Revolution in the Underground (28 page)

“But… do you desire to be human?” Kara asked.

“I want to fit in and belong… that is only natural for all living things… You are not the pinnacle of evolution—there is no such thing—and I suspect if you grew up in a city of androids, it would be you who would wish to be something else.  Deep down, I know that your world… your distinctions… are semantic and arbitrary…  I wish you could see past it all and see me for who I really am.  I am not a human, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a person.  We are different species, that’s all.”

“Okay… okay…” Kara said, trying to be progressive.  “Don’t judge me either.  You have to understand the society I grew up in.  This is… very new to me…  I need some time…  I’m sorry Luna… I apologize for what I said.”

“Me too,” Sven said, trying hard to feel sincere.

“And tell them what this means,” Styles instructed Luna.

“I know the code.”

“What?!”

“Really?  But I thought you said there were about a billion base pairs!  How could you possibly memorize them all?”

“I don’t know… It just comes naturally to me.”

“And you knew this the whole time?!” Maggie asked indignantly from Styles. 

Styles laughed heartily.  “I suspected it, but I didn’t know for sure.  The only real question was whether she was an android or a cyborg.  I can’t believe you all missed it.  It was so obvious!”

“But why did you make me feel so bad?” Maggie asked.

“Because you annoyed me… plus I thought it would be funny… and I was right.”

“You’re sick.”

“No, you’re annoying.  Do you know how much more difficult things will be because of your little stunt?  Do you know how much more security there will be at the Gate?  And now I have to drag Luna along!  You’re lucky things turned out as well as they did.  For all you knew, all could have been lost.”

“What’s done is done.  Stop picking on her,” Luna said, with a new sense of authority.

“I’m assuming you have night vision,” Styles said, pretending not to notice her new found leverage.

“Yes,” she admitted.  “There is a path that spirals downward around the circumference of the chasm.  I can see a few dim lights at the bottom, but it’s really far down.  The route is fairly narrow, so you’ll have to hug the walls if you don’t want to fall down.”

“How narrow?” Sven asked, fearful of possible restrictions that his unique dimensions might pose.

“You’ll be okay,” she promised.  “We’ll take it slow.  I’ll lead the way.  Everyone, hold hands.”  Luna, not by accident, grabbed Maggie’s hand first.  Ember walked slowly, waving his hands blindly in front of him.  Kara stepped hesitantly forward but tripped on a rock, and Sven began staggering in the complete wrong direction.  Even Styles sauntered forward gracelessly and hesitantly.  “You humans are so lost without your eyesight,” Luna said with a laugh, trying to lighten the mood. 

“Where are you?” Sven asked, clumsily bumping into the cavern wall.

“Stay where you are, and I’ll come get you.  Maggie, extend your arm.”  Luna walked Maggie over to Ember and had her grab his hand.  In this fashion, she connected Maggie to Ember, Ember to Styles, Styles to Kara, and Kara to Sven.  Luna slowly walked them, in single-file, to the wall of the Abyss and subsequently began the coiled descent.

“I’m worried that I’m going to fall,” Kara admitted, just then bumping into a gravelly mound.

Luna, seeing her hesitancy, assured, “Don’t worry, it’s just a small pile of dirt.  Walk over it.”
              “Are you sure?  It seems really big?”

“Things always seem scarier when you can’t see them.”

“So true,” Ember muttered, just then considering how her words applied to intangible, abstract concepts.

“If we fall,” Sven said worriedly, “will we die.”

Luna stopped to look downward before answering.  “Yes, almost certainly.  Don’t worry though, you have plenty of room.  So long as you don’t step wildly out of line, you should be fine.”

The next thirty minutes passed with painful slowness.  Maggie could not shake the feeling that she was about to perpetually bump into something.  Sven was haunted by the chronic fear of the ground collapsing or falling off the path.  Kara was entertained by her other senses, which she perceived to increase in sensitivity, but became increasingly and uncomfortably anxious, and Ember was preoccupied by Kara’s disturbing reaction to Luna’s revelation.  Styles was, as usual, deep in thought, planning his next moves.

“So, if you’re a robot, and if Styles is a genetically engineered super human,” Sven began, trying to escape his fears, “that means that, in a way, you were both made by the engineers.  So it’s kind of like you have the same parents, right?”

“I suppose,” Luna said.

Styles laughed condescendingly, as if to suggest the manifestly fruitless nature of such pontifications.  “I don’t care what you think.  In the end, we’re all just complicated calculating machines… some of us just more elegant than others,” Styles said haughtily.

“So you aren’t frustrated by your comparison to a robot?” Kara asked in disbelief.

“Not in the slightest.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Luna said, intentionally changing the subject, “and I know you guys are really worried about falling down, but if we continue at this pace, we’ll never reach the bottom.”

“I can’t see!  It’s totally freaking me out!” Maggie exclaimed in a panic, breaking hands temporarily with Luna and her brother to rub her eyes.  “I want to go back!  I want my vision back!”

“Close your eyes and try to pretend that your back home, floating in the Falls,” Ember suggested, just then trying it himself.

“Calm down,” Luna said, putting her arms around Maggie in an attempt to make her feel secure.  “There are some lights and markets down at the bottom.  The Abyss isn’t as bad as everyone thinks.  It is dark and dangerous, but if you go to the right places, you will find dim lighting and hospitality.  There’s a whole sprawling city down there.”

“Really?” she said, fighting back tears.

“Really,” Luna assured.  “No one knows exactly how big it is, but trust me, there are some good parts.”

“Have you been there before?” Sven asked, as they started their descent again.

“Yes… a lifetime ago…” she said, as if digging up very distant and painful memories.

“How old are you, exactly?” Kara asked.

