Post-Human Series Books 1-4 (70 page)

13

“I’m sure most of you know who I am,” I said as confidently as I could, a microphone in my hand as I stood on a small platform that the post-humans had erected in front of the crowd. As I looked out into the growing sea of faces, now numbering in the thousands, I was cognizant that it would be my last speaking engagement. I’d dazzled crowds for years, enthralling the assembled masses with my confident, eloquent, and—as some of my detractors might have said—arrogant demonstrations of future technology. I’d enraptured crowds by showing them possibilities made real, held in the palm of my hands or worn on my wrist or over my eyes. My face was synonymous with the future—with the impossible, possible. “If you don’t know who I am, I’m sure someone in the crowd will fill you in.”

They laughed nervously.

I paced as I collected my thoughts. I wondered how many of these keynote speeches I’d actually given and how many of them had been memory implants. It suddenly dawned on me that my earlier career had been implanted into the memories of all of those assembled as well. “We’ve been through a lot together,” I said, grimacing as I tried to comprehend that my life as I’d known it was over, never to return. “We’ve seen the world change a lot. I hope our shared experiences have built some level of trust between us. I hope you know I mean what I say. I hope you realize I’d
never
lie to you, for you mean too much to me.”

At that point, I could sense their fear; if I could have stretched out my arms to shelter them all, I would have.

“I’m here to promise you that you
will
be okay. Your families will remain together. Everyone here will be safe. But to accomplish this, we have to recognize the reality.” I sighed and gestured toward John and Haywire. “We’ve been evacuated by the authorities because there is a catastrophic danger approaching. It
will
not
pass. We can’t ignore it. We can’t fight it, but there is an action we must take if we are to overcome it.”

The fear rumbled through the crowd.

I held my hands up to soothe them and to quiet their gasps and murmurs; if I could have reached out to wipe the tears from the eyes of the mothers holding their little ones, looking on in terror, I would have. “What I ask of you will be simple. It’s nothing to fear.” I turned to the gateways and pointed to them. “Those, my friends, are exit points! I know they appear strange to you, and I know you’re as frightened of them as I was at first, but there’s no reason to be. They are a top-secret, last-resort evacuation vehicle, and they will be our salvation.”

The crowd was baffled into almost complete silence.

“Evacuating the city isn’t enough!” I announced, sending them into a temporary panic, but I knew they could be reeled back in. “The terrorist destruction that is coming will incinerate everything that does not escape through those gates!”

The silence returned. Now they knew the stakes.

“You will not be herded through those gates. You’re not animals. Everyone who walks through the gateway will do so of his or her own freewill. The choice is yours, but to show you that there is nothing to fear,” I said, nodding to the crowd, “I’ll be the first one to go through.” I handed the microphone to John and then stepped down from the platform and joined Haywire.

We walked to the gateway together.

“Well done, Professor,” she said, sounding impressed. She looped her arm in mine. “You should have seen that from my point of view. Brad Pitt giving an inspirational speech before risking his life? Definitely doable.”

“What?”

“It’s a joke. Geesh. Nobody has a sense of humor.”

I stepped to the foot of one of the gateways and gulped a breath of air, steeling myself. I turned back to the crowd; they were watching my every move, enraptured. I thought of the keynote I’d given a mere thirty-six hours earlier. I’d felt none of it was real then—as though I were playing a role. Now, I felt more purpose than I’d ever felt in my life. For as long as I’d lived, I’d wanted to make the future real, and now I finally had that chance. I could literally step into the future, lead all of them to a better world. I waved to the crowd and smiled confidently.

“Break on through to the other side,” Haywire encouraged, smiling. “I’ll see you there.”

I nodded. “Looking forward to it.”

I turned and entered the light.

14

WAKING UP was an experience that was denied to me. Fingers dug into my shoulder as a hand grasped me and pulled me roughly backward, out of the white light. I blinked several times, disoriented, as the world that I thought I’d left reappeared, though dramatically altered. “What the hell is going on?”

The sky was flashing, alternating between a deep indigo blue and a glowing pink; together, they blended into a dreadful purple hue, etched with strange patterns that appeared like fragments of code and small globes and sparks of light. The bizarre display was extraordinarily uncomfortable to observe and made it extremely difficult for me to regain my bearings.

All the while, Haywire held me firm with the hand that had snatched me from the light while she waved her other hand in front of me, manipulating data screens and lines of code that hovered just inches in front of my body, seemingly having been extracted from inside me. “Oh, dear God,” she suddenly said, her complexion turning even whiter than normal. “John! She embedded a lynchpin program into him!”

“A wh-hat?” I stammered.

“That’s impossible!” John exclaimed, addressing Haywire and ignoring me entirely again. “We would’ve detected it!”

“Not this one,” Haywire replied. “This one was split into almost a million different fragments, too small to be detected. When he tried to exit the sim, they were automatically activated and merged. We’re lucky. If it weren’t for the delay, we’d all be dead.”

I thrust my hand between them to get their attention. “Not another word unless it’s spoken to me in the form of an explanation!” I yelled, exasperated.

