Machines of Eden by Shad Callister Page B

cameras
and opening doors in the fences.
    How they had infiltrated
the estate was no longer a point of interest to the few men
remaining on the premises. Survival wasn’t even a very worthwhile
discussion. They had been outsmarted entirely, and would now pay
the price of overconfidence. It was a simple matter of leaving the
last bullet for themselves.
    An hour later, the mist had
all lifted or been dispersed by the force of the exploding
ordnance. The team that had broken into the plantation estate had
come and gone, taking what they wanted and leaving the doors wide
open. A hidden camera relayed images of them to a place far away,
where it was noted that the men and women of the team wore hideous
green masks and dark camouflage suits. They ran a quick scan and
planted flags in the soil where the obvious gas canisters and mines
were hidden. Then they left, with three largely undamaged bots in
tow, to be dismantled for reverse engineering and repurposing,
although that seldom resulted in anything but disintegration as the
built-in self-destruct mechanisms activated.
    Then the hordes arrived.
Gaunt, filthy, some with painted faces and a bewildering assortment
of clothing and lack of clothing, they came yelling, laughing, and
screaming. With fire-hardened spears, machetes, scythes, and
throwing clubs, they poured into the estate through the gaps in the
fencing. Within minutes the majority of the crops had been
stripped, and in-fighting broke out between groups as greed and
lust invariably mixed with hunger and frustration to spark
conflict. More fighting and destruction took place in and around
the estate’s buildings, even though they were long abandoned and
emptied of all that was useful.
    Unseen mines and canisters
were triggered. People died screaming amid the throngs, and space
was made around the danger areas. The fighting and yelling and
scrabbling went on.
    By late afternoon nothing
was left of the estate that had once displayed the proud sign out
front, “Australia’s Largest Biomass Contributor”. A military
aircraft flew over at high altitude, ready to rake the earth below
with firepower if the opportunity presented itself, but there were
no targets in sight.
     
     
     
     

9
     
    There was a pond in front
of him, so he stopped.
    Frogs, active even at this
time of day, croaked ceaselessly. The sun was hot on John’s neck and he felt
sweat trickling down his back. He swatted irritably at a swarm of
midges whining in front of his face.
    This isn’t Eden. Eden wouldn’t have bugs.
    Movement caught his eye. A
small group of ibises in scarlet plumage stalked sedately from
behind a boulder. He though t they were
ibises, anyway; he wasn’t so big on tropical ornithology. They were ugly birds, he
decided, but they moved with a strange grace. He stood watching
until they vanished in the reeds.
    Eve hadn’t said anything
lately. He scanned the cliffs, looking for the flash of sun on
glass or steel, but saw nothing. It was vitally important to
discover how she could monitor him out here. He suspected either a
single high observation platform or a low - orbit geosync hronous sat ellite . There were still a few
operational prewar birds in the
Pacific , even though no postwar emerging
nation had rebooted its space program. An AI like Eve could have
found her way into one of their feeds and wrested control. John wouldn’t put
anything past her now.
    She might also keep her
tabs through an extensive system of grounded cams and mics, but he
doubted it. The upkeep and maintenance would be too difficult,
especially in a tropical environment, not to mention the juice it
would take to keep them all consistently powered. There had been
that sensor cam at the fence near the beach that was self-sustaining via
solar panel, but it still needed maintenance.
    No, there was some very
expensive, very omniscient technology around here somewhere, and it
enabled her to see and hear most of what she wanted. The key would
be finding her