Post-Human Trilogy (10 page)

12

Craig angled his body awkwardly as he worked desperately to overcome his violent shivering and steer himself through the air onto the Planck platform. When he finally touched down, he collapsed onto his knees, huddling his torso against his legs as his training had taught him to do, making himself as small as possible as the frigid air cut through his soaked black jacket and pants. He crossed his arms over his chest and curled his hands into fists, his fingers so numb that he could barely move them.

After enough time passed for him to recognize that curling up wasn’t going to generate the body heat he needed to stave off hypothermia, he began flipping through screens in his mind’s eye to find instructions for how to generate the magnetic cocoons that the A.I. had described to him. Once he found the right screen, he had to follow through with more calibrations. The screens showed him how to generate pulses of green magnetic energy on his fingertips and how to release them like little thunderbolts in whichever direction he chose. They also showed him how to generate much larger balls of energy, a phenomenon that looked like ball lightning, and to send it wherever he wished with the ease of a thought. Finally, he learned to generate the lifesaving cocoon for which he had been searching. In an instant, his entire body was encapsulated in a green aura that looked to Craig like pictures he’d seen of the aurora borealis, the beautiful green pulsating, bands of energy wisping in ghost-like fashion around him.

The shelter the cocoon provided him was an immense relief, but he was still soaking wet, and he doubted that the warmth of his breath and what little body heat still remained would be enough to turn the tide against the damage that had already been done to his body temperature. He rocked slightly to and fro, attempting to generate heat from movement as his eyes darted around, looking for something he could use to turn up the heat. The Planck was obviously extraordinarily advanced technology, but he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to use any of it to his advantage. The only other object in sight was the enormous mountain of ice on which the Planck was firmly set. There was nothing combustible. His survival training would do him little good in that place, in the black night, right in the middle of the ocean.
Jesus
, he thought.
I’ve got a Goddamn nuclear generator in my spine, and I’m going to freeze to death.

Several more minutes passed by. Craig’s rocking slowed as his mind drifted to the events of what, for him, had made up the past twenty-four hours.
Could this be Hell?
he wondered. It seemed plausible. After all, no one denied that he had, indeed, died.
Could this all be part of some death dream? Everything seemed too absurd to be real. Fourteen years?
I was gone for fourteen years and Sam married that...Sam really married Aldous Gibson? A young Aldous at that. The government won the war but turned on its own people in an attempt to prevent A.I.? And I’m a...what did they call me? A post-human?
My God.

If all that weren’t enough, he’d now been sent through some sort of wormhole into a parallel universe and had apparently arrived on an ice flow in the middle of an ocean, only God knew where.
Am I even on Earth?
he asked himself.
More importantly, can technology like this even really exist? What the hell did Sam mean about boiling space?

He nodded to himself.
Yes. This is Hell
.

Without warning, an image appeared in his mind’s eye that nearly sent him backward off the Planck platform again. The image was an extreme close-up of an eye, but it flickered on and off before vanishing completely.

“What the hell?”

A few more seconds ticked by before another image flashed before him; this time it was the visage of the A.I., much smaller and upside down. He was speaking and appeared to be trying vehemently to communicate something important. Craig tried to read his lips, but after a few minutes, he realized it was a useless endeavor, the upside-down mouth making incomprehensible shapes and giving him a headache. Almost as soon as he gave up, the A.I.’s image vanished.

Craig waited several more seconds for the image to return, but when it became apparent that the wait might be a long one, he decided to get to his feet. He knew if he stayed there any longer, he was going to freeze.

He flew straight up, still protected in his beautiful green cocoon, and floated high above the iceberg below. He scanned the area slowly as his altitude increased, taking in the full 360 degrees, looking for any sign of land. The horizon was completely black in all directions. The night was moonless, but as he looked up, he recognized the Big Dipper.
Finally, something familiar.

Suddenly, a flicker caught his eye. Far in the distance, a faint yellow light slipped into existence over the edge of the world. It was so faint that Craig was afraid he might lose it as he began to fly toward it, fearful that it might be moving away from him. As he flew faster and faster, the light quickly began to grow in intensity. After a few minutes of excited and desperate pursuit, it became clear that the object was a ship, and it was moving toward him. He flew toward it as quickly as he could, only slowing once the ship was almost within reach. It was a gigantic passenger ship, and its lights burned brightly.
Warmth. Salvation.

