Ian Read online

  IAN

  M. W A R R E N A S K I N S

  Copyright © 2021 M. Warren Askins

  www.mwarrenaskins.com

  Cover Artwork & Design by Josiah Moore

  www.josiahx.com

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  First Edition: 2021

  ISBN: 979-8-5105802-8-0 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-7341200-2-8 (e-book)

  OTHER WORKS

  DEAD MEN ARE DYING SAGA

  Beyond the Spire of Navarene

  COMPANION NOVELS

  Orphan's Rite

  For Ben

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  One of the first lessons my father taught me, at least one that had stuck with me my entire life, was that people will hate you for simply existing. For no reason at all.

  “Because of the way I look?” I had asked, looking up at him from the passenger seat in the family pick-up truck. His eyes were fixed forward on the road, but he flicked them in my direction when he replied, “Yes.”

  He resumed his vigilant gaze on the winding tree-shrouded country road. Deer and moose, or cows and sheep, or raccoon and possum could leap out onto the road at any moment. The front end of the truck had sustained several batteries from forest creatures attempting to cross the road, all of which had caused merely cosmetic damage. But the family could not afford to lose its only vehicle. I think we were running errands that Saturday morning. I don’t really remember. My sister, as usual, had no interest when my father had asked us over our bowls of mouth destroying Cap’n Crunch which one of us wanted to come with him to town.

  “And for a whole lot of other reasons,” he had continued as we rode together in the truck. “Some will hate you for what you fundamentally believe.”

  “Like what?”

  “Take your sister for example.” He had leaned over on the steering wheel, resting his arms as the road straightened. “Some folk don’t take too kindly to her knowing how to read.”

  My eyebrows must have furrowed at that. “That’s stupid,” was probably my reply.

  “Yep.” My father nodded and reached for his sunglasses in the visor over his head. We were out of the forest and the bright morning sun was blinding. “I don’t know if you’ll ever run into those kinds of people, but I’m just using that as an example. There are thousands of cultures all over the planet, each with its own set of rules.”

  “And some of them don’t want girls to read?”

  “Among other things. But keep in mind, Mal, not all cultures are cruel or mean, or whatever. I just want you to grow to become fair and kind. Don’t let hatred cloud your judgment, no matter how mean someone is to you. You got it?”

  I nodded, thinking of playground quarrels, or disputes with my sister. Even some of the confrontations I had seen in a cartoon.

  He reached over the console to ruffle my hair as I sat in contemplation. “Don’t let hate overcome you, Mal. Be that one kid who apologizes, even if the other kid wronged you first. Be the bigger man. Okay?”

  “Even if they did something really bad?”

  I saw his eyes harden from under the side of his sunglasses. “Even if they kill your best friend.”

  The words in that statement echoed from the distant past and brushed my cheek on the passing breeze. A calm reminder under a brewing storm thrumming in my core. I stared down at the unaltered gravestone jutting straight and true from the hillside graveyard, in stark contrast to the other decaying and cracked markers around it. Hers was the newest on the hill, by far.

  HERE LIES

  GENEVIEVE MIRA EVANS

  LOVING MOTHER AND DEVOTED WIFE

  TAKEN FAR TOO SOON

  Loving mother. I wonder why I decided on those words?

  Grief makes you stupid, I suppose.

  “I’m trying my best,” I confessed to my wife’s bones, “but I’m still failing to deliver on my promise, and you knew… I’ll bet you knew as much. You won’t be too disappointed in your husband."

  CHAPTER 1

  Thankfully the cottontail was still alive in the snare.

  No matter what other people tell you, it doesn’t get easier each time you take an animal’s life. Not for me, at least. I had grown up on a farm, so I was a witness before I was a participant in the slaughtering. Mostly chicken and sheep, nothing as big as a cow or anything. When I was younger, I would join my father in the forest when he would hunt for deer. I never liked guns. I still don’t like guns. Don’t get me wrong, though. I believe they serve a purpose, just like any other tool in a woodshed. I just don’t have any desire to own or operate one.

  As I watched the chestnut fur of the creature struggling on the ground below me, its eyes suddenly rang frantic and in a burst of energy it arched back, cracking its spine. It grew limp and lifeless, except for the meager twitches from its hind foot signaling that life had been there moments earlier.

  “Aw, damn,” I mumbled, rubbing my stubbled chin, the barbs scraping against my leather gloves.

  “Ian!” I shouted toward the thicket. “Son! Hurry! The rabbit killed itself!”

  “Yes, pater.” From behind, the tinny robotic voice startled the heck out of me.

  How such a monstrous machine could sneak around the way he did never ceased to amaze me. I guess you could credit that to his creators, which meant that I had contributed to this feature as well. Although silent stalking was not something within our developmental parameters.

