Post-Human Trilogy (56 page)

13

“We’re ready,” Neirbo declared. “Let’s initiate the launch,” he ordered his android companions. “Every second we wait here, more people are dying.”

“What’s our ETA for reaching our firing position?” Djanet asked.

“We’ll reach it in nine minutes,” Neirbo replied.

“Whoa,” Rich reacted. “How is that possible? Even at the speed of light, we couldn’t make it there that fast.”

“Wormholes,” Old-timer replied.

“If we’re going to use a wormhole,” Thel began, “then wouldn’t we reach our destination instantaneously?”

“No,” Neirbo replied. “The amount of energy required to make a wormhole big enough for this ship to get through limits how far the wormhole can go. Therefore, we’ll be using multiple, shorter wormholes to cut down the distance we have to travel.”

“Amazing,” Djanet observed. “It’s like suturing your way there, using a thread to pull the material of space together.”

“That’s how you were able to move so quickly into our solar system,” Thel realized. “Your technology is phenomenal. We’ve only ever been able to generate wormholes big enough for communication signals to pass through. To put large objects through is...like Djanet said: Amazing.”

Neirbo’s usually expressionless face showed a rare hint of pride in response to Thel’s admiration. “You’ve never been through a wormhole before?”

“No. None of my people have,” Thel replied.

“I have,” Old-timer stated. “We’re in for one wild ride, lady.”

Neirbo nodded. “We are indeed.” He turned to one of his subordinates. “Engage the first wormhole.”

The android simply put his hand on the controls in front of him, palm flat, and instantaneously the ship was enveloped in a sensory overload of warping light and sound. The ship shook unpredictably, sometimes in a low vibration, other times in a strong, rocking horse-like motion.

Rich stumbled to the floor, and Old-timer put his hand out to help him up. “You’d never last eight seconds on a bronco,” he said.

“I have no idea what that means,” Rich replied.

Suddenly, the ship exited the wormhole and slid back into regular space. The sun had doubled in size from their perspective, and it was immediately evident that they had traveled an enormous distance.

“Amazing,” Thel repeated before Neirbo gave the signal to initiate the next wormhole.

Space opened up and swallowed them once again.

14

The A.I. gestured with his left hand for James to take his place beside him in the operator’s position. James took a gulp of simulated air before stepping onto the platform. As soon as his feet met the floor, his consciousness became one with the reversed mainframe.

“I missed this,” James whispered.

“It was difficult for you to surrender your power,” the A.I. observed. “For a very good reason, I think.”

James was taken aback by the A.I.’s assertion. If anyone could understand how he felt, however, it was the A.I. “I felt it was too much power for any one person to have,” James confided.

“The acquisition of knowledge, wisdom, and imagination is
never
a bad thing, James.”

“But if knowledge is power and power corrupts, then what if absolute knowledge corrupts absolutely?”

“The flaw is in the second premise, James. Although power can, indeed, corrupt, those that it does corrupt are corrupted
precisely because
of their lack of wisdom, knowledge, and imagination.” The A.I. turned to James and put his hand on the human’s shoulder. “Seeing the interconnections between all things, between all beings, only increases a being’s ability to make ethical and wise decisions.
The more holistic a being’s knowledge becomes, the more ethical and moral that being becomes.
Corruption can only come from ignorance, whether that ignorance is willful or not. James, my son,
do not be afraid to know.
”

James nodded. He felt he’d just been given the advice he’d been waiting for his entire life. “I won’t be anymore.”

“Good, my son—and now,” the A.I. smiled, gesturing for James to peer with him into the immensity of the mainframe, “it is time for you to unleash your imagination as well. The androids are heading toward the sun on a mission to detonate an anti-matter missile and destroy the solar system—the nanobots will undoubtedly, anticipate this and attempt to intervene. Only
you
will be able to stop them.”

“How can I possibly do that? I’d have to be impossibly fast, strong—”

“The answer is in your question,” the A.I. replied. “You are right in your assertion that you will have to be faster, stronger, and smarter, amongst many other factors. You are incorrect in your assertion that this is impossible.”

James absorbed the A.I.’s words, then turned back to look at the massive expanse of the reversed mainframe; in the operators position, he was able to see all the information at once and access it as well. The knowledge at his disposal was a sea that expanded further than any person other than James could imagine.

“You’re suggesting that I become a...superman,” James observed.

“I am suggesting that you set yourself free, James. I am suggesting that you transcend. There are no limits.”

“But,” James questioned, “will I still be me?”

