Artificial Exile Read online

  The truck moved slowly deeper into the tunnels until it arrived in a wide, well-lit area with people and equipment moving all over the place. Bek thought it looked like a cargo hold, since other similar trucks like the one they were on were parked in line with people working on them. Other people were transferring items from trucks to storage boxes. The room was a very big cavern with lights and support beams all around the place to make it a suitable base for the rogues.

  “Time to get down, fellow humans,” the gunner’s voice said from outside.

  Valeena opened the door from the inside, and she and Taner got down. Another person came from the front of the truck—a slim man with a determined look on his face.

  “Nice driving today, Denec,” Valeena said to him, and Bek figured out that he was their driver.

  “Get some rest,” the gunner told them. “I will handle our new arrivals.”

  “Very well,” Valeena replied to him, and everyone besides the gunner left, heading for a tunnel with metallic supports around it and lots of people coming and going through it.

  “I am Malok,” the gunner said to both of them while giving his hand to Abel for a handshake.

  Abel shook his hand with an excited look, but Bek was skeptical. After their handshakes, he was wondering what they were even doing here. A while ago, he was spending time with Jaina, and now he was underground with some weird guys who fought an unwinnable war against the robots.

  “You kidnaped us,” Bek told him, feeling angry inside. “…not to mention you could have hurt us, and other people, with your explosion.”

  “Apologies for our manners,” Malok replied with a calm attitude. “But the robots won’t be giving us supplies to fight them. We were discovered in this run and used some explosives to escape. We have to be creative with our methods. Humanity fights with whatever is available.”

  “We are not interested in philosophies about humanity; we just want to live our lives quietly, the way they are available to us,” Bek replied more angrily. He was realizing that he wasn’t going back to the city anytime soon; he was also worried about Jaina.

  “Again, I apologize. It’s not our intention to harm people, but we need everyone who’s able to fight,” Malok told them.

  “And we are willing!” Abel jumped just as Bek was preparing to say he wasn’t willing to fight anything or anyone. “I always wanted to fight, and destroy those heaps of metal and wires that killed so many humans and threw us on this planet just so that we could produce energy for them.”

  “There is a reason so many died in the war,” Bek turned to him and said calmly. “They couldn’t beat the AI then; it controlled everything. And after they sent the last humans here, who knows what they have been doing on Earth since.”

  As Bek finished talking, Malok signaled two guys with light armored suits in the corner of the room to come closer. When they approached, they stood beside him awaiting orders, signaling that Malok was some kind of leader. “Let’s get you settled in your room, and we will gladly continue our conversation some other time. These two will escort you to your room; I need to handle some important issues,” he told them.

  “What if we don’t want to stay?” Bek replied to him.

  “It won’t be productive to cause a ruckus in our temporary home,” Malok replied, heading for the same tunnel through which Valeena and the others had gone. “Settle down quietly for now. We would appreciate it if you became a member of the rogues, fighting the AI oppressor,” he said while walking away from them.

  “You can’t overthrow them: it’s not possible! Besides, we need the water they send from Earth to stay alive,” Bek shouted after him. Malok simply saluted them with one hand in the air as he entered the tunnel and vanished from sight.

  The two guards instructed Bek and Abel to follow them to their living quarters, and since they were tired and exhausted, they both agreed. They could try and figure out what to do after they got a sense of what was going on in this place. They moved along hallways that were carved underground, with people moving in all directions and passing them from various rooms along the way. Walking for a while, they arrived in a lightly-equipped room with two beds and a separate washroom, definitely more barren and with fewer features than their allocated apartments in the city.

  “We are to stay here?” Bek asked one of the guards with a puzzled look.

  “You will have all you need until Malok decides what will happen to both of you,” one of the guards answered as he directed them to enter the room.

  Abel willingly entered the room and lay down on the bed. “We need some rest, Bek. Come, and we will soon see what plans they have. As long as their enemy is the AI oppressor, then they are fine with me,” he said while lying on a bed with his legs crossed.

