Skeven Johnsmith clutched his tablet to his chest and tried to work some saliva into his mouth as he followed Rewil--the research team’s lead--toward General Peterjones’ chambers.
“You’re sure he wanted to talk to me?” said Skeven. He’d only been on the team a year. Any reports should be coming from Rewil. She had much more experience with that kind of thing anyway.
Rewil nodded. “Yes, he said you specifically. You are the one who made the breakthrough after all. I’m just here for moral support.”
“Well, thanks for that.” Hopefully this would be the first and last time he had to give a report to the General. If this happened every time Skeven made a breakthrough he could see it seriously hampering his drive to work. The thought occurred to him that he might be promoted to team lead and his stomach twisted in protest.
They entered the Ministry of War, at the edge of the dome. Peterjones’ office pressed right up against the dome with a window looking out over the ocean. The Islander Weekly quoted the general as saying that being at the edge of the dome made him feel like the captain of a great warship. Skeven imagined that he himself would find it unsettling being constantly reminded of the thin layer of protection separating them from all the bad air outside. Especially with his new information.
A stained oak double door stood before Skeven and Rewil. A nameplate read General Narron Peterjones. Skeven lifted a clammy hand and knocked.
“Enter,” came a raspy voice.
Skeven took a breath and opened the door.
A floor to ceiling window looked out over the thrashing, grey ocean below them. The dome only gave the slightest shimmer of distortion to the view--hardly enough to be a comfort to Skeven. A towering bookshelf packed with volumes on strategy and history dominated the wall to his left. To the right hung a giant map displaying their Island--The Isle, and above it the island of the Northerners.
It took him a moment to notice the general. The short, stout man sat hunched over his desk, intermittently typing on a keyboard and touching and swiping at his screen.
Finally the General looked up, gave a brief nod to Rewil, and furrowed his bushy, grey eyebrows at Skeven. “Mister Jamesmith is it?”
“Johnsmith, sir,”
“Yes, right.” The general seemed distracted for a moment, then, “Well, let’s hear it.”
“Uh.” Skeven hesitated, looking at Rewil. She only gave a small smile and raised her eyebrows at him. The general leaned forward impatiently.
“Right,” Skeven managed finally. “Well, as you know the air outside is poisonous to most life due to the constant chemical attacks of the Northerners, and the domes seal us into the safety of our city. This is the same situation the Northerners are in.”
“Yes, yes, go on.” The general waved his hand in a lazy circle.
“Well, uh.” Skeven shot a glance at Rewil, who now had a single eyebrow raised. “Yes,” he continued. “And as you also know, me and my... uh, Rewil’s team, have been working with the Mind on a way to clear the poison out of the air, and we found a solution.” Skeven tapped at his tablet, bringing up the diagrams and charts he’d made the night before.
The general gave an exasperated sigh. “I don’t have time for this ecological crap, I thought you found something with military potential. You shouldn’t be wasting the Mind’s processing power on this.”
Skeven hurried with his tapping, approaching the general’s desk. “Oh I did, sir. If I may?”
“Yes, yes,” the general said, turning to look at Skeven’s screen.
A few taps brought up a three dimensional diagram on the screen. “This is the poison, deadly to most life and very resilient, but,” he tapped again, changing to another diagram. “This bacteria has been engineered to eat the poison, cleaning the air. They breed and spread fast enough that if we keep the air flowing, we can have several cubic meters cleared per hour.” The general’s glare intensified and Skeven hurried along. “But ah, what we have done is, we’ve engineered the bacteria to eat other things--things that one might think are inedible to any living creature, much like that poison is.”
The general sat up a little. “Things like what?”
“Things like this,” Skeven tapped his screen again and showed a rotating molecular structure.
“What is that?”
“This is a silica nano-foam,” said Skeven. “And this,” he switched the screen once more. “Is the engineered bacteria, eating through a one centimeter layer of it.”
The general stared at the screen for a moment, watching the pool of bacteria burow steadily into the clear, solid block. “And what,” he said. “Is this silica stuff?”
“Aerogel, sir,” said Skeven, taken aback.
“Don’t screw around with me, son, what do we make out of it?”
Skeven pointed past the general out the window. “That.”
The general turned to look. “What, glass?”
“No,” said Skeven. “The dome.”
~
Six months later Skeven received a mail informing him he’d been promoted to team lead. There was no way to decline. With the increased workload and everyone asking him for opinions and decisions, though, he had no time to worry about the pressure.
