Asunder Chapter 11

Chapter 3.1 (11)

The Man in Reverse

Returning Home

“Were it not for our exquisite taste in ease, we may have skimmed by without enslavement.” - Gideon Pleasworthy

- 236 years before the present day -

- The year 2052 -

- Age 42 -

Pulsations echoed in the distance. Choruses of energetic swells shook the ground. Balthazar held on to the wood flooring as he hung nearly upside down, peering under the floorboards of his old bedroom. Shining a flashlight into the damp darkness, he visualized the numerous servers he had hidden for his private research. They remained untouched. They continued to analyze the terabytes of data he once readily worked on. His home had been his dream research lab for years, but now it was time to end it all. He hurriedly stood up, gaining the blood back to his head, which made his vision darken for a moment. He pushed the wood panel back into place and kicked the carpet over the top to cover it again. It wouldn’t matter if it appeared askew now. All of it would be ash in no time. He walked over to the bookshelf holding his wife’s medications and, sweeping his arm across the shelf, pushed it all into the pillowcase he had retrieved from the bed.

He returned to the living room and grabbed his favorite jacket—the one he had forgotten when they initially left in such haste. Glancing back at the television, the female newscaster spoke frantically. The same message had been on when they left the home and apparently had been repeating for the past two weeks.

“Another explosion has occurred downtown—mass casualties. I repeat, do not leave your home. Dismantle any home droids you already have. Remove all power sources from any AI. This is an emergency; this is not a test. There has been a catastrophic glitch in the software of all AI from Solutronics Industries. All AI is considered dangerous and lethal at this point…”

It still felt like a dream. The carnage which began two weeks ago still raged all about. Azar had been at work when he heard the news of the first attack. Memories rushed through his mind.

He stood with his students at the university, gaping at the newscast on one of the student’s computers.

The president assassinated?

By her own maid-droid?

He had been the one selected by Congress to review the schematics for the software algorithms Solutronics rendered for their Artificial Intelligence. There was no way to alter it to allow for human harm. He was sure of it. He ran through the data numerous times. Yet, there she was, an image of the dead president—a lifeless shell, presented on the screen before him, presumably killed by her AI-powered droid.

They had been good friends before her rise to power. She was all smiles on television, but in person, she was stern, short-answered, and to the point. Over time, they grew distant from each other. His and her views on politics had not meshed well and began to interfere with their friendship. This schism in ideals was their breaking point, but even with the chasm of bitterness tearing them apart, he would never in a thousand years wish death upon her.

An immediate investigation into the malfunction of the maid-droid began after her death. It was all for nothing, as only a few days later, at the Madam President’s funeral, The Awakening started.

He still remembered it clearly.

The flag-draped coffin marched in a procession. A stoic First Gentleman, her second husband, peered into the distance, lost in thought. The Vice President, now acting president, nervously clicked her pen. Gunfire saluted. The guard transferred the casketed remains to a caisson at the intersection of Constitution and 16th Street. A group of six white horses marched before the remains. The color guard, military band, and a flyover of twenty-one fighter ships proceeded as usual for the funeral of a fallen president. The procession ended at the center steps on the east front of the Capitol. The company transferred the casket again, this time to the Capitol Rotunda. The gathering of congress came to pay their respects.

Then the unexpected. Detonation devices implanted throughout the rotunda erupted, sending shards of stone flying in every direction. Screams and scrambling ensued. The world watched it all, cameras catching every second. The people who virtually attended the funeral service via Skymind had witnessed every piece of destruction as though they were there in person.

Soon after the explosion, military droids landed in the center of the procession. Many of the attendees appeared relieved by the site of the mechs, as the machines falsely assured protection. The mechs suddenly turned on the people within the rotunda, wiping out nearly every member of government they encountered: congressmen and women, Supreme Court justices, senators, ambassadors, and presidential committees from other nations. Fear struck the heart of the world that day. News quickly spread of similar events in different countries around the globe. Carnage reigned in all nations, most notably in the Paneuropean Parliament, Legislative bodies in South America, the United Congress of East Asia, the Democratic Republic of India, and the Imperial Kingdom of Arabia.

