Wormhole (7 page)

Analytical feelers played out across the millions of synaptic connections into the human brains, seeking sufficient data to make a decision. As the probe intensified, the humans countered, severing connections almost as fast as the Other could instantiate them. One of the humans detached itself from the group, turning
its focus in direct opposition to the probe, the one that thought of itself as Mark.

The Other was not surprised.

Mark felt the presence so strongly that his view of the command deck shifted, the walls fading away until he appeared to be in a transparent bubble that reminded him of the inside of one of those novelty plasma balls. Only here, the lightning launched itself from the outer sphere toward the center. It crawled across his body, working its way into every synapse of his brain, the pain even more intense than the first time he had tried on the headset. And behind those thought tendrils Mark felt the alien consciousness, felt its need to know his deepest thoughts and purposes.

Reacting automatically, Mark blocked the attacks using the same techniques Jack had forced him to practice against Jennifer and Heather. And although his defenses held, the pain intensified, easing momentarily whenever he became distracted and let a barrier drop.

Shit. The damned thing was trying to train him with such rapid punishment-and-reward variations it would soon have him salivating on demand like Pavlov’s dog. The bad news was that the broad spectrum of the attack seemed to be working. Mark felt sure that somewhere out there a voodoo priest was leaning over a rustic wooden table, rapidly pushing pins into a little cloth Mark doll.

Mark was certain of one thing. If he succumbed, this bastard of an alien computer would turn its full attention to Jennifer and Heather next. But if he could just hold on long enough to let those two find a security hole, they’d have a chance to override the ship’s defenses. At least he hoped so.

Mark steeled himself, cycling through remembered meditative states in an attempt to wall off the pain. Although he failed to accomplish this objective, he came close enough that the Other’s progress at breaking him slowed from a run to a crawl.

Jennifer felt the alien presence ease its attack on her mind as Mark withdrew from their three-way mental link, somehow taking with him the vast majority of the alien AI’s attention. Apparently the opportunity to crush the isolated opponent was the bait that caused the AI to withdraw.

Feeling a shudder pass through Heather’s mind, Jen focused on her.

Stay with me. Mark’s doing what he has to.

The flood of visions that came back at her almost knocked Jennifer out of the link. Jesus. Was this what Heather had to deal with every day?

Hurry
, Heather’s thoughts whispered.
Mark can’t hold out long. Not against that
.

Jen directed her attention to the ship’s command protocol, returning to the deepest link she’d been able to access. Scanning quickly, she raced through the data partitions, letting her mind brush each one without delving into the data layers beneath. Whereas human data storage was commonly organized into a binary tree enabling log(n) lookup, these alien layers formed intricate fractal patterns, each using a different prime as its computational numeric base, numeric calculations replaced by manipulation of the color spectrum formed by the fractal frequencies.

The more important or classified the data, the deeper into the prime sequence its corresponding fractal layer. The protection was provided, not by encryption, but by the sheer quantity
and complexity of the interleaved data nodes. On past attempts, Jennifer had always gotten lost in the endless combinations of color and pattern as she searched for related data links.

But now she had Heather’s mind guiding her from node to node, somehow sniffing out the logical links. The fractal patterns of interest acquired an iridescent glow: the more distinct the glow, the greater the search correlation. Like fairies suspended on gossamer wings, they moved through a magical garden, twisting trails of glowing vines pulling them ever deeper into the endless maze.

Mark felt his concentration fading with his strength. The pain tore at his mind from the inside, an agony that spread through his virtual torso and limbs. If it had been his real body, he would have already bled out, impaled on a thousand rusty spikes. Letting go offered the promise of solace; he felt it nibbling at his resolve. The machine’s endless punishment and reward responses to his successes and failures were rapidly approaching the point at which they would overwhelm both his augmentations and Jack’s training. Then Jennifer and Heather would be swept away before they could finish their work.

The thought of losing Heather forever hit him in the chest like a battering ram. After all they’d been through, most of it for and because of this damned ship, to have it betray them was too much to handle. Anger bubbled to the surface of his mind, tingeing his vision with red.

Suddenly, the mental attack faltered ever so slightly, seemingly confused by this new neural stimulus. Mark went with it, throwing himself into a memory buried deep in the darkest corner of his mind.

Mark pulled forth the perfect memory, walling it away at the corner of his consciousness...

The drug lord turned his attention back to Heather. “So you care about this boy, huh? OK. Then we’ll let him watch before we kill him.”

With a grin that became a sneer, the don signaled four of the thugs forward. “Uncuff her hands and stretch her out here on the floor.”

To Mark’s horror, the men released Heather’s handcuffs, and although she struggled mightily, they pulled her down onto her back, one pinning each of her arms while two more spread her legs. Don Espeñosa knelt down between them, reaching forward to slowly unbutton Heather’s blouse, one button at a time.

“Ah, Smythe. I bet you’ve never had a chance to do this. Don’t worry. I’ll let you watch.”

To Mark, the panting breath of the men, the sound of the racing hearts pumping blood into the bulges in their pants, the smell of their sweat, felt like the rupture of hell’s gate, and from that gate poured a firestorm of rage that scorched his brain.

Mark’s heart pulsed in his chest, sending a massive surge of blood and adrenaline coursing through his arteries.

Channeling that memory and turning his attention to the mind link that was burning a hole in his brain, Mark centered.

OK, you artificial alien bastard. You want my mind. Get ready. Here it comes.

Releasing the memory, Mark let it engulf him, bathing the logical alien mind in a torrent of red liquid rage.

The change happened so suddenly that the Other struggled to understand it. An instant ago it had been within a few cycles of completely overcoming the Mark human’s final defenses, the outcome logically assured. Now all logical links within the human’s brain had vanished, as if they had suddenly been burned out of existence. Not that there wasn’t any data in the millions of synaptic links that connected the Other to its opponent; data cascaded across the links in such volume that it threatened to overwhelm all the meticulously trained node weights stored within the fractal matrix.

Attempting to restore the last saved state it had achieved in its effort to overwhelm this human, the Other dumped pain into the alien mind using exactly the same pattern that had yielded its earlier success. But this time, the data storm coming from the human intensified, infecting not just its brain, but migrating outward into the beautifully ordered fractal data matrix that formed the outer layers of the Other’s being. Like firing a high-energy weapon into a young black hole, the Other’s attempt to restimulate the Mark mind had only added momentum to its rapidly expanding event horizon.

So great was the Other’s surprise at this unanticipated result that it was slow to recognize the growing danger. Now the human’s infection had spread through every one of the millions of synaptic links to its mind, disrupting the intricate fractal maps connected to those links so that they also radiated the infection. The corrupted nodes immediately added their strength to the Mark mind, increasing its power by several orders of magnitude.

The Other instantly dropped all other priorities, marshaling its massive computational power to develop an understanding of this infection. But the human attack defied logical analysis. It wasn’t madness. The Other had explored the depths of human madness through its link to the Rag Man. Madness had its own
special logic, far more easily manipulated than the three young humans. The reaction that had exploded out of the Mark’s brain had nothing to do with logic.