by Ryan Rinsler
One call was all it would take to make a woman a widow and a child fatherless. On the flip side, that one call would push forward the resistance with the hope that one day Andrew’s sacrifice would have helped change the world.
He stared at the phone, his thumb quivering above the dial button.
He had a decision to make.
39
Stanley slipped his leg from under the sheet as surreptitiously as possible. The door at the end of the ward was unmanned. The woman, who had clearly been alerted of Stanley’s identity, or at least his status, had been absent for at least five minutes. The coast appeared to be clear.
His bare feet touched the cold ground, and, still wearing his stolen lab coat, he stepped gingerly toward the door of his cubicle. Nobody acknowledged him. His first thought was to tiptoe, but, having thought about it for a second, he simply opened the cubicle door and walked confidently toward the exit. Again, nobody looked up, let alone made eye contact with him.
Robots, he thought disdainfully, yet with a flash of gratitude as he swung open the ward door and made his way into the corridor beyond. It was agonizingly long, with bright sunlight beaming through a window at the end of it.
I’m above ground, he thought, his heart pumping even faster. Now he started running. Now he wanted out of there. There were medical staff in the distance, but Stanley didn’t care. He galloped down the corridor, his lab coat billowing behind him, the skin of his soles slapping on the tiled floor as, still limping, he sped toward the light.
He barged past two people, who looked surprised but not alarmed, apologizing as he did. He was almost there. Soon he would find out where he was, and how he may escape. Many of the Silk medical facilities were on lower levels, only a few above the ground floor for speed of access, the thought of which gave him an extra boost of energy as his lungs began to burn.
Fifty steps... thirty... ten....
As his hands slapped the window hard, his heart immediately sunk to the floor as the mountainous view flickered and flashed momentarily.
Virtual windows. He was still underground.
It’s not over yet.
Suddenly he heard the crash of a door banging open behind him, and, swinging around quickly he saw two scouts bursting into the corridor. They looked at him immediately, not even checking elsewhere, then began running toward him, the crack of their shiny, metal-heeled shoes on the floor echoing like gunfire.
They’d obviously seen him on surveillance, his thoughtless, energetic outburst toward the end of the corridor blowing any kind of cover he may have had.
He looked around, side to side. There was a single door, maybe fifty steps from him, and beyond that, their distance narrowing quickly, were the Scouts.
He bolted for it, forgetting any kind of fatigue and running at full speed. As he was no less than ten steps away from the door, he watched helplessly, almost in slow motion, as one of the scouts withdrew a weapon from their belt and aimed it at him. A flash came from the muzzle, and he was hit suddenly with what felt like a lightning bolt which sent a dull thump right to his core. His arms tensed across his chest as he hit the floor, his back arching, legs shaking as he slid down the corridor on his side. His teeth were clenched so tightly they felt as though they would splinter together at any moment, and a pain ran through his spine like he’d been hit with a baseball bat between his shoulders.
As the Scouts reached him they skidded to a halt, one of them instantly jabbing a needle gun into his neck and firing.
And then, black.
#
His eyes opened, and with a huge intake of breath he flinched as he saw a face not ten centimeters from his own. Hans was stood over him having brought him back around, and was staring at him intently. A light beamed behind him, giving him a menacing silhouette, the glint from his excited eyes flickering back at Stanley.
“Welcome back,” he said. “Not with a tinge of Déjà Vu, don’t you think?”
Stanley caught his breath and looked around. They were in a similar room in which Hans carried out his earlier interrogation, with him now lying unstrapped on a long, reclining chair.
“I’m glad you’re back here actually, Dr. Chen,” said Hans, relaxing a little. “I feel we had some unresolved business. You see, I wasn’t… shall we say, quite myself last time. I like to be professional and show respect where it is due. Now you’re back on my chair I’d like to clear the air.”
Stanley looked at him with a sideways glance, the aching muscles and bruises on his body a grim reminder of his last encounter with Hans.
“The journey isn’t over for you by any stretch, Dr. Chen, but resorting to fists is a messy business. There is one thing, though. It highlighted the flaws in my work to such a degree that I’ve put my mind to more, umm... appropriate developments.”
“I’m delighted.”
“I’m sure you are,” he replied with a grin. “I want you to be a part of the test team for it, especially since what happened in the lab earlier. I’ve been very keen to get you down here to take a look at you – I haven’t had my fingers on someone like you before, at least not here.”
Stanley shrugged. “Someone like me?”
“Yes! I’m a little pissed I didn’t find out sooner, but you’re here now, so we can begin.”
“Find out what?” asked Stanley, taking a little more notice.
Hans looked a little taken aback. “You don’t know, do you?”
He didn’t answer, instead frowning with curiosity.
Hans took a seat. “After all this time,” he said to himself under his breath. “So, you never thought to test yourself?” he asked.
“Test myself for what?”
He leaned forward and looked deep into his eyes. “Why did you wake up, Dr. Chen? In the lab. Why did you wake up and nobody else did?”
A cold river of realization began to flow from his forehead to the tips of his toes.
