Bryce once read in some book written in a time before the automata that the pen was mightier than the sword, and on the day when the riots raged through the city and threatened to shake all the towering housing stacks down into rubles of rust and dust, he learned how a typewriter could be wielded as a weapon far more furious than any of the firearms sold in any gun and ammunition vending machine.
He watched the chaos rush through the streets from the vantage point of his nineteenth-floor apartment’s balcony. Spotlight beams from flying security drones swayed through the night as drone cameras struggled to locate the sources of gunfire that echoed about the crowded buildings. Rebecca gripped his arm, and Bryce pulled her closer as he felt a shudder run through her. His story unhinged the world. His words unleashed madness. His writing inspired a terror unlike anything ever found in the pages of Mary Hecate’s paperbacks.
An electronic voice blared through the emergency speakers installed about the city. “Citizens, please return to your housing stacks. The streets must be cleared. Return to your housing stacks before security forces arrive.”
Rebecca buried her face into Bryce’s chest as a drone buzzed passed the balcony. The drone’s spotlight didn’t turn to consider that pair of keepers clutching one another. The drone never slowed to indicate it realized that Bryce and Rebecca were responsible for that violence swirling in the streets below. The drone didn’t appear to know they had distributed the book that drove the world mad. Bryce’s heart still refused to calm. He felt like a cornered criminal. He didn’t think it would be long until the drones focused the blue beams of their spotlights upon his face, not long until a state security team knocked upon his door to hold him accountable for throwing the world into mayhem.
“Citizens, please return to your apartments. Such destruction to state property will not be tolerated. Those responsible for harm will be persecuted. Return to your housing stacks.” The electronic voice continued to echo off of the city walls.
The gunfire refused to cease. Bryce suspected that every gun and ammunition vending machine was emptied. He was certain that everyone who screamed in the street below was armed. He dreaded to imagine the blood that would run when the security forces arrived with their weaponized machines to reclaim the city from the frightened masses.
An errant bullet ricocheted off of his balcony’s wall, and Bryce pushed Rebecca into the apartment for shelter.
“Is there any sign of the crowds dispersing?” Rebecca’s voice trembled.
Bryce shook his head. “People are still streaming into the streets.”
“How is that possible? Only three bookstations distributed your story, and those stations couldn’t have printed enough books to account for all the violence below us. There’s just no way so many people could’ve read your story.”
“But the words are spreading all the same, Becky. People are reading my story and then shaking their family and friends wide awake. People are lifting their eyes from those pages the automata have for so long provided for them, and they’re realizing what’s happened to their world.”
Rebecca slumped. “But they’re learning too quickly. It’s why everyone’s so scared and desperate. Bryce, we woke up slowly. We recognized all this waste over time as we pulled away from the stories of the automata. But all those people in the street are taking everything in one moment, and it’s too much. As far as they know, the robots are pointing their eyes to the waste. They don’t know that a human wrote your strange story. It’s making it all the worse.”
“They’re waking all the same.”
“And that justifies the violence?”
“Maybe.” Bryce growled. “The world must wake up before it’s too late.”
“But people are dying.”
“There won’t be a future for any of us if people keep distracting themselves in the dreams of the automata.”
“Listen to yourself,” Rebecca sobbed. “Look behind you.”
Across the narrow divide between housing stacks, that gnomish man wearing boxer shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt reemerged from his apartment. He held in his hand another book, as he always did when he took to his reading chair positioned upon his balcony. Yet Bryce knew his neighbor on that day read none of Sheriff Gary Tate’s Western adventures. Bryce knew his neighbor held a copy of his story, his story that threw the city into such frantic rage. The man waved at Bryce before he tossed that book across the divide separating them. The book landed on Bryce’s balcony, and Bryce recoiled from its cover. The book was his creation, but Bryce found that he shook at the thought of touching the thing. Bryce watched his neighbor climb upon his balcony’s railing, where his plump body teetered dangerously upon the edge as that man straightened his arms and lifted his hands over his head. He nodded shortly at Bryce, and then that neighbor jumped into the divide, making no sound as he plummeted upon the street.
Bryce couldn’t summon the courage to look where that man had fallen. Instead, he turned to Rebecca and attempted to blind his sight and suffocate his hearing in her dark hair. He could not turn around and watch as so many other neighbors followed that gnomish man’s example and fatally tossed themselves from their balconies.
Bryce suddenly regretted the words he had written. He felt ashamed for how he had used his position as a keeper of the automata to distribute his story to the world. Suddenly, he realized that all his work within his bookstation shop maintained much more than robots. His work maintained what little peace could be kept in a world falling apart at the seams. The automata were implanted too deeply into humanity to ever be removed, and the truth was that nothing could be done to save the world – the planet had long ago slipped beyond any point of recovery. It was better to let the readers have their books filled with worlds dreamed by robots. It was better to let humanity sleep while death came to claim it.
Suddenly, Bryce Munson felt terribly cruel.
Rebecca sobbed. “Don’t make me look at any more of it.”
Bryce squeezed Rebecca. “I promise, Becky. No more. Let’s just get inside before the security forces arrive. Let’s get inside before they start fighting to clear the streets.”