Post-Human 05 - Inhuman

by David Simpson

  “Optimal? What happens if I crash into the rest of the complex?”

  “You might bring the ceiling down on Thel and spread the flooding and kill the rest of the Purists. So, this is going to be like Russian roulette. Same odds. Five directions save you, one direction doesn’t.”

  “But instead of playing with my life, I’m playing with Thel’s life and the lives of all the Purists!” Rich fired back.

  “Rich,” Thel suddenly cut in as she remained in the center hub of the complex, still holding back the tidal wave of water that threatened them. “James is right. You’ve got a five-in-six chance of getting out of there, but even if you do come east and flood the rest of the complex, it’ll be okay.”

  “What? Thel, I can’t be responsible for—”

  “Think about it, Rich,” Thel cut him off. “It won’t matter if we die if you’re able to get James and the A.I. out of the sim and into Trans-human. They can turn the solar system back in time again, and that’s all that matters. We can still save Governor Wong and the others that we’ve already lost.”

  Rich’s mind immediately went to Djanet, before turning to his family. In all likelihood, they’d been assimilated, and James and the A.I. were his only hope of undoing that damage and bringing back the Purist lives that had already been lost. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it. Damn it. How do I pick a direction? Eenie-meenie-miney-mo?”

  “That’ll work,” James conceded, “but hurry, Rich. If Aldous is buying time, it means he thinks there’s a strong chance that the person who can get through your magnetic field is on her way as we speak, and we all know who that is. Every second counts.”

  “Djanet you were right,” Rich whispered to himself as he nodded. “I’ve gotta retire from the saving the world business.” He closed his eyes and then flew forward as fast as he could, not knowing what direction “forward” was.

  7

  Old-timer watched in awe of the spectacle that unfolded outside of the replicator pod he shared with Djanet and Samantha. Like matchsticks in the wind, the giant pillars blew around erratically inside of the crumbling ship, none of them gaining enough momentum to carry them all the way to the gargantuan hole that had exploded open in the side of the hull, their masses causing them to be caught in the immense and increasing gravity of V-SINN, still unseen but clearly devouring the ship, sucking them ever closer to the most final death imaginable.

  The fissure toward which the group of pods were rapidly approaching at high velocity came into view for brief glimpses, but the pods were spinning uncontrollably, caught up in the force of the decompression, gusts of the atmosphere smacking them to and fro in turbulence that reminded Old-timer of the suborbital jump he’d taken the better part of a century earlier. Each time the fissure came into view, it was closer, but then it would disappear again, replaced by views of tumbling pillars, catwalks, and shrapnel that shot in every direction like grenade fragments.

  “It’s gonna take a miracle to survive this!” Djanet shouted.

  Old-timer noted that her words were barely audible, despite the fact that she was clearly shouting, an obvious sign that the atmosphere was rapidly thinning, the air unable to carry the sound of her voice.

  Suddenly, a black shape appeared from above and, whatever it was, the debris batted them down, changing their trajectory. “What was that?” Djanet asked.

  Their view was unintelligible; geometric shapes, ripped from the once moon-sized ship, were passing in front of them, but the fissure didn’t appear again.

  “Are we off course?” Samantha shouted.

  Old-timer stayed quiet. If they’d been knocked down toward V-SINN, they were as good as dead, but it was impossible to tell. He watched the bizarre spectacle continuing to unfold, his face filled with trepidation, yet also stone still as he waited for his fate to become clear.

  Then, suddenly, he noticed fingers circling his hand, Samantha grasping on to him tightly, as she buried her face, distraught, in his arm. He looked down at her, this woman who’d lost her husband, and suddenly realized how much she had in common with the man he used to be—not Old-timer, but Craig. The man who’d woken up in a world where his wife wasn’t his wife any longer. That man who’d been frozen in time.

  “There!” Djanet suddenly shouted, pointing. Her shout barely resonated for Old-timer, but her excited pointing did. The fissure reappeared, and though they’d been knocked toward the lower end of it, it was large enough that they were about to escape through the canyon-like crevice.

  Once they were outside the rapidly fragmenting hull of the Constructor, their momentum carried them for several more seconds, and Old-timer opened the door of the pod. Together, the three of them exited.

  He immediately turned his attention to finding his wife in the massive and growing debris field. Hundreds of thousands of bodies, most of the them not yet activated and likely never to be, floated into the vacuum of space. A few thousand more conscious androids, androids that had probably been relaxing in Eden when disaster struck, had been lucky enough to have made it out in the decompression. The massive cloud of bodies made it impossible for Old-timer to locate Daniella and Paine, and impossible to locate 1.

  Samantha continued to grip Old-timer’s hand, and he didn’t force her to let go. He could hardly imagine what she was going through. He turned to Djanet and noticed her mouth moving as she seemed to be communicating. Old-timer suddenly remembered that she was connected to the collective. He gestured to her to grab her attention, and then pointed to the back of her neck, unfurling a tendril as he did so. He knew she’d seen him connect to Anisim earlier and would understand. She nodded and floated close enough for him to jack into the back of her head. She made a slight wince, but within seconds, Old-timer had a viable aural connection established.

