“And what’s this truth?” Old-timer asked, dubious that any answer could ever make him join the collective.
“That humanity is not immortal,” Jules replied. “Use your reason, Craig. Humans invent and invent and invent. It’s what separates us from every other species in the known universe. Our technologies are double-edged swords. Fire let us cook our food and kept us warm, but it let us burn our enemies and wage war. Nuclear technologies led to unlimited power sources, but it was also the sword of Damocles that hung over us—was used in WWII but truly unleashed in WWIII, yet even this wasn’t enough to destroy us. Think of each of these inventions as little marbles removed from a jar—some are white, because they help humanity, some are gray because they both help and hurt, and some are very dark gray, because they threaten our very existence. But Craig, it is inevitable that one day, humanity will reach into that vase with our inventive minds and pull out the pure black marble—our last invention. And that invention will be the end of everything—the end of the multiverse—the end of life.”
Old-timer swallowed as he listened to Jules’s rationalization. He wanted desperately to dismiss it, to insist that it was nothing more than fanatical Luddite propaganda, but there was an image screaming in his mind, and a coldness that felt that it might stop his heart as he asked, “And what’s the last invention? The black marble?”
Jules’s eyes widened as she read the expression of dread on Old-timer’s face. She recognized it instantly. “You already know the answer, don’t you Craig? You’ve already seen it.”
“I-I haven’t seen it,” Old-timer stammered in response.
“But you know of it. I can see it in your eyes. The invention that destroys universes. I know you know it.”
“Just-just shut up,” Old-timer replied, shaken. “Take me to the replicator. I have people to rescue. Really rescue—not your version of it.”
Jules continued to fly Old-timer through the long, dark tunnel, only dimly lit by sporadic lights on either side, like a massive subway tube. “I won’t resist, Craig. I can already see on your face that I won’t have to.”
8
“Got it!” James announced proudly, looking up from the table he sat at with the A.I. and catching Thel’s and the candidate’s attention as he held a long furl of code up like a trophy fish for display.
The A.I. turned with an equally proud smile and flashed it for their companions.
“Got what?” Thel asked.
“The code that’ll let us circumvent the trapdoor and call out!” James responded, as though the answer were obvious.
Thel smiled and shook her head. “Geniuses will be geniuses.”
“Damn straight,” James replied as he jumped to his feet and walked briskly to the candidate, his left hand held out while the right held the golden stream of code. “May I borrow your aug glasses?”
“Of course,” the candidate replied, removing the eyewear and handing it to James.
“What’s this supposed to do?” Thel asked.
“We’re changing the code,” James replied. “I could really use anything—you remember the coffee demonstration you made for the candidate?”
“It was a London fog, but yes,” Thel interjected.
“…but the aug glasses are, essentially, a first-generation version of the mind’s eye, so it makes the most sense to modify them.” He slipped the golden, coded pattern over the aug glasses and it seeped into the device, becoming one with it. “Perfect.”
“Now what?” Thel asked.
“We make a phone call,” James replied.
“To who?”
“The range won’t be great,” James replied as he opened a line of communication, “so we have to hope Aldous has found Old-timer by now.”
“Is it true that Old-timer can get us out of here?” she asked.
James nodded. “Oh yeah. Those tendrils on his new body can unfurl until they’re microscopic and make connections with nano-sized materials. He can connect to anything. If we can get him into physical contact with the hard drive Aldous constructed, he can get our patterns out.” He grimaced. “Damn it. He’s not close enough.”
“Try Djanet,” Thel suggested.
James nodded in agreement and tried to open communication.
“Even if you can get your pattern out,” Thel continued, “what then? If the mainframe was destroyed, our bodies—”
“It’s highly unlikely James’s body was destroyed,” the A.I. chimed in as he stood and calmly strolled over to the trio. “While Aldous likely thought the impact of the android ship would destroy it, it is designed to be extremely durable. Only a trip to the center of a star or a black hole could destroy it.”
“Damn it,” James cursed, “no Djanet either. I’ll try Rich.”
“This isn’t looking good,” Thel pointed out. “What’s the use of being able to call out if the only person we can reach is also the one person who wants to keep us trapped?”
“Oh my God,” James suddenly whispered.
9
“James?” Rich reacted to the voice he heard in his head.
“What’s that?” Aldous asked.
“Rich, if this is you,” James responded quickly, “don’t let Aldous know you’re speaking with us. Just cough and move away from him. Let me know when you can speak.”
Thel and the others watched James’s face breathlessly as they waited.
Rich coughed. “Sorry,” he said, pretending to clear his throat as he got up from the chair.
James suddenly smiled. “He coughed,” he relayed to his companions. “We’re standing by, Rich.”
“Are you okay?” Aldous asked.
“Yep. Need water. I’m just gonna head to the bathroom.”
“I thought I heard you say James?” Aldous asked, his expression puzzled.
“I did,” Rich confirmed. “I did. I was just thinking, I really wish James was here, you know? Because he’d know what to do. So this sucks. Then I realized how dry my throat is. I’m getting water. Want some?”
