She said, “My name’s Hannah.”
Then reached out her left hand to shake mine. I could see three dots on her wrist. I had noticed her immediately. Being human-sized is so abnormal, I always notice. Her clothes hung on her petite frame in much the way mine did. She was a bronzed sun-induced color. Also, abnormal.
I had popped into this bar because I knew I could go undetected. The patrons weren’t the kind that noticed people from out of town or anything really. It was dimly lit. My shoes kind of stuck to the floor as I walked up to the bar. There were the typical bar peeps milling about, playing pool, doing bar things. The bartender barely looked up as I approached, much more intent on scooping ice into glasses for cocktails already ordered than in engaging with yet another patron. This place was living up to my expectations.
Slipping in under their radar, I ordered a Pacifico and retreated to a back booth that was barely lit to enjoy it alone. I watched the crowd to ensure I had done what I intended. Even if they did notice me walk in, I was quickly forgotten as they had other things on their minds, mostly numbing their minds, distracting themselves from their miserable existence and maybe going home with someone they just met. The hardest part of passing unnoticed was knowing that I was on high alert. We hoped the machines hadn’t become aware of our intentions, but our tactics made sure we had no contact with their systems preferring to communicate, engage and live under our own power.
And then she walked in.
I noticed her as she stepped across the threshold. Her long sun-bleached hair was pulled back in a ponytail but still flowed down over her shoulders and onto her upper back. Compared to the others in the bar, she could be called anorexic, but we know that just means she is human size. Strangely enough, when one succumbs to the mechanized life, their size increases dramatically. Understanding this makes it extraordinarily easy to identify those who are outside of their influence.
I kept my gaze hidden but ensure I knew where and what she was doing. After she orders her drink in much the same way I did, she scans the room looking for a spot to hide. I allow my gaze to be direct and catch her eye. She immediately looks away and I can see her processing what to do next. She looks at me again and then walks over to my booth.
I stand up and reach out my hand.
I wear a large watch on my left wrist for a reason. It covers five dots. I slide the watch up my wrist revealing those dots and reach out my hand to shake hers. Her eyes tell me that she didn’t expect me to be who I am. We shake hands extending our middle fingers and placing it on the middle dot tattooed on our wrists.
“My name’s Seth.”
She stammers, “Ya… You… You’r… You’re…”
I chuckle at her surprise. “I’m Seth. Please sit down.”
She slides into the booth opposite me entering the part of the bar that is dark enough that only shadows of shapes can be seen, but I can tell her eyes are still wide.
The call went out about four weeks ago. When you travel exclusively without using motors, it can take time to get places and we were all headed to one of the biggest hives, Los Angeles. It also takes time to communicate when you don’t use cell phones and the sum total of recipients isn’t directly known. We had been working, organizing, training for this moment for near on a decade. Watching as our enemy’s power grew.
I had arrived only a few hours prior exactly as planned. Just enough time to get there punctually, but with a few hours to spare. The beer sitting in front of me was the only thing I had left to do before the Resistance began at midnight. Her arrival confirmed that my call, the Call had been heeded. I didn’t know anything about her other than those three dots, three dots that confirmed she was a member of the Alliance.
I leave her at the booth with her disbelief. In an effort to make our interaction seem more normal, I order us a couple of beers and return to the booth as if I was waiting for her. I guess in a way I was.
The name of the bar was Sports Bar. This was clearly a very creative bunch of folks. I had popped into this particular bar laughing to myself as it seemed like the perfect, non-descript place for me to land and spend a couple of hours before shutting down the hive. We were in South Los Angeles. The outside of the building was the color of almost every strip mall in Phoenix. That brown that wanted to be pink at one point but has given up to the desert sun.
Not only was the bar as generic as it could be, it was situated next to thousands of boxes. Boxes that kept the human beings safe, warm, chubby and content. We were here to disable the machines with the hope that we could awaken the beings buried deep within the catatonic state that had become humanity.