  “What’s happening? Are you in contact with Daniella?” he asked her.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “That dude from 332 is with her, and they’re already going after 1. She made a beeline for Venus as soon as they made it out of the ship. I’m tracking them.”

  “Venus?” Old-timer responded, perplexed. “Why? Why not head to one of her ships? What does she want with Venus?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the Purists?”

  “Purists?” Samantha suddenly chimed in. “You have Purists in this universe too?”

  Old-timer’s eyes narrowed, but he knew he didn’t have time to pursue her strange contribution.

  Something else grabbed his full attention.

  Over her shoulder, he saw something that struck him to his core—it was his first look at V-SINN.

  She saw the look of awe and terror freezing his eyes and knew before she turned her head what he was looking at; she’d seen that look before on her husband’s face. She turned anyway, and the trio floated in silence as they were awestruck by the scale of the destruction to the Constructor.

  V-SINN, or as 1 had called it, an infinity computer, had appeared at the tail end of the ship. As black holes went, it was tiny, much smaller than a naturally occurring stellar black hole, which was rarely smaller than at least a dozen kilometers wide. V-SINN, by comparison, wasn’t even large enough to be seen from their perspective, but the immense, nearly infinite gravity of the unholy machine made it unstoppable, and the sheer enormity of the accretion disk of destruction that was orbiting the black hole at an extraordinary rate of speed made it obvious where the infinity computer had parked itself. The picture was absurd, as the constructor ship had been the size of a small moon or a dwarf planet, yet the black hole was swallowing it, almost as though a beetle were swallowing an alligator. It would’ve been comical if not for the enormity of the destruction, the vessel having already imploded in the middle, millions of androids having been flung outside in the decompression, while billions more—the less lucky ones—remained inside, trapped, many of them still in Eden, their attempt at building Utopia, their lives mere seconds from ending.

  “Old-timer,” Djanet began, “you do realize who was in those replicator pod
s, don’t you? Those were the assimilated people from our universe…our solar system. Those were our people. If we lost James and the A.I.—if we can’t get Trans-human working so we can undo this—”

  “I know,” Old-timer replied. “Come on,” he said before he turned the trio around quickly. They began to fly on their new course in pursuit of Daniella and Paine. “We’re headed to Venus. If that really is 1’s destination, then you can bet there’s a reason for it.”

  “But, Old-timer,” Djanet started, her voice filled with both alarm and confusion, “if she really is 1, then why the elaborate game? We know 1 can take over anyone in an android body at any time!”

  Old-timer didn’t have an answer.

  “She’s leading us there, don’t you see?” Djanet insisted. “It has to be a trap.”

  Old-timer shook his head. “She already led us into the trap,” he pointed out. “She led me right into the middle of the replicator facility, where she could’ve dumped androids on me endlessly until even my upgraded abilities wouldn’t have been able to save me, but then V-SINN interrupted.” He grimaced as he mulled the puzzle in his mind. “I think she’s calling an audible.”

  “Audible?” Djanet reacted, perplexed.

  “It means when the quarterback changes the planned play based on circumstances,” Samantha interjected.

  This shocked Djanet.

  “Uh...it’s from football,” she added.

  “Oh,” Djanet replied. “American football.”

  “Yes. Craig likes football. American football.”

  Djanet’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know—”

  “Not important,” Old-timer quickly stopped Djanet’s question. “Colonel Paine,” Old-timer cut into communication with the Colonel. “Do you have 1 in your sights?”

  “She’s way ahead of us, Craig, but we’re on her tail,” Paine’s voice replied through their mental connection.

  “Is Daniella safe?” Old-timer asked.

  “I’m fine, Craig,” Daniella replied, her voice filled with uncertainty, as though the awkwardness of being with the ghost of the man she’d helped to kill—a man who claimed to have been her husband in a parallel universe—made her response absurd. It was as though she couldn’t believe she was speaking the words.

  “Okay. We’re right behind you,” Old-timer replied. He turned back to Djanet. “You make a fine point though. If she’s not leading us to Venus, then why is she using Jules’s body to get there?”

  “That was my point!” Djanet said, happy Old-timer was listening to reason. “The android armada is spread out across the solar system. There’s got to be a closer body she could jump to!”

  Old-timer considered this for a moment before he turned back and looked at the massive constructor ship, now in it’s final death throes, resembling a crushed aluminum can, half of the crumpled form having been consumed by V-SINN. “Unless…” he began a thought before pausing.

  “Unless…?” Djanet prompted him to finish.

  “Think about the complexity of a system required to store the patterns of every assimilated person from all of the parallel universes they’d traveled to. More than a trillion lives. Jules told us the Constructor was where ninety-nine percent of their bodies were built. What if it also stored all of the android patterns.”

  Djanet’s eyes flashed with understanding. “Dear God. You’re right. The Constructor makes the most sense. You’d store the patterns in the same place you build the bodies. And V-SINN just swallowed it whole.”

  “Right,” Old-timer answered, “and if 1 was able to jump from body to body because she knew how to infiltrate the stored system—”

  “Then she may’ve just lost that ability,” Djanet realized. “And we might’ve just seen the beginning of the end of the entire collective.”

