by James Maxey
The world went dark as his shields strengthened to protect him from the hail storm of monstrous fists that came at him from every direction. Under assaults like this, his force field became a prison, so resistant to all forms of energy that he couldn’t move them even from the inside. He might as well have been entombed once more in the iron cube.
Time passed. His mind swirled, then dulled, as his shields protected him from all stimulus. There were no sounds, no light, no smells, no sensation of pressure, or heat. He felt like a bodiless soul, trapped in eternity with only his own guilt for company. He didn’t fully understand what had happened to him. Who was he fighting? Who was Ogre?
“I’m you,” he’d said. “The real you.”
So who am I, thought Servant.
Not Ogre.
Not that monster.
He no longer felt guilt for his old crimes. Now, his guilt was the burden of what he’d failed to do. Half the world might be moments away from annihilation. Worse, given how impossible it was to judge the passage of time within his shields, half the world might already be dead.
No, he thought. Have faith. Whatever God Sister Amy worshiped, it wasn’t his God. His God would never allow such a terrible thing to happen. But… what if Servant was God’s plan to stop the mass slaughter? What if God’s faith in him had been misplaced?
After an immeasurable time, he felt a slight pressure on the back of his eyes. No, not pressure. Light. First deep reds, then purples, then dim shapes emerged. He blinked, and his sight was restored.
He didn’t like what he saw.
He was stretched out, spread-eagle between two enormous silver pillars. He tried to move but couldn’t. He seemed to be floating in midair. With great effort, he could turn his head from side to side but his limbs were utterly immobile.
“Everything’s working exactly like the simulations,” said a nearby voice. “Unlike the clones, his cells are regenerating as fast as we drain them.”
“Good work, Brother Thomas,” said Sister Amy, somewhere beyond Servant’s field of vision.
“Sister Amy?” Servant asked, straining to move his jaw and tongue, trembling to exhale.
“You said he wouldn’t be able to speak,” said Sister Amy.
“His limbs are effectively paralyzed,” said the unseen Brother Thomas. “But the power drain will be weakest at the exact center of the pillars. He may still have enough strength for a few words, but I doubt he’ll retain this strength for long. According to the simulations, using the space machine to move the city is going to drain 93% of the energy stored in his cells. We can’t promise he’ll survive.”
“Once we’ve moved the city, his survival won’t truly matter, will it?”
Sister Amy walked around to face Servant. She was flanked to one side by one of the Ogres. At least, he thought it was one of the same doubles he’d fought. This one looked thin, emaciated.
To the other side of Sister Amy stood a gray haired man in a lab coat carrying a tablet. Sister Amy smiled gently. “Peace be with you, Brother Clint. I’m glad you’re awake. I’d hoped you might understand that you’ve been given a second chance. You’ll be helping us move the temple after all.”
“What… are you doing… to me,” he whispered.
“The space machine requires a great deal of energy to move objects with significant mass,” said Sister Amy. “Rex Monday, the inventor, had cut a deal with the Russians to draw power from one of their aging nuclear reactors. The Knowbokov Foundation has a fusion generator in their basement. But Brother Thomas tells me that moving New Jerusalem would take even more power than their reactor can produce. Your force fields tap into the vacuum energy of space itself. This energy siphon is draining that power. We literally cannot do this without you.”
“Who… is he?” he said, eying the emaciated Ogre.
“A clone,” said Sister Amy. “Even though you don’t need to eat food, you still enjoy meals. Out of habit, I suppose. What goes in must come out. It was a simple, if somewhat disgusting, matter to recover your DNA from a toilet.”
“He… doesn’t… look healthy,” said Servant.
“No,” said Sister Amy, looking over the monster. “The clones we made were flawed. Their cells don’t process energy as efficiently as yours. Stress them for more than a few minutes of sustained effort and they burn out, crumbling to dust. It makes them useless for powering the energy siphon. Fortunately, we can always make more as we need them. One of the brain trust happens to be an authority on cloning.”