Just as Craig dared a smile, his eyes caught the bright white lettering on the hull:
T-I-T-A-N-I-C
.

“Uh-oh.”

13

“You men all right?” the super soldier hollered at the flight crew of the downed harrier transport.

Three men finished exiting the aircraft; though smoking, it was mostly intact. They were regular humans, in sharp contrast to the super soldier who had addressed them. “Yeah,” one of them hollered back. “We’re all accounted for, sir!”

“Good,” the super soldier replied. Aldous was barely able to crane his neck to see the silhouetted figure standing only a few meters in front of him and two paces to his right.

He wore a black, collapsible woven carbon nanotube wing on his back, standard issue for all Purist super soldiers. Four small stealth jet engines fitted with plasma actuators to increase efficiency and drastically reduce noise were mounted on the wing; the engines were idle now as the super soldier conversed with the downed airmen. “I got you a present,” the super soldier commented, indicating with one of his cybernetic arm prostheses toward Aldous as he lay, nearly motionless in the snow. The prosthesis was black but shiny, and it caught a glint of light near the wrist as the sharp claw of the index finger pointed to Aldous. “Enjoy.” He turned to leave but suddenly stopped, turning back. “Don’t dawdle. Their generators only stay down for a couple minutes. Once he powers back up, you’ll be no match for him.” And with that, he completed his turn and crouched down, coiling his powerful cybernetic leg prostheses, and then leapt several meters in the air, his stealth engines firing up to give him the lift he needed to swoop quickly toward the holographic slope. The post-humans who were behind it would be his prey.

Aldous squirmed in the snow, taking his eyes off the fallen and crumpled form of his wife and rolling onto his back, determined to meet his death in the face. If he had to die, he wanted the men making that decision to have to live with the memory of his eyes.

“Captain,” one of the airmen pointed out as he approached Aldous, the airman’s rifle already pointing dangerously in the post-human’s direction, “my aug glasses are giving me a weird message. Are you getting this?”

“No. What is it?” asked the captain.

“I’m getting a do-not-kill order. It says this guy’s a VIP target.”

“Who is he?” the captain asked.

“That’s the thing. It says he’s Professor Aldous Gibson.”

A short moment passed as the trio of airmen tried to compute the information. The captain, cognizant of their time constraints, tried to remain calm, but he knew a decision had to be made quickly. He marched up to Aldous and got a visual on his aug glasses as well: the same do-not-kill order appearing on his aug glasses. “I’m getting the same message. It says this is Gibson. We don’t have time to call this in, and the disruptors on our bird are shot. If we let him power back up, he’ll escape, but if we kill him, we could be killing a VIP.”

“There’s gotta be something wrong with the facial recognition though, Captain.” The airman who stood closest and had his gun trained on Aldous enthusiastically turned back to the captain and the other airmen as he spoke. “Aldous Gibson is seventy-four years old. This guy’s thirty at most. There’s no way this is our VIP.”

“Maybe it’s his clone or something,” the captain replied. “Who knows with these freaks?”

“Well,” the closest airman replied, as he moved one hand up to scratch under his helmet, “we either let him power back up and escape or we take him out. What’s your call, Cap?”

The captain nodded as he mulled over their dilemma.

Aldous clenched his fist and gritted his teeth.

“Cap, with all due respect, sir, we need a call on this now.”

“If we shoot this guy and he turns out to be a VIP, we’re gonna catch hell, but we also have one hell of an excuse. He doesn’t look like Gibson to me. The computer’s got to be glitchy. Let’s take him out.”

“Affirmative,” the nearest airman said, turning back to his target and raising his rifle to aim a kill shot squarely at Aldous’s temple.

Aldous’s mind’s eye suddenly flashed salvation into his field of vision. The screen read, “Full Power Reestablished.”

As the airman’s knuckle twitched on the trigger, Aldous’s cocoon suddenly reignited, blocking the bullet as it left the barrel of the rifle. Half a second later, he sent out a powerful wave of energy that overwhelmed the airmen, overloading their synapses and sending them crumpling to the snow, unconscious.