“Yes, James. Even before the advent of nanotechnology, the human body replaced over 90 percent of its matter every month, yet the people remained themselves. It is not the physical material that matters, James, only the integrity of the core pattern.”

The information continued to blaze golden into the horizon, shimmering and undulating against the perfectly black backdrop. It was as if James was standing upon a precipice, looking out into a vast ocean, about to take the leap he’d been waiting for his entire life. It felt right.

“I won’t be like other people anymore,” James observed, “but that’s the point, isn’t it? I don’t have to be. The future should never have made people more and more alike—it should have
increased our individuality.
I will be the first, but everyone will be able to be as they wish to be from now on.”

The A.I.’s eyes suddenly lit up, beaming with pride in his protégé. “There. You see what I mean about knowledge, wisdom, and imagination?
You are ready.
”

“I’m ready,” James agreed as he began to design his new material form. “How much time do we have?”

“Very little,” the A.I. answered, “but in the operator’s position, your mind works far faster than in the material world, meaning time seems to move much slower. You will have the time necessary to become that which you need to become.”

15

“We’re coming up on our targeting area,” Neirbo announced, barely audible over the uncanny warping of sound generated by the wormhole. Open, black, unwarped space was suddenly visible at the end of the tunnel and then, in an instant, the ship cruised out of the kaleidoscope of light and sound and fury. There was no warning. The vessel jumped out of the wormhole and directly into the waiting mouth of a massive cloud of nans.

“Evasive maneuvers!” Neirbo shouted out as the sun and stars were immediately blotted out by the unrelenting attack of the nanobots.

The attacking nans were everywhere. Old-timer looked directly above him and then directly below his feet through the invisible skin of the ship and watched as the nans shredded the hull surface. “That is one big cat,” he muttered, “and we’re the goldfish.”

“How long can this hull withstand an attack like this?” Thel desperately yelled to Neirbo.

Before he could answer, the ship power abruptly cut off, leaving the ship in the dark. Everyone inside was tossed brutally around in the darkness as the nans batted the ship from side to side, jerking it wildly the way a lion shakes a rabbit to snap its neck. The artificial gravity gave way as the figures inside tumbled like coins in the piggy bank of a child hungry for ice cream. Djanet’s face smashed roughly into the unforgiving wall, breaking her nose and shifting it noticeably to the left side. Rich, who had been struggling desperately to reach her, threw his body over hers to protect her.

“They’ve cut off our power! The engines are dead!” one of Neirbo’s subordinates reported.

“What do we do now?” Old-timer demanded of Neirbo. Both men had managed to grab hold of a small metallic outcrop and had hedged themselves into relative safety as the ship continued to be battered relentlessly.

“There’s no power! We can’t target or fire the missile!” Neirbo shouted back.

“We can’t just wait here to get ripped to shreds!” Old-timer replied.

Neirbo looked down at the missile, still docked in the center of the room on a low, long platform. “One of you will have to detonate the missile manually!”

Old-timer’s mouth fell open in shock and disgust. “What? One of
us
? This was
your
people’s plan! Not ours!”

“We’ll have to repair the ship and navigate home! Only we have the technical knowledge to open the wormholes!”

“You rotten piece of filth!” Old-timer shouted, reaching a level of fury that he hadn’t been to in many decades. “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? All that bull about how ‘it’s our law’ and ‘only people native to a solar system can destroy it’ was just a ruse to get us out here!”

“That’s not true,” Neirbo responded.

“Shove it!” Old-timer continued to fury.

Thel, Djanet, and Rich looked on in awe, never having seen Old-timer in such a state. “This isn’t your first rodeo! You’ve done this before with other solar systems! You knew the nans were most likely going to be here already, and you brought us here as sacrificial lambs!”

“That is ridiculous!” Neirbo fired back. “You are here of your own free will!”

“Bull! You tricked us!”

“Old-timer! They saved us from the nans! You told us that yourself!” Thel interjected. “Now you’re saying they tricked us?”

“We’re not here freely, Thel!” Old-timer responded. “Look around you! There are two of them for every one of us!”

“You are here of your own free will,” Neirbo repeated.

“We shouldn’t even be considering this!” Thel interjected. “We should be working together to get the power back online!”

“They’ll tear through the ship before we can do that!” Neirbo countered. “One of you has to manually detonate the missile and lead them away!”

“You can manually shove that missile up your ass!” Old-timer spat back.

“If none of you will make the sacrifice, all of us will die!” Neirbo shouted. “One of you must guide the missile toward the sun and lead the nans away from us!”

“And detonate it?” Rich shot back. “That’s a suicide run!”