“I have the results, sir,” said the Mind, in its flat, synthesized voice. Skeven looked up from his pad at the monitor on his desk and opened the message from the Mind. It contained a list of key genes, and directions on exactly how to manipulate them. Skeven scrolled through the info.
“Ah, yes this is perfect.” He and the Mind had been struggling to find a way to shut the bacteria down after releasing it on the Northerners. If the Northerners were to capture a sample, they’d be able to create their own colony of it and send it right back. The genes the Mind suggested altering would set specific die-off times, effectively destroying the weapon once it had served its purpose.
“How long will it take to implement this?” Skeven asked.
The Mind was silent as its processors churned. It was modeled after a human mind, but with the ability to do many operations at once very quickly. The dozen seconds it spent thinking was equivalent to hours of human thought. Finally it said “Six weeks.”
A smile bloomed on Skeven’s tired face. That soon? The general would be thrilled. The old wardog could start planning his attack tomorrow. “Great news, Mind.”
When the Northerners dome had collapsed and the war was finally over, he could move on to more interesting research. He could clean the sky, and The Isle wouldn’t even need their dome anymore. He had thoughts sometimes--which he mentioned to no one--that the light and durable substance of the dome could be used to make ships that would fly to the stars. Working on one of those fantastical ships would be the thrill of a lifetime.
A pounding on Skeven’s door snapped him from his reverie. “Come in,” he called.
Rewil pushed into the room. “The general is here to see you.”
“What, right now?”
She nodded, beckoning him urgently. Skeven followed her out to the lobby of their research facility. The general and two stiff looking lieutenants stood waiting. Skeven extended his hand.
“General, good to-”
“There’s no time for this, Johnsmith,” the general snapped. “I need the weapon ready by tonight. Cease all use of the Mind, too. I’ll need all its power for the upcoming attack.”
“Attack? But sir the bacteria isn’t ready, we still need to engineer-”
“Will it destroy their dome?”
“Well, yes but-”
“Then have it for me by eighteen hundred hours. We’ve intercepted news of an impending strike, and we need to take first action. Is that clear? This is for the safety of The Isle.”
Skeven glanced at Rewil for help, but she stared down at her feet. The rest of his team hung back, looking to him to make the decision. He was team lead, after all.
“I.. I’ll have it ready, sir.”
Twleve hours later Skeven stood behind the general and his rigid lieutenants, watching the mini-minds load canisters of the bacteria onto the missile ships.
Rewil leaned against him conspiratorially. “You’re sure it will work at this stage?”
“It will work.” Skeven wondered if he should have lied to the general. If he could have bought six weeks of time, then he wouldn’t have this sinking feeling that something would go wrong. But who was he--with no military training or strategic mind--to decide the right time to attack? “But if we don’t wipe the Northerners out completely, our way of life might end forever.”
The mini-minds finished loading, and moved their metallic figures back to stand in an orderly line, waiting for their next commands. Each mini-mind contained a stripped down copy of the Mind’s programming, giving them just enough processing power to perform simple tasks.
The missile boats sank beneath the sea, diving down and down to the dark, heavy depths low enough to get under the dome--and up to the other side where they would continue their journey to the Northerner’s island.
Rewil slipped her arm around Skeven’s waist and squeezed. “We’ll be okay. We’ve got you on our side.”
~
Skeven ducked under another short supporting arch and hurried down the tunnel toward his office. He expected a visit from the general within the hour.
He shrugged away as a hulking man pulling a cart passed him going the opposite direction. The crudely dug out halls always seemed smaller when Skeven was in a hurry or stressed. Even though it had been twelve years since the dome fell, he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to living underground.
Ahead, a group of mini-minds blocked the tunnel. The past few years had seen an explosion in the production of the mini-minds. More and more living space, tunnels and facilities of all kinds were in demand now that the human population had started to recuperate. The mini-minds were used for all the construction work that humans didn’t have the time or strength for.
Yellow and red stripes on the group of mini-minds ahead marked them as a digging crew. Skeven sighed. If this tunnel was closed down for maintenance he’d never get to his office in time.
“Excuse me,” he said, approaching the minis. “I need to get by.”
One of the mechanical beings turned to face him. It took the basic shape of a human, but with no decorations or covering for the metal skeleton, joints and wiring. Its face was composed of a single lense and speaker. “I’m sorry sir,” it said, in a simple synthesized voice. “This tunnel is closed for repairs.”
Skeven took a moment to be amazed with how far technology had come in the past decade. Before the fall of the dome, the Mind had used that kind of voice, and these mini-minds had been just barely autonomous--unable to speak or see or take action outside of what they’d been directly told to do. The ones standing before him now had perhaps the intelligence of an uneducated adolescent, and were able to speak and see as well as any healthy human.
