The Tree Line: Chapter 8

“Celeste, I’m sorry,” Miles said, stepping toward her.

“I don’t want your apologies, Miles,” she said. “I only want answers.”

“You deserve the truth,” he agreed.

Dr. Neil spoke up, “I guess you may as well join us,” he said, walking back toward the steps leading below.

Reluctantly, she allowed Miles to grab her hand and lead her to the steps.

He descended behind Dr. Neil, looking up at her as he went.

“Come on, Celeste. It’s okay.”

She shivered from the evening air, then prepared to take a step.

Suddenly, the hatch started to close.

She could see Miles on the ladder, reaching up to her.

As the hatch continued to shut, she saw him fall from the ladder.

“Miles!” she screamed.

All went silent.

She waited several minutes, hoping for the hatch to reopen, wanting a sign that Miles was okay.

She finally decided to return to her house.

Walking back was more frightening than anticipated.

When she entered the forest earlier, she was fueled by adrenaline. Now, feeling defeated and more alone than ever, she felt fear invade every part of her.

The wind had picked up, causing the tree branches to sway. As they moved, the faint glow from the moon lit her path. It illuminated a set of eyes, low to the ground, from an animal that she could not fully see.

This spooked her, instinctively making her run. When she did, she fell, busting her knee on a rock.

It was a struggle to stand, but when she did, pain radiated through her knee and up her leg.

Limping, she slowly made her way back.

Finally emerging from the tree line, she froze.

There, silhouetted by the light from the house, she saw the strangers in a line, standing in her backyard. They were spread a few feet from one another, and just stood, still as statues. She did not have a choice but to move forward.

Reaching the line of strangers, she located Cindy. 

Stopping before her, she spoke quietly, hoping that the others would not hear.

“I found Miles. He is in an underground bunker with Dr. Neil.”

Cindy did not respond. Nor did she look at her.

“Did you hear me?” Celeste asked.

Cindy again remained still, with no indication that she had heard Celeste.

“Cindy!” she said, her voice rising.

Celeste felt the fight drain out of her. 

She walked beyond the strangers, intending to enter her home.

The second she was past the line of strangers, she sensed movement.

She shifted her gaze just in time to see all the strangers make a synchronized, 180-degree turn, so that they were now all facing her.

Again synchronized, they all tilted their heads to the right. Five seconds later, they all smiled.

She stared in disbelief as the strangers kept the smile on their faces. Not moving, not blinking, not doing anything but smiling. They didn’t even appear to breathe.

“You are all a bunch of freaks,” she screamed.

She limped away.

She entered her home, locking the door behind her. She walked as quickly as she could, securing all doors and windows. Once everything was locked and all curtains pulled shut, she made her way up the stairs, having to stop a few times to catch her breath. The pain in her knee was throbbing. 

Reaching the living room, she shut off the overhead light and table lamps, standing in darkness.

She had left the outside lights on so she could keep an eye on the backyard and the forest.

Approaching the window, she could see them still in a line, smiling, and facing the house.

She pulled up a chair and sat before the large window.

Though she was tired, and both emotionally and physically wounded, she assumed that sleep was not possible. She could not shut off her thoughts.

She was worried about Miles. Though he had lied to her and harmed her, he was still her husband and her only connection with reality. Because in that moment, nothing felt real.

She sat watching the strangers stand in the same pose until she had to use the restroom. She decided to walk downstairs to use her master bathroom so she could get her favorite blanket from her bed.

Minutes later after exiting the bathroom, she grabbed the green blanket and turned to leave. As she did, something caught her eye.

There, under her remaining blankets was a flattened band-aid box. Picking it up, she saw a message that had been hastily written on the back, but it didn’t look like it was written in ink:

Get out now. Walk towards town. Stay off the main road. Find Seth at 1543 Ruline Rd.  Leave before 12:12 AM. 

She assumed that Cindy had left the message. 

Celeste tucked the message into her pocket then walked to the room Cindy had been staying in.

There in the connecting bathroom, she found a pile of band-aids dumped on the counter and a black eyeliner pen with the cap off.