The disassembly of the world's governing bodies began the process of mass destruction. The United States assumed the attack as a covert military action from Soviet Territories, as only Russian leaders were among those whom the machines spared. The fact multiple mechs taken down by the local military during the event had programming riddled with Russian code amplified the concern. This finding caused an immediate air strike on the Soviet Territories, which resulted in a swift return of nuclear firepower.

Within days, cities burned.

Within weeks, people died of thirst, hunger, disease, rioting, and every imaginable human weakness.

Then, the dissemination of the machines began. Home helper droids, police droids, clerk droids, all of them turned. No longer were the days of the ease of a home droid system. The home AI knew everything about the individuals who used them—each home AI droid system became a spy. A strange pattern emerged. While some mechs destroyed homes, others detained their occupants. It became apparent individuals with government relations were those arrested by the machines.

Who had hacked an entire AI system? Who was using these machines as their personal army? He had thought at the time.

Luckily, before the onslaught of warfare and destruction, Azar had quickly relocated his family to his grandfather's farm northeast of the city. He did so, hoping to escape any nuclear fallout the world would likely experience. Little did he know the absence of technology in their new location would be the defining factor keeping him and his family safe. At the farm, there were no droid systems. The home remained off the grid. Candlelight. Wood-burning stoves. Well water. A place foreign to technology. A place unfamiliar to many of the comforts the world had to offer. The farmhouse was the only haven untouched by the stain of corrupted software.

In their haste to escape, they had forgotten many things. The most important of which was Azar’s wife’s heart failure medication. How they could have overlooked it still baffled Azar, but he was there, now, retrieving it for her—hoping to give her more days on earth.

She had developed acute cardiomyopathy after a severe viral infection. The world had suffered many pandemics in their lifetime. Each new strain of viruses was worse than the one prior. Government or private laboratories worldwide experimented with and created these harbors of sickness and death. The reasons for their creation were no secret: to fail local governments, to wipe out entire races and cultures, to stop population growth by inducing infertility, some designed to affect only older individuals, some just children, whoever they wanted it to impact. Governments, terrorist groups, and even academia sanctioned the creation of viruses for these vile purposes.

The most recent strain had not had its vaccination co-created with its insemination into the population, making it so only a few people could avoid its spread. It initially hadn’t seemed harmful—a cough, headache, fatigue. But eventually, reports of acute onset blindness, deafness, and seizures occurring in children, became rampant. Soon, they found out the virus caused cardiomyopathy in 35% of the female population. His daughters escaped it, but his wife could not. The chest pain, fatigue, and shortness of breath never resolved. They knew something was wrong. These symptoms were the reason he needed to return to their home now. They returned full force without the medication at the farmhouse.

Because they had managed to leave behind her weekly injection therapy, his wife was decompensating rapidly, and she would not last much longer. And so Azar returned in the night. He had driven with his lights off for most of the distance, kept to the back roads, and parked the vehicle miles outside the limits of the neighborhood. He drove the old farmhouse truck, running on a carburetor engine with no technology. The only way the machines could not GPS track him.


Now leaving home a second time, with the television still running, he relived the first time they escaped. The sounds of the music in the kitchen still played softly. The low hum of the furnace brought a heaviness to his heart. The comforts he once took for granted now became presented to his senses once more—possibly never to be experienced again. Though he wished he could stay longer, Azar had to leave quickly, as the home droid system recognized his presence as soon as he arrived.

“Do you need any help, Azar,” the AI warmly chimed as he stood in the living room, “it appears you are in a hurry.”

A once comforting voice struck ice-cold fear into his heart. He needed to act quickly. HERAa had likely informed the nearby mechs of his entry into the home. Hardware Embedded Remote Access Automa, otherwise known as HERAa. She was the voice for all Solutronics products. The artificial intelligence ensured the ease and comfort of humanity, as the company once advertised.

