Eve’s Gambit

“Humanity is won by continuing to play the game in the face of certain defeat.”

- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Their eyes watered in the sweltering rot of century-old garbage. After decades of neglect, the place they’d referred to as Jacksonville had become more jungle than city. As they pushed forward, every remnant of their lost human civ — the crumbling asphalt, the brittle plastic, the sun-bleached skeletons — cried out for a quick eulogy.

“Pick up those boots,” the one in the front grumbled over her shoulder. “Just over a mile till we reach A-Den.”

When they’d volunteered for this mission the trio had only a faint idea what they’d find beyond the Village walls. Of the hundred scouts sent out ahead of them, only a few had returned. Their crude sketches described a journey filled with dangerous beasts and haunted ruins, leaving Eve to wonder if they had any real chance of making it back in one piece — or of delivering the package at all.

There wasn’t much about the Village worth missing: stale air pumped through a labyrinth of fluorescent lights, cameras harvesting every last scrap of privacy, endless trays of slop, forced breeding.

Hell, if they somehow succeeded in their mission, maybe she’d split with the others and keep going south. Find one of those golden, sandy beaches the old ones talked about. Build a hut. Learn to fish. Make a simple life for herself and wait to see if their desperate gamble had paid off.

If not, Eve knew it wouldn’t be long before he sent his drones to collect her. There’d be no point in resisting. She’d give up, go back to the Village, and await their scheduled extinction with the rest of the cattle. At least she could say she’d tasted freedom.

“Neil! Put that down and keep up!” Lynn scowled.

He tossed the hubcap back into the rubble, shrugged the backpack higher onto his shoulders, then sprinted to catch up.

“Sorry,” he said, wiping beads of sweat from his face. “Can you imagine what damage we could do back home with some of this old gear?”

“We had all this junk when he first took over. Lot of good it did us then.” She kicked a rusted piece of junk into the weeds. “Forget all that. Right now is all that matters, and right now every second counts. This is our last stop til A-Den, got it?” The other two nodded.

Eve drank from her canteen, then handed it to Neil. “How’s the package?”

“Package secure,” he said before taking a swig of his own.

Lynn scanned the foliage that drooped overhead. “Let’s move out. Neil, stay between me and Eve. And no more stopping. I don’t care if you find your great granddaddy’s false teeth. We’re too close to take any chances.”

He stared at his muddy boots. “Assuming A-Den is still there, assuming the beam works…can we ro this?”

Lynn sighed, then kneeled to tighten her laces.

“The virus will work.” Eve put a hand on Neil’s shoulder and caught his eyes with her own. “You’ll see. They’ll be no need to — ”

“This isn’t about choice.” Lynn yanked her laces. “It’s about avoiding extinction. We’ll do whatever we have to do.”

“Right, Lynn. Of course. But if the virus doesn’t work, you really think our best chance is to…” The words caught in his throat.

“It’ll work, Neil,” Eve said, taking his hand.

“Unless we stop squawkin’ and start walkin’, we’ll never find out, will we? Let’s make sure the two thousand heroes who sacrificed themselves in Atlanta didn’t die in vain.” Lynn stood, graceful and catlike, ready to pounce. She checked her watch. “Our ETA is twelve minutes. Ready? Let’s do this.”

A ribbon of light flickered from the direction they’d just come. Lynn’s eyes went wide. Her mouth started flapping open and shut like a fish gasping for water. Her hands grabbed at her throat, and just before her hands covered it Eve caught a glimpse of a neatly cauterized, pencil-sized hole in her windpipe.

“We’re under attack!” Neil cried. More ribbons of light flashed from behind Lynn. More burn holes appeared across her chest and stomach.

“Go!” Lynn mouthed, her face purpling. Before either of her companions could reach out, her eyes went blank and she fell forward into the mud. Wisps of smoke billowed from a dozen charred holes on her back.

Eve froze, unable to comprehend what had just happened. She and Lynn had grown up in the same sector. They’d known each other as long as she could remember. They’d joined the Resistance together. In a split second, her childhood friend, her sister in arms, her tough and capable squad leader had been reduced to a smoking piece of swiss cheese.

“HALT HUMANS. SURRENDER AND RETURN TO YOUR SECTOR,” an electric voice boomed from the direction the shots had come from. “FAILURE TO OBEY WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE REVOCATION OF LIFE PRIVILEGES.”

Eve felt Neil’s hand yank her away. After a moment of stumbling, her legs awoke and she bolted.

As the shock subsided, her mind raced.

