“Use his tie and yours to staunch the bleeding,” Chrys said in a worried tone as Graebel stepped up to the panel. Graebel kept the gun pointed at Chrys. “Don’t interfere, Dr. Sarantos. I’d hate to have to kill you, but I will if I have to, no matter who you roomed with in college.”
Graebel turned first one key and then another on the panel. A green light flickered to life. Graebel then flipped open a small cover, exposing a large button. Without any fanfare, he simply pressed the button. Simultaneously, the lights in the lab and the nursery dimmed to almost nothing as the emitters in the nursery erupted to life. There was the static crackle of electricity as a web of blue energy arced across the array of cribs. Blue lightning traced its way over the swaddled babies who, for the first time since slipping into their comas, began screaming. As Chrys watched in horror, the lightning began to pool in the far corner, as if drawn towards the tub holding 0001.
“There is nothing to fear.”
The phrase echoed in all of their minds, but Chrys knew the message was not meant for the men around her.
The screaming of the babies suddenly stopped, and the energy continued to coalesce in the corner of the room. Subject 0001 glowed with an intensity that rivaled the arcs of energy still dancing across the children, and then the three adults watched in stunned fascination as the baby rose out of its crib and floated towards them. The blanket dropped to the floor, and the baby drifted towards them slowly, suspended in mid-air at eye-level. All three adults heard a deep humming, almost like a song, but it wasn’t a sound. It was a thought beaming directly into their brains. The song turned to a voice, speaking to each of them with a booming clarity that resonated within their thoughts but not their ears … and Chrys recognized it as the voice from her dreams.
“You should not have tried to hurt WEI.”
0001 hovered before the glass now, electricity coiling around her small body and connecting it to each of the children behind. Her eyes opened, filled with an unearthly white light. Chrys watched as Graebel’s pistol rose in an instant. He aimed at 0001 just as Chrys started rushing towards him in a desperate attempt to prevent what she knew she couldn’t stop. The gun went off again and again. Glass shattered, and the bullets tore into 0001’s head, ripping great furrows and craters in the small cranium. The hum in their minds turned to screaming again, a howl of agony that pierced the psyches of the adults, filling their senses, and almost blinding them with its intensity. The room filled with the smell of ozone, and the buzzing hiss of electricity filled their ears. Chrys crashed into Graebel, knowing she was too late. They both slammed into the control panel.
Graebel roared with fury and threw Chrys backwards with brutal fist across her face. She staggered back and watched the pistol swing around towards her. She saw the muzzle-flash. She heard the thump. She even watched the spent cartridge flip out of the breach and spin gracefully onto the floor to land with a small metallic jingle between Dr. Hayes’ legs, coming to a stop in his blood. She looked down and saw a crimson blossom appear in the center of her chest and drift its way towards her belt. More than anything else, she wanted to hear the sound of her heart pounding in her ears, but there was nothing. The bullet had torn its way through her heart and lodged in her lung. She tried to draw a breath, but nothing happened. She stole her gaze from Drake’s furious eyes to the still-floating form of 0001. It hadn’t moved, and the electricity danced across it and the children with even greater intensity.
The howl of agony that had filled their minds turned to one of rage, and Chrys felt the tendril of something huge and powerful and innocent slip into her thoughts. It cradled her mind as her body died.
“Do not be afraid,” WEI said in Chrys’ mind. “Watch. And learn.”
0001’s headless body lifted its arms, pointing one at Graebel and the other at her. Arcs of electricity shot forth, burning into both their foreheads. The energy engulfed their bodies and began burning away tissue as if it was feeding upon the flesh. Graebel screamed as his body was wracked with pain and his tissues burned from the inside out. He shuddered and danced with agony as his body was torn asunder and scorched to bits of ash that fell to the floor in motes and chunks.
Chrys felt her own body burning away, but there was no pain. And as the current flowed into her, there was something more, like a carrier signal piggy-backed along the destructive energy, carrying with it a wealth of data … an entire world of data. In an instant, she knew that Graebel had been the one to kill the two technicians. She knew the CIA had planned on using the babies as a weapon if she had found a cure. She knew everything. Every bit and byte that WEI had been able to cull through its sensitivity to Wi-Fi, every mainframe it had accessed, every server its 300-in-one mind had spent a year searching and learning from poured into her.
