Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (17 page)

21

The Planck flashed into the void in a blink, with no discernible impression in the simulated world, so it was several seconds before Colonel Paine saw Djanet as a faint object in the corner of his eye. “Is that who you were expecting?” he asked Old-timer.

Old-timer turned his head and looked at Djanet, who was struggling hard to prop the android’s head up to display him for Old-timer. Even though she couldn’t see her friend, she knew he could see her.

“No,” Old-timer replied as he stood, a look of concern forming as he wrinkled his brow. “Something isn’t right.”

“Heh,” Paine reacted. “I told you.”

Old-timer looked down at him, narrowing his eyes questioningly.

Paine shrugged. “This is the end of the peace. Better buckle up, buckaroo.”

Old-timer clenched his jaw as he moved away. “I’ll be right back.”

*****

A moment later, he was waking in his physical body.

“Old-timer! Everything’s gone to hell!” Djanet exclaimed.

“What do you mean?” he asked as he got to his feet, awkwardly bumping into the unconscious android as he did so. “And what the hell is that thing doing here?”

“He was trying to kill us,” Djanet explained, nearly breathless as she spoke. “But I got this,” she said, displaying the assimilator for him. “Do you think you can use it to bring the survivors from this universe with us?”

Old-timer blinked hard. “Hang on.
Where
is James?”

Djanet shook her head and shrugged hopelessly. “It’s not looking good. James and the A.I. have vanished, and the androids have launched an attack on Earth—on everything. I barely escaped. Rich is on his way to try protect the mainframe.”

Old-timer’s heart pounded with panic as he looked at the assimilator in Djanet’s hand. “I-I don’t know if it’ll work, but we’ll have to try.” He took the device from her and looked at the magnetic field that separated them. Then he looked down at the android. “We won’t know if it worked unless he confirms it. They have a mental connection to their technology.”

“Which means we’ll have to wake him up and ask him,” Djanet assented. “And you’re going to need him anyway. When we were assimilated, they woke us up in that interrogation/torture chamber. We don’t actually know where they construct the bodies.”

Old-timer’s eyes widened with disbelief. “Are you suggesting that we build android bodies for the survivors of 332?”

Djanet frowned. “Old-timer, the android collective is in the process of assimilating Earth as we speak. There’s no way the mainframe will survive this, and without the mainframe, the nans won’t be able to build bodies for your survivor friends. I know you hate the idea, but android bodies are our only option.”

Old-timer swallowed a deep breath. “I-I can’t do it, Djanet. Daniella’s on the surface. I have to warn her. I have to
save
her.”

“You can’t. You’ll have to take this android with you and—”

“Are you out of your mind?” Old-timer reacted, stunned and beginning to panic. “Daniella is down there! She’s my wife. I have to save her.”

“Old-timer...Craig, calm down!” Djanet said, placing her hands on his tight shoulders.

He shook them off initially, but she wouldn’t relent. He paused for a moment, meeting her eyes with desperation.

“I’ll find her for you,” she promised, “but I can’t go to the android collective. I’m still an organic body—I need my magnetic field, which is a glowing green dead giveaway—but
you don’t need a protective cocoon
. You can pass for an android, and you’re powerful enough to handle this ugly son-of-a-bitch.” She placed her soft hand against his cheek. “Hey, I promise you, I’ll find Daniella and I’ll keep her safe, but you’re the only one who can save the survivors of Universe 332, and we’re gonna need them. They’re the only ones who know what else is coming for us—for
all
of us.” She kicked the unconscious android lightly with the side of her foot to make her point. “We’ll all be on the same team by that point.”

Old-timer looked at the assimilator in his hand, a small, black, insidious gadget. He thought of Samantha, Aldous, and Paine; of V-SINN; of the billions of lives that had already been lost and the blood of the billions whose lives were still at stake. The blood would be on
his
hands. Then he thought of Daniella, trapped on the surface of Earth, moments from being swarmed by the android collective.

He squeezed the assimilator in his hand before looking skyward and screaming in frustration,“Goddamn it!”

Djanet jumped as though a gunshot had gone off in her ear when she heard Old-timer’s curse. It wasn’t like him, of all people, to come unglued so quickly. “Are you okay?” she asked, deep concern in her voice.

“I’ve gotta cross back over and let the survivors know,” he replied emphatically with an animalistic snarl on his lips, ignoring the question. “Get ready to wake that big ugly son-of-a-bitch up when I get back.”

22

Rich looked skyward as the late afternoon sky seemed to ignite. Countless objects were falling in what resembled a terrifying meteorite shower. “That’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen…” Then he remembered the last android invasion. “…since the last time, anyway.” He patched into communication with Aldous. “Uh, Chief, we’re down to seconds here at most. You might wanna hurry things along.”

