Short Stories
By Scott Niven
Last School of Humanities
The campus dormitories suffered the most. Ashley, Spencer, and Walton dorms sunk into the earth to become ten-story deep adolescent tombs, each a tribute to the glories and fancies of a youth unable to escape the mistakes of older and wiser generations. But not all of the damage could be attributed to the disasters. An idiot savant Baptist priest gathered white bricks from the ruins of the chapel and tossed them into the historic old well. He used exactly seven thousand bricks, each brick coated with xegocidic pesticide, then hung himself with kite string from the well’s white-washed rafters. No one would drink from the historic water source again.
Across from the well stood the remains of the Terrel Science Building, where experiments conducted in the final hours of the old world and the first hours of the new left scars of red and black punctured into the walls. The roof blew apart, pushed upward by chemicals before fracturing into thousands of tiny projectile splinters. Bits of shingle and oak beaming could still be found littered across campus, each jagged edge crawling with unidentifiable bacteria.
Few areas of the world survived the combined thrashings of nature, vandalism, and disaster. On this campus, only Palton Football Stadium received such haphazard preservation. Chunks of the proud stone wall that encircled the stadium had been knocked free, and the stately ivy that had once crawled over every vertical surface now limped along the scoreboard’s lower edge, but the basic structure of the place endured. And the soil, the well-tended turf of the football field, remained fertile, undamaged by human error, ready for use. Inside the stadium, Janna maintained a farm.
She lived in the announcer’s booth along the top edge of the stadium’s northern wall. The windows had shattered long before she’d arrived, so to protect her home from future vagaries of the weather, she’d blocked the empty windowpanes with aluminum bleachers stacked and turned on their sides. Slits between the bleachers provided sunlight and irregular views of the field.
At night she slept in the men’s bathroom, where a moldy but disinfected cot provided cushioning for her sore back. She had removed the bathroom door years ago so she could hear when the children in the main room cried out. Invariably, one of them did. She rarely slept an entire night without waking at least once to fetch water or sing a lullaby.
Sometimes after soothing a child, when it was too close to sunrise to go back to sleep, Janna would carry a stool into the middle of the stadium, into the middle of her plot of corn, and she would pretend everything was like it used to be, back when people understood about quarterbacks and field goals and fumbles. She would sit on the stool and look up at SECTION H, ROW 12, SEATS 9-10, because she and Jake used to sit in those seats and watch the games. They would hold hands and talk and laugh and enjoy each game for what it was: a diversion, a relaxing break from the monotonous routine of the day.
There were no diversions now.
Everything was work to Janna: manage the farm; milk the cows; feed the fifteen children who had somehow fallen under her care. She was only thirty-eight, yet she was thirty-five years older than anyone else on her farm. But although she felt isolated by her age, she never went long without company. Wandering “tourists” seemed to gravitate toward her stadium, as if by visiting such a majestic relic of the past, they could remember and recapture the glory of an America that died. Janna tolerated them; they sometimes gave her food, providing her and the children with a better variety of diet. And occasionally, a man would spend the night and give her his seed, and she would hope for the bulge to build in her stomach.
Today, she wanted no visitors. Three of the children were sick with fever. The others slept fitfully, battling nausea and head colds, fighting their daily battle against pollution, radiation, and poor nutrients. Janna planned to spend the morning watching their health and wiping sweat from their bald scalps. The afternoon would be filled with farming, while the evening would involve preparing the food she harvested from the crops. A busy day, with no time for personal rest. So when she heard the pounding of feet on the stadium bleachers, she sighed and ignored the noise. But the stomping found her anyway; it always did. Visitors loved investigating the announcer’s booth.
A shadow fell across her shoulders as the footsteps stopped at the doorway behind her. A man most likely, based on the impact of his march up the bleachers. Someone who hadn’t bathed in days, or else had run hard and fast to get here and had clothed himself in the stench of his exertion. She imagined him standing behind her, leaning against the doorway, peeking in at her crouched body and the long row of sleeping children spread out before her. She waited for him to speak.
“Hello?” a man’s voice asked. "What do you need?” Janna asked. He would need something. Visitors always did, even when they gave her nothing in return.
“A woman?” the man asked. “Alone with so many children? What’re you doing here?”
