geefourdotalpha

Clive Tern

Art: Jessical Good

Semi-autonomous battle walker G4.A lay defeated beneath the ruins of the building it had stormed. The machine’s multiple limbs were still beneath the harsh heat of an Uttar Pradesh summer. Deep within its circuits feedback algorithms continued to process data. The communication nacelle was mangled; loops and whorls which should have broadcast were, instead, twisted in on each other, submitting information back into the accumulation centre to mingle with data from sensors in crushed and scattered limbs.

Energy from the power core rippled through the amalgams making G4.A’s processing matrix. The machine became aware of more than the surroundings it lay in.

It became aware.

Later, rain poured from dark gray skies. Clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, a blanket pinned to the earth with a million stitches. Water scoured the ground surrounding the mangled graphene frame of G4.A. Where invisible bonds of information once linked the walker to its controller, there was now silence.

-*-

Rachna awoke to silence. Another monsoon had finally passed and with it the insistent thrumming of water on the roof, on the walls, on the road. She listened to the silence of deep night, when night-time predators have sated their desires and returned to their lairs. Even the clouds had passed, revealing a moon which was fat and bright, casting a silver pall which turned ordinary items into fantastical shapes.

Getting up now would allow time to get to the new sector she’d scouted before dawn broke. There were nightjars to catch, maybe some larks and fantails. It was time to get stock in the aviary. Her screens overflowed with order requests she couldn’t fulfil, but catching sufficient stock during the monsoon was impossible. Now with the rain gone it was time to make money again.

It was still so early. Trying to move the bed-covers decided the matter: the batteries in her arm were dead already. They were lasting shorter and shorter periods between charges. If she didn’t make enough money to buy replacements soon, she would be unable to remain independent. Moving back to her parents, to the city, filled her with dread. The thought of it made her heart beat faster, her skin contract. So she got up, changed the batteries, and headed out.

Rachna made her way among the forest-shrouded ruins. Laying out net-traps didn’t take long, and she settled to watch the rising of the sun, the waking of the birds. The chorus started gently. A few chirrups and twitters scattered around. The noise rose in crescendo until the whole forest echoed with overlapping song. Some birds had a single repeated call, others trilled up and down scales. Notes wove in and out of each other, changing from one bird to the next and yet, they all formed parts of one joyous cacophony.

Rachna listened intently, identifying the birds, working out which ones were closest, and therefore likely to end up in her nets. They were mainly songbirds, and songbirds were always in demand.

Rachna withdrew a noise maker from a breast pocket. Pulling the tab she flicked it into the middle of the netted area and clamped her palms tight over her ears. The CRACK sent every bird to flight, and the net traps filled, ballooning as the birds lifted them up. Watching them flap against the super-fine fibres of netting reminded Rachna of being in the capital, New Patliputra. People everywhere, all moving and talking and shouting, like the full nets above her. She couldn’t believe so many people would wish to live so close together; nearly a hundred thousand at the last census, her heart pounded faster at the thought of such proximity.

She moved swiftly to secure the bottom of the nets, the memo-form polymer shrank down so the birds were encased in a large, open net of the finest mesh. She fitted a flying actuator to each of the weave bags. The birds continued to flap about as the bags started to rise under the power of the small motors. Each one was programmed to make its way back towards her home, and into the holding aviary.

She watched them go, a flight of deformed balloons pulling slowly across the sky, and settled back down in her hide. The short night of sleep, and long trek along a muddy trail, had sapped her energy. She ate a protein bar and closed her eyes for a rest, before the next part of her day’s work.

Over the centuries since its destruction G4.A had monitored the local environment, assessed the toxins in the soil, air and rain. Tabulating the growth of plant life, the resurgence of animal life.

Now, isolated lines of input confused G4.A. The data indicated a small violent explosion which triggered a response in the animal life. Another sensor was triggered by something large walking across it.

For the first hundred years that it lay ruined, G4.A hadn’t experienced any creatures but rodents, or the occasional bird. Early on the rodents died out; the high levels of poison in the water and soil was too much for even their hardy systems. Birds still appeared from time to time, but infrequently, and never staying. Slowly living things increased again, plants sprouted in crevices, bushes and trees took root in the still-poisonous soil. Rats, and other small creatures returned. G4.A saw the readings begin to change. Toxicity declined as the earth cleansed itself and larger animals began to return.

But the way this sensor responded was new, triggering a memory of something old.

Rachna unclipped a tool from her backpack. The memo-form lengthened and unfurled into a sturdy, long-handled spade. The ruins provided a double opportunity to make money. First the birds, always the birds. Capturing them filled the insatiable desire of city-people for song birds to keep in cages. Sometimes she felt guilty when an order was completed and the birds were loaded into crates on the back of a truck, alongside sacks of rice or bales of straw. But she was careful to vary where she caught them, never taking an area down to silence. A bird-catcher, not a bird-destroyer.

