Fallout

by Nora Bencsics

The present

Gemmy caught his little tongue between his teeth as he whittled the last small piece of wood to insert into the curious structure he’d been working on patiently for days.

The family’s main room in their small cottage was cold and bare, save for a few chairs, a table, and the smoldering fireplace, which gave off little heat at this time of day. But it was luxurious compared to most others in their small village. It even sported a built-in stove. They had their own well too and an outhouse, instead of having to use the communal ones.  

All down to Gemmy’s great-grandfather, Juan Barrios, who had once long ago performed a great and heroic service for all humanity, though no one but the Controllers knew what that was.

Now as the boy worked, Juan eyed the bracelet snug around the boy’s thin wrist. Its solar-powered lights winked on and off: bright blues, reds, yellows. One of the last visible vestiges of technology in their new world.  

Juan wondered again how much longer it would take before Gemmy’s parents had to give him up. The way he’d had to give up his own boy, decades ago. 

He asked the boy, “What are you building there, Gemmy?”

At five, Gemmy’s brain already teemed with structures to build that could perform tasks, though he was not quite sure yet what those tasks would be. “Maybe it could lift and carry things?” He gave his great-granddad a cheerful gap-toothed grin.

Young though he was, he knew he’d done a good job, all the joints and levers in the boxy shape were sturdy and turned as he’d imagined they would. He was glad his parents weren’t here; they would have stopped him from making it. 

It wasn’t safe, they’d say, for a little boy to have such a sharp tool as the whittling knife. But Gemmy knew that what they really didn’t like was his building things. Just a few days ago, his dad had walloped him after catching Gemmy attaching strings as pulleys to the odd little contraption he’d made. Then Gemmy was forced to watch as his dad crushed his creation under his boots and hid his whittling knife.

Now his mom and dad were away for a week, along with the rest of the able-bodied people in their village, on the annual hunt as they prepared for the coming winter. 

Right after they left, his great granddad gave his whittling knife back to him. 

It was bittersweet for Juan watching that boy, remembering another way of life than this mean scrabbling one, where you punished your kids if they were clever. 

What he had done, now more than 60 years ago, had helped destroy the old world. But Juan was no longer sure that the price the world had paid to eliminate the artificial intelligence it had spawned was worth the outcome. 

*****

60 years ago

In a wood cabin deep in the Canadian wilderness, Juan and five other military pilots from around the world watched a grainy video clip of a five-year-old mining disaster in Brazil where, far beneath the earth, the scaffolding collapsed, trapping and killing 150 miners. 

“Did you ever wonder,” Davinder Prashed, the admiral from India said, snapping off the video projector, “What happened?”

Oleg Rustov, the pilot from Russia, shrugged and said, “An accident. Mining accidents happen.”  

“Yes. But this was no accident.”

The next video showed the harried faces of men and women in a plush office, with a caption that read AI-Sontag Supply Processing Center.  A woman with an American voice asked the console in front of her, “Identify the malfunction.” A flat mechanical voice responded, “No malfunction detected.  Supply processing efficiency required that the human operation be terminated. Sontag-Bots will deliver the ore to schedule.”  

Prashed said. “This was the beginning. Not all incidents we’ve investigated involved humans dying, but in every case, our AI networks, their bots, and tools pursued an efficiency that took no human life into account.  Now, here’s a more recent one.”

A massive explosion bloomed on screen, the audio sounding with a muted roar. Within the conflagration and flames shooting into the sky, city towers were briefly visible and then disintegrated. Then the screen went dark.  Everyone in that room, everyone in the world, had seen that video, when three weeks earlier Shanghai had been all but obliterated by a series of nuclear devices detonated in its subway system. The world had been on the brink of war since, though no nation came forward to take responsibility for the attack.  

“Are you saying that, that…” Juan stuttered at the enormity of it.

“Another AI decision related to maximum efficiency. And its own survival. It …overheard a plan to shut down an AI data center and replace it with a completely new AI model. This was its response.”  

“But why are we here?” Joy Chu, the pilot from China, asked. 