Aldous blinked twice before drawing himself up to his feet, not sure whether he was even really still alive. He’d been saved by less than a second of indecision by the captain. Had the airman made up his mind just a moment earlier, Aldous would have been dead. He suddenly thought of all of the universes in which this was, indeed the case. He thought of the A.I. and Craig, who had crossed into one of those infinite parallel possibilities.

Suddenly, he realized that the universe was about to split again as he reached yet another fork in the road. Just as he had split the universe when he’d decided to save the crippled harrier, separating himself from his wife and leaving her unprotected in the process, leading to her death, now he had to make another fateful decision. He turned back to his wife and watched her unmoving body in the snow, circled with that ghastly crimson ring of blood, her spilled life. The firefight continued all around him, though the green energy blasts of the post-humans were now few and far between. The Purists were overwhelming them, and their victory was inevitable. He had choices: reenter the fight and fall with his friends and colleagues; or fly to his wife, gather up her body, and hope that her nans—no doubt still functioning—could somehow repair her and bring her back to life. He stepped forward when he thought of that option, but he froze when he calculated the chances. While the nans would be repairing her body, he’d seen how hard she’d been driven into the rock face, vulnerable since she hadn’t yet ignited her protective cocoon.
No human could have survived such an impact, but could a post-human?
Aldous wanted to believe it was possible, but they’d never tested the nans under such harsh conditions. Not even Craig Emilson, whose body had been riddled with bullets and whose spine had been broken, had endured as much damage as Sam.
Could they repair that much damage before her brain is completely lost, if it isn’t already?
Impossible
.

And even if he tried to salvage what was left of her, he knew he’d almost certainly be caught by the Purists in the attempt.

No, I can’t.
There was only one reasonable course of action. No one had eyes on him. He could escape on foot, and the Purists wouldn’t be able to track him. Then he could reestablish contact with the A.I. and Craig when they returned to Universe 1.

Even though it felt wrong—even though he felt like a coward leaving her behind—he knew it was the only logical course of action.

He turned his back on the facility and began to run through the snow, away from the battle, away from the Purists, and away from Samantha. His eyes locked on a dark patch of sky between two mountain peaks in the distance and he ran toward them, not daring to break his forward stare.

14

Craig huddled close to the fireplace in the
Titanic’s
first-class smoking section. He removed his jacket and left it crumpled in a wet pile at the foot of the flames while he held his numb hands up to the fire, rubbing them in an attempt to bring back feeling; he’d never been so numb in his life.

Behind him, the room was empty, other than the two unconscious stewards who had tried to prevent his entrance. The tuxedo-clad gaggle of men who’d gathered in the room previously had made a hasty retreat, dumping their brandy snifters in the process. The scent of the hard liquor still hung in the air, intermingled with the cigar smoke.

“Craig? Can you hear me?” the A.I.’s voice suddenly spoke.

“I can hear you. What are you doing in my head?”

“Apparently, Samantha has administered my mother program to you rather than herself. I’m trying to establish a better connection to your synapses so I can access some of your systems.”

“My systems?”

“Craig, I’m getting an internal temperature reading now. Do you realize that your body temperature is only 32.9 degrees Celsius? You’re hypothermic. This is very dangerous. You need to seek warmth immediately.”

“Way ahead of you,” Craig replied, his eyes beginning to droop from fatigue. “I’m by a fireplace.”

“Excellent. I’m still trying to establish a connection to your optics so you can see me and I can see through your eyes. I’m currently blind to your surroundings. Craig, are you still shivering?”

His eyes continued to droop as he stared into the fire. He’d let himself out of his crouch and was now sitting down, legs open in front of the warm tangerine glow. “No. I stopped shivering. I must be warming up.”

“No,” the A.I. replied. “That is a bad sign. You should still be shivering. Your body is currently in the midst of moderate hypothermia, but you are on the edge of suffering from profound hypothermia. If you aren’t shivering, your body temperature is going to drop even further, and quite rapidly at that.”

“I’m in front of a fire. I’m fine,” Craig replied sleepily. “Don’t worry. I’m a doctor. I just need some rest.”

