Rich scoffed, his palm going to his forehead. “Oh dear Lord, I am in a comedy!”
“I’m afraid not, Richard,” Aldous replied. “And there will be no Deus ex machina to intervene this time. I’m making sure of that. Now, please, hand over the hard drive. I give you my word I will protect it, and I’ll make sure the androids take you painlessly.”
“He can’t touch you, Rich,” James pointed out. “If he could break your force-field, he would’ve done it already .”
“He’s waiting for the androids to arrive,” the A.I. added.
Rich nodded. “Your word is…what would Old-timer say? Oh yeah. A steaming pile of horse—”
“Stop, Richard,” Aldous warned as Rich began to back out of the corner Aldous had backed him in to, making his way slowly to the steps of the command center toward the exit. “If the androids have to take back that sim from you, I can’t guarantee its safety. I’m trying to save our friends here, Richard. Please, be reasonable.”
“I hate to break it to you,” Rich responded, “but you disabled the Purists’ defenses almost two minutes ago. There was a whole world full of androids in orbit just itching to get down here. Are you sure your backup is coming?”
Aldous’s face nearly formed a smile at Rich’s absurd suggestion. He paused for a moment, and Rich saw the flash of information before Aldous’s eyes as he seemed to check on something. Whatever the answer was that he found, it contorted his face into an expression of dread.
“Oh my God,” Aldous whispered.
“What’s wrong, friend?” Rich asked. “Betrayed again?”
“We’re already too late,” Aldous uttered. In shock, he pulled out a small, black object from his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand.
Rich’s expression reached a new level of surprise. “Is that...an assimilator?” he reacted. “They gave you one?”
Aldous nodded as he looked up at Rich in utter defeat. “For my wife,” he confirmed. “She’d never have gone along with my plan. So I did it while she was sleeping.” He stroked the side of the device with his index finger as though he was stroking the side of Samantha’s cheek.
“I can’t believe you assimilated your wife,” Rich said, disgusted. “You have no lim—”
“Richard!” Aldous screamed in response, snapping his head around, his eyes suddenly burning with fury. “Do you know what’s happening right this second?” He gesticulated violently, gesturing toward the sky that was far above them, several meters of concrete and ocean separating them. “The ship the androids call the Constructor, a ship where more than ninety-nine percent of their people are built, is being devoured by an infinity computer.”
“A what now?”
“In layman’s terms, Richard, it’s a black hole,” Aldous continued. “A perfect computing device, built by the nans.”
“Oh my God,” James reacted when he overheard the news, immediately exchanging looks of terror with the A.I. “Is it possible?”
Rich heard James’s reaction and tried to make sense out of what was happening. “But…how could…”
“It’s inevitable,” Aldous responded gutturally, as though the pressure of a secret kept for decades could finally be released. “It’s exactly what Trans-human is—the unavoidable consequence of mathematical perfection—and it’s eating the goddamn multiverse! Devouring it! That’s what I was trying to prevent, Richard! That’s what I’ve been trying to save us from!”
“Is it possible he’s telling the truth, James?” Thel suddenly asked, having tapped into the conversation moments earlier as she slowly made her way back to the command center’s door after recovering enough from Aldous’s salvo against her.
“I-I don’t know,” James replied.
Aldous looked up at Thel, his bottom lip actually protruding slightly in a pout, his eyes beginning to glisten as tears welled in them. “I never wanted this to happen,” he suddenly said. “Please tell James for me, Thel. I never wanted this. I tried to protect them—James and the A.I., but I was betrayed, and now we’ve run out of time.”
“Uh, James,” Rich said in a panic, “this son-of-a-nut-job just completely lost his mind! He’s got a crazy look in his eye. I need some help here!”
Within the sim, James appeared out of options, too stunned to formulate a plan.
Aldous, however, had settled on the only course of action that made sense to him. “I’m sorry,” he repeated as he put the assimilator away, back into his pocket and then looked upward, holding his hands above his head, energy beginning to pulsate on his fingertips.