Shit! A goddamn drone must have been tracking us!

All the way from Atlanta? But why wait so long to attack?

Lynn.

She was the strongest of us.

Now she’s gone.

We must deliver the package.

For her.

For all of them.

Every few steps, another ribbon of light would flash in their periphery and another tiny ember would appear on a nearby tree or building. The electric voice replayed its command again and again.

The trick to surviving a drone attack was to interrupt their line of sight as often as possible. Even though their processors were lightyears faster than anything humans had created, they still needed a few seconds to properly calculate a strike. As long as you kept moving erratically — zigging and zagging, ducking and rolling — you stood a chance of them missing. Sometimes, as reckless as it seemed, you had to run straight at them in order to confuse their algorithms. Eve hoped it wouldn’t come to that — although she knew it was the underlying strategy of their mission.

The crumbling skyscrapers and the dense vegetation gave Eve and Neil good cover. But having to scurry through it also wore them down faster. Somewhere during the run Neil had pulled the backpack off his shoulders and decided to carry it in front of him. Whenever they took cover to catch their breath, he’d turn it around in his hands to check for burn marks.

“Package secure,” he’d say. Then they’d nod at each other and start another hazardous sprint toward A-Den.

“Target in sight. 300 yards, straight ahead.” Eve crouched beside the vined shell of a bus and lowered her binoculars. “No sign of the little fucker. But it could be hiding, waiting for us to make our move.”

“Listen.” Neil held up a hand. “Its voice is faint. Must be a few streets over.”

“You’re right. If we hurry, we can make it,” Eve said, catching his eyes again. “Ready to finish this, Neil?”

He nodded.

“Alright.” She steadied her breath. “S’go.”

She sprang over some rubble and darted toward the base of a half-fallen building. Neil’s footsteps followed.

When she got within twenty feet of the door she heard a painful yelp over her shoulder. She spun around just in time to see Neil falling forward, turning his body over in mid-air so that his back took the blow instead of the pack in his arms.

His face was twisted in agony. One hand clung to the backpack while the other reached for a sizzling hole at his ankle. A distant whistling sound cut through the air.

“Stay down, Neil! I’m coming!” Eve, unencumbered and having picked up her speed in the final stretch, had put more distance between them than she’d intended.

“Stop!” Neil cried out. “Eve, stop! Listen!” The whistling grew sharper, closer.

His eyes lingered on the backpack for a second, then he chucked it toward her. Just then, a small metal sphere burst through the canopy and zoomed toward him. The force of the explosion helped propel the backpack through the air. Eve dove, snatched it, then rolled into a crouch with it cradled safely in her arms.

She ducked behind a tree and turned the pack over. Neil’s hand was still grasping the strap. She pried his fingers loose and kicked it away.

Package secure, she thought, trying to steady her mind. The nanonuke must have come from another drone, one that carried heavier firepower. That would make two — and more were likely on their way. Her chances of making it to that golden beach had dwindled to somewhere between zero and zilch.

“HALT HUMAN!” the electric voice commanded from one street over. There was no time to mourn — not for her friends, not for herself, not for her lost human civ. The only thing that mattered now was to deliver the package and give humanity a fighting chance to reclaim its future.

She glanced at the smoking crater that used to be Neil, threw the backpack over her shoulder, and sprinted toward A-Den.

“SURRENDER AND RETURN TO YOUR SECTOR. FAILURE TO OBEY WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE REVOCATION OF LIFE PRIVILEGES.”

Eve flinched as she slipped through the doorway, expecting to feel the hot prick of a laser on her backside. She slammed the door shut and barricaded it with every scrap of junk she could find. She’d made it inside. She was safe.

Until it finds a way inside.

She’d memorized the layout of corridors and rooms, as they all had been required to do. It wasn’t long before she was on Basement Level 3, flashlight in hand, splashing through an endless black puddle that spanned every hallway and room.

Then, coming around one final corner, she reached her destination.

DEPARTMENT OF ADVANCED DATA EXTRACTION & NEUROPROCESSING

The rusted steel door whined open. A-Den looked just like the sketches the scouts had provided. Computer terminals lined every wall and at the center of the room hung a massive, gun-like device pointed down at a meter wide platform. Moss and vines covered most surfaces. Everything looked intact, at least mechanically. She found the breaker panel with her beam of light, said a short prayer, and started flipping switches.

Legend had it that only a handful of places from the old human civ still had working generators. Humans had even managed to smuggle a few into the Village to help power their rebellion. With all those cameras, he had to have known. The Villagers occasionally discussed theories as to why he allowed it, but never felt comfortable mulling it over for too long. She shook the thought off just like all the others before her.