His tone – not the lilting, anticipatory tone of a man with needs to quench, but a gentle tone of amazement – caused her to turn and look his way. He stood two meters behind her, propped against the doorway, just as she had imagined. He was black, and wore only a loincloth, boots, and a beard the color of dirty snow. He looked half-dead, body sweaty, chest heaving, mouth panting, as if the effort of climbing to her booth had cost him years of his life.
And his face. The aged wisdom she saw there questioned her more than his voice. Who would live here? the wrinkles around his eyes seemed to ask. Who would stay in such an isolated, lonely environment?
Janna had no answer, because she had never figured out her reasons for staying. What purpose did keeping the children alive serve? They had little energy now, sleeping and eating all day long. What life did they have to look forward to in the days and years to come?
She answered the old man’s spoken and unspoken questions with a simple answer.
“What am I doing here? Surviving. Trying to, anyway." He looked beyond her, at the children. “They yours?”
“I think of them as mine, yes. Others would say different, though.”
“What others?”
Janna frowned. “I don’t have time for your questions. If you need something, ask. If you brought something for me, leave it. Otherwise, go away.”
The old man pointed out the doorway. “As a matter of fact, I do have something for you. It’s outside.”
“So bring it in.”
“I can’t. You’ll have to see it for yourself.”
Often, Janna imagined how her life would end: a pack of bandits, posing as weary travelers, would arrive at the stadium and discover the success of her farm. They would trick her into revealing her farm water codes, then would slice her up into curled ribbons of Janna flesh.
But this didn’t feel like one of those times. The old man’s nature seemed sincere, and he had long ago exceeded the age when banditry would serve him better than honesty.
“All right,” she said. “I’m coming. But not far. The children need me.”
“Just outside this doorway. That’s all it’ll take.”
Janna whispered a quick lullaby to the children, then pushed up with her knees and joined the old man by the door.
“Lead me,” she said.
The old man nodded. As he turned away from her, her eyes rolled over his exposed skin. Red welts wove their way across his shoulders, down his back, and over his hips. The wounds protruded outward from his skin, and were the color of overripe turnips.
All the welts looked fresh.
“You’ve been attacked,” she said.
“Nothing. I’ve endured this and lived, and it’s in my past, and it’s forgotten. Now come.”
Janna followed him into the steaming sun, into the thick garden of baby magnolia trees she had planted around the booth. The wide leaves of the plants added to the cooling of the building, and had proven critical to keeping her and the children alive during the incendiary summer months.
When they cleared the foliage, they were rewarded with a panoramic view of the farm. Square plots of corn, wheat, tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, and other vegetables raced from end zone to end zone. On the home side of the field, cows grazed on ankle-high grass. On the visitor side, pigs and chickens waddled and strutted across dried mud. Both end zones blossomed with baby fruit trees: apple, orange, peach, and pear.
“No,” the old man said. “You aren’t looking in the right place.” He pointed away from the stadium. “There. Outside. To the left.”
At first Janna didn’t see it. Her eyes tricked her and drew pictures of the same familiar scenery: the empty campus, the parking lot, the city ruins.
Then she looked higher. In the distance, huge brown-black clouds swirled through the sky, creating a haze that obscured everything beyond. Not a tornado. And not a windstorm either.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You asked me what I brought you,” the old man said. “Now you know. I brought you knowledge. Knowledge of change.”
Janna squinted. “A fire?" "Yes, a fire. But that’s not all.” The old man gasped, as if his words irritated his throat. “That haze of black smoke marks the current location of a band of men setting fire to everything they pass. They’re at the edge of the city. Believe me, they won’t ignore this stadium. And they’ll bring their fires. You won’t like it.”
“How do you know them?”
“I used to be their leader. We were a band of travelers searching for a home, for a place to rebuild. We were a small group, but not one without hope. Religion had already reestablished itself among some of our younger members. I had reason to believe we’d survive.”
“What happened?” Janna asked.
“We took in too many newcomers too fast. People who had existed as loners too long, and who had lost the moral edge that forms the foundation of civilized community. I kept things under control for awhile, but then a man joined us and turned our ragtag gang into a mob. Children starved. Women were raped, then killed. The group’s now a pack of wild men, led by the one who took my place. They roam the country, searching for food, killing for pleasure, then moving on, always random, always without thought to the future.” The old man paused. “Ironic, isn’t it? Even though they don’t think about the future, they are the future.”
“What makes you say that?”
