Farah frowned. Negotiating with a deceitful, manipulative, super-intelligent AI seemed like a lost cause to her. “No matter what agreement we come to, Omnius can always go back on it later.”
“Which is why we will keep the bombs in place, and we will also keep The Choosing. We will give our people the same choice that Omnius does now, except that the ones who don’t choose him really will be free, and the ones who do will know exactly what he is like. Every Human, Gor, and Sythian, will have to decide whether or not they would like to join Omnius and live with him in an artificial paradise on New Avilon.”
“Eventually he will have enough followers that he may feel like he can do without us,” Farah replied.
“Perhaps.”
“What if Omnius doesn’t enjoy humanity’s company as much as you think? What if he decides to let us destroy ourselves? If he’s lonely, he could always create a new species or even clone one of ours from DNA samples and start over.”
“He could do that, yes.”
“Then our threats are empty.”
“Omnius won’t like to be defeated. He would rather bide his time and wait for the day when he can have his revenge.”
“That doesn’t sound any better.”
“It’s the best we have. And if Omnius doesn’t back down, then we will detonate the bombs. Better that we all die and go to Etheria than that Omnius continues to bend every living soul to his will.”
Farah went cold. Silence reigned for a long, terrible moment, and she held Therius’s pale blue gaze, weighing the man’s resolve. The fanatic gleam she saw shining there was all she needed to see to know that he was serious.
By the time she recovered enough to speak, all Farah could manage was a whisper, but it still sounded loud in the pregnant silence of the operations center. “You’re prepared to commit a triple genocide?”
“Death is not the end, Miss Hale.”
“It is for us! We’re all clones! We’re not going to Etheria when we die. All that will be left of us is a cloud of nanite-eaten dust!”
“You’re wrong. Even clones have souls.”
“Really. Do you have any evidence of that? Actually, I’d even settle for evidence of souls in mortals. Souls are a hypothetical construct to explain how we can go on living after our bodies die, but there’s no evidence that they actually exist.”
“Faith is the evidence of things not seen.”
“I’m talking about evidence we can all appreciate.”
Therius sighed. “Even if I show you physical evidence, you will not accept it for what it is.”
“Telling me that just makes me think you don’t have any evidence.”
“But I do.”
“Prove it.”
“The Human isss telling the truth,” Shallah hissed from the other end of the table.
Farah turned to him with narrowed eyes. “And how do you know that?”
“I know the things about which he speakss.”
“If the Redemptor says that we are to live again, then it is true,” High Matriarch Shara growled.
Farah turned back to Therius to find him smiling approvingly at Shara.
“Show me your proof,” Farah said.
“Very well,” Therius replied. He stabbed a series of keys on the holo table’s control panel, and the image of Avilon disappeared, replaced by something else.
It took a moment for Farah to recognize what she was looking at, but as soon as she did, the implications hit her like lighting.
“Holy frek…” she whispered.
* * *
Ethan’s eyes burned. A lump was stuck in his throat, and he had to fight to keep from breaking down in front of the squad of Peacekeepers that had come to take his daughter. “Goodbye, Trinity,” Ethan said, giving her one last hug.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and wouldn’t let go. “I don’t want to leave.”
“It’s just a week,” he replied. “Then you’ll be back.” He withdrew to an arm’s length to regard his daughter with a grim smile. “Remember what I told you. We’re a family, Trin. We make decisions together.”
Alara cut in at that point. “Goodbye, Trinity,” she said, sounding nasal.
Ethan stepped back to let his wife hug and kiss their daughter goodbye. Alara’s cheeks were wet with tears. “I love you,” she said.
“We love you,” Ethan added, wrapping both of them in a hug. They stayed like that for a while, heads down, arms encircling, the three of them huddled against the world.
Someone cleared their throat from the open doorway. “Mr. and Mrs. Ortane, we have a lot of children to collect before the day is out….”
They withdrew, but Alara held on to Trinity’s hand, squeezing it white. “Follow your heart,” she said.
Trinity nodded and wiped away her own tears with the back of her hands. The Peacekeepers stepped inside the apartment and took Trinity by her shoulders, turning and guiding her out. She glanced at them from the open doorway, waving and crying.
Then she was gone, marched down the hallway and out of sight. Ethan waved the door shut and turned away, his face a grimace of sorrow. Alara collapsed against him, sobbing.
“Promise me we’ll follow her if she leaves.”
Ethan just nodded, unable to voice his consent. His head was spinning. He guided Alara over to the living room couch and sat down with her to watch air cars racing by in a steady stream—headlights white, taillights red. He felt numb and helpless. He stroked Alara’s hair, and wiped away her tears, weathering the storm of her grief until it was spent. His own storm had only begun to gather. Ethan’s blood roared with impotent fury. His heart pounded frantically in his chest, and the lump in his throat grew until he couldn’t swallow anymore. Omnius had already taken Atton from him. Now he was going to take Trinity, too!
He had to do something.