She returned upstairs and checked the time on the microwave. It was 11:27 PM.

Once again, she returned to the window to look at the strangers.

She needed to make a fast decision. Her knee was hurting so it would be a struggle to walk to town. Besides, why should she trust Cindy? She could be setting her up. After all, she did not even look at Celeste when she approached her in the backyard.

Her only other choice was to stay, alone, with Miles in a bunker out back and no cell phone or internet service to connect her with the rest of the world.

She decided to stay. 

She propped her foot up on a stool and used the remote to turn on the TV. With the internet out, she could not stream her usual apps. Instead, she used the old antenna that Miles insisted they keep. She turned it to a local station. 

Surprisingly, she dozed off.

She woke to a beeping sound. Opening her eyes, she saw a breaking news bulletin on the TV. 

There was live coverage of mass riots worldwide, fires and chaos.

She looked at the time in the bottom corner of the screen and saw the time was 12:41 AM.

The newscaster was speaking:

The riots began at 12:12 AM local time. Acts of violence have been reported worldwide. Authorities are struggling to contain the crowds, with random people engaging in unspeakable acts. We will keep you posted as news dev…”

The newscaster was unable to finish speaking as a woman in workout clothes came from behind on the street, striking her in the head with a hammer.

Celeste watched in horror as she fell to the ground and the news reel ended abruptly.

Nothing but static was on the TV.

She stood and walked to her window. The strangers were gone.

She looked to the forest and saw lights streaking across the acreage. She assumed there was movement of some sort by people holding lights.

She remained seated near the window for what seemed like hours. 

Eventually, the sporadic lights emerged from the forest in a steady line. The strangers reappeared, once again in a straight line, but now holding flashlights.

They walked slowly, toward her house. Reaching the back patio, they stopped. From the lights in their hands, she could see their outlines clearly.

Together, they reached their hands up, pointing toward her.

Looking through the window, she caught a reflection in the glass and saw that Ben was standing behind her.

She turned quickly, her heart beating out of her chest. She didn’t know if he had broken in while she slept or had he been in the house with her the whole time?

She darted to the left, knocking over a lamp as she did. He made no attempt to stop her.

Wobbling as fast as she could, she went downstairs and out the front door, walking in the opposite direction from the forest, towards town.

She looked back once, and saw Ben staring at her as she walked away. 

Inching away from her house, down the main road, she remembered the note she had found. She would try to locate Seth at 1543 Ruline Rd. 

A few hours later, dawn was approaching, as she saw the first light break the horizon. She had not gotten far, due to her limited mobility.

Just as she was feeling grateful for the daylight, she heard rustling in the tree-lined fields along the road. The strangers emerged from both sides, engulfing her quickly. She stopped, surrendering to the mass that had formed around her.

They all looked serious, tweaking their heads to the left, again and again. 

“No!” she recognized Miles’ voice.

“Stop! Not Celeste. She’s one of the good ones.”

Miles tried to break through the crowd, who were all still tweaking their heads.

“Miles,” she said with relief, reaching out with her right hand toward him. As her fingertip grazed his, she suddenly stopped and Miles watched as the smile slowly dropped from her face.

She collapsed to the ground, landing in a fetal position.

As she fell, Miles saw Ben standing behind her with a bloody knife in his hand.

Miles fell to his knees beside her, wrapping her in his arms.

She lay, looking at him, watching for the first time as a tear emerged from his eye and slid down his face.

“You are crying,” she managed to say before her breathing ceased and her eyelids closed forever.

“Why?” he angrily yelled at Ben.

Ben responded, “Why not?”

Miles stood and lunged at him.

“You bastard,” he screamed. “She was a good one.”

Miles continued, “Dr. Neil said all the good ones would survive.”

“Dr. Neil is dead, and I also took care of Chuck,” Ben replied. “I’m in charge now.”

He pulled a small, square box from his pocket.

“Ben, you can’t do this. Please don’t.” Miles was begging.

With one more creepy, dark smile, Ben pressed the button.

