Software, how can I still see?
Electrical impulses from our system are keeping your nerves active. This will not last long.
Sebastian tried to remember what being heartened felt like. Footsteps approached and the blanket disappeared from view. Above him, two blurry faces examined him.
“Are you sure the shard is in there?” one said.
“I wouldn’t have brought you here, Kolas, if he didn’t have it,” Raphael snapped.
“You’re right,” Kolas said as Sebastian’s world shook. “It’s in there, with an energy level of point-nine. That gives us a maximum of nine hours.”
“Is that enough time to get it out and purge him from the system?”
Kolas’s blurred shape nodded. “To avoid damaging the shard I’ll carve the neck port out of the skull. Then I only need to chip away the bone, dismantle the port and wipe the shard. It’ll take three hours.”
“I’ll see you in two.”
A high-pitched buzz pierced Sebastian’s world.
“Wait until I’ve gone!” Raphael shouted.
Footsteps clumped away and a door slammed. Kolas floated into view above Sebastian, his eyes shining. He held a small circular saw.
“Hold still, Mr. Jones. This won’t hurt a bit.”
The saw descended. Despite his lack of fear, Sebastian still cried: Don’t do this.
Kolas halted the saw’s descent. Sebastian waited for his world to end, but Kolas stayed poised above him. The saw was just at the edge of his vision.
Put the saw down.
Kolas bent over and Sebastian heard him drop the saw to the floor. He could still push. Sebastian steeled himself for the pain that always followed, but there wasn’t even a hint of a headache in his living death.
He could push without payback. With this discovery, Sebastian experimented. Kolas carried out everything he asked: walking away, returning, scratching his nose. Even after ten pushes, the usual pain didn’t come.
Software, how can I still push?
I don’t know how you influenced others when you were alive.
Sebastian recalled the shame he’d felt before he died, but, again, his lack of emotion stopped him from being concerned.
Tell me everything about the shard, Sebastian pushed at Kolas.
Kolas told him, so Sebastian recalled a pleasurable event so he could mentally smile.
Kolas, listen carefully. This is what we’ll do.
SEBASTIAN WAITED. ONLY a central slice of Raphael’s office was visible, but he was too late now to change his viewpoint. In the last couple of hours, his vision had corroded and blocks of his sight had become gray and mottled.
Sebastian tried to ignore the fact that his body must be breaking down. Kolas had needed half-an-hour to lever him into the air-conditioning vent, the only suitable place to carry out his plan. Two hours after he’d left, Raphael returned.
“Give it to me,” he said.
Kolas strode toward Raphael. “You’re planning to abuse the technology. I didn’t create immortality for the likes of you.”
Kolas revved his saw, turned it around and held the edge close to his own throat.
“Don’t!” Raphael shouted.
Kolas edged the saw nearer. “You might be interested to know that you didn’t kill Sebastian. I patched him up and let him escape.”
With this lie Kolas pressed the saw to his throat. Kolas’s death throws only made Raphael frown in bemusement.
“We killed him,” a guard said. “He couldn’t have escaped.”
“Find the body, or the shard,” Raphael said.
Sebastian expected Raphael’s guards to find him quickly, but for hours they searched without success. With less than three hours remaining he still lay in his hideout. He would have worried, if he could.
Finally, a clattering sounded in the air-conditioning followed by a shout about the stench. Someone removed a panel, the sound muffled and foggy.
A voice came, clear and close. “He’s in here and, oh the smell! We need a blanket.”
The air duct revolved. Then the office spiraled into sight, leaving him with a view of the wall and his feet splayed out before him as someone dragged him backward. A snail’s trail of dark liquid marked his passage.
Then his view tilted and he faced the ceiling. A few minutes later, Raphael appeared above him, his smirking face blurred. Raphael held a saw and he clicked the motor into life.
“I always say, if you need something done, do it yourself,” he said happily.
The saw buzzed and closed in on Sebastian’s face. A grinding noise filled his mind. His vision became flecked with red and white, and then there was nothing followed by the absence of even nothing.
Chapter Twenty
SEBASTIAN EXPERIENCED endless absence: no images, no sounds, nothing. Despite the lack of perception, Sebastian still knew he existed. In some place beyond existence, he was aware that the countdown moved to 000.2 and then 000.1, but the passage of time, in this world beyond time, no longer meant anything.
Unfocused light flashed and then faded. Sounds without tone pulsed over him. Then absence filled him again, but, from nowhere a swirling curl of light appeared, coming closer and filling his world.