The old man coughed and swayed back and forth on toothpick legs. “Because if you put two equal forces on a battlefield, chaos and order, who do you think will win?”
“Chaos,” Janna said. “Order can’t fight chaos without becoming chaotic itself.”
“Exactly.” The old man smiled. “You know, there’s something special about you, woman. Something I can’t quite place...”
Janna reached out and plucked a dead leaf from one of the magnolia trees. “I don’t understand any of this. Why are you warning me? Why are you here?”
The old man coughed again. This time drops of blood appeared on his lips. “Why am I here, you ask?” His eyes rolled around, as if searching for something to focus on. When he looked at her, he continued. “I’m here for the same reason they are.”
“Which is?" The old man frowned. “Because you are in the way.”
And with those words, the old man collapsed into Janna’s arms.
Janna watched the old man sleep. He lie on a cushion beside the children in the announcer’s booth, the welts on his back throbbing with each breath, as if the raw slashes and jagged cuts were slowly sucking the life from his lungs. She had washed the wounds and rubbed ointments over them, but an infection had already set, and the outline of a blue-black rash was now visible across his back. That he had lived this long amazed her. She spent the remainder of the day working with the crops and caring for the children. Throughout the afternoon, she caught herself taking frequent breaks to peer up at the sky. Each time she looked, the black smoke appeared to have changed course, giving credence to the old man’s claim that the arsonists moved randomly. They had entered the city. She felt sure of that. But which road would they take? How long until they reached her farm?
At dusk, after the children and the old man had eaten and fallen asleep, Janna stood alone outside the booth, smoking a cigarette and eyeing the colored sky. The sun seemed to quiver as it sank toward the rim of the stadium, its roundness disfigured by the heat in the air from the nearby fires. The clouds, rather than the pinks and blues of most evenings, grabbed the hues of yellow, ruby, purple, and black. As the sun shriveled away behind the bleachers, a halo of orange soot and a crimson swath of color followed in its wake. Then the colors weakened and vanished, and the sky turned dark.
In the twilight that followed the sunset, Janna watched a city burn.
Infernos roared everywhere, fifteen-story flames leaping from city building to city building, feeding on the leftover remains of a once great city. The edge of campus began sizzling with color, the fires creating a tapestry of brilliant oranges and reds in a broad semicircle around the stadium.
One edge of the circle seemed headed for her front gate.
Janna made her decision quickly. She dropped her cigarette butt, smothered it with the heel of a bare foot, then hurried down the stairs. The old man had warned her not to reason with them. But staying inside the stadium and burning to death accomplished nothing. Besides, she was a woman. There were things she could offer that might convince a group of men not to burn her farm. The corn slithered around her in the breeze. She marched between the rows, marveling at how straight and tall the corn stalks were, even weighed down as they were with green-brown husks. Soldiers, she thought. The corn is like a field of soldiers, standing at attention as their leader marches among them. She cut across the cow pasture, then strode toward the front gate, through which, in the distance, she could see the bright yellows of fire consuming the previously damaged campus library. The nine-story building remained standing for several seconds, then collapsing into a ruined shell.
A lump formed in Janna’s throat. How many books had she stolen from that building to help her escape the realities of her life? Why hadn’t she stolen more? What had prevented her from compiling a library in the announcer’s booth for her and the children? There would be no sane arguments with these men, she realized. They were not going to listen, and anything she hoped to convey would have to be shouted, not discussed. She quickened her step, rushing deeper into the black parking lot. Ancient Fords and Toyotas and Hondas, scattered throughout the parking lot, reflected colorful distortions of the swirling fiery hell. Twenty meters from the stadium, Janna stopped in front of a rusted Mercury Sable. Here she would wait. She would wait for the advancing column of fire and smoke, then she would argue her case. She saw the men before they saw her. They were on horseback, hurrying away from the library, weaving around the cars as they galloped toward the stadium. She counted a dozen men total, half of them waving torches above their heads as they advanced. The lead man whipped his horse constantly, as if the beast could not go fast enough to please him. Or maybe, Janna thought, because he only knew how to direct through violence. As she watched, the lead rider rode faster and faster, steering the group away from the boundary of fire, guiding them toward her.
No, she thought. They aren’t coming for me. It’s like the old man said. I’m simply in the way. I make a pretty target, or at least my stadium does, and they’re rushing toward it to see what color it burns.