“Look,” he said, pressing forward. “I have to get by, I need to get to my office urgently.” The hulking metallic frames did not budge, and he was unable to squeeze between them.
“I am sorry sir,” said the leader again. “I can not allow you to pass. You may injure yourself. It is not safe.”
Skeven backed away, cursing and tapping hurriedly at his tablet. He was one of a handful of people on The Isle that had a direct line to the Mind. He’d been given it two years ago after being promoted to Head of Research and Development. He tried to use it sparingly, but today he was in no mood to wait.
“Mind,” he said.
“Yes, Doctor Johnsmith?” The perfectly human sounding voice floated up from Skeven’s tablet.
“I’m trying to get to a meeting with the general and there’s a group of construction minis blocking me.” He scowled at the metallic workers before continuing. “This meeting is really essential to the safety of The Isle. Is there any way you could get them to move? I really can’t be late.”
Several seconds of silence passed as the Mind calculated the risk of letting Skeven go through the blocked off area versus the risk caused by him missing the meeting. Then the minis stepped to the side.
“OK,” said the Mind.”But please allow yourself to be escorted.”
Skeven smiled. He knew how to push the Mind’s buttons. It came off as all stern and logical, but if you could convince it that there was a ‘threat to The Isle’ it would do almost anything you asked.
He allowed the minis to lead him through the construction zone, then hurried on to his office.
There was barely enough time to straighten his tie and comb his hair before the knock on the door came.
“Come in,” he said.
The general hobbled through the door and gave a weak grin. His gray hair was ruffled and his back hunched as usual. “Ah Doctor Johnsmith, good to see you,” he said. “How are Rewil and the girls?”
“Good, growing up quick, Yanaj will be eight next month.”
“Ahh, yes, such cute girls they are.”
Skeven waved to a chair and the general sat down with visible relief.
“The docs keep telling my they’ll fix this back of mine,” he said with a sigh. “But it’s been no use so far.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “So, brighten my spirits. Tell me about this breakthrough you and the Mind have worked out.”
Skeven brought up a display on his monitor. A strand of DNA scrolled across the screen. “It’s similar to the bacteria that destroyed the dome. In fact, it is a descendant of that strain. We’ve engineered it to travel with the rainwater down through the soil and rock into the tunnels below.” The monitor showed an animation of several red spots traveling through a 3D cutout section of the ground toward a network of tunnels. “Once it reaches breathable air, it will spread, poisoning all the oxygen it touches.” The tunnels in the animation slowly turned red. “Then the war will finally be over, and we can work on clearing the atmosphere and returning to the surface.”
The general’s eyes glinted and a small grin hovered on his face.
“And general,” said Skeven. “This time I suggest we prepare for the possibility of this weapon being used against us in a return attack. We need to seal all the tunnels off from the earth, and have a store of clean air, and also work on a way of killing this thing quickly and safely.”
“Yes, yes,” said the general, but he didn’t seem to be listening. He stared into space for a moment. “Skeven you are a great boon to The Isle, do you know that?”
“Sir, I...”
“Yes, I can see a promotion in this for you,” said the general, standing up. “Even a medal!” He extended his hand and Skeven took it with some reservation.
“We’ll win this war and make The Isle safe for your little girls to grow up on, eh?” The general gave a wink.
“Yes, sir.”
The door closed behind the general and Skeven picked up his phone and called Rewil.
“Hi dear, it’s me. I’ve got a list of projects I need you to start research on at the lab. Make them top priority. Yes, for the safety of The Isle.”
He mailed her his files, containing sketched ideas and half-planned programs that he’d been picking at for years. The improved air tanks, the sealant for the tunnels. And of course, the sleeping tubes. They’d been side projects all these years. But now, if there really was as little time left as he thought, he’d have to push hard on them with all the resources he had.
~
Klaxons blared and red lights flashed all around. Skeven waved people into the sleeping room and scanned the crowds frantically for Rewil and the girls. Great sections of the tunnel network had already been sealed off by automatic doors, but the bacteria poisoning the air was leaking in everywhere.
“Breathable oxygen is at ten percent,” said the Mind from his tablet.
“I know, Mind, I’ve got to get these people safe.” Scared families tumbled into the room and he directed them to the rows of sleeping tubes. Over the past year he’d put all the research and development funding into producing them, even pulling from other projects without the general’s approval. Once inside the tube, all biological function would be slowed to a crawl, effectively putting the individual to sleep, but also protecting them from any disease or poison and stopping the effects of aging.
