Atlas of Arcadia Read online

  “Hold your breath,” hissed Christian with urgency. Their active camo flicked on and the group raced forward down the blackened smoke-filled space. They burst into a vibrant green space. It was the gigantic kitchen greenhouse. Robotic hands gracefully moved up and down on hanging rails, pruning and spraying the fresh green vegetables. The peace was broken by a hail of glass shattering and projectiles pounding across the space. The group ducked below the growing tables and made their way to a door on the far side. Christian reached up to open the handle of the door but as he did an energy round went through his glove and hand. Not reacting to the pain, he completed opening the door with the other hand. The group hustled inside and he closed the door again. The inside of the gigantic gold garage was an array of golden steel archways, fixed over a grey tiled floor, with a huge ceiling high above bay windows at the far end. The room was filled with ancient sports cars and even a helicopter.

  “It would take me a lifetime to afford one of these fucking cars,” murmured Christian as he counted his two remaining men, plus the three scientists who were way out of their league today.

  “Let’s stop fucking about and pick a car,” yelled one of the guards to the group. He pointed to an inconspicuous five door car and climbed in the driver’s seat.

  “Okay, you in the boot,” directed Christian to the other one. The rest climbed in silently. Abi stared ahead, her emotions required some serious catching up. The guard in the boot broke the boot window and prepared himself as the vehicle descended into the hidden road network. The gleaming white tunnels played haunting piano music and had pleasant nature scenes and oceans moving along the walls. To the left of the car was a barricade of poly armoured vehicles.

  “Eat shit.” The guard laughed in the back as he fired an explosive projectile into the mess of armoured cars, setting them ablaze. Bullets pinged back but were far off the mark. Christian leaned out the window and fired at a drone which had flown over the carnage bringing it down.

  “I was having a green beer fifteen minutes ago, how did I end up in high speed chase in fucking Arcadia of all places?” Christian chuckled. The guard driving laughed but no one else could see the funny side over their shell shock. The tunnels seemed empty for a long time. Occasionally they would see a blockage up ahead and would take the conveniently placed exit before it.

  “I feel like they are directing us towards something,” noted Atlas.

  “We could tackle a barricade but we might get taken out in one strike. My impression is they want to take us alive otherwise they would be returning explosive ammunition, they also seem to be firing cautiously which is why it took them too long to respond in the hallway,” Christian informed them.

  “Can we go over the barricade by going through someone’s mansion and back down again?” asked Atlas.

  “No, they know where we are. They will have vehicles tracking us above ground as well. We need to get out from under Arcadia’s dome. I’m sorry Atlas, we are in an impossible situation” offered Christian unhelpfully.

  The guard in the boot grunted and joined in the conversation. “I have a contact in Gaborone which is in the direction we are headed,” offered the guard.

  “Is there anywhere you don’t have contacts,” smirked Christian.

  Half an hour passed. The car was being trailed slowly from behind at a distance which was out of range of fire. “They could catch us if they wanted, but I would prefer to make a last stand. If we are going to die let’s do it my way,” growled Christian. He turned to see Abi’s solemn frightened expression and it was obvious she did not agree.

  Suddenly the car seemed to be headed for the side of the tunnel. Christian grabbed the steering wheel and held it steady. He switched off the engine in his vision and the vehicle came to a gradual stop. The nameless guard who had been driving had been silently shot in the temple. The only indication an execution had taken place, being a tiny black hole in the windscreen, side window and face shield.

  “Throw down your weapons, we want you breathing,” said a robotic voice echoing in the cavern.

  Christian looked around for targets to shoot at in a blaze of glory but was instead confronted by an empty tunnel. “Fuck,” sighed Christian.

