Family's end

   The bridge crossed the gorge in all its extension. The father stopped the car at one end and head out. He inhaled the fresh air and walked near the railing of the bridge. There was a big net like structure to prevent people from falling but the view was just outstanding. There was a small river below but mainly trees, a big green mat of big and small trees that covered the valley below. The mother joined him with two small kids, which seemed to have just woken up. They held their mother’s hands and were rubbing their eyes with their free hands.

 The family stood there for several minutes, without saying a word. Even the children were silent. Then, a burst of light and smoke appeared far away, clearly visible from the bridge. The father inhaled and exhaled without saying anything, only tightening his hand in his pocket. Then he went back to the car. Mother and children followed. The engine started and they crossed the bridge fast into the highway beyond. They travelled without making a single stop. None of them complained or said anything. They were a family but it really didn’t seem like they were. The kids kept to themselves, not even playing with one another and just looking through the window or looking straight, apparently distracted with the flying dust or the sounds of the car.

 Night arrived and the car finally stopped by a roadside hotel. They paid for one room with twin beds, one for the children and the other one for the adults. But none of them really slept. They seemed to be on alert, waiting for something to happen. Every time a car drove into the hotel parking lot and the lights lit their room, they moved, opening their eyes again and shaking softly.  That was during the night and during breakfast and a nearby diner things weren’t less strange. A perky waitress tried to cheer up the kids, given them pancakes with faces on it, but the kids seemed not impressed and even worried. After they left, she told everyone that would listen about the weird family that had come in early, with a lot of money.

 Because the waitress had seen the father’s wallet and the several bills inside it. He even gave her a big tip but all with that weird face, between worry and boredom. The family kept on travelling by road until they reached the border with another country. The father and mother acted then, hugging and smiling as the immigration agents checked their passports. The mother even bought the kids some chips and candy and the kids laughed and ran. They all behave like a normal family until the immigration officer let them pass. An hour later, the car was as silent as it had always been. The terrain they were crossing at that point was desert with only a few plants to see and even a couple of rocks every few kilometers.

 That night, they didn’t stop driving. The father didn’t seem to be tired at all, just going on and on, his legs moving normally and just looking ahead, with a strange look in his face. They finally reached a big city and parked inside a shopping mall. Going inside, they suddenly separated. Each kid, mother and father took different directions and explored the place. The father went to an electronics store and checked out several computers, TV’s and sound systems. In spite of the money he had, he only bought a tablet computer. The mother, meanwhile, was in a department store trying out clothes and shoes. She made the saleswoman bring her so many pairs of shoes but finally settled for one pair she had seen from the beginning. She also bought a flowery dress and went out of the store already wearing it. The little girl went playing to the arcade and his brother entered a pet store and sat down in front of the many aquariums and fish bowls in one end of the store.

 They reunited several hours later. None of them had eaten anything but when meeting they went straight to the car and restarted their journey which happened to be a short one. They paid a room for each in a hotel and stayed there for a week until the secret service and other agencies got to them. They were arrested and send back to the country they had fled. There, a hearing was held to read the crimes they were being charged for but none of them seemed to be interested in the matter. They accused them to plan a terrorist attack and bomb a power plant that served millions of people in a large region of the country. Days later, they were presented with a lawyer and the father only told him to ask him about his story in front of the jury and the media.

 He did exactly that some weeks later and the father started telling his story. According to him, they were all a family. He knew it didn’t seem like it but it was true. He told everyone his family had been living a quiet life in a ranch not far from the bridge they had crossed to escape. They were happy and didn’t harm everyone. True, with no other relatives nearby and believing in homeschooling, they hadn’t really made many acquaintances. One night, he claims, their home was raided by men claiming to be the military, saying they suspected the home was used as a laboratory to make drugs. They apparently arrested them and took them to a military facility were they were tortured. Not only the two adults, but also the children.

 The father stopped his story there and asked if his wife could tell the rest. The judge agreed and the woman stepped up to her seat, not even looking at her husband as he grabbed a seat with their lawyer. She told them they noticed the place was underground, as they never saw any sunlight when being kept down there. She looked at the judge and told him they began another round of tortures, much more medical and even scientific. She had no idea how to explain it but she assured that they had been probed and tested several times. It was then when they all began to feel detached, not a family anymore.