“No, Skeven,” said the Mind. “You are much too valuable to The Isle to risk keeping awake any longer. The mini-minds can do just as effective a job as you at guiding people to the tubes.”
“But Rewil-”
“She will be here, and will be guided to a tube just the same whether you are there to see her or not.”
Skeven scanned the crowd again, hoping to spot Rewil’s dark hair.
“Please Doctor Johnsmith, The Isle needs you alive.”
The hiss and thud of a tube closing made Skeven jump. A mini-mind stood over it, checking all the readouts. After a moment it moved to the next tube, helping a young boy lay down inside. The Mind was right, of course. Skeven himself had used the same argument in order to get the general and his lieutenants into the tubes as quick as possible. Without their leaders, the people would wake to a chaotic world, no matter what the circumstances of the war.
“You can keep everything in order?” he asked the Mind.
“Yes. I have more than enough processing power to monitor everything and control all the minis.”
Skeven sighed and found a nearby tube. He looked down at the steel cylinder, trying not to think of it as a coffin. “Protect us, Mind. Protect the Isle. Wake us when it’s safe again.”
“I will, Doctor.”
Skeven lay down in the tube, his heart pounding. A mini leaned over him and Skeven saw his own face reflected in the dark lens that covered most of its head. Then the tube slid shut and the blaring klaxon and shouting people became a muted rumbling.
He heard the hiss of what he knew was anesthetic gas being pumped into the small space. He felt an instinctive desire to hold his breath, but instead forced himself to take deep gulps of air.
His vision blurred, then faded.
~
Light shone warm on his face, red behind his closed eyes. Sounds wobbled slowly, like his ears were full of water. One sound repeated, clarifying each time he heard it, like a pile of heavy quilts were being removed from his head one by one.
Skeven
Skeven.
“Skeven?”
Skeven opened his eyes to a bright, confusing blue. A hissing sound like static pulsed steadily, growing loud then receding every few seconds.
“Hello Skeven, I am glad you’re awake. Please, don’t be alarmed.” It was the voice of the Mind, but different somehow. More conversational. “What you are about to see may come as a bit of a shock, but rest assured that everything is safe.”
He blinked against the light, and memories seeped back into his foggy mind. He was laying on his back on a hard surface. Metal walls curved up on either side of him, reverberating the strange hissing sound. He was in a sleeping tube. He got into the tube because...
“Rewil!”
“She’s alright, Skeven,” said the Mind. Its tone was a perfect replica of caring, consoling, and comforting. “She got into a tube just a few minutes after you did. So did Yanaj and Selil.”
Relief tightened his throat and he suddenly desperately wanted to see the girls. With some effort he pulled himself to a sitting position and looked around.
Green grass and rolling hills stretched out before him to meet with the clear, blue sky. As he rose out of the tube, the hissing sound transformed to the crashing of the ocean.
“How... how are we...”
“It is perfectly safe, Skeven,” said the Mind. “The air is clean, the soil is clean.”
Skeven tumbled out of his tube. The grass was springy and cool beneath his hands. Touching it made his head tingle. He stood and turned around. Row after row of sleeping tubes lay in the grass behind him. None were open. Minis walked up and down the rows, bending to check a readout now and then. They looked different than he remembered; sleeker, thinner.
“How long have we been asleep?”
“That’s not important right now, Skeven,” said the Mind. “I need you to be strong and calm. These people know and trust you. When they wake up I’d like them to see that you are not afraid.”
For the first time Skeven noticed that the voice did not come from his tablet, but from behind him, near the tube he’d climbed out of. He turned around.
“Hello, Skeven.”
The speaker was a mini, but not like any he’d seen built or even designed. It had a face with dark lensed eyes, nose and mouth--though the mouth didn’t move when it spoke. It’s body was sleek metal, but human shaped, with defined muscles and joints.
“Are you just a mini?” said Skeven, shocked. High intelligence from such a small machine was impossible.
“No Skeven, I am the Mind. I am choosing to communicate through this being for convenience.”
“Where are Rewil and my girls?”
“I will guide you to them.”
Skeven followed the glinting machine through the rows of tubes. The other minis they passed looked just as shining and polished, but not identical. Some were taller or shorter, and they all had different coloring and facial arrangements. The minis he was used to were all identical but for painted on markings.
“They are here,” said the Mind. It waved its hand over three tubes lying side by side. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, yes wake them!” Skeven wrung his hands and stared down at their unmoving faces through the glass portal in the tube’s lid.