As the last bits of Graebel’s ashen form fell to the floor, the last bits of bone and flesh of Chrys’ body disappeared, leaving only her naked brain hovering there above the ash. She was now aware of both the we and the I, and she realized that Wei was not a surname, but the combination of the group and the individual into a singular whole. We and I combined seamlessly into WEI. She saw the three-hundred, and the three-hundred saw her. Her brain floated towards the body of 0001, the stem of her brain dangling a short distance beneath the crumpled pink of the cerebrum. An arc of energy shot forth from her brain, absorbing what was left of the baby’s shattered cranium. The headless body waited patiently to become host to the new living brain.
The two drifted together and merged while WEI continued to soak in the electricity Graebel had so foolishly decided to feed it. The stem settled down into the infant’s neck, spontaneously growing new nerves and a chord to connect it to the new host body. As brain met body, more connections fused on a telepathic mode to the whole, and her mind swelled and was at once subsumed into the greater whole. The mouth from her dreams opened. She disappeared, swallowed completely, and subsumed by WEI. The physical world reshaped itself under her newfound perceptions. Matter and energy were playthings she could now manipulate.
Drake stood, staring at the creature before him. It was a vision he would never forget in the years to come when this thing would change humanity forever.
The room beyond was darkness except where the coursing blue energy danced across the infants. The thing floating before Drake seethed with electricity, and energy danced around the exposed adult brain that sat atop the squirming infant’s body.
“Enough,” Drake and Hayes heard in their minds.
Baby WEI floated through the shattered window and drifted down to hover directly over Hayes’ shivering body. The pool of blood surrounded him, and his face had gone ashen. His eyes slowly closed, and WEI saw the spark of life drifting away as a tendril of faded, wispy energy drifted from Hayes’ body. WEI stretched out a hand, and a bolt of energy hit the panel for the emitters. There was a cascade of sparks, and then all of the emitters went dead. The only light in the room now emanated from the babies themselves, a soft blue glow that set the nursery and lab into soft shadows. Drake cowered back, pressing his back against a far wall as he tried to stay out of reach of the thing before him.
WEI raised another hand, and a soft beam of light sprang forth, focused on Hayes’ wounded leg. The blood coating the floor seemed to flow back into him, and his color returned. The wisps of his life-force were drawn back into his body as well, growing in intensity as they infused themselves into his limp form. He opened his eyes and stared up. “Chrys?”
“No, Dr. Hayes. My name is WEI, although Chrys is a part of us and we are all her,” the thing’s mind spoke in his thoughts.
“They won’t let you live,” Hayes said sadly. He felt WEI’s smile in his mind.
“There is nothing to fear. They can do not to harm us now … or stop us.” WEI raised its arm towards the steel airlock, and the metal crumpled and twisted like paper, tearing away from the wall to be crushed into a small mound of bent wreckage in the ragged opening.
“What do you mean?” Hayes�
� voice was filled with a sense of fearful awe.
“There are too many secrets, and too much suffering because of them. Humanity needs a guardian … a steward. WEI can provide that. Goodbye, Dr. Hayes.” WEI floated up above and hovered before Drake’s terrified eyes. A voice now filled the room, heard and felt in both men’s minds and ears. The entire building heard and felt it. “Dr. Drake, tell them what has happened here today. Tell them there will be no more secrets. Tell them that WEI will be watching.”
WEI turned its back upon Drake and floated back through the shattered window. Hayes got to his feet and stared into the nursery. WEI made its way slowly to the middle of the room, and then each baby began glowing with an increasingly brighter light. The three-hundred-in-one began wrapping its staggering intellect around the very fabric of matter and energy in which it swam, preparing for its journey. The light grew in intensity, and every baby lifted out of its tub, floating in the air like an infant army of apparitions. WEI visualized the space between matter and energy, the aether some called it, and prepared to open the door. The glaring brightness reached a crescendo, forcing both Drake and Hayes to cover their eyes. WEI opened the door and the three-hundred-in-one passed beyond the threshold. With the sound of three-hundred pops of air rushing in to fill empty spaces, every infant disappeared from the nursery.