“Aldous! Don’t do it!” Thel shouted as she realized what Earth’s formerly most powerful man’s desperate final bid to protect the universe from Trans-human would be.
She tried to rush toward him, but it was too late. He blasted through the ceiling of the command center, allowing the power of an entire ocean to crash down upon their heads.
4
Jules was the first to grab a handhold, clutching the side of a replicator pod just one level lower than the rapidly disintegrating catwalk. She looked down to see Old-timer’s tendrils wrapping around the wrists of both Samantha and Djanet, while a third tendril burrowed into the side of a pod one level farther below Jules.
“Daniella!” he shouted out as he realized neither of the two people he saved was his wife and he searched desperately with his eyes for her, darting his eyes in every direction. Almost immediately, he saw her, a level below him, Colonel Paine having dropped his weapon to grab the wrist of the ghost that haunted him deeply, saving her, while clutching one of the pods with his other hand.
“Got her!” Paine called up as he looked down into Daniella’s astonished eyes. “But the weight’s getting tough—V-SINN must be getting closer! If that hull doesn’t breach soon—”
“It won’t save you!” Neirbo shouted down to them from his perch, his feet planted on the side of a replicator pod above them. “I have the high ground! None of you is leaving here!” His eyes fell on Old-timer. “Especially not him.”
“Craig, what the hell did you do to that guy to piss him off so much?” Paine shouted up to Old-timer, exasperated.
Old-timer didn’t answer the question, realizing their time was too short, and instead looked up at Neirbo pleadingly. “Neirbo! Goddamnit! We can still get out of here! All of us!”
Neirbo shook his head. “You’re too dangerous to be left alive! This is the only way for me to finally destroy you, Craig Emilson.”
He knows my name? Old-timer thought to himself, surprised.
“Your orders were to take him alive!” Jules shouted out to Neirbo.
Neirbo looked at her before, extremely uncharacteristically, laughing. “My orders?” He gestured with his gun to the destruction around them. “None of us is going to survive this. I think the time for following orders has ended.”
“Where’s your loyalty?” Jules shot back. “The orders came from 1 herself!”
Old-timer’s eyebrows knitted furiously as he made a realization.
“Loyalty?” Neirbo replied, astonished by the concept’s sudden and total absurdity. “In the final moments of my life, you know what I say to 1?” His voice became colder than it had ever been in the hundreds of years he’d lived. “I say go to He—”
Neirbo’s sentence suddenly ended abruptly, his final thought never able to be spoken, as the hand that held his weapon suddenly began moving the gun, its muzzle pointing toward Neirbo’s own temple. His disbelieving eyes darted to Jules as he finally made the same realization Old-timer had just moments earlier.
The muzzle flashed, and Neirbo’s head was cut in half, circuitry and metal suddenly scattering before being abruptly sucked down as though a vacuum cleaner were drawing them toward it. His headless body collapsed a second later, slipping from its perch on the side of the replicator pod and falling past Paine and Daniella, narrowly missing them as it fell at an astonishing rate of descent.
Old-timer looked up at Jules, his face painted with fury, his t
eeth gritted so hard that he couldn’t squeeze out the words.
“That’s right,” Jules confirmed, answering the unspoken question. “1’s still alive.”
“Is that…” Djanet began to ask, as she tried to make sense out of what she’d seen, “…did 1 make him do that? How? Has she been monitoring us the whole time?”
“She’s not just monitoring us,” Old-timer replied, his eyes fixed on those of Jules. “She’s with us.”
“What?” Djanet asked, her brow furrowing.
“Jules is 1,” Old-timer revealed. “She led us into this trap.”
“And now I’m going to lead you out of it,” she called down to them as she swung her body like a mountain climber across the front of the pod to which she clung and pried the door open, tossing out the not-yet-activated android occupant, his body falling rapidly into the approaching black hole. “The decompression will occur in seconds. Unlock the pods from the pillars, get inside a pod, close the door, and hang on. It’s your only hope.”