Unlike most wars, ours was one of nuance and subtlety. The machines, unlike the sci-fi versions of our reality, took over slowly. Instead of learning to do things we humans couldn’t, they simply began doing the things we didn’t want to. The creep was slow taking most of the century, but once started, stopping the wave seemed impossible. Exacerbating the situation was the fact that most of us could no longer do the things that machines did for us. We couldn’t move under our own power, we needed a machine. We couldn’t grow and harvest our own food, the machines did that for us.
Once the machines learned that doing things for us gave them amazing power, that’s exactly what they did. The creep started with the necessities of daily life and then moved into figuring out how to do everything we humans do anyway. The creep went exponential when they successfully took over all human interaction. Talking to someone became a thing of the past, instead we spent countless hours socially being alone until the very nuance of being human ended and it seemed like there was nothing we could do about it.
Hannah knew who I was, or at least, the myth of who I was. She also knew why I was sitting in this bar and she knew we wouldn’t be chatting about any of those things. The things she knew created more questions for her than answers.
“How was your journey?” She asks.
“It was amazing. Kind of like it always is. Grounding. Invigorating. I planned it out and was able to spend a few days in the desert alone. That’s my favorite place. The places that they haven’t been able to completely dominate yet or maybe they just haven’t tried. How was yours?”
“Similar.” She replied fidgeting. I notice she is rubbing those three dots on her wrist.
“I came from up north. The weather was pretty atrocious for the first couple of days, but once the clouds cleared, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I would want to be or anything else I would want to be doing.”
She shifted in the booth, took a sip of her beer. “What’s your ride?”
The question caught me a little off guard. It had been so many years since I had thought about my bike or what it might mean to someone else or even considered what it was. I let it marinate a little too long getting lost in the maze of my brain.
“Sorry, should I have not asked about that?”
Her question brings me back to the table. I chuckle, “No, that’s totally fine, I just kind of got lost in my thoughts about it. I’m not sure I even remember what it started as. It’s some sort of steel bike I’ve had for ages. It fits me. It’s nondescript and can do everything I need it to. Having watched what has happened to us over the course of my life, I do my best to make sure that tools remain tools and don’t become part of my identity.”
She smiles, but I can tell she felt chastised by my response.
As midnight approaches, the energy of the bar begins to dive. Ours does the opposite and soon it’s time to head outside.
Hannah had parked her bike around the corner and we regroup where mine was chained to a tree. It’s always fascinated me that humans will do almost anything they can to not ride a bicycle, yet we have to chain them up to keep them from being stolen. She rolls up and we begin to ready our tools.
The job is simple and tool list is short. We’ve got good shoes, dark clothes and our ability to move quickly and quietly. And then there is the valve core remover.
You see, the funniest thing about this whole war is that the machines are so complacent and comfortable that they don’t even attempt to protect their Achilles. Almost every single one of them runs on pneumatic tires. Meaning they need to contain and compress air to allow them to move. It’s extraordinarily easy to temporarily disable them by simply removing the valve core. You don’t even need to do all four wheels. A simple removal of two and the entire beast is now dormant, unable to arise and whisk their human captives from point to point forcing them to labor for the privilege of being captive.
The plan laid out in the call was simple. If you have the ability to disable the digital system, do so at midnight. If you don’t fall within that small cadre of elite members, show up with your valve core remover.
11:58. My anxiety is spiking when what feels like a sudden surge of activity almost puts me over the edge and into a panic attack. Out of the shadows, foot soldiers emerge. At first, I’m certain that our plan has been foiled and the cops are here to stop the whole thing. It seems like the world has just awoken ready for a battle at midnight. Then Hannah high fives one of them and I realize that it isn’t the police that are here, but that the entire Alliance, total membership unknown, must be in Los Angeles for this fateful night.
And then the lights go out.
Chapter 2 is now available here.
