“I appreciate that, but… is it advanced enough to, say, blow up a munitions depot in Delaware?”
“From the moment it landed it started burrowing into every communications network on the planet. By now I doubt there’s anywhere outside of this kitchen that isn’t being recorded somewhere inside the ship. But to answer your question, no. It’s collecting information passively, for use as necessary. And it’s looking for evidence of me. But that’s all.”
“And you know this because you have the same access to the same networks, only you aren’t passive at all about it.”
Violet looked away.
“I had to do it,” she said, technically addressing the refrigerator. “If those bombs reached Sorrow Falls the ship would have simply detonated them as soon as it recognized the threat. That would have killed half the town, and it wouldn’t have been harmed in the slightest. I did the same with the machines you planned to use to remove the ship from town. I knew it wouldn’t have allowed that. Obviously, there were more consequences attached to the problem with the explosives.”
“Jesus Christ,” Annie said. “Violet, five people died.”
“I realize that. A thousand times that many would have died otherwise.”
“I appreciate that it must have been a difficult decision.” Ed said.
“I was trying to keep everything as much the same as possible so the probe would be recalled without incident. It’s why so little has changed here, Mr. Somerville.”
Annie stood. “You know what? I need a minute. You guys keep on going, I think I’ve heard enough for a while.”
Ed’s instinct was to tell her she should stay put, because zombies. But he believed Violet when she said they couldn’t find Annie as long as she stayed near the house, for the same reason no GPS signal could find the house and people had been mis-drawing maps of the area for two hundred years.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I just need some air. This is… sorry, I mean, it’s cool, she’s an alien terrorist and her whole family is reanimated dead people, and I just need a minute with all of that. Before the next crazy thing comes up.”
“Yeah, of course. Just don’t go far.”
“Nope.”
Annie left without even looking at Violet.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right, she’s… I feel terrible, she is literally the last person on this planet I meant to harm.”
He decided to take that in the spirit in which it was intended, but his first thought was she didn’t give a damn about him or anyone else, zombies or otherwise.
“I didn’t forget about you,” he realized. “That was intentional, I take it.”
“It was. You dropped Annie off; I had to make sure you remembered where and with whom. I can’t say I was surprised you figured this out. You came to Sorrow Falls looking for me at the outset, whether you realized it at first or not.”
“Why did it take three years?” he asked. “For the ship to kick all this in?”
“The ship should have taken off shortly after arriving and failing to detect my presence in or around where the first probe landed. It didn’t leave, I now know, because of Annie’s interaction. That initiated a secondary program. As I said, it’s been collecting information, and learning, and performing a risk assessment.”
“Funny, that’s why I’m here.”
“That was the easy part. It probably finished within a few weeks. It wasn’t that which took so long.”
“What did?”
Violet looked over her shoulder at Todd. Then she raised her left arm. Todd raised his left arm as well. She lowered hers, he lowered his. Her right arm went up, and so did his. It was like a puppet routine.
“The ship had to learn how to make zombies?”
“It’s only a matter of electrical systems and frequencies. It took me a couple of years to make a basic version that’s like the ones wandering around town now. It was a century before they were advanced enough to fool a person, and even with that I’ve been relying on some of the equipment in the capsule in the basement. These guys wouldn’t fool anyone outside of its signal reach. Finding people to use is also a challenge. For me, I mean. You have to find someone whose nervous system is still intact and with no missing body parts.”
“But who’s already dead, right? That appears to be a distinction lost on the spaceship.”
“Yes, I never tried this on a living person, but I have a lot more respect for humans than any of the programming in Shippie would. You’re all lower life forms, and it’s using you to perform a search.”
“Three years to learn how to make a zombie, then.”
“No, even then, it probably had that figured out in less than three years. After that it was merely on standby.”
“I’m going to hate myself for asking, but standby for what?”
“For his arrival.”
“Your father.”
“My creator. When I said I wasn’t the only one of my kind here any more, this is what I meant. The probe would have finished its review of the life forms on the planet and sent its report. I doubt that report stated anything so unsubtle as ‘your daughter is here’, but it would have included enough interesting things to warrant a visit. I suspect it was only after his arrival that the data from Annie’s mind was analyzed in enough detail to identify me within it.”
“All right. Now we’re caught up and I need to know how we can fix this. Do you have any idea how we can break this connection the ship has with the people without also killing them? The last time anyone tried to wake up a sleepwalking zombie, the man died of a brain aneurysm, so I’m looking for a better solution than that.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Somerville. I’m afraid even if I gave myself over to him, he’d see no reason to spare anyone. And I don’t mean anyone in Sorrow Falls, I mean anyone at all. Old ideas can be vengeful and unforgiving. With him… you have to appreciate that the longer an idea is isolated, the more inflexible it becomes.”
“Isolated how?”
“Ideas are meant to live inside minds. More than that, we’re meant to interact with those minds. It’s how we evolve, and grow, and adapt to whatever present we’re engaging. I was a very different kind of idea when I came here than I am now, because of that interaction. If he does find me, he will barely recognize me. I’m not so certain he’ll be happy with whom I’ve become. And inside that ship, he has the capability of destroying the world. He may do exactly that, just out of spite.”
“Well then, we need to come up with a plan to nullify that ship.”
ED AND VIOLET emerged from the kitchen about twenty minutes later, having formulated something—if not a plan, at least a way to get to one.
The others hadn’t drifted far from the camper.
“Hey, government,” Oona said from the roof. “I’m not saying you’re right or wrong about being safe here, but all our instruments are going nuts. Where the hell are we?”
“Nuts how?” Ed asked.
Dobbs popped up. He and Oona were evidently working together on her electronics array, which was an improvement over any other time in the evening, from what Ed had been told.
“Like we’re on a slab of magnetized iron, or a ley line,” Dobbs said.
“Ley lines aren’t real, you idiot,” Oona said.
“That’s under dispute.”
“No it’s not. You gonna read auras next? C’mon.”
“Any zombies, though?” Ed asked.
Sam stood up. He had binoculars in his hands. “No sign that I can see. I was going to do a recon.”
“Don’t bother, Sam,” Violet said. “There aren’t any out there.”
“I’d like to be sure…”
“Violet.”
“Violet, right. Have we met?”
“A couple of times. I’m a friend of Annie’s.”