MAXIPOK Part 2: Panic Station
If not friend, why friend shaped?
The story so far:
These stories are set within a world created by the digital mind ‘Max’, who recently sent a robot gamekeeper to investigate weird happenings deep within the forest.
Daniel is a human who lives in the forest. He is feeling rattled by an alarming encounter with a strange creature known only as an anomaly.
Max suddenly goes offline, leaving Daniel and the other human inhabitants of the world cut off from each other. Daniel decides to seek one of the engineers who built Max to see if they know what is going on. The closest engineer is Hannah, Daniel’s estranged wife.
Hannah sat low in a wooden adirondack chair, heels resting on the sawn stump that served as a table, watching Daniel roll a cigarette.
“Do you know what’s keeping me awake at night?” She asked.
“Is it knowing you placed the fate of the human race in the hands of a psychotic artificial mind against the wishes of half the population?”
Daniel applied a final, practiced twist to the cigarette and placed it between his lips before tossing the tobacco pouch into Hannah’s lap.
“Nope. And it was slightly less than half or it wouldn’t have happened, as you well know.” Hannah sprinkled tobacco into a rolling paper, a small white filter wedged between her lips in the corner of her mouth.
“No, it’s a chicken and egg thing. Did Max do something that caused the system to get the jitters. Or did we miss something, some instability buried deep in the system that’s caused Max to glitch out?”
“Which would be worse?” Daniel asked.
“The second one probably, but either would be bad news. I’m hoping it’s something more benign, a failed experiment maybe. I don’t know. Did he say anything to you before going quiet?”
“I haven’t heard from it in weeks. It’s just me and Nom out here, communing with fake nature and minding our own business.”
Hannah’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “Who’s Nom?”
Daniel smiled. “You’ll see, if we head out into the forest. I assume you have a plan?”
Hannah nodded. “There’s a Panic Station a few miles from here. If we hike out to it I might be able to use the terminal to find out what’s going on.”
“Okay, that does sound like a plan. When do we leave? Now?”
“Now.”
*
Hannah shouldered her pack and cradled the old Winchester rifle in the crooks of her elbows, across her chest. “You better get your gun, Annie, we might need it out there.”
Daniel exhaled a disgruntled sound and walked back up the steps into his cabin. He returned with a Mini-14 rifle slung over one shoulder.
“Are these things even going to work?” He gestured towards Hannah’s Winchester.
“They should. We’re fucked if they don’t to be honest, and not because something might eat us. If they don’t work, it’ll mean the World Rules have changed in a way that shouldn’t be possible. That’s partly why I brought mine. Could be useful as a rough and ready debugging tool.”
The pair crossed the clearing outside Daniel’s cabin and entered the forest. The air beneath the tree canopy was pleasantly cool and smelled of earth and damp wood. They walked in silence for a while, Hannah absorbed with her map and compass, Daniel casting surreptitious glances at the undergrowth as if he was waiting for something to happen. Satisfied they were heading in the right direction, Hannah pocketed the compass and returned her attention to where she was and what she was doing. Despite heading into an unknown and possibly dangerous situation, she looked happy. Daniel felt a door in his mind crack open, allowing locked-up feelings to spill out and fall directly into his stomach where they formed a butterfly lurch. ‘Shit’ he thought to himself, feeling momentarily lightheaded.
A mile into the journey Hannah stopped dead in her tracks. “Did you hear…”
The bushes ahead rustled and the air filled with a fizzing electric crackle that prickled the back of Hannah’s neck. She yelped and began to raise her rifle, but Daniel was ready. He reached out a hand and placed it on Hannah’s wrist, holding the weapon down.
“It’s ok. Relax. That’s Nom. It won’t hurt us.” Daniel’s grin faded abruptly when he saw the fear in Hannah’s eyes. “Shit, I should have warned you. I’m sorry.”
“That’s a full-blown fucking anomaly, Daniel. What the hell are you doing, we need to get away from it!” Hannah’s voice was full of stress and she was clearly on the verge of running.
“No, wait. It’s ok, just wait a second.” Daniel put himself in between Hannah and the glowing, oscillating ball of energy that had materialised in front of them. “Nom, give us a bit of space please. Just for a minute.”
The anomaly immediately retreated out of sight, leaving silent, still air behind it.
“What the actual fuck, Dan.” Said Hannah, visibly rattled. “It listened to you. Why? How? How can an anomaly listen to you? They are just balls of ghost code. They can’t listen, or understand. Much less do what you ask them to.”
