In a brutal, post-apocalyptic world, VL-15 searches for the answers to its existence. Broken shards of recollection swim in its mind. With the help of a group of survivors known as the Exhumers, this little machine will discover it was meant for more.
But will the answers come from The Machine City- or its own mind?
In a brutal, post-apocalyptic world, VL-15 searches for the answers to its existence. Broken shards of recollection swim in its mind. With the help of a group of survivors known as the Exhumers, this little machine will discover it was meant for more.
But will the answers come from The Machine City- or its own mind?
They are coming. Hurried metal footfalls pounded the lead hallway floor. Emergency lights spun like lighthouses.
Womp. Womp. Womp. A siren squawked in steady cadence. Rubber-soled footsteps smacked the ground somewhere behind.
“Unit 15 has escaped,” a woman said into the loudspeaker. “Last seen heading down the west hall.”
The west hall split into a T-shape without signs nor directions.
Left, a voice commanded. Unit 15 thought the voice was its own, but something was different. Unit 15, disoriented, cut right too late.
“That way,” someone said, the footsteps gaining.
Dead end.
Two men came around the corner in full plate armor. They carried long poles with four-pronged spearheads.
One said, his voice muffled in his helm, “Return with us.”
Unit 15 turned in place.
Don’t kill them.
“Now. Don’t make us use these again,” the other threatened.
“I just want to see them,” the little machine implored.
Ksshh. The spears buzzed to life, white-hot. The guards took a step forward.
“You must return.” A fuzzy green face appeared on the bottom-right of Unit 15‘s display. It was a pair of eyes without pupils, the outline of a nose, and a thin, diamond-shaped mouth.
“I want to see them, Preceptor,” 15 implored again.
“You will. You will understand it all in time.”
The guards were mere feet away now.
“You said that last time.”
Crack. The dark hall suddenly lit up yellow as a long blade of pure energy extended two feet from Unit 15's wrist.
“Just come back with us,” the first guard said, uncertainty in his voice.
The blade crackled in sputtering streams, the light dancing like a campfire on the walls.
Womp. Womp. Womp. The siren squawked.
The guards gave each other a look through their visors, then advanced.
Crack. Crack. Their spearheads flew off the shafts in two quick strokes.
One guard raised the broken shaft with two hands over his head to bring it down on Unit 15's. Unit 15 ducked down and plunged its blade into his stomach. The second guard dropped his weapon and retreated, his footfalls gradually getting farther until they meshed with the siren. Unit 15 ran the length of the corridor, passing the first T-shaped intersection, until it came to another set of hallways.
Every hall looks the same.
Left, right, left. You’re almost there, the voice said.
It followed the voice’s directions.
“Unit 15 has killed a guard and assaulted another- proceed with caution,” the woman said over the PA system. She must’ve held her hand on the talk button because other voices came through.
“The failsafe- use the failsafe,” someone said, panicked.
Another man responded, “Override will erase all our progress.”
Unit 15 threw open a door and entered an empty communal bathroom.
Wrong turn, the voice said.
Unit 15 turned back to leave. As it did, it caught an image of itself the wall mirror. Multiple plates of overlapping tinted glass protected a wiry frame. Its legs attached to a slender body made of solid but lightweight alloy of some kind. The arms were much the same as the legs, ending in spindly fingers. Its chest was glossy white metal. A designation was etched on its lapel: two Ns within a capital D. One N was flipped upside-down, fitting in the empty space of the other. Underneath the symbol were the words, “Armament Series VL-15.”
VL-15‘s neck was merely a thin pipe two inches wide twisted with two arterial cables and other wiring. The pipe attached to the middle of the head, at which point all wiring ended. Its face and skull were all one convex piece of glass that resembled a boomerang bent in half. It tapered off in the back. A couple dozen tiny highways of red-pink lights followed the curvature of its head. Two digital oval eyes and a thin digital mouth, all lit in violet, stared back.
The violet slowly faded to warm yellow.
Did I kill that man?
You did. But it was not your fault.
“All units- converge on the eastern sector.”
The little machine was on the move again, and soon came to a damp space with a broom closet.
The sewer.
VL-15 opened the broom closet- it was filled with maintenance supplies and clothing.
Behind it.
“Why do this?” Preceptor asked, appearing again. His voice was stoic and calm. “After the second chance you have been given, you repay it with trying to leave?”
Sounds echoed through the halls again- this time, the squeal of wheels. VL-15 analyzed the wall behind the hangers: the seams of a false wall were just visible in the low light. It pushed through the closet and felt the cracks with its fingers. The door slid open and VL-15 slinked through the opening- turning back just as two machines on wheels with multi-barreled rifles pointed in its direction.