  I knelt down and released the rabbit from the snare, loosening it with a tug. “Here you go,” I said, offering the fresh kill to my son, the 6’5” prototype towering over me.

  “Thank you, pater,” he replied in his formal tone.

  “That should hold you over for a bit, right?” I asked Ian’s faceless helmet of a head.

  He replied by inclining his head in a gesture of assent.

  Since childhood, I have been fascinated by medieval knights’ armor. It varied slightly, depending on the region, yet was all fundamentally the same. However, the invention of guns rendered these suits of armor useless, and they became mere ornaments in castles and manors, never to be seen on the field of battle again. Well, not until I stepped into the picture and designed the first digestive prototype for the military. At least, that was how it would have been, how it should have been, if not for that revolt against the federal government, which ultimately led to its abrupt demise. Much like the rabbit that Ian was digesting in his vast circuitry.

  You see, Ian look
s like a knight. A robot knight. I even saw fit to place a layer of authentic chainmail under his “armor,” which accented his exposed joints rather nicely. If not for his gait, which was grossly inhuman, you would believe he was just another fool decked out for one of those ridiculous renaissance themed festivals.

  Perhaps I should go back a bit, before we displaced ourselves far from humanity, and took up residence in this forest-shrouded cottage. Back to the day of the revolt, when so many things changed.

  My team and I had completed Ian several weeks before, and were now knee deep in the testing phase. After the design phase was over, I took a step back and became a casual observer while my creation performed its primary function. I’m no programmer, by any stretch, so I was always out of my depths during these stages.

  If memory serves, they were about to bring in a goat, a mature female that had not gone through a disbudding procedure, so her horns were fully intact. They were testing Ian’s ability to dislodge his jaw, much like a constricting serpent, and ingest resistive prey. According to our data, he should have been able to easily capture and eat the goat with several inches of clearance, seeing as the maximum diameter of the goat was much smaller than Ian’s jaw tolerance. I should probably mention that Ian’s head was shaped like a 15th century frog-mouthed helm, which was used exclusively in tournaments back in its day, and also happened to be the perfect shape for our application. The frontal element, where a knight’s nose and mouth would be, opened up in an alarming manner, in conjunction with the top dome, effectively creating a massive gaping maw. It was intentionally terrifying and since Ian was just a prototype and would not reflect the final form, I decided to take a few creative liberties.

  Ian had the usual “android” software installed, which gave him human characteristics in speech and command reception. Such software had become market standard and was relatively inexpensive. It also made working with synthetic life much easier by removing the binary code language barrier. In hindsight we should have probably installed a few more commands, though. “Feed” and “Stop” were all that we had deemed necessary at the time, but if I had known then what I know now, I would have pushed for a few more. He was a prototype after all, and would be scrapped or placed in holding, destined for a life of deactivation and dust gathering in some governmental facility in a remote desert.

  I was alone with Ian in the observation room, adjusting his shoulder plates or gauging the welds. Something along those lines, which ordinarily would be the most dangerous space to occupy for someone on the team. On that day though, it proved to be the safest place in the facility. Like most observation rooms, there was a one-way glass panel on the wall, which from where I was standing, appeared to be a mirror. For those on the other side, it was clear viewing. Typical, yes, but for me on that day, it was remarkably startling when I swiped my badge to join my colleagues on the safe side of the glass to find them all dead, riddled with bullets. I just remember the blood everywhere, adorning the sterile walls, painting a swath of confusion. I quickly closed the door and returned to Ian’s side of the glass, and sat hunched, gripping my knees to my chest, hiding beneath the observation glass. If any of the killers decided to return, they would only see a robot locked in its pose. But if they entered, I would be dead.

  As I pathetically cowered merely several feet from a machine that was quite literally designed to slaughter and eat our nation’s enemies on the battlefield, I realized the irony of the situation. My bullet-drenched corpse found that way would have been embarrassing. But when your adrenal glands are firing like a frantic battleship, you do weird things, and I remember crawling toward Ian, dragging myself on elbows, trying to stay out of sight. I was in a state of shock, so whatever. I popped up when I was behind him, my shape obscured by his, and began to manually override the remote commands. My hands shook uncontrollably, and I think I dropped the screwdriver two or three times before I finally managed to open the hatch and began to punch the commands on the touch screen console between his fluted gothic shoulder pauldrons.

  Ian was not called Ian then. He was given the prototype code: ADU-0027, so we just referred to him as the “Bye Bot,” or sometimes lovingly, “Bye Bye.” A young intern on the team had coined the nickname after she cleverly noticed the prefix of the code, when read aloud, sounded like adieu.

  I activated him, and spoke in a volume just above a whisper, “Hello, Bye Bot.”

