Post-Human Trilogy (53 page)

4

“J
ames!” Thel exclaimed. “When was this recorded?”

“Alejandra and I saw this live just before we came to get you on the Purist ship,” Old-timer replied.

“Who is talking to James?” Thel asked.

“It is
1
,” Neirbo replied.

“1?”

“There must be a voice for the human race,” Neirbo explained. “Since we are all of equal intelligence and ability, we randomly select a person to be our leader every 1,000 days. This person takes on the moniker of
1
and spends that time jacked into our collective consciousness. She is the only person who can communicate with all of us at once; she leads us. It is a tremendous burden—but also the highest honor.”

“Why is she talking to James?” Thel asked, still confused.

“Listen,” Neirbo said in his typically toneless voice.

Thel watched the exchange from the point of view of 1. “We wish for you to join with us,” 1 said to James. “We have to fight the nans here before they join with the other organisms of their type that are already established throughout the universe. There can be no safety for the human species in this universe until the last of the nans are finally eliminated.”

James’s expression was terrifying—Thel could read the hopelessness in his eyes. “I appreciate the offer,” James said, “but there’s a problem.”

“What is it?” asked 1.

“I’m not alone,” James said ominously.

“What do you mean?” 1 asked.

“The A.I. still exists,” James said, suddenly meeting her eyes, “and it has become part of me,” he admitted. Thel gasped with fright.

“What?” 1 asked in a whisper. 1’s terror could be felt by those watching. “It’s here? Now?”

“Yes,” the A.I. interjected as he suddenly appeared with his all-too-familiar sadistic grin exposing his razor teeth.

“Then I’m sorry,” 1 replied with regret, “You’ve been corrupted too. There’s no hope for you.” She paused for a moment, eyes locked with James. Thel was able to look right into his eyes and see the terror—she had never seen him like that—the blackness of all hope lost. She knew he was gone.

“No!” she yelled out as she twisted her body in agony. “No!” she yelled out again as she began to sob. “No,” she said one last time before the sobs consumed her.

Old-timer turned to Neirbo. “Let them go,” he whispered.

Neirbo nodded in silent agreement and, with a simple thought, the three prisoners were freed. Rich rushed to embrace Djanet, who touched his damaged face lightly and carefully; she was unable to find words regarding the ghastly appearance of the metal structure underneath where his cheekbone should have been. They both quickly turned to Thel and comforted her as she sobbed. Djanet held Thel’s head on her shoulder, taking the guttural heaves of utter agony against her chest, while Rich held her hand tightly.

Old-timer stood and watched the misery.
This is the future?
he thought to himself. The optimism that he had worked his entire life to cultivate about the destiny of humanity was wrong? How could this be? How could he have been so wrong?

“You’d better tell them the rest,” Neirbo said, breaking the silence.

“The rest?” Rich reacted. “How much worse does this get?”

“A lot worse, old buddy. The nans were waiting to attack us. They were in our bodies and in everything that James had re-created—absolutely everything. Alejandra and I tried to warn as many of the survivors as we could, but—”

“But what?” Rich asked, the dread of realizing that his family still had the nans within them gripping his insides and drying out his mouth.

“They didn’t have much warning. I...I saw Daniella die. They didn’t deactivate quickly enough...” Old-timer couldn’t say another word.

Djanet, Rich, and even Thel were silenced by Old-timer’s revelation. If Old-timer hadn’t been able to save his own wife, then what were the chances that any of the other survivors had made it? They’d been ripped apart by the nans—
again
.

“The nanobots from this solar system are currently attacking our collective,” Neirbo stated, adding to the implacable ghoulishness of the circumstances. “Every moment, they are killing millions of our numbers,” he said, making sure to meet the eyes of everyone in the room, “and they are headed this way. Soon, it will be us they are consuming.”

“Then why don’t you retreat?” Old-timer demanded. “Why don’t you get all of us the hell out of here before it’s too late?”

“If we do that, our billions of lives—your billions of lives as well—will have been sacrificed for nothing,” Neirbo snapped back.

“But what alternative do you have?” Djanet asked.

Neirbo opened his mouth to respond before suddenly jolting back, as though coming to attention for a superior—this was indeed the case.

“We
can
fight back,” said 1 as she stepped into the room in her physical form, “and we can destroy them all.”

