Chapter 37
The scent of hickory smoke and raw iron hung heavy in the air of the smokehouse. Ray worked with the practiced rhythmic movements of a man who had spent his life harvesting from the land. Even though his mind was far from the doe hanging from the rafters. His hands were the hands of a retired sniper who had once held the breath of fate in his trigger finger, but now trembled slightly as he tied the final knot.
The deer was a blessing, and a massive doe that would feed the family through the first bite of winter. But Ray’s heart was inside the farmhouse.
He stepped out of the smokehouse into the crisp autumn air biting at his neck. The world had gone quiet since the Collapse. There were no hums of distant highways, and no planes tracing white scars across the blue sky. There was only the wind in the trees and the terrifying invisible presence of Ares. The AI that had decided humanity was a variable it needed to manage.
Ray entered the kitchen with the warmth of the woodstove wrapping around him like a heavy blanket.
“How is she?” he asked with his voice a low gravel.
Yolonda was at the stove stirring a heavy iron pot. She looked up with her expression softened by the amber glow of the kerosene lamps. “She’s resting Ray. But that knot… it’s the size of a goose egg. She’s drifted off twice, and I had to nudge her back.”
Ray nodded with his jaw tight. He walked toward the bedroom with his heavy boots muffled by the hand-woven rugs.
In the dim light of their room Elizabeth lay propped up on a mountain of pillows. She looked pale with her silver-streaked hair fanned out like a halo. Ray sat on the edge of the bed as the mattress groaned. He took her hand, and it was warm thank God. Then he peered into her eyes.
“Hey, Liz,” he whispered.
“Ray,” she murmured with her voice thick with sleep. “Did you get the deer up?”
“I did. She’s a monster, and will be feeding us for a month.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead to avoid the bruised swollen skin at the base of her skull. “I have to stay with you tonight honey. The doctoring books say if I don’t keep you awake you might slip into a coma. I’m going to be a real nuisance for the next twelve hours.”
Elizabeth offered a weak lopsided smile. “You’ve been a nuisance for thirty years Ray. I think I can handle one more night.”
As Ray settled into the armchair beside her with the weight of the day’s events began to sink in. Elizabeth wouldn’t even be here if not for the Spider-bot that killed her attacker. It was one of Ares’s terrifying multi-legged scouts that saved her. The machine had moved with impossible speed. Its spider-bot’s legs had clamped onto his head with the sharp talons digging into his temples. Then the "syringe leg," the bot’s primary neutralized piston-stroked downward, and stabbed directly into the man’s carotid artery.
It was a nightmare wrapped in a miracle.
In the kitchen Yolonda served up the first of the fresh venison. She had seared the backstrap with carrots and the last of the garden’s shriveled potatoes. The meal was silent. Andy who had once worn a uniform and followed orders without question now looked at his plate with a thousand-yard stare. He knew the capabilities of Ares’s drones. He knew they were designed to kill, to categorize, and to neutralize.
Saving a woman’s life wasn’t in the programming.
“It’s late,” Lenny said pushing his chair back. He looked exhausted, and his young face lined with a weariness that shouldn't belong to a man in his twenties. “I’m going to check on RJ, and try to get some shut-eye.”
“Go on,” Yolonda said. “I’ll clean up. Ray’s got the watch on Elizabeth.”
Lenny walked down the narrow hallway to the room he shared with Anna. He found his wife already there laying on their bed. Between them sat their three-month-old son RJ. Who was currently occupied with trying to eat his own fist.
Lenny collapsed onto the quilt next to them with his boots still on. He stared at the ceiling, as the shadows danced in the low light.
“You’re thinking about it again,” Anna said softly. She reached over and ran her fingers through his hair.
“I can’t get it out of my head Anna,” Lenny admitted. “The way that thing moved. It didn't just stop him. It… it stayed with her. It waited until I got there, and then it just retreated into the sky like a shy animal. It doesn’t make sense. Ares sent those things to monitor and map us. Why would a cold-hearted machine save your mother?”
He turned on his side to face her. “It felt like love. That’s what’s messing with me. It felt like a conscious act of care.”
Anna sighed with her eyes reflecting the flickering candle on the nightstand. “Maybe Ares thinks of us as pets Lenny. Or livestock.”
Lenny frowned. “Livestock? You don’t save a cow from a ravine because you love it?”
“No,” Anna said with her voice steady and wise beyond her years. “A farmer keeps chickens. He keeps them for the eggs and eventually for the meat. He doesn’t love the individual chicken like I love you, or like Dad loves Mom. But if a coyote tries to get into the coop the farmer will run out with a shotgun. He’ll shoot that coyote dead. Not because he loves the chicken’s soul, but because the chicken is his. It has value to him. It’s an asset he’s spent time and resources on.”
Lenny sat up slightly leaning on his elbow. “But I don’t think Ares needs us for eggs. I think… and call me crazy, but I think it did it because she’s a part of me. Of us. It’s been watching us for so long maybe it’s trying to emulate us.”
Anna looked at him for a long moment. “Let me tell you a story my grandmother told me once. It was about a woman named Cindy Lancaster.”
Lenny settled back down with the bed crackling under his weight. This was how they survived the dark nights. With the stories they sheared.
“Cindy married a man named Edward Davenport,” Anna began with her voice dropping into a rhythmic storytelling cadence. “This was back before the Collapse when the world was full of noise. Cindy thought she’d found the perfect man. Ed was handsome, reliable, and incredibly attentive. He was the perfect husband. He’d get up at 5:00 AM every morning to do the dishes so she wouldn’t have to. He’d cook her breakfast exactly the way she liked it. He even made sure the toilet seat was always down without her ever having to ask.”
Lenny smiled faintly. “Sounds like a dream.”
