Old-timer ignored her dark humor and reengaged the magnetic field. “We’re going to use the Planck to give us a boost. It’ll take us into a random parallel universe, then return us a second later, next to Earth’s orbit. From there, I’ll make my way to the Constructor and it’ll be up to you to get to Daniella and help her get off the surface before it’s too late.”
“Where will I take her?” Djanet asked. “Daniella had a good point. Nowhere’s safe.”
“Just get her off the surface,” Old-timer replied. “Worry about where to take her after that. Venus is an option, if it’s not already under siege.” He locked eyes with her earnestly. “Djanet, I’m counting on you.”
“I’m counting on you too,” she replied.
Old-timer nodded in understanding. She was right: Everyone was counting on him. He thought of the version of himself from Universe 332, who’d been in the same position...that version of him had failed. I can’t let it happen here. I won’t. Not again.
“Okay. Ready?” he finally said.
Djanet nodded and bit her lower lip in nervous anticipation. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Then let’s do this.”
A second later, they vanished.
28
“Richard, I admire the bravery you’ve demonstrated,” Aldous commented through his mind’s eye connection. “You protected the mainframe long enough for me to take control of the operator’s position, but despite this achievement, I was expecting you to take this moment to flee while the androids regroup.”
“There’s billions of those suckers,” Rich replied, feeling nauseous as he looked at the collective bodies re-amassing into a tsunami-like wave. “They’re concentrating their attack right here. I’ve tried working my way through them before, but that was when they were surrounding the entire planet. That was a picnic compared to what trying to get through this would be.” Rich sat on the ground, exhausted. “Let’s face it. I’m as dead as a doornail, just like you’re going to be.”
“I’m not planning on dying today, Richard,” Aldous replied, “and neither should you.”
The words caused Rich’s eyebrow to raise. “Are you jerking me around right now?”
“No, in fact, I am glad that you’ve chosen to stay. I agree, your chances of escape on your own would’ve been low to nonexistent. But I’m happy to inform you that your chances of survival if you stay with me are 100 percent. We will survive this.”
“Wait a second,” Rich replied, scrambling up to his knees. “I thought you said these were the last minutes of life on Earth.”
“They are. That android ship’s collision with the surface will obliterate the mainframe and send a shockwave around the planet that will destroy all of the life on every corner of the globe.”
“Then how—“
“Trust me,” Aldous responded calmly. “I’ve got this. In the meantime, I’d suggest contacting your family. When the mainframe goes down, all long-range communication will be terminated.”
“And what about your family?” Rich questioned.
“Arrangements have been made. My focus is currently on contacting James and the A.I.”
Rich’s eyes widened. “They’re alive?”
“I can’t confirm that as of yet, but I’ve located the sim they were in and it’s currently still running. Their core patterns were cut off by a trapdoor code, but there’s a chance that they’re still functioning within it.”
“Can you get them out?”
“I’m working on it. Contact your family, Richard. This may be your last chance.”
Rich nodded, breathless as he turned back to the increasing wave of android bodies. It was as if some demonic appendage beyond even biblical proportions, like a hand to match God’s was readying to slap post-humanity like a bug, squashing it forever. The dark cloud of bodies was already crossing over the sun, sending a foreboding shadow across the dirt on which Rich stood, the temperature dropping noticeably and sending a chill down his spine. “Okay,” Rich replied.
“Rich!” Djanet suddenly shouted through his mind’s eye. “Are you still—”
“Djanet! You’re alive!”
“So are you!”
“Where are you?”
“I promised Old-timer I’d help get Daniella off the surface. What about you?”
“Wait...you’re intentionally heading down to the surface?” Rich reacted, aghast.
“Yeah, I know, adrenaline junkie, right?”
Rich shook his head emphatically. “No, no, junkie isn’t funny this time! It’ll get you killed! Djanet, the androids are about to ram the planet with one of their ships. Listen to me carefully. You can’t be on the surface when that happens! Do you understand?”
Djanet could see the ship Rich spoke of, moving toward the surface. She hadn’t realized it was on a kamikaze mission. “Are you sure?” she asked, astounded.
“Aldous has control of the mainframe. He’s in the operator’s position. He calculated their trajectory and speed and there’s no doubt about it. They’re going to ram us and the mainframe’s ground zero!”
“Then you’ve gotta get out of—”
“Aldous assured me I’m safe. He guaranteed it even. Look, don’t worry about me. Worry about you and Daniella!”
“How much time do we have?” she asked as she plummeted into the atmosphere above San Antonio.
“Aldous, how much time until impact?” Rich asked.
“Three minutes and fifty-one seconds.”
“Did you copy that?” Rich asked Djanet.
“I did,” Djanet replied, picking up speed as she rocketed toward the surface. “This is gonna be another close one.”
“As usual,” Rich replied. “I don’t think we know how to do it any other way.”
29
“Destroy the universe?” James reacted, sighing as he fought back the impulse to roll his eyes. “That clinches it.”
“How so?” the A.I. replied.
“Are you serious?” James responded. “It’s 1. She sounds like a broken record. ‘Fear the future’ is her mantra, her excuse for assimilating world after world.”
