As the title suggests, this is the 3rd chapter in this story. You can read the first here.
Chapter 3
I can’t help but think about Horus and his face glowing in the light of his computer as he stands in front of his desk. I know he’s monitoring the traffic, setting up digital booby traps and attempting to keep the lights out for as long as possible. He’s playing a risky game of cat and mouse where the worst case scenario is federal agents blasting through his front door because he stayed too long in an effort to give us as much cover of darkness as possible.
Hannah yells my name ripping me out of my sudden nostalgia for my comrade.
My eyes are still adjusting to the sudden darkness, but I can feel the energy and she is giddy. As the blackness turns to shapes, my eyes start to perceive what we had hoped. Hannah is giddy because there are hundreds of Alliance members swarming the machines just in this street. Seeing that we have never kept a roll of members and there was no specific location for the beginning of our attack, only the vague, be in L.A., the numbers are astounding.
With the city cut off from its typical motorized roar, all I can hear are the footsteps as people are moving from one car to the next followed by what soon becomes an endless hiss of the air escaping the rubber encasement rendering the machines useless.
We move quickly and methodically. The machines lining the street are one by one attacked in their slumber, two valve cores are pulled from the wheels and thrown. Before the tires are even flat, we are onto the next one. The group spreads out. No one is giving orders or pointing people where to go. Each Alliance member simply sees where their comrades are and disperses throughout the community.
Within minutes, close to a hundred cars have been disabled just by Hannah and myself. The lights are still out, but the quiet is starting to be disturbed. Some of the machines begin wailing as soon as the air begins to escape creating the sense that they are in pain as we disable them.
And then the sirens.
I knew that we would have a few minutes of uninterrupted work, but then we would be battling the foot soldiers of the machines as they descend on us. Our only defense is to move quickly and quietly and to scatter like cockroaches if they approach.
As the operation continues, the noise grows louder. The sirens and wailing alarms are soon joined by the screams of slaves fighting to keep their masters from injury. Our hard rule is no violence except in defense and only after attempting to avoid the need. At first, humans begin yelling from their front porches adding to the growing din. Then a few begin to descend to the street to attempt to stop us.
One man sprints down off his porch approaching the Alliance member pulling cores. As he gets close, his master already useless, the combatant just stands up and runs half a block. The man makes it to his machine realizing that it has been disabled and then attempts to chase down his liberator. His anger is quickly replaced by the realization that he hadn’t ran this far ever. His face turns bright red and he is forced to stop by his own body. He drops his hands to his knees and doubles over in the typical human reaction to over exertion.
I’m witnessing this scene from about a half block away. Without thinking, I yell, “Be free of your masters. Kill the machines!”
And then I repeat it.
On the third repetition, Hannah realizes what I’m doing and joins in with a few others and then a few others and then a few others. Soon the chant is roaring across this neighborhood and still gaining steam. Humans who were desperately trying to understand the scene unfurling in their front yards, are even more perplexed. Those who were making an effort to stop our onslaught halt, caught off guard by the juxtaposition of a mass of humans running through the streets yelling about freedom and removing valve cores from the endless line of cars parked on public property.
About a block away, another man has actually caught one of our comrades and proceeds to start beating him. Within the first couple of punches, a swarm of Alliance members rips him off their comrade and instead of reciprocating with violence, they create a wall. A tall, black wall of humans protecting their own. The man realizes he isn’t fighting off a lone teenager and slowly retreats to his home yelling that the cops are coming.
Someone yells back, “God, I sure hope they do.”
The chant has continued and grown. I can’t know for sure, but it sounds like it has reverberated across the entire city. The roar of this metropolis has been replaced by the roar of its liberators.
Like a flash flood, we continue through the streets. We are now a couple of miles away from the Sports Bar. I have lost count of the cars disabled and the adrenaline and doubt has been replaced with a realization that we never had an exit plan. I never expected this kind of momentum fulling expecting the cops to shut us down almost immediately. I guess that was my plan, when the cops stop us, we’re done, but I realize there’s little chance of the cops being effective at halting our attack.
And as expected, the pigs finally come hurling into the neighborhood. Or I should say, a pig.
She jumps out yelling about stopping and the typical police bull shit and then runs after someone.
The moment she leaves her machine, it is swarmed and within seconds, its tires no longer have any air. As planned, we all just scatter like roaches. She’s calling for back up as she has no idea what to do. It reminds me of a perplexed dog owner chasing a dog that is clearly playing keep away while yelling at it to stop. Within a few minutes, she is not only completely blown up physically, but she realizes there is nothing she can do. There’s too many of us and we move quickly and easily.