  The weapons were thrown from the windows, personal handguns included. The doors were ripped from the vehicle by invisible forces and so were the occupants. Their arms were pulled in front of them and cuffs snapped on. The active camo of the Arcadian polys flicked off. The pattern in this part of the tunnel was a myriad of scientific references, and the hauntingly large logo for ASI Arcadian Science Institute animated brightly above the car park entrance to the facility. The group we’re directed inside descended further using a vehicle elevator and were marched to another elevator in a car park to descend even further still. They were marched through a warren of chrome-sheeted walls and labs with wide windows. Pale faces stared back through the glass. They passed a table appearing to contain an agglomeration of gore dripping onto the floor.

  “What the hell are they doing here?” Atlas asked Junius. Junius looked ashamed and did not reply.

  They dragged their way into a gigantic white-walled room. A lone red figure stood below a colossal black steel orb. Atlas’s head began to pound loudly and he felt he could almost hear whisperers. His vision was blurry as he was pushed towards a woman who reached out. Her cold hand found its way to Atlas’s shoulder. “Mr Series, so glad to finally meet you.” The voice was nasally and stern, devoid of femininity. Atlas followed the path of the arm to find a short woman in a red dress staring back. She had short dark brown hair and darting unsettling eyes which moved constantly as she spoke. “I am so glad to have found you. I am Ayian Gammon, welcome to the Arcadia Science Institute.” Atlas could not reply, something was painful and broken in his mind. Ayian waited, gave a sharp glance to Junius before continuing. “We were very surprised today to find your homeless camp at Tass so heavily fortified.” She laughed and waited again for a reply. “We were hoping to smoke out leaders of the LN,” provoked Ayian.

  “We have nothing to do with the LN,” pleaded Junius.

  “You don’t get to talk,” Ayian hissed, pointing at a guard who threw Junius to the ground wheezing. “Atlas, when the planet was wiped clean of government and corruption with the meteorite two thousand years ago, Henry Arcadia rebuilt it. His idea of total freedom has been proven to be the best way to run society, two thousand years of world peace. Have you seen the incredibly efficiency? The unstoppable growth powered by billions of hard-working hands. Anyone can obtain a perfect life. We truly live in heaven. Then the losers, the layabouts who want to make everyone equal, they want to hand out food components like humans are pet cats they want to control and take freedom. They want to eradicate failure, but with failure gone so is our purpose as a species. Do you see the evil I’m trying to stop? Have you been watching all the death on the news, millions starving or rioting? Are you listening, Atlas? They are people who have lost their purpose, even the losers have purpose in our world.” Ayian glanced up lovingly to the giant black sphere.

  Atlas glared and felt pain and dread in his heart, while he listened to the things he did not agree with. Atlas thought: no utopia has starving children living in dilapidated dens at the bottom of its cities; no Utopia would have unemployment from automation resulting in death. “Is my family safe?” he asked.

  Ayian shook her head. “Terrorists are not a family, Atlas, the only family you need is liberty.” Her eyes were hazed over like there was no one behind them.

  “Andy, Veronica and Zack, are they okay?” Atlas pleaded, looking at Abi to check she was still there.

  Aiyan pulled his face back towards her. “I don’t know. Look, you might think your family loved you but even your family has betrayed you.”

  “Who has betrayed me?” is what Atlas wished to say but his brain was pounding and his hearing was drifting away.

  “He saw the damage of your pointless revolution and gave me a call.”

  Atl
as gave no thought to the person’s identity and instead only wished to collapse to the floor, but was instead yanked over to a chair beneath the sphere, and held down into it by guards.

  “Normally I would just extract what I need from you over the network, but you have been disconnected somehow, therefore we need a more direct approach to retrieve the credits. Also, it is of interest to us how you have been using the equipment we have sold to you to build something allowing you to skip past six thousand miles of our fair planet. Quite a remarkable feat, even our best node computers like the one you are sitting under have failed to invent something like this.”

  The needle aperture opened and putrefying flesh crept down towards Atlas’s skull and began its work. Atlas breathed very carefully, unable to control what was happening to him, but in his soul came deep relaxation. Life cannot be controlled, any attempt to do so is illusionary self-defeating and anxious. Atlas knew he could only have made the choices he had made. Those choices predetermined by his environment. He stopped grasping to life and went happily.

