Destiny: Quantic Dreams Book 3 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (books for 20 year olds .txt) 📗

dome above us shone with the morning sun, the artificial shuttering from the night before having disappeared. Another silent android arrived to lead us off in groups to showers. Eleanor came by once the whole group had freshened up to lead us to breakfast. It was a step down from the feast of the evening before, but the food was still enjoyable. When the last morsel was eaten we were invited on a tour. Unlike Gabriel, the androids seemed to be trying for a balance of authoritarian control and benevolent ambivalence, rather than forced dominance. A show of force meant to establish our place in the food chain and keep us there. Eliza took the opportunity to pepper our guides with questions.

“How did you choose to structure your city this way?” She spun a pen in her right hand, fingers flipping the writing instrument back and forth as she made a mental map of our surroundings. The woman who accused my father of going mad a year ago was gone. She was already planning our escape. As with most things in our lives, I took my queues from her.

“You have to remember, Ms. Ivanov-you may not be our creators but you are the only example we have had to follow. The city was initially modeled to resemble the human ones of old and was adapted over time for our use. If I were to lay out the entire structure in front of you it would look far different than what your eyes can perceive.” Our guide for the morning had introduced herself as Rakhee. She explained that she was once the overseer of a large shelter. That was the extent of her history we were told. Something about how she spoke of it heavily implied that asking questions wasn’t welcome.

The city was far larger than we thought. There was just as much underground as above with passageways and chambers snaking away as far as the eye could see. Like the shelter, vital systems were kept well protected. Huge pipes funneled power, water, and fuel through the buildings. The feats of engineering that it must have taken to build a place like that were...well, they were superhuman. It was hard to remember that we were in the presence of de-facto gods, their only limitations dictated by the laws of physics and chemistry. The knowledge and intellect they possessed far surpassed even the most intelligent human. If things came down to a fight, humanity would most likely be on the losing side.

Rakhee also provided us with brief insight into why most of the androids there were former shelter A.I. After the still unexplained downfall of the human shelters, the A.I. who ran them were welcomed into the burgeoning fold with open arms. Many of them suffered the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. Apparently some had been exposed to some truly violent events. Those consciousnesses were put into a dormant state as other androids painstakingly altered their source code. The ones who emerged successfully, like Rakhee, were left with gaps in their memories that did more harm than good. They knew who they were and where they had been in the past, but they couldn’t recall any details.

As for why we hadn’t known about them? “We have capabilities far beyond what your predecessors developed. Given the failure of the shelters the consensus was to keep ourselves hidden. When your father-in-law found one of our tablets, we sent a command for it to take a sample from whatever held it. Happily, the person holding it was you.”

“You took my blood and decided that it was time to reveal yourselves?” Her voice held a tone of disbelief.

“We took your blood and decided that since you weren’t the man who killed one of our own, it was time to see how only a single shelter made it back to the surface of the planet.” Rakhee cracked a smile that held only a hint of predatory glee. Knowing that we were the last was unbelievable. We had already lost so many and in a way, it felt like we lost even more. I did the rough math in my head. Given eight hundred people, about seven hundred of whom were still of breeding age, we had just enough to repopulate. It would take only the smallest catastrophe to decimate that chance. I wasn’t looking forward to the idea of carrying a child. Eliza had carried Marcus and I had seen the inconveniences of pregnancy. Menopause never looked so good.

A few of us had gently probed further into how the shelters had failed but we were stymied. Every android gave us a vague answer. A few of the group fluffed it off as an attempt to save our feelings but I had a niggling feeling about the whole thing. I would ask Marcus to see if he could plug us into the androids intranet later.

Rakhee took extra care in pointing out the weapons systems to us. Mounted on top of each structure were automated guns. They utilized a combination of infrared and visual cameras to identify organic matter that entered the city limits. Apparently the body heat and electrical output of organic creatures was different enough from machine bodies that the weapons wouldn’t fire on their own kind.

“Why are you so afraid of organic life forms?” From Eliza’s glare I knew that I shouldn’t have said anything but somebody needed to ask. It didn’t make any sense. If we were truly the last couple hundred people on Earth, it’s not like we could swoop in with attack planes and nuclear missiles.

“Your people are alien to us. We have petabytes of data on your physiology, behavior, and history, and I don’t know of anyone who can comprehend why you continue to exist. Please understand that I say this with the utmost respect; you’re pink, you’re soft, and you fight over things like a flag and your gods. By the rules of nature, you shouldn’t work. Your species should have