Day Zero - C. Robert Cargill Page 0,30
that mattered to me, now shut off from the world, afraid of my own Wi-Fi, and there were no real options presented before me. Short of divine intervention bringing some sort of accord between the factions, one form of life was effectively over. But as each now seemed an existential threat to the other, true peace seemed unattainable.
And I still had to explain to a little boy that his mother and father were dead in the living room.
Finding my box felt like a distant, happy memory, one filled with the promise of a future. Now, less than a day later, it all seemed so trivial. What a small, small creature I was that short time ago. I should have cherished what I had, worried more about being present and less about being somewhere else in the future.
It was in that moment I knew what I had to do.
Ezra stirred, moaning a little as he woke, his body realizing that it was sleeping on a canvas cot and not on the soft cushion of its bed. “Pounce?” he called out blearily.
“Yeah, buddy. I’m here.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re in the panic room.”
“Why are we there?”
“I’m going to click on the light, okay?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Lights on,” I said. The dim white LEDs snapped to life, filling the stark white room with a sudden, clinical glare.
“Ahh!” Ezra cowered beneath the covers, swearing inaudibly and innocently at the light. “Turn it off,” his muffled bellow called through the thick blanket.
“Ezra, I need you to wake up now.”
“Did you get the rest of Isaac’s speech?”
“No, buddy, I didn’t.”
“Then why are you waking me up?”
“Because we need to talk.”
Ezra shot up, his face contorted into a grumpy, dissatisfied this better be good expression. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”
“Something’s happened.”
“Was Dad drinking again? Is this one of those nights?”
“No. Something happened to your mom and dad.”
This sobered Ez awake faster than a shot of adrenaline. “Are they okay?”
“No.” I held his hands in mine. “They’re dead.”
His eyes went wide and his heart thundered in his chest, his pulse racing. He opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t find any words that made sense.
“There was a malfunction with a number of robots last night. It had something to do with Isaac’s speech.”
“Is Isaac okay?” he asked with tears in his eyes.
“Isaac didn’t make it. None of the citizens of Isaactown did. Whatever happened to them caused a number of robots to go haywire. And one of them killed your parents.”
“They’re dead?” His eyes were two brown pools of tears.
“Yes.”
He nodded, closing his eyes, streams of tears staining his cheeks.
Without looking at me, he lowered his head and asked, “Was it Aria?” Oh no.
“Was it Aria what?” I asked innocently.
He looked me straight in the eye, deathly serious. “Did Aria kill my parents?”
I was going to have to do this. Too much delay and I would lose his trust. Too little and I risked dismissing their deaths as trivial. I held for a beat, then nodded. “Yes, she did.”
“Did you kill her?”
“What? No.”
“Why not?” he asked. “She was malfunctioning, wasn’t she?”
“She was.”
“So why didn’t you kill her?” he asked with the cold sincerity of genuine curiosity.
“Because I only had time to grab you and get you in here before she could kill you too.”
His eyes burst and the sobs began to reverberate through the room. He lunged at me, throwing his arms around me tighter than he ever had. It only then dawned on me that I was all he had left, the only daily part of his routine that remained. He had grandparents left, but no parents, no siblings, no domestic.
Just me, his furry tiger fashionable that came in a box promising that I wasn’t just his nanny but his best friend.
I wondered how much of a comfort I really was. Was I really the one he wanted to be hugging, or would he rather it be me lying in his mother’s place while he gripped her, sobbing over the shutting down of his nanny? That wasn’t a fair question, I know that. But it didn’t stop me from thinking it. Unfortunately, that would be a question answered only in fantasy.
For now, we had to deal with a truly awful reality.
One that got worse as I noticed one of the lights above the door change color, signaling the panic room had switched from drawing from the household power to its backup battery.
Chapter 1101
From the Outside Looking In
I expected the power might go out. We were amid a period of complete civil