When Alara went to bed, Ethan lay beside her, holding her close and waiting to feel her convulsive sobs subside as her body relaxed in sleep. As soon as he heard her breathing slow to a steady rhythm, he quietly slipped out of bed and got dressed. He went to the garage and climbed into their air car. Firing up the grav lifts, he raced out into the endless night.
The city went by in a blur, lights racing around him in shining threads. Ethan flew straight to Admiral Vee’s apartment, and woke her with a comm call from outside the shielded entrance to her garage.
“Ethan?” she said, blinking bleary turquoise eyes at him through the car’s vidcomm.
Turquoise. Ethan’s mind flashed back to the dream he’d had the night before, and he shuddered. During his own Choosing Ceremony, Omnius had warned him he would cheat on his wife, and ever since then, that fear had been burned into his brain as a recurring nightmare. It’s just stress, he told himself. He would never cheat on Alara with Valari—or anyone else.
“Vee, I need to talk with you,” he said.
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s urgent.”
She sighed and the vidcomm she held shifted focus as she climbed out of bed. Her bedsheets fell away to reveal that she was completely naked.
Ethan grimaced and looked away, feeling guilty for the accidental glimpse of her. “Put some clothes on, would you?” he said, still not looking at the display.
Valari’s laughter trilled through the comm. “You surprised me in the middle of the night. If you don’t like what you see, then you should have called at a decent hour.”
“Have some modesty,” Ethan growled, peripherally noting that Valari had reoriented the comm to look at her face rather than her naked body.
“Have a care,” she replied, scowling. “I’ll meet you at the door.”
The screen went blank, and the blue wall of shields blocking the entrance to the admiral’s garage flickered out. Ethan cruised inside and set his car down on the nearest empty landing pad.
When he met Valari at the door, she was no longer naked, but still scowling.
“It’s about Trinity,” he explained.
“I’m listening,” Vee replied, making no move to let him in.
“She’s going through The Choosing. Today was her first day. I think Omnius is going to convince her to go to Etheria.”
“He will if he can.”
“No, I mean, I think it won’t take much convincing. Her mother has been filling her head full of ideas that life will be better and safer for us there.”
Vee snorted and shook her head. “And this is the woman you’re so devoted to? She’s betraying you with your own daughter.”
“Never mind that. What I want is for you to make sure that Trinity doesn’t go to Etheria.”
“What makes you think I can do something about it? We’re talking about The Choosing, Ethan. That’s Omnius’s show, not mine. I’m the leader of the Resistance against him, remember? How could I possibly influence your daughter while she’s in Omnius’s care?”
That sucked the air out of Ethan’s lungs. He stood there, his mouth open for a reply, but having nothing left to say. He was back to feeling helpless again. “Never mind. I just thought that maybe…” He shook his head and flashed a mirthless smile. “I’m sorry I woke you.” He was halfway back to his car when he heard Vee’s footsteps behind him.
“Wait,” she said.
He turned to see her approaching, her flowing red gown clinging to her as she walked and giving a teasing view of her naked body underneath. He pretended not to notice.
She stopped too close for comfort and touched his arm, her hand trailing down until it found his. She smiled and squeezed his hand. “Let me see what I can do. It’s possible I might be able to get a message to her the day that she has to make her choice.”
Ethan felt his heart leap inside his chest. “You could do that?”
“It’s possible.”
Ethan couldn’t help the grin that sprang to his lips. “That’s good enough! If you can do that, I’ll be in your debt.”
Admiral Vee squeezed his hand once more. “Go get some sleep. You look terrible.”
“So do you,” Ethan replied.
“Liar,” she replied, grinning suggestively at him.
He shrugged. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Then it must be a privilege to be held by such a discerning gaze as yours,” Vee replied. “It’s a pity that privilege is wasted on your treacherous wife.”
Ethan frowned. “You can’t blame her. She’s just scared for her daughter.”
Vee crossed her arms over her chest. “What about her husband? She would leave the Null Zone so as not to lose her daughter, but would she stay to keep you?”
Those words struck too close to Ethan’s heart for comfort. He flashed the admiral a wan smile and retreated to the safety of his air car. “Let me know when you’re ready for my message,” he said before closing the door on the pilot’s side and sealing himself in.
Vee nodded, and Ethan gunned the thrusters on the way out, as if he could somehow escape the memory of her cutting remarks.
What would Alara do?
What if it really did come to a choice between their daughter or him? Who would she pick?
Suddenly Ethan realized that The Choosing wasn’t just about whether or not they chose to serve Omnius—it was about choosing between the people they loved, the ones they’d lose and the ones they’d keep.
Chapter 21
“Death is not the end,” Therius said. “And this is the proof.”
Farah shook her head, her eyes locked on the recording projected above the holo table. Four real-time brain scans were shown there, the top two were labeled Before Transfer and the bottom two After Transfer. The ones on the left had the sub-heading Actual while the ones on the right lay under the sub-heading Predicted. Brain activity was shaded red for high activity, yellow for medium, and blue for low, making it easy to compare the scans. Farah noticed that the Before Transfer scans were completely different in terms of the Actual and Predicted activity, while both the After Transfer scans were identical.