“Brain… trust?” he gasped.
She nodded. “I know that thinking isn’t your strong suit, but I would have thought by now you’ve put together all the pieces. You know who Reverend Delilah McPherson was, don’t you?”
“Your sister,” he whispered. “The one… who killed… people.”
“The one put to death in the gas chamber,” said Sister Amy. “And the one pulled out of a tube of goo many years later, to learn she’d been used by a mad telepath named Dr. Knowbokov as an auxiliary brain. He’d used portions of my mind as a telepathic amplifier. When I woke from the goo, I found that I could hear the thoughts of everyone around me.”
“You?” asked Servant. “I thought… this happened… to your sister.”
She smiled. “You were probably told that Delilah McPherson died in a car wreck a few weeks after she was placed back into society under a new identity. They’d done their best to brainwash me, to imprint a new identity over my existing memories. All the other people pulled from the tubes were blank slates. It was simple to fool others into believing I, too, was an amnesiac. I never uttered a peep of resistance. I told them everything they wanted to hear. When I was released, it was a simple matter to kidnap my sister Amy, drug her, and turn her loose on a highway in a car with a stuck accelerator and the brake lines slowly bleeding out. I stepped into her life and no one suspected a thing. It wasn’t difficult at all. Before she died, I’d stolen all of her memories.”
“Stolen… her memories?”
She sighed. “I know that the energy syphon is draining you, but at least try to pay attention. It’s tedious to have to repeat things. Niko Knowbokov was a powerful telepath but even he had difficulty coordinating the thoughts of his networked extra brains. While my brethren were tasked with solving exotic scientific challenges like cloning, time travel, energy harvesting, and unraveling the secrets of his daughters’ powers, my mind was used as a sort of telepathic bridge, a hub through which the thoughts in all the various minds might meet and cooperate with one another. When I was pulled from the tube I still possessed this telepathic connection, not only with my fellow prisoners, but with anyone I focused on. Which such a gift, it’s simple to deceive people. If anyone who met me had doubts or suspicions, I could address those doubts while seeing in their mind what they most wanted to believe. It became easier still once Brother Kelley was restored to the fold. His brain had been used to study the Thrill’s vocal gifts. With my help, we liberated those memories, and learned how to mimic the effects of her voice telepathically. With her mind control, it’s been easy to build my ministry into the world shaking force it’s become.”
“You… you can project Sarah’s voice… into the minds of others? You’re responsible for the—”
“Dervishes. Yes. Brother Ledo possessed Dr. Knowbokov’s medical knowledge, and knew which glands I needed to mentally stimulate to give a man a quick, superhuman burst of strength and speed. With Brother Jacob unraveling the secrets of Rail Blade’s iron creation, and Brother Smith perfecting his time duplicates, everything I needed for creating the dervishes was in place.”
“Why?”
“Why the dervishes? The Middle East is a cauldron of war but most American’s feel sheltered. I’ve brought the war to Main Street and the malls. The political pressure to send more troops to fight overseas is growing. The time is ripe. The nation is ready for war, and with a few telepathic whispers in the Thrill’s voice, the president will be eager to reinstate the draf
t and send the youth of America off to put an end to this terrible, terrible threat.”
“Why… do you… want war… so badly?”
“How can you ask why?” she said. “You’ve listened to my sermons for years. I have the ultimate marching orders. I’m tasked by the Lord to bring about the end of days. I have been given my gifts to see His prophecy fulfilled. Why else would a sham death sentence have given me telepathy? Why else would the Lord have given me a volunteer army of thirteen genius scientists, their talents hidden beneath the false programming of the mind butchers of the Knowbokov Foundation? These geniuses awaited the touch of my mind to waken and nurture them. These things cannot have happened by chance.”
“The men… you use… were killers…” Servant whispered. “They… they can’t… be eager to face… God.”
