Chapter 7.0:
Training
Speed didn’t know what he thought his life would be like on the red planet of Amazon. He thought that he would have some choice of destination, until he realized two things: He was a child, and everything he ever knew about the universe had been destroyed when the moon crashed into the earth. As far as the Amazons were concerned, he was basically an animal unexpectedly caught in the net of the great Amazon people.
Amy was praised for her daring escape, but for Speed, nothing.
Still, life on Amazon turned out to be far different than he thought it would be. Amy had mentioned “training,” and she was right. For months, Speed had no idea what he was training for, or why. He was a prisoner, but with a spacious penthouse view of a vast, red planet.
Every few months, he and his trainer would have to pick up and move. Some huge asteroid would randomly threaten that part of the planet, or a bloom of native life would spring up and overwhelm the Amazon “builders,” who protected tall, metal spires from nasty local wildlife.
One time, great vines had grown over miles of Amazon and began creeping up the tower where Speed was staying. He had to battle the poisonous vines with a simple knife while his trainer brought up the rear. Every time they had to move, it was a close call.
Between moves, there was training, training, and more training.
At first Speed through the physical exercise was meant to prepare him for a life on the vicious planet. Maybe Speed had indeed found a new home to replace his lost earth. Everyone on Amazon was very, very serious. It turned out that Amy was probably the most lighthearted person on the entire planet.
As far as Speed knew, no Amazon he saw cracked even the hint of a smile.
Speed chided himself for being so stupid. People didn’t get super powers from growing up in a soft environment. If Amy was kind, it was because she wanted to be different. People got super powers because they were challenged beyond what they were capable of. Speed realized that the planet Amazon was, therefore, probably one of the most terrifying places to live in the entire universe.
So, it made sense that Speed would need to be trained physically to survive on this planet. He would never get crazy powers since he didn’t have Amazon blood, or their tendency for genetic variation. But at least Speed didn’t have to live on an asteroid full of Vampires, or “Vapes” as Amy like to call them. Speed gathered that the Vampires didn’t take too kindly to name calling, so he would keep the slur to himself.
Two months ago, when Amy, Fiero, and Speed had first landed on Amazon, and been hurried away into quarantine, he awoke to yet another sight which he would now never forget. A mid-sized man in a skin-tight black suit which revealed muscles stretched tightly over a smallish frame.
His eyes were set far apart, and his black hair cropped closely to his head. The man had a look in his eyes which Speed thought of as crazy. The man looked crazy.
“I’m Rux. You’re life is now over.”
With that, Rux had turned and left the room. Speed didn’t see anyone for the rest of the day. Boredom, however was welcome to Speed since the traumatic events on the moon. He felt he could go forever, just being left alone. Such a life of quietude was not in the cards for Speed, as Rux returned the next day with all manner of bizarre training equipment.
For eighteen hours, Speed trained with Rux, taking food and water through a tube from a pouch on his back, a kind of cold, nutritious soup. It tasted terrible, but Speed learned to ignore it after a few weeks.
In the middle of the day, he and Rux would meditate, then resume combat drills. Rux, like Amy, was psychic. He had the ability to project training scenarios directly into Speed’s mind, where together they would fight all manner of beasts, real and imaginary. The two partners often fought against simulated Vampire dragons, in the cold of space.
Actually, Rux never told Speed what he was training for. Speed went on with combat drills involving mechanical robots and powerful Amazons day after day, alongside the mental simulations from Rux. Speed could have been amazed that such powerful, busy people had time to train Speed in hand-to-hand combat, as well as fighting in space.
Time inevitably slipped away from Speed as he settled into this new life. He had grown about three inches, and gained lean muscle from his workouts with Rux. Speed’s voice now cracked awkwardly when he spoke, and his boyish frame was becoming awkwardly disproportionate.
Despite these challenges, Speed had developed a kind of fluid movement, and he was ready for combat at the drop of a hat. MoonBall was a thing of the past.
