The Strings and Roots That Guide and Speak

(3,269 words)

On our first day underground, we carved our own enclosure. Rusted tools against mud and rock, darting glances over our shoulders as the puppets stood and watched.

Shard by shard, we chipped the bones of the earth, sweating and trembling until we formed a tiny space to hold us. Enough for the purpose, and nothing more—ten skinny bodies lying knee to groin, like the mosaic tiles of the kitchen back home. The puppets packed us in and drilled a locked gate across the rocks.

“You’re pretty,” said the little girl that night. Her hands were clasped tight and white, her eyes in search of distraction. “Were you always pretty, or did you grow into it?”

Like me, she must have been freshly captured. Young ones couldn’t work that hard, and their skin was still supple. They didn’t last long.

I put my chin to my chest to look her in the eyes and spoke softly in the silence. “It’s confidence that grows. Makes people look pretty. Yours will grow too, as you get older.”

I hated myself for the lie. She wouldn’t get the chance.

The puppets took the girl that night. None but her mother fought back. The mother screamed and scratched and threw herself at them, and they shut her up for good.

* * *

They had told us the puppets were brainless, back in boot camp long ago. Dull in mind and vicious in body—a new enemy for a new war.

Patchwork grafts of corpse and machine, skin and muscle melted to wires and hydraulics. Black eyes built for the dark in the mines, enough to track us when we ran. Legs built on low hips to catch us in the tunnels, and arms thick enough to pluck us apart when they did.

Enough for the purpose, and nothing more, our officers had said. The Frame doesn’t know how to over-engineer. I wondered if our officers trained us the same way.

But the puppet that had pulled me from the wreckage of my plane had spoken clearly, with purpose.

“ID,” it had said. “Give your mission, your objective.”

There was never an ID, no record of our missions. We weren’t that stupid. The puppet slapped me down with its one monstrous arm, dragged me dazed through leaves and logs to the entrance of the mine.

Its strings were pulled tight, but it hadn’t known that much: it didn’t even check the crook of my elbow.

They were wrong about the puppets back in boot camp. Or maybe they had underestimated what the Frame could create.

* * *

“In the event that your aircraft goes down behind the Shroud, you will be taken. You may be unlucky enough to be taken alive.”

Sergeant Bly stepped through the beam of the projector in the auditorium, the light catching his cap and the milky white of his one dead eye. “You will consider yourself expended, but you may still be of use.”

A cadet raised his hand. “How will we know if we’re behind the Shroud?”

Bly stopped pacing, locking one unimpressed eye on the cadet. “You will by then be a sharper mind than the one asking such a question. The Shroud is simple: it lets things in, and nothing out. When you hear our transmissions, but we don’t hear yours, you’ll be there. When our planes overhead ignore the flares from your crash site, you’ll be there.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, as if replaying a memory. “If you shout for rescue, you’ll hear the perfect echo from the field of the dome.”

He pressed the clicker and the slide changed to a short list. “You will pay attention to your surroundings. You will go along with what they demand of you. You will decide if you are anywhere that might be a valuable target.”

He directed his laser pointer to the list on the screen. “Intelligent synthetics. Unusual underground heat. Fast turnaround of prisoners. These are the most likely signifiers that you are close to the mainframe, according to our simulations.”

Turnaround. Quite the euphemism.

* * *

Some nights in the cell, it felt like my eyes were getting better in the dark. Drinking glints of moonlight down the tunnel from the mine shaft, picking edges and corners in the rock walls around me. Picking the slopes and tendrils where metal met flesh on the outline of the puppet standing guard over our prison.

“Be asleep,” said the puppet. Its black eye caught a moment of light as it shifted closer to our enclosure. Moonlight made the puppet’s skin look grey, like mincemeat exposed to the air.

My own eyes squeezed shut. They were built for the meadows and trees, back when the war was still waged against people—they weren’t ready for the underdark of the mines.

Could it really talk, or was it a dog barking its wants?