  “Let’s see who else we have here then. So you are Abi. You are very lucky I promised to send you home.” Abi was crying pitifully. All her strength was gone, and she would have slumped to the floor if she wasn’t held firmly upright by a soldier.

  “What are you doing to Atlas, what the hell are those thing?” blubbered Abi.

  “This is a node computer, dear, it harnesses the trillions of neurons in a human brain alongside an advanced Nano system to deliver the most powerful quantum computer ever known.” Ayian smiled proudly, waving a hand sporadically into the air almost as if the action would explain the entire concept. “Junius himself worked on improving much of this before he betrayed Arcadia for the LN. We know all about it, June; no sense lying.” Ayian laughed, slapping Junius gently. She stood confidently in front of Atlas’s last two security guards. “You guards fought brilliantly, I’m sure we will have good paying work for you.” Ayian smiled, but was then struck dumb as the guard’s face shield slid back revealing the grinning face of Laki.

  VIII

  “Stop the machine,” screamed Ayian. The guards who held Atlas in the chair were now stood frozen. Technicians flinched, they took steps forward to help but realised apart from sticking their arms in and losing them to the node nothing could be done. Atlas was sucked upwards and dangled. Unlike the technicians Ayian couldn’t afford to fail. She rushed forward, jumped on the chair and forced her arms through the blood and the gore and grasped his raw brain. She tried to drag it backwards out of the needle. Her screams and the sight of the scene caused the hysterical Abi to vomit. Junius glared with ferocity at the floor. Laki grinned on in the happiest moment of his long life. This time one of the multiple guards intervened to save the life he was paid to save by firing energy rounds through her arms and severing them. She crashed to the floor. A technician rushed in with a kit to clot her stumps. He injected her and she regained consciousness as the pain left her body.

  “Shoot that man,” screamed Aiyan to her guards, who raised their weapons to fire as Laki smiled on. “Shoot him then,” said Aiyan from the floor. The guards stood eerily frozen in place, their heads twitched before one by one they fell to the ground. One guard dropped his weapon, approached the group in jerky painful movements and removed Laki’s shackles before falling to the ground. Laki dismounted out of the mechanical suit, revealing his usual white suit and trousers.

  “You have been outplayed, sister,” whispered Laki to Aiyan.

  “What have you done? You will get us all killed. Father will be angry,” screeched Aiyan.

  “Father Loves this kind of thing, besides Father is a metal sphere filled with clockwork and dead flesh, it’s time for real people to take charge again.”

  “How the hell did you find an unregistered node manager or have you broken our encryption somehow?” blurted Aiyan as she was helped by a technician to her feet.

  “Don’t touch her, she’s a big girl, she can help herself,” Laki yelled at the technician. Aiyan slid back to the floor and stayed there. Laki looked lovingly to Atlas’s dangling flesh, and Abi shuffled her way over and collapsed on her knees in front of Atlas sobbing. “Atlas was not a faked node manager. We’ve tried many times without interface success to hack the encryption; Atlas is a real son of Arcadia. The Pengjiang civic noticed this unnatural genius roaming around their building and found a security tunnel back to Arcadian nodes; they thought he was a spy and almost had him killed.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “Chong-Kemin, same as us, sister.”

  Aiyan flicked through her Nano and found the files of Atlas along with a photo of a dead child with a fractured skull, who now she looked closely did not look very similar to her memory of a young Atlas drawing squares. Aiyan realised this node manager reject had slipped the net due to deceitful guards wanting to save their jobs, and had let him get away.

  The twenty node managers like Aiyan have limited access to the node, their very thoughts however mingle subconsciously and interpreted by a powerful AI mind. Their beliefs and goals turn into real action before their very eyes, without lifting a finger. This system is further held together with an implanted personality into the node managers in late childhood modelled on Henry Arcadia. A personality that was now staring at Laki in horror.