His vision returned, focused and centered. He received a report about a computer screen. Schematics of the shard scrolled across the screen.
“Is everything all right?” a voice asked.
A long hand passed across Sebastian’s new form of vision and gestured at the screen. Sebastian recognized Raphael’s hand.
“Diagnostics say the shard survived undamaged and it works,” Raphael said. “Immortality beckons, when I’m ready.”
“Then I’ll leave, boss. Just call if you need me.”
Sebastian mentally curled in on himself. He perceived this new existence in the same way as he had in his dead body. Vision was second hand, sounds were the reporting of a sound, touch was a memory of a touch and emotion didn’t exist.
If this was immortality, it was an existence that didn’t appeal to Sebastian, but no matter as he was now in Raphael’s neck port, which was where he wanted to be. He tried to reach out to Software, but the connection didn’t work, as Software had been discarded, like his old body.
Sebastian tried to focus on the countdown, to check whether Raphael had inserted a power pack, but couldn’t access the information. These discoveries didn’t disappointment him, as such experiences weren’t available to the living dead.
Sebastian waited until Raphael checked the schematic of the shard on his console. He focused on each corner of his reported vision – Raphael’s vision – and found the countdown glowing in the corner of the screen, buried in a list of statistics.
The display reported 999.9 so the shard’s countdown had been restarted. Sebastian mentally smiled. It had been fourteen months since that number had last appeared. He had fourteen more months before zero zero zero came around again and that was a long time indeed, for Raphael.
Raphael, close your eyes for two seconds, Sebastian pushed.
The world disappeared and then reappeared. Sebastian’s mental smile widened. Inside Raphael’s skull, without a barrier between his suggestions and Raphael’s brain, Raphael couldn’t escape from him. More important, freed from the pain that pushing had caused him when he lived, Sebastian didn’t need to limit the number or strength of his suggestions.
Sebastian tried a bigger push: Go to the window.
Sebastian received a report that the world lurched as Raphael strode to the window.
Turn around, Sebastian pushed and the world spun as Raphael complied.
Return to your desk and take out a pen and a pad of paper, Sebastian pushed and in a few moments paper appeared.
Now write, Sebastian pushed.
Raphael wrote: ‘Hello, Raphael. It is I, Sebastian. You didn’t purge me as Professor Kolas taught me how to hide. Now I’m alive in the shard.’
Sebastian paused, noting a report that the world lurched
.
“Casey, get in here this instant,” Raphael shouted.
Look at the paper, Sebastian pushed.
Raphael wrote: ‘When Casey comes in I’ll make you send him away. You and I have a year of double-crossing to repay.’
“I’m all right, Casey,” Raphael said as Casey came into view. “Don’t disturb me for the rest of the day.”
Sebastian mentally sighed and then, wasting no time, he pushed some more.
Raphael wrote: ‘You’ll like the next bit. We both have a talent for pushing, but the headaches stop us before we can do too much. Freed from my body, I feel no pain and I can push for as long as I like.”
Fourteen months would do, Sebastian noted. He could only tolerate this existence for that long.
Raphael wrote: ‘I met someone called the Doctor. He taught me about pain and I’d like to share his knowledge with you. If you don’t entertain me, in fourteen months you’ll plug in another pack, but if you entertain me, I’ll let you die. Agreed?’
“That’s not happening,” Raphael said. “I’ll get rid of you.”
Raphael wrote: ‘You’ll learn, Raphael. For my first lesson we’ll start small. Fetch the paper stapler.’
Sebastian formed the appropriately large push for an action Raphael wouldn’t want to do. He received a report that Raphael was screaming.
That was just a start. Believe me, you’ll soon be counting down to zero zero zero.
While he pondered whether to get Raphael to fetch a length of rubber tubing and a rusty nail, the console swam into view.
The countdown read 999.8.
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Did you love Zero Zero Zero? Then you should read Ultimate Witness by Harlan Finchley!
The Plato Colony is the first permanently manned moonbase, but it could be the last. Budgetary restrictions mean the base is to be abandoned in seven days, but while the colonists prepare to evacuate, chief administrator Malcolm Wade faces other, more troubling problems.
A mysterious anomaly has appeared outside the base and an unknown assailant is attacking the colonists. As only seven people live on the moon, Malcolm reckons he should be able to find the culprit, but with the anomaly getting closer every day and with the attacks growing in severity, he suffers premonitions of an impending disaster.
With time running out to save everyone can Malcolm work out who, or what, is to blame?
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Zero Zero Zero Page 14