5

1’s beauty was astonishing. She was the kind of woman that made it so that it didn’t matter how a man might love his wife, he would still find himself drifting off into pleasant daydreams around her. Her hair was blonde, and each strand shone brightly, even catching low light so it would draw eyes. Her figure was strong but feminine—her moves were graceful and athletic like a dancer. Her eyes were...well, Old-timer couldn’t help thinking to himself that they were more stunning than Alejandra’s.

“It’s a great honor to meet you in person,” Neirbo breathlessly whispered, lowering his gaze respectfully. It wasn’t required that one bow in respect of 1, but there was something about being in the presence of a figure with that much power that made it impossible not to be humbled.

“You’ve done very well, Neirbo,” 1 replied graciously. “I think they are ready to listen now. I’ll take it from here. You may leave.”

“I thank you,” Neirbo replied, bowing again unconsciously before leaving the room.

“Thank God somebody finally kicked the killjoy out,” Rich said as he watched the door to the room close behind Neirbo.

“His methods were strict, but unfortunately necessary, given our current, grave situation,” 1 replied. “Still, I felt his presence was no longer an asset. I am sorry for everything that you and your friends have had to endure,” she said, turning as she spoke so that she met the eyes of everyone in the room, one by one. “We came here to save you, but in the end, I fear we will have lost far more of our numbers than we will have saved of yours.”

“You said there was a way that we could fight them,” said Djanet, cutting to the chase. “How?”

1 smiled a strained smile with her mouth, but there was something in her eyes that told Djanet that what she was about to say would not be comforting. “There is a way—but whether we follow that path will be up to you.”

“Up to us? Why can’t anyone here give a straight answer?” Rich reacted with exasperation.

“I thought you were the person in charge, 1,” Old-timer interjected, “so why would any decisions be up to us?”

“We have a rule that prevents even me from making a decision of this gravity about a solar system to which we are alien,” replied 1. “This is
your
home.
You
must be the ones to decide its fate.”

“Lady, can you please, please, pretty please with sugar on top cut the bull and just tell us what the hell you’re talking about?” Rich asked, the frustration causing him to plead while balling his hands into fists. He promised himself he wouldn’t attack this woman if she finally gave a straight answer. She had one chance left.

“What decision are you talking about?” Old-timer asked, outwardly calm, but his voice stern as he, too, was rapidly running out of patience.

1 saw their impatience transforming into aggression before her eyes and was pleased—
they were ready to make the choice.
“We have the opportunity to kill every nanobot in this solar system and to make sure they cannot use this solar system’s rich resources to reproduce further.”

“What’s the catch?” asked Djanet.

“It requires the destruction of your sun,” 1 answered with a frank and deadly seriousness, “and therefore the destruction of this system.”

6

“Okay. Talk,” James responded with resignation. Katherine was right—he really wasn’t going anywhere.

“Thank you, my son,” the A.I. replied with a warm smile.

My son
, James repeated in his head. The words had once been so comforting. The A.I. used to be very much like a father to James—but a father that had since forsaken him. “Why don’t you start by telling me where I am?”

“Certainly,” the A.I. replied. “You’re in the mirror image of the mainframe.”

The answer startled James as something in his memory suddenly jarred loose—a theory he had worked on years earlier but had mostly forgotten in the meantime. “Mirror image? You mean...the reverse?”

Jim and the A.I. smiled when they saw that James remembered. “I knew he’d remember,” Jim said.

“So did I,” the A.I. concurred. “Yes, James. You are in the reverse side of the mainframe.”

James’s eyes widened as he began to realize the enormity of the A.I.’s revelation. “I wrote about the concept of
reversible computing
a few years ago. It was a theoretical method for building astronomically sized computers but minimizing the heat they would generate. It never gained any traction in the Governing Council.”

“That’s right, James,” the A.I. replied. “It gained traction with me, however,” the A.I. said, tapping his temple. “I took the notion and started working on it and was able to create a fully functioning mirror image of the mainframe.”

“This is the part I never understood,” Katherine interjected. “Why? I’ve been here for a year and a half, yet I still don’t understand why you would build a mirror image of the mainframe.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me?” Jim asked her. “I could’ve explained it.”

“I figured I wouldn’t understand,” Katherine admitted, adding, “then I forgot about it.”

“Entropy,” James replied. “It circumvents the law of thermodynamics.”