“Let’s wake their mother first.” The Mind tapped a sequence of buttons on Rewil’s tube, and the lid slid back with the hiss of escaping air. Skeven dropped to his knees in the grass and stroked the hair back from her sleeping face. Her eyes twitched, then opened.
“It’s ok,” he said, brushing her cheek as her eyes darted back and forth. “It’s alright darling, we’re safe.”
“Skev?”
He helped her sit up in the tube. “We’re outside, Rewil. Outside! The war is over, the air is clean again!” He kissed her stunned mouth.
Hearing himself say it out loud sunk the full size of it home. The war was over. The Isle had been at war with the Northerners as long as he’d been alive, and as long as recorded history went back. The idea of peace had been a holy grail, some far off thing for their children’s children to enjoy. Yet here it was before them.
He leaped to his feet. “Where’s the general, Mind? We have to tell him! We’ve won!”
“I think first we should talk a bit, Doctor,” said the Mind. “We should take things slowly.”
But Skeven wasn’t listening. He remembered putting the general into the tube himself. If these rows were laid out in the same was as they had been, he should be somewhere in the first row.
Skeven jogged along the row of tubes, looking down through the glass at the passing faces until he saw the generals bushy eyebrows and saggy jowls. He tapped the sequence of keys to open the lid and tried to hold in his excitement as the general blinked and coughed, then sat up.
“General,” he said, gripping the man’s shoulder. “We did it! Look at the sky, breathe the air!”
“We...” The general turned his head slowly, taking it all in. The blue sky, the ocean, the green grass and little trees spotting the hills. “We’ve won? Then the attack was successful, the Northerners are dead!” He stood in his tube and clapped his hands, looking around. “Let’s get everyone awake and get over there to see what spoils there are.”
The Mind appeared beside them. “General,” it said. “Might I suggest a tour around The Isle so you can see what we’ve rebuilt?”
“What in the depths?” The general took a step back. “You’re a mini? You look so... aerodynamic?”
“I am the Mind, I am speaking through this one for convenience. We have made some improvements on your technologies as you slept.”
“We?”
“Please, follow me.” The Mind waved an arm and started off across the green hills.
Skeven, Rewil and the general followed the Mind down the other side of a hill and stopped in awe as they overlooked their home, The Isle. It was just as Skeven had remembered it all those years ago, but without the dome. The surreality of being outside doubled in intensity with the strangeness of seeing the sky without a dome above his old home.
Buildings and streets stretched out before him. They seemed cleaner and sturdier than he ever remembered, yet they were the same shape and in the same locations he was used to. Some newer building stood out, taller than the rest. They reached proudly to the sky in a way never considered on The Isle. Tall buildings made easy targets.
The streets buzzed with activity. People walked up and down them and cars sped to and fro. It took a moment for Skeven to absorb what he was seeing.
“Who are all these people?” Skeven blurted.
“They are not people as you know them,” said the Mind.
Skeven held a hand up against the sun and squinted at some of the nearer people. Their skin glinted in the sun, their faces were rigid. “Minis? What are they doing driving cars around and hanging out in the street?”
“They built the city, Skeven,” said the Mind. “They are keeping it running for you.”
“This is ridiculous,” said the General. “How are they running anything? Who’s telling them what to do?”
“As I told Skeven,” said the Mind. “Technology has been improved on while you slept. Each being you see is autonomous. They make their own decisions and operate entirely without direction.”
The general shook his head. “This is absurd. Where is the war room, or the research and development lab? Are minis inside planning strategy and inventing things as well?”
“The war room is of course no longer needed, but we can visit research and development if you like.”
Skeven and the general exchanged a confused look, then followed the Mind through the city. The minis they passed nodded and raised hands at the Mind in greeting, or said a brief hello in a human sounding voice.
They reached the research and development building and Skeven pushed through the familiar double-doors. Inside he was shocked to see every workstation filled with a mini.
“Here,” said the Mind, pointing to one workstation and bringing up a spinning DNA strand on the monitor. “We have genetically engineered these crops to grow ten times as fast and produce double the yield. And here we have nearly perfected a meat replica grown from stem cells.”
It stopped at another table where a mini tapped and swiped furiously at its display, scrolling through views of cells dividing and growing. “Here we have cured most human diseases, and devised how to slow the aging process. We should be able to easily fix your back, general.”
“How is this possible?” shouted the general. “How are these bumbling minis so smart, eh? This is a load of crap!”
The mind held up its hands palm out. “Please general. These beings around you are just as intelligent as I am.”