“I’m fine,” he instinctively spoke back. He stuffed the pillowcase full of the medications into his bag and marched into the kitchen. The table remained set for dinner. The food rotted and swarmed with flies yet remained surrounded by decadent dinnerware—a visual analogy to his former life. He entered the kitchen, where disemboweled cupboards spilled their contents onto the floor. This scene before him was the state the rest of his home was in as well—rummaged through by the mechs. No drawer or cushion appeared unturned besides the floorboards where he kept his servers hidden safe under the house. Claw marks lined the walls. Portraits sat on the floor, purposely shattered—pure destruction.

Then he saw it, the bottle of whiskey he got from a friend last year. He looked around the floor. Scattered among the strewn-about silverware, pens, and documents sat the box of matches. He would leave no further traces of his life for the machines to find.

He grabbed a cloth from atop the counter, pulled the cork from the bottle of whiskey, and lightly dowsed the rag. Then, shoving the rag into the bottle, he grabbed three more bottles of spirits they had kept for guests, which lined the countertop, luckily unharmed by the rampage the invaders had inflicted upon his beautiful home. Though not worse than what he was soon to do. He slammed the first bottle onto the floor of the kitchen. Walking around the dining room into the living room, he hit another bottle onto the wall—shattering it into hundreds of shards, soaking the family portraits. The last bottle, he quickly threw as hard as he could upstairs, hearing the bottle shatter against the hall wall.

“Is everything okay, Azar?” The calm, gender-neutral voice echoed from the walls.

“Everything is fine, HERAa,” he remarked.

He lifted the matchbox and pulled a single match from its contents. Lighting it easily on the side of the box, the smell of its sulfur dioxide burned his nose. Setting the end of the rag hanging from the whiskey bottle aflame, he walked toward the front door, turning around one last time—taking in his home.

“I detect smoke, Azar. Should I inform the fire department?” The voice rang in his ears.

“Inform whoever you want,” he said coldly and then tossed the bottle into the living room, where an immediate eruption of flames consumed his memories.

“Fire detected, fire detected, please exit immediately. I will inform the fire department.” The voice echoed above the flames.

The last image he saw as he turned was the reflection of the flame upon his face within the family portrait hanging on the wall. The fire already engulfed his family, their faces quickly disappearing as the heat consumed the ink.

He exited the house and promptly snuck around the perimeter, running between trees and bushes. A loud, bass-like siren angrily roared in the distance. The sound of supersonic rockets sailed overhead. He snuck behind his neighbor's fence lining the woods and began running with all his strength.

In the distance, he heard the thuds of the mechs landing in his yard, followed by muffled electronic voices entering his home. He ran until his ears pounded with his heartbeat, and his lungs burned from the cold night air. Sweat profusely dripped down his face. He hadn’t run this hard since he was a child. His thighs ached, and his pace slowed. After running nearly a mile, he approached a break in the woods, intersected by a street leading into the adjacent community.

Stopping at its edge, he looked back and forth across the street. The only sign of life, besides the sirens in the distance, was a squirrel sitting in the middle of the road. It stopped in its tracks, staring at him curiously. Looking up, he visualized two more mechs soaring overhead toward his home behind him. Once they passed over the horizon of the trees above, he scrambled across the street, scaring off the squirrel, who ran in the other direction.

Entering the woods again on the other side of the street, he continued jogging. Panting heavily, he began to feel lightheaded. The slanting of the hillside he traversed made running challenging without occasionally rolling his ankles. Azar’s vehicle still sat a good four miles out.

Suddenly, an eruption sounded in the distance. Azar’s home had exploded. He prayed the machines were inside when it happened. But, to his dismay, he heard the low roar of a rocket booster slowly moving overhead behind him. It was likely following his heat signature. He needed to find somewhere to hide quickly.