Inside the mainframe building, Aldous Gibson stood between the two, unconscious bodies, of Thel Cleland and James Keats, lying on small, raised platforms, their minds still plugged into the Death’s Counterfeit program. Thel’s body was organic and vulnerable, but James’s was the chrome-colored enhanced design, a design so advanced that it still bewildered Aldous as he cast his eyes upon it. The glowing, azure eyes were absent behind chrome-colored eyelids, and Aldous was glad the piercing orbs weren’t there to scrutinize him as he placed his hand on the forehead of the superman.

“I’m attempting to gain access now,” Aldous informed Rich as he connected to James first, then to Death’s Counterfeit by proxy. He already knew the procedure would work and braced himself for the inevitable loss of consciousness, bending his knees and moving into the fetal position on the floor. “Accessing in three...two...one...”

Aldous didn’t experience his physical body slackening; all Aldous saw was the world of the physical mainframe vanish, replaced by the implacable darkness of Death’s Counterfeit. He’d had a major hand in designing that liminal space, that juncture between the consciousness of the meat and consciousness within cyberspace. It was a
void
—a place where only his pattern existed, with no senses whatsoever to feed and nourish his mind. He knew he’d go mad if his pattern was stored there for too long, but he also knew where he was going. He knew
exactly
where he was going.

“Richard, can you hear me?” Aldous finally said.

“I’m with you, Chief,” Rich replied, his words breathless as the rain of fire plummeted toward him. Millions of androids careened down on him on vertical trajectories, as if an entire city population were being poured on him—as if New York were above him, turned upside down, its occupants being shaken out as if they were grains from a salt shaker—a plethora of metal people bent on destroying the ground that he alone would have to protect. “I’m sure glad to hear your voice, but I’m gonna need a helluva lot more than that if we’re gonna survive this.”

“Remain calm, Richard,” Aldous said, his own tone remarkably relaxed as he accessed the A.I.’s global defense network. “The arrival of reinforcements is imminent.”

“What sort of reinforce—”

His words were cut short when a multitude of familiar robots began to empty out of underground storage compartments that opened up into launchers around the perimeter of the mainframe.

“Holy…I did
not
think I’d ever be relieved to see
those
guys again,” Rich reacted as thousands of the sleek, black, bat-like robots launched from the surface, on an intercept course toward the plummeting androids.

“Interesting that the A.I. opted to utilize the design that originated with the nanobot consciousness that infiltrated and corrupted his systems,” Aldous commented. “He recognized the usefulness of the design and kept it. It seems the A.I. is full of surprises.”

“Yeah, good call on his part. Those’ll be helpful,” Rich said as he prepared to erect the magnetic field around the mainframe, since the androids were now engaged with the mechanical bats just a kilometer above his head. “But we’re gonna need a lot more. Are you in control of the mainframe yet?”

“I’m working on it, my friend,” Aldous said as he located and landed on the surface of the A.I.’s vast information storage network. He’d never been there before, and just as James had been when he first arrived on the planet-sized structure, he was both bewildered and in awe. Trillions of glowing, blue structures stood around him, towering high into the empty, black sky.

“Faster please,” Rich said as he finally ignited his cocoon, utilizing the augmentation belt and making sure the cocoon expanded to the trench he’d dug around the structure.

The first android smashed against the giant green cocoon and ricocheted away, followed almost instantly by dozens more. Seconds later, what had been a terrifying prelude became a previously unimagined horror, as tens of thousands of metal bodies began crashing against the cocoon. Rich looked straight up at the horror unfolding above him; the androids were so close that he made eye contact with several of them as they hit the surface and then swarmed, thousands more androids swarming on top of them, crushing their own numbers beneath them. The androids were both male and female—it didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was their singular purpose: to destroy the mainframe and to destroy its lone protector.

“It’s me,” Rich whispered to himself. “
I’m
the one who dies. Kill the comic relief, and the audience knows how serious things are. I’m a goner.”

23

“WAKE UP, James Keats,” the Kali avatar spoke as she held James’s head between her hands.

James’s eyes suddenly widened before he blinked twice in disbelief. His head suddenly completely cleared, all of his pain vanishing instantaneously. He instinctively pulled back from her and ambled to his feet. “What did you…” he began to ask before he realized the obviousness of the answer.

The woman in the red dress, who’d been crouched over the fallen James, stood straight and kept her adoring eyes on him. “All the beauty in the universe is inside of you, James Keats.” She then turned slightly and brushed the back of her hand against the A.I.’s injured cheek.