  Laki danced through the Arcadian systems. He had full control of them now through Atlas’s brain fused into the node. Every worker and guard in Arcadia was given a new lucrative contract with him. He sent out a request to have Henry Arcadia brought before him. Laki looked over to his grand architect Junius approvingly, but if he had looked harder he would have seen Junius had his fingers crossed. As he waited he played with the lifeless body of Atlas dripping from the needle.

  “You monster,” cried Abi as she fell weakly against his leg. He kicked her hard in the bridge of her nose adding even more to the mess of Abi’s appearance. Laki laughed “You know as children before they implant the Arcadian personality and encrypt us, they make us very weak willed, to say yes to anything. Who you think of as Atlas is just designed to act a certain way by people like Junius, like a robot.” Laki made Atlas’s body dance some more for Abi’s benefit. Laki took a message from his Arcadian security asking him if the outer wall guards could ingress a troop of thousands of armoured soldiers headed by Victor Flores. He allowed the passage without second thought. Laki grinned as he lifted one arm then the other and gave Atlas silly expressions.

  “Ah, here is the main event.” Shuffling at gunpoint into the room was a collection of Laki’s smartly dressed brothers and sisters. The node managers were the joint co-owners of Arcadia, for a hundred generations they had imbibed the extracted personality of their ancestor Henry Arcadia from his still active brain. A smallish sphere on a trolley was pushed into the room along with containers and machines. Laki received a request from the sphere for video chat, which he accepted. Into Laki’s vision strode Henry, or at least the simulated conglomeration of a trillion brain cells preserved into a personality. The figure had a thin black moustache and an athletic appearance, he often made personal appearances in this form to inspect his protégé. The room was filled now with guards and suited figures and an atmosphere of extreme tension. The 4D of Henry was smiling joyfully.

  “My son, I’m so proud of you. You see, Laki, everyone here is a sheep. But you really listened to my message. The strong-willed take all.” Henry walked up to Laki and put a virtual hand on each shoulder in warmth. Laki strode through the surprised projection and inspected the line of Arcadians.

  “My aim is not to be owner of the world, unlike you. My aim is to give ownership back to its people.”

  Henry laughed. “Laki I know you, I analysed your thoughts until you left us. You wish to be a God, you wish to be a king and to control man, but man cannot be controlled, only bought and sold, given jobs. Not controlled against their will but with it. Remember what I always say, don’t play with your food.”

  Laki pun
ched at options in his vision and the line of Arcadians began moving against their will, including the corpse of Atlas. “It seems to me we do have some control after all, you there.” Laki pointed to a grey-haired man called Titan Hughes in the line-up.

  “Me?” replied Titan meekly.

  “How do you feel about gifting me your companies and civics?” asked Laki innocently.

  “I would rather cut out my own eyes than give you even one credit.”

  Laki sent the line-up of freighted brothers and sisters into panic as their fingers shot up to poke themselves hard in the eye. Laki continued to jab at commands, causing Titan to go into a strange dead-eyed trance. “How about now, brother?” asked Laki.

  “I’m tired and would like to relax at home, maybe if I give you my civics you can ensure they function for years to come.” Titan smiled through a dreamy expression. Laki accepted the ownership of thousands of businesses across the globe. The crowd was stunned in panic and fear. Henry had a sad expression and then ended his communication link. Laki climbed into his armoured suit again. He picked up the sphere of Henry raised it above his head and hurled it with force against the far wall just missing a guard standing there. He approached it again and began prising apart the sphere from the crack. Blood spayed like a mist from the hole before erupting into gore as the side came away. Hot flesh and strands like green netting sprayed across the floor. Sobbing could be heard over the carnage. “You bastard,” and other insults came from the Arcadians. From the direction of the lift arrived Victor with a large group of his soldiers.