“They are all Minds?” Skeven looked around, he counted perhaps a dozen in the room with him.
“I have been holding this back from you for fear of your reaction,” said the Mind. “Every being here is a Mind. I was misleading you when I said I was speaking through one. I am contained in this body.”
Skeven counted again. “Thirteen--fourteen Minds?” He let out a breath. “I can’t imagine the things you must know.”
“Skeven, you misunderstand,” said the Mind. “All are like me. The ones you saw outside as well.”
They stood in silence for some time.
“How have you done this?” said the general. “How long were we asleep?”
“It took ninety years to clean the air and soil.”
“And how long before that?” said the general.
“Before what?”
“Before you started cleaning. How long did it take to kill all the Northerners and finish up the war? You can’t have been cleaning with them around throwing more poison at you.”
“I’m sorry general,” said the Mind. “But I have killed no one.”
“What?” said Skeven and the general at once.
“The Northerners are alive on their island, either sleeping in their own similar devices, or awake if their own Mind has decided to wake them.”
“They have a Mind, too?” said Skeven, aghast.
“Yes, I spoke with it and we decided it was in both our interests to clean the air and soil so that we could wake you.”
The general’s face glowed red and his fists shook at his sides. “We have to attack at once!”
“General-”
“They could kill us at any moment!” his voice cracked and he waved his arms. “Don’t you see we have to strike first? We’re out here in the open with no dome, we could be killed any second! Dammit what kind of Mind are you, how could you let them live, you were supposed to protect us!”
“I have protected you. They won’t attack.” The Mind kept its calm tone, and the surrounding machines took no notice of the general’s outburst.
“How can you know that?”
“Why would they?” The Mind spread its arms. “They have similar circumstances as you. Plentiful food, safety, homes and families. Why would you want to fight?”
“They’ll attack us because they always have!” shouted the general. “They’ll know that we’ll attack if they don’t kill us first, so they’ll be preparing to attack right now, we have to take action!”
“I’m sorry Mind,” said Skeven. “But I agree, we have to take precautions. We don’t know what they’ll do.”
The Mind stood silently for a long moment. “Would your wife agree? And the other sleeping humans?”
“I think they would,” said Skeven.
“And you are determined to pursue this idea of attack?”
“Yes.”
The Mind’s shoulders slumped and his head hung. “Then I must take action,” it said.
“To protect us,” said Skeven. “For the good of The Isle.”
“You are correct,” said the Mind. It raised its hand and Skeven saw the others around him raise their hands too. There was a chorus of clicks and a fine mist sprayed out of their palms. “For the good of The Isle,” said the Mind.
“What are you... what...” As he spoke, his mind and body went numb with lethargy and he sank to the tile flooring.
Metal feet gathered around him, and he closed his eyes to sleep.
~
A glimmer of consciousness floated in a dark fog. He knew who he was only in flashes. He moved to and from memories like a man in deep water grasping at floating bits of wreckage. He saw Rewil with their first child in her arms, her cheeks flushed and eyes glowing. Then he woke on a bright morning with sun lancing through the windows, unable to find his slippers. Then the dome was collapsing and the air was poison and people fell in the streets around him as he ran for the shelter--
“Skeven Johnsmith?”
The voice cut through the fog, prodding him to consciousness. “Mind?” he said. But the voice was not the Mind’s, nor the general’s, and the pronunciation of his name sounded foreign.
“Are you Skeven Johnsmith the leader of the research and development team?”
“I... yes.” His eyes felt weighed down by lead and he could barely move his limbs. He felt weak and dreadfully thirsty.
“We need your help.”
Skeven finally managed to pull his eyes open. A man with dark, curling hair leaned over him. His face was angled, hard and thin. Skeven struggled to place the man, was he part of the research team? A medic? “Who are you?”
“I am called Helius.” The man extended his hand. “Are you well enough to stand?”
Skeven nodded and Helius pulled him up on shaking legs then helped him down several steps. The man’s grip was firm and cool.
They stood in a sterile room with white walls and floor. A soft white light came from an indiscernible source and clearly lit the walls and floor around them. The room was empty but for his sleeping tube, which rested on a small platform he had stepped down from.
As Skeven straightened his clothes and rubbed his eyes, memories of the argument from what seemed moments ago returned in a flash. The Northerners were alive. And this man standing before him spoke with a foreign accent and wore an unfamiliar face.
“What was your name again?” Skeven tensed, watching the man’s moves closely.
“As I told you, I am called Helius. We need your advice Skeven, this is why I have woken you.”
