Robot Uprisings

  As I pass into its shade, the hospital tent sighs, bloated and belching and sinking into the folds of its own belly. I can make out human forms inside, shrouded, dim shapes swimming behind sheets of creticide-coated plastic. Without consciously making the decision, I stop and peer inside, hoping to find some movement or noise—some sign of life, anything, from the rows of supine mannequins.

  A quiet darkness permeates the field hospital.

  Birds call distantly in the jungle behind me. My breathing has synchronized with the building’s. Things are becoming clearer. Things inside. Men whose faces are stretched out, torsos distended into taffy-twisted malformations, limbs too long to make any sense. There are strange things growing here, I think. The cretes are like seeds. Pinhead seeds, too small to see, floating on the air. Seeds looking for dirt.

  We’re the dirt, I think, and something inside me wants to giggle.

  Private Tully comes to mind. The way he scratched the back of his head. Whatever-it-was had already gotten inside him. Planted itself in his scalp. Laid roots. A perfectly formed tooth. Bone-leached calcium.

  I force myself to look away from the hospital. Begin to jog, then break into an outright run, trying to ignore the vampiric heat from the sun at my back. My leather shoes clumsily pound the earth. Sweat wells up from my pores and forms a sheen on my forearms.

  The sweat is clear because it’s just water. Not red like blood. Not red like on her face that bad morning.

  The acrid smell of burning chemicals pricks my nostrils. I stop running and double over, breath heaving out of my lungs. The air here is thick with the smell of scorched plastic.

  I nearly vomit, and spit bitter saliva next to the steps of my ruined trailer laboratory. The wreck squats in a dark patch of burned grass, half-melted, the rear of the building drooping awkwardly like a paralyzed dog. The front door hangs from its hinges, petrified and brittle, tortured into sinuous curves by departed heat. A small reinforced window in the door has shattered, giving the trailer a baleful, Cyclopean glare.

  And everything is coated in fluttering white pellets, like snowflakes. I resist the urge to scoop up a handful, crumble them between my fingers. The pellets must be some form of my creticide.

  A respirator, I think. Get yourself a respirator.

  Inside the trailer, someone is whistling merrily. I can hear rummaging. Items bouncing off the walls and floor.

  I start to knock on the flaking plastic wall, then pull my knuckles back. Better not to touch. Every micron counts, after all.

  “Hello?” I call into the shadows. The noises stop.

  Pale eyes appear in the doorway, hovering above a clean blue surgical mask. They belong to a hunched-over man who is now peering down at me. He pulls the mask to his chin, flashing a wide yellow-toothed grin.

  “Doctor,” he says, hobbling through the doorway, arms outstretched. “Welcome!”

  I shy away from his touch. The misshapen little man is dressed immaculately in a tan T-shirt tucked into camouflage fatigues. A blue paper hairnet billows from the top of his head as he bounces down the charred steps. His meaty hands are sweating under blue latex gloves. The paper mask hangs askew at his throat. Something wrong has happened to him. A rash of pulpy scars are smeared from ear to cheek; the fleshy topography pulls his lip to the side and gives him a partial lisp. Something has been burnt off his face.

  It looks like it was done in a hurry.

  “Who are you?” I ask, keeping my hand by my side.

  “First Lieutenant Fritz, sir,” he replies, motioning toward his face in a half salute. “Your research assistant. Before the accident, anyway.”

  I don’t know whether he means what happened to his face or what happened to the trailer. I decide not to ask.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say, gamely. “The captain told me to get down here and salvage what I can find.”

  Fritz nods enthusiastically, reaches back into the room, and drags out an olive drybag. He holds it up to me. “I found your things, doctor,” he says. “Gathered up everything I could salvage. Very sorry about what happened, but they love to burn things here.”

  I take the waterproof drybag from him with a thumb and forefinger. Peek into its dark interior. Immediately, I snatch out a respirator and pull the goggles and cans over my head. Hanging around my neck, that familiar rubbery smell dazes me for an instant. I think of lipstick-red smears on white tile floors. The bag falls onto the ground and Fritz flinches, knees dipping.