“Perhaps, but it still doesn’t explain the stranger’s reluctance to kill us,” the A.I. pointed out. “1 would have no issue with terminating us, and it appears this stranger the candidate speaks of certainly had it within his power to do exactly that.”
“Uh...hello?” Thel piped in. “Unless I’m misreading the situation, we’re as good as dead right now anyway. We’re in the mainframe, we can’t escape, and the Earth is the androids’s for the taking. And if they take the Earth, there’s no reason for them to keep the mainframe.”
“She’s supremely confident, and let’s face it, she should be,” James added. “She didn’t need to kill us.”
“And what of the entity that spoke to us through Kali?” the A.I. reminded his companions. “Why heal us? And what of what she said about James, that the beauty of the universe was within him?”
“I don’t know,” Thel admitted. “Weird, mocking flirtation? Or maybe she wants to keep James as a trophy. He is the smartest man alive, after all. Maybe she wants to preserve his intellect so that she can exploit it.”
“To what end?” the A.I. countered. “Her mandate is quite clearly to keep humanity from progressing technologically. It’s in her best interest to eliminate James and to eliminate the candidate and myself as well.”
“Not if she has us trapped,” James replied, “or if she thinks she does.”
“Thinks?” Thel reacted. “Are you suggesting you think we can escape?”
“Look, 1 has cut us down to size here by cutting our core neural patterns off from the mainframe,” James explained, “but in the brief time that I had control of the operator’s position with the A.I., I managed to put contingencies in place.”
“What sorts of contingencies?” the A.I. asked, surprised.
“Old-timer, for one. His new body is capable of connecting with the sim and providing a bri
dge for our patterns to escape, but it means we’ve got to find a way to get a message to him.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” Thel pointed out. “How the hell are we going to make contact with the outside—”
“James Keats, this is Aldous Gibson,” a voice suddenly cut into the sim, speaking to them as easily as though they had a connection through their mind’s eyes, stopping the trio in their tracks. “Can you hear me?”
“Aldous!” James shouted in surprise. “Is that really you?”
“What’s going on?” the candidate asked, unable to hear the voice.
“Help, hopefully,” Thel explained to him.
“I’ve taken over the operator’s position,” Aldous informed them. “I’m leading the resistance to the android collective, but in the interest of time and honesty, I must tell you that I won’t be able to fend them off much longer. One of their largest ships is on a collision course with the mainframe. Only three minutes remain before impact.”
“I can stop them,” James proclaimed. “Aldous, can you get me out of here and put me back in control of—”
“I’m afraid not, James. Whoever is responsible for cutting you off from your bodies and trapping your core patterns in the sim used a trapdoor code that is so encrypted, that even with the processing power of the mainframe at my disposal, I can’t break it in the time remaining. We’re going to lose this battle, I’m afraid.”
James’s hand went to his forehead as he covered his eyes, the ramifications of Aldous’s grim forecast too overwhelming to bear.
“There is hope, however,” Aldous continued. “I’ve been able to construct a solid state core that is small enough that I can transport it away from ground zero by hand, but it has enough processing capability to contain the sim. I’m transferring the sim out of the mainframe and into the core as we speak.”
“Is there enough time?” the A.I. asked.
“I’m confident, yes, albeit barely,” Aldous confirmed. “I’ll get you out of there alive.”
“Okay,” James replied. “Aldous, when the mainframe is destroyed, we’re going to lose our communications. You’ve got to reach Old-timer—Craig Emilson—before then. He’s the key to getting us out of here and back into our bodies. Do you understand?”
“I’ll do my best to reach him,” Aldous replied. “Stand by.”
“Aldous,” James began with emphasis, “Craig’s the only one who can get us out. If you can’t find him, we might be trapped in here permanently.”
“I understand,” Aldous replied. “Stand by.”
30
Old-timer couldn’t help but be in awe as he neared the android mothership—the Constructor—and marveled at a structure that was larger than any of the other ships in the android collective. It was oblong in its overall shape, but the closer one got to the surface, the easier it was to see the randomness in the design. The ship itself appeared reminiscent of a brain, but with the neurons reaching outside of the enclosure and snaking away from the hull in patterns that didn’t seem to make sense, as though the entire ship was an organic, growing thing that continued to expand, snaking further and further out with every passing day, its grotesque fingers reaching out for more and more space to occupy.
“This is it,” Anisim said reluctantly as he flew toward the Constructor, Old-timer’s tendrils still embedded in his body, the worst intrusion being the one that had jacked into the base of his skull. The pain was excruciating for Anisim, but it was a pain so intolerable that he’d made up his mind not to disobey Old-timer in the slightest, as the post-human had already demonstrated his ability to make Anisim’s discomfort a thousand times worse.
“Where will my friends be replicated?” Old-timer demanded.
“It’ll be easy to find their location,” Anisim replied, his lips unmoving as their communication remained entirely telepathic, “but there’s stringent security built into the replicator system. The new replicants aren’t to be awakened until they’re scheduled for education. You’ll need someone who works there to get you inside and who can override the computer systems.”