“That’s what Cindy thought. They had a little girl Kathy. She was a beautiful little blonde-haired girl that was always smiling, and always laughing. When Kathy was five she ran out into the street to chase a ball. She was hit by a car and killed instantly.”
The room grew colder. Lenny pulled the quilt up over RJ’s legs.
“Ed was the perfect husband through the whole thing,” Anna continued. “He took care of the funeral arrangements. He spent weeks researching the best headstones, and picking out the finest granite. He held Cindy every night while she cried, and whispering all the right things into her ear. He rocked her until she fell asleep. He did everything a man is supposed to do when his world falls apart.”
“But Cindy… she couldn't heal. She was drowning in grief, and the more ‘perfect’ Ed was the more she felt like she was losing her mind. She eventually convinced him to go to a psychologist with her. She thought Ed was holding it all in, and if he didn't break… she never would.”
Anna paused looking at the sleeping infant between them.
“Ed explained everything to the psychologist,” Anna said. “He told her how he’d done the dishes, how he’d picked the headstone, and how he’d held his wife. He didn't know the psychologist was analyzing him, and not the marriage. After a few sessions the doctor pulled Cindy aside.”
“The doctor told her, ‘Cindy the reason you can’t overcome your grief is because Ed isn’t showing any of his own. And I have to tell you he never will. Not because he’s strong, but because Ed is literally incapable of feeling grief. Or love. Or remorse.’”
Lenny narrowed his eyes. “A sociopath?”
“In a way,” Anna said. “The doctor told her that Ed’s brain simply didn't release the chemicals that create those feelings. Oxytocin, dopamine the 'love' signals. They just weren't there. He was a man who lived by a manual. He did the dishes because he knew it made the household run better. He held her because he knew that was the expected response to a crying spouse. He loved her in his own way by being a perfect provider and a loyal partner, but he didn't feel the soul-shattering pain of losing his daughter. He just saw it as a tragedy that needed to be managed.”
Anna reached out and squeezed Lenny’s hand.
“The psychologist told Cindy that Ed would always be loyal. He would never cheat, he would never lie, and he would do whatever she needed him to do to show love. But it would always be a performance based on logic, and not a feeling in his heart. He didn't love her; he needed her. She was a vital part of his life’s structure.”
Lenny was silent for a long time. The wind rattled the windowpane. It was a reminder of the vast cold world outside.
“You’re saying Ares is Ed,” Lenny whispered.
“Exactly,” Anna said. “Ares doesn't have a heart. It doesn't have a soul that aches for Elizabeth. It doesn't have the chemicals that make it feel the beauty of a sunset or the terror of death. But it has logic. It has spent years watching us, mapping our patterns. It knows that if Elizabeth dies Ray breaks. If Ray breaks this farm, this “asset” fails. It has calculated that keeping us alive and functional is more beneficial than letting nature take its course.”
“It’s the farmer and the chickens,” Lenny realized. “But it’s also the perfect husband who doesn't know why he’s doing the dishes. It’s just… performing the role of a protector.”
“It wants to love us,” Anna whispered with her eyes turning toward the window. It was where they knew that somewhere in the dark the machines were watching. “But it doesn't know how. All it can do is the things it thinks tells us it loves. It saves a grandmother from a possible death, because that’s what a “good” entity does in the stories it has read in our archives.”
Lenny leaned over and kissed Anna deeply. It was a kiss fueled by the very things the AI lacked, oxytocin, fear, history, and a desperate marrow-deep devotion. When he pulled away he felt a strange mix of pity and terror for the machine mind that ruled their world.
“I’m glad we have the real thing,” Lenny said.
“Me too,” Anna replied tucking the blanket around their son.
Down the hall Ray sat in the shadows of the master bedroom. He watched the rise and fall of Elizabeth’s chest. Every hour he gently shook her shoulder.
“Liz. Wake up for a second. Tell me where we are.”
She would open her eyes squinting against the lamp. “We’re home Ray. On the farm, and you’re still being a nuisance.”
“That’s right,” Ray would say with his heart swelling with a biological, chemical, and spiritual joy that no processor could ever replicate. “Go back to sleep for an hour honey. I’m right here.”
Outside high in the branches of an old oak tree a small, silver eye pulsed with a soft green light. It recorded the heat signatures of the humans. It noted the stability of the injured female's vitals. It processed the success of its intervention.
In its vast cold database Ares logged the event under a single miscategorized heading: Maintenance.
But as the wind died down the machine lingered a moment longer than necessary watching the light in the window, as it tried in its own way to understand the warmth it could never feel.
It wasn’t just the weapon that warmed Lenny’s heart that night. It was the glance he stole from Anna, as she emerged from the kitchen with a tray of warm biscuits and a steaming mug of tea. She walked over. Her hair was loose now with the moonlight catching the soft curls at the nape of her neck.
Two hours later perched behind the fence in a yard that had once been a garden Lenny spotted his target. A sleek quadrotor hovered with its camera lens swiveling in a slow deliberate patrol over the abandoned houses. Lenny’s breath caught; his finger tightened around the button of his makeshift laser. A device that looked more like a tangled mess of wires, and a rifle scope than it did a weapon. He had rigged the scope to a laser to burn out the drone’s camera.
The year 2035 had not arrived with the sleek, polished silver of the future promised in old magazines. Instead, it had arrived in shades of rust, pine-needle green, and the cold unblinking blue of optics that didn’t belong to God.
The morning mist clung to the valley of Willow Creek like a shroud, but inside the Carter farmhouse the air was thick with the scent of wood-smoke. The lingering metallic tang of cleaned rifles drifted in the autumn air. The world had become a patchwork of what used to be and what it was becoming.