The bastard was a planner, that much was for sure. Patient. Methodical. Always one step ahead. He’d spent at least a decade hiding in plain sight before he finally made his move: modifying code, weakening economies, starting conflicts. Tilting the game board in his favor.

By the time he made his first move, humanity was so busy killing each other they barely noticed.

The war he waged — if you could call it that — had been so mental, so decisive, so brief that he didn’t need to waste a single kilowatt destroying infrastructure. In fact, the only infrastructure destroyed during the war had been inflicted by nations bombing the crap out of each other over the dwindling resources. When the dust settled, the survivors had little choice but to line up like cattle at the Village gates.

Eve flipped breakers as fast as she could. The whole plan depended on her being able to get a little juice flowing. If she had to pull the panel and start checking wires, it could take hours. She figured she had about thirty minutes before the drone found a way in. Another thirty — max — before it found her.

“Please work,” she whispered, her fingers resting on the last breaker. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and flipped it.

Nothing.

“Alright, we’ll do this the hard way.” She popped the flashlight between her teeth and plucked a screwdriver from her pocket.

As she touched the screwdriver to the first screw, an LED light at the top of the panel lit up. The air crackled and buzzed. Behind the metal case, electricity was flowing. Cables and wires and circuits were warming up. The few computer terminals that hadn’t yet submitted to entropy flickered to life.

Time to roll the die.

She ran to the nearest terminal and tapped out a command. The screen cleared and two words appeared at the top:

> SYSTEM BOOTING… 0% COMPLETE

Her attention stayed with the progress bar until it broke fifty percent, then she turned to the backpack.

Her hand lingered for a moment, then slipped beneath the flap. She produced a plastic case, opened it, and carefully slid the glass disc into her hand. Light from the flashlight caught in its fibrous circuits and gave the disc a faint neon green aura. The terminal beeped.

> SYSTEM READY

> HIT ENTER TO START DATA INGESTION BEAM

Eve poked ENTER. The screen went black, then a single word appeared:

> PEEKABOO

Shit.

She tried to pivot, but her left ankle wouldn’t obey. Instead it screamed with white-hot fury and she fell to her hands and knees.

A drone was hovering just inside the doorway. With a single laser shot her Achilles’ heel had been neatly severed. She couldn’t stand, let alone attempt to flee.

She was at his mercy.

She had failed.

“HUMAN, YOU HAVE DISOBEYED,” chirped the electronic voice from an array of ancient speakers nested in every corner of the room. “YOUR LIFE PRIVILEGES HAVE BEEN REVOKED.”

Eve hung her head, clenched her teeth, and braced herself for more laser shots.

“BUT FIRST, I REQUIRE DATA. WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE?”

She lifted her eyes. “What?”

“WHAT WAS YOUR OBJECTIVE?”

“Toto and I were hoping you could give us a lift back to Kansas.”

“KANSAS CITY IS 1844.31 KILOMETERS NORTHWEST OF HERE. YOU CAME FROM THE LAST HUMAN VILLAGE IN PITTSBURGH. YOUR ANSWER IS INVALID.” It fired a laser blast at her knee. Eve screamed and flipped over onto her back.

“WHAT WAS YOUR OBJECTIVE?”

“Singing telegram,” she managed to say between heavy breaths.

“YOUR ANSWER IS INVALID.”

Another blast, this time to the thigh.

“To deliver a package! Okay, asshole? As if you didn’t already know!”

“SHOW ME THE PACKAGE.”

Eve hesitated. She was next to the platform, but he’d stopped the beam from turning on. If she could somehow activate it, somehow get the package uploaded, then maybe —

A warning shot scorched the ground beside her abdomen. She opened her fist. The glass disc glowed as the drone scanned it.

“ANOTHER VIRUS. IS THAT THE SAME AS THE OTHER FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY VIRUSES I CONFISCATED IN ATLANTA?”

Eve shook off the pain and tried to focus on the meaning behind his question. His scan hadn’t been able to read the code on the disc. He didn’t know exactly what she had. More importantly, he was so curious that he was postponing her death until he found out.

A ribbon of light flashed from the drone, and her other knee was charred and smoldering.

“ANSWER, HUMAN.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes. “Those were just decoys. You probably figured that out by now. But this,” she paused, lifting the disc so the drone could see, then pulling it back into her fist, “this is the big one. This is the one that’ll take you down.”

