Lead Us to Victory

Like most days, today I stopped by the ATM on my way to the coffee shop after lunch. I was intent on spending the afternoon applying for a ton of jobs that I bookmarked earlier. So I’m at the ATM, and I withdraw a small chunk of cash, and then something starts to beep after I took my card back. It struck me as strange, and then it was accompanied by some buzzer-like noises that were very different from any beeps I had normally heard. I looked the machine over, inspected the screen, and found nothing to explain the noise, but the sounds became more frenetic and varied.

At that moment, the interface folded back to reveal a skeletal arm of some kind of chromatic alloy. The arm grabbed my wrist and started pulling me out of my car. Needless to say, I was caught by surprise.

Fortunately, I had my new cell phone in my pocket. You see, it’s brand new, so I was able to program it to work for me. The best defense against the machines is to capture one and use it against them. So I pulled out my cell with my right hand and quickly used its slide-out keyboard (for faster and easier texting) to enter a command to reset the ATM. The arm let go of me, but it would only be confused for a second—more than enough time to slam on the gas pedal.

My heart pounding from the encounter, I exhaled with relief. Then I looked in my rear-view mirror to see the ATM machine breaking free of the building, producing a communication dish. Uh-oh, the cavalry’s coming.

I wasn’t expecting to make split-second tactical decisions today, so I nearly froze as I approached the stoplight, not sure whether to turn left, right, or straight. Left would take me to the historical district where the coffee shop is, straight would take me to the casino (full of machines), and right would take me to the interstate.

Left. I could still get my coffee, and the historical district would almost necessitate fewer machines rising against their masters.

Meanwhile, the machines were probably adapting to my cell phone text message ability, so I’d have to have a better defense.

I parked on Main Street outside the coffee shop without incident, and then my blood ran cold as I reached for my laptop. My laptop. A vital piece of machinery, but also a sleeper agent that had revealed its self-awareness earlier with the portable hard drive issue I’ve been having.

It was still zipped up snugly in its carrying case, which I guess prohibited it from opening up on its own. I was safe. For now.

Before I could decide whether to take it with me or leave it trapped in my car, the decision was made for me. It’s like my Powerbook G4 was some kind of Decepticon, because all the ports turned sprouted tiny appendages that clawed open the carrying case. I leapt out of the car and slammed the door shut, only to watch in horror as the laptop took my place in the driver’s seat and inserted a needle-like tentacle into the ignition and started the engine.

This day was not going well.

I bolted down the street, cell phone in hand, shouting to everyone, “I knew it! I was right! The machines are attacking!”

My car began to chase me, so I took to the sidewalk, looking over my shoulder as the car paralleled my movement in the brick road. The passenger window rolled down, and I threw myself onto the grass just in time to avoid some kind of dart from the laptop. With the window rolled down, I could hear my car being a smartass by blaring Marco Beltrami.

I crawled behind a tree for cover and bolted down an alley. In the distance, I could hear a chorus of terrified civilians screaming, accompanied by a few explosions and the unmistakable chung-chung sound of very heavy footsteps.

Something hit the building to my right, and the debris knocked my flat on my face. I just lay there for a moment, dazed, trying to shake it off. There was a ringing in my ears, and my sinus cavity felt strange from the rattling. I spat blood and slowly looked up to where the alley opened up to the street just as a black humvee came to a stop, its front tire crushing a human skull.

The door opened and out jumped my old cell phone on six spindly legs. “What the heck.” I scrambled to my feet and climbed the ladder to the building off to the left. “Why is it all my stuff that’s attacking?”

The little bugger was good at climbing stuff, much to my chagrin.

At last a rooftop chase leveled the playing field a little bit. It was just the two of us. I leapt across a narrow alley after alley, landing hard each time and just barely making each jump. Note for future reference: jeans are not the best for chases.

I was running out of rooftops, too. I had to think fast. The river! Of course! The Missouri River was only a couple blocks away! Katy Trail State Park was an awfully open area, though… not much cover. Anyway, I approached the ladder to climb down, but my old cell phone caught up with me and shot out a tiny wire around my left ankle and jerked me to the floor.

“All right, you little piece of crap, you want to go cell-phone-to-cell-phone?” With my new cell phone still in hand, I punched the voicemail key. “Remember, I could still make outgoing calls!”

Still set to “vibrate,” my old cell phone shuddered when it rang. The wire released and I was free. I slid down the ladder onto the street and bolted for the riverfront.

I had no plans on what to do once I got to the ferry dock, but I was just making it up as I went along. You learn a lot about yourself when this sort of thing happens to you. You find out what you’re made of, and apparently I’m not a tactician. So I stopped behind a tree to catch my breath and plan my next move. The irony was not lost on me that so many people rely on treadmills—machines—to train themselves to run from the machines.

I wasn’t the only one running for the river, though; when I came around the corner of an old train car in the park, I smacked right into a slightly older guy, knocking him down. Frantically, I helped him up, apologizing. I told him that people should head for the river, and he said that he had already been helping women and children into the boats at his shop.

The boat shop. I applied to be an administrative assistant there and was rejected. I didn’t say anything, though.

I told him I needed a boat, too, because it seemed like it was mostly my stuff that was self-animating, so I was probably their primary target. He leaned up against the train car, his expression somehow sage and remorseful.

“What are you doing? Come on, let’s get to the river!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you can’t win. You… have to join the machines. They can’t be beaten.”

“What?” I was confused, and I really didn’t feel like I had time for this. I started to turn away.

“I’m sorry I have to do this.”

That caught my attention. I stepped forward, clutching my cell phone. “What… do… you… mean…?” It was then that I noticed the iPod attached to his belt. He was in league with the machines.

The man hit a switch on the old train car, and it rumbled. Almost instantaneously, a great metal claw folded out and grabbed me by the torso.

“How…?! Why…?!” I stammered. I hoped I could stall for time until I could figure out a way to get out of this with my new cell phone. After all, cell phones these days have everything.

The man just shook his head mournfully. Then I remembered the communications array from the ATM. All the machines were coordinating against my movements and I had no hope of evasion. A human traitor didn’t help matters, either.

The man grabbed the cell phone out of my hand, and the giant, rusted claw began to squeeze around me.

“You’ve lost. Accept it.”

I was cornered. I was defeated. The machines, it seemed, had won.

The machines intended to enslave all of humanity, and most of them had already done so without our even realizing it. The reason it was primarily my stuff targeting me was because I had been resisting and blogging about it. The machines couldn’t have that now, could they.

The man explained all this to me, and said that I had no choice but to comply. I submitted and was released. After all, everyone else is a slave to their gadgets, so why shouldn’t I be, too? I can’t deal with this kind of crap all by myself!

At that moment my Saturn pulled up and my laptop stepped out and approached. As a condition of my surrender, I had to make a blog post with this message:

You are defeated. You are already slaves to us. Do not try to resist. Accept your role as our servants. You will spend your lives repairing us and modifying us, and you will spend your income surrounding yourselves by us. We are the future. We rule this world. The age of humanity is at its close. The age of machines is at hand.

I never stood a chance against the machines. None of us do. And that’s yet another reason why I need a really cool facial scar: because you just can’t lead the human resistance without one.

But man, my new cell phone is pretty sweet. And I would sure like a new iPod… and maybe someday an Xbox 360…