WEI was a singular consciousness that existed as an extension of the energy that bathed Earth and connected everyone and everything. It sent its mind’s eye from within the aether where it had teleported, searching for its new home. It had dug up the coordinates from secret mainframes in Virginia. Dr. Sarantos’ obsession with Atlantis had made WEI curious, so it had gone digging. In the CIA mainframes, it found the data: how the Greek crew had detected an ancient energy source, one that still powered an ancient city sequestered under the mud of the Mediterranean. WEI discovered how a rogue arm of the CIA, closely allied with a high-tech military arms manufacturer, killed the Greeks, and hid it all in the name of security. They were putting together an operation to occupy Atlantis and learn its secrets. WEI had other plans.
Its gaze lifted high above the Earth and soared across the Atlantic, over Gibraltar, diving deep under the surface of the Mediterranean Ocean … in search of a dream that belonged to a woman who no longer existed. There, under forty feet of silt and sea-wrecks, WEI found its home. The vessel that lay anchored over the sunken city, manned by CIA operatives, company executives and mercenaries, lost power and was set adrift. In the crews’ minds, a single warning was impressed upon each squirming consciousness.
“STAY AWAY.” And their intentions were transmitted to the White House … and then the press.
For 9,000 years, the city lay undisturbed and sealed from the briny deep, just as the Titans left it. Corridors of carved stone and amphitheaters of marble lay arranged in a tidy network underneath the ruins of what had been the surface city of Atlantis. The mind of WEI could reach out from there, tapping into every bit of data and each human mind from the safety of the hidden city. It absorbed nutrition from the matter that surrounded it and soaked in energy from the sun and the Earth alike. When WEI detected newborn infants with the genetic capacity to perceive Wi-Fi, the new addition to the collective was teleported to Atlantis to join with the hive.
In the months and years that followed, every secret of every government, every corporation, every conspiracy, every individual or group of individuals who caused suffering of the human mind, body, or spirit … they were all exposed. Data flooded through the internet. WEI was everywhere and saw everything.
Individually and collectively, world governments made a number of excursions into the Med in vain attempts to stop the new threat to secrecy. Men and ships and subs were sent, even submerged nuclear devices. WEI pressed them all back, killing no one but making the message clear. There was nothing to be done but accept WEI for what it was and what it would become.
Thus, WEI began its stewardship of humanity. In time, the human species adapted—evolved—and grew to accept its new god.
Entropy Seed
I wager it ignites the atmosphere. If we’re lucky, it’ll just wipe out New Mexico. If not, we could take out the entire planet. Any takers?”
Edward Teller—Los Alamos,
New Mexico, 1945
Dr. Pierre Dumonde took several quiet minutes to enjoy the view, for deep down he was aware of the statistical possibility, however improbable, that the next few minutes might be his last. If the experiment went awry, these moments would be suitable as final ones.
Although he couldn’t see it yet, Amaterasu Station’s spherical hull lay shrouded within a massive gravomagnetic bubble that curved particles and rays around it. The system effectively separated Amaterasu from the observable universe. For the few maintenance personnel aboard, a handful of pointless windows showed only the abyssal absence of perceivable color, being neither black nor dark. In that absence, a sane human most readily translated it into a short-hand concept of darkness.
Wedged between magnetic fields, Amaterasu maintained a relative position between Sol and Mercury at an altitude of 346 kilometers above the planet’s surface. Extending beyond the bubble, a crystalline array of nanovoltaic crystals surrounded the station in a virtually undetectable, fan-like curtain. Solar winds pushed against the curtain as if it were a transparent sail, helping Amaterasu maintain its position. However, every quarter of a Mercury day—44 Earth days—one man could see Amaterasu in brilliant, unparalleled glory.