“This one’s different H, I swear it’s harmless. Trust me, it won’t come close enough to hurt us. It always comes with me when I walk the forest, I think it just likes the company.”
“When? How?” Hannah was still upset, but her fight or flight impulse was fading.
“About a month ago. It just materialised like they do, back at the cabin. Really close. I thought I was going to get zapped, but it just floated around for a while then buggered off. That seemed to be the end of it, but it came back the next day, and the next. I started talking to it. Any one would, right? And I realised it could understand me, so I gave it a name. Nom, short for anomaly. And now it comes along whenever I leave the cabin. I think of it a bit like a dog, to be honest.”
“Jesus Dan, that’s completely mad. You should have told me.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I thought it would be a cool surprise, not a crap your pants surprise. I’d forgotten how scary they are when they just appear out of the ether.”
“No, I don’t mean that. A sentient anomaly? That shouldn’t be possible. What the hell is going on with this World? Did you try shooting it?”
“No, I did not try shooting it. Fuck’s sake Hannah. Like I said, I think of it like a dog. Are you ok now, can I call it back?”
Hannah nodded.
“Nom, it’s OK. You can come back.” Daniel shouted into the undergrowth. The air began to fizz again, and the anomaly reappeared.
“Nom, this is Hannah. She’s my friend. No zapping her, please.” The ball of energy fizzed and crackled. “We’re going to keep walking now, you’re welcome to tag along.”
*
They walked the final mile as a threesome, Hannah asking Daniel questions about Nom, and Nom itself gliding between the trees, far enough away from the humans that its field caused them no discomfort. After half an hour, Hannah pointed into the gloom and said “There it is.”
At the bottom of a hollow and surrounded on all sides by old growth trees stood a gunmetal grey computer terminal, the sort usually found on factory production lines. The terminal’s casing was weathered and rusting in places, but its screen blinked with a green cursor. On the side of the cabinet, below a break-glass cover, glowed a red pushbutton.
“What’s that?” Said Daniel, reaching a hand towards the button.
“Don’t touch it.” Answered Hannah, slapping his hand away. “I knew you’d do that. It’s the panic button. Absolutely not to be touched.”
“What does it do?” Asked Daniel, rubbing the back of his hand.
“It’s an emergency disconnect. If Max starts doing any of the evil Skynet shit you are so afraid of, that button is linked to explosive charges that can sever his higher function modules from the network. In theory, pressing it would turn his mind off, but leave the World Sim running.”
“In theory?”
“Yeah. It would have worked in the early days, when we first switched Max on and came here. I’m not so sure now. This is just a software switch, I imagine Max will have found it and bypassed the Panic Button connection by now. We only put these things in to make you lot feel more comfortable. In either case, don’t touch it please, we’re a long way from resorting to that desperate measure.”
Hannah began typing commands into the terminal, which lit up and began to make hard disk noises. Daniel watched over Hannah’s shoulder for a while, but since the scrolling code meant nothing to him, he sat down on a log and unslung his Mini-14. Careful not to point the weapon in Nom’s direction, Daniel raised the rifle to his shoulder and peered through its telescopic sight. Panning around in a slow arc, Daniel looked out into the forest’s gloomy depths. Trees, and more trees. Then, a flash of yellow. Movement. Was that a bird? Daniel stopped panning, and tried to reacquire the bright object that had caught his eye. There it was. Yellow and grey, moving quickly. Definitely not a bird.
“Hannah…” Said Daniel.
“Hmm” Replied Hannah, absorbed with the code flowing across the terminal screen.
“HANNAH” Said Daniel again, sharply this time.
“What?” Hannah turned to look at him.
“Something’s coming. Really fast.” Said Daniel.
Hannah picked up her rifle, and took a knee next to Daniel.
“Can you see it?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah. Any ideas?”
“It’s a robot.”
“Can’t be, there aren’t any robots in here.”
“There’s one.” Said Daniel, cycling the action of his rifle to chamber a round. “Max sent a robot called Ranger into that fucked up nature preserve it created to find out what was going on in there. The robot disappeared and Max never heard from it again.”
“And now it’s back and hurtling towards us at high speed?”
“Yep. And it’s difficult to tell because it doesn’t have a proper face, but through this scope I’d say that thing is either furious or terrified.”
Hannah raised her rifle and trained its sights on the rapidly approaching metal form.
“Promise me you won’t press that panic button, Dan.” Said Hannah, racking the Winchester’s lever action.
“I’m not promising anything, H. Jesus Christ that thing is really travelling…”
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Well, you've got me hooked.
Really enjoyed this! Curious to see where it goes. Nom is a strangely interesting character