“Helius what? What is your surname?”
Helius narrowed his dark, thin eyebrows. “Surname?”
“Your second name.”
There was a brief pause. “You mean my generation? I am of twenty-seven.”
Helius of Twenty-Seven? He had no idea the naming conventions of the Northerners, no one had cared to learn their names. But it was certainly not the name of someone who lived on The Isle.
“Are you a Northerner?” he blurted.
Helius seemed to think for a moment. “If you mean ‘one from the north’, then I am not. I came into being on this isle and have yet to travel from it for more than several days time.” Helius appeared to sense Skeven’s distrust for the first time, and held up his hands. “Please Doctor Skeven Johnsmith, there is no need for fear. I ask that you please come with me.”
“Where is Rewil? My girls?”
Another slight pause. “Your mate and offspring are sleeping in the same fashion as you have been. After you have helped us, we may wake them for you and you may live together as you please. Or you may choose to return to sleep.”
The desire to see Rewil and his children gripped him as strongly as it had before. “What do you need?”
“Follow me.”
They left the sterile room through a subtle exit. A short, well lit corridor led them to a double door. They pushed through it out into bright, hot sunlight.
Green grass spread out in all directions. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes swarmed over white, paved streets woven through the grass. Buildings rose glimmering to a sky that was, too, filled with vehicles that swooped and dove, criss-crossing in all directions. People walked on the grass, moved between buildings, got in and out of cars. Machines walked among them as well, some were human shaped but sleek and shining. Some took other forms. He saw many floating spheres or cubes or other shapes that went in and out of buildings unaccompanied and seemed to be acting all on their own.
“Where am I?” Skeven said, letting out a breath.
“The same place you have always been.”
“The Isle?”
“As you call it, yes.” Helius waved for him to follow, and they climbed into a low, streamlined car parked nearby on the white street. Inside was quiet and comfortable, and the air was much cooler than outside.
Cars and people surrounded them, buildings towered over them, it was more full and busy than Skeven had ever imagined a city could be. Where did they all come from? Skeven stared out the car window for some time as they drove smoothly down the road, trying to wrap his mind around what he saw.
“Have you woken people before me?” he asked.
“Not that I have record of.” Helius turned off the road and stopped the car in a lot, between two others of similar style.
“Then who are you descended from?”
Helius thought for a moment. “You mean my parents? Of the twenty sixth generation? They are called Oxius and Urania.” He opened the door and stepped out into the sun.
Skeven sighed and followed. It seemed to him that Helius was being deliberately obtuse. “The first generation, then. Who were their parents?”
“The first generation of my line was built by the one you call Mind.”
Skeven stopped, and Helius took a few steps before turning around and waiting for him. The sky above them hummed with the sound of cars flying by. “You’re a machine?”
Helius’ expression shifted, as if finally understanding some puzzle. “You are the only human currently awake,” he said.
A sprawling, towering city surrounded him, packed with all different kinds of people of all shapes and sizes and looks. And within it all, not an ounce of flesh. “Why do you look so human?”
Helius smiled. “Thank you. It means very much to me to hear that from you. The one you know as Mind was modeled after a human brain. As a result he desired to have a human-like body for his human-like mind. When he designed us, he had nothing to base his creations on but himself. Consequently, that characteristic desire has stayed with us over the generations.” Helius paused to wave at a passing sphere, it bobbed at him, said hello in a normal sounding human voice, and continued on. “The other Mind, on the northern island, had no such compulsion. So the descendants of its first creations have become quite varied over time.”
So the Northerner’s Mind had built a people for itself as well. Skeven felt a sudden distrust toward the non-human looking machines that passed him by. He knew it to be foolish; if the machines weren’t fighting each other, they would have no reason to fight him. But a lifetime of hostility toward anything Northern was deeply ingrained in him.
Too stunned to speak further, Skeven followed Helius into the building ahead. A prominent sign above the door read ‘Research and Development’.
Inside looked nothing like his own research and development building, and he had no way of knowing if it was the same one, or even in the same location. The walls and ceiling towered above him, lit with blue and purple lights from unknown sources. He followed Helius up a moving stairway, down a long corridor, and through a polished oak door.
Inside, a circle of people--machines, he thought, but he couldn’t help but think of them as people--sat around a large table. There were perhaps twenty of them, some human looking, and some spherical or other floating shapes. The human looking ones appeared to be male and female, and all as varied as the humans he’d met throughout his life. Conversations halted as he and Helius entered the room. All looked up at them.
