by David Walton
A loud crash made him open his eyes despite himself, and he saw one of his copters burning on the ground. Several of the prisoners were motionless on the ground, however. The copters were everywhere at once, reacting to any attack by splitting and covering all possibilities. That didn’t stop a number of them from being destroyed. But when they managed to surround a varcolac-controlled individual with their energy shields, it would drive the varcolac out, leaving the human shell lifeless.
The copters were effectively holding back the prisoners, but that didn’t help them teleport out of there. “What now?” Angel shouted over the buzz. “We need to get out of here!”
“You have any ideas?” Alex shouted back.
He didn’t. Running was out of the question, not with Sandra unconscious on the ground next to him. Alex was improving her technique, knocking them down faster, but it didn’t matter if the varcolac was just going to destroy the whole prison complex.
He had to do something. It seemed futile, but Angel wasn’t going to spend the last minute of his life feeling sorry for himself. He brought up the teleportation module and opened the source code. There were thousands of lines of software, none of them familiar. He hadn’t written this code. But he didn’t need to read it all. Instead, he tried to teleport again, executing the module in a debugging mode, which allowed him to see each line of software as it executed. It was a common strategy for finding a coding bug, since it sometimes demonstrated that the software was executing different lines, or with different values, than the programmer expected.
With only one minute left before annihilation, Angel didn’t expect to find anything, but he did. He saw it almost immediately. There was a line in there, an impossible line. It was a simple if-check that had no earthly business in this piece of code. And it wasn’t a bug. The line couldn’t have been put there by mistake. It was sabotage.
He removed the line and recompiled the module. Thirty seconds to go. It was time for goodbye, one way or another. Angel closed his eyes and focused on his lab.
CHAPTER 21
Alex knew they weren’t going to make it. Her skill with the quadcopters was improving as she fought, holding the prisoners back, but it didn’t matter. If Ryan’s timeline was right—which she had no doubt it was—they had only seconds until the whole place was destroyed. Even if she killed all the prisoners, there was no reason to believe that would allow them to teleport again.
Not only that, but she was increasingly distracted by the presence of Sandra so near to her. With so many probability waves forming and collapsing in the near vicinity, many of them under her control, she could feel the tenuousness of the standing wave between them. They were just an unresolved quantum state, a single person with two possible futures. It was becoming increasingly clear to her that the wave stayed unresolved simply through their desire to keep it that way. Which meant that, just as she had reincorporated her own doubles back into herself at the funeral home, she could reincorporate Sandra into herself just as easily. They could become one person again, become Alessandra Kelley, in a heartbeat.
But she couldn’t think about that now. If they both died here, as seemed likely, it wouldn’t make any difference whether their probability wave resolved or not. And if by some miracle they lived, she was pretty sure they both wanted to keep on living separately instead of risking losing themselves in a combined whole.
The prisoners kept coming. It felt almost like a video game, in which she killed over and over again without thought. But of course, they were already dead, weren’t they? The varcolac was killing them, not her. And when, in less than a minute, the whole prison went up in multidimensional smoke, it wasn’t going to matter who had killed whom. They would all be dead.
She was about to apologize to Angel for failing, when he made a cry of astonishment.
“What is it?” she asked, but his eyes were closed, and he made no answer. A moment later, the wreckage of the prison vanished, to be replaced with a cluttered robotics lab.
Alex stared at him. “You fixed it! How—”
“Sandra first,” he said.
Sandra still hadn’t regained consciousness, and her hair was matted with blood. “Teleport us to an ER,” Alex said.
“I don’t have precise coordinates. We could be dropping her from several feet off the ground, never mind the risk of intersecting a car or another person.”
“Call 911, then!”
“I already did.”
Angel’s lab was in West Philadelphia, only blocks from three different university hospitals. An ambulance was there in minutes, and she was in the Jefferson emergency room minutes after that. Alex worried that there would be trouble, that someone at the hospital would recognize Sandra from the news bulletins about Alex, and call the police.