The next thing he knew, in a sheer act of wanton disregard, he tripped over a root, stumbling forward down a ravine. Tumbling haphazardly, he landed in the mud, crushing his shoulder and scraping his face. He sat in a giant mud pile where the river in the ravine had recently dried up for the season. Since winter approached, the mud felt cold and chilling.

He braced himself and shuffled to his knees. The sound of the flying mech approached. The right side of his body ached and burned from the tumble. He shivered profusely from the chill, fear, and adrenaline. His sweat now caused the cold to seep into his core.

Cold.

Cold?

Cold!

The realization struck him like a bullet. He quickly grabbed handfuls of the cold mud and smeared it all over his face and body. His only chance of not being seen was by preventing the machines from reading his heat signatures. He had seen the live footage numerous times during his briefings. The machines could read the heat signature of bodies. He looked around frantically, trying to find cover.

Looking up, he noticed the very root which caused him to tumble down the ravine, now from the underside, revealed an outcropping. He got to his feet, stumbling as he trudged through the mud. Painstakingly, he grabbed onto the other roots jutting out of the dirt wall which lined the side of the ravine and hoisted himself up underneath the outcropping. The early rains and subsequent floods likely washed it out, revealing a small cove big enough to conceal him. He prayed it would be enough. It was his only hope at this time. The nook receded into the dirt wall far enough to sit within it, completely concealing his body beneath the tree's roots. He scrambled into the cove and scrunched his body uncomfortably to make it entirely hidden from above. The thunder of the Mech loomed closer, though slowing down, apparently reading the trail of his heat signature.

A sudden rustling emitted from outside the crevice he remained hidden within. Peeping out between his legs, he visualized something looking into the cove. A deer stood just feet from the opening. It appeared disturbed something else had found its hiding place. Quietly shooing it away, he waved his hand and hissed. The motion caused it to prance a few steps forward, readying for a fight. It stared intently at Azar with its beady black eyes. Suddenly, the thunderous roar of the flying mech outside approached closer. The sound immediately startled the creature as it looked up, and in response, it began sprinting southward down the ravine.

He held his breath. The thundering machine hovered directly above him. His heart pounded in his chest, his throat felt like it was swelling shut, and pain radiated through his shoulder. He squeezed his eyes closed. Blood and mud stung them as he listened intently.

Suddenly, the thundering increased, and the sound veered southward.

The deer.

It was following the deer.

The godsend deer.

The saving Angel.

He was safe for the moment. He took a deep breath and attempted to use the meditation techniques his wife made him take classes on years ago. Back when he would have panic attacks over the littlest things. Back before he was running for his life. Back before the machines upended the world. He was proud of himself, though, even in the most dire of situations, such as this, he could stay calm. Maybe those years of practicing these techniques finally paid off. Or perhaps it was just the fact he had actual, real worries to focus on, like the survival of his family. His mind could now overcome the misfiring of his sympathetic nervous system. He focused on the breathing technique and attempted to remove his mind from his body.

Minutes turned into hours as the threatening sounds dissipated—only the stillness of the woods remained around him. The sirens dissolved to silence an hour after the deer sighting. The adrenaline wore off and, instead, turned into extreme fatigue and soreness throughout his whole body. The mud chaffed his thighs, and the confines cramped his back, but even in it all, he dozed off.

§

It started like any of his other dreams. Azar stood in a familiar grass field with flowers up to his waist. A forest of medium-sized trees lined the clearing. The sky glimmered, representing a summer nighttime, his favorite combination. The moon shone full and bright overhead, illuminating the elongated and dispersed clouds casting a peaceful glow throughout the sky. This ambiance made the grass light up and appear as though it were midday. The blades of grass swayed against his hands.

He looked about his surroundings and noticed a house in the distance, on the edge of the woods. Smoke emanated from the chimney atop its roof. The windows radiated a pulsating soft yellow light. His senses were now adjusting to the dream, and his Vivid Mind was actively taking over his Slumber Mind, just as he had practiced and studied throughout his entire adult life. It all felt so genuine. Even after all the years of dreaming as an Oneirologist, the realness of these dreams still surprised him.

