9
As Old-timer and his companions passed Europa, its new host planet’s predicament immediately became clear. Several android ships surrounded Venus, orbiting it along with an untold number of androids and smaller ships, the cluster so strong that it almost appeared as though Venus had developed rings as thick as Saturn.
“Colonel, we’re about three minutes out. What’s your ETA?” Old-timer asked.
“We’re entering the atmosphere!” Paine shouted back. “This 1 character is in my sights. She’s got about a twenty-second lead on us.”
“When you catch up to her, do your best to contain her,” Old-timer commanded. “We think she might be weakened, but use extreme caution. She’s desperate...and she’s smart as hell.”
“I’ll give it everything I’ve got,” Paine replied.
“Daniella,” Old-timer switched gears, “stay back as much as you can.”
“Like hell! I have to help!”
Old-timer heard Paine snicker over their connection.
“What?” Daniella demanded from him.
“Some things, not even a parallel universe can change,” Paine observed.
Old-timer’s expression hardened. Hot jealousy burned under his cheeks.
Djanet saw the changed expression on Old-timer’s face and cut in. “Daniella, Paine’s a trained killer. Let him do his job and just try to stay alive, all right?”
“I’ll do what I have to,” Daniella replied, clearly reluctant about her acquiescence.
“Damn it. Damn it,” Old-timer cursed repeatedly to himself. “I can’t lose her again. It’s my job to protect her. I can’t lose her.”
“You won’t,” Djanet reassured him before a small cry of pain snapped their attention onto Samantha.
Old-timer realized, without intending it, he’d squeezed Samantha’s hand so hard that he’d damaged it. He released it, and she held it in her other hand, falling behind as she pulled up.
Old-timer pulled up as well to match her declining rate of speed, turning to Djanet as she pulled away and ordering her to, “Hurry! We’ll catch up!”
She continued, cruising toward re-entry.
Old-timer reached out for Samantha’s hand, his eyes filled with sorrow. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Let’s go, we can’t waste time. I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” she shouted as she zoomed past him, streaking to catch up to Djanet.
Old-timer accelerated as well, now taking up the rear. He looked down at his hand, the hand that could crush that of even an android, and was astonished at how oblivious he could be.
I just can’t stop hurting people.
10
“Damn it to hell!” Rich shouted. “He’s shooting at the tower!”
“Rich! You’ve got to protect it at all costs!” James shot back, having retaken the aug glasses within the sim.
“I’m trying!” Rich returned as he reached the shoreline and extended his protective field, forming a shield that deflected the powerful blasts from Aldous as he skimmed above the ocean on a collision course. “I need some help here. I can’t connect the sim to the signal booster and hold him off at the same time!”
“Just hold him off,” James returned. “The tower is the signal booster. The A.I. and I will take it from here. Just make sure he doesn’t harm the tower or the hard drive, and thirty seconds from now, we’ll be on our way to Earth, at the speed of light.”
Within the sim, the A.I. was already de-patternizing his hand. He winced from the pain but quickly joined his exposed patterning to that of the Kali avatar. Just as had occurred with Thel, the patterns began to fuse.
“See you on the other side,” James said.
“You certainly will,” the A.I. replied. “Happy journey.”
A moment later, he’d left the sim and the Kali avatar blinked back into existence, taking his place instantly, once again lifelessly standing in place, its left hand missing.
James stepped to the de-patternizer gun and aimed it at his own hand, but before he fired, the candidate stopped him.
“What about me?” he asked.
James turned to him, his expression filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry. We have to go.”
“I could come with you, couldn’t I? Is there any reason why I couldn’t use the Kali avatar to leave the simulation as well?”
“Yes, there is,” James replied matter-of-factly, walking to within a step of the candidate. “We don’t have a body for you yet, and we don’t have a mainframe to house you either. The A.I. will be able to share the brain space in my body temporarily, but two people in one skull is already one person too many. For now, this sim will have to be your home. But I promise you, we’ll get you out of here and make things right.”
“But I-I don’t relish the idea of being alone.”
James smiled. “You won’t be. We’ll be in contact again very soon.”
James aimed the de-patternizer at his hand and looked up at the candidate, who had the expression of a child that was about to be left alone in the dark—he realized that wasn’t far from the truth.
“I promise,” James repeated with emphasis.
His words made the candidate bravely force a smile. “Okay.”
James shot his hand and screamed out in pain, suddenly finding himself filled with admiration for the subdued level of reaction both Thel and the A.I. had exhibited.
“James!” Rich suddenly shouted out. “We’ve got company!”
“Who is it?” James asked before he fused with the Kali avatar.
“I don’t know—it’s definitely an android…definitely a woman.”
“Oh no,” James responded, fearing the worst. However, regardless of whether the woman was 1 or not, there was no turning back now. “Rich, I’m sending my pattern to Earth now! Do whatever you have to do. Just hold them off!”
He joined patterns with the Kali avatar and a moment later, stood in the silence of Cloud 9, only the candidate there to bid him farewell. The candidate offered a halfhearted salute, which James returned before opening up his reestablished mind’s eye controls and selecting the exit option for the sim.
