Welcome back to my post-post-apocalyptic novel, Ada’s Children, and thanks for reading! If you’re new to the story, please don’t be surprised that it’s paywalled. The Prologue and first three chapters are free, and you can start reading them here. The previous chapter, “Robots Will Provide,” is here.
The last time we were with Carol, she and everyone else had just learned that an AI had taken control of everything. Now two years have passed, as that AI’s plan for humanity has grown progressively more draconian.
This is a long chapter, so grab a hot beverage and a comfy chair. I thought of breaking it in two, as I did with Chapter 18, but this is one long emotional arc. It also has a long flashback. I do love a good flashback, and I hope you do too. This chapter begins with a long section before the paywall, so feel free to share.
DECEMBER 2045
The pounding on the door wouldn’t stop. Why couldn’t they just go away, whoever they were? It was probably Megan, though Megan usually called her name and kept calling until she opened up. But right now, Carol needed to go back to sleep, no matter who was at the door.
Sleep—it was practically all she did these days, all she wanted to do, ever since…
The pounding again. “Carol Marsh, I know you’re in there. Please open the door.”
She knew that voice. She opened her eyes, squinting at the late fall sun slanting through her bedroom window. She’d forgotten to close the curtains when she moved from the couch to the bed yesterday evening.
The knock came again. “Carol, we’re worried about you.” A woman’s voice, not the one she’d expected. “Please come to the door or I’ll have to call our landlord.”
She struggled to a sitting position, then got unsteadily to her feet and moved toward the hall. She hadn’t spent many hours upright these past weeks.
She swung the front door open and there was Mary, her downstairs neighbor, with Shondra standing beside her.
“Look who I found on the doorstep!” Mary said, a note of forced cheer in her voice.
Carol and Shondra stared at each other for a long moment, Carol taking in the new lines on her friend’s face and the new gray in her hair, no longer straightened. Then the look of worry as Shondra made a similar assessment of her.
They fell into a hug, and Carol wanted to stay that way as long as she could. Finally, she had to ask. She took a step back and breathed the name. “Michael?”
Shondra shook her head, her mouth turned down. Carol could hardly acknowledge the blow. Like a bucket of water poured over the head of a woman already drowning in the ocean. At the same time, she realized this must be an old grief for Shondra.
“Well, can I come in?”
Carol stepped silently aside.
“I’ll just leave you two to catch up. It will be good for you to have your old friend back.”
“Thank you, Mary,” Shondra said, and stepped into the hall. Carol cringed as her friend surveyed the scene in the living room. “Wow, Carol. How about we open a window?” Shondra crossed the room, stepping around fallen wrappers and carry-out containers, and struggled with the ancient sash until she got it open. Crisp air parted the light curtains. “There, that’s better.”
Carol stood between the kitchen and the living room. She should probably offer her friend a cup of tea or maybe the last of her coffee, but this was one more action she didn’t have the strength to take.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Shondra asked. After everything Shondra must have been through, and she could still think about what had happened to someone else? It was better than Carol could do.
“Mary didn’t tell you?”
Shondra shook her head. “She said it was best if you did.”
Carol sat down heavily on the one clear spot on the couch and stared at the floor.
Shondra moved around the room, picking up the detritus of the last weeks. “It’s all right if you don’t want to talk right now.”
Carol kept staring at the floor. She knew there was something she was supposed to ask, if she could bring herself to do it.
“What happened? With Michael, I mean.”
Shondra gave a soft exhalation. “The stupidest thing, really. He cut his hand working on the wiring in the squat we were fixing up. Trying to get A/C before the summer got too hot. But there was never enough electricity anyway, not that first summer, so it was pointless anyway. Then the cut got infected, and the antibiotics must have gone off, what with all the brownouts and blackouts. By the time we got him to a hospital with power, it was too late. All they could do was ease his pain.”
“I’m so sorry.” The words were automatic. It seemed unreal, along with everything else. “It must have been…awful.”
“It was. Like living in another century, but mostly without the skills that would require. A lot of the infrastructure was fried, between the flooding and the heat. But that was four years ago. Things got better, we got a functioning government again, things got more organized. But it was too late for Michael.”
Carol tried to pay attention as Shondra told of the challenges of rebuilding a society from the ground up, starting with sowing the fields and repairing the power grid. “Thank God for the Chinese and the French, who were willing to sell us food and fuel on credit. But the border was lifted, what, almost two years ago. I stayed for a year, trying to keep things going. Then Damian was leaving to see what was left of his farm, and I went with him. Stayed with him for a while, but then I missed home. I missed my friends. I missed you.”
“I tried to call you. Email you. I even tried a letter.”
“I figured you did. We did too. But Cass had communication shut off. And besides, most of the cell towers were down that first year. I tried sending a letter with one of those French sailors, asked him to post it when he got home, but I guess you never got it.”
Carol shook her head.
“I know I should have reached out to you once the border was opened. I told myself I didn’t know which of the new Ada-approved messaging apps you’d be on. But really, I think I was just afraid to get bad news about you. If it was going to be bad, I wanted to get it in person. Do you understand?”
Carol nodded. “I could have done the same. I was afraid too.”
“And now here I am.”
Shondra stood there, giving Carol an opportunity to speak. But Carol couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Shondra surveyed the room again. “Honey, I bet you’d feel better if we got rid of this mess. How can you even move?”
Carol watched as her friend went to the kitchen for a trash bag, then returned and began filling it. She knew she should get up and help, but it seemed pointless. Megan had done the same two weeks before, but what good had it done? This was life. Things fell apart, and there was nothing you could do about it.
Shondra came to a framed photo that had fallen face down on the floor. “Look what I found underneath all that…” A sharp intake of breath as she turned it over. “Oh, Carol, honey…” She came and sat beside Carol, putting an arm around her shoulders and setting the picture on the cluttered coffee table. Carol turned away. She couldn’t look at it. It was a photo Megan had taken and framed for her, right before…
“You had a little girl.”
Carol nodded.
“And the robots came for her?”
Carol nodded again. She could never have said the words herself, but now that Shondra had said them, she knew she would have to tell her, reliving the night she’d been trying to forget for the last month.
Carol awoke with a start. Out on the street, someone, a woman, was screaming. She went to the window to see a van stopped a few doors up. Several bots stood around it, two preventing the screaming woman from reaching the back of the van. Carol couldn’t hear what the woman was saying, but a man stood behind her trying to calm her. One of the bots moved toward the woman, raising its arm. She fell, the man catching her before she hit the pavement. What was it all about?
Carol froze as she heard footsteps on the stairs, then the door opening. She was relieved when Megan called out, “Carol?” Her friend had a key to the apartment for babysitting Alice.
Carol met her in the hall. Megan was out of breath, her eyes wide with panic. “What is it?”
“Get Alice! They’re taking children!”
“What?”
“There’s no time to stand there. I would have messaged you, but it’s not safe.”
“But where…”
“We can go to my apartment, they’ve already swept the building.”
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