Favela Pt. 23

The last three months had been interesting to say the least. Olivia barely bothered to register everything that had changed in the last month alone, but perhaps the most shocking of all though was hearing her girlfriend’s voice over the factory intercom every morning and afternoon. One day while they’d been working, Muduru had walked up to Maithri down below and pulled her off of the assembly line. A new girl that Olivia had never seen before slipped in and seamlessly took her place. Olivia was scared at first, terrified actually, that her girlfriend was being punished for something, but a few minutes later the PA squawked and then to her absolute surprise Maithri was reading the latest bulletin from the State.

As it turned out, the announcements had become so frequent and critical to daily operations that Bozna had decided to create a dedicated post just to keep up with them all. Maithri had told Olivia everything that evening when they’d both met up excitedly at the front gate, Bozna had mentioned her interview all those months ago, said she’d been confounded by how well spoken and articulate she was for an anemic street urchin. It had stuck in her head until the need for an official announcer had come up. “Also she told me that she likes my accent.” Maithri beamed.

Olivia felt a sharp stab of jealousy, but tamped it down immediately as a flood of memories reminded her of all the times that her friend had reached out to her when she just as easily could have walked away. Maithri, her usual perceptive self seemed to take note of this subtle wrinkle in Olivia’s delicately pained expression. “I’m sure she likes my boobs too, but I told her in no uncertain terms that I was betrothed to a fearsome gorilla who would rip her limb from limb if she so much as solicits my affection.”

“S-Seriously?” Olivia blinked, struggling to imagine the petite girl before her telling off the towering amazonian giant that was Bozna. Maithri clapped her hands over her mouth and started laughing uncontrollably, snorting and spluttering for several seconds.

“Oh my god. Your face!” She laughed a little more, until Olivia was glaring balefully. “No. I just told her I’d quit if she touched me.” The girl tittered musically. “She assured me that our relationship would remain entirely professional.” Maithri said seriously. Olivia nodded, feeling strangely subdued.

Her pay was the same as before, but her new job consisted of summarizing the detailed reports transmitted to the factory’s secure channel and then after clearing them with Bozna, reading them over the intercom. There were going to be regular updates every thirty minutes so despite being less physical, it was still going to be a lot of work. “Summarize?” Olivia asked curiously. “You mean they’ve been leaving things out this whole time?”

“Oh yes. But not just leaving things out.” She leaned in closer to whisper in Olivia’s ear, even though they were basically alone in the jungle. “The reports are already censored when they show up on my console. Sometimes half the document has been redacted, and then even after I write them up Bozna crosses out some of the items. Things are getting pretty crazy in Calico, I know you heard today that the AI has finally accepted a single human diplomat to act as a liaison, but what what you didn’t hear is that the military attempted to tunnel into the fortress while the first meeting was taking place.”

Olivia’s mouth opened in disbelief. “How stupid can they be?” Her friend nodded.

“Yeah, that’s why it was left off the bulletin. The drilling platform was vaporized and the operation team was stripped naked and ejected back onto the surface. Everything was angel ray cloaked and they were even using analog comms, but it didn’t matter, the AI could see and hear everything. When the diplomat was released he said that they had discussed the attempted breaching in realtime. The whole thing was displayed on a wall in the meeting room, like it was one of those antique American action movies. Maybe it was mocking Calico, but it seemed to him like the AI was just being playful and didn’t feel threatened at all, which is why there were no casualties.”

Olivia nodded thoughtfully. An AI with a sense of humor? Wasn’t that mandatory by definition? “Sounds embarrassing for them.” She smirked.

“To add insult to injury the operations team reported that before the platform was destroyed the plasma cutter encountered an unknown substance, it looked similar to the concrete they were expecting to find since the site is basically an old bunker, but it seems the masonry had been replaced with something else, the notes mentioned iridescence. The plasma couldn’t make a mark and actually started to reflect and overheat the drill head, it had completely melted before the rig was even attacked.” Olivia glanced down at her wrist and smiled at the opalescent filament tied around her wrist.

“The tower, it’s woven out of this stuff, I’ll bet it’s the same as what’s in that bunker now.” Maithri took hold of Olivia’s wrist and held it up to the light, the bracelet shimmered like a tiny rainbow.