“Yes, yes,” continued Hans, nodding slowly with a huge grin. “The universal bots didn’t take to you, did they?”
Stanley began rubbing his hands together, breathing heavily.
“Yes,” repeated Hans. “Yes!” He was becoming more excited with each wring of despair carried out by Stanley. “And you know what this means. I can see you know what this means.”
Stanley remained silent, staring at his knees. He knew exactly what it meant.
“You thought all the Dr. Stanley Chen ‘two-point-zeros’ in the default timelines were under control, didn’t you? Well, it looks like the other versions of you didn’t have quite the conscience.”
Stanley was distraught. Had he assumed his alternate-selves were acting to someone else’s will? Had he convinced himself they had no control, no desire to carry out the work that would ultimately pave the way for the Global Pacification Program? He searched his mind frantically for an alternative. Could it just be he who had immunity? The chances were so miniscule it couldn’t even hold up against his desperation to believe it were true. It was probable the will to not know, to be blind to the truth, was the reason he’d never tested himself, nor probed too deeply into his role in the default timelines, and now his worst fears were confirmed.
“That’s the world’s biggest problem, Dr. Chen — this conscience everyone seems to have developed over the years. It’s conscience that stops us from doing the right thing.”
He was now speaking to Stanley with an air of enthusiasm, as though he were speaking to himself, discovering new truths as he spoke. “If the world has taught us one thing it’s that the weak die and the strong survive. It’s the conscience keeps the weak alive. You don’t see a lion feel bad for taking a baby away from its mother, yet here we are, in an age where medicine denies death to the weakest of us. That’s not what brought us here, Dr. Chen. That’s not how we evolved. It’s the enemy of progress.”
His face dropped to a scowl. “This… this weakness… it’s in you,” he continued. “I can see it. It’s not in him, not in Dr. Chen ‘two-point-zer
o’. No, he knows what’s got to be done, as does Silk. They get it. This place is vile. What I’d do to be able to port myself across for good, to be rid of this crèche, this… this nursery for the weak.”
Stanley was sinking lower, frowning, his hands shaking.
“This is just the beginning, Dr. Chen. Now I’m here, things are going to change.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Oh… we’ll do some tests on you, find out why you’re immune, which… I don’t think you’ll find very fun. You see, when I said you’d be part of the test team, I meant as much as shaved rat is part of a test team. Your immunity gives us an opportunity here. You never know, we mind find something the others didn’t.”
Stanley was purposely acting bored and disinterested, not making eye contact, just fiddling with a small badge on his stolen lab coat. From the corner of his eye he could see Hans bowing his head slightly, trying to get Stanley’s attention, his look of excitement replaced by a subtle frown.
“We could always just send you for reallocation, if that’s what you’d prefer?”
Stanley frowned with curiosity once more.
“Oh, that’s news to you too?” said Hans, suddenly perking up. “Oh yes, we’ve begun the introduction of reallocation here as well. You… do know what it is… right?”
Stanley finally made eye contact.
“You don’t?” Hans asked, grinning condescendingly. “Ah, the best kept secret across an infinity of universes. Quite something. It was more out of necessity than anything else; our mineral resources started to run low at roughly the same time as the defaults. Well, relatively speaking. It’s funny how things so closely line up here with the default paths, just a few decades behind. We can almost predict the future.”
“Not my future.”
There was a silence.
“So it seems,” said Hans, a wry smile, suggesting he was conceding some kind of small defeat. “No, when you disappeared from the lab it was quite a surprise. Yet, here you are. It seems your fate was always to be back on this chair talking to me, whether we’d known about it or not.”
Hans opened his BlackBook and began typing. “Of course, Dr. Chen, as much as it pains me to say, there’s the very real possibility that Dr. Chen ‘two-point-zero’ had just been D.N.A. targeted.”
Of course. Stanley had a pang of excitement and relief. Those who were immune would fight off the NanoBots with their immune system. By sampling the target’s D.N.A. and creating the NanoBots using a strain of that D.N.A., Silk were able to bypass the immune system completely and have the subject’s body assume the NanoBots were in fact simply part of their nervous system. This was part of the reason the numbers in Mana’s team were depleting — members were either killed or taken in, their immunity then bypassed by D.N.A. targeting, thus becoming the enemy themselves.
It gave Stanley hope — hope his alternate-selves weren’t villains, pushing the regime of Silk Corporation and the Global Pacification Project through choice, but as he noticed a figure enter the room, presumably to extract D.N.A. and begin the process of creating a biologically targeted NanoHive, that hope, that glimmer of possibility, was extinguished as quickly as it had kindled.
He would rather die than become one of them.
“Yes?” asked Hans.
Stanley suddenly took notice. Hans was talking to the large man, seemingly an unexpected visitor, who had just stepped through the door.
“Stanley Chen?” asked the man.
“Yes?”
The man raised his arm, in his hand a pistol, and fired two shots.
It was over.
40
Andrew’s eyes slowly opened. He was still laying on his side, Connor watching him intently, cross-legged, aiming Andrew’s pistol at him. It was loaded this time. Andrew looked at Connor softly, appearing to be collecting himself. Still laying on his side he glanced at the phone in Connor’s hand.