I can hear her call for back up requesting all available units. The radio crackles and a voice responds, all units are in active pursuit.
We’re not just in this neighborhood.
Hannah runs up beside me and grabs my hand, “We’re winning!” she yells.
“I know.”
I scream out to the Alliance, “We’re winning. Don’t stop now. Kill the machines!”
Horus’ fingers race across the keys more out of a sneaking suspicion that someone is coming than any evidence that they are.
His mission was clutch for this attack. It provided a universal start point like a starting line gun blasting into the night, the darkness fell across the city in a wave that mimicked the sound of the gun. And more importantly, it provided the Alliance with a cloak of darkness in which to execute our designs. When we first met, he was convinced that to be free, he must give up his job as a software engineer. As we explored this option, it seemed that his skills could be put to use in a way that was worth him sticking it out. He explored different options to stay active, alive and moving toward liberation while being constantly tied to a computer. The stand-up desk became a necessity. He added a timer to the desk that would remind him to move every 15 minutes. He eventually went a step further and convinced a company to build him a desk that not only allowed him to stand upright, but also to sit directly on the floor. He would alternate between standing, moving in place and sitting on the floor. This forced him to move up and down hundreds of times throughout the day. He didn’t love it, but as is his way, he endured for the end goal.
The end goal? To liberate humanity from their mechanical masters.
His ability to navigate unseen through the digital landscape that rules our lives was honed and perfected. While the foot soldiers of the Alliance took a couple of weeks to congregate in LA, Horace had spent years breaking into the systems and learning the existing safety nets the infrastructure relied upon and of course, how to disable them without being detected.
His fingers were giddy, dancing across his keyboard. He had been preparing for this for so long, the emotion was both sides of nervousness: anxiety and excitement. Horus was stoked to finally be executing the plan, but he was also keenly aware that getting caught could mean a very long stay in a place that would imprison his physical body. All of us on the ground removing valve cores also risked arrest, but there was little evidence that could link us. We had no central command, no list of members, no digital communication that could be used to find and lock us up. Horus, on the other hand, was committing digital terrorism, breaking a piece of infrastructure so vital to the system that it was considered part of the natural landscape of the city, something that couldn’t be turned off.
As the operation unfolded, he was caught off guard by how little protection, and in turn pursuit, was in place. This made him even more nervous, running tests, checking the activity of the authorities. His fingers were racing to find those who he assumed were trying to find him. His mood vacillated between pure joy that they apparently didn’t exist and pure terror that they were at the door, two steps ahead of him and he just hadn’t been able to see them.
The machine roared to life revving its engine past the red line and then jamming into gear. The screech of engine is followed by sparks and rubber flying in all directions. Its slave behind the wheel. His eyes crazy, rage spattered on his face. The car leaps into uncontrollable motion. First, lurching forward as the slave expects but as the two tires with air take over the momentum and the other two sit spinning throwing metal shards glowing orange behind it, the vehicle rotates out of control sliding down the street while gaining speed.
As it races past Hannah and I, we can see the slave’s eyes. The rage has been replaced with fear. He has no control over the machine and it is hurtling toward a wall of cars and several humans. Our comrades scurry in every direction, but the machine, with only two of its wheels functional, is unpredictable. The screeching, wailing of its engine and the metal rims on pavement come to a sudden stop as the unmistakable sound of metal on metal reverberates through the neighborhood.
There’s a scream. In the malaise of machine smashing metal, Sam is caught. The brute force of the car slams her, still upright, into another parked on the street. At least a dozen Alliance members are at her side within seconds, including Hannah and I. Even with all of us, there is no way we can overcome the sheer size and weight of the machine. Sam’s body has been crushed. We climb onto the mess of metal and flesh and plastic and rubber trying to get to her. If nothing else, we wish to provide comfort, to give her the last bit of humanity before she becomes the first martyr in our cause. She has one hand free and reaches up. I’ve known her for years and the tears begin to stream down my face. Her left hand brushes them from my cheek and, in a barely audible whisper, she says, “Seth, this is it. This is all we ever wanted. To fight back. I’m dying, but the Alliance set me free.”
Her last breath wheezes from her body. The hand wiping the tears from my face falls onto the mess of metal that took her life. As it lies there, lifeless, I notice the four dots tattooed on her wrist. I stand up to assess our situation.