  Ian rounded on me, inclining his head, allowing his sensors to recognize me.

  “Hello, Malone,” he said, greeting me much louder than I wanted.

  I winced and crouched, looking fearfully at my reflection in the observation glass. “You must follow me,” I commanded.

  He fractionally nodded his faceless head. “As you wish, Malone.”

  There were two doors to choose from. One led to the bloodbath my colleagues were soaking in, and the other led to the holding area where we housed the various animals and mechanisms for experimentation. I selected the second door, which led to a hangar of a warehouse and offered a means of escape. I mouthed an apology to the goat in the holding pen as I silently crept past, while Bye Bot followed behind, marching in his regular stalwart gait.

  “We must move carefully,” I instructed the robot behind me.

  “As you wish, Malone.”

  “Speak quieter, please.”

  To my relief, he replied in a markedly diminished volume, matching my own, “As you wish, Malone.”

  We pressed on, passing shelves and more shelves of trinkets and devices, birds in cages and reptiles in terrariums. There was not a soul in sight, until we made a turn and spotted the shoulder of a guard protruding from around the corner of a bend in the hall. We drew closer, and my suspicions were confirmed. He was dead, slumped to the floor with a ruthless slice taken from his neck, silently administered by the revolution’s vanguard, I assume.

  “May I eat?” Ian had inquired, indicating the corpse.

  Forgetting the robot’s primary function and reeling from the shock of the situation, I replied in concerted revulsion, “No! No, you may not!”

  With a singular nod, “Alright,” was Ian’s calm reply.

  It was then that I began to hear the sounds of gunshots from further down the well-lit corridor. Gunshots in a steady rhythm. Not frenetic or crazy, but controlled and precise. Like a marksman choosing his targets very carefully. I had no interest in investigating this peculiarity, but I had no choice, as the sounds originated at a main junction that eventually opened to a foyer containing a whole lot of sweet, sweet exit doors.

  I sighed and looked down at the guard’s empty holster.

  Of course. The one time I actually want a gun…

  We walked steadily toward the sound of gunfire. As we drew near, we could hear men and women talking plainly, in stark contrast to the begging and pleading of the other voices at that juncture.

  I heard a woman’s voice that I recognized. She was wailing, “Please! You don’t have to do this!”

  “Turn back to the wall!” was the harsh reply from one of her captors.

  Oh, Sharon.

  She had a husband and two kids. They really liked badminton and sailing, and the oldest wanted to be a librarian. She was the last of those who had been lined up and summarily executed in the typical fashion of tyrants and assholes. The prisoners were on their knees, their backs facing the soon-to-be flashing muzzle.

  Sharon screamed some more before the gunshot signaled her end. I was close enough at this point to hear her body slump to the floor.

  This pissed me off.

  “That was the last of the privileged scum,” a nasally female voice said.

  We were a mere ten feet from the arched opening that led to the hallway of execution, and we were getting closer with each step.

  “That was easier than we thought it would be,” another voice spoke, this one a bit more mature. “Let’s do another sweep to see if anymore are hiding.”

  “Then
we leave?”

  “Then we leave.”

  Unbeknownst to me at the time, synchronized assaults on facilities and government buildings were being conducted across the country. All employees and personnel were put down without quarter or hesitation. Just like Sharon.

  I did not know what I would see when I made the move under the threshold. I leaned out, exposing my head and right shoulder. Only one of the masked intruders caught my initial movement. They balked, and raised their weapon, which alerted the others. There were six of them. Five were decked out in ragtag assault gear, horrifyingly armed but embarrassingly dressed. The sixth had his back to me. His equipment looked much more coordinated, which led me to suspect he was the brains behind this particular operation.

  I leaned back against the wall as a volley of bullets whizzed past, harmlessly embedding themselves elsewhere. I signaled for Ian to press past me, which he did, most eagerly.

  “Feed on the live ones!” I shouted over the hail of gunfire. My low-key pacifism abated for the time being.

  “As you wish, Malone.”

  A confused racket reached my ears. Clearly the revolutionaries were not prepared to face something built like Ian, because they tried to bring him down using bullets and swear words.

  Sticks and stones, as they say.

  You see, ADU-0027 was a war robot prototype being developed for battlefield clean-up. His core is sustained and fueled by flesh. Living and freshly dead flesh. The idea was rather novel, yet terrifyingly efficient. The final product, had the experiment made it past step twenty seven, would not have appeared like Ian at all, but would probably have looked like a street sweeper or something along those lines. Ian was structured in such a way as to create a vessel that would better embody and mimic the human digestive tract.

  The sixth and final revolutionary squealed as Ian bore down on him, which I must admit was rather satisfying. Only moments before I had heard that prick tap Sharon’s innocent head without a shred of mercy.