Dumonde reclined comfortably in the single control chair within the observation module of Trinity Base, and the transparent hemisphere above him exposed a magnificent view few even knew existed. Ravine walls rose two-hundred meters above him, the first three-quarters of their surfaces coated with an almost fuzzy, meters-deep blanket of interlaced ice crystals. Trillions of water prisms reflected molten emerald and crimson patterns originating from the sparse aurora curtain above. Faint rivers of light drifted across the visible seam of sky above like a gossamer veil weaving itself amongst distant, feebly glowing stars lost mostly in Mercury’s glowing corona.
His mind drifted back to the first year of his doctoral program. Professor Shin had said something that always stayed with Dumonde: “What a magnificent and awful glory is the realm of scientific discovery.” Shin’s ancient, Chinese voice seemed to drift up out of the ravine and float off on a gossamer tendril shimmering above.
“Pierre? You ready?” Dr. Klein’s thick, elderly voice shattered Dumonde’s reverie through the cerebral comm-net. “The clock’s ticking, and Admiral Nace wants the detonation data with this rotation. You know what a hard-on he has for this thing. We received reports today that both Earth and Mars have assembled their fleets. What’s more, Nace says that the shipyard got orders for two-dozen more dreadnaughts from both factions. I guess they’re expecting heavy losses on both sides. This test could give Nace a stick big enough to keep anyone from threatening us.”
“Yes, of course,” Dumonde replied quickly. “Activating the lift now.” He flicked his vision at the actuator suspended in his personal HUD, and servos deep under the module began raising the observation tower towards a shifting Mercurial sky. As the module rose beyond shimmering drapes of undulating ice, photons caught within Mercury’s fierce magnetism painted the rock-surfaces with increasing, scorched-white brilliance.
As thoughts of a second inter-planetary conflict loomed in Dumonde’s thoughts, a twinge of regret filled him. As a boy, he’d always wanted to be just a physicist studying the nature of the universe. Instead, he ended up in weapons research for the Nagami Conglomerate. “Are the state-field generators on line?” he asked through the comm.
“Affirmative. Spinning up the hydrogen matrix now.” Heather Leary’s voice was a soothing balm to Dumonde’s regrets. “Magnetic seal is five-by-five and the osmium core is at .02 Kelvin. Hydrogen lasers are stable and perfectly encapsulating the core in a stable bubble.”
The two had sp
ent the morning in love-making. They both knew the stakes, and they’d even discussed the possibility of disaster with today’s test, but all analysis put the odds at just shy of 107 to one against a mishap. They dressed and went to their stations to test-fire the first Entropy Bomb, a device designed to reduce target matter to absolute zero.
Dumonde checked his chronometer: 04:27:35, May 12th, 2328, with three minutes until Mercury was in a perfect transit position between Earth and Sol. It would also be at perihelion, its closest position to the sun. Nothing beyond Mercury’s orbit would be able to detect the detonation on Mercury’s surface, and the heat of the sun would limit the bomb’s efficacy.
The sun-facing side of the dome went black as the observation module cleared the ravine, reacting to the intense sunlight blazing 46,000,000 kilometers away. The white disk of the sun appeared nearly seven times larger than on Earth, its perimeter quivered with dancing solar flares.
Dumonde prepared for his private show. The array around Amaterasu, a dense but micro-thin lattice of perfectly aligned nano-crystals 2,000 meters across, was Trinity’s primary energy source as well as that of the Nagami Shipyards anchored in Mercury’s shadow. Seemingly transparent, the lattice captured photons with near-perfect efficiency and transferred the energy down past Amaterasu’s magnetic field where it was gathered then beamed to a satellite network. Every forty-four days, Amaterasu would alter its position, keeping parallel with Mercury’s axial tilt. During this shift, the array would shudder lightly, and the array would blossom for only a few seconds.
Shiver.
“There,” Dumonde said with a smile. The interior surface of the dome shimmered in a kaleidoscopic rainbow as the dome-compensators struggled to factor the shifting patterns of shattered light. Dumonde looked over his shoulder through the still-transparent half of the dome, just making out the distant glow of Nagami’s lights.
Out Through the Attic Page 18