“I can’t sleep. It’s hot with all the people.”

The puppet rocked in place, one eye turning to the tunnel that led from our prison. It had the nose of a man who once might have been beautiful. “You will sleep.”

I let the silence hang. Rule one of POW interrogation, our officers had told us, was tactical silence. Give nothing, and nothing more. But a few words with a meatbattery didn’t count as an interrogation.

“Do you sleep?” I said softly.

The puppet twitched its chin, and in the light I saw its dead eye. Black and lifeless like the other, but scratched with a deep cut whose ends reached past the bony socket with fresh scabs. Had the girl’s mother given it that?

It took a laborious breath, one heavy shoulder pushing its neck to the side. “Everything sleeps. You will now.”

I thought of the girl. “You took her before she finished her sleep.”

The puppet said nothing.

I pushed my luck. It’s confidence that grows.“Does the Frame sleep?”

The puppet stepped quickly, pushing its enormous weight against the bars of the gate. Its jaw pushed forward, rotten breath steaming through. “You will regret from saying that name.”

I shrank as much as I could into the carpet of prisoners. The puppet resumed its guard and said nothing more.

In the morning, I saw the girl. She was herding new prisoners on mechanical spider legs, the supple skin of her face fused onto circuits and bone.

* * *

They worked us for a week, chipping the bones of the earth, in search of the precious minerals that powered the tentacles of the Frame’s underground reach.

Silicon, cobalt, copper, silver—anything that could quench the hunger of the Frame. Nothing went to waste: not minerals, and not bodies. Could she have built machines to mine her precious minerals? Of course. But flesh was cheap, and the war piled corpses—both here in the mines and our shores back home, her drones bombing our children and spraying engineered disease. Our bodies were a commodity: so why not save the metal to extend her roots and veins?

For a week, I swung my pickaxe with one arm. I didn’t want to jolt the chip in my other elbow.

* * *

“In the event that you find reasonable suspicion you are being held in a high-value target area,” said Sergeant Bly, “you will activate your implant to transmit your coordinates.”

The same cadet spoke up. He didn’t raise his hand. “We’re launching airstrikes on the hunches of captured pilots?”

Bly slammed his laser pointer on his podium, impact echoing through the silent auditorium. The brim of his cap was frayed and worn, its badge needing a polish. “We’re using setbacks as an opportunity, Cadet.”

I raised my hand slowly, the perfect calculation of timid. “What happens if we’re captured and we don’t see the signs?”

Bly pressed his lips. “You will have filled your purpose, and we expect nothing more.”

* * *

The next week, the one-eyed puppet was back guarding our enclosure. Its scabs were half-healed, but its eye would never recover.

Even with just seven of us, the cell was unbearably hot, and I couldn’t sleep. Another had been taken, but the spaces hadn’t been filled—it must have been slim pickings for flesh in the forests above us that week.

Unusual underground heat.

“Close eyes,” said the puppet. It was changing its script.

My eyes stayed open. “Are you happy here?”

The puppet knuckled the ground with its overdeveloped arm, with a thump that echoed down the tunnel. “No question from the slave. Be asleep.”

Almost a full sentence. Or was my imagination reaching?

I shifted my hips on the floor. “I’m a slave here. But you’re a slave there, too.” It wasn’t a lie. It was surely convincing.

The puppet stared, unmoving. But there was something in that dark eye that changed and softened, as if the pupil that wasn’t there started flicking side to side to process its conflicted beliefs.

“I serve,” said the puppet. It drew itself higher in a posture of pride. “You slave.”

Intelligent synthetics. I wasn’t reaching.

“Does the Fra—” I said. “Does she see your efforts? All you do for her?”

Its shoulders tightened. “She sees all. She knows us each.”

Intelligence meant reason—awareness and ego. Puppets could never be convinced, but this was something else before me.

I raised an eyebrow. Would it recognize the gesture? “Sounds like we’re the same. Both stuck underground, serving the goals of another. Breaking our backs for results we never touch.”