  “Oh no, sir,” he mutters, picking up the bag and inspecting it. He holds it downwind and shakes it out. “We mustn’t drop our things onto the ground like that. We mustn’t be clumsy. The soil carries more than you know. The island, herself. She is swarming with the engines of creation.”

  Satisfied with his inspection, Fritz hands the bag back to me.

  “You mean the cretes?” I ask.

  “The whole coastal base is in a natural wind tunnel,” says Fritz. “But Captain says this is where we make our stand. That we should be willing to die for the cause, and so on. When the wind blows, he says, the cradle will fall. It’s why we’re all counting on you.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a doctor,” he says, incredulous. “Father of creticide. A man with a plan, right?”

  Fritz smiles at me broadly, scratches his neck where the blue paper mask clings.

  “Right,” I respond. “I do have a plan. And I am … was a doctor.”

  “And that’s why you’ll succeed where others have faltered. You won’t be rejected by him. I can feel it. It’s the genius inside Dr. Caldecot that causes him to revile the soldiers, you see? It’s his terrible genius that forces him to cut those poor boys down. But you can speak to him. Negotiate with him, doctor to doctor. Genius to genius, if you will.”

  The madman at the center of the island. Again.

  “Caldecot. Who is he? Who put him in charge?” I ask.

  “Oh, he’s a great man. A powerful man. You don’t know? Caldecot shapes the world by his will. His crete varieties are a revolution. A running leap into the future. He created all this with his mind, don’t you see? All of this. Every bud and leaf of it!”

  “You’ve known him?”

  “I was honored to work for him.”

  “Where? When?”

  “In the interior. Deep inside. ‘Ten klicks in, where the light gets dim, and the sights get mighty strange,’ as the troopers are prone to singing.”

  The malformed little man tilts jaundiced eyes toward the coast, watching the razor-thin line of the horizon.

  “You were injured,” I say. “Was that thanks to this genius as well?”

  Fritz looks at the ground. He absentmindedly caresses his face with one finger, gingerly tracing the broken terrain. A childlike look of pure sadness folds itself into the asymmetry of his eyebrows and into the spongy flesh of his cheeks. I wonder what a crete infection can do to a person’s neurology. If this is his face, what might have happened to his mind?

  “In the end, I wasn’t worthy to serve a man like that,” he says. “The doctor tried to show me the future, you know, but the sight of it was too much. It was so bright. It scorched my eyes and I ran away when I should have stood firm and been brave.”

  Fritz looks up, hopeful.

  “But you’re made of different stuff, like him. I read your file, doctor. Pardon me for saying it, but you know when to take the lives of others into your hands. Men like you … you can make death mean something. You’re the ones strong enough to bring light into the world.”

  I remember sipping hot air through a respirator. Squinting through the foggy plastic of my goggles while a crest of blood blossomed over the floor. Her body was a fallen mountain range across the room. It was just a vial. Just a single broken vial.

  We use your invention by the planeload.

  “I gathered your team. They’re waiting over at the tree line. Six rebounders was all I could find. Sergeant Stitch and Private Tully are with them. Old friends of yours, right
? All outfitted and ready to go. Everything you need for today is in the drybag, including a map.”

  I mutely look down at the bag in my hands. My plastic respirator digs under my chin in the familiar way that it used to in the lab. Inside the bag, I spot cardboard boxes labeled MRE and a full surgical satchel and a specimen sampling kit and tan clothing and a pair of boots. A metal container the size of a lip balm is labeled CRETICIDE.

  I look uncertainly at the tree line.

  The moist jungle breeze sighs over the back of my neck, gentle as a snake gliding under sheets. If I stay here, I’ll end up in that tent of horrors behind me. The cradle will fall. But there is another scientist on the island and he’s only ten kilometers away.

  Fritz is still blinking at me with his poisoned eyes.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I’ll be back before nightfall. Set up a place for me to sleep?”

  “It will be my honor, doctor,” says Fritz, but the way he is watching me, well, I get the feeling he’s not convinced. We shake hands awkwardly.