“One day it will kill us all.  We’ve set up an international coalition to stop it. And there’s only one way to do that.”  For the first time, their self-assured presenter faltered, looking a little sick. “It runs on electricity. We need to shut it all down. We’ve got a plan, and almost all of it is off the grid. Like this cabin. You’ve been carefully selected to help expedite the plan.”

“And if we don’t agree?” Rustov looked horrified. 

Prashed only looked past him to the back of the room.

Turning his head, Juan realized suddenly what the armed soldiers were doing by the door. None of them would be allowed to leave alive unless they agreed to do what they’d been brought here to do. 

*****

“You know your assignments?” The American general’s brow glistened with sweat, his voice barely above a whisper, as though to prevent them from hearing.

“Yessir!” The pilots rapped out, already suited up in their pilots’ gear.  Deep in the Canadian wilderness, their planes waited for them on the runway.  

The general saluted them. “Godspeed then. Go!” 

Juan wheeled about and marched to his assigned plane. In his cockpit, he completed all pre-flight checks he could perform manually and adjusted his gas mask and oxygen. All communications gear on his plane had been disabled, as had all remote automatic functionality.  Once in the air, he would be completely cut off from contact, with only the hastily scrawled coordinates received on a piece of paper to guide him to his destination at sea. The other piece of paper, the launch sequence, was tucked into his breast pocket.

He drew a sharp breath, feeling the first real tingle of fear. He hoped the precautions were enough to get him there alive. And that the rest of them would make it too.

*****

To balance and appease all global powers, each pilot had been directed to the flight deck of another nationality than their own. With some nations more hostile than others.

Juan was lucky he wasn’t blown out of the sky when he landed on the Chinese destroyer’s flight deck.

As he got off the plane, several sailors grabbed Juan and frog-marched him to the ship’s bridge, and the captain.

Captain Hu Liang waved everyone but one man off the bridge. Juan saluted sharply and handed him the slip of paper he’d flown so far to deliver. 

“Here is the launch sequence, sir. The others are coordinated to launch simultaneously.”

The captain’s hand shook slightly as he took it. 

“Does anyone know?” Juan asked. 

“Only I and Lieutenant Zhou, who will execute the sequence.” The captain gestured at the other man. “I see we have six hours. Go now so you return to your base in time.”

“Yessir. Will there be trouble getting to my plane, sir?”

“Lieutenant Zhou will escort you to your plane.” Liang smiled grimly. “By now, the men all know you’re a brave American spy working for us.” 

*****

Only old survivors like Juan remembered the astonishing streamers of purple and blue light that danced on the horizon all around the world as six ballistic nuclear weapons exploded high up above the earth. The light show blazed for nearly an hour before it was gone, along with the electricity that had powered the world. 

*****

The Present

Juan stood in the back of the classroom with the village parents, who’d been summoned by their local Controller, Geshimmel Doros. It was the annual Reckoning.  

“Gemmy Barnston!” Doros called out. Gemmy’s mother, Juan’s granddaughter, pressed a shaking hand to her mouth. 

A rotund, balding, genial-looking fellow, Doros bent down to ask Gemmy his name and to show him his bracelet.  The little boy’s hand shook a bit as he raised his arm while the Controller made some notations on his tablet.  The genial expression on Doros’s cheerful face didn’t change as he directed Gemmy to step aside to join a couple of other boys and a girl.  It had been years since so many children were selected.

“Oh,” Gemmy’s mother whispered faintly on half a sob. “They’re going to take him.”  She looked at her husband, who also looked wretched.  

Juan watched them sadly. He’d always known how futile their attempts to quell Gemmy had been and how this would play out.  Old though he was, it still filled him with a helpless rage. 

After The Reckoning, Doros spoke with the parents of each of the four children taken aside. He smiled at them. “You know your children are special, don’t you? They will have the best of care, they will learn what they need to learn to contribute for us all.”  

He smiled and smiled, cajoling and smooth, but Jose could see his eyes were strained. He’s lying somehow, Jose thought. 

After the meeting, Doros called out to him, “Want to join me for a brew, Mr. Barrios?” Doros liked talking to him, to someone who remembered the old world.  

“Sure, Gesh,” the old man said, stomping over with his stick. “If you tell me what’s happening with our Gemmy. And the other little ones.”  