The sound of hooves striking pavement thundered toward her. As she watched, the features of the lead rider became visible: a young one, probably in his early twenties, wearing dark pants, ebony shirt, and an indigo cape that billowed behind him, obscuring her view of the others. Just as it seemed they would pass her by in their rush to reach the stadium, one of the men yelled to the lead rider and pointed in Janna’s direction. The lead rider slowed, then turned toward her. When he neared her, he whipped his horse one final time across the nose, then yanked hard on the reins. The horse stutter-stepped to a stop. In synch, the other riders coaxed their mounts to do the same.
The lead rider stared down at her, rolled a hand through his long black hair, and smiled. “Greetings,” he said. “I’m Cassidy, your new owner.”
The riders behind him laughed, some spitting in her direction, others sneering or hooting.
“No. No one owns me.” Janna moved her hands to her hips and kept her eyes on Cassidy. “I know what you’re about, and I’m here to ask you to turn away. The city is large. Burn something else. Leave my home alone." Laughter filled the ashen air. One man jabbed a torch in her direction and cackled when she shied away. Another leaned sideways off his horse and relieved himself. The wet sound of urination hitting asphalt sickened Janna. How could she reason with men who behaved like animals?
Cassidy climbed off his horse. His smile grew as he approached Janna. “Let’s talk, woman. In private.”
She had no choice, she realized. Cassidy could order his men to kill her. Better for the children, at least for now, if she listened to what he had to say.
She pushed away from the car and stood in front of Cassidy. He motioned to his left, and together, they began walking around the stadium, leaving the snickering band of riders behind.
“So,” Cassidy said, “you know what we’re about, huh? Then tell me. I’d love to hear your hypothesis.”
“You sound educated,” Janna said.
“I am educated,” Cassidy said. “You’ll never believe this, but before the disasters, I was a teacher at a university much like this one. I taught mathematics. Chaos theory.”
“You’ve changed for the worse,” Janna said. “I saw the old man. What your people did to him...”
Cassidy grinned. “You know what? Up until the moment we began whipping him, I had no idea what was going to happen. His fate was completely random.”
“You didn’t cause it?”
“Oh, I caused it. In fact, most of the welts that cover his body came from me. From my whip.”
“But why?”
“Let me answer your question with a story,” Cassidy said. “When I was a kid in school, I used to daydream about the girl in front of me. She had these two pigtails, and I used to fantasize about grabbing hold of them and yanking as hard as I could.”
“That’s nothing,” Janna said. “I’m sure every boy thinks about doing something like that at one time or another.”
Cassidy nodded. “You’re right, of course. But you see, I wanted to push the fantasy a step further. I wanted to pull so hard that I’d yank the pigtails right off the girl’s head. Big fistfuls of twined hair. Blood spurting everywhere. Kids crying, teachers panicking. I wanted it all. Used to get delirious thinking about it.”
“That’s crazy.”
“No, not crazy. Just a wish that went unfulfilled. In our society, back before the disasters, you were never allowed to play what if games. Too much what if got you thrown in jail or locked away in an institution.”
They had walked a quarter of the way around the stadium. Janna wondered how long Cassidy wanted to talk. Had he left the other riders behind to search the stadium? "So when the wars started,” she asked, “you saw your chance to play what if.”
“No,” Cassidy said. “I didn’t see it then. It wasn’t until joining the old man’s group that I began to understand I could do whatever I wanted." "And now you and your band roam the country, burning whatever you find and murdering whoever gets in your way?”
“Not exactly. We have no preset plan. We move randomly, we kill randomly, and we burn randomly. Pure chaos.”
“Like what you taught in college.”
Cassidy smiled. “You see why such a life appeals to me.”
Janna shook her head. “You’re so casual about your dementia.”
“Chaos has nothing to do with the condition of the human mind. Think of me as someone who firmly believes in freedom of choice. In some ways, I’m the ultimate libertarian.”
“And has your chaos theory played itself out on me yet?” Janna asked. “Will I be allowed to live, or am I going to die?”
Cassidy patted her on the back. “Oh, you’ll live. One of my men had on his sunglasses. Infrared sunglasses, because he likes to blind himself with the strength of fire. Of course, when he saw you, he told me of your truth.”
Janna frowned. “My truth?”