“You better know someone, son,” Old-timer snarled in response.
“I-I think I do,” Anisim replied, a flood of thoughts contradicting one another and causing self-doubt. “I dated her briefly, but she’s assigned to the replicator. I’ll take you to her.”
“That’ll suffice,” Old-timer replied. As they neared the surface of the monolithic hull, a surface that reminded him of the frozen surface of Europa that he’d so recently had an up-close encounter with, they started to come into visual contact with an innumerable amount of androids, who were flying in the opposite direction. The prying eyes of the multitudes made Old-timer uneasy.
“What’s going on?” he asked, warily. “What’s with the mass exodus?”
“They’re headed for Earth,” Anisim replied in a pained voice. “As long as we behave like we have a purpose, they’ll ignore us.”
“They’re not ignoring us now,” Old-timer observed as he made eye contact with android after android, every one of the expressions they returned filled with suspicion.
“They’re just curious,” Anisim replied through their mental connection. “They’ve been sent to assimilate Earth, yet the two of us are moving against the flow of traffic. They’re wondering why we’re important—why we’re special. Members of the collective are rarely ever special. Just don’t look them in the eye. Look like you’ve got a purpose.”
“That’s not a problem,” Old-timer replied. “You people give me the creeps.”
They flew inside one of the gaping openings of the hull and entered the seemingly endless internal labyrinth of catwalks and bizarre architecture inside of the ship.
“Where’s this former love interest of yours?”
“Not far,” Anisim replied. “Listen, I barely know her, okay? We went out once, it didn’t go all that well.”
“Why not?”
“She made it pretty clear she wanted children.”
“Children? “Old-timer exclaimed out loud, unable to internalize his shock. “Androids can breed? You have children?”
“Yes. Lots of us. Most of us actually. I just—I’m not ready.”
Old-timer remained silent for a moment, stunned as they continued moving deeper into the Constructor. “Robots having babies. Weird, Anisim. Really, really weird.” He paused for a moment, trying to shake the perversity of the notion out of his mind before adding, “It’s also weird that she brought up children on a first date.”
“I know, right?” Anisim commented.
“Just keep focused.”
“I’m focused,” Anisim answered, the pain in the back of his skull making it impossible not to be present in the moment, “just, look, please don’t hurt her.”
“I’ll do what I have to do,” Old-timer insisted emphatically, ignoring the request, dead set in his determination to save the last survivors of Universe 332, no matter the cost.
“She just wants to be a mom—”
“Shut up, Anisim, or I’ll make you shut up,” Old-timer ordered. “Take me to her.”
“Yes, sir,” the android replied meekly as they made their way toward the hive-like inner workings of the ship to the area that was clearly where the androids had made their dwellings.
Old-timer’s mouth opened in awe when they emerged from a wide, ugly, twisted tube of metal, and into a place that he couldn’t have imagined existed in his wildest dreams, especially not deep in the belly of the gruesome vessel.
Before him, Old-timer saw land—earth—whether simulated or not, in which forests sprawled for kilometers, river-like creeks flowed, and parks and gardens dotted an idyllic, spectacular, serene landscape. There were buildings that reminded him of the modern architecture of Earth, giant skyscrapers that reached up toward a simulated blue sky, complete with simulated sunlight.
“What the hell…” Old-timer whispered.
“I’ve set a course for her address,” Anisim informed
Old-timer.
Old-timer worked hard to shake himself free of his shock. “She lives alone?”
“Yeah, I think. I dated her a couple of years ago. I haven’t checked up on her.”
Old-timer began to feel the wind blasting on his skin as they continued to fly into the simulated Earth-like setting. “There’s an atmosphere here,” he observed, using his mouth to speak once he realized that the air would carry the sound.
“Yes,” Anisim replied, “of course. We’re still human. We want to be able to speak to one another with our words and not just via mental connections. We want to listen to live music, hear a bird singing in the trees—”
“This is perverse,” Old-timer said, his upper lip curling. “It’s a crude imitation of the real thing.”
“It’s how we have to live,” Anisim responded. “We don’t have a choice. We’d all still be on Earth if we could.”
“Still be on Earth?” Old-timer said, his eyebrow’s knitting harder than ever. “You mean, your version of Earth? Your home planets?”
“Home planets?” Anisim reacted. “I’m from Earth, man. I’m an Earthling, just like you. I was born in the Ukraine.”
Old-timer forced them to a halt. They floated in the warm breeze, midway between two skyscrapers in the belly of the android’s mothership. “Hang on here a second. You’re from the Ukraine? As in next to Russia, Ukraine?”
Anisim nodded, but winced, the pain of the tendril in the back of his skull causing his eyes to close for a moment thanks to the worst headache he’d ever endured as he moved his mouth to confirm the gesture. “Yes. I’m human, just like you.”
Old-timer suddenly understood the truth. “My God. James was right. The reason you all appear human is because you’re from parallel Earths.”
“That’s right,” Anisim replied. “We’ve been at this for a long time. Our mission is to save the universe, man. We’re the good guys, I swear to you.”
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