Haywire grimaced. “Kali is better than us,” she said with a defeated sigh. “She had hidden protections built into the sim, and now we’re screwed, big time.”

“What are you talking about? Why?”

“She embedded a lynchpin program into you, put it into your coding, splitting it into pieces and burying it so deep that we couldn’t detect it. It means if you leave the sim, Professor, the sim turns off.”

Absurdly, I held my hands up to my torso and placed my palms flat against the flesh where Haywire had been extracting the holographic coding. I suddenly felt as though I were an unwilling suicide bomber, explosives strapped and locked onto my chest. “You saved my life,” I uttered.

Haywire scoffed. “Heh. Yours is the only life I didn’t save, bub. If you’d exited, you would’ve been okay. It’s the rest of us that would’ve been screwed.”

“Haywire!” John whispered harshly, his eyes wild and threatening.

Haywire rolled her eyes. “Relax, John. He won’t do it.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Run through the exit,” Haywire replied. “You’re not a mass murderer now, are you, Professor?”

I was aghast at the suggestion, and the expression I displayed to John demonstrated that clearly. “How dare you?”

“It’s the logical move for you,” John countered. “All rational beings act in their own self-interest. Running out now guarantees your survival.”

“I shall take your inference that I am irrational as a compliment then.”

“Let us not forget, Professor, that you implied that we might be cyber-Nazis.”

“Right,” I conceded. “I suppose we’re even then. You’re not Nazis, and I’m not a selfish bastard who’d let thousands die so that I could save myself.” I turned back to Haywire. “What happens now?”

Haywire shook her head, refocusing. “The sim will purge itself.”

“Purge?” I asked.

Haywire offered no answer, so I turned back to John for an explanation.

“Worse than Dante or Blake,” he said.

15

“Lynchpin programs are designed to keep a principal character from exiting a sim,” Haywire further elaborated. “If one is triggered, it means the principal must have been contacted by and come under the influence of hackers—that’d be us. If you’ve got hackers in your sim, the most efficient defense is to purge the system.”

“The NPCs will turn on each other,” John translated, his tone foreboding. “They’ll tear one another apart in a Battle Royale until there’s only one left standing—one out of millions.”

“This is all in an effort to find and destroy
us
,” Haywire continued.

I imagined the carnage as they described it; my imagination failed me. “Is this, uh...purge, is it happening now?”

“It would’ve started the moment when the lynchpin program activated,” John confirmed. “It is not hyperbole to say that, at this moment, the streets of every major city in this sim are running with blood.”

The image caused me to grimace involuntarily. “So what do we do? Surely all is not lost?”

Haywire and John exchanged glances with each other.

“What?” I demanded.

“There’s no easy solution,” Haywire replied. “We have to bide our time and continue the evacuation as planned.”

I turned to the assembled masses of conscious entities, who remained corralled, huddled together, the post-human sentries who guarded them not taking action. “Then why aren’t you moving them out?”

“We can’t,” Haywire answered. “The gates are locked.”

“What?” I responded, terror gripping my simulated heart. “You mean we’re trapped?”

“Yes.”

“Then what do we do?”

“We have friends on the outside,” Haywire replied. “Once they realize we’ve been cut off and the gates are closed, they’ll go to work to hack their way in. Eventually, we’ll get those doors open.”

“In the meantime,” John interjected, “we have to keep these people safe, and we need to make sure Kali remains...” John trailed off, his head tilting back with surprise, concern narrowing his eyes. “Haywire, can you reach Mr. Big?”

“Oh no,” she whispered as John’s alarmed expression spread to hers. “No!” she shouted after several moments of trying to establish a connection. “This is crazy! Kali’s lynchpin program is more advanced than anything we’ve ever seen! It cut off our communication!”

“We’ve underestimated her, it seems,” John replied, slight admiration for Kali commingling with controlled alarm in his tone.

At that moment, four of the post-humans dressed in far more advanced military garb than I’d ever seen before, joined our huddle. “Our communication has been cut off,” one of them announced.

“We’re aware,” John replied. “Everyone must remain calm. If we panic, we’ll frighten those who are in our care.”

“Agreed,” one of the post-humans said with a firm nod.

“First things first,” John announced. “We must secure Kali’s safety.”

“What?” I reacted, stunned. “What makes you think
she
isn’t safe? Mr. Big is with her, right?”

“Yes, along with three other post-humans, but they’re also in the middle of a heavily populated urban sim that is in the throes of purging itself. NPCs do not play favorites. Right now, they’re pattern recognizers with only one purpose— to destroy anything that appears human. They won’t discriminate. If they find Kali, they will kill her, and if she dies, we all die.

16

“If this is a rescue mission, count me in,” said one of the post-human soldiers as he rested his gun on his shoulder.

“I’m afraid not, my friend,” John replied. “We need you and the others to remain here to guard the sims.” He turned to Haywire. “Head back to the city to make sure Kali is secure, and assist Mr. Big. The professor will join you.” He turned back to his friends in the military garb. “We can’t currently download any assistance from the outside, so we’ll have to make do with what we have here in the sim already. The professor will require means to protect himself so, gentlemen, if you’d be so kind...”