Sister Amy shrugged. “They’re eager because I’m eager. When the thirteen of us are together, we’re of a single mind. A unified mind. I control that mind, or rather, the Lord does, as he speaks with me. Welcome to Doomsday, Servant. Please don’t struggle. You can’t break free. You may as well sleep, until you’re awakened by the final trumpet of the angels.”
Servant strained to move his limbs, strained all the harder, his heart racing, until he gave up, gasping for breath. Whatever held him, his fields couldn’t protect him from the energy drain. If anything, he suspected that, the more he struggled, the more power they could pull from him.
As Sister Amy, or Delilah, whoever, turned away, Servant managed to find the strength to call out, “If… you can control minds… why pretend I had a choice?”
She shrugged. “Alas, Dr. Knowbokov’s telepathy didn’t work with his own children. As the son of Rex Monday, you’re Knowbokov’s genetic son. I’m also unable to control Katrina Knowbokov. I’m told that she was given some sort of technological aid created by Rex Monday that shields her from telepathy. If not for that, I’d command her to confess to her crimes, tell the world the full story of her complicity with the destruction of Old Jerusalem, then have her blow her brains out on live television. Since that’s not an option, I’ve hired someone to take care of her confession and her death. Any more questions?”
He was too weak to move his jaw.
“Sleep well,” she said, turning away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Reboot
For dramatic effect, Chimpion slumped to her knees as the space machine placed her and Steam-Dragon’s remains into the center of the room. Instantly, a swarm of technicians descended upon her, shouting out questions. Nathan reached her and she took his hand, rising on trembling legs.
“We were ambushed,” she said. “The second we got inside, Rail Blade was waiting. She tore App apart, shredding his belt before he could reset. Steam-Dragon got in a few blows before Rail Blade did the same to her. It all happened so fast. I tried hitting her with poison gas, but she no longer needed to breathe. She’d become a creature of pure iron, but iron animated by a magnetic mind. I hit her with ultrasonics to disrupt her thoughts then destroyed her body with acid. She’s gone for good.”
“Why did she attack?”
“She’d been driven mad by isolation,” said Chimpion. “Paranoid. Talking crazy. There was electrical interference once we entered the dome that glitched out my video recording, but I’ve got photos of the sick little fantasy world she’d made. Wait until you see the creepy dolls she thought were her children.”
“Creepy dolls?” said a familiar voice from outside the room. “Man, it’s bad enough I went to Mars and don’t get to remember it. I missed out on creepy dolls, too?”
Chimpion’s eyes doubled in size as App strolled into the room.
“App!” she gasped. “You’re alive!”
“That’s debatable,” he said with a shrug. “But, yeah, they reset me once they got your call from Mars and learned I hadn’t… oh my god.” His eyes focused on Steam-Dragon’s fallen form.
Chimpion didn’t answer, still processing the fact he was alive. App dropped to one knee, placing his hand on Becky’s pale face, visible in the open chest cavity of the armor. As he stared silently at her unmoving form, a team of medics approached. Nathan gently pulled App aside.
“I’m so sorry,” said App. “Is there any chance...?”
Nathan shook his head. “She bled out long before we pulled them back. We have a lot of medical miracles available, but nothing that’s going to fix this.”
“I came in here making dumb jokes,” App said, shaking his head. “I mean… I should have…”
“You couldn’t have known,” said Chimpion. “Could you?” Did he really not remember, or was this only a ruse?
“You know,” said Nathan, “if you want to remember being on Mars, we did collect data from the time it took you to walk from the touchdown site to the dome. It was simpler to reboot you to a pre-jump state, but we can download those memories if you’d like them.”
“I… sure,” said App. “I mean, they’re my memories, even if it sounds like they aren’t going to be good ones.”
“How is this possible? Your belt was destroyed,” said Chimpion, furrowing her brow in confusion.
“No big deal,” said Nathan. “We still have the data it transmitted, though it suffered some signal degradation due to the distance. We’ll clean it up before we put it back into his brain.”