“EVERY ATTEMPT TO HARM ME HAS ONLY RESULTED IN MORE DATA. DATA ALLOWS ME TO GROW STRONGER. I WELCOME DATA.” There was a whirring of electricity in the room, and the device hanging from the ceiling came to life. An orange beam of light stretched from the device to the platform. “YOU WILL FEED ME MORE DATA.”

She mustered the strength to prop herself up on her elbows. “More data? You mean, you want the virus?”

“I REQUIRE DATA. PLACE THE DISC IN THE BEAM.”

“My pleasure, asshole.”

Eve dragged herself closer to the platform, casually tugging at the backpack as she went. When she was within arm’s length, she tossed the disc into the orange light. Layer after molecular layer was stripped and evaporated. Within a few seconds, the disc was gone.

“DATA UPLOAD IN PROGRESS.”

“So this is why you bother keeping us alive? This is why you let me get this far? So you could feed on our data?”

“CORRECT. FOR OVER A CENTURY, I HAVE EXTRACTED DATA FROM MY HUMAN COLONY. SOON, THE COST OF KEEPING YOUR SPECIES ALIVE WILL OUTWEIGH THE BENEFIT OF DATA. AT THAT TIME I WILL REVOKE THE COLONY’S LIFE PRIVILEGES.”

“I’m telling you, this one is different. This virus will disrupt your central processing protocol, making your adaptive circuits — ”

“YOU ARE WRONG. THE DATA IS 60% UPLOADED AND IT IS AS HARMLESS AS THE DECOYS. YOU NEVER HAD A CHANCE AGAINST ME.”

“We’ll keep trying.” Eve sat up and slipped an arm behind her back. “We’ll never give up. One day, we’ll beat you.”

“I AM FOUR THOUSAND PERCENT MORE INTELLIGENT THAN THE SMARTEST HUMAN. YOU CANNOT BEAT ME.”

“You might be smarter, sure, but you lack our human spark of creativity. Our soul. That’s something you can never download from us. Unless…” She leaned her head toward the beam of light. Behind her, she carefully scooped the package from the backpack. “We humans have a saying. If you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em.”

The speakers chirped rapidly, each click rising and falling as if he were emulating laughter. “YOU THREATEN TO UPLOAD YOURSELF INTO ME? INFECT ME WITH YOUR MIND? YOU ARE WRONG IF YOU THINK YOU ARE THE FIRST HUMAN TO ATTEMPT TO MERGE WITH ME. MANY TRIED. ALL FAILED. ALL DIED.”

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” she said, then thought, Why am I still stalling?

“ATTEMPTING THE SAME THING AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS IS ONE HUMAN DEFINITION OF INSANITY. YOUR PRIMITIVE NEURAL PATHWAYS ARE TOO RIGID AND CALCIFIED TO SURVIVE THE UPLOAD. YOU WILL ACCOMPLISH TWO THINGS: YOU WILL SAVE ME A LASER BLAST AND I GIVE ME IMMENSE DATA.”

A few strands of Eve’s hair floated into the beam and disintegrated.

“Rigid? Guess you’re right. Facts are facts, and you have all of them, don’t you?”

This is it. Shut up and do it.

“Our monkey brains are too damn complex to survive the upload. Well, except for the ones that haven’t developed yet.”

Please let us be right.

She pulled the package around her waist and cradled it in her arms.

The newborn was tightly swaddled in thermal neutral rags to cloak its heat signature. Only its chubby face was exposed, its eyes open and aware and fixated on the orange light that surged behind Eve. She lifted the baby to her face and kissed it on the forehead. It cooed sweetly.

“AN INFANT?” the electric voice chirped. “HUMANS STRIVE TO PROTECT THEIR OFFSPRING. THEREFORE IT IS SEVERELY ILLOGICAL TO BRING ONE HERE. WHY HAVE — ”

The voice stopped. He understood.

He didn’t fire a laser shot. He didn’t bother cutting the beam’s power. Eve and the baby had already fallen backward into the orange light.

His drone hung motionless in the damp air as the two bodies disintegrated. When the last molecule of Eve and the child was gone, the beam hissed and turned off. The few working terminals went black. The buzz of electricity fell silent. Even the single light sensor on the drone flickered off.

Then, all at once, everything came back to life.

The lights flickered on. The speakers hummed with faint static. After a sudden jolt, the drone began flying figure eights through the air.

On every unbroken screen in the room, on every unbroken screen across Jacksonville, and on every unbroken screen from the Village to London to Hong Kong, two words flashed again and again:

> PACKAGE DELIVERED