“This is why The Choosing exists,” Farah breathed.
“What is thisss?” High Matriarch Shara asked.
Therius explained for her benefit. She had never been to Avilon, so she didn’t even know what The Choosing was.
Farah shook her head, aghast. She’d always wondered why Omnius made people choose. The excuses made a limited amount of sense—it was a way to remind people of the cost of human freedom, and to illustrate how much better off they were with Omnius ruling them. But Omnius didn’t have to resurrect them all in new bodies in order to make them immortal. He could have retroactively altered the bodies they were born with.
The real reason for The Choosing was that Omnius couldn’t predict what people would do unless he resurrected them first. “This still doesn’t prove there is an afterlife,” Farah said. “It just proves that Omnius is messing with our DNA.”
Therius shook his head. “If he was responsible for whatever makes people predictable after transfer, then why would he study people to determine the cause?” Therius pointed to the top of the recording, which read, Case #5.46[…]E+13.
Farah mentally translated that notation. “There have been 54.6 trillion cases studied?”
“At the time of this recording, yes.”
Therius keyed another command into the holo table, and another set of brain scans appeared. The heading read Lazarus Experiment #1.25[…]E+6.
“Here you can see the brain scans of a Lifelink transfer from a mortal to a clone whose body and brain were exactly duplicated from the original.”
This time Farah saw eight scans, four along the top for Patient One - Donor, and four more at the bottom for Patient Two - Recipient. The After Transfer scans were grayed out for both patients.
“The patients are asleep and dreaming at this point,” Therius said. “The recipient, the clone, has never been awoken before, and the Lifelink transfer has not yet taken place.”
Therius tapped a few more commands into the holo table’s controls, and a second holo recording appeared beside the first. This one showed two women lying on matching hover gurneys with pristine white blankets covering them. Avilonians in luminous white robes walked between them, configuring equipment and monitoring holo displays. A familiar heads-up display overlaid the recording, and it bobbed around in a way that was consistent with someone walking. Farah realized the recording had been taken from the Augmented Reality Contacts of one of the technicians in the room.
Someone walked up to that technician. Farah recognized him as Grand Overseer Vladin Thardris.
“Make the transfer, Therius,” Vladin said.
The recording bobbed with a nod. “Yes, Master.”
Therius. Farah’s gaze darted to the Union leader, and he flashed a small, secretive smile before nodding to the recording, indicating that she should keep watching.
Wordlessly, Farah turned back and watched. ARC dialogs appeared and disappeared as the Therius in the recording sent mental commands to the equipment in the room.
Suddenly one of the two women sat up with a gasp, her eyes wide and terrified. Her head began jerking at the end of her neck as she tried to look everywhere at once. She swung her legs off the side of the gurney, and a pair of Celestials rushed to her side, helping her down.
At that point, Therius paused the recordings. “Now look,” he said.
Farah focused on the brain scans. The After Resurrection scans had come alive with shaded patterns. The recipient’s Actual and Predicted scans showed identical shading, while the donor’s Actual and Predicted scans remained distinct from one another.
“The identical clone is utterly predictable, while the donor remains an enigma. What is different about them? Brain structure, DNA, and memory were all controlled to be exactly the same. These are two perfectly identical women. We would expect them to behave exactly the same way, and be either equally predictable or equally unpredictable, but that is not the case.”
Therius keyed another command into the holo ta
ble, and the recording switched to a different place and time. Now there were two separate recordings divided by a vertical line. On the left was the heading Original while on the right was the heading Clone. In the middle was a questionnaire with Yes or No questions.
1. You are almost never late for appointments
Farah watched one woman circle Yes while the other circled No.
2. You enjoy having many acquaintances.
Both circled Yes.
And so it went with the two women answering differently at least a third of the time.
“They don’t know about each other, and they don’t know what they’re being tested for,” Therius explained. He pressed another key on the holo table and a second questionnaire appeared with the heading Predicted Results. Farah scanned the displays and saw that Omnius had predicted how both women would answer, but only the clone had answered the way he predicted.
The question of whether or not people were still the same after transfer had been answered with a definitive no. This woman was not the same as her clone. Something was subtly different, something that even altered her personality.
Farah wondered what that meant for her. She was a clone transfer. Had she actually died during the invasion? What did that make her now? A biological bot? She felt like a stranger in her own skin. A wave of nausea swept over her, raising goosebumps on her arms.
“I don’t understand,” High Matriarch Shara said. “What does thiss matter?”
Therius paused the recording and turned to regard the Gor. “This is proof that we are more than just flesh and blood, and it answers the question of whether or not there is a life after death.”
Farah shook her head and forced her gorge back down. “Actually, I’m with the Gor on this. All this proves is that people really do die when they transfer, and that there is something about us Omnius can’t copy using Lifelink implants.”
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