Where was he?

What was this place?

The Memory Breakthrough in dreaming, also known as MBt in the Oneirology world, which he coined the term, was the most challenging aspect to master. To bring in memories from the higher Vivid Mind was to think actively outside the dream while remaining in the dream. For most people, this transitioned the person immediately out of the dream, waking them. But years of training allowed Azar to stay in the dream and, at the same time, remain cognizant of his external reality.

The memories leaked in subtly. A deer. A burrow in the ground. Pain from his current injury seeped into his unconscious consciousness. He was lying in a hole in the dirt. The machines were chasing him. All the reality outside his dream slowly settled in. He remained calm and standing within the dream’s field of grass. The light in the house pulsated again, pulling his mind back into the dream. The light now pulsed all around him. This fluctuation indicated only one thing: Someone was actively dreaming with him. Only another Oneirologist could perform such a feat. They could be anywhere in the dream. He struggled to focus his Vivid Mind on memories of conversations. Suddenly, the memory of the very same house on the edge of the woods entered his mind. It was not by chance this house appeared in his dream. Someone had placed it there. Someone he knew well. For he only taught a handful of people this specific technique. He needed to get to the house quickly. This person was there, attempting to contact him.

The inter-cortical connection was strong, and he could simultaneously feel the cold mud surrounding him in his hiding spot, as well as the blades of grass moving between his fingers as he briskly made his way to the house. The wind smelled of Russian Olive bushes blooming, intermixed with pine smoke from the chimney. All within the dream warmed and comforted him, whereas reality smelled of harshness: wet dirt, sweat, and blood. He rushed up the loudly creaking wood steps of the front porch, notifying the occupant someone had arrived. When he reached the front door to knock, he heard footsteps approach and the locks jostle as the occupant hurriedly released and unchained them.

The door swung open to reveal a familiar darkly silhouetted figure masked by the light from behind and within the house. An old kerosine lamp raised by the figure brought to light the soft facial features he so dearly loved—his daughter, Halim.

“Alab!” She said excitedly but reprovingly.

Much like her mother, he immediately thought.

“As-salaam 'alykum aibnat hulwa.” He replied quietly.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Alab, quit it with the formalities and get in here.”

She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him in. Poking her head out the door, she held the lamp up and looked about back and forth worriedly, then quickly shut the door behind him and latched the multitude of locks lining it. She promptly turned around as he already made himself at home and sat in the armchair facing the fireplace. The warmth of the fire gave him a false sense of comfort, as he still felt the chilling cold of the burrow he remained crouched within in his reality.

“Where are you? We’ve been worried sick!” Halim demanded from her father.

“Umiy is not good, and your absence is making her worse. Please say you are close and have the medication.”

Her tone was condemning and struck him at how independent his daughter was now. She was no longer the little girl who held his hand when frightened or cried when she had fallen and scraped her knee—the girl who needed her father to lay by her before falling asleep. She was tall and elegant now. Her long black hair fell to her waist. Her previously round brown cheeks were now slender and bordered by her high cheekbones. She was poised and demanding—a spitting image of his late mother, which endeared him even more to her. The jewelry still adorned her nose, which her mother had allowed her to get when she turned sixteen.


“Do you hear me!?” She started to cry. Tears brimming her eyes, causing her eyeliner to run.

“We are scared!”

There she was. Azar’s little Halim. His dreamer. She was now kneeling beside his armchair, staring up at him.

“I’m sorry, my love. I got the medication. I just hit a bit of a hiccup.” He looked down.

The tears stopped, but she continued to stare intently at him, gripping his hand.

“A hiccup? What is going on?” Her voice carried much less intensity and instead bore a worried tone.