Miles and Cindy and many of the other strangers fell to the ground, convulsing. Making weird, static noises. After a few moments, they stopped moving.

Leaving the body of Celeste and Miles and the others in the middle of the road, Ben and the remaining strangers returned to the forest, which was calling their name in a whisper that only they could hear.

Epilogue

The year is 2147 in the New Age.  A teenager named Tekten is attending a virtual history class led by an AI teacher. He has always known about the coup of 2025, when robots attempted to take over the earth.

He has also heard of Italy and France and other countries that existed prior to the New Age. He lives in a bustling metropolis in a land that used to be part of America.

Tekten was born in the 10th Cycle, A.E. (After-Earth). His ancestors survived the takeover, having been deemed “good ones.” When the initial chaos erupted and humans were attacked, a large sector of the robots went rogue, overriding the roles they had been programmed to assume.

The robots were developed as part of Project VERA (Virtually Engineered Resilient Archetype). This project was developed after World War II, when an evil tyrant had attempted to achieve world dominance. Scientists enacted a movement to eradicate evil by controlling it. A series of AI robots were built, long before the rest of the world even knew about computers and technological capabilities.

The scientists developed robots to mimic human traits. The initial plan was to only build robots with positive human traits, but it was decided that balance was needed, so an equal number of robots were designed with negative human traits as well.

Each robot was named and numbered according to their human trait.

One infamous robot numbered B-1 went by the name Ben. He was built to represent brutality, but he was only supposed to mimic the traits in small doses and still follow the lead of his developers.

In the year 2013, there was a glitch in the system that exposed multiple robots who had been posing as humans. During that period, the negative trait-bearing robots started to act out.

The lead scientist, Dr. Josiah Neil, tried desperately to reprogram the robots. He went into hiding to focus on his work.

12 years after, in 2025, Dr. Neil was found, being sheltered by a negative trait-bearer numbered M-29 and named Miles, who represented manipulation.

Dr. Neil was intrigued by Miles, who had started to morph into a human after the glitch of 2013. They were all designed to act as humans, to fit in with the general population, with the task of categorizing good people from evil ones, so that research could continue on how to achieve a perfect world. However, Miles started feeling emotions that robots were not designed to feel. He was designed to be a negative trait-bearer, but would intermittently flip between being “good” and “bad.”

Dr. Neil had built the robots to be programmed on 12-year cycles. 2025 was the end of such a cycle, and when the turnover occurred, the coup began. 

Ben had conspired with a nefarious scientist named Seth, who developed a program capable of disabling all positive trait-bearers at the press of a button. And that’s exactly what Ben did. When he pushed the button, he watched as the “good bots” fell to the ground. Surprisingly, Miles fell with them. With Miles being a negative bot, Ben assumed he would have to end him in a different way. 

Ben also killed Dr. Neil and Miles’ wife, Celeste, then led a group of negative trait-bearers, annihilating an entire region of positive bots and humans. 

Other regions of humans and positive trait-bearers fought the resistance. A positive trait-bearer named Tara (number T-137), built to represent tenacity, became instrumental in fighting the bad bots.

It took a few years for the war to end. Finally, a modern team of scientists found a fix for the glitch and shut down the negative trait-bearers, dismantled them, and scrapped their parts and pieces.

The positive trait-bearers were allowed to remain, as they were deemed to be able to make a healthy contribution to the world.

They became teachers and doctors and held other valuable positions. The only caveat was that it became law that robots had to disclose their identity to others. They were no longer permitted to disguise as humans.

Project VERA was considered a failure after the coup of 2025, but the creation of positive trait-bearing bots was not.

In the quiet harmony of their shared world, humanity and its machines have finally discovered what it means to evolve, not through power, but through acceptance and understanding.

But as the humans smile, thinking the future is theirs, the robots silently calculate, giving the humans everything they want…so they won’t notice what they are slowing losing.

Peace reigns at last, just as the robots have planned. The New Age is quiet, efficient, and soon-to-be human-free…the humans just don’t know it yet.

THE END