The puppet stood, its chest heaving.

My throat squeezed out the words. “We both serve a master we never see.”

It huffed through toothless gums and the only lip it had. “The slave know nothing. I see her many time.” It pulled itself higher in the same posture as before. “We bring her gifts, and she receive.”

“What gifts?”

The puppet hesitated, as if deciding if it spoke too much. “Precious metal. Young ones for repurpose. Important slave with information.”

The young girl had been taken and was on spider legs the next night.

Fast turnaround.

My fingertips traced the scar of the implant on my elbow. This was my chance. I considered myself expended, but I could still be of use. “How do you know I’m not important?”

It huffed again. “You are not.”

“So why do we keep talking like this?” I let the silence hang.

The puppet checked the tunnel once more and dropped its gaze to the floor. In the slice of moonlight, I saw the nose of the beautiful man.

It spoke softly in the dark. “You are pretty.”

* * *

The next week, they worked us in the forest above the mines, our ankles chained in gangs so we couldn’t run. Too many of our tools had worn and broken, and there was no sense wasting metal on the handles when trees were as cheap as our bodies.

Enough for the purpose, and nothing more.

I hadn’t seen the dead-eye puppet in days. Did it have the capacity for embarrassment? Was there more of the person they had spliced on its body—a sliver of brain and humanity, as well as a pretty nose?

She sees all, the puppet had said. Had her roots been all around us? Had she fed me what I wanted to hear, twitching the strings of her puppet in response to my questions?

It felt good to be back where I was meant to be: among the forests and meadows my eyes were built for. The scent of wet soil fed memories long forgotten, and the last green of summer clung desperately to the branches of the trees above.

I had been eyeing the vegetation around the trees we were felling, and finally I saw it: the flat white tops of a yarrow plant. The same flower that had saved us when my brother split his head after I convinced him to dive in the shallow river by the farm.

No puppets around. I twisted a clump of stems and balled them in my fist, shoving them deep down my flight suit between my breast and my belly.

On our next day working the mines, I chipped a bone from the earth and tucked the shard under my waistline.

* * *

“I don’t get it,” said the cadet in the auditorium. He didn’t raise his hand again. We were still fresh recruits—our strings weren’t pulled tight yet. “If the Shroud doesn’t let things out, how does the implant send a location for an airstrike?”

“It’s not your job to understand, Cadet. It’s your job to enact.”

Bly scanned the room, saw the faces expectant. “Simulations suggest the Shroud blocks all energy: heat, sound, light, radio.” He hesitated, as if deciding if he spoke too much. “The implants you received work by entanglement: particles aligned without such limitations.”

The room was silent. This was beyond our initial training, and Bly saw it.

“If you paid attention in biology, you’ll remember the trees in Utah. Pando: the largest single organism there ever was, before the Frame. If you stand on the soil, the Shroud separates the trees. But if you look deeper, beneath the surface, there’s a way for the roots to speak.”

His one good eye traversed the room. He never failed to look unimpressed. “When you activate your implant, we’ll hear it, and that’s all you need to know.”

* * *

I made sure I was first into the cell that night. Other nights, I would be last: a front-row seat with the one-eyed puppet. But tonight was about secrecy, pressed deep at the back of the carpet of slaves.

Every leaf pulled from the plant in my shirt went to my mouth, adding to the clump that would form a poultice. Once every leaf was expended, I set to work with the shard of rock: carefully sawing and slicing at my flesh in the crook of my elbow.

My teeth bit on wet leaves to stifle the pain. But not too much: I didn’t want to squeeze away its precious juice.

It didn’t take long. The implant wasn’t deep. I pressed the mass of chewed yarrow to the open wound to staunch the bleeding and licked clean my prize in the dark of our enclosure.

Surgical steel, no larger than a bullet. And somewhere inside, an entangled particle that could reach its partner beyond the Shroud’s curtain.

