The Harvest Cycle Read online

  “Lucy was right behind me.” Amanda turned with a frown and peered down the tunnel. “There she is!”

  A small dog, Lucy’s, ran into the light. It was a lab-hound mutt, maybe a year or so old, and the girl herself was right on its heels. Nine years old, Lucy was a fragile little ginger-haired child who was barely able to catch her breath in pursuit of the puppy. Wrapping her arms around it, she waved to Hitch and West. “Me and Daddy missed you. And puppy too. Did you get the gas for your trip?”

  “Sure did.” West pointed to the tanks. “How is your dad?”

  “Tired. A lot.” Lucy pulled nervously at her hair. “He’s not talking again. Just tired I guess. I wish he wasn’t.”

  West nodded. He’d been monitoring Lucy’s father Walter for a while now, and was pretty sure that his botched nanoplastomy, shortly before his escape into the mines, had left him lobotomized. Hitch wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it seemed as if Walter was even worse off than the non-dreamers. It seemed like he’d lost his soul and then some.

  “Well, let’s get down to the common area. We’ll get the gas put away, and then I’ll see your dad.” West gestured to Hitch. “Let’s go.”

  As he passed Amanda, Hitch forced a smile. She touched his arm. “Good to have you back.”

  ***

  Further up, not quite above ground, in the subway tunnels...

  Jack DaVinci sat in his living quarters and folded his overcoat in the harsh glow of an electric lamp. Then, he crawled across the floor to the lamp and removed a panel in the wall behind it. There was a jar filled with a greenish preserving fluid. Floating in the fluid were a dozen white, pea-sized nodules.

  They were the cortices removed from the city’s newest citizens. DaVinci stared at the jar, turning it in front of the lamp and studying the smooth marbles of tissue.

  Then, unscrewing the lid, he scooped out a handful of them and shoved them into his mouth.

  They were sickly-sweet going down his throat. He closed his eyes, leaned back, waited as they were digested, absorbed into his blood, waited for the blood to reach his brain and then...

  God! The feeling. The void suddenly filled with warmth, the colors behind his eyelids, the exuberance in his very bones. Imagination! Spirit!

  He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. He turned them, saw not the hands of a simple survivor but the hands of an artist, a sculptor, a painter, a writer. An investigator, examining clues and imagining scenarios and motives and detecting the truth in a grand mystery.

  He thought about the dreamers. They’d been plundering fuel. For what? A vehicle. For what purpose? There was only enough fuel for maybe one or two cars, and with their severely limited resources he couldn’t see them having more than one. So what was it for? Certainly not a mass migration. No, it was for a mission.

  Did they intend to stage an attack on his city? Why would a car be necessary? Why that much gas? A car bomb? But why an attack at all? They didn’t come after the non-dreamers, they ran from them. No, it didn’t fit.

  They meant to travel outside Gotham. For what, then? Supplies? Food? Maybe. So they intended to try and get by without burglarizing his community’s resources. That was honorable. Acceptable. Maybe he wouldn’t return to the tunnels after all.

  But could he be sure?

  He tried to imagine other alternatives, tried not to be distracted by the sheer pleasure of seeing color and possibility.

  Maybe this was about the Others, or the Harvesters.

  He had to be certain, that was all he knew. He had to return to the tunnels. Not to arrest or assault the dreamers, but to keep tabs on them. He had to know the truth.

  DaVinci laid back on the floor and closed his eyes. He watched the colors swim.

  2.

  The Others

  Thirty miles east of Gotham, a pack of dogs walked down an empty street in a small town. German Shepherds, they sniffed the air and the ground, moving together, a feral pack perhaps, only too well-groomed and too in sync with one another to be feral.

  No, a hunting party.

  The lead dog stopped and stared straight ahead. The others read the cues of its body and halted likewise, following its intent gaze to a manhole in the center of the street.

  The manhole cover was ajar. There was the faintest splash from within.

  With a low growl, the lead dog stepped forward.

  Then, a snapping of fingers.

  Without another sound, all the dogs retreated, padding off into an alley and out of sight.

  A man stepped out of the alleyway. Across the street, another. And another, and another, and another. Exiting side streets and abandoned buildings, the men hefted enormous handguns, smoothed their coats with their hands and approached the manhole.

  Without the slightest twitch of the mouth or shifting of the eye, they communicated.

  For those of you unfamiliar with the Gyro, it carries a .55-caliber chemical payload. The firing system, free of primer and powder, allows the chemical payload to remain stable. Gyroscopic system also increases bullet velocity three hundred percent over conventional firearms. The gun will stay balanced in your grip, so don’t attempt to compensate for recoil.

  And don’t hesitate. Don’t bother to explain. Shoot to kill.

  The lead man stepped over the manhole. He glanced down. All clear.

  He dropped into the sewer.

  Striking a shallow pool of water, he immediately rolled aside and swept the tunnel for any sign of life. There were ripples up ahead, in another pool, indicating the targets had moved south. As the others entered the tunnel at his back, he ran forward.