“Sure,” the post-human replied as he reached with his hand and grasped at his chest, as though he were trying to pull a spiderweb from his torso. A holographic copy of his armor came free in his hand, and he handed it to John, the image suddenly solidifying into a tangible object before my eyes.

“Here you go,” John said, thrusting the chest plate toward me. “Just slap it to your chest,” he said, demonstrating the motion for me with his own hand.

I did as he asked, slapping the armor absurdly against my chest, only to gasp in shock as the armor opened up and suctioned onto my body, sealing me inside it. It wasn’t just protection for my chest that I had acquired, however. The armor then snaked down my arms and legs, forming a full-body suit, gloves, boots and all.

“Good,” John said with an approving nod. “The armor is impenetrable in the sim. If you’re cornered by NPCs, they won’t be able to claw or bite their way through.” John turned back halfway to the post-human, his hand outstretched, and his palm flat in expectation as his eyes remained locked on mine. The post-human didn’t miss a beat, copying his large firearm and placing the copy in John’s open, waiting hand. John held it up for me to see. “This doesn’t fire bullets. It’s a pattern disruptor. Anything you shoot with it will come apart, whether it’s an NPC or a solid brick wall.” He placed it firmly in my hand. “Just make sure you don’t accidentally shoot yourself in the foot with it.”

The post-humans shared a laugh.

John turned to them briefly, but then turned back to me, his face completely humorless. “I’m serious. It would kill you.”

“Okay,” I replied sheepishly.

“As good as these protections and armaments are, you’re far from invulnerable,” John continued. “The armor will protect you against sharp objects like teeth, claws, knives—even bullets won’t be able to breach it. But if you find yourself surrounded by a large enough group of NPCs, make no mistake. They
will
be able to kill you. There’s nothing preventing them from crushing your windpipe or smothering you with their vast numbers.”

The thought conjured an image of a nasty death in my mind; I blinked hard to make it go away. I turned to the post-humans. I was adorned in their same protective equipment, minus one important exception. “What about a helmet?” I asked. “Don’t you think—”

John reached out swiftly and pulled my aug glasses from my face. Then he swiped his hand in front of a sensor on the front of the armor’s large collar. A helmet instantly formed around my head, as though it were inflating, yet the parts were solid. A HUD, far more advanced than my aug glasses, flashed on. Instantly, the pattern recognizers in my suit locked onto the assembled post-humans, but they quickly unlocked, dismissing them as non-targets. “Your gun is synched with your onboard system now. If you find yourself in the company of any hostile targets, it will guide your hands and shoot.”

“All you have to do is go along for the ride,” said the post-human who’d so generously copied his equipment for me.

“Literally,” Haywire jumped in. “John, you realize that if our communications have been cut off, then our teleportation capability will have gone along with it.”

“Teleportation?” I reacted, surprised. “
That’s
how you got here so fast?”

Haywire didn’t reply to me directly, instead pointing her thumb at me as she commented to John, “Check out Sherlock over here.”

“The trip is manageable,” John replied. “Just fly him there. When you are confident that Kali is secure, you, Mr. Big, the professor, and the others need to get back here as quickly as you can. There’s no telling how long it will take those on the outside to hack the gates, and you
don’t
want to be left behind.”

“You’re staying here?” I asked.

“Yes. This is the largest pocket of conscious sims, and they’ll need our protection. We’re off the beaten path, and I’m not expecting trouble, but if the villagers somehow catch wind that we’re here before they’ve finished purging themselves, we’ll be in for one hell of a fight.”

“But what can NPCs do to
you
?”

“Admittedly, not much,” John replied, “but a large enough herd of them can be extraordinarily dangerous. I’ll remain here to lead a repulse attack if necessary. Now, you two,” he said to Haywire and me, “go!” With that, he turned and walked with his four companions back down the incline, toward the helpless, confused crowd.

“We’re going to have to fly,” Haywire said, turning and walking toward a nearby clearing through the brush.

“But the helicopters are in the opposite direction,” I commented, confused as she walked away from the only mode of flight that I could see. “You’re going the wrong way.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Professor.” She bent over slightly and motioned for me to join her. I cocked my head back, astonished when I realized that she wanted me to get onto her back! “Are you joking?”

“Afraid not. Look, I’m not looking forward to it either. You’re going to be heavy as hell.”

“Are you telling me you can fly?”

Wordlessly, she turned to me and levitated a meter in the air before quickly coming back to earth. She sighed impatiently. “Enough demonstration? Now get onboard, big fella.”

I hesitantly lifted my leg up, allowing her to scoop first it, and then the other, under her arms.

“Oh damn!” she exhaled. “You’re heavy! Why the hell did John do this to me? I could have done this alone!”

She lifted off and I wrapped my arms tight around her torso.

“Because he doesn’t trust me,” I replied. “He thinks I’ll run through the gates.”