Each day began and ended with a fist-fight with Rux. Speed had been on Amazon for nearly a full year. He had been forced to see much of the planet, always accompanied by Rux, whom Speed no longer thought of as a jailer.
The planet was dangerous. It was filled with creatures that would kill just as easily as taking a breath. Vicious creatures were created by a vicious planet. The combination produced a vicious people, who kept their powers in check only because they knew that conquest would not allow them to learn about other cultures in the galaxy. The Amazons hungered for knowledge, but they were not weak.
Speed had thought fleetingly about escape, but then he would be reminded, by some small work of art or social interaction, that the Amazons were his best hope for continued existence, and Speed wanted nothing more than to be one of them.
So, day after day, one fight with crazy-eyed Rux after another, Speed grew a year older and bore the weight of physical training that became more extreme every moment.
Then, one day, it wasn’t Rux who woke him up. It was Amy.
“Speed. Speed! Wake up.” Amy hissed into his ears.
Amy grabbed his hand and led him out of the room. Amy apparently had the ability to go wherever she pleased on Amazon, but where was Rux, and where were they going?
Crossing through several corridors, and across at least five bridges, Amy and Speed finally came to a spire which was more rounded at the top than the others. Entering the spire, the lift shot upward.
Walking through the largest, grandest hallways and chambers Speed had ever seen, the two finally entered a small antechamber, where Rux sat waiting. His hands were folded in his lap.
“Your life is once again, over,” Rux announced.
“The council needs to speak with you Speed. They’re going to reveal the reason for your training,” Amy said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Why couldn’t you have told me that on this long walk?” Speed asked. He was irritated, but excited by the prospect of actually meeting with the highest governing body on Amazon, the Elder Council.
“I wasn’t even supposed to tell you that you’re to talk to the council. Show a little gratitude!” This time, Amy spoke directly into Speed’s head.
Just then, the doors to the cavernous council room slowly opened, and Speed was beckoned inside by a deep echoing voice, which seemed to vibrate from one side of his head to the other. The chamber must have been engineered to amplify the voices of all of the council members.
“Rammington Speed,” the female voice boomed, “there is one rule to this audience. You are not to speak under any circumstances. Surely you have learned this discipline under the tutelage of your instructor Rux.”
Speed was about to say yes when he remembered to have discipline, and kept his mouth shut. He silently praised himself for not screwing up the meeting so soon after it began.
“Very well,” the lady’s echoing voice continued, “You have been training for nearly three Amazon years, the equivalent of one of your solar years. We are sorry for the loss of your home planet and its only moon, for both the Amazons and the Vampires share in the blame. The Vampires’ legendary greed for vapor led them to your moon and caused the robots living there to do the unspeakable deed of driving that moon into your home planet, which we now know is called earth.”
“We cannot restore you to you former life, and we know that you are not motivated by revenge. We have seen tha
t something drives you, however, and we wish to know what that might be.”
Speed swallowed.
“I always thought… I mean... I thought you wanted me to live here on Amazon.”
The words bounced from wall to wall.
“What we want will be revealed to you shortly. If it is what you want to remain here with us, then that it permissible.”
Speed’s heart nearly leapt out of his chest. At last he had a new home. Even though this home was filled with fierce warriors, terrible beasts, and an unforgiving climate, Speed could at last call someplace home.
“However, we have some news which might be of interest to you. Our scientists who have studied the stars, and interrogated your stowaway Machine, find it highly unlikely that you are the last of your race.”
Speed lost control. He wasn’t the last human?
“What?!”
“The remaining robots from your world appear to have taken little interest in you, most likely because they do not know that you’re alive. Moreover, the planet earth was riddled with airtight structures which could have provided for some human survival even in the case of a collision with an object as large as your robot moon, that battle moon the robots built.”
Speed remained silent. He supposed it were theoretically possible that humans were alive, but he had seen the collision. Surely nothing could have survived that cataclysmic blast. The earth was blown to pieces!
“We hope this is good news, but we do not have the resources to do anything about the earth for some time. The immediate problem is what to do about these Machines, and these robots, these GoodBots from your planet. It seems that they are in league with the Machines, and that they are building an army to invade our world.”