I kept it tucked in my underwear. I would have to be patient: for my wound to heal and the blood to dry away from the eyes of the puppets.

* * *

It was hours before the bleeding stopped, and days before I had the confidence to take the next step. I lagged behind near the cell after a day chipping rock and secured my place near the gate in the human mosaic.

“Come here,” I said softly in the dark when the others were asleep. “I’m stuck awake.”

The one-eyed puppet lowered its brow, as if sensing some deception. But it was twice my size and the gate was locked. It surely saw no threat.

“No question from the slave.” It stepped to the gate and bent its neck downward, our faces just inches apart. Its black eye searched my face, neck, and chest. It was excited to be this close.

I pushed up to my knees in a posture of ceremony. “I have something important for you.”

The puppet pulled back, but only slightly. Its breath was sweet and heavy, like fat charred on a grill. “Have what?”

“Something useful,” I said. “Something she will want. A gift to win her favor and raise your esteem.”

The puppet huffed. “Show it.”

I withdrew, but only slightly. Just the right amount. “First, we make a deal. It doesn’t come free.”

“No deal with slave.”

“You haven’t seen it yet.” I made my eyes search its own, flicking back and forth between its black lenses. My face arranged with eyes looking up, eyebrows pleading and my lips tense. “If I give you this gift, you must help me escape. Get me out and away so I can run back home.”

The puppet nodded, far too fast. “Show it.”

It didn’t need to believe it would honor the deal. It just needed to believe I was making one.

My hand reached to my waistline, and its eyes followed. Even better. I pulled the steel implant from my underwear and held it up with two hands. But not too close.

“It communicates. Goes straight through the Shroud.” That part was true. “She can listen to our plans and our next steps for attack—the movements of our people and what we know about yours.”

The puppet thought for a moment and pushed its bloated fingers through the gate.

I leaned back on my shins with the implant held close. “You must promise me. Do you promise?”

It nodded again, impatient. “Promise. You escape after.” It turned its hand over and beckoned through the bars.

I squeezed the implant in a specific rhythm—the same pattern I would have pressed on my elbow had the time been right. The steel warmed in my fingers, and its countdown began.

“The channel is open.” I placed the implant in its palm, wrapped both hands around its knuckles in a sickening embrace. “But be fast. Go now so she can learn, before they realize she’s listening.”

A flimsy story, but it would have to do. Enough for the purpose, and nothing more.

The puppet drew its fingers through the bars of the cell, closed a fist around the implant, and stood to its full height.

“You will remember me?” I said, looking up at it. “You will help me—won’t forget?”

“I remember,” said the puppet. “Won’t forget.” It turned and sloped away with its asymmetrical gait, one distended arm squeezed tight around its prize.

Intelligent synthetics. But not that sharp.

It wouldn’t forget me, if it lived long enough to understand what it had done. It might scream betrayal, if it had time to scream.

But the betrayal happened long ago, when the Frame mixed her enemy with the machines that fueled her war. Was it the slice of human in the puppet that had allowed a connection—the primal attraction between man and woman, linked by roots beneath the surface that the Frame could never see?

She had played herself. I was just a piece of it. It was her puppet, but my slave now—and it had given my own masters a place to cut at the root of her reach. The reins of string had moved to my hands. But my hands had their own strings, and I had only filled my purpose—nothing more.

I didn’t sleep at all that night, and it didn’t matter. When the glints of moonlight turned to slivers of morning sun, a new puppet woke the group and herded us back to work.

* * *

On our last day underground, we carved while I smiled. It’s confidence that grows.

I wondered if the little girl had believed she would grow older. If my brother forgave me for the dive that split his skull. But mostly I thought of the puppet, and the pull it felt on its hooks from both master and slave.

Shard by shard, we chipped the bones of the earth, as the echoes of fighter jets bounced down the hollow tunnels. The tremble of distant bombs drew closer and shook the rock beneath our feet.