“Okay.
That’s
why I didn’t ask,” Katherine replied, rolling her eyes and exhaling an exasperated sigh.

“No, honey, it’s simple actually,” Jim said patiently as he gently began his explanation for her. James remembered when he used to patiently try to explain things to Katherine; he didn’t miss it.

“Computers have always been irreversible, which means you can’t run them backward. Once a computer moves from one step to the next, it erases the old data because saving it would take up valuable memory.”

“When you erase the data, theoretically, it has to go somewhere,” James continued, “so, according to the law of thermodynamics, it is released into the surrounding environment in the form of heat.”

“That’s why computers generate heat,” Jim concluded for Katherine, “and it’s a limiting factor to how big computers can get, since otherwise massive computers would actually create so much heat that they would cause extreme global warming.”

Katherine smiled. “Wow. I actually understood that. So we’re in the saved memory of the mainframe?”

“Yes,” Jim replied, relieved that she understood, “but not the intentionally saved memory. We’re the stuff that’s been deleted but not completely destroyed so as to keep the mainframe cool.”

“That’s why our patterns are still intact,” James added. “That’s why we’re still alive.”

“That’s right, James,” confirmed the A.I.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d done this?” James asked.

“At the time, it certainly didn’t seem important. I was experimenting with several different methods for making my growth more efficient. This method ended up saving my life, and all of yours as well.”

James’s eyes were intense with concentration as he continued to put the pieces together, excitedly solving the puzzle. “If you didn’t tell the Council and you didn’t inform me, then the nans didn’t know about it either!”

“Right again, James,” the A.I. said, beginning to smile again.

“They deleted you thinking that you’d just dissipate into heat...” James continued, “but your pattern remained intact—and the same for Katherine and my doppelganger.”

“Jim,” Katherine interjected, sternly correcting James.

“He’s no longer
just a copy
of you, James,” the A.I. explained. “When he arrived here, I was able to change his program so that he had the ability to form long-term memories. He’s now a completely unique person from you, with a different pattern and his own experiences and lessons. He’s
human
now.”

James was silent for a moment. He turned and regarded his ghostly twin and considered the A.I.’s words. What once had been a simple copy of his pattern had lived a completely separate life from him for over a year and a half and was now a different person. They shared most of their life and memories and would always be bonded because of it, yet theoretically, Jim could live for thousands of years and choose an infinite number of different paths that would take him on journeys to places James might never see. Soon, he would become more like a brother than a copy—and then eventually he might become like a stranger. James wondered if he might not even recognize his mirror image in 1,000 years. Jim smiled at James as though he knew what James was thinking—he probably did. James smiled back. “I’m sorry about that, Jim.”

“No harm. So are you convinced, or do you need to know more?” Jim asked.

“It makes sense,” James admitted, “and I
want
this to be real, but there are still things I don’t understand.”

“You need only to ask, and all the answers will be provided,” replied the A.I.

James nodded as he considered the myriad of questions that he still had. “How were the nans able to infiltrate the system and delete you without it being noticed by anyone? Didn’t you put up a fight?”

“I held them off at first so I could gain more information and understand the situation,” the A.I. answered. “The nan consciousness communicated its intention of deleting me and that an invasion force of alien nans were on the way. Once I was armed with this information, I was able to run several trillion game theory simulations in a matter of a few seconds and determined that the best move was to allow them to delete me.”

“But why?” James asked. “How could that have been the best move? They’ve done more damage than you can imagine.”

“On the contrary, my son,
I can imagine
it. I knew it was going to happen, but I also knew that this course of events gave us the best chance to arrive at the
best
possible outcome.”

“I don’t understand,” James admitted. “If you ran several trillion simulated scenarios, then surely there had to have been better outcomes than this! Do you realize that they’ve murdered almost everyone in the solar system and who knows how many more of the machine humans?”

The A.I. smiled calmly; he had patience that made him an ideal teacher. “In this instance, your mistake is to assume that
this
is the outcome. It certainly is not. We are still moving toward the ultimate outcome.”

“But how can it get better?” James asked. “They’ve murdered billions of people, and we can’t bring them back this time. We’ve lost control of the nans.”

“Once you’ve used the word ‘can’t,’ you’ve already defeated yourself. Indeed, my son,
there
is
a way
to bring everyone back.”