“You might be the only person in the world who has an intact fragment of this filament Olivia. They tried to take samples from the first tower, but nothing would scratch it. Diamonds, lasers, acid, MEMS, they tried everything.” Olivia pulled her hand away, clutching her wrist to her chest and stroked the bracelet possessively.

“Well it’s mine now.” She sulked. “Those idiots aren’t going to stop that thing, even with all the free samples and help in the world.” She said confidently. Maithri didn’t feel like she could disagree exactly, although her head was swimming with many other unaired excerpts from the daily brief. So much was happening, so much that she was afraid of. She leaned over and clung to Olivia, pulling their bodies so closely together that it made it harder to walk. The vivid sky-blue dot on her shoulder caught her eye, the place where she’d been bitten by the mosquito, the day after Olivia, a poignant reminder of the AI’s long reach. Marcella had been bitten too, along with everyone in the factory, and probably everyone in the Favela for that matter.

Another week or two went by. It seemed like each day a new series of shocking reports filtered through the factory intercom, although Olivia was starting to get a little desensitized, by all the drama. The only reason she even kept listening was because she never got tired of hearing Maithri talk. Bozna had chosen well, the girl had a golden voice, it was clear and carried through the entire plant despite the cheap barking speakers, it had a soothing quality yet always sounded authoritative and self-assured. On top of that she could speak four different languages, and had quickly become fluent in Portuguese, plus she never struggled with big or overly technical words, reciting them as flawlessly as a machine herself.

Olivia’s ears always perked up however, the moment she detected that subtle note of stress in her girlfriend’s voice. These particular passages she’d file away for later, being sure to ask Maithri about them after work to get the full unabridged version of the story. Just such an instance had triggered her attention as her friend described the daily list of detours which were now necessary to avoid the various large groups of metal stick-men who roamed about the favela. It wasn’t that they were hostile, but rather that they could be oblivious, accidentally causing damage or injury if one were to stray too close or get caught up in one of their drifting triangular platoons.

They had become an oddly mobile environmental hazard, like tumbleweeds that could roll through walls, or flatten a child. The state had started tracking them via satellite and balloon, issuing advisories of avoidance, or AoAs as they were called. Apparently, off the record, the strange arthropodal droids had taken over certain unoccupied buildings and seemed to be moving between them. At times they were seen carrying raw materials, or performing mysterious rituals on the ground. It was scary at first but as days went by without any serious incidents, people became complacent again. The AoAs were reliable and easy to follow, also it did seem like the paths that the robots took were becoming more predictable over time.

Production demand had increased at the factory, and everyone was doing double duty, even Olivia had taken on a few more shifts. Every evening she grilled her girlfriend while they walked home. Maithri told her fantastic tales about the transformations that were happening in the North. The cities nearest the first towers were being restructured in a sense. The AI had built its own factories, mimicking human industry. But it hadn’t stopped there. Trees were growing again, their genetic blueprints resurrected from ancient terrestrial archives thought to have been lost centuries ago, but now modified in strange ways to survive in previously uninhabitable areas.

All the vaults and treasure troves of the old world were being unearthed and invaded, their knowledge extracted and exploited by the emerging intelligence. The stick-men walked on the bottom of the dead acidic oceans, moved steadily through the hearts of impassable mountains, waded through lava and fire, fearlessly ascended the highest airless, vacant, frozen spires brushing up against the vacuum of space. Systematically they were exploring the earth like ants looking for sustenance, but their diet was information, data and artifacts. Then they would return to their “queen” in great waves like rivers of living mercury flowing back to the nodes of an ever expanding nexus.

The normal familiar paths that Olivia and Maithri had taken through the jungle had changed too. The stick-men, by way of their incidental movements had established a new network of wide corridors through the overgrown synthetic vegetation. People had just started using them as a matter of course because they were safer and more convenient than the crude winding footpaths. The metal droids always moved in perfectly straight lines, crushing and flattening everything that got in their way. The only curiosity being that whenever they changed course, their junctions were at 60 degree angles. There were as many as six separate paths at each intersection, but never more than that.