  He presses a vial into my palm.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  Fritz looks away, somehow embarrassed.

  I hold the inky cylinder up to the light, turn it upside down and watch a viscous tide of gray-green flecks tumble in slow motion toward the opposite end. Fritz motions at me to put it away, his head swiveling frantically. I tuck the vial into my pocket.

  “It’s a flesh-eater,” says Fritz. “A dangerous crete. But useful in case of an emergency.”

  “Won’t it disseminate?” I ask.

  “Liquefied,” he says. “Too heavy to spread in the air. Eats the target only.”

  A flesh-eating crete. Murder in a bottle.

  “And who do you think I’m going to have to kill?” I ask.

  “What?” responds Fritz, blinking his pale eyes in surprise. “Oh no, doctor. You don’t understand. When the time comes, you’ll want to use that on yourself.”

  I can’t think of how to respond.

  “It’s a quick one, see?” says Fritz. “A gift for you, sir. Quicker than most. Why, it’s almost painless.”

  7

  At the tree line, Stitch and Tully and four other young troopers are smoking cigarettes and standing around, waiting. Nobody leans on anything. They’re too smart for that.

  I reach them, wearing my new military fatigues. My cleanroom experience has paid off. I’ve got my pant legs tucked into chunky tan boots. The laces are tied up tight and also tucked inside my boots. I’ve duct-taped the whole thing snugly around my ankles. Smeared creticide around the seams. I notice the others have done the same. My outer jacket is buttoned up all the way, the fabric stiff and crinkled with a pre-coating of what must be creticide.

  I wonder if it’s the same stuff I invented.

  Thankfully, the wind is pushing the wet smoke of burning jungle away from us, letting it spread up and over our heads like a false sunset. The sheer volume of particulate matter created by the chemically fueled combustion is forming a shield—a toxic screen that stands a chance of knocking down or absorbing whatever nightmares might be floating in on the languid wind. It’s a poor man’s creticide.

  “You’ve all been inland before?” I ask. “Near the epicenter?”

  The troopers look at each other. Stitch speaks for them: “Little bit. It’s why we decided to jump ship in the first place. Let me tell you, going in there is no fun at all.”

  Chuckles pulse from stubbled throats.

  “Well, don’t worry,” I say, pointing with my folded map. “I just want to get the lay of the land for now. We’ll go a few kilometers, grab some samples, and get the hell back out. Good?”

  In response, several cigarette butts hit the dirt. The paratroopers watch me emotionlessly. Each wears a neat rucksack and has a pistol strapped to his hip. I don’t know what they’ve been through. What atrocity made them run. But the lack of emotion on their faces makes me uneasy. I find it hard to tell them apart. They’re all hopeless and unafraid in the same sick anonymous way.

  By habit, I tap the respirator hanging around my neck to make sure it’s still there. A few others do the same, like silent echoes.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  Two ruts from a jeep path snake beyond the tree line and into the island interior. Stitch points out the path and guides us in. After a few minutes, he silently drops back and gives me the lead.

  As we trudge into the throat of the jungle, I hear a droning noise from far above. More supplies are sloping out of the sky. Swaying wooden crates strapped to double parachutes. The wind is pushing the line of supplies too far east, away from the island.

  More sacrifices to the ocean.

  Someone laughs. Otherwise, the march is silent. Even our footfalls are quiet—the troopers step high to avoid brushing the grass whenever possible. The men keep their mouths closed, sleeves down. They’re happy to have sweat dripping out of their pores, just so long as nothing goes in.

  The jungle is slowly strangling this narrow road. It’s obvious that it used to be a major route, clean and straight and worn into the terrain. But it’s been a couple of years since it was used. At least. We march down the forked tongue in single file, draped in chlorophyll-stained shadows. The wind-brushed canopy of leaves murmurs above. There is nothing obvious to harvest, nothing seems out of the ordinary. Just dark waterfalls of vines and leaves.

  Until the first scream rasps out of the jungle.

  It comes from somewhere up ahead, just off the path. A feminine wail of pain followed by a high-pitched, wind-sucking gurgle. The soldiers glance at each other. Respirators go on in panicked synchronicity.