 The hearing was stopped them because of the time and rescheduled for a later date, the week next to that one. During that pose, something happened that made the media really pay attention to the case and stop saying they were all acting because their adoration of terrorism had made them insane. The children were held in a facility for abandoned youth. They were being watched at all times but it was too late when, one night, the cop that was in charge of them arrived in the room and realized the little boy, maybe seven years of age, had committed suicide. His sister was three beds away, asleep or so he thought. The boy had planned it all because he knew he wasn’t going to be normal ever again.

 When the trial resumed, the girl was put on the stand. She didn’t cry when asked about her brother’s death. Actually, she seemed no to feel anything. It was as if she was made of stone. She told the jury she had been with her parents when they decided to escape the facility they had been held in. Somehow, they were all faster, stronger and much more intelligent than when they were abducted from their home. Something had been done to them that had rendered them better but less of a family. They used these abilities to kill several people and escape. In a matter of minutes, they used the militaries weaponry to make a large bomb and they activated it with a remote control. The facility happened to be beneath a power plant and they had not known they had destroyed it too. They just wanted revenge.

 But as the days passed, they realized revenge served no one. Something else had been done to them, much worse than any of the tortures. Somehow, in their minds, they didn’t feel any love or care for any of their relatives. It was, they described it, as looking at someone they had never seen in their life but no one else was there to help them so they united. It didn't mattered who they were as long as they weren't doing mean things to them. They felt there was something, but not enough to make them a family again. The father stated they had stayed in that hotel for a wheel in order for the police and others to finally catch them. Escaping was not their plan all along.

 People were divided on their opinions about the case. The owners of the power plant demanded justice to be done for the deaths of several of its workers and the military were rumored to release a statement soon. But none of those things were necessary not mattered. One morning, all remaining suspects, about to be convicted for the death penalty, were dead. The father had cut his throat with a cutter he stole from one of the guards. The mother took several pills she grabbed from the purse of a woman in the court room and the girl drowned herself in a tub.

 No one ever knew anything about them. Where they had come from or what had really happened to them, nor where they had gotten all the money the police had found with them in the hotel.But it wasn’t important. They had been killed by guilt, by pain, because they realized their lives would never be the same without their family united.

200

   They descended from the sky, like rain. They didn’t fall hard on the ground but rather softly, walking slowly after landing. They looked like simple robots but everyone watching knew what they were: androids. The last generation that had been built in the Takashima factories, in what remained of Japan. They were the last remnants of technology as Takashima was the only company still spending so much money on technology.

 People didn’t like that and had tried, several times, to disable the factory. But that had proven impossible. The owners of Takashima had found out how to be independent, not relying on the energy generated by any of the public dams or energy plants. No one knew how although some speculated they had reactivated a nearby nuclear facility or maybe they were harnessing the power of the ocean waves.

 No matter how they did it, the androids were landing in small groups, all over the world. Takashima had been hired, in the midst of chaos, to ensure security wherever they could. Only fifty countries were chosen for the trial run and two hundred androids had been built to be the first to ensure the safety of the people. Those first hundred had the toughest job as humans did not like to be lectured or punished by what people in the slums called “inhumans”. And they called them liked that because they had no visible feelings, no remorse when killing or hurting someone.

 Their job was to protect people but in order to do that; other would have to be eliminated. For the next year, thousands of thieves, murderers, rapists, drug dealers and con artists, among many others, were arrested or killed on the spot if they had resisted. There was no way to escape one of the two hundred when they became angry, if that can be said. Because a machine does not become angry, it just enters another mode in it’s programming and responds only to those directives.

 The people that remained in the destroyed cities began to fear the robots. Small groups of rebels formed but they were always destroyed by the androids, not even having a chance at defying them somehow. On the other hand, the few governments that remained were very happy with these prototypes. They were behaving exactly as they had predicted and, in some time, the occupation of the now empty territories could be achieved with the help of a new generation of androids.

 Because, as always in the world, the powerful are the ones that really control all situations. It was them who paid Takashima Industries to build the robots in a time when money was not abundant. The needed that help because their rule was coming to an end and, effectively, the androids turned the tide in favor, again, of the powerful. The rebels, who were mainly poor and many more, had won several territory and were starting to colonize the remains that the war had left them. But the androids took that all from them in just a few weeks.