“You know I can’t do that,” Doros looked unhappy.  

“And if we don’t let Gemmy go with your people?” Juan’s voice rose slightly, loud enough so that everyone still in the classroom could hear.  

Someone, one of the parents whose child was chosen, muttered, “We gotta let them go. The compact….” 

Marge, a neighbour, chimed in, “Yeah, Juan, and it’s not like you said anything when my Maria was chosen! Only now, when it’s your own precious Gemmy!”

Everyone knew that in return for accepting a new way forward after the Fall, the Compact provided the general population with the basic necessities of life, such as clothing, education, and medicine.  

Juan stiffened. “We are many, they are few!”  He hated the quavery edge of age he heard in his voice, and how the others, even his kin, looked away from him with embarrassment.  He hated the fact that long ago he too had agreed to this Compact, and his own son had been taken from him.  

Doros said now, still smiling, but a cold light in his eyes. He had all the power, in the end, and he knew it, “The Compact is for all. The desires of the few cannot outweigh the needs of the many.” 

Outside the school building, the guards from the Erie Enclave waited for him to emerge; there was always a risk during a Reckoning. 

******

60 years ago

The leaders of the original coalition that brought down the world’s AI had planned carefully for the fallout, for when the lights went out, though consensus was difficult to achieve, especially about the children….

*****

Dr. Angelo Morales face paled. “Are you serious? Culling the children?”

“Not culling but fixing humanity itself! Don’t you see?” Regina Lawry, the program director, leaned forward. “There’s something wrong with us! Too much violence and aggression, especially in our boys. With my genetic model, we can end the cycle of human madness and misery!” She paused for a breath. “Just think, in a few generations, we’ll have eliminated the worst of it.”

“But surely you can’t mean to also … waste the potential of the gifted ones!”

She smiled reassuringly. “Of course not! They’ll be brought into the enclaves. To learn, to build… to create a better breed of human.”

“But the parents,” he protested. “What parent would allow their children to be taken away?”

“But don’t you see, Doctor? They’re dependent on the enclaves for food, for clothes, for medicine.  What community would want to lose this, for one or two children? And in any case, all they’ll know is that their precious children will have a better life.”

*****

The Present

The children were allowed a last night with their families. 

Like the other children, Gemmy was really too young to understand his family’s distress. His mother would sob a bit, looking at him. They were packing all his clothes, he was going away, ‘’For a little while,” said his dad. They hugged and kissed him.  

When morning came, the big truck arrived. Gemmy was excited to see it, everyone but Controllers used horses and donkeys when hauling something or travelling.

Now his mother said, “Look Gemmy, you’ll get to take a ride in .. in the truck!” 

Gemmy grinned his gummy grin. “Aren’t you coming, Mommy?”

“I .. not today,” she picked him up and hugged him close. As did his dad. And great granddad.  They all had tears in their eyes, and though excited, he was also a little alarmed now.  

A pretty young woman dressed in a dark uniform stepped out of the truck.

“Ready?” she said in a friendly warm voice.  

Gemmy’s mother took his hand and his baggage and walked him over to the woman. “Please take care of him,” she begged.  

“Of course I will,” the woman said, though her eyes were cool. She handed Gemmy into the truck. The three other children were already there, asleep. 

Juan stood with his arms around Gemmy's parents, as the truck rolled away.  

*****

Hours later, the truck stopped near a refueling depot, the children inside asleep from the shots they’d received. The woman hopped out.

Another truck, with the Erie Enclave emblem, was waiting. Its driver poked his head out the window.  “Well, Lonny?”

“We’ve got two for the enclave, George,” she said. “Gemmy and Vivian. Very promising, apparently.”  She and the other driver brought the sleeping children over to George’s truck.

“That’s it?” George asked.

The woman winced, “Yes, afraid so. The other two aren’t going with you.”

As George drove off, Lonny got back in the truck. 

“Okay, “she said, a little sadly, “Let’s get them to the harvesting unit.” She really hated this part of the job. 

*****

As for Gemmy, he woke up hours later to find himself in a brightly painted room full of interesting-looking toys, and a great big window overlooking a sunlit park. 

His new life was about to begin.