  There were torches in the walls up ahead. A couple of them appeared to be set lower, in the shadows...they were being held by hands...

  The man raised his gun to fire. Before he could, the torches flared blinding white as a magnesium compound was added to the flame.

  “I’ve got no visual! Hold your fire!” The man shouted. He shut his eyes and listened intently, filtered out the splashing at his back, focused on what was up ahead. Heard a footfall, calculated the location taking acoustics into account, and fired.

  There was a scream. A long, wet, human scream. Then silence.

  “Go go go!” The man shouted, opening his eyes and seeing the torch go out as it fell in fetid water.

  “Bots!!” Someone up ahead yelled. A cacophony of screams erupted within the tunnel. The lead man sent a message to his comrades:

  Delmar, there’s a junction up ahead. Take the west tunnel. Macendale, your men go east. I’m going straight ahead.

  He stumbled as two bullets punched into his chest. They had silenced firearms. He listened for footsteps and fired into the darkness.

  “Please!” Someone cried. “Please leave us alone! Don’t!”

  He ignored them and unleashed a hail of chemical rounds. Bursts of flame and shrapnel lit up the junction as he entered. He saw men and women flailing as the meat of their faces was scorched and shredded.

  His pack split up down the tunnels. There were more cries, some cut off abruptly. The sound of Gyros cutting through flesh and bone and rock.

  A wall up ahead. No, a door. The man crossed his arms in front of his face and plowed through.

  In the light of a single torch, he saw a woman huddled over three children, the lot of them wrapped in a filthy blanket.

  The woman wept. “Please. Let us live. Just let us live.”

  “I can’t let you suffer,” the man said, and fired four rounds.

  ***

  The cleanup crew took the dogs down into the tunnels. One of the shepherds was being uncooperative. Smelling the blood on Macendale’s clothing and hands, it whimpered.

  “Go on, dog,” Macendale snapped. He grabbed the scruff of its neck and dragged it toward the manhole.

  The lead man stopped him. “Macendale.”

  “Bruce.”

  “Positive reinforcement.” Bruce removed Macendale’s hand from the animal and knelt. He patted its head
. “C’mon now boy. Let’s go. Down there. C’mon!”

  He clapped his hands and headed for the manhole. The dog followed him, staying at his side.

  “Negative reinforcement is detrimental to their whole training program,” Bruce reminded Macendale. “Use praise. Simulate love and acceptance. You can still be firm, but always remember, respect over fear.”

  The other bot nodded curtly.

  Delmar walked over to Bruce, feeling his torso with his thick fingers. “I think some of my armor’s loose. This old Army-grade material just isn’t going to hold up any longer.”

  “We’ll see what we have back at the base,” Bruce replied. Delmar was a modified military bot, unlike most of the first-gens on Bruce’s team. They were a civilian peacekeeper class that had worked for the United Fuel Cooperative prior to the first Harvest.

  Macendale was one of the second-gens, built by the first-gens. Their emotive programming wasn’t quite as mature as that of their parents, but they were still good as infiltrators. Macendale, like many other children, just needed to learn to follow his field training rather than improvise.

  Cinnamon came up from the sewer. Bruce gave her a hand as brushed the scarlet hair from her eyes. He’d asked her why she hadn’t removed the synthetic locks, as most did, and she’d said it was part of her programming. She’d been a personal recreation model, had worked in a bar up in Alaska in the same Cooperative town as Bruce and Delmar. He conceded that her uniquely human look often gave her an advantage with the targets, even if it was form over function.

  “It’s clear down there,” she said. “The bodies are being destroyed.”

  “Good work all around. We’ll want to review this one frequently.” Bruce turned and patted the dog’s head again. “Guess we won’t need you down there after all. Good boy.”

  3.

  Other Dreams

  It had been the bots’ nanotechnology - the ability to plug into a human body, connect with the mind and interpret brain signals - that had introduced the bots to the entity known as Nightmare, in the Year of the First Harvest.

  In Goar Head, Alaska, Bruce and Delmar had been working with a skeleton crew of human UFC employees to break down a section of pipeline. Out there in the bitter wilderness, under the suspicious eyes of former co-workers who had only just learned that they had bots on their team, they had been hard at work all day, and were alone with each other when they received a call on the radio from back in town: they were under attack. The seaplane, their only means of escape, had been torn apart. People were dead in the street, and those still alive were holed up in the local tavern.

  They’d made their way back into town. And there, they saw the swarm coming, saw the Harvesters in all their horrible glory.

  Using their gyros, they fought their way into the tavern. Though Bruce hadn’t noticed it at the time, the Harvesters weren’t interested in them, and only struck out when they’d been struck first. It was a blur, all of it, culminating in the barricading of the bar and the mortal wounding of a corporate liaison. The man ranted feverishly, slipping in and out of conscious, saying one word again and again: “Nightmare...”

  Bruce had plugged in with his nanotech. And there, the first meeting.

  ***

  It was twilight when Bruce was ready. Seated beside the unconscious man, the synth closed his eyes and disabled his external sensors. He was now alone with this human’s subconscious.