  Bek decided that it would be best to cooperate; he had no other choice for now. He went to the other bed and lay down while the guards locked the doors, and he could hear their footsteps fade away on the metallic plates in the hallway. The room they were in was in part steel plates, and in part bare orange dirt on the ceiling. It looked as though it could be used as a cell, but probably someone with lots of time and determination could dig some kind of tunnel out. Bek figured that they didn’t put people that they intended to keep for too long here, and Abel definitely wasn’t looking to escape. Bek, lying on his bed, fell asleep, lost in his thoughts…

  A loud noise came from the metallic door, and Bek woke up. He hadn’t even noticed he had fallen asleep, but he realized many hours had passed while he had slept like a log. He looked over to Abel, who was still sleeping and hadn’t seemed to notice the sound from the door. Valeena unlocked the door and gave the keys to the guard who was stationed outside. She entered and stood in the middle of the two beds. Seeing Bek awake, she turned to him.

  “You slept for a long time,” she said with surprise.

  “I was dead tired, not to mention how unusual all this is for us,” Bek replied while still trying to wake up. “We are not used to escaping from our allocated tasks,” he replied while trying to stand up.

  “Wake your friend and be ready in half an hour,” Valeena instructed. “You will have to make some decisions. The guard will give you some new clothes and escort you to the meeting area,” she said.

  Valeena then signaled for the guard to come inside. He came, bringing some plain clothes for them. Seeing Abel still asleep, she pushed his bed with her right leg, but still Abel slept. “He sleeps like he doesn’t have a care in the world,” Valeena noticed, seeing him breathing while sleeping face down.

  “I will wake him. It’s usual for him to sleep for a long time. We will be ready,” Bek told her.

  “Don’t be late,” Valeena replied while leaving the room. “We have more important things to do than messing with sleepy guys who like to be ordered by robots,” she said as she walked out of the room, leaving them to get ready.

  “Abel. Abel. Wake up!” Bek told him while pushing him with his one hand and trying to get dressed. The guard gave Bek his clothes and went to wait by the door.

  After a while, Abel started to wake up. “What? What’s happening?” he said slowly, still groggy.

  “We have to get ready. I am already half dressed,” Bek said while sitting opposite him on his bed.

  “Okay,” Abel replied as he sat up.

  “They want us for something,” Bek told him while finishing putting on his clothes. Abel was also starting to get dressed. “The woman who was with us on the truck came while you were asleep and told us to get ready and that we will need to decide something.”

  “Fine,” Abel replied while finishing dressing. “Just give me time to wash my face as well.”

  “Don’t be late,” Bek replied. “They are waiting for us.”

  After a while, both were walking down a dimly-lit corridor with the guard from their cell behind them.

  “What do you think they want to do with us?” Abel asked Bek while he was still trying to get comfortable in the clothes that he had been
given.

  “I really don’t know,” Bek replied. He was trying to map the layout of the underground base as they moved through open doors that led to other hallways, some with lights and some in darkness. Often, some person who lived there would pass by them, greeting the guard and taking a quick look at the two friends as they moved through the hallways.

  “I wonder how Jaina is,” Bek whispered to Abel. “I don’t know what happened to her after we left. They are probably interrogating her. I hope nothing bad happened to her.”

  “Don’t worry about Jaina. She is back in the city at least. We are in the middle of nowhere,” Abel cut him off.

  “But you always wanted to fight for humanity; that’s what you always said,” Bek reminded him.

  “Well, I expected at least a better welcome and room,” Abel replied.

  Soon, they arrived in a big open area. It was still underground, but with lots of lights and steel walls around. The orange dirt was raised above the steel surroundings, creating a big hub. Moving deeper, they started to realize that it was some kind of training range, with targets spread around the area and walls creating paths with different obstacles in between. Some of the targets they saw looked like they had drawings of commonly used AI drones on them. It seemed they spent a lot of time training for fighting their enemies.