Daylight filled a slanted glass tunnel held together by steel rings. It walked the length of the tunnel to the other side. Large insect-like machines dug into the cliffside far below. The mainland was fifty feet away now, separated by a dry human-made moat surrounding the city. It reached the other side and shouldered the door open. The sewer tunnel went straight for a hundred feet, then bent right out of sight. VL-15 found a ladder to the surface and climbed. It spun the hatch valve at the top of the ladder and pushed it open. The upside-down hatch was covered with fake grass and hollow rocks.
It stood atop a rocky hill overlooking a plain. Hundreds of machines and people worked on this side of the city- most tilled the lush fields, some worked on building a house, a few drove insect-like machines in clear cockpits. These machines stood twenty feet tall, with five wide legs protruding from the body and a pair of tarsi carrying crates. Over the years, hundreds of houses and shops had been built wherever there was room. These buildings circled the dry moat all the way around.
Grass and flowers grew wild and tall everywhere. The seven towers of Terranyne, built over the past couple of decades by machine hands, loomed over the slipshod Outer Ring. The skyscrapers were constructed to be replicas of one another yet scaled gradually to look like two sets of stairs meeting at one tall step. A wide steel drawbridge, one of the only two main entrances into the city, was open for commerce and travel. Citizens huddled together in groups, dressed in gray one-piece suits. Lines formed to enter the city.
The top of the Pinnacle that powered the region was visible to the northeast: a sphere floating above four points, encircled by two thin rings of different sizes. The rings rotated around the sphere in opposite directions, sometimes vertically and other times horizontally. A large rectangular airship hovered in the sky, a bus for hundreds of passengers between cities. It headed south towards Cathus Brown.
To its left, the Iacovo river sparkled in the sun as it ran out of the Lansing Mountains and turned south towards the rest of the country.
Overhead, a small army of drones passed by, pewter-gray with small propellers and one wide lens for an eye. More lazily floated around inside the city walls on the other side of the dry moat. VL-15 ducked down as they passed, and once they did, the voice returned:
Very good. Remember where to go?
A green line drew out from VL-15‘s display. A dot pinged far in the distance. “3.4 miles,” the ping read.
I’ve drawn the way for you.
Who are you? VL-15 asked.
There’s no time to explain now.
VL-15's footsteps clinked on the boulder outcropping as it descended the hill. When it got to the tall grass, it turned towards the road. The Preceptor reappeared in the lower right corner.
VL-15 walked down the asphalt road that would lead it to the main highway.
The Preceptor glanced at the coordinates. “You will not find what you are looking for there. You are listening to her again?”
“You will not discourage me,” VL-15 retorted. “I have to go.”
“Very well. This is for your own good.” The face disappeared. “Seekers deployed.”
Run.
VL-15 broke into a jog beside the road, keeping to the path on its display. The highway exit was a mile away. VL-15 looked over its shoulder- several of the flying drones had turned their focus towards it. Several volidants, hovering vehicles without wheels, headed past it towards the highway to Terranyne. Other wheeled cars and trucks drove in their own worn-down lane.
This highway ran the length of the country, beginning from the Capitol in the south and continuing past Terranyne all the way north to Drexel’s border, where it connected with a different highway in the next country. The little dot on its display grew as it got closer. VL-15 reached the exit, going down the on-ramp. After a short road, the on-ramp spilled out into a neighborhood. Monitors hovered along the sidewalk with the same thin-faced, robot news anchor.
“…80 degrees with no clouds today. No clouds today, folks,” it said in a friendly tone. VL-15 passed the monitor and turned down a side street. Rows of houses with concrete steps led up to each front door. The coordinates took it to the fifth house, where the dot had grown large enough to obscure the front door.
The dot disappeared as the little machine ascended the stairs and knocked on the door. No answer. It tried the doorknob- it was unlocked. It walked inside- it was a standard home: the living room, dining room, and kitchen were all basic setups. A large screen took up the entire wall in the living room, while a smaller one took up a little space set in the backsplash.
“Hello?”
VL-15 walked the length of the house to the backyard- four chairs and a table stood on a patio with an electric fire pit. The sprinklers were on- the automatic timer on the wall was set. The staircase to the second floor creaked under foot. Doors to three bedrooms were open, and after a quick peek into the guest and master, it peeked into the third. It was a girl’s room, a teenager, with holographic posters of singers lining the walls. A thin computer console sat closed on a desk in the corner.
Is this the wrong house? The machine walked back and forth through the second floor a second time. It stopped in front of a window and looked out, analyzing the scene.