Old-timer and Djanet exchanged astounded glances before Old-timer quickly used his powerful appendages to rip off the locks that held the pod they clung to into place before he slid back its door. Luckily, it was unoccupied, and he was able to bring himself, along with Samantha on his right and Djanet on his left, inside. The fit, however was extraordinarily snug, both of the women’s bodies squishing onto his hips, each of them tucking their shoulders to allow for the door to close. The last thing Old-timer saw before he closed the door was Daniella and Paine just below on the pillar to their opposite side, also sharing a pod, their eyes locked on one another, Daniella appearing confused and frightened, while Paine’s eyes expressed a gentleness that Old-timer had never seen from the professional killer.
Then he sensed eyes on him to his right and caught Samantha looking up at him, her eyes carrying their own hurt and confusion, and he looked away when he couldn’t take it anymore.
“What do you think our chances are?” Djanet asked, her focus on surviving, as it should’ve been.
“Better than you might think,” Old-timer replied. “1 could’ve killed us if she’d really wanted to. There’s a reason we’re still alive. I suggest we follow her lead for now, as ridiculous as that notion might have sounded five minutes ago.”
“So we’re being manipulated—again,” Djanet said, summing up the situation.
“Yeah,” Old-timer sighed. “What else is new?”
Suddenly, there was a shudder, then a shockwave that was far more powerful than anything they’d felt so far. Through the dark, tinted window of the pod, they saw the hull breach, a sudden exit forming in the side of the ship that was so huge, the pressure being released so massive, that the pillars, each one of them dozens of times taller than the tallest structures ever built by humans on Earth, began crumbling like a sandcastle, breaking free from their moorings like matchsticks, being sucked toward the hole.
The pods were sucked in too, the acceleration so instant and extreme that it would’ve killed them if they’d still been in their post-human bodies.
“This is it,” Old-timer grunted. “Hold on!”
5
“Thel! What’s happening?” James shouted as he heard her last, panicked shouts.
“I’m out of control!” Thel shouted back as she was forced out the door again, her magnetic field cocooning her and the unconscious Alejandra and Lieutenant Commander Patrick—she hadn’t been able to save anyone else. “They’re all dead! Aldous killed them—he murdered them! The Purist complex is flooding—he brought down the ceiling!”
“Oh my God,” James whispered before his mind quickly snapped into action. “Thel, find a bottleneck point. Throw up a magnetic field and seal in the water before the entire complex is flooded!”
“Uhn!” she grunted in reply as she struggled to turn, the torrent of water propelling her through a long hallway. She managed to turn and saw the end, an opening that led back into the main hub of the complex. “I got it—hang on!” she shouted as she prepared herself, timing her next maneuver. She’d have to relinquish her cocoon, lowering her own protection and the protection that had saved Alejandra and the lieutenant commander so that she could seal in the flood, as the walls were the bottle neck she needed. Just before she reached them, she lowered her field, falling into the whitewater rapids, the water warm like that in a bathtub. She was swept away and then fired up a new magnetic field, closing in the torrent of water behind her as she slid across the soaked, concrete floor of the main hub of the new Purist complex. Alejandra’s and Lieutenant Commander Patrick’s unconscious bodies limply hydroplaned until the water dispersed enough beneath them and they came to violent halts several meters behind Thel, but her eyes remained on the wall of water that, within seconds, had completely filled the hallway from the floor to the ceiling.
“Are you okay, Thel?” James asked, feeling utterly helpless as he waited for an update. “Did it work?”
“It worked,” Thel gasped, “but, James, I was only able to save two of them. I lost all the rest—including Governor Wong. He drowned.”
“Focus on who you still have a chance to save,” the A.I. interjected. “Your field will protect the Purists for now, but they need to evacuate.”
“I understand,” Thel nodded, turning to see as hundreds of Purists entered the main hub, alarms blaring and red lights signaling an emergency. “You need to evacuate the complex!” Thel screamed out at them! “Quickly!”