“From the bathroom?” Aldous asked quizzically. “The replicator is working just fine. I think I’d opt for that if I were you.”
“Yes,” Rich agreed. “Yes but I also need to pee. So, two birds with one stone, I was thinking. But, you’re right. Pee first. Then replicator for water.”
Aldous nodded.
Rich began to head to the bathroom before Aldous’s voice stopped him.
“Oh, and Richard...” he began.
Rich squinted in frustration before wiping the expression away and turning back to Aldous with a slight smile. “Yes?”
“In the future, when you need to use the facilities, there’s no need to be so...descriptive.”
Rich pulled his lips back in a half-smile and nodded. “You’re right again. Okay, so, off to do something mysterious with my body.” He turned and left.
Seconds later, he was in the bathroom. “Okay, what the hell?” Rich asked in a whisper as he looked at his own worried reflection of the mirror. “Is this really James?”
“It is, pal! It’s good to hear your voice! Where’s Aldous?”
“On the bridge. And we’ve got Thel’s body with us. Unfortunately, Aldous couldn’t rescue yours, Commander.”
“Heh. Shocking,” James retorted. “Where are you?”
“We’re on your ship, en route to Venus.”
“Venus?” James reacted. “What’s he want with Venus?”
“He thinks it’s the best place to find survivors,” Rich replied, “and he thinks it’s a low priority for the androids.”
There was a short pause. “Maybe,” James finally returned, his tone dubious. “Or maybe he’s planning to bring them down himself, from the inside.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Rich asked, stunned, his heart suddenly beating twice as fast.
“Rich, listen to me. We can’t prove it, but Aldous is a suspect—maybe the prime suspect—for having been the one who trapped us in the sim and helped
the androids destroy the mainframe.”
“What the—are you serious?”
“He’s only a suspect, but he had the means and we think he might have had the motive.”
“Listen, Commander Keats, we sent a message to the Purists, but our regular communication system is down, so we haven’t heard back from them yet, but we’re on our way and should be there in about half an hour. If the Purists radio back to us that they’re okay, what do I do?”
“Keep a very close eye on Aldous,” James replied, “but don’t tip him off that you’re on to him. If he gets wise to us, he might damage the hard drive.”
“You think he’d do that?” Rich reacted, aghast.
“If he’s a man who’d betray his entire species? Yes. Rich, if there’s any way in Hell that you can get that hard drive away from him without him getting suspicious, do it. Then let Old-timer know what happened and get it to him. He’ll know what to do from there.”
“Commander, I’ve lost contact with Old-timer. Hell, I’ve lost contact with everyone but Aldous. I’m alone out here. Old-timer might’a been…you know…”
“He better not have,” James replied, “because right now, our only hope for the solar system rests on his shoulders.”
10
“Dear God,” Old-timer said when the replicator came into view at the end of the tunnel. A moment later, they reached the mouth of the tunnel, and the full, awful expanse of the monstrosity started to sink in: a dark, brutal, metal structure that stretched in every direction in perfect geometric lines, endless coffin-shaped pods, adjoined by the ubiquitous catwalks that were a mainstay of android architecture.
“This is it,” Jules announced. “Pretty impressive, I know.”
“Wasn’t the word I was thinking.”
“Oh, right,” Jules replied as she held up her hands and mockingly twitched her fingers as though she were shaking with fear, “this is the evil heart of mechanical darkness,” she said, mimicking a scared child’s voice. “This is pure technological evil.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous, Luddite reaction.”
“Luddite?” Old-timer reacted, astonished. “You’re calling me a Luddite?” He unfurled one of his tendrils and displayed it to make his point. “You don’t think joining a collective of trillions, all in the name of keeping humanity standing still, is a little more on the Luddite side?”
Jules scoffed, unimpressed. “Your weird worm parts don’t make you advanced, Craig. They make you a freak.”
Old-timer glared at her but kept his composure.
“Come on,” Jules said, dropping the subject, “Let’s get your friends.”
“From where?” Old-timer asked. “It’s endless.”
“If they were uploaded together, they should all be grouped together.”
“They weren’t.” Old-timer held up his assimilator. “In fact, three of them haven’t even been uploaded yet.”
“That’s perfect,” she said, holding out her hand to take the assimilator. “We can upload them now.”
Old-timer refused to hand the device to her.
“Really?” she said, shocked. “You’re in my head. You know I’m not lying.”
He relented and handed her his precious cargo.
“Was that really so hard?” she chided. “Now, tell me the names of your friends who were uploaded already. I’ll find their location and then we’ll make sure we construct them all near one another.”
“Djanet Dove and Daniella Emilson,” Old-timer replied.
“Okay,” Jules replied as she mentally input the names. Old-timer monitored her activity through their mental connection. “They’re here,” Jules replied, “but…”
“But what?”
“It’s not a problem, but you have to understand that there’s billions of people in the replicator pods right now—”
Old-timer sighed as he impatiently sifted through the information in her mental locator. “And they’re seventy kilometers from here,” he observed, sighing when he realized they were still a long way from their prize.