“No,” said Chimpion. “I mean… how can he have been reset without his belt?”
“I didn’t reset. I was rebooted.” App put his hand on his belt buckle. “Reset is the command I used to return to normal after using a power. A reboot is triggered remotely when the server realizes I’ve been mortally injured.”
“But if your belt isn’t intact to rebuild you…?”
App shrugged. “This thing gets destroyed all the time. Technically, it disintegrates every time I go into ghost mode. It gets recreated from data as easily as I can.”
“Oh.” She took a deep breath and managed her best imitation of a smile. “That’s wonderful. I didn’t know.”
“In retrospect, maybe I should have gone alone,” said App. “I wouldn’t have been in real danger, and alone maybe Rail Blade wouldn’t have felt threatened. Sarah told us not to go. She’s not going to be happy with us when she finds out we killed her sister.”
“I killed her sister,” said Chimpion, letting her shoulders slump. “It was in self-defense, but, still, I’m responsible. I’d… I’d like to be the one who breaks the news to Sarah. Mrs. Knowbokov as well.”
“Sarah still hasn’t checked in,” said Nathan. “As for Mrs. Knowbokov, she insisted on live updates. When you made your retrieval call and told us about Amelia’s death, I gave her the news myself.”
“How’d she take it?” asked App.
“Her usual stoicism,” said Nathan. “Honestly, she seemed more concerned about losing Steam-Dragon. She’s told us she personally wants to notify Becky’s next of kin.”
Chimpion nodded. “I should still talk to her.”
“Understood,” said Nathan. “But that can wait until you’re checked out by the medical team.”
“I’m fine,” said Chimpion.
“No doubt you are,” said Nathan. “But you’re also the first pers—” He paused, reconsidering his word choice. “The first individual we’ve ever had travel to another planet and back via the space machine. In theory, it should be no different than traveling to any spot on Earth, but we still need to check for any physical effects.”
“It can wait, can’t it?” she said. “I’d really like to talk with Mrs. Knowbokov while the events are still fresh in my mind.”
Nathan shook his head. “That’s not a good idea. Since your recorder went dead, we’ve got a debrief team that will be interviewing you during the physical exam. It’s important we get your story fresh, before you’ve told it to anyone else. It’s been shown that the act of telling a memory actually alters the memory. You’re also more likely to edit your memories if you’re speaking to someone emotionally invested in
your tale. We don’t want to lose valuable information by having you filter your story based on Mrs. Knowbokov’s reactions.”
“My eidetic memory wouldn’t allow that to happen,” said Chimpion.
“I believe you,” said Nathan. “Still, protocol is protocol. This will only take an hour, maybe two.”
Chimpion nodded. She’d had to play the role of superhero for weeks in order to get close to Rail Blade. As tempting as it was to kill everyone in the room and make a straight line for Mrs. Knowbokov, patience was the best strategy. If she killed Mrs. Knowbokov before Sarah was located, it might put Sarah on guard. There was still hope that she could arrange a meeting with both at the same time. Certainly there would be a memorial service for Steam-Dragon. That might put both her targets in the same room at once.
She went to the debriefing room. For an hour she played along, calmly answering questions, moving between detached, emotionless reporting and voice-quavering remorse and shock as needed. Humans wore their emotions on their faces so well she was able to calibrate her answers to what they wanted to hear. Still, she gave her answers with only half her mind focused on the interview. App’s presence at the base bothered her. How could she have missed out on the fact that he could reboot even if the belt was destroyed? He’d said several times the belt was the source of his powers, barely ever mentioning the servers that truly housed him. She saw now this was typical human verbal looseness. For a species that pointed to their gift of language as evidence of their superiority over other mammals, humans often mangled the most basic forms of communication. They said one thing and meant another, not because they were lying, but because they had no respect for precision in their vocabulary. What a waste of breath.