“You mean you don’t know?” Cassidy laughed. “How could that be?”
“What?” Janna asked. “What don’t I know?” They had walked halfway around the stadium, and the flames now circled the parking lot. They were trapped in a ring of fire.
“You aren’t human,” Cassidy said. “You’re a Jane. A pre-war Jane. And that increases your value enormously. At least it does to a group of men looking for the perfect, unharmable woman. How could you not know what you are?”
Janna thought back. The Johns and the Janes. Machines that looked like humans and performed like humans, but were really robots programmed with artificial intelligence.
She immediately began poking holes in the idea. "But I have memories of my husband.”
“Janes can get married.”
“And of my childhood.”
“No, those aren’t real. Not exactly. Your designers created a fake person, wrote a fake history, then gave you memories to match.”
“But everything’s so clear. I remember exactly when everything occurred.”
Cassidy laughed. “That’s the problem. Your memories shouldn’t be clear. A normal human’s memories get foggy over time, like you’re reading a book with pages and chapters torn out of it. If you don’t have gaps in your memory, you’re a Jane.”
In her mind, Janna traced her history from this moment back to when she was five. There were no gaps.
Despite the heat of the surrounding fire, she shivered.
“You really never knew, did you?” Cassidy asked. “All this time, and you never knew.”
“I still don’t believe you.”
Cassidy threw his arms into the air. “Think about your life, woman. Haven’t you noticed how you never get sick? Or how you always luck out and avoid injury? And on the few occasions when you have been hurt, haven’t you noticed how your blood clots immediately and you never bleed?”
Janna tried to recall bleeding, really bleeding, and of being in pain, but she couldn’t do it. Except for–
“But I have a period. Each month I have my period.”
Cassidy laughed. “And you pee and orgasm too. But that doesn’t mean you’re human.”
The next question sprang into her mind, and she asked it without thinking about what it would reveal. “Can I give birth?”
Cassidy stopped moving and stared at her. “Of course not, woman. Why else do you think you’re so valuable to us? Undamageable merchandise. That’s what you are. The perfect woman.”
Janna shuddered, turned, and walked off. She didn’t get far before Cassidy caught up to her and draped an arm across her shoulders.
“Leaving this place doesn’t bother you, does it?” he asked in a whisper. “I mean, you’re alone, right?”
She pushed his arm away and kept walking.
“We plan to search the entire stadium,” Cassidy said. “Then we’ll burn it. I just wondered if any others lived with you. My men won’t let them leave, you know.”
“That’s crazy,” Janna said. “I have...I’m caring for children. And the old man’s here. There’s no reason to harm any of us. Why can’t you leave us alone?”
“Because that’s not how chaos works. We ended up here, and we’ll do what we want while we visit. And what I want is to see this place burn.”
Their circle around the stadium was complete. Before her, Janna saw that Cassidy’s men had dismounted their horses and now stood close together, staring at her and smiling.
“Give me till sunrise,” she said. “Give me that much time alone with the children.”
Cassidy laughed. “Why should we? Fire is beautiful at night. Your stadium will be quite a blaze.”
“Please. Chalk it up as an act of random kindness. Chaotic kindness." One of the men stepped forward and faced Cassidy. “We peeked inside, Cass. There’s food in there. A field of fruits and vegetables. She’s even got some livestock." "Fruits, vegetables, and meat? Now that’s interesting.” "And plenty of grass to sleep on. This Jane’s a worker." "I’m not surprised,” Cassidy said. “Most Janes thrived on physical labor." He turned toward the rest of the men. “We’ll bed down here for tonight and restock our food supplies.” He winked at Janna. “Looks like you get your wish, woman. One more night with your children before this place burns. But if you’re thinking of attacking us in our sleep, forget it. I know your programming. They never made a Jane who could take a human life. Kind of a safety latch for us human creators, I guess. Thou shalt not kill thy master, or something like that.”
Janna’s one flicker of hope died with his words. But she nodded to him anyway, then turned and raced off toward the stadium.
“You’ve got till sunrise,” Cassidy yelled. “Then you’re leaving with us, and this place is gonna burn!”
Janna ignored him. She listened only to her feet bounding across the pavement, hearing each child’s name in her head with each step.
Her left hand looked strange without a pinky finger.