 The first two hundred were scheduled to be decommissioned after the first two years but that didn’t happen. Takashima assured the governments that those androids were still in pretty good shape and could serve as a support for the new generation of robots they were preparing in the factory, which had grown to the size of a small city.

 The United States invaded the “empty” territories shortly afterwards, when the second wave of androids was ready. They were another two hundred, better equipped for land and aerial assault. They were more military and had only one directive: obey the orders of their commanders. They did not protect civilians nor guarded for no one’s security. Although more evolved, they were brutes, cybernetic bullies at the service of the oppressor.

 The invasion of the territories was fast. Practically no resistance came from the few inhabitants that had remained, becoming slaves for the enjoyment of the new masters of the land. They formed several small states, each greatly relying in the strength and relentlessness of the new generation of androids.

The first two hundred, however, were removed from the colonies and returned to protect people in what became known as The Core. This was the most part of the northern hemisphere, where the wealthy of the new world were still settled. The androids there protect people, much like policemen and soon became loved by these inhabitants, which grew to like them and trust them. So much they did trust them that children even greeted any android they saw on the street and, as androids that they were, the artificial life forms began developing a relationship with the humans.

 That was not the case, at all, in the colonies. All artificial life was evil. That was what the native inhabitants knew and they were always very careful around them as any sign of rebellion was enough to be killed on the spot, it didn’t matter where it was. Their masters never cared, making the slaves clean the mess that the androids had caused. It was brutality at it’s best and no one dared to challenge the state of things.

 That is except the group that called themselves the Invisibles. No one really knew whom they were or if they were actually human. It was rather impossible they weren’t but slaves, in their quarters, loved to speculate that it was an advanced alien race that had come to save them from their masters. Of course, they were wrong. The Invisible were nothing more than people who had welcomed back their savage ancestry, behaving like animals and living in the woods and forests.

 Many territories of the world had not been recolonized after the war, so many of the survivors had gone into hiding there, slowly becoming more and more animal, losing themselves to nature and trying to forget the technology that they had used in the past. Not all survivors had taken this path and were now dead or enslaved. The Invisibles apparent goal was to be forgotten by the rest of the world, asking them to be left alone and leaving behind all trace of their disastrous humanity.

 The official of the Core knew about them but they regarded them only as intelligent animals, nothing more than a chimpanzee or a gorilla. But the Invisibles had not shed all of their humanity yet. They still had enough to seek revenge. And for many years they planned, away from everyone and everything. They sought to destroy the Takashima factory, once and for all.

 Although they did not speak that much anymore, they knew that this had been their target for a long time and the only logical thing was to proceed with their old plan. Once it had been done, they could go back to the forests and just live a peaceful life in the nature. They had no intention of breaking the rule of the Core, nor of liberating the many slaves of the world. They were a small group and they were going to use that only to avenge their deceased. That was it.

 Slowly, for some years, they travelled the wilderness until they arrived to the ancient country of Japan. That wasn’t the name the Core used anymore, changing the world so much, even the names, for people not to remember who they were. All of those all country names had ceased to exist.

 Takashima Industries was located on a small island, off the coast of Kyushu. The savages waited, scouting the island from afar, planning their strategy with care. The island could only be reached by boat and the place was heavily guarded. So it was best to do it at night. After all, they had dragged with them a secret weapon, which they knew would be essential to their plans. They stayed hidden for some weeks until they had a raft ready to sail closer to the island.

 On the raft travelled only two people: a woman, partial leader of the group, who used to be a scientist and a strong man, who used to be a military officer. There was a third passenger though. It was one of the first two hundred, an android that the Invisibles had defeated in battle, the only one that had ever fallen to them. They sailed the raft midway towards the island and then the woman pushed a few buttons on the back of the robot. The creature lit up and people on the shore could see their plan was working. The android was blind but functional. The man whispered a few coordinates to his cybernetic ear and then waited. The android then stood up and fired a rocket from his hand.

 The rocket flew up and this gave time to the raft to go back to the shore and escape with the rest of the Invisibles. Shortly after, the bomb fell on the factory, fully destroying every single piece of equipment on the island and killing hundreds of workers. It was the end of Takashima Industries as the Core decided to build new androids by themselves, even going as far as torturing the founder of the factory and making him give them all his research on artificial intelligence. Afterwards, he was killed by fire squad, falsely accused of treason.

