Trust Machines - Rampage

Two teenagers strolled into the mall, hand in hand.  One was idly brushing some straw out of her braided blonde hair with her free hand as they walked.  The boy laughed.  “You should know better than to start things like that in 4H, Anne-Marie.”

“Aw, c’mon Daniel, you had fun in the hayloft too.”

Daniel laughed again, a loud bray.  “Of course.  Not the kind of fun I had in mind, but the straw-fight was fun.”

Anne reached over and picked out a piece of straw from among his messy brown curls.  “I know what you wanted,” she sang.  “There were way too many folks around to risk that.”

“I guess.  We just never get to find time to be together.”

Anne gave Daniel’s hand a tug.  “I know one way we can be together for the whole weekend, and nobody will say a thing.”

“Oh?”  Daniel looked ahead at where Anne was guiding them.  The Venn Machine was standing empty, with both its doors open.  “Oh, no.  I’m not getting into that crazy machine.  Gary spent last weekend as a box of chocolates!”

“And he got himself delivered to his girlfriend, Sally.  She ate him all up!” Anne giggled.

“How is that funny?  Wait, she ate him?  Did she know...”

Anne shook her head.  “Not until she got to the second layer, she said.  He left her a note and... something else.  She wouldn’t say what, but she blushed pretty hard when she said it, so it must have been good!”

Daniel frowned.  “But I talked to Gary yesterday...  He was fine.  Other than getting all dreamy-eyed whenever Sally waved at him.”

“Yeah, once the time’s up you go back to bein’ you again.  Doesn’t matter what happened.  Remember when Sally spent a weekend as a guy, and got her leg broken by her horse?  She was better as soon as she came out of the machine.  And she told me that she even lost weight last weekend.  She swears that eating that box of chocolates made her bloat up so big she couldn’t fit her dress... or bra,” she added with a wink.  “But it all went away and then some when Gary came back.”

Anne leaned in closer to her boyfriend and whispered conspiratorially, “Sally said that Gary said that he could feel himself becoming part of her.  That when she... did things that she and I did not talk about, no sir, that Gary could feel it too.”

Daniel’s eyes were wide.  “No kidding?  I mean that sounds...  Aw man, you want to turn me into chocolates?”

“Welll...  You know how Ma has me on a diet?”

Daniel looked Anne-Marie over and shook his head.  “I don’t understand it.  You’re thin as a rail already.  My Mom keeps saying she wants to feed you up properly.”

“I know!  What I really, really want more than anything else in the world is a huge bucket of fried chicken.  And if I can eat it without Ma getting on my case about growing out of my dress...”  She looked up into Daniel’s face with her sweet, innocent blue eyes. “Please, Danny?”

Daniel couldn’t resist those eyes.  He never had been able to.  “As you wish, my princess.”

Anne clapped her hands and skipped toward the Venn Machine.  Then stopped short, milling near the Venn Machine with several other teens.  “What the...  Who set it for three years?”

“We don’t know,” said one of the others.  “Nobody’s willing to go in with three years on the line.”

“Oh for pity’s sake,” said Anne.  “You just go in and hit the red button, like this.”  She stormed toward the entrance, then stumbled and fell.

Daniel heard the crack of a rifle just as he saw his girlfriend fall, and turned to look toward the source.  There was another crack, and one of the other teens wailed with pain.  Time seemed to slow as he considered his options.  The shooter was up on the second floor, shooting through the open gallery in the middle of the mall.  There was no cover at all to be had, nothing but... the Venn Machine itself.

As the third crack echoed in his ears, Daniel was shoving Anne further into one side.  He felt pain blossom in his hip as he dove for the other.  The closing door cut off the echoes of the shot that had tagged him.

“Anne!  Are you OK?”

The only answer from his prone girlfriend was a gurgle and a cough.

“ANNE!  Damn it, fight.  We need to... fight.  Something bulletproof, something that can fight...”  He tapped desperately at the bubble that was nearly glowing out by the edge of the interface.  The shape that popped up startled him, but he had to concede it met his conditions.  It looked like a cross between a spider, a crab, and some kind of archaic suit of armor.  It had two giant scything claws, six legs to scuttle on, and a low, squat head.

It had been silent too long on Anne’s side, Daniel didn’t dare wait longer.  As he hit the green button, his hip gave out, and he collapsed to the floor.  The pain from the impact forced a scream from his throat.  He looked down at the floor, and his last thought as his mind started greying out was ‘that’s a lot of blood’.

Anne screamed.  It took her a moment to recognize that the pain was gone.  And two heartbeats more to realize that the body slumped on the floor in the other side of the booth was her boyfriend.  Her voice was alien, unfamiliar.  Her attempt to scream his name resulted in musical tones vibrating her... she had no idea what the front of her body was doing, but the noises it was making didn’t sound like any language she knew.

Anne looked at herself.  She shuddered, twittering more noises that somehow she could parse as words even though she knew the sounds should make no sense.  She was black, hideous... and when she tapped battle-claw against her chest she also realized she was armored like a tank.

[Make him the same as me], she whispered, or tried to.  Twittering tones came out, but she despaired of any understanding.  Still, bubbles did come up in the interface, and the green button was timing down to when the sniper would be able to see Daniel again.  She touched a bubble, saw something black and chitinous appear, and hit the green button with one of her two-foot-long battle claws.

The doors opened on carnage.  Several of the teens that had been near the booth were lying on the floor, bleeding profusely.  The rest had scattered, though as they emerged another shot rang out followed by a cry of pain.

[Let’s go!] twittered a voice from beside her.  Anne stared at her insectoid boyfriend in surprise.

[Can you understand me?] her voice sang.

A bullet spanged off Anne’s carapace to no apparent effect.

[You go left, I’ll take the right stairs.  Charge!]

An ululating cry lept from Anne’s thorax as her six legs churned into action.  She skittered twice on the brick flooring then dug her talons in deeper, leaving gouges in the floor as she flung herself forward.  The next two shots went wide.

Then they were up on the balcony, both charging toward the dark-skinned man with a rifle.  He swung toward Daniel’s terrifying form, and managed one last shot.  It hit true, but only made Daniel stumble a little.

Anne was on him first, and the first strike from her claws cut his gun in half, and took his left forearm and right hand clean off.  As she was rearing back for claw-strikes that would have torn him into pieces, Daniel cried out in a strident chord of command, [Stop!]

With her claws an inch from his throat and torso, Anne obeyed.

She glowered down at the vermin that had wounded her and her mate.  [Why?]

[It isn’t a threat.  And you aren’t a murderer.]  Daniel’s fluting words were gentle, soothing.  The sniper whimpered and stared at the blood pumping from the stumps of his arms.

With two remarkably delicate slashes of his claws, Daniel removed the sniper’s pants legs.  Four delicate manipulating arms emerged from behind their protective chestplates.  He picked up the torn fabric, and quickly tied them into improvised tourniquets.

Anne stared at him as if he was mad.  [You’re saving his life?  How many did this filth kill?]

The sound of sirens was approaching, and soon a tactical squad stormed their way to the top of the stairs.  Anne and Daniel stood with their battle-claws raised, hoping that would show their intentions well enough.  They stayed very still while the squad leader heard the pleas of others who had been in the mall, telling him that these two things hadn’t caused the massacre, they’d ended it.  His men kept a close eye on the two black... things while waiting for a medical team to fetch the shooter.

Then there was the chaos and confusion of the EMTs treating the wounded and carrying off the dead.  By the time anyone thought to ask who the black-carapaced heros were, animal control had arrived and taken them away.

Chief Slater glared at his radio.  “What do you mean you don’t know where they went?  Two giant black beetle-things can’t just disappear into thin air.  Someone must have seen them!”

He sighed at the reply.  “Fine, I’ll go talk to animal control myself.  I don’t know why they’re stonewalling you.  We’re pretty much done here, the medics have taken all the living off to the hospital.  God, I hope we don’t lose any more.  Well, except one.”  The crackling response made him sigh again.  “No, I don’t mean...  Fuck it.  You didn’t see the mess here.  I sure won’t mourn if he doesn’t make it.”

At the animal control office, confusion seemed the order of the day.  Nobody seemed to know where the van with the two bug-things had gone.  He had to throw a considerable degree of influence around to even find out who’d been driving it.

“Reggie?” Chief Slater asked.  “You run this place, what the hell were you doing driving?”

Reginald Archer sighed.  “Nobody else would, not once they got here.  I mean, they weren’t doing anything except tootling away and kept their claws away from everyone, but even my biggest guys were totally freaked out about them.  They’d heard about what these things did at the mall.  You know I don’t have a facility here to hold things that dangerous.”

The chief rubbed the bridge of his nose.  “Fine.  So where are they?”

“Look, I’d rather not...”

“Reggie!  They’re witnesses to the worst crime this town has ever seen.  Not to mention the heroes of the day, if the others are to be believed.”

“They’re just giant bugs...”  Reggie protested weakly.

“That’s as may be.  They came out of the Venn Machine.  I need to talk to them.”

Reggie snorted.  “Good luck with that.  We tried, all they do is make twittery noises like birds.”

“I’ll figure something out.  They’re in big trouble if I can’t find them, they were badly hurt before they changed.  If they change back without medical attention, they’ll probably die.”

“What?  Crap...  Okay, fine.  There’s this exotic animal dealer I know...”

An hour later, and well past his dinnertime, Chief Slater and a medical examiner arrived at an out of the way ranch.  In a well-hidden grove there was a series of heavily-barred enclosures, and within one of the enclosures were his two heros.

The owner, a nervous-looking rat-like man noted that he’d put them in separate enclosures, but pointed to a series of bars between said enclosures that had been cleanly shorn away.  “They haven’t done anything else, but... the only reason they’re still here is because they haven’t decided to tear out the outer bars.”

The chief nodded, then waved to the two bug-things.  “Hello over there!  Can you hear me?  I need to talk to you.”

Daniel and Anne scuttled over to the bars, moving more slowly as they got closer so as not to seem threatening.  They tootled softly between themselves, wondering what would happen now.

“Which one of you is Daniel?”

Daniel hooted softly, and raised a battle-claw.

“Oh, good, so you do understand me.  Do you know how long the Venn Machine was set for?  For certain?”

Daniel bobbed his body forward and back, in an approximation of a nod.  He leaned forward, and drew with a manipulator claw in the dirt, three circles with a dot on one side, and an obvious star in the middle.

“Three years?  Well.  At least we don’t have to worry about you changing back soon and... well, you both know what would happen then.”

Daniel and Anne hooted mournfully, and scuttled a bit closer to each other.  Daniel stroked his battle-claw over Anne’s back, making a dissonant scraping noise.  Anne trilled at him softly.

“Right.  Can you at least write in English?”

Daniel scuttled over a bit, and drew a series of symbols on the ground.  The chief looked at them, and shook his head.  “I have no idea what that means.  I’m sorry.”

Daniel looked down at the symbols.  To his eyes, they meant ‘I think so’, but obviously he was mistaken.  He softly hummed the alphabet song to himself, and realized that nothing on the ground connected in any way to it.  Slowly and laboriously he traced out three of the half-familiar half-forgotten symbols.  Y-E-S.

“OK, that’s painfully slow.  Do you think you’ll get better with practice?”

Daniel just pointed to the word again.  His claws had the wrong reflexes, when he thought a word they drew the wrong thing.  But if he paid attention...  As the conversation with the chief continued, he slowly got better at writing the right symbols.  Occasionally he slipped up, and a word of the other script would come out.  The chief would cough, and Daniel would rub it out and try again.

“Look,” the chief said at last.  “Can you stay here a little longer?  It’s obvious you both need to stay like this for a while.  Fred,” he gestured to the medical examiner beside him, “says that the longer you stay transformed, the better shape you’ll be in when you change back.”

“I need to review the literature on Venn healing,” said the white-coated man beside the chief.  “It’s slow, but on the plus side, it keeps things from getting worse.  I’ll review the tapes and I’ll come see you soon.  For now, we should focus on what you can eat.  If possible, I’d suggest you stick to nothing but water unless you’re...”

Daniel and Anne looked at each other, and their body language expressed guilt.  Daniel pointed to a patch of torn-up plants just outside the fence.

Fred sighed.  “Are you feeling any ill effects from that?  Are you hungry?”  Daniel and Anne both rotated their bodies left and right to indicate ‘no’.

Daniel scrawled a final message in the dirt.  ‘WHEN CAN WE SEE OUR PARENTS’.  He ended with an interrogatory hoot.

“Soon, son,” said Chief Slater.  “I’ll bring them to you tomorrow.”  Then he turned to the owner, and stabbed a finger at him.  “Take care of them.  Do it right, and I’ll overlook the other animals here.  For now.”

* * *

The next morning a police van arrived at the exotic pet trader’s place, and Chief Slater hopped out.  He walked over to the enclosure where Daniel and Anne had been the night before, then cursed.  “Where’d they go?  Damn it, Finn, if you’ve sold them on me...”

“I don’t know!  I swear I didn’t do anything,” the rat-faced man said.  “Look, even the bars are intact... wait a minute.  Those rocks over there,” he pointed.  “They don’t belong here.”

A tootling noise that sounded for all the world like little children giggling emerged from the rocks, and two of them lifted up onto insectile legs and approached the chief of police.  As they walked, their carapaces returned to their usual black.

“Oh great.  Now you’re chameleons as well?  Crap, I really hope I never run into someone changed like this who’s of a mind to do some damage.”

[Crap,] tootled Daniel. [I never thought of that.  What if other people figure out?]

Anne looked at him, and chirped her concern.

“There’s a zoo near here,” said the chief.  “I was going to take you there, but now I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be smarter to keep you away from crowds.  I don’t want people getting ideas.”

[Please?] asked Anne in an interrogatory trill.  

Daniel scraped her request into the dirt, followed by, ‘We don’t want to be stuck alone’.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Chief Slater mused.  “Videos of your attack have gone viral already, so it’s not like the idea isn’t out there.  Hopefully it’ll do more good than harm, having others know that a Venn Machine also can act as an armory.”

So Daniel and Anne scrambled happily into the back of the van, clinging onto the seats with their mobility legs.  They didn’t exactly fit in a way that would work with the belts.  As they bounced along the narrow country road away from the trader’s compound, Anne began to sing.  [The wheels on the bus go round and round...]

Daniel trilled a laugh, then joined in.  Making music in these forms was so easy, and their ‘voices’ were pure and clear.

When the van door opened, it was into a transfer enclosure, with open doors at one end that led to a large open space.  The chief walked out into the enclosure with them, and on into the open space.  They paced by his side warily.

“This is an open-style zoo.  There’s a couple of acres for you here, shared with a bunch of gophers, far too many rabbits, and some deer.  Leave the deer alone, but if you want to snack on the rabbits, feel free.

Anne stopped and stared at the chief, with horror visible in her almost-human eyes.  Her low, descant keening made her opinion on that very clear.

‘We seem to do OK on veggies’, scratched Daniel in the dirt.  Anne twittered at him and he added, ‘and raw meat doesn’t appeal’.

“Fair enough.  Come over this way, there’s a viewing area and some people that would like to see you.”

At the edge of the large enclosure, the ground sloped away to form a sort of moat.  Atop a tall wall, taller than Daniel figured he could jump, were familiar faces peering down.  His mother called out, “Daniel, is that you?”  He waved up at his mother with one of his battle-claws, snapping it happily.

She cringed, but tried her best to smile.  She waved back, uncertainly.  Daniel’s father hugged her tight, and called down, “Good work, son.  We’re proud of you.”

Anne’s mother was staring down at the things in the enclosure in horror.  “That black crab-thing is my daughter?  Why can’t we change them back?”

Anne winced at that, and slumped to the ground.  Daniel sidled up beside her, and stroked his battle claw over her carapace.  [It’ll be OK,] he trilled reassuringly.

Their parents left after a little more staring back and forth at each other.  Anne sighed softly, and let Daniel trill-talk her into exploring their new home.  They took their time walking around the perimeter, then wandering this way and that through the middle.  There were plenty of plants, and a small hollow in the middle that Anne curled up in.  From there, none of the walls were visible, and she huddled under a bush and made soft ticking noises that Daniel’s body interpreted as crying.

He clipped a few branches from nearby trees, draped them over his sweetie, and curled up beside her.  As they relaxed, their black carapaces slowly took on the patterns of the vegetation around them.

Later there was endless poking and prodding by medical technicians, several varied types of biologist, even an entomologist.  Nobody knew how to make head or tail of these new creatures in their midst.  Anne got tired of hearing it, but Daniel kept listening.  They didn’t fit any known animal species, and attempts to analyze their blood were going nowhere.  Daniel had allowed a few samples to be drawn from the soft area under his manipulator arms.  It hadn’t hurt, and was well worth it for the confusion on the scientists’ faces.

Daniel and Anne were the focus of many curious eyes whenever they emerged from the hollow.  Several of the teens from the mall showed up, some on crutches, holding a big banner thanking them for stopping the shooter.  There were lots of younger kids that seemed fascinated by the giant bugs, and especially thrilled whenever they played chameleon.  Anne even figured out how to turn herself pink, which made all the little girls cheer.

Two days later, a computer was set up in a sheltered area.  Daniel found typing out messages to be fairly easy, but Anne struggled with it.  She mostly dictated to him in trills, and he read the messages from their friends out to her in similar musical tones.  He was becoming quite adept at translating, and worried that Anne seemed to have given up on it.  Her appreciative gestures whenever he translated for her always drove off his concerns.  It felt nice to be needed.

They learned through the messages that in the end only one of the teens at the mall had died.  The other fatality had been Venned earlier, and when his change reverted he woke up in the morgue.  It had taken days to sort out the paperwork.

At the end of the week, the medical examiner returned.  He met them by the bars of the entry enclosure, and explained what they’d determined.  Both of them could happily exist on local plants with a few mineral supplements.  Those would be added to the feed bin beside the computer.

“Then there’s the issue of your original bodies,” said Frank, earnestly.  “The doctors reviewed the footage from the video cameras, and... well, not to put too fine a point on it, but Anne, you were at best seconds away from death when Daniel shoved you into the Machine.”

Anne squealed in concern, and huddled against her boyfriend.

“Daniel, you just had a shattered hip.  Painful, but quite treatable as long as you get your wounds stanched as soon as possible after changing back.  We could take you to the mall, and have a trauma team standing by within the hour.”

Daniel shook his body back and forth.  ‘I stay with Anne’, he scrawled on the ground, then cuddled against her.  ‘What will happen to her?’

“If she stays like this for the full three years, there’s a pretty good chance she’ll be OK at the end of it.  We don’t have much information on healing while transformed, but it does happen.  It’s not quick, though.  The doctors think it would be safest if she stayed like this for the duration.”

‘Then for the next three years, we’ll live here,’ Daniel said, hooting his answer to Anne as he wrote it.

Anne tried to burrow into his side, and trilled relievedly.  [I thought you would leave me here alone!  You could be human again...]

[I will always stand by your side.]

Frank just shook his head, and walked off.  “Crazy kids.”

Claw in claw, Anne and Daniel walked into the middle of the enclosure, and let the world fade away.  All they saw was each other, slowly mottling into greens and browns the longer they stayed still.

[Are you sure?] trilled Anne at last.

[Certain.  It’s not such a bad life, you know.  We don’t have to work, our food and shelter is provided.]

[Shelter?  There’s no shelter here, just trees!] Anne hooted angrily.  Her carapace went solid black again and her battle claws snapped at the air.

[Have you felt cold at all since we changed?] Daniel asked softly.

[Well, no,] Anne hooted in reply.

[We don’t need much.  We have each other.]

[And schoolwork.  They’ve put it on the computer for us.]

Daniel trilled a laugh.  [Figures.  See, it won’t be so bad.  Maybe we can go to graduation like this.]

Anne giggled.  [Can you imagine...]  Her colours started to meld into the background again.  [Thank you.  I don’t think I could handle this without you.]

Daniel cuddled close against Anne, chestplate to chestplate.  He slipped one of his manipulator arms under Anne’s chestplate, to trail against the sensitive areas there, and she cooed happily.  [Oooh!  Do that again.]  As Daniel continued exploring, Anne’s cooing got louder, and her shell started turning bright red.

A while later, after their shells had dulled back to mottled greens, Anne trilled quietly, [Well.  Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.]

[I could handle three years of that,] laughed Daniel.  [As long as it doesn’t result in either of us laying eggs.]

[Oh my!  I hope not.  I think I made you a copy of me, so we should both be female.]

Daniel burbled another laugh.  [So I’m not only some kind of insect warrior for three years, I’m also female?  Wow, we’re sinning in all kinds of ways.]

[What?]  Anne’s shell darkened again.

Daniel brought out manipulator arms to count the ways.  [We’re living together.  And having sex.  As females.  Not to mention the use of the Venn Machine, which your preacher keeps calling sinful.  And we’re some kind of insect things, I’m sure he’ll find some way for that to be sinful too.]

Anne sighed mournfully.  [I don’t want to live in sin.]

Daniel gestured for her to stand up, then lowered his forelegs in an approximation of a kneel.  [Anne-Marie Clarke, will you marry me?] he fluted.

[YES!]  Anne’s shout of joy resounded like a chord on a pipe organ.

[Then before God and nature, I declare us husband and wife.]

[But... can you just do that?]

[Dad’s a lay priest, and he’s taught me enough... it counts if we say it counts.  We’ll get the paperwork later.]

[Oh God.  What will my Mom think?]

[I saved your life.  She’ll come around.  You know, in three years when we’re human again.]

Anne giggled weakly.  [Sounds about right.]