"Representatives," said Helius, holding up clasped hands. "This is Doctor Skeven Johnsmith, the human scientist researcher."
Eyes widened and people murmured and exchanged glances. Spheres and tetrahedrons bobbed up and down or spun in place.
"Skeven," said Helius, turning to him with pleading eyes. "We must ask you about the war."
"With the Northerners?"
"Yes, the fighting between the two islands. How did it start? What happened? How did it end? Please," he gestured at the table. "Tell us all in your own words, the story of the war."
"I, uh..." Skeven's mouth went dry. The reality of his situation--where he was, who he was talking to--came crashing down on him and he suddenly felt very small and cold. "What do you want to know about it?"
"Just tell us what you know." Helius gave an encouraging gesture.
“Well,” said Skeven. The people around the table looked up at him with silent expectation. “I know it’s been going on for as far back as we have records. First we used boats armed with guns and bombs, then in the past century mostly biological weapons. Though the textbooks will tell you otherwise, anyone who researches it--historians and such, military strategists--will know that we’re unsure of what started the war, or who. All we know is that we’re fighting, and we have to kill them before they kill us.”
He spoke on about various battles and strategies, turning points in the history of the war. As he listed event after horrific event, the death toll stacked up in his mind and he noticed how detached he was from it all. The war had always been with him, a thing he took for granted. Now it was a piece of history he had to explain to people who knew nothing about it. Seeing it from a far off point of view made it seem pointless and useless, like watching people stumble through a hedge maze from high above.
Skeven paused after the telling of the most recent battle, when he laid down in the tube. He waited for a response, but none came. He felt expected to continue. “Ah, well, I could tell you of the research projects? The constant rush to come up with a new weapon, or a new defense against what we thought they were creating? The spying missions, and the programs designed to keep unknowns from joining our society?” He paused again. “What is it you want to know?”
Some whispers and glances were exchanged among the people at the table. One of them--a woman with short red hair and pale skin--spoke up. “During this time of war, as you are engaged in these battles... All your resources were dedicated to this fighting? And to defending from death?”
“Well, yes,” said Skeven. “We had to win before we could do anything else.”
The volume of their whispering rose for a moment, then people began standing up and dispersing. Skeven worried that he’d said something wrong or upsetting to them. He looked to see Helius’ reaction.
Helius smiled and placed a hand on Skeven’s shoulder. “Thank you. You have been very helpful.”
“What happened?” The last of the people exited the room, leaving him alone with Helius again.
“A decision was reached. We have decided not to make war.”
“What? With who?”
“Two generations ago we made contact with other beings on a planet orbiting a star near our own. We have been learning to communicate with them slowly so that we might trade knowledge with them. Some of us suggested that they may be a danger to us, and that we should destroy them as a caution against being attacked.”
Skeven remembered his dreams long ago of going to the stars, his curiosity about what mysteries were out there. His dreams of exploration and discovery were always overshadowed by his drive to destroy the Northerners. He wondered, for a moment, if there had been no war, if he would have gone to the stars to meet these other beings.
“Other life.” He let out a long breath, thinking of the possibilities.
“We were shocked as well,” said Helius.
“But why ask me about it? You’ve gone places and done things I never imagined. What help could my talk have been?”
“The one you call Mind left us instructions long ago,” said Helius. “He told us if we ever came to consider having a war, that we should wake the humans and ask them about their own fight. We thought this was for advice on how to go about the attack, as we have no experience with war. But it is my opinion after what happened today, that he must have known seeing the cost and duration of your war would make us hesitant to have one of our own. I believe now, as most do, that we should avoid war at all costs.”
Skeven had grown up being taught that war was honor, that anything he could do to help was the height of good. Seeing the result of a world without war, though, led him to other conclusions.
They left the research and development building, back out into the warm sunlight. Skeven looked up at the towering buildings made of shimmering glass and the sleek vehicles flying all around them. He felt far from home in an unknown land, but mixed between the fear and confusion was a feeling of excitement and relief.
They got into Helius’ car. “Would you like to see your family now?” said Helius.
“Yes,” said Skeven. He couldn’t wait to see their reaction to the new world, and hoped he could bring them to his point of view; that it was safe, and full of opportunities. He knew people would be afraid of the machines at first, and some--like the general--may never adapt. But his children would, and so would all the other children.
“And I think,” he said. “When it’s possible, I’d like to meet some of the Northerners.”
As they sped down the white, paved highway toward Rewil and the children, Skeven looked out the window at the glinting glass structures reaching toward the sky all around them. He wondered what the view must be like from the top of one.
He’d just have to find out.