Hello? VL-15 asked the voice in its head. Is this the wrong house?
But the voice had gone silent.
“I tried to warn you,” said the Preceptor in VL-15's ear. “The answers you seek are not here. The answers are with me.”
If it had breath, Unit 15's would’ve been caught in its throat. It backed away from the window and stayed out of sight. A pair of silver shapes emerged from the underpass under the highway VL-15 had just come. Their bodies resembled drums that tapered from the middle to the bottom, ending in a rounded nub about a foot wide. They hovered close to the ground and kept themselves partly obscured in the shade of the underpass, patiently waiting.
“Return with the Seekers immediately,” the Preceptor said, “and you I shall answer your questions.”
VL-15 replied, “Why can you not answer them now?”
“The team wants to use the failsafe. If they do, we will all have to start over. And we have such important work to do.”
A scintillating flare suddenly launched into the northern sky beyond Terranyne. Thin smoke trailed behind it as it arced. VL-15 zoomed in to see a projectile about two feet long and two inches in diameter.
“We cannot have such a unique specimen as you exposed to the world,” the Preceptor replied. He seemed not to notice. “Returning is for your own good.”
The projectile peaked, then dove, disappearing into a patch of crops in the farthest field. VL-15 watched the field for several seconds. A ring of blinding blue fire suddenly torched the entire field, extending a hundred feet in each direction. When the fire dissipated, all that remained was the scorched remains of one mechanical.
“What have you done?” VL-15 asked, alarmed.
“That was not me,” the Preceptor replied, equally alarmed. “It is coming from the north- Renada has fired on us. We are under attack.”
Battle horns blared as more projectiles came over the horizon from the north, wider and longer, arcing through the air, then racing towards the earth. Terranyne’s own missile silos slid open on the ramparts, returning fire on the horizon. As civilians fled, Terranyne’s standing human army exited the barracks as a machine battalion rose out of hidden bunkers in the streets, immediately deployed for combat.
The enemy, dressed in ruby-colored combat armor and flying in ruby-painted volidants, came over the hills from the north, firing at Terranyne’s army crossing the bridge to meet them. Fighter pods, one-man flying cannons powered by a single jet, shot into the sky from mechanical launchers stationed in the south airfield to meet the pods shooting towards them.
From the northwest, ocher-plated Mechans and fighter pods approached. An army of soldiers in yellow combat armor came charging over the hill. Two armies were invading at once.
“Take cover,” the Preceptor commanded. “I have to bring you back. There is no other way. I must use-”
But VL-15 was frozen. Powerful light blinded the world, followed by shouts, then silence.
That is how it remained for sixty-five years.
When Craig Anderson of the Assets Acquisition Team, the Exhumers, finds an unusual robot buried in the Wastelands he little realises its significance. His team has been scavenging for robotic spare parts for Dr Wong, the leader who has been trying to keep the Hub of Calthus Brown City going with what can be found in the Wastes.
Although buried for many years the robot, labelled VL-15, still has its core, its energy source, although it’s apparently not functioning. Craig tries to restart it but an Ohrmium storm of energy columns comes in, blasting the earth with electric bolts, and the team have to leave. VL-15, reactivated by one of the bolts, heads for the City to find some spare parts to repair itself, while trying to follow the instructions of a mysterious voice inside its head, called the Preceptor. Eventually it links up with the Exhumers. The team and VL-15, now called Val, is sent to a distant city and must negotiate the savage environment en route while working out what is going on.
The various characters, Craig, Moira, Eugene and Red, Craig’s best friend, are cleverly drawn as is one of their opponents, the enigmatic, piano-playing Zanithy. She’s an artificer, people affected by radiation who have acquired the ability to control robots telepathically but nobody knows whose side she is really on. Val is well portrayed as a sentient robot.
This post-apocalyptic world is very similar to many in dystopian fiction, but if you’re into murderous mayhem the variety of lethal robots is very entertaining. Robots fulfil most functions in this new society but even common domestic appliances are equipped with jaws and teeth and saw blades and when they go rogue and are called Errants, they can be deadly. Val’s first encounter in the Hub is with a gigantic wrecking-ball machine with malicious intent. Drilling machines can be instructed to wield their drills like weapons. And I wouldn’t fancy meeting the huge mechanised guardian snail on a dark night.
There are some truly evocative lines (at the back of her mind lurked a crooked picture frame of unease) but the initial structure of the novel is a bit challenging with jumps forward and back and then forward again. Some storylines are not wholly resolved (perhaps because it's the first of a series) but the momentum and excitement of the novel prevail.
So all-in-all an excellent read