“An hour ago I told you I’m not a killer,” said Connor. “That was an hour ago.”
“I’ve gotta hand it to you, kid, you surprised me. You’re tougher than you look.”
I surprised myself, too, he thought.
Andrew slowly pushed himself upright into a seating position and rested against the wall, his arms sitting heavily between his thighs. He glanced at his pistol in Connor’s hand. “So, what now?” he asked. “I guess this one’s loaded.”
Connor took the recently removed Jammer from his pocket and placed it down in front of him. Andrew blinked a few times, trying to focus on the device, before letting out a deep sigh. He touched gently behind his ear. “Thanks for patching me up. Did you call it in?”
“Not yet. I’ve given them the nod that the Jammer’s been removed, and I told them as you woke up that if they’ve not heard from me in ten minutes to get someone to connect to you.”
Andrew rubbed his face and took a deep breath. He looked groggy. “Has my wife not been in?”
“She knocked and said she was going out with Christie. I just pretended to be talking to you and she went away.”
“So it’s just us two?”
“So it appears.”
Andrew took a deep breath. “There’s that conscience I was talking about.”
“You’re right, I do have a conscience,” admitted Connor. “Without one I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and, well, I kinda like that person. It’s a lack of conscience that’s got us into the situation we’re in now.”
“Oh?”
“Not on my part,” he replied, giving the act of pointing his gun at Andrew his full attention. He wasn’t about to let his guard down now.
“May I finish my drink?” asked Andrew.
“Sure.”
He struggled to his feet, stumbling slightly causing Connor to flinch and grip the pistol a little tighter. He staggered around the desk and slumped into his seat, before clumsily grabbing his glass and taking a large swig.
“For the last hour I’ve been thinking about nothing other than you and me,” said Connor. “I’ve had people I barely know calling for your death, and up until the point where I was actually going to have to commit, I was OK with that. What you’ve done in the default timelines must be pretty atrocious to deserve a unanimous death sentence, which I guess is why, up until this point, it seemed fairly righteous for me to do what I was going to do. You were to be the sacrificial lamb, but without the innocence. But the more I sat there and thought, the more I saw the reality. For the past month I’ve been tearing myself apart inside, barely sleeping. You know what’s kept me awake? The fact that my default-self is the cause of so much pain. See, I’m not unlike you. In the default timelines I’m also responsible for a lot of problems. More than you can imagine. So when I was given the job of executioner, all I would have been doing was confirming to myself that I am him. If you’re judged here by the actions of you in other universes, then shouldn’t I be?”
“You don’t know me, kid. You seem like a good guy. Coming in here with an empty pistol, just in case you hurt me. I’m not like you. Not at all.”
“You could’ve shot me an hour ago.”
“I thought about it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I ain’t a good guy, son. Really.”
Connor lowered the gun and took a seat. “Help us.”
“Help you do what?”
“You’re a level nine. Get us inside the building. Down to the lower levels. Do that and you can have this back.” He placed the small Jammer on the desk.
“It’s folly.”
“Why?”
“Whatever level I am, you’re a level nothing. I can’t just walk you in there.”
“Just say we’re your guests.”
“What, and take you down to the basement? That place is so off limits even I get questioned when I go down there. No, kid, it’s not an option.”
“There must be something we can do!” exclaimed Connor, more in desperation than frustration.
Andrew laughed t
o himself. “Just connect to me kid. Get one of your guys to connect and walk in there, do what you gotta do and that’s that. I won’t be missed.”
“It doesn’t have to come to that.”
“I’ll make you a deal. When my wife gets back you ask her what you should do,” he said, smiling.
This isn’t the time for wisecracks, thought Connor. “There has to be another way.”
There was a long silence, just the tinkling of the metal cooling cubes knocking against the side of his glass as he slowly swirled his whiskey.
“I have a Primer,” he said.
“You, what?”
“I have a Primer. It’s a little out of date, but it works.”
“You have it here?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say sooner? Can we use it?”
He stood up and walked to a bookcase at the side of the room. In there was a small box, which he opened, flicked through, then withdrew the small, black device. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to help you,” he said, taking a seat. “Coming in here and threatening me in front of my family.”
“That wasn’t intentional.”
“Intentional or not, I’ve put people in the ground for less than that. Well, when I was younger, maybe. Maybe I’m just getting too old for all this stuff.”
“So will you help us?”
“I like you, kid. It takes a lotta guts to take on a guy like me with an empty pistol. Guts and morality; not the usual recipe for a success story, not when it comes to conflict. But it looks like it helped you this time.”
“So you’ll help us?”
“OK. You dial it in and I’ll get ready.”
Connor hurriedly grabbed his phone and dialed Jacob. Andrew topped up his glass and drank it in one, dropping the glass down with a thump on the desk.
“OK, they’ll be ready in five minutes,” said Connor, hanging up. “Are you OK to go?”
Connor noticed Andrew wipe his eyes, redness and moisture appearing to take over them. “It’ll be OK,” he said. “Our guys are real pro’s. They’ll be in and out before you know it.”