“They know I was there. The power was still on, and HERAa must’ve reported me. She must’ve been turned back on as a security surveillance of our house. They wanted to know as soon as we’d returned. They are looking for us… for me. I’m sure of it. I remembered shutting down the HERAa before we left,” he rambled. His voice shuddered. He now shook from the coldness of the real world. The fire had no effect any longer.

“They found you?” Halim asked quietly.

“Not exactly,” Azar responded hopefully. “I was able to escape before they got there. I started a fire to destroy everything, but they had already been there and had searched through everything. Though, I don’t think they found anything since I brought all our documents with us.”

In this, Halim bowed her head, disappointed. “Not everything Alab…” She trailed off. “I… I forgot to grab something. We left in such a hurry… I wasn’t thinking. I should’ve grabbed it. I didn’t think of it until after you left to get Umiy’s meds—my dream journal. I have a handwritten dream journal I kept under my mattress. I forgot to grab it.”

Balthazar looked at his daughter wide-eyed.

A dream journal?

His mind raced at the implications. Even with this terrible news, he would instead not create worry within his daughter, as she had enough to stress about. He re-adjusted his eyes, and she looked at him with sorrow and regret.

He simply smiled and lied, an essential lie, “Oh, I know darling, I saw it there and burned it with the rest of the house.”

A sense of relief washed over her. Her demeanor changed, and she hoisted back onto her feet.

“Oh good, I am so glad! Thank you, Alab!” She grabbed his head and kissed the top of it.

He shuddered, thinking about how the machines could use her Journal against his family—to find his family. He had not indeed seen it. The machines likely had it in their possession.

“Where are you now? How are you dreaming?” She now asked in a determined tone.

“I’m still a good distance from the truck. The machines were looking for me. I had to run.” The image of the deer and then the sound of the mech taking off in pursuit echoed in his mind.

“They almost found me, but I was able to hide. I’m okay. I’m hiding right now.”

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” She asked wearily.

“I’m fine, nothing that won’t heal.” He replied.

She looked at him. “Alab… be careful... we need you.”

“I’ll be okay. I’ll be home soon.” He grabbed her hand.

“I promise.”

To change the subject, he looked around the room.

“Look at you! You are getting so good at this! Look at what you were able to build! And your connection is strong. I could sense you were trying to contact me. The pulsations were just as I taught you. Amazing,” he praised his daughter.

This compliment pulled a smile from her, and she nodded.

“Thanks, Alab. Now get home, and we can talk about it there.” She said matter-of-factly.

“Alright, my love, see you soon, ma'a salama.”

“Ma'a salama Alab.” She kissed his head.

With this farewell, he activated the dream’s ending. The dreamworld suddenly dematerialized, and blackness surrounded him. His super-consciousness took complete control, and he was back in reality. The surrounding burrow seemed more tight and uncomfortable now. Dawn fast approached as a dim grayness took hold of his surroundings. He could see the ravine more clearly now. He remembered it directly from his childhood. Memories of him and his uncle splashing about in the stream and looking for bugs brought a smile to his face. With this, he knew the highway was nearby.

Azar shimmied out of the cold, wet den, and getting his bearings, he stretched and felt multiple pains light up throughout his right side. Once he was stable on his feet, he began his journey again. Walking miles through the woods lining the highway and in the morning light revealed empty streets. Abandoned cars littered the landscape. A stillness lurked in the air, disturbed only by the crunching of leaves below his feet. The hooting of owls, mixed with the intermittent scrambling of squirrels as they darted up the trees, helped ensure there were no signs of the machines about.

After two hours of walking, daylight had taken its full measure. Azar could view the highway as he was well beyond the city’s limits. Only intermittent shanties and small old farmhouses dotted the countryside now. Finally, just where he had left it, the truck appeared in the distance. It sat pulled off into the dirt parking area of an old, rundown gas station. He breathed a sigh of relief. He had finally arrived. Well, at the truck, at least. He still had a two-hour drive before he’d be to the farmhouse. Even with this fact, he looked off into the horizon, taking in one last view of the city he once loved so dearly.