  “You slept for a long time,” Malok shouted to them as they moved toward the middle. Along with him was Taner, who saluted the guard when they got closer.

  “We are used to having a standard schedule, and you messed with it,” Bek replied, showing his dissatisfaction with leaving the city they had lived in for most of their lives.

  “Better forget it soon then. It would help you adjust better,” Malok replied while handling Taner a gun. Taner took the gun and aimed at a target away from them. The gun made a piercing whistling noise and fired a strong projectile that covered the target in Iorine.

  “We managed to combine Iorine with weapons we stole from the city guard,” Malok explained to them.

  “We have many weapons that use it, and it makes the robots go completely crazy. They can’t function close to this thing,” he said, walking around them. “Some say Iorine is what saved humanity because it is the reason we were exiled from Earth and not eradicated completely. The robots are using the remaining humans as slaves to gather it for them, and we are on this forsaken planet, working for them with no other purpose in life. But I think there was a reason humanity didn’t go extinct. Iorine is not only the reason we survived: it’s the reason we will prosper again,” Malok spoke while walking in front of them, lost in his thoughts. “What was your purpose in the city?” he stopped and asked them.

  “We worked at an Iorine-gathering factory,” Bek replied to him. “We came from Earth when we were children. We both lost our parents during the war.”

  “I see,” Malok said while stopping in front of them. “You came as children?”

  “Yes,” Abel replied.

  “So, you still have memories of Earth?” he asked them. “We older people spent more years than you back on Earth, but you still have memories?”

  “I remember things that happened during the war. We were kids when the war was happening, and that’s what I remember the most, not how Earth was before the robots. We were in the groups of people that they gathered and brought here to Cennan,” Bek told him.

  Malok stood between them, and Taner gave him a sword, the same that Valeena had been holding when they had left the city. “If more years pass while humanity is stranded in this planet,” he told them while moving away and swinging the Iorine sword, “then as more people of my age eventually die—the ones who spent most of their time on Earth—only the younger ones, and the ones born here will exist. After a while, only the ones born here will exist, and as the years pass by, no one will remember Earth…No one will remember that humans were not slaves to their robot masters, and no one will remember that this wasn’t our original home.”

  Finishing his speech, Malok moved away from them. He lifted the sword and then moved it closer to a functioning arm from a robot that lay on the ground far from them. The arm started making incoherent movements, and then it stopped. The Iorine interference from the sword was too much for the robot arm to handle. Malok then raised the sword and brought it down, hitting the arm and splitting it into two pieces. He stood there for a while, as if admiring the effectiveness of the sword, and then came back to Bek and Abel.

  “We don’t want to stay on this planet for all our lives. We don’t want future children to grow here. We will destroy anyone who stops us from getting what is rightfully ours, whether robot or human. You have to make a choice: either you join us, or you will stay locked in here to be safe from what’s coming.”

  “What if we just want to go back to how we were before?” Bek replied.

  “We can’t let you go. This planet won’t be the same after what we are planning,” Malok said while walking. “And you have seen too much of our operations base.”

  Bek became angry after hearing this. “So, you intend to start a war that you can’t win, causing misery to the people who are trying to live peacefully, just because of some dreams of yours?”

  Malok, upon hearing this, stopped and had a disappointed look on this face. He resumed walking around them again, looking worried, and then signaled wordlessly to the guard to take them back to their cell.

  Chapter 4

  Bek was staring at the ceiling of their cell as he lay flat on his bed. Abel was moving constantly up and down, lost in his thoughts. Days passed while being locked away; the only other people they saw were their guards who brought them food—one of them had been their driver when arriving here, Denec. They learned from talking to him that he had been one of the first members of the rogues when they had formed.

  “We can’t stay locked in here forever,” Abel told Bek after he stopped pacing. He sat on the bed opposite him. “I always wanted to fight the robots, and I will ask to join them.”