“It’s a sacrifice to save the rest of us!” Neirbo replied.

“Then sacrifice one of
your
men!” Djanet chimed in.

“Any loss of one of my men lowers the chance that we’ll be able to repair the ship in time and open a wormhole fast enough to escape!”

“And we’re expendable, isn’t that right?” Old-timer bellowed.

James’s deletion suddenly flashed in front of Thel’s eyes again—vividly. She jolted with the memory. The picture of the shadowy nan consciousness, the figure that finally destroyed the most important person in Thel’s life, blazed in her memory. At that moment, she suddenly realized that she was in its presence once again. She looked up through the invisible skin of the ship, through the dark, smoky swarm of the nans, and saw the shadowy man standing just above her, looking down at the trapped, pathetic people below. The figure had no face, but Thel swore she could see a mocking smile in the blackness.

“We’re running out of time!” Neirbo warned. “They’ll be in here with us in a matter of minutes! Maybe seconds!”

“I’ll do it,” Thel suddenly said, calmly and cooly.

16

“
Thel! You can’t!” Djanet exclaimed.

“There is no way in hell that I’m letting you do that,” Old-timer growled.

“You don’t have the right to stop me, Craig.”

“They’re using you like a pawn,” Old-timer replied.

“She has made her choice,” Neirbo stated, a slight sense of relief in his voice. “You should honor her sacrifice.”

“You should honor my foot up your ass!” Old-timer blasted back as he jumped across the room, pouncing on the missile platform within reach of Neirbo. Before he could get his outstretched hands around Neirbo’s neck, however, Neirbo revealed the gun that had been concealed inside his coat sleeve.

“Wait!” Thel shouted, holding her hand out in desperation to signal for Neirbo to stop.

Old-timer froze, surprise and fury comingling across his face. “Gutless.”

“Rest assured that this gun will, indeed, terminate you,” Neirbo stated. “If you make any move to try and prevent your companion from her sacrifice, I will kill you.”

“No! Old-timer! Back away!” Thel shouted. “No one else will die!”

Old-timer’s eyes remained fixed, dark and deadly, on Neirbo. “You better kill me, son, because if you don’t, I’m sure as hell going to kill you.”

“Stop it, Craig!”

“I warned you,” Neirbo stated expressionlessly. The gun fired without warning. Gold sparks flashed ever so briefly before Old-timer’s body recoiled. A short moment past before he dropped to his knees. Another violent shaking of the ship from the nans tossed him roughly to Neirbo’s feet. Thel immediately rushed to his side, holding on to him tightly as the ship continued to shimmer and jolt. “Craig,” she said helplessly as Old-timer remained unresponsive. Before she had time to process the events of the previous few seconds, the hot barrel of the gun was an inch from her temple.

“We are out of time,” said Neirbo. “You must do what you promised.”

“I thought we were free,” Thel replied, mockery at the notion dripping from her lips.

“We both know we’re past that now. Undock the missile and lead the nanobots away.”

“The gun doesn’t scare me. I’ll die anyway,” Thel replied.

“That’s true. But if I have to shoot you, I’ll move on to your other friends,” Neirbo responded in his factual manner. “I’ll kill all of you.”

“Don’t do it, Thel!” Djanet shouted.

Neirbo made the slightest of gestures to his subordinates, and instantly each of them had a weapon trained on Djanet and Rich. “Speak again and you die.” He kept his eyes on Thel. “This is your last chance. Undock the missile and do what you promised. If you hesitate again, I’ll shoot.”

Thel had no choice. She moved away from Old-timer and toward the missile platform, steadying herself as the ship continued to move violently. She braced herself against the long, gray missile. “Now what?”

Without moving, Neirbo mentally unlocked the missile so that it became loose from the platform. “Remove it.”

Suddenly, the ship jolted so violently that it spun a complete 360 degrees. The nans had unexpectedly let it go, and it began to list aimlessly through space. Everyone onboard was stunned and peered through the invisible skin of the ship to see what had happened.

“They let us go,” said a flabbergasted Neirbo. “What is happening?”

The nans had reacted in unison like a flock of birds sensing danger before an earthquake. They assembled together and waited in a malevolent black cloud.

“Someone’s coming,” Thel suddenly sensed.

Not far from the nans, space began to ripple like the surface of a pond on a breezy fall day. The ripple quickly became a blinding white tear as yet another wormhole opened up. A platinum object shot free from space and cut right through the cloud of nans like a hunter’s bullet slicing into a flock of geese.

Although no one onboard could possibly have known it at the time,
James Keats had arrived
.