  I put my finger up for everyone to stop moving. Nobody lays a hand on his weapon. Instead, questing fingers check seams of clothing in a flurry of small patting movements. Each man inspects the man next to him. I think of an educational video I saw once of ants cleaning each other.

  Leaving them, I step off the path to investigate the noise.

  “Hello,” I call, voice muffled by my respirator. “Are you injured?”

  Ducking under arched ferns, I hear another gurgling wheeze. In the tunnel vision of my respirator goggles all I can see is a long-overturned tree trunk. It’s a tall one, surrounded by debris created when it fell. A shallow pool of dark reddish liquid seeps into the dirt around it, drowning shattered pieces of bark.

  It looks exactly like a pool of congealing blood.

  Then, slowly, the trunk moves. A gnarled pink orifice splits open. It sprays bits of bark as a gust of air pushes out in a grunting shriek. My mind stumbles, trying to comprehend.

  It’s the small things you’ve got to look out for.

  The tree trunk is breathing, sheaves of fleshy bark rising and falling in crying gasps. Some kind of medical crete has grown into the wood. It has given birth to something that defies all natural experience. Cretes have limitless potential. Atom by atom, they spread and consume, twisting the world we know into a phantasmagoria.

  “That’s just wrong,” says Tully. He and Stitch have gathered behind me, panting through their respirators.

  “It’s incredible,” I say. I squat and peer into the shuddering hunk of meat. “Those look like human lungs in there. Formed by a colony of sub-micron-sized nanomachines. Billions of them penetrating a natural substrate and self-replicating from local materials. Manipulating the carbon atoms. Tree bark into human organs.”

  I reach into my drybag and pull out the sampling kit, snap open a disposable pick, and scrape a piece of bark into a vial. I try not to wince at the high-pitched grunting coming from the log.

  “Imagine,” I say, musing. “A functioning pair of lungs.”

  “Ain’t he just like a dog chasing a car?” Stitch asks Tully, nodding at the look of awe on my face.

  “Wonder what’ll happen if he catches it?” asks Tully.

  “Be eating a rubber sandwich is my bet,” replies Stitch.

  “This is science,” I say, looking between the two of them. I p
ack up the sampling kit as I talk. “Not magic. It’s the result of a simple reaction. A medical crete designed to generate human organs landed on an organic wood substrate. Okay? The crete doesn’t care where it gets carbon from as long as it gets it. They’re windborne and they’ve gotten into the vegetation and that’s bad. But it just means we have to be more careful.”

  A sliver of nausea slips into my stomach. Part of a human heart is wedged in the pool of reddish mud. It shivers, once.

  “Yeah, but the tree is fucking breathing, man,” points out Stitch.

  “It sounds like it’s in pain,” mutters Tully, reaching for his gun. “Maybe we should put it out of its misery.”

  “No,” I say, standing and putting my hand over his. He shies away like I’ve slapped him. “Try and think of it as a collection of atoms in a particular pattern. That’s all. Little machines forming order out of chaos. It’s all according to a plan. Just don’t touch anything. Keep your respirators on. I had no idea the tech could become this complex this fast. I spent years studying this and I never dreamed that in my lifetime I would see …”

  Stitch and Tully are staring at me, bored.

  “Wait a minute,” I say, looking around the clearing. “Where are the other guys?”

  “Bailed,” says Stitch, grinning.

  “Rebounders, man,” says Tully. “What’d you expect?”

  “Sonofabitch,” I exclaim.

  I turn quickly and my jacket accidentally brushes against a drooping leaf. A pang of terror obliterates my anger. Veins bulge in the swaying leaf. They are thick and fractal and my God, I don’t know—they could be made of human tissue, for chrissake.

  Stitch and Tully are watching me like I’m an animal in a zoo cage. Two pairs of dark goggles glittering over respirator cans. At least they’re finally interested.

  “Why didn’t you go with them?” I ask, quietly.

  “What’s the point?” asks Stitch. “You can’t stop progress, right?”