“Amazon spy ships report that many GoodBot vessels of the size and configuration of your moon have been manufactured with assistance of the Machines, which seem to have some strange power to replicate matter, albeit slowly.”
Speed didn’t know what became of any of the goodbots except for his Ship. He assumed that Ship had been destroyed by the Machines. Apparently the remaining GoodBots had found a reason for existence, and it was conquest. Wasn’t anybody in the universe content with just living in peace? Speed tried to imagine hundreds of ships the size of the moon, bristling with GoodBot weaponry. The only purpose of such an army could be the destruction of races like the Amazons and the Vampires.
This news was hard to digest. Hundreds of ships the size of the Moon were gathering against them? Both Machine and GoodBot technology were highly advanced, and Speed doubted that the Amazons would be able to fight such an enormous force. Battleships made of entire moons? The Amazon fleet wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Over the last few months there has been a buildup of forces around the Machine central nebula, here. The leading Machine, The Vagus has taken up residence around a dense, metal planet. His own Machine vessel is larger than the others, and heavily fortified.”
A council member gestured vaguely toward a holographic map that appeared directly in front of Speed’s face. He couldn’t make heads nor tails of the map, since he knew very little about the region. As far as speed knew, he had spent the last year getting his tail kicked by Rux and his computer training program. Speed still knew next to nothing about stars and nebulae.
“In another three months, these battle moons will be unstoppable. We have therefore forged an alliance of necessity with the Vampires. Our fleets will be combined, and we will strike at the heart of the Machines!”
This proclamation was greeted with a roar of approval from the other council members. Speed, however, was shocked that the Amazons would trust the Vampires. Still, it was hardly his place to question such a decision, and it seemed to Speed that there was little choice.
“We have been training you to help. First, however, we need some more information about these GoodBots. My daughter Amastra had managed to make contact with an intelligence you once referred to as the interlink. We do not understand this interlink. We see that it is was a way for humans to communicate with each other, and make decisions. So, clearly we need to know more about your people before the final days of preparation.”
“It’s a big planet! Or, it was anyway.”
Speed no longer teared up at the thought of his lost family and friends, but it was hard for him to see the purpose of this discussion. Why did the Amazons want to know about a planet that had been destroyed? Then the GoodBots themselves were the problem, not the people who had created them.
“He doesn’t know where to begin. It might help if we told him why we need to know about this earth.”
“Very well. Tell the child.”
Speed didn’t like being called a child, but at least now they might explain themselves. He felt Amy reaching out to his mind, comforting him.
How could Speed explain the GoodBots to them?
Demons. Speed remembered that the Amazons called the dangerous Amazonian species demons because they were a constant threat to survival. So, they must see the robots the same way, as just another species to defend against.
From Speed’s experience, he knew that it was dangerous to underestimate the GoodBots. After all, they had crashed the moon into earth just as easily as they would run a scan for viruses.
“If you want to know about the robots, then just think about a computer.”
“Computers!”
“Yes, just as Rux exists to help me train, GoodBots exist to help humanity survive. Whatever’s going on out there, there’s some person behind it. That person might even be unconscious, but there is some human life out there in that nebula, and I’d guess that the Machines have whoever it is under lock and key.”
“Get to the point child!”
“Well, ma’am, our computers work best when they’re all tied together in a network. If the network gets big enough, and has the right program, it can think just like you or me. The only difference is that the goodbot’s program is meant to keep people safe, and humans can think about whatever they want. The GoodBots anticipate these desires and carry out human will, sometimes with disastrous results as we now see.”
“There seems to be a serious problem with the program. Very well. It is a technology issue, and we do not have time to guess at human computer science. Take him to our vampire fleet scientists, and see if he can explain to them what’s happening out there. Show him everything he needs to see, and set a course for the Machine Central Nebula. The last of the ships are arriving from the outer colonies. At last, it is time to eliminate the Machine threat.”