In the next second, the Kali avatar returned, the deadened look in her eye the candidate’s only company.
“Farewell,” he whispered.
11
“This will only be the beginning of the android onslaught against you, Richard,” Aldous warned through their mind’s eye connection as the female android landed with a thud that vibrated through the soil so that they both felt it through the soles of their feet. “Millions of them will come, and only I can protect the sim and James and the A.I. within it. This is your last chance.”
“Chief,” Richard began, his eyes on the form of the woman as she marched with determined purpose toward them at the foot of the 180-foot Tesla tower, “I’ll die before I trust the lives of anyone in your hands.” His eyes left the woman and went to Aldous. “That’s a promise.”
Aldous’s lips tightened as he watched what he saw as Rich’s inevitable destruction unfold before him. “Remember, I tried to warn you,” Aldous ominously said.
The woman, Jules, marched to them and, with a simple flick of her wrist, sent out a signal that completely disabled Rich’s magnetic field in an instant as though she were putting a match to tissue paper.
“Oh damn,” Rich whispered. “That’s not good.”
She quickly peeled her eyes from Rich and they went to Aldous, whose eyes narrowed as he began to suspect who he was dealing with. “1?” he asked.
She answered by reaching out with her hand, putting her thumb to his throat, and lifting him above the ground, his feet dangling inches above the sun-baked soil.
“You failed,” she proclaimed. “Our agreement is now void.”
Aldous couldn’t reply, his words strangled by the thumb dug deep into his throat, crushing his larynx.
“He’s not the only one who
failed!” Paine shouted as he collided with Jules’s body as he traveled at over 300 kilometers per hour, smashing her away from Aldous, freeing him whilst the trio carved a scar into the soil as Paine’s momentum carried them for several meters. The collision had caused a plume of dust to launch into the air in front of Rich.
“James?” Rich spoke. “Please tell me you’re on your way to Earth. Things just got, uh...really, really weird here.”
There was no reply.
Instead, Rich watched as Old-timer’s wife, Daniella, landed a few seconds after the collision, her eyes peering through the dust before briefly darting to Rich. “Hi, Rich.”
“Hey,” Rich replied, not sure of what else he could do and accepting the absurdity unfolding around him, the way one does in a dream.
As the conflict continued, mostly obscured by the cloud of dry Venus soil thrown into the air, another figure appeared, descending quickly. In less than a second, Rich recognized the pattern of her incoming silhouette.
“Djanet!”
She landed as 1 had, with a thud, but her eyes locked on Rich immediately, and she ran to him. “You’re alive!”
He threw his arms around her. “Thank God! Djanet! Everybody and their uncles and aunts are trying to kill me right now!”
“We’ll keep you safe!”
“Who’s we? What the hell is going on?” Rich asked, exasperated.
“Old-timer’s right behind me.”
Rich sighed with relief. “Oh thank God. Because Chief Gibson’s been trying to kill me all day and some android chick just deactivated my force-field!” he exclaimed as he pointed to the cloud of dust, 100 meters to their right and to the right of the base of the Tesla tower. “They’re after this.” He displayed the hard drive for her. “James and the A.I. were inside this hard drive,” he said, “but I think they used the tower to send their patterns to Earth.”
“A woman landed here?” Djanet asked, forcefully and earnestly demanding confirmation as she clutched Rich’s still-flesh shoulders, forgetting herself as he yelped in pain.
“Yeah!” Rich shouted in return. “Ow! Hands!”
“I’m sorry,” Djanet replied before looking into the dust. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” Rich shouted. “I just got you back!”
“I know, baby,” Djanet replied, “but that was 1, and somebody has a lot of explaining to do. I’ll be damned if I’m not about to make them talk.”
12
“Listen, lady,” Paine grunted as he held 1 to the ground, his elbow to her throat to incapacitate her, “I don’t want to hurt you, so you just stay put, ya hear?”
“It can’t be,” Aldous stammered as the dust began to settle, the image of the man just two meters in front of him becoming more clear as he subdued 1. “It can’t.”
Paine looked up from his quarry and peered through the dust at the man on his back. “Aldous?” he reacted, astonished. “Aldous Gibson? Is that you?”
Aldous’s disbelieving face vanished in an instant, replaced by the face of pure hatred—of pure, unreasoning vengeance. He got to his feet, coiled his legs, and then pounced on Paine, seventy-five years of built-up thirst for revenge demanding to be quenched. “You son-of-a-bitch!” Aldous shouted as he drove Paine off of 1 and back to the ground. “You murderer! You devil!”
“Aldous?” Paine uttered, flummoxed as he tried to protect himself, holding his arms up defensively like a boxer, absorbing the vicious blows that were leveled upon him as best he could, his artificial flesh being torn away with each vicious attack. “What’s the matter with you?”
“You murdering psychopath!” Aldous screamed. “You’re not human! I won’t allow you to live! I won’t allow it!”
Aldous’s blows kept coming, Paine remaining on his back, unable to do anything other than to hold his arms up, protecting his face and torso from the worst impact of the heavy, life-threatening blows. After several attacks in quick succession on Paine’s right arm, it began to give, one blow causing Paine’s forearm to crack, the very next causing it to snap, nearly severing it from his android body.