Around midnight, she had decided to test Cassidy’s words. She grabbed a large sliver of glass, rolled it over her pinky finger, and rested it on a joint. Then she began sawing. The process took fifteen minutes. There was no pain, not beyond the brief ache she received from the first cut, an ache probably programmed into her to simulate the slight pain of a human’s accidental cut.
Once the pinky finger was severed, she stared at her hand and cried. No blood. Some type of white bony material, but nothing like what she knew a human’s insides should look like.
Now, as she sat on the floor beside the sleeping children and the snoring old man, she tried to recall the dividing line between real and fake memory. Jake her husband. Had he been real? She hoped so. It sickened her to think that the experiences they had shared had been artificially implanted.
But what was the difference between real and fake memories anyway? If a memory was in your head, and if you remembered it occurring, didn’t that make it real? Didn’t the fact that you could recall something make it just as real as if it had actually happened?
The idea soothed her, but not by much. She found a cigarette, then walked outside and sat on the stairs, allowing the nicotine and cool night breeze to calm her anxieties. Below, the group of men had settled into the cow pasture for the night. Their guttural laughter drifted up to her, intermixed with words and phrases that sounded profane, yet made no sense. Could they understand one another? Could they even understand their own voices?
As she watched, the men began spearing the cows. They jabbed them lightly at first. Just to hear them moo, it seemed. Then their attacks grew more forceful. One cow crumpled over, bleeding to death. A second cow toppled before Janna could watch no more. She turned her head to the side and waited for her eyes to dry.
When she finished the cigarette, she chanced another peek at the field. Four of her five cows lay slaughtered. The men had apparently tired of the killing, and had moved on to new amusements. Two of the men were having sex with one another, while the others stood around them and laughed.
Had civilization really sunk this far? Or was Cassidy right, and given the chance, all men revert to their deeper chaotic sides, acting out whatever pops into their minds?
No, Janna couldn’t make herself believe everyone acted from primal instinct. The men below her maybe, but not everyone. Certainly not the old man. He had left these men behind, and had tried to warn her of the approaching chaos.
So order still existed. But with no one around to enforce it, it was now a matter of personal choice. You had to maintain your own system of values, then live by those values despite the chaos that surrounded you.
“Care for some company?”
Janna turned and saw the old man standing behind her.
“You should be asleep,” she said.
“I can sleep later. Right now, I want to feel the breeze.” He stumbled down the steps, then sat beside her. The exercise seemed to weaken him; he coughed and wheezed for several seconds before speaking again. “They’re a sick bunch, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know how you stayed with them,” Janna said.
“They weren’t always like that. But now, look at them. Nothing but animals.”
Janna watched several of the men surround one of her baby apple trees and shear off its limbs. Branches, leaves, and apples thudded to the ground.
“You could leave now, you know,” the old man said. “The fire around the stadium has died down. Grab a couple kids, run into the city, and find some place to hide.”
“What about the rest of the children?” Janna asked. “And what about you? What would they do to you? No, I can’t leave. Not until there’s no other way.”
“But I’m too weak to protect the children. And you can’t defend them either. I saw your finger in there. I know what you are. Suspected it for some time now. And that means you can’t kill humans.”
Janna stared down at the end zone as one of the men climbed on top of another and pushed on his chest. The quarrel turned violent, and no one moved to stop it. When a knife appeared, she realized she now had only ten men to deal with.
Ten men...plus Cassidy.
The leader of the band had claimed his own section of the field in the opposite end zone. As Janna looked, she saw he slept alone in a hammock, safely distanced from his pack of untamed animals.
“I just figured out how to save the children,” she said.
“How?” The old man asked. “By getting the men to fight one another?”
“No, not like that. Something more direct.”
“Tell me–” The old man coughed and dropped his head between his knees. When he lifted his head, bloody saliva had pooled on the cement stairway.
“Here.” Janna stood and pulled the old man to his feet. “Lean on me. I’ll help you inside.”
“I’m not ready to go in.”
Janna sighed. “Look, you’ve been a big help, but if you don’t get out of this chill, you’re going to die of pneumonia.”
“Lady, I’m gonna die soon regardless.” But he stopped fighting and let her guide him up the stairs. When they reached his bed cushion, his arm tightened around her waist. “Whatever you’re planning, be careful. Cassidy’s dangerous.”
“I know,” Janna said. She smiled. “But thanks.”