“Yeah.” Jules nodded. “It’ll take a few minutes to get there.”
He grunted in frustration. “Let’s get moving then.” They started to fly into the endless labyrinth of metallic corridors. If they hadn’t had access to Jules’s navigational programs, they’d be lost quickly.
“Patience, Craig,” Jules said, sensing his frustration.
“While we’re heading that way, you might want to check for Aldous Gibson and Rich Borges. I lost contact with them.”
“Sure,” she replied. “Hmm. Now that’s interesting.”
“What?” Old-timer asked, as he pulled her screens over to his own mind’s eye.
“Rich Borges isn’t here, so he hasn’t been assimilated yet, but—”
“Oh my God,” Old-timer whispered. “Am I reading this right?”
“I think so,” Jules confirmed, a bit uncertain herself. “I mean, I’ve never seen this before, but it looks like this Aldous Gibson has already been assimilated, but he was discharged two days ago. He’s not in the pod.” She rubbed her temples. “That’s an anomaly. No one gets discharged that fast. They have to go through the assimilation education program. It doesn’t make sense...”
Old-timer’s face reddened with fury, and his upper lip curled into a snarl. “It makes sense...if the person in question made a deal.”
“A deal? What kind of deal?”
“The sort of deal that involved betraying his whole damned species.”
11
“Chief Gibson, this is Governor Wong, of the Purist colony,” the governor spoke in his deep, gravelly voice, a voice that had been weathered by the ravages of time. Post-humans weren’t used to hearing the wisdom in a voice that had aged to such a degree. The recorded message arrived crackled with interference. “We’re under attack from android forces. We’re defending ourselves with every means available to us. We’ve detected and identified your vessel and will monitor your approach. If you can break through the android blockade, we’ll take control of your vessel and guide you past our planetary force-field. Stand by for further instructions and, Chief Gibson, good luck.”
Rich blinked in near disbelief. “When was that message sent?”
Aldous looked down at the time readout and did some quick calculations. “It took two minutes to reach us,” Aldous replied. “At the speed we’re traveling, Venus and the android blockade should be coming up on our view screen soon.”
“Are we still trying to get to Venus?” Rich asked. “You did hear him, didn’t you? Under attack? Android forces?”
“I thought you were sworn to protect the Purists?” Aldous replied.
“Yeah, I am. But I thought you just wanted to go there to check for post-human survivors. If they’re under attack, why are you not in favor of getting as far away from the solar system as possible while the coast is clear?”
“Careful,” James cautioned in Rich’s ear. “You don’t want to tip him off that you’re suspicious.”
“And float through an eternity of space,” Aldous replied to Rich, “hoping beyond all mathematically reasonable hope that we’ll somehow encounter more survivors, all the while knowing that every day that we venture farther into the endlessness of space, the less likely it’ll be that we’ll ever see another human being alive other than each other?”
“It’s a reasonable explanation,” James pointed out. “Just keep an eye on him…and on us.”
Rich craned his neck and regarded the hard drive on Aldous’s waist as he considered James’s words. “When you put it that way…okay: break through the android blockade it is then.”
As Rich turned back to the view screen, he suddenly saw the faint image of something surrounding the pale blue glow of the tennis ball-sized planet in the distance. Although Venus was still hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, there was clearly a giant explosion onboard one of the android ships that surrounded it, a pulse of gold, growing like a flower opening
its petals.
“My word,” Aldous reacted, surprised and impressed by the sheer size of the explosion.
“Are the Purists actually fighting back?” Rich said, shocked.
“It would seem so,” Aldous replied. “How they’re doing it is another question.”
“I know James gave the planet a force-field,” Rich offered, “but…”
“It looks like he provided them with more than that,” Aldous said with a grimace.
Rich narrowed his eyes at what he perceived to be Aldous actually appearing perturbed that the Purists were able to resist. Or was he just pensively considering the difficulty of maneuvering through the surrounding android ships? It was impossible to tell, and impossible to ask James for his opinion, since their connection was only aural and without his connection to the mainframe, he couldn’t scan him for signs of insincerity.
Aldous gestured to the explosion that was still pluming and getting larger by the second as Venus and the dramatic battle that surrounded it quickly became more clear. “Apparently James has provided them with some sort of military means.”
“No kidding,” Rich replied as a second giant plume erupted from a second vast android vessel. The explosions were still a long way off, but it was almost unfathomable that the Purists, who’d been limited on Earth to weapons that were barely worthy of early twenty-first-century warfare, were managing to stage such a dramatic and effective stand against the android collective. “They’re doing better than we did on Earth. What the hell is that thing they’re shooting at them?”
“It’s a death ray,” James informed Rich. “I’m glad to hear it’s working. It’s a particle beam weapon—the entirety of the natural electrical power of Venus is charging tiny particles, and the Purists are firing them at nearly the speed of light at the androids. That should keep them at bay.”
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