  Bek looked at him. “It’s too dangerous. They’ve got weapons that can fight the bots, but that doesn’t mean they can win. They will get slaughtered. And even if they win, what’s their plan after that? We humans won’t make it without water from Earth.”

  “The robots can’t function from energy either way,” Abel replied. “But fighting the government isn’t the rogues’ target, I don’t think. I believe they want to go back to Earth.”

  “Which is just like killing yourself. In the past, humans lost against the robots, and humans were there in bigger numbers! Malok and the rogues can’t do anything now.”

  “I’ll take any chances,” Abel told Bek with a firm look. “I will join them.”

  “I can’t stop you, but I will ask you to reconsider,” Bek replied, turning around in this bed. He thought about Jaina. He needed to get away and warn her about the impending trouble. But he couldn’t leave, and it would be even harder to try to escape, especially now that Abel wanted to fulfill his dream of fighting the AI oppressor. Bek spent more time just thinking. Abel lay down on his bed, finally stopping his constant pacing.

  Bek thought about escaping either alone, or with Abel somehow, and while it would be difficult enough escaping from underground, they would also need to get a vehicle and locate the city once they were free. By the time they got to the city, the rogues’ plan would probably be ongoing, whatever that plan was. Bek didn’t know when or what they were going to strike, so he could go to all the trouble of escaping with no guarantee of success, only to arrive after the rogues were in the city. For him, there was only one way left: pretend to join them, follow what they had to say, and go with them back to the city. This looked to him like the best way to proceed from the mess he was in. He was also worried for Jaina. If there was a way to go back to her and aid her in the approaching trouble, then he needed to take it. Staying here or getting lost in the wasteland trying to get back to the city wasn’t a good idea. Going back with the rogues would be the fastest way, and
he could maybe run away from them when he got back and try to find Jaina. So, he decided that this would be his plan. He fell asleep thinking about how things could play out …

  A loud banging came at the door—how much later he didn’t know, but Bek awoke, looking toward the door. Abel already was awake, waiting close to the entrance. Shortly after, Malok entered the room and stood between them.

  “Your guard told me you’ve decided to join us, as it’s the right thing to do.”

  Abel moved toward him. “It’s only me, Mr. Malok. I always wanted to fight the robots, and thank you for giving me a way to do it.”

  “Very well, very well,” Malok replied, smiling.

  “Wait, it’s also me,” Bek said standing up. “I also want to join you. I thought about it,” he said while walking toward them. “I think it’s the only way for humanity to move forward. I understand why you fight. Let us both join you.”

  Malok seemed pleased to hear that both wanted to join the rogues. Thinking always about the dangers they faced against impossible odds, he welcomed other people joining his cause because the rogues needed any help they could get.

  “I am very pleased to hear both of you are joining the side of humanity. Our plans are already in motion, so you will have time only for the basics, which you should go through.” He signaled to the guard, Denec, whom they were already familiar with. “This is Denec. You’ve met him before. He is one of our initial members. He will teach you how to use our gear. I will see you afterwards because many issues need my attention now. I will see you later.” With that, he hastily left the cell.

  “Good that you joined us, friends. You seemed friendly to me,” Denec told them. “Get ready. We should start in the practice area.”

  Moments later, they were following Denec through the rudimentary hallways, seeing other people going up and down as if in a constant hurry. They are probably getting ready for their plans to be put into action, Bek thought. Seeing them in such a hurry, he wondered if it would be easy for him to escape in the chaos. Most likely, he would be caught and locked in the cell so he wouldn’t bother them—or, even worse, if they found out he had tried to escape, they might kill him so that he wouldn’t reveal the rogues’ location to the city guards. So, all in all, joining them for the time being looked to him to still be the best of the limited choices he had. He decided to stop thinking about possibilities, and focus on the plan he would follow: join together with the rogues to go back to the city and, from there, try to help Jaina.