“We’re going to need help with this. I think it’s best if we go see a friend of mine first.”
Matilda takes an exaggerated step backwards, palms extended before her.
“First, I see we’re still keeping things in the ‘vague as hell’ column. Second, did you just admit that you actually have a friend?”
Closing the hatch to the maintenance panel, James stands up.
“The best friend any Taciturn ever had. A program.”
James adjusts a final knob, and the portal comes back to life. James reviews the device’s diagnostic screen and frowns.
“Pretty shitty connection out here, but it should hold up for a bit.”
Matilda claps her hands to her forehead.
“Where. The hell. Are we going?”
James gives her a slow grin.
“You ever been to Hawaii?”
Chapter 5: “Half-Humans”
Matilda gazes out the dirty window of the rattletrap empty Greyhound bus and lets out a dispirited sigh. She’s been stuck in this decrepit vehicle for almost eight hours. Evidently, the communication lanes out of the Wastelands are teeth-gnashingly slow, and she doesn’t care much for how the System has decided to manifest the transportation.
Outside the bus, she’s seen nothing but the dreary landscape that’s been procedurally generating for hours. As bored as she has ever been – that she can recall – Matilda turns to regard the mercenary. He rests quietly across the aisle. So far, her closest approach to diversion has been repeatedly asking “Are we there yet?” It raises some visible annoyance on the Taciturn’s part each time, but she has to admit, it’s a becoming a game of rapidly-diminishing returns.
She is about give him another one when the bus comes to an abrupt halt. At the front of the driverless cabin, the passenger door opens with a wheezing, hydraulic hiss.
James rouses himself, stands and collects his gear.
“Good. We’re here.”
Matilda looks at him, turns to press her face to the grimy window, and drinks in the exact same, boring yawnscape stretching infinitely in all directions. She turns back to regard him blankly.
“Um. What?”
Ignoring her, James moves up the aisle and exits the bus. Exhaling, Matilda shoulders her pack and trudges after him.
Stepping out of the vehicle, the Scry is engulfed in a strange, blinding light. When her vision finally returns, Matilda finds herself on a platform nestled on a dizzyingly-high coastal cliff. The brilliant sun shines down onto a crystal blue ocean below, surging with white-crested waves. It is a million times better than the dry heat and gory mess they left behind in the slave camp.
Matilda blinks in awestruck wonder at the panoramic beauty swelling and crashing on the rocks below her.
“This… this is Hawaii?”
Matilda shifts the weight of her pack and absently billows her shirt above her navel in a halfhearted attempt to cool herself off.
“Is it always this humid?”
“You’ll get used it,” James mutters.
Matilda starts to say something, and suddenly becomes aware of four statues near the platform. Even from a distance, something about their design feels sinister. James strides toward them without hesitation, but Matilda hangs back. Humanoid in design, the sculptures tower twenty feet tall. Carved from some type of tropical wood, their grotesque, exaggerated faces are more monstrous in their mien than welcoming.
Taciturn abruptly motions for Matilda to stop, but her quick scan of the cliffside reveals only the mercenary and the tall, carved figures.
“What?” she asks.
The gunslinger slowly removes his pistol from its holster – and then places it gently on the grass.
“Just give me a moment. And don’t move.”
A sheen of sweat forms on Matilda’s face. Humidity, she tells herself, but as Taciturn inches his way towards the statues, she feels her stomach start to tighten.
Matilda looks down, examining the grass at her feet. Scattered among the mostly-lush greenery, Matilda notices small patches of blackened grass and scorched blast marks at her feet. She raises her gaze to the mercenary, aware all at once of the numerous singe-marks and scores of charred dirt and burnt turf all around him.
Matilda opens her mouth to speak but stops when she sees the eyes on the statues begin to glow. The knife is in her hand, just under her clothing, before she is even conscious of the fact – but something tells her this is not a situation she can solve with steel. Reluctantly, she stashes the blade back inside her clothing. The statues are intently focused on her. She can feel it.
She can sense the power radiating from behind those eyes. She closes her own eyes to avoid their carved-rictus scrutiny.
Matilda can feel something forming in her throat. A warning, or a scream. She—
“Hey, come on. Stop fooling around.”
Opening her eyes, Matilda spots James, standing well past the statues. He beckons her forward. Hesitantly, she runs to catch up, deliberately navigating around the blackened spots.
Up close, the towering, many-faced poles are even more frightening – larger than life. Gaping mouths reveal rough-sawn rows of jagged wooden teeth. Exaggerated, wide-eyed facial features make the statues appear more alien than human. Matilda realizes she has been holding her breath, and greedily takes in great lungfuls of air as she crosses into the clearing beyond, leaving the hideous sculptures behind.
She does not look back. “What the hell are those things?”
James tilts his head.
“They’re the Guardians of the Ohana. The islands’ defense system.”
James gestures to the lush, tropical landscape around them.
“They protect the last bastion for half-humans, idealists, and anyone else curious enough to merge their minds with the machine…”
“Um… even without freaking amnesia, everything you just said was total gibberish.”
James stops and turns to face her.
“The Ohana is the network of islands separated from the main hub of the digital world. This isolated region is mostly populated by replicants – autonomous routines that have absorbed too many emotions and memories from human entities in the Cyberside.”
Matilda pauses and considers the Taciturn. For a guy who supposedly likes to keep quiet, he sure has a habit of rambling on sometimes – especially when it comes to explaining how things work. At least, she reflects, most of what comes out of his mouth is interesting. She wonders how much of that can be chalked up to losing all your memories beyond the last three months or so. “How did some software absorb emotions?”
James clears his throat, a sign that he’s preparing to pontificate. Matilda finds herself smiling. The Taciturn has probably kept quiet for a lot of his life. It must have been difficult.
“See, what happened is, when the System went online, it populated the Cyberside with a slew of AI bots – to make the whole transition easier, or at least that was the idea. The goal was to make this world feel alive, dynamic. They were called ‘NPCs’ – ‘non-player characters’. It’s all from the video-gaming roots of the System. Their functionality was focused on manufacturing and entertainment purposes. Primitive in their initial scope, NPCs were limited to very basic AI.” For an instant, the expression on his face becomes unreadable. “But designed to look exactly like humans.”
James resumes walking inland. Matilda follows, a pace behind him.
“So, they’re not human.”
She can’t see James’ face from behind. But she can hear the change in his voice.
“Not exactly… well… not at first. As time passed, their neural networks grew to understand – well, mimic – human emotions. The more they observed us, the better they became at simulating human behavior.”