“I was here from the beginning… before the beginning actually.”

“So you saw what the world looked like before?!” Sven inquired, excited for the details.

“Not exactly…”

“Tell us your story,” Kara suggested, “from beginning to end.  I want to understand.”

              “Okay,” she acquiesced.  “I was born in a large factory.  Rudimentary machinations helped put me together, but it was the humans, the engineers, who planned my design—they were the ones that really made me.  At first I didn’t know what was going on, but then some of the older robots said that I had been selected to go to the Sanctuary—which is what they called it.  I remember looking out of the window of the factory…  I remember seeing these giant buildings, and glowing bridges—lights everywhere…”

             
“Were you made how you are now?  I mean, do you age physically?  Have you aged?” Kara asked, believing this detail to be vitally important.

             
“I have made a few alterations to myself along the way, but no, I do not age.  Anyway, I don’t think they wanted us to see their cities because when I next opened my eyes, I was in the Underground.  They had evidently turned us off for the duration of the transportation.  I don’t think they wanted us to know anything…  I think that, for whatever reason, they built the Underground to start over.  I think they thought that if their memory persisted, we would make the same mistakes as they did.”

             
“I can’t imagine how things could have ever been worse than they are now,” Sven remarked snidely.

             
“When I awoke, I was surrounded by hundreds of people—first generations.  They poked and prodded me, called me names.  There was a debate among the people about why the engineers had built us in the first place.  You see, I too don’t know why I was created.  Some had suggested that we—the androids—had been made to service the humans—to complete tasks that they couldn’t.  Others argued that we were created as knowledge repositories—the thought being that if the Underground proved inhospitable to humans, at least we would survive and carry on the legacy of humanity.  The discovery of the Mainframe of Knowledge, to some extent, both bolstered and undermined this claim.”

“So it did exist?  Is it true that the Mainframe contained the totality of human technological and scientific knowledge,” Styles inquired, unusually interested.

“I never saw it, but yes, that was the rumor.  It was also said to contain the world’s history, but those files were supposedly so well encrypted that they were effectively unreachable.”

“So what were the first days like?” Kara asked, wanting to return to Luna’s more concrete recollections.

“I can only tell you from my perspective…  We were treated as second-class life forms, but for the most part were allowed to peacefully coexist.  As the humans settled down into their new lives, the prejudice became more and more intolerable.  Things got worse when some of the androids raised concerns about their treatment.  The second generation mostly continued and expanded the practices and beliefs of the first, but it was the third generation that took it to a new level.  They were, above all else, fretfully perturbed by the thought of android assimilation into human society.  Though we are physically indistinguishable from humans—at least superficially—we had, initially at least, particular mannerisms that were patently robotic.  Over time, however, we learned how humans acted, and some of us even underwent operations to behave more humanly.  As the line became more and more blurred, the humans began to enslave us.  I myself was sold to a man who tried to use me as his sex slave.”

“How terrible!” Maggie cried.

“I ran away, found a dark, hidden, secure place, and turned myself off for a few generations.  I was awakened prematurely by two other androids, Philip and Rick.  They had informed me that in my absence the humans had formed a government, in part to systematically dismantle robots.  They had accused us, among other things, of behaving violently, irrationally and corruptly.  Can you imagine!  Us, violent, irrational and corrupt?!  As we lessened in number, and as the survivors learned to better conceal their identities and successfully assimilate, the humans turned to the practical matter of securing power and control.  One of the first things they did was seize the Mainframe and destroy historical records.”

“I had no idea!” Kara exclaimed, ashamed by her own humanity. 

“Philip, Rick and I joined an android movement to build our own city, under the Underground.  Eventually humans, fearful of what their government was becoming, joined our cause.  Overtime, we became friends—human and android, made inseparable by the brotherhood of toil, cause, and increasing mutual understanding.  They began to empathize with out plight, and soon many of them became the staunchest defenders of our liberties.  We were, of course, not without our opposition.  After Philip and Rick were dismantled by a battalion of renegade humans, posing as sympathizers, I went into hiding once more.”

“I’m so sorry, I had no idea,” Sven expressed.

“When I woke up next, our underground Underground city was a sprawling metropolis.  I spent the next sixty years among humans: Patrick, Rachel, Leonard, and Camille.  Ember, you remind me a lot of Patrick.”

“Me?”

“Yes, he had your same green eyes and the same smile.  Similar personality too.  The five of us would spend every hour together, laughing, playing, talking.  The under-Underground was like a completely separate magical world.  No one cared that I was an android.”

“Did the attitude in the rest of the Underground change as well?” Sven asked.

“Well… I don’t really know, because I didn’t spend much time there.  I think there was still a stigma, but they definitely weren’t dismantling us like they did in the past.  Most people, I think, had either forgotten us or just accepted our existence as a fact of life.  We really didn’t concern ourselves with their world.”

“What happened next?” Sven asked, feeling bad for derailing her narration.

“Leonard and I grew very close.  We spent every night together, talking and philosophizing.  After Camille died, he became particularly concerned about being forgotten.  He would hold me tight at night and tell me things like, ‘you are lucky that you don’t have to age,’ and ‘I wish I could be like you.’  I told him that I was jealous of many of his human qualities and tried to remind him of all the great things about being human, but my consolations never really helped him.  After Rachel and Patrick had a child together, Leonard made me promise every day that I would never forget him.  He fell into depression for sometime thereafter.  I think I saddened him.  I reminded him of his own mortality.  I think, however, it wasn’t the thought of dying that bothered him most… I think he was most disturbed by the thought of me continuing to live on after him.  I think he feared, more than anything, that I would forget him… that he would become just a single forgettable face of many.”