Several Purists joined forces to retrieve both Alejandra and Lieutenant Commander Patrick, dragging the two unconscious bodies away toward the strangely designed vehicles that populated the main hub. Thel wasn’t sure if they were air- or water-vehicles, but knowing that James had designed them, she knew they’d do the job either way.
“The evacuation is underway,” Thel relayed, slightly relieved. “But what happened to the hard drive? Is Rich okay?”
6
“We’re trying to figure that out,” James returned “Hang on. Rich? Do you copy?”
“Where the hell am I?” Rich shouted as, all around him, he appeared to be surrounded by a wall of white. “I don’t see anything! I don’t even know what direction I’m facing!”
“Thank God you’re okay, pal,” James breathed a sigh of relief. “Listen, Thel’s helping the Purists evacuate, and Aldous doesn’t seem to be able to get to you through your magnetic field. He’s trying to buy time—he must think there’s still a way he can prevent us from assuming control of Trans-human.”
“What about the Purists in the command center?” Rich asked as he was suddenly interrupted, the interruption causing him to scream out in a brief call of terror. As if in answer to his question, Governor Wong’s dead body was thrust against the side of his magnetic field. “Jesus!”
“Rich! Are you okay?”
Rich was panting as he tried to regain some semblance of control over his rapid breathing as the governor’s body was swept away in the torrent. “Relatively,” he replied, “but James, the Governor’s dead. I just saw him. Oh Christ.”
James shut his eyes. “That blood’s on Aldous’s hands. Goddamn it, I never thought he’d betray us like this. Not in a million years.”
“Nor did I,” the A.I. echoed. “Aldous has clearly been using his privileged position as the chief of the A.I. governing council to keep a great many secrets, perhaps for several decades.”
“What do I do here, guys?” Rich asked, panicked. “I can’t see. It’s just a wall of white all around me. Just frothing water, man.”
“Where’s Aldous?” James asked. “You should be able to detect his position if you’re in such close proximity.”
“That’s the thing,” Rich replied, “I can’t. His position isn’t coming up on my mind’s eye. Guys, he’s not playing by the rules here.”
“He’s right,” the A.I. concurred with Rich’s assessment as he conferred with James, the candidate standing nearby, transfixed by the drama, yet remaining a silent bystander. “Rich can’t g
et a position, he doesn’t know which way is up or down, left or right. This is right where Aldous wants him. If Aldous can’t lower Rich’s magnetic field, then at least he can keep him trapped in one place.”
“And if he’s trapped in one place, he can’t reach a signal booster,” James added.
“It also provides a possible answer as to what Aldous is buying time for,” the A.I. said, his brow furrowed as he thought deeply, unraveling the puzzle. “If Aldous can’t lower Rich’s magnetic field, yet he claimed to have been the one who developed the prototype—”
“Then someone has to have given it to Aldous,” James said, finishing the A.I.’s thought for him. “And our top suspect is 1, once again. She’d be in the best position to know how to beat her own collective’s technology, but she wouldn’t trust Aldous enough to give him the key.”
“Indeed, it’s now all but certain that Aldous and 1 struck a deal,” the A.I. agreed.
“But their deal hasn’t gone according to plan, and now Aldous is waiting for the other shoe to drop,” James realized.
“Uh, guys,” Rich interrupted, “I love detective time as much as the next guy, I really do, but I’m sorta trapped here. What the hell do I do?”
James turned to the A.I. and they, without a word, seemed to agree on the only course of action available. “Look, Rich...” James began.
“Okay, already I don’t like this,” Rich replied. “Why did I know your tone was going to be foreboding? Why can’t it ever start with, ‘It’s super easy, Rich! No worries! Have a beer! Chill out!’”
“I wish it was that simple, but it’s gonna be a risk, bud,” James said. “I know you don’t know where you are in the room, but we need you to give us some sort of visual cue so that we can direct you to a signal booster. That means we need to get you out of that room.”
“And how do we do that?” Rich replied, his face stricken with dread.
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