“There’s nothing we can do about that,” Angel said. “She’s not the sister who’s wanted for murder, and she has friends in the police department. She should be okay. What she needs most is medical care.”
The ER waiting room looked newly refurbished, with plush green chairs, racks of neatly organized magazines, and a play station for kids with toys, puzzles, and books. The screens mounted high on the walls showed news images of the demolished prison with the words, “Second terrorist action in two weeks.”
The prison now looked like Citizens Bank Park, the pieces scattered in a complex spiral, none of which were bigger than a chair. The image being shown was from above, from a news helicopter, and the similarity was obvious.
“So . . . how did you get us out of there?” she asked.
Angel shook his head in wonder. “There was a specific line of code in the module. I can’t imagine who would have put it there or why, but it was no accident. It instructed the software to stop working at 05:40 today.”
“What?” Alex thought she must have heard him wrong.
“Yep. Hardcoded into the software was a downtime coordinated with the varcolac’s destruction of the prison.”
“We were sabotaged? Someone tried to get us killed?”
Angel shrugged. “Looks that way.”
“But who would do that?” Even as she asked, Alex knew there was only one real answer to that question. This was Ryan’s software. And he was the one who had known what time the varcolac’s attack would come.
“So Ryan tried to kill us?” Angel asked.
“I don’t know. But we need to pay him a visit,” Alex said.
Angel took his Higgs projector out of his pocket and held it out to her. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m going to stay here.”
“But you won’t have a projector,” Alex said. They were down to only one, since Jean had stolen Sandra’s. “The police are going to be here, you know. Sooner or later, they’ll make the connection to Muncy. Probably sooner.”
“All the more reason not to leave Sandra on her own.”
Alex tried to smile, but she was pretty sure it came out wrong. Was he scolding her? Sandra was her sister, after all. Another version of herself. That meant Alex should be the one worrying about her, the one ready to camp out in the waiting room as long as it took. On the other hand, where did Angel get off telling her how to take care of her own sister?
“I have to do this,” she said. “I have to understand this, so next time it doesn’t kill her.”
“It’s okay,” Angel said. “You’ve got every cop in the country looking for you. I’ll watch her for you.”
Alex relaxed. She could see why Sandra liked this guy. He had an innocent, disarming way about him that meant you couldn’t take him too seriously. He was hard to stay mad at. “You’re sure?”
“I’ve got this. You go do the physics stuff.”
Alex smiled for real this time. “Okay. See you soon.”
The varcolac was living in Ryan’s mind. He felt energized, a vitality of thought and will that he could only attribute to the alien presence. Mostly, he felt a sense of triumph and vindication. It was all true! The stories he had dreamed as a child, the idea that he was desti
ned for something more, something greater. That his intelligence was not of the same kind as the people around him. He had always suspected, but now he knew it for certain. He was a creature of mind, not of flesh and blood, now reunited with his own kind. He was a varcolac.
It knew him completely. Not only that, but he, Ryan, knew the varcolac. He saw—if not fully grasped—its understanding of the universe, from the tiniest ambiguities of particle and wave to the vast sweeps of gravity that formed the contours of space-time. He sensed its confusion with the individual, the distinct, the time- and space-bound creatures that were human beings.
It could not have melded with just any human mind. Ryan was certain it was his mind, and his alone, that was precise and analytical enough to be an adequate host. Even so, Ryan could sense the varcolac’s distaste with him, almost a moral judgment. A holy vessel defiled. He was a too-complex equation, a million variables where one would do. The varcolac’s goal was not so much to destroy, as to unify. To simplify the equation, driving away inefficiency and inelegance.
Yes! He could see it all so clearly now. Ryan could have crowed with the beauty of the varcolac’s vision. Human interaction was slow and imprecise, prone to error and misunderstanding. As an interface, it was terrible. Data was passed through conversation and body language and—worse—social cues and norms. Words carried ambiguous meanings and were rife with redundancy. Multiple languages, not easily translated, