There were high-definition televisions lining the ticketing areas of JFK Airport, courtesy of the news organization featured on every screen. As Marty entered, carrying the package and metal briefcase he’d retrieved from a storage locker he couldn’t recall having purchased in the basement of his building, he was distracted by the broadcast and located a seat within viewing range. He still had no idea where he was going, or why.
    The stories were all the same things he’d seen earlier in the day, focusing primarily on the contagious insomnia story with predictable implication that insurgents were responsible, and he couldn’t quite pinpoint what had drawn him to sit down and watch.
    After a few minutes, the exaggeratedly-emoting newscasters segued into a commercial break, and as the feed quickly faded to black for no longer than was absolutely necessary, the same digital artifacts he’d seen at his apartment appeared briefly on the screen. He wondered whether there were service problems throughout the city, but his thoughts were quickly redirected to an inexplicable compulsion to buy a ticket for the next available flight to Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
    He also realized there was a wallet in the briefcase containing a credit card he could use to make the purchase, along with some other InfoCard he could use to check the package aboard the plane as luggage without inspection. He tracked down the nearest available automated kiosk and purchased a one-way ticket for a flight boarding forty minutes later.

    Mounted to the back of the seat in front of him was a small high-definition television. It was IPTV, but with a limited feed selection. Marty flipped through the list of available live streams using controls embedded in his armrest, halfheartedly seeking something interesting but ultimately deciding on America First News. He wished he could figure out why he’d even taken this flight, but every time he tried his brain would forcibly divert its attention to something else. Eventually he just gave up.
    A set of cheap headphones wrapped in plastic fell into his lap and he turned just in time to catch a bored-looking flight attendant tossing them carelessly from a white garbage bag. They were uncomfortable, but he clipped them to his ears and plugged them in anyway.
    He still wasn’t sure what it was that kept drawing him to this particular newsfeed. The stories had been nearly the same all day with no interesting or unpredictable developments, but he was unable to assuage a nagging sensation that there was something very important he needed to be informed about.
    Halfway through the flight, after the same news items had been reiterated in ten-minute blocks about seven or eight times, the digital artifacts once again danced across the screen. Dismissing it as service problems or atmospheric disruption he continued staring at the screen, faintly mouthing the recurring news stories from memory in synchronization with the anchorwoman. He understood now, as though it was a concept that had been clear to him for years, that he was on his way to kill someone.

    *

    ”Greetings, Sal,” said an unexpectedly pleasant voice that permeated the whole of the cockpit. “I understand we’ll be working together.”
    The small compartment was by far the most comfortable and intuitive he’d ever encountered in a military vehicle. Upon entering, a marshmallowy seat closed in behind him to seal the hatchway, reinforced from behind by at least a dozen layers of shielding. Every control in the cockpit was within immediate reach in his lap, and the view from the front of the machine was displayed on a set of curved high-definition screens that nearly entirely encompassed the front interior wall of the compartment, stretching at least as far back as his range of peripheral vision.
    His legs were enveloped by conforming, spongy padding, and he could get the machine to walk by pressing his legs firmly in a given direction. For manual control of the external arms, he could slip his own arms into similar spongy pockets to his immediate right and left. When not in use, the arms would be under the control of the artificial intelligence.
    ”Uh, hi,” he responded. “They, uh, didn’t tell me what to call you.”
    ”Kate will do.”
    ”Hi, then, Kate. Sorry, it’s just — I was expecting something a little more, uh…”
    ”Rudimentary.”
    ”I guess so, yeah.”
    ”If it would make you feel more comfortable, I could modulate my voice, pretend to be completely oblivious, and you could address me as HAL.”
    Sal laughed. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll adapt.”
    ”I thought so. Though, I can sing a charming rendition of Daisy Bell, if you’re ever interested.”
    ”I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.”
    They sat in uneasy silence for a moment, the awkwardness of which would have been exacerbated had she been a real human woman sitting there with him.
    ”Orange scent in your body wash?” she asked.
    ”How did you–”
    ”The cockpit is lined with chemical sensors. It helps me regulate life support systems and compensate for your various biochemical shifts. It has the added advantage of providing me an extremely acute sense of smell. For instance, how were the eggs?”
    ”Oh. Uh, mediocre.”
    Another awkward silence.
    ”What are we doing again today?” he asked eventually. “Something about arms, I think.”
    ”Arm interaction and balance testing.”
    ”Wanna get started?”
    ”Sure.”

    *

    Every rumor they’d heard about the Lone Star Republic had proven true. The GPS device the guards at the border had attached employed some kind of tamper-resistant seal, so that if one tried to remove it from one’s vehicle without the appropriate tools it would explode, spraying the interior of the vehicle with blue paint and probably some other chemical agent they weren’t as explicit about. Though ensured that the mechanism was only sensitive to intrusion and not regular jostling, they all still flinched at every bump in the road.
    ”Good lord ,” said Tate, about a mile after they’d gone through the painstaking process of crossing the border. “Why would anyone want to actually stay here? Is it really that big a problem?”
    Jenna shushed him. “Quiet. That stupid thing might be bugged.”
    ”I’d try to scan it to see if it’s actually even transmitting any kind of signal, but I’m afraid I’d detonate it. Do we have anything we can put over it so it doesn’t spray up our goddamned faces if it goes off?”
    ”Maybe we could take it off completely if we wrapped it in a couple socks or something and gave it a good yank,” said Mitch, obeying the speed limits more cautiously than usual.
    ”I don’t think they’d be too thrilled when we hand them a couple blue-paint-encrusted socks on our way out when they ask for their tracker back.” Jenna passed Tate a baseball cap from the back seat. It belonged to the other engineer sleeping on some jackets on the floor at the very rear of the vehicle.
    Nearly two hours later they arrived in Groom, where hundreds of people were gathered around the heavily-pocked metal goliath of Christian symbolism, their cars lining both sides of the road about an eighth of a mile in either direction. Mitch found a place to park as close to the cross as possible.
    ”Getting anything back there?” asked Tate.
    Jenna had been carefully studying the screens for the last half an hour, but there’d been no change in the readings. “Nope.”
    ”Shit.” Tate sighed. “Well, maybe we can find one of the bugs laying around somewhere or something if one of these assholes didn’t already find it and declare it the new messiah.” He opened his door and looked at Mitch. “Stay here and guard the van. Oh, and try not to wake Rip van Wetdream back there.”
    As Tate and Jenna crossed the highway, a tall, skinny couple with a slightly pudgy son and a wafer-thin teenage daughter who looked like she’d puked herself into amenorrhoea exited their nearby station wagon and jogged to join them.
    ”Come to see the miracle?” asked the mother.
    ”Uh. Sure.” Tate wondered for a moment where robotic bugs descending from the sky and eating a bunch of aluminum siding ranked in terms of miraculousness compared to walking on water and making an appearance on a grilled cheese sandwich.
    ”We drove in from Amarillo first thing after hearing about it.” The father slicked back his hair with a comb from his shirt pocket.
    ”Yeah, well, we came all the way from New Mexico . Guess we win Christian of the Month or something.” He grabbed Jenna’s arm and started shoving through the crowd toward the t-shaped monolith jutting from the ground like a stubby robot claw. Along the way they were accosted by several volunteers bearing collection bins at the ends of outstretched arms.
    Eventually they found someone who seemed to be in charge. As the man smiled friendlily at visitors, he repeated the same greeting at nobody in particular. “Greetings, welcome. Glad you could come.”
    Tate nodded at the man as they approached him, indicating he was interested in more than just saying hello. “Any idea which direction they went when they left? Or what they seemed to be doing? Were you able to catch one or maybe find one laying around on the ground somewhere?”
    ”Why do you feel the need to know?” The man chuckled toothily, a condescending expression that remained on his face as he spoke, breathily pushing out his words through smugly clenched teeth. “Can you not accept the mysteries of the Holy Spirit for what they are?”
    ”Well, if you could actually, I don’t know, prove this was a sign from God, maybe I’d be a little more inclined,” replied Tate.
    ”But faith is just that: faith. It requires no proof, or else it wouldn’t be faith.”
    ”So the idea is to ignore evidence that might be present in case it interferes with our beliefs? Neat.”
    ”When God gives us a sign, why do we have to check his handwriting? Or figure out what ink he used to write his message?”
    ”I, uh, it might have some kind of spiritual significance,” interjected Jenna, crowbarring into the conversation before Tate could provide another brusque and non-conducive response. “Like, maybe God is saying ‘look to whatever direction for the next miracle’. Or warning us against some adversary somewhere.”
    ”Ah. Well.” The man eased a little. “I watched them the whole while. When they took to the skies, they went that way.” He pointed.
    ”Well, uh, thanks, then,” said Tate, eager to take his leave. He mumbled to Jenna, “perhaps you should be marketing director.”
    ”Would I get a raise?”
    ”We’ll be lucky if we still have a company next week.”
    Deeper into the crowd, it became apparent that even if a few bugs had fallen or deactivated, they’d almost certainly been pulverized under the shuffling feet of the awestruck.
    ”You know,” said Jenna, “this apparently isn’t even the western hemisphere’s largest cross. I looked it up before we left. I read there’s a place that makes them all to the exact same height, so that they can all claim the title as a tourist attraction. Not sure how true that is.”
    ”Crazy. I wonder how they even market that kind of thing.” Peering upward, shielding his eyes from the sun with a flier he couldn’t remember being given, Tate assessed the damage, which seemed to be focused mostly around the topmost portions of the structure. “Hey, what do you suppose they were doing? The bugs, I mean, not the people building monster crosses.”
    ”My first thought was that they were treating it like some kind of antenna, but that doesn’t explain why they attacked it.” She was whispering at this point, speaking directly into his ear to avoid further displeasured looks from the people around them who were all quietly praying.
    ”Maybe they stopped to continue the script? Like, they tried to continue the Statue of Liberty, but got confused when the structure they’d started was no longer there.”
    ”Or they needed parts for repairs.”
    ”Maybe. Or they could’ve seen it as some kind of enemy. Or, shit, I don’t know. Let’s just get back to the van and get ourselves the hell out of here before we’re covered in blue paint and burned as heretics.” There was another possible explanation, he’d realized, the implications of which troubled him immensely: They were reproducing.

    *

Jabberwock