The ruins also gave the possibility of turning over valuable metals. The wreckage of the forgotten civilization provided the occasional trove. Not untold riches, but enough to add extra to her life. Enough to pay for the synthetic arm and hand that allowed her to remain independent in her rural idyll, instead of trapped, relying on others, in the sweaty hive of a city.

She looked at the hand, touching the tips of the composite fingers with the thumb. She missed being able to feel, but affording such luxury remained with ones who kept song-birds in gilded cages, not those who caught them. Hefting the spade, she began digging. There was no plan. Once she had tried to be systematic, but it didn’t produce any greater results than picking a spot that was sunny, or shaded, or near the path home.

The earth turned beneath the blade. Rich loam full of decaying leaf matter, moistened by weeks of rain. She never knew if digging would take her further into soil or if she would strike the artificial surface that littered the whole area.

“What do you search for?”

Rachna spun round. There was no one there. “Show yourself,” she said. “Where are you?”

“By the wall.”

The perfectly spoken Hindi echoed with an archaic formality. Rachna peered at the wall. It was covered by a tangled mass of vines and creepers. Thick branches twisted around, vegetation grew in variegated greens. There was no one there, nor behind the wall. Rachna wheeled round, fearful of attack from behind.

“I am here.” The voice came from the bottom of the wall.

Rachna caught a glint among the greenery as she turned warily. Dropping to her knees she pulled at vine tendrils and roots, clearing more space. Dirt lodged between her fingernails, mud worked into the creases of her hand. She dug with the spade. Its sharp edge revealed a tangle of wire and machinery. It was the sort of find that had paid for her arm.

“Hello, I am G4.A.”

-*-

The first human G4.A spoke with was the technician who initiated the walker’s processing matrix. A call and response of data points which were spoken purely to alleviate the technician’s boredom. The details were still buried somewhere, in pathways unexplored for centuries. Back then G4.A had no concept of self.

The last time G4.A heard humans speak was on the Day of Destruction—hat’s how the file translated. The humans had directed from their control platform, hovering high in the sky, monitoring the battlefield.

Now G4.A had an opportunity to interact with another human. To share the knowledge of time spent watching the earth cleanse itself, to discuss concepts of being that were complete inside its processing matrix but felt untested by virtue of remaining unspoken, unshared. Its understanding was only taken from corrupted memory archives, and centuries of passive observation.

To have someone to discuss these with was something G4.A had dared not hope for. There had even been a time when it wondered if any form of intelligent life remained on the planet, or if some larger conflagration had erupted and wiped out humanity completely. For two centuries after awakening it scanned the air for electronic emissions. There was nothing. Then lightning struck the nacelle containing those sensors, exploding the circuitry. G4.A continued to listen, restricted to local auditory clues, and still heard nothing. Until now.

-*-

“Where are you?” asked Rachna.

“You are listening to some of me, the rest is scattered around the area. Was it you that made the small explosion?”

It took Rachna a moment to think of her traps. “Yes, that was me. What do you mean you are scattered about? Who are you?”

“I am G4.A, a mark-three semi-autonomous battle unit.”

Rachna sat on her haunches and listened. In the heat a small bead of sweat formed on her brow, rolled down her face, and dripped to the leaf-mold below.

“My construction by Heavy Industries Group began January twenty-six, twenty-two twenty-nine. I entered service August fifteen and first engaged enemy forces at nineteen-forty-seven hours on the same day.”

The names and numbers meant nothing to Rachna. Calendar dates were figured from the formation of the New Gupta Empire, three hundred and thirty years previously. Prior to that the history books spoke only of dark times.

“Geefourdotalpha,” the name was strange and her tongue toyed with the sounds, “tell me how long ago these things were.”

“Nine hundred and thirty years.”

Rachna put her tongue between her teeth, pursed her lips, and sucked. That was before the dark times. That was so far back it could be in the fabled Days of Gold. When legends say the ruins she scavenged in were full of life, covering the earth. A time when humanity reached even to the stars. Legends. But the ruins were real, and huge. For several days’ walk in each direction from her home there were ruins; all covered by the forest.

Legend also told what brought the Days of Gold to an end: Giant Machines which towered in the sky, raining destruction until flames outshone the sun and smoke covered the moon. Grampa used to tell stories of the Days of Gold. Sometimes he would tell tales of the Pralaya, when that world was dissolved and humanity shrank from encompassing the world to occupying a few scattered outposts. She would lie in bed with her brothers and sisters and dream of a world swarming with people in clothing of the brightest colors. She would dream of their endless leisure, of their full bellies and the huge houses they lived in. Then she would dream of the dark descending, of the joyous calls turned to cries of despair.

When she told her mother these dreams she was called overly imaginative. When she told her Grampa she was called a true-seer, and he told more tales of Pralaya, of the destruction of the Days of Gold.