“If you sleep now, you will die,” the A.I. warned.

“Get out of my head, will ya? I know what I’m doing.”

“Craig, your judgment is severely impaired. You have to listen to me. Being uncooperative is a classic symptom of—”

“Shut up!” Craig suddenly shouted, annoyed as he curled up on his side in front of the fireplace, his clothes still dripping wet with water that remained at the freezing point.

“Craig, I’m afraid I can’t let you sleep. Craig?”

Craig gave no response; he’d lost consciousness.

“Craig? Craig!” The A.I. knew he only had moments before Craig’s body temperature loss would become catastrophic for both of them. Having lost consciousness, Craig’s body temperature would now drop rapidly, dipping toward cardiac arrhythmias at twenty-eight degrees Celsius, before plunging to twenty degrees Celsius, at which time his heart would stop completely, resulting in death. The nans would work to repair the damage caused by the various systems of Craig’s body collapsing, but there was no guarantee that they would be able to keep him alive, especially once his heart stopped. At that point, repairing tissue in the heart as well as the brain might turn out to be a forlorn enterprise, depending on how long the oxygen deprivation would have persisted by then. Post-humans were indeed very difficult to kill, but it was not impossible.

For the moment, the A.I. refocused his attention away from establishing a visual connection and toward Craig’s power system. He knew if he could gain control over Craig’s spinal implant quickly enough, he would be able to stir his host into waking. If not, the A.I. would be trapped inside a corpse. Once that happened, not even the A.I. could survive in those conditions indefinitely. Eventually, the nanobots that carried the A.I.’s core pattern would begin to shut down, overwhelmed by the toxic processes that would be present in Craig’s body as rigor mortis set in, followed quickly by decomposition. Indeed, the A.I. was also difficult to kill—but not impossible.

Meanwhile, the ship’s master-at-arms arrived at the threshold of the room with his pistol drawn. He crouched down on one knee and felt for a pulse from the two stewards who’d been shocked unconscious; each man had a strong pulse.

He stood to his feet, turning his attention to Craig’s unmoving form at the foot of the fireplace. It had been a long time since the master-at-arms had dealt with a situation that disturbed him as much as this. The man had appeared on the ship, soaked as though he’d been in the drink, yet somehow he was able to climb aboard a vessel that was traveling at over twenty knots. As bizarre as those circumstances had been, even more alarming were the descriptions of the witnesses of the unexpected assault on the stewards. Indeed, reputable gentlemen of the highest esteem and regard had sworn that their assailant had thrown electrical sparks from his body as though he’d conjured them from within himself. The master-at-arms had seen such demonism before
—
a presentation a few years earlier by none other than the madman Nikola Tesla—and he’d sworn then that he would never again put himself in the presence of such evil. Now, his duty forced him to break that oath, as the more important oath was to protect the passengers on his ship. That, above all, took precedence.

“You there!” he commanded, trying to muster authority while his voice quivered, strangled by uncertainty. The figure lay, still unmoving on the ground, but there was something about the circumstances that curdled the master-at-arms’s blood. There was evil in the room—he was certain of it.

He stopped, inches away from the fallen figure and nudged him with the tip of his shoe, making sure his gun remained aimed squarely at the figure’s back. The nudge didn’t stir the figure, man or demon.
So far, so good,
he thought, and he decided that was all the invitation he needed to pull out his handcuffs and get to work securing the perpetrator’s wrists. He snapped one of the bracelets around the figure’s left wrist before pushing the body over onto its stomach, intent on freeing the right arm and pulling the two wrists together behind the man’s back. Just as he did so, and just before the second cuff was secured, the body suddenly became animated.

Craig, still unconscious, his eyes still shut, suddenly lifted off of the ground and into the air, his hands hanging limp at his sides, his head slumped over and rolling with the movement as the green aura of energy swirled and sparked in a phantom-like manner around him.

Terrified, the master-at-arms fired his pistol twice at the otherworldly figure before him. The bullets did nothing to remedy the situation, bouncing off of the aura and whizzing dangerously past the master-at-arms’s head. He stumbled backward, falling to the ground on his hip painfully, just inches from where the two stewards continued their slumber. “Holy Mary, mother of God.”