 The Invisibles returned to the forest, with their android companion, and disappeared for years in the thickness of nature. But they would return again, very soon.

New Freedom

Official Transcript # 485

Interrogation officer: Please, state your name.

Inmate 3063: My name is Jordan Skye.

I.O: Louder, please.

J.S: I'M JORDAN SKYE!

I.O: Occupation?

J.S: Special agent of the UN special forces unit.

I.O: Can you prove that?

Silence. Jordan sighs.

J.S: Not at the moment.

I.O: Why?

J.S: No papers, man.

I.O: Please sum up the events occurred on September 6th.

J.S: That was the day after the invasion.

I.O: Proceed.

J.S: I was part of a small group that came in with the rebels, on their ships. As they took the city, we had a special priority.

I.O: Which was?

J.S: Capture Minister Sumter.

I.O: What were your orders regarding him?

J.S: Capture and bring him to justice.

I.O: Which justice?

Again, Jordan sighs, tensioned.

J.S: Had to take him to Geneva.

I.O: What happened September 6th?

Jordan fists close, as if imagining the man's neck.

J.S: The rebels were winning. You were winning.

I.O: We know.

J.S: I fucking bet that.

I.O: Keep going.

J.S: My team was composed of seven men and women. Three of them had to secure Sumter. My partner and I were the ones that had to going in his office and take him.

I.O: Partner?

J.S: My husband.

I.O: The new government overruled those rights. Are you aware of it?

J.S: I don't give a shit.

The interrogation officer moves on his chair but doesn't say a word.

I.O: You failed. Why?

J.S: Supporters of Sumter overran me and my team. They started to chase us. I lured them to me in order for my team to be extracted by fellow rebels.

I.O: No report of that on our data.

J.S: Secret operation, genius.

I.O: You were captured by those men, correct?

J.S: That's right.

I.O: Then, you were rescued by the new government on September 10th, correct?

J.S: Rescued is a strong word.

The room feels too cold. Jordan wraps his arms around himself trying to the cold not to diminish his spirit.

I.O: What happened between your capture by those men and your extraction?

J.S: You know what happened. You did the tests.

I.O: Please, sum up for record.

Jordan tries to talk but his mouth feels dry. There's a glass of water on the table but he doesn't take it. He wets his lips with his tongue and talks.

J.S: I was held prisoner in some old barracks or a hangar. I don't really know.

I.O. Hangar A-03, Sumter Military Base.

J.S: Ok... I was tortured by the group of men that captured me.

I.O: Were you visited by Sumter during that time?

J.S: Never.

I.O: What kind of torture were you submitted to?

The man looks at the officer and smiles.

J.S: This is fucked up.

I.O: Please state the nature of...

J.S: They raped me, ok?! They fucked me with a stick or something and tortured me with water and punched and hit me, for hours.

I.O: Were you given food or water?

J.S: What a fucking stupid question.

I.O: What happened on September 10th?

J.S: You people showed up and apparently took me here.

I.O: What happened before that?

Jordan stands up, annoyed.

J.S: None of your business.

I.O: This is a report for the republic. We need...

J.S: You don't need shit!

I.O: Our team extracted a body along with yours. Whose body was it?

Shadows do not allow Jordan to see his interrogator well but he tries to glare at him, hurt.

J.S: You have his body?

I.O: Yes. Who is he?

J.S: You have my husband.

I.O: Those rights were...

J.S: Fuck you! That man got in that airbase and attempted to save me. He did something as you stood there, forgetting what we did to let guys like you keep on living.

I.O: He was unsuccessful.

J.S: They caught him. He was framed. They beat him up in front of me. They made me watch...

Jordan has started crying, in silence.

J.S: Then, they told him because of his bold act he had to see me go. Turns out, right in the moment they were going to kill me, the gang's leader changed his mind and shot him in front of me. I fainted after screaming my lungs out. I woke up here. In this prison.

The interrogation officer stands up and exists the room. Jordan walks to the door but they shut it. He then hears a voice on the speakers.

I.O: Thank you, Jordan Skye. You may go to your cell now.

Another door, on the opposite wall, opens. But Jordan does not walk towards it.

J.S: I told you everything. Let me go now.

I.O: You will be released in due time. Have a good sleep.

Two men enter the room. Jordan tries to fight but they have a needle, the needle he has learned to fear. He slowly falls asleep, letting go, again.