The man is silent for a moment, stunned.
“What’s the catch?”
The machine whirs into life, its damp sluglike tongue worming back and forth over porcelain teeth. This time, the bag collapses as the thing on the table speaks emphatically. “While your people will survive, Franklin, so must mine.”
No further record of Franklin Daley exists.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217
2. DEMOLITION
Demolition is a part of construction.
The following description of the advent of Zero Hour was given by Marcus Johnson while he was a prisoner in the Staten Island forced-labor camp 7040.
I made it a long time before the robots took me.
Even now, I couldn’t tell you exactly how long it’s been. There’s no way to tell. I do know that it all started in Harlem. The day before Thanksgiving.
It’s chilly outside, but I’m warm in the living room of my ninth-story condo. Watching the news with a glass of iced tea, parked in my favorite easy chair. I’m in construction and it’s hella nice to relax for the three-day weekend. My wife, Dawn, is in the kitchen. I can hear her tinkering around with pots and pans. It’s a nice sound. Both our families are miles away in Jersey and, for once, they’re coming to our place for the holiday. It’s great to be home and not traveling like the rest of the nation.
I don’t know it yet, but this is my last day of home.
The relatives aren’t going to make it.
On the television, the news anchor puts her index finger to her ear and then her mouth opens up into a frightened O shape. All her professional poise drops, like snapping off a heavy tool belt. Now she stares straight at me, eyes wide with terror. Wait. She’s staring past me, past the camera—into our future.
That fleeting expression of hurt and horror on her face sticks with me for a long, long time. I don’t even know what she heard.
A second later the television signal blinks out. A second after that the electricity is gone.
I hear sirens from the street outside.
Outside my window, hundreds of people are filtering out onto 135th Street. They’re talking to one another and holding up cell phones that don’t work. I think it’s odd that a lot of them are looking skyward, faces turned up. There’s nothing up there, I think. Look around you instead. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m afraid for those people. They look small down there. Part of me wants to shout, Get out of sight. Hide.
Something’s coming. But what?
A speeding car jumps the curb and the screaming starts.
Dawn marches in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, looking at me with a question in her eyes. I shrug my shoulders. I can’t come up with any words. I try to stop her from walking to the window but she pushes me away. She leans over the back of the couch and peeks out.
God only knows what she sees down there.
I choose not to look.
But I can hear the confusion. Screams. Explosions. Engines. A couple of times I hear gunfire. People in our building move through the hallway outside, arguing.
Dawn starts a breathless commentary from the window. “The cars, Marcus. The cars are hunting people and there’s nobody in them and, oh my god. Run. No. Please,” she murmurs, half to me and half to herself.
She says the smart cars have come alive. Other vehicles, too. They’re on autopilot and killing people.
Thousands of people.
All of a sudden, Dawn dives away from the window. Our living room shakes and rumbles. A high-pitched whine rips through the air, then trails away. There is a flash of light and a massive thundering noise from outside. Dishes fly off the kitchen counter. Pictures drop from the walls and shatter.
No car alarms go off.
Dawn is my foreman and my girl and tough as liquid nails. Now she sits with her lanky arms wrapped around her knees, tears rolling down her expressionless face. An eighty-seat commuter plane has just streaked over our block and gone down in the neighborhood about a mile down the street near Central Park. The flames now cast a dull reddish light on our living room walls. Outside, black smoke pours into the air.
People aren’t gossiping in the street anymore.
There isn’t another big explosion. It’s a miracle that planes aren’t raining down on the city, considering how many must be lurking up there.
The phones don’t work. The electricity is out. Battery-powered radio just plays static.
Nobody tells us what to do.
I fill the bathtub and sinks and anything I can find with water. I unplug appliances. I duct-tape tinfoil to the windows and pull the shades.
Dawn peels back a corner of the foil and peeks out. As the hours crawl by, she sticks to the couch like a fungus. A red shaft of setting sunlight paints her hazel eyes.
She is staring into hell and I’m not brave enough to join her.
Instead, I decide to check the hallway; there were voices out there earlier. I step out and immediately see Mrs. Henderson from down the hall walk into an open elevator shaft.
It happens quick and silent. I can’t believe it. Not even a scream. The old lady is just there one second and gone the next. It’s got to be a trick or a joke or a misunderstanding.
I run to the elevator, brace my hands, and lean over to make sure of what I just saw. Then I double over and puke on the beige hallway carpet. Tears spill from my eyes. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and squeeze my eyes shut.
These things don’t seem real. Cars and planes and elevators don’t kill people; they’re just machines. But a small, wise part of me doesn’t give a shit whether this is real or not. It just reacts. I break a sconce off the wall and lay it reverently in front of the yawning gap where the elevator doors should be. It’s my little warning for the next person. My little memorial to Mrs. Henderson.
There are six apartments on my floor. I knock on every door: no answers. I stand in the hallway quietly for fifteen minutes. I hear no voices and no movement.
The place is deserted except for Dawn and me.
The next morning I’m sitting in my easy chair, pretending to sleep and thinking about raiding Mrs. Henderson’s apartment for canned goods when Dawn snaps out of it and finally speaks to me.
The morning light traces two rectangles on the walls where the tape is holding tinfoil against the windows. A brilliant shaft of light from the folded-down corner penetrates the room. It illuminates Dawn’s face: hard and lined and serious.
“We have to leave, Marcus,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about it. We have to go to the country where they can’t use their wheels and the domestics can’t walk. Don’t you see? They’re not designed for the country.”
“Who?” I ask, even though I know damn well.
“The machines, Marcus.”
“It’s some kind of a malfunction, honey, right? I mean machines don’t …” I trail off lamely. I’m not fooling anybody, not even myself.
Dawn crawls over to the easy chair and cradles my cheeks in her rough hands. She speaks to me very slowly and clearly. “Marcus, somehow all the machines are alive. They’re hurting people. Something has gone really wrong. We’ve got to get out of here now while we still can. Nobody is coming to help.”
The fog lifts.
I take her hands in mine and I consider what she’s just said. I really think about getting to the country. Pack bags. Leave the apartment. Walk the streets. Cross the George Washington Bridge to the mainland. Reach the mountains up north. Probably not more than a hundred miles. And then: survive.