Djanet attempted to intervene as she landed nearby. “Chief Gibson, stop!” she shouted before throwing her arms around his neck, lunging onto his back, a gesture which he easily shrugged off before backhanding her across the face, knocking her to the ground.
“No!” Aldous shouted. His revenge-obsessed eyes met the frightened orbs of Paine. “No one will interfere with this demon’s death sentence. You’re going to die today, Colonel Paine, once and for eternity.”
“Aldous!” a voice suddenly thundered from their right side at the same moment as the form’s body thudded to the ground, sending a terrific vibration through all of them.
“Craig?” Aldous replied as he narrowed his eyes, recognizing the silhouette as it took shape in the swirling dust and the beams of streaking sunlight that penetrated them. “Craig, this is the man that killed Samantha. This is the man that murdered our wife!”
A second figure suddenly appeared next to Old-timer in the dust, her frame even more recognizable to the former chief.
“Sam? Sam?” Aldous reacted, astonished as he stood to his feet. “Is it really you? How?”
Paine rolled to the side, away from his attacker and the fortunately abandoned death blow, his right arm dangling uselessly in front of him, having been mostly severed below the elbow.
“Aldous,” Old-timer said as he put out his arm, blocking Aldous from crossing to Samantha, who looked at him with morbid curiosity and confusion. “Don’t touch her.”
“Craig, she’s my wife,” Aldous protested.
Old-timer shook his head. “She’s not,” he replied. “Your wife is dead—for good this time—and it was by your hand,” he related, his tone filled to the brim with vitriol.
Aldous turned to Old-timer, his eyes disbelieving. “No. It can’t be true.”
“It is,” Old-timer replied. “But you know that already, Aldous. You know that better than anyone.”
A second later, Old-timer plunged one of his tendrils through the chief’s throat, the microscopic filaments attaching quickly to the chief’s android brainstem.
“And now,” Old-timer began as the chief struggled fruitlessly, the appendage impaling him through his Adam’s apple, “I want to know the whole story. I want to see why you betrayed us.”
“Aldous is an android?” Djanet reacted, aghast as she saw the chief twitching, impaled through his throat by Old-timer. “But…when?”
“Since the start,” Old-timer growled. He gestured with his head toward 1, who was standing nearby, watching events unravel, wordlessly. “Make sure she doesn’t try anything.”
Djanet crossed quickly to her, but 1 put her hand up to stop her.
“If I wanted to ‘try’ something, I’d have done it already,” she stated, sounding insulted by the insinuation that she could be stopped by the company in question. “I’ve already achieved what I wanted to here.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Djanet said as Colonel Paine ambled up beside her, doing his best to help cordon off the dangerous leader of the androids, even though his right arm was useless. “What’s she talking about Old-timer?”
“I’m about to find out,” Old-timer replied as he closed his eyes and let himself drift into Aldous’s memories.
13
Old-timer could feel the dread within Aldous as he inhabited the chief’s memories.
Aldous sat down in the situation room of the governing council, having just watched a live image of James crushing the body of 1 into dust in his mind’s eye. Aldous wearily uttered to himself, “We live in momentous times.”
Old-timer skipped forward.
Aldous fretted in the master bedroom of his penthouse in downtown Seattle on a stunning evening, the sun having dropped below the horizon an hour earlier, yet the indigo glow remained on the sky while the post-human world, his world, bustled about efficiently before him as though nothing had happened—as though
it wasn’t threatened—as though it weren’t about to end.
He turned to face the bed. Samantha was already asleep. She went to sleep content, thinking Aldous had set his nans so that he’d fall asleep beside her for the night, but he’d awoken soon after they’d closed their eyes, a preplanned waking, as he stepped out of bed and paced by the luxurious floor-to-ceiling window, watching the green cocoons of the people dance by like fireflies on a summer night. He wanted to share his terror with her, confide in her the truth, but he knew her too well. She won’t have it, he thought. She won’t listen to reason. He already knew how it would end.
He knew how the end would begin as well.
Old-timer skipped forward again.
Despite fears of an overwhelming wave of defections from the android collective in the hours and days after James’s pronouncement that they were welcome to stay with the post-humans as long as the androids abandoned the collective, only a scant few thousand actually chose to make their way to Earth, the moon, and Mars to join the post-human world. Aldous chose one of these few enclaves that had made their way to San Diego just hours after James had killed 1 and made his invitation. It didn’t take much detective work; just a few well-placed questions to locals, for Aldous to find a group of two dozen androids in the downtown area near the gas lamp district that, unlike much of the city, had largely survived the devastating nuclear bombardment of World War III. They’d taken up residence in what had been little more than a historical oddity, abandoned by the locals for the anachronism that it was, the Courtyard Marriott hotel. With worldwide travel accessible to every post-human within minutes, the notion of a hotel was foreign, laughable and to some, including Aldous, even pathetic. But there was irony in the fact that more than half a century since it had seen its last visitor, the hotel was indeed serving its intended purpose once again, temporarily housing visitors who were a long, long way from home.
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