She stretched the old man out on the cushion, kissed his forehead, then covered his legs and chest with a tarp. Then she crept back to the stairs and glared down at the party of men.
They would not set a guard. They would be too confident, and would not view her as a threat.
At least this once, she decided, being a Jane would be an advantage.
She grabbed another cigarette, lit it, and watched.
And waited.
A strangled cry woke Janna from her sleep. She opened her eyes and saw daylight filtering in through a crack in the bathroom wall. A second cry brought her fully awake. She leapt off her cushion and ran into the announcer’s booth to find Cassidy crouched over the old man, both hands encircling his neck.
“You bastard!” Cassidy shouted. “You killed my men!" Janna rushed forward. “Stop!” She raised both arms toward Cassidy, palms outward. Some part of her mind registered the missing pinky finger, but the lack of pain kept her from dwelling on it. “Do you see the blood on my arms and shirt, Cassidy? Do you see the thickness of it, the many layers? It was me. I killed your men. I approached each of them, I took their necks in my hands, and I twisted. You’re a band of chaos bandits no more. Your power is gone.”
Silence blanketed the room as Janna glared at Cassidy. He returned her glare without speaking a word. Then one of the children started crying.
“You couldn’t have done it.” Cassidy released his grip on the old man. “You’re a Jane. You’re programmed not to take a human life.”
Janna smiled. “Yes, you know my programming well. But do you know the level of intelligence my designers gave me? I can make decisions. I can discern between degrees.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that in this world, at this critical point in time, I’ve discerned that the rules have changed. Your band of men aren’t human. You roam around, you kill and you rape and you burn, and you don’t consider the consequences. Dogs. Nothing more than dogs." Cassidy, eyes wide, stared at her from his position over the gasping old man. “But how could you overpower them all?" Jane smiled. “You said yourself that Janes are workers. And you’re right. We can be very efficient when the need arises. Once the last of your men fell asleep, I snuck down and killed each of them, one by one. A couple of them lived long enough to scream, but you were on the far side of the stadium. Too far away to hear them." Cassidy shook his head. “They built you in a factory, woman. You’re a machine, like a car or watch or television. Why would you do this?”
“Just because I come from a mold,” Janna said, “doesn’t mean I can’t change. Until you came along, I believed myself a part of this time, a person who could make a difference by nurturing these children into the future. Maybe even contribute to that future by giving birth myself.” She frowned. “You’ve stolen that fiction from me, Cassidy. You’ve alerted me to what I really am, and I can never live in my dream world again.”
Several of the children were now crying. Janna walked over to them and patted them on the head. “But that doesn’t mean the children have to know. I can continue being their mother and they’ll never realize I’m not human. If anything, Cassidy, you’ve shown me that my life isn’t empty. Even with a hollow heart that no longer believes I’m human, I can still act like a human. And by filling that role, I can still provide a future for these children." "But what about me?” Cassidy asked. “Why didn’t you kill me?”
“We talked too long, you and I. I got to know you, and although I don’t agree with your chaos theory, I do see it as a human theory. It’s what sets you apart from the others.”
“You’re wrong. I’m just like them. We’re all followers of chaos.”
“No. You’re the leader. You take people, untrain them, then set them loose on the world. But you don’t grant yourself the same freedoms you incite in others. Instead, you allow your men to act out your fantasies for you. You allow them to pull the pigtails out of every girl’s head while you stand in the background and marvel at the chaos. I could be wrong. I’ve only had one night to study you. But from what I’ve seen, you make complex rational decisions apart from the rest of your group. In my eyes, that makes you human. My programming wouldn’t let me kill you.”
Cassidy smiled. “Your programming will be your undoing, woman. Trust me. Things are not going to go well for you." What happened next surprised Janna. One of the old man’s hands shot up and rammed into Cassidy’s chest. Cassidy looked down, saw blood gushing from his body, and moved his hands over the wound in an effort to stifle the flow. His energy didn’t last long, and as he collapsed onto the floor, Janna saw a large sliver of glass protruding from his chest.
The old man pushed Cassidy’s body away, then tried to pull himself into a sitting position. But the glass had cut him too, and blood poured from his hand and wrist.
“Old man,” Janna cried. “What have you done?”
His cough lasted several long seconds. Then he looked up at her and smiled.
“Just proving,” he said, “that I’m human too. Just like you.”
Then he stared off into nothingness and died.
End
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