the corner and down into the steps of the dormitory. The door was broken and most of the room was on fire. The roof was creaking ominously. The beds of those that hadn’t returned had been packed away. Only a few remained.
 

He jumped over Isaac’s bed and grabbed his pack from beneath his own. He opened it and pulled out the chestplate Merv had crafted what seemed like years ago now. It still glittered like the jewel of the desert. He slipped it on and fastened it in place. He threw on his pack and nodded to Melanie.

“Oh, shiny,” said Melanie. “Does it do anything special other than look very bright?”

“That’s all it needs to do.”

The two ran back up the stairs just as the ceiling collapsed. They turned toward the eastern gate and ran to the intersection, where they came to a shuddering halt.
 

A dragon was crouched down in the alley, waiting. It released a fireball.
 

Melanie picked up a screaming Sebastian and threw him through a shop window. She threw herself back against the stone wall, narrowly avoiding the sheet of flame rolling past. The beast took several steps down the alley, its metal body scraping against the wall. Its angular head turned and looked in through the shattered window.

Dark red beams came spearing out of its eyes, cutting through the furniture in the shop. Then the beams hit something shiny and bounced back, hitting the dragon in the face. One of its malevolent dark eyes blinked then went dead. The beast screeched and reared up on its hind legs. It brought its wings down and leapt into the air, lurching erratically as it fought to gain height.
 

Sebastian and Melanie clambered out of the rubble back into the street. The beast roared and stared down with its one remaining eye, turned then flew away.

“I see your shiny top works,” Melanie said. “You should tell people about that.”

“I did. They didn’t want to listen to me.”

“I think they might now. It’s scary that it was looking for you, waiting to attack you. But not as scary as if it was looking for me.” She was about to lead him toward the east gate when a thought struck her. “You don’t seem to be in pain, like before.”

“It’s still bad, but I’m getting used to it. I was a bit dizzy from being thrown through the window. So maybe if my mind can’t concentrate it hurts less. I don’t know. It’s all new to me.”

They took off for the gate when Sebastian suddenly stopped in his tracks. “Can you feel that?”

“What?”

“Something powerful.” He spun around on the spot then looked down. “Below us. Something bad.” He closed his eyes and cleared his mind. They snapped open. “It’s them, underneath us. We need to tell the others.”

*

Nikola had cornered Thrown to force an update out of him. “Can we get anything in the air?” he demanded.

“You must be kidding,” replied Thrown, visibly irate at being delayed.

“How long until the batteries are useable?”

“About an hour.”

“An
hour
. See what you can do with the cannons.”

“It’s going to get messy. It’s still dark. We can’t see what we’re shooting at. It’s less than ideal. Have you secured Number Two? And Number One?”