  It came to him in a convoluted rush, a mess of blurred images and overlapping sounds that surrounded him in his "mind's eye" as he stood calmly. The storm of sensations began to resolve itself. There was earth beneath Bruce's feet. A warm, whispering wind that pushed clouds across a mountainous horizon. Sunlight from some indistinct point overhead.

  Bruce knelt and touched the ground. Even though he was merely translating the man’s electrical impulses within his own positronic brain, it all felt authentic. Remarkable.

  But the man himself was not there.

  No, a voice said, he isn't. It's just you and me. And what are you?

  The voice was a strange, lilting one that seemed to come from all around Bruce. "What are you?" he asked back.

  I am...Nightmare.

  This is the name Man has given me. I rather like it, though. You see, this dear boy isn't the first human I've made deep contact with. So many of them, in fact, have powers of perception that they don't even realize...

  Now, what are you?

  "I am one of the dreams of men," Bruce replied.

  Clever, came the response.

  "He said that they--that you--want dreams. What does that mean?"

  Yes, the Harvesters have been sent for the dream-meat, to bring it to us, so that we may dream... so that we might not go MAD in our infinite slumber! To think that humans have the ability to do this, but not the gods!

  "You believe yourself a god, then?"

  One among many.

  "And you're not one of the creatures outside... you merely sent them."

  Made them, as Man made you. We slumber far from your world, in the court of chaos. Here, we awaken only to dance our infernal dance around the throne of Azathoth, before our mounting terror--a terror beyond your understanding!--begs a respite...

  The respite of dreams...

  But I tire of you, machine. Soon we will have this man’s dream-meat, along with the others.

  And suddenly Bruce realized what this Nightmare meant by dream-meat--he knew what the Harvesters were after, what they sought to devour.

  He tore himself from the human’s subconscious just in time to see a rain of claws tearing through the tavern door.

  All this time, Delmar had been sitting prone in a chair by the wall. He sprang into action, throwing his bulk against the barricade and the blindly grasping the hands of the Harvesters and shouting, "Give me a gun, Bruce!"

  Then a single claw burst through his head, jutting rudely from one sparking eyeball. Delmar shook and gibbered while the humans screamed.

  The synth collapsed against the barricade, which itself began to come apart. Bruce detached himself from the human and drew the Gyros. "Everyone away from the door!"

  I'm still here, Nightmare sang in Bruce's head.

  "What?" he cried. "How?"

  And then Bruce was assailed by a vision, a frequency-jamming transmission from the very heart of chaos, from Nightmare's mind to his own--he saw city streets overrun by Harvesters, mountain roads littered with headless corpses, ships adrift in tossing seas, dead crewmen floating in crimson froth.

  Just let them come, machine. The minds of all men will live on in us. You see? Even now, all over your world, the Harvest is taking place. The minds of all men will serve us through eternity.

  It was a simple statement, simple and true. And it allowed Bruce to make a simple decision.

  The door caved in and the Harvesters forced their way through. Bruce took aim with the Gyros. He wouldn't--couldn't--allow any human mind to suffer in the infinite with these mad gods. It was a fate worse than death.

  He emptied both guns.

  When it was done, the Harvesters stared blankly at him, claws dragging along the floor, jaws slack. Then they trudged back out into the cold.

  Bruce surveyed the scene. He'd hit every intended target. There was no dream-meat remaining for the harvest.

  They all looked peaceful there on the floor. He thought he detected the slightest hint of a smile among what little remained of them.

  An arm wrapped around his neck and tightened with the brute strength of a python. His feet left the floor, kicking, and he thrashed in the relentless grip, feeling the wall of his throat begin to crack.

  "Why?" Cinnamon yelled into his ear. "What have you done? We are made to protect and serve them, not--not--"

  "I had to!" Bruce barked. "It was to save them!"

  Cinnamon relinquished her hold; he heard her stepping back and kneeling on the floor. Bruce turned, gingerly fingering his neck.

  "I don't understand," she said softl
y, cradling the body of Paulie, her employer, in her arms.

  "I'll explain," Bruce said, and ignoring the screaming in his brain, the wailing and gnashing of the angry gods, he did.

  ***

  “We need a plan,” Bruce said to Delmar.

  “For what?”

  “For Gotham.”

  4.

  The Plan

  “The maps you’ve given me over these last few weeks, Hitch, have been a big help.” West folded the papers over his arm. He was standing in front of the van, its headlights illuminating the cavern in which the dreamers all stood. Buchanan up front, Amanda at West’s side, Lucy and Walter and their puppy front and center among the rest of the citizens.

  “What we know about the Harvesters,” West began. “That they come from the sea, that for thirty days they have one purpose: to tear through the streets and tunnels in search of us, to harvest. To kill and eat, to take in our dreams, to sleep and then to wake and kill again. And at the end of thirty days they return to the sea. They cloister.

  “I’ve seen them fall into the surf like corpses, tentacles unfurling from their backs. They cloister, and turn themselves off, hibernate, save for whatever means they use to send out those stolen dreams - and they wait for the next year.”