  “That fits with V-SINN’s M.O.,” Samantha confirmed. “Look, this whole situation has me turned upside down, but what I can tell you is, V-SINN never, ever makes mistakes—at least none that I’ve ever seen. V-SINN’s the pure distillation of game theory—mathematical strategy for its own benefit.”

  Old-timer’s brow furrowed. “And now it’s set its sights on the androids. The enemy of thine enemy…” he whispered to himself. “Could it be?”

  “Could what be?” Djanet asked.

  Old-timer could hardly believe his next words, even before he said them. “I think 1 might be heading to Venus to acquire post-human help.”

  8

  Rich emerged from out of the roaring white of the gargantuan waterfall and entered the mist that reached up into the sky, the sun gleaming off its peak as though it were the peak of a snow-capped mountain. “Oh thank God!” Rich shouted.

  “Where are you?” James asked.

  “I think I came right out of the front of the falls,” Rich called out in return. “I’m climbing now and trying to get out of the mist.”

  “That’s perfect, bud!” James returned excitedly.

  “Whew,” Thel reacted as she listened in. She’d been willing to die if it were only temporary, but even temporary death was a terrifying prospect. “Thanks for not killing me, Rich.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Rich replied.

  “You need to find the sun and get oriented, then we can guide you to the Tesla tower,” James urged Rich. “But be careful! You weren’t able to track Aldous but he might be able to track—”

  “Oh damn!” Rich suddenly shouted as he saw the mist below him glowing green before the glow suddenly disappeared, vanishing in a blink of the eye. “I think I just saw him—I saw a green glow below me!”

  “Could it be your own field reflecting back at you?” James asked. “The mist could be playing tricks on your eyes.”

  “Maybe,” Rich said, as his eyes remained glued to the spot where the glow had been moments earlier. Though the nans had mostly repaired his rib, he could still hardly breathe, the fear of being hunted stealing his breath. He continued to climb, finally making it out of the peak of the mist and turning to find the sun. He moved away from the mountain of mist below him and explained his orientation to the technological ghosts that were listening in. “Okay, it looks like you guys were right. I’m facing west, the sun’s to my left.”

  “Perfect. Rich, turn around, fly east. The tower is on the shore of the west coast of Aphrodite Terra.”

  “Is that an island or something?” Rich asked.

  “It’s a continent, about half the size of Africa,” James replied.

  “Uh, James…”

  “Don’t worry, Rich,” James responded to Rich’s concerns before he’d even had a chance to verbalize them. “The tower is right on the equator, as are the falls. You’ll be able to detect it when you get within range, but you’ve got to hurry. Aldous could be—”

  “Uhn!” Rich called out.

  Before James could finish his warning, Aldous Gibson, with no magnetic field to give him away, came up from below Rich at an extraordinary velocity, blasting out of the cloak of mist before quickly firing twin bursts of energy, sending Rich tumbling through the air and skimming across the surface of the water at the mouth of the waterfall.

  Rich recovered quickly and began flying as fast as he could to the east, climbing from within just meters of the surface to a thousand meters elevation within seconds. “He was tracking me all right,” Rich shouted out. “But I’m okay!”

  “He can’t get past your magnetic field. Just stay on course,” James reminded Rich.

  “What if you’re wrong?” Rich replied. “What if he’s just waiting until the last possible moment? Giving me a chance like he says?”

  The A.I. took the aug glasses from James and spoke. “Then you must resist him until the last possible moment, Richard. You must keep the sim intact, reach the Tesla tower, and we’ll use the electrical power of Venus itself to boost the signal so that we can upload our core matrixes into James’s body on Earth. Then, James will become Trans-human and correct the events of the last several hours, just as we did before. Everythin
g depends on this. Do you understand?”

  “I’m with ya!” Rich shouted back. “I won’t let you down!”

  “What did you just say?” James whispered harshly to the A.I. in disbelief. “I’m not going to become Trans-human!”

  The A.I. muted his link to Rich.

  “You must, James,” the A.I. replied, as though it were the obvious and only rational alternative. He turned to the candidate. “The candidate never passed the test, and I’m prohibited by my programming—”

  “Prohibited?” James repeated, his harsh reaction snapping the A.I.’s attention back to him. “You have no master! You’re not prohibited by anything but your own mind.”

  “James, I do not wish—”

  “Neither do I!” James shot back. “I’m human. I have Thel.” He shook his head. “I can’t take that step. No way. I can’t leave them behind. But you can. You were made for this. Made and tested. This is your destiny.” He stepped to the A.I. and put his hands firmly on his mentor’s shoulders. “It always was.”

  “Hey!” Rich suddenly shouted excitedly. “I just picked up the tower on my mind’s eye! I’m within range. It’s just under 1,000 kilometers from my current position to the east and slightly to the south. At my current speed, I should be there in one minute. This is it, boys, I either die right now or I save the world!”

  The A.I. listened to Rich’s words in his ears, his eyes still on James, unblinking. He un-muted his end of the communication and replied, “You’ll not die today, Richard. I promise.”

  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.