There are several skirmishes happening in the neighborhood. The numbers of slaves versus Alliance members is starting to tilt as the noise and chaos begins to awaken the slumbering humans.
The slave that piloted the machine into Sam has been removed from the car. His hands and feet have been zip tied together to keep him from inflicting any other damage. I jump back off the hood, open the gas tank and turn the mess into a funeral pier for our fallen comrade. Those of us at the scene take an improvised, unannounced moment of silence. We back away as the flames jump from the back of the car and then engulf the scene. The first explosion breaks our silence and the pure roar of battle spontaneously emerges from us.
The slaves resisting their liberation halt. A few, witnessing the explosion and the flames engulfing our comrade, fall to their knees pleading for help. The rest fall back unsure of what this escalation means.
A thin line of orange light has begun to border the horizon as our comrades make it to Commerce Way and come upon Rosewood Park. The lack of machines parked on the roadway slows their progress as there is some uncertainty on how to continue. A group of about 15 have been working swiftly and efficiently through the city and have become the defacto leaders in this area.
With the light growing, what has felt like an eternal battle for survival is being interrupted by the awakening of the city. They can hear I-5 and the roar of cars just a few blocks away. It’s a devastating blow to an otherwise productive night to realize that there are still millions of machines, fully functional and ruling the city even as we cling to the idea that we can liberate the masses.
A spontaneous meeting occurs right in the middle of the roadway. Consensus is quick and decisive. The group moves toward the interstate. They have no sense of time other than that thin line that is growing and fading into the blues of the morning. The news would report later that it was close to 5 AM.
The group grows as the idea snowballs through the ranks. The Alliance has been actively engaged in destroying the blood cells, they are now focusing on the vein.
They begin to gather and carry anything they can, garbage cans, discarded 2X4s, pipes and even doors ripped from disabled automobiles. Once they reach the edge of the freeway, they begin to launch the gathered items onto the road. The debris begins to slow the traffic. They take one lane, then two constricting all the traffic into the left side. As congestion builds, so does the anger and urgency. It’s not long until a slave overtaken by road rage is hurled by his machine into the impromptu barricade.
The car is stopped dead in its tracks. The slave is promptly removed and incapacitated and the machine is lit on fire. The barricade continues to grow until the entire south bound corridor is blocked. The obstacle itself isn’t large but as soon as traffic stops, there is no way through. The vein has been blocked and the blood cannot continue.
The line of orange on the horizon grows and fades and soon the sun is about to hop right over the San Gabriel Mountains.
As planned, Horus is anxiously watching the clock. His fingers have ceased dancing. He just waits. No one ever came for him. After a few hours of vigilance, he realized it was not because they were just a few steps ahead of him, it was that there was no one there. The grid was completely unprotected. Or at least not in a way that would keep a digital ninja like himself from doing whatever he wanted.
We had no exit plan, but we did have an exit time, 6 AM.
The clock ticks over from 5:59 to 6, Horus jolts into action. First, all power is restored to the grid. Second, he triggers a complete swipe of his workstation incapacitating his hard drive, disconnecting all internet and power from the house. He pockets the hard drive, walks out the back door where he has prepped all communication cables entering the back of the abandoned one-story shack. And then, as if he was cutting its throat, he slices all digital connection between where he has been working and the outside world.
His bike is sitting in the back yard. He jumps on and rides away.
As that same click of the clock rolls in LA, the incessant action of the Alliance is interrupted as the lights roll back across the city causing a din. Not only does the electricity awaken a city, but it causes an almost immediate shock to the system. Alarms begin pounding in the distance, generators sputter out and music randomly plays. This was all in conjunction with thousands of watches covering dots on left hands that had alarms set for this exact moment.
There’s a collective question mark throughout the streets. I don’t even know what to do, but as I look around at everyone it’s obvious our first attack has been unsuspected and successful, we just need to walk away. I yell at Hannah and we begin moving back toward the Sports Bar and where we stashed our bikes. There’s an exodus about to happen.
As the alarms sound at the barricade, the group looks around. There is a long line of traffic that is continuously growing on one side and nothing on the other. Unless their machine is at the barricade, the humans have no idea what is going on and assume it’s just an irregularly brutal morning commute. As the rest of us did, they look at each other and then someone starts to walk. The group follows scattering in all directions headed back to the decentralized starting location of the battle, Los Angeles.
Just as quickly as we appeared, our dark clothing is shed and we fade into the fringes of modern society.
Embrace Chaos. Seek Discomfort.