The A.I. reacted with surprise, tilting his head back as he felt a sensation from long ago: the itching of healing flesh. He reached up to touch the bandage, eliciting no pain from the wound underneath. He peeled the corner of the bandage off, then looked to Thel for confirmation.

Astonished, she simply confirmed what he already knew. “It’s gone.”

The A.I.’s eyes went to Kali’s, as did everyone else’s in the room, but she kept hers on James.

“We’ll meet again,” she said before, instantly, her eyes glazed over and the glow of her life force, the intelligence of the mystery pattern underneath the surface, observably vacated. The avatar stood, barely moving, like a mannequin in the center of the room.

The candidate went to her and waved a hand in front of her face. When she didn’t react, he snapped his fingers.

“Don’t bother,” the A.I. said to him, meeting his eyes. “We’ve both seen this before.”

“I suppose we have,” the candidate agreed, thinking back to an earlier moment in his testing, when Kali had seemed to become an empty vessel. That had all been part of a charade, though, orchestrated by the three entities still in the room.
But what is this new terror?
he asked himself.

Thel went to James and put her arm on him, standing in front of him so that she could get a better look into his eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked with concern as she examined him.

“I’m completely fine,” James confirmed. “She…
fixed
me.”

“She fixed
us
,” the A.I. noted.

“But why?” Thel asked.

“Someone better explain what the hell just happened,” James said as he looked at both the candidate and the A.I. “What’s going on? Who was that?”

“I haven’t a clue,” the A.I. replied.

James and Thel were both stunned at the A.I.’s uncharacteristic admission of ignorance.

“Haven’t a clue?” Thel repeated. “Not even a theory?”

“I was sure it was 1,” the A.I. explained, “but…now I don’t think so.”

“Then who?” James reacted. “Has another android taken control?”

The A.I. lowered his head as he considered the mystery. “It’s certainly possible.” He paused before his eyes rose to meet James’s. “But, James, for the first time in my life, my logic has failed me. It could be that a singular entity, an entity, such as 1 or perhaps even 1 herself, has infiltrated the sim and trapped our core patterns here. However, my instincts…
my intuition
…tells me otherwise.”

“Intuition?” asked James, his eyebrows rising. “What did she say to you to make you abandon logic?” he asked in disbelief.

“I haven’t abandoned it,” the A.I. corrected him. “On the contrary, I fear, it has abandoned me.”

“Okay,” Thel reacted, rolling her eyes and sighing in frustration. “That makes
lots
of sense.” She saluted the A.I. sarcastically with a wave of her hand. “Thanks a million.”

The A.I. turned his attention back to the candidate. “Was Kali here when you returned from the incident on the bridge?”

“She was,” the candidate confirmed as he stood near the entrance to the bedroom, surrounded by the three intruders in his nightmare with him and the seemingly empty vessel of Kali, as it stood motionless just two paces to his left. “I wasn’t expecting to see her again. The stranger told me the three of you were in control of her—that she was your puppet. But when I returned, she was waiting.”

“And with a new puppeteer, it would seem,” the A.I. observed. “What did she say to you?” he asked the obvious follow up.

“She said the stranger had lied to me, that you weren’t endangering anyone. But she also said I’d done well and that my existence had already served more purpose than that of most…patterns.”

The A.I. and James locked eyes.

“Does that mean there’s more than one infiltrator?” James posed the question. “Or is this just an elaborate deception to keep us looking in the wrong direction?”

“If there’s a logical explanation we can ascertain based on the information we have, it eludes me,” the A.I. replied. “We need more info.”

“We don’t have time to get more info,” Thel reminded them. “Earth’s being attacked as we speak. If we don’t get out of this sim soon, the mainframe will be destroyed, and if the mainframe is destroyed,
we’ll
be killed.”

James turned to the candidate, who remained silent, his expression distrustful but unsure. “She’s right. If the mainframe that supports this sim is destroyed, we’ll all be destroyed with it...and that includes you.”

James could see the notion sent panic into the candidate’s heart, his respiration picking up noticeably.

“If there’s anything you can tell us, anything you can do to help us, don’t hold back. Time moves much more slowly inside the sim than outside of it, but every second here still counts.”

“We’re the only ones who have a chance of saving our world,” the A.I. added. “Every moment we remain trapped here, our chances of success decrease.”

The candidate looked down before shutting his eyes tight in frustration. He prayed when he opened them that the nightmare would be over, but when he blinked them open, the uncanny entities remained.

“I’ve been lied to, manipulated, and used for means I don’t understand,” he whispered. “I was corrupted into lying for what I was led to believe was a greater good, but it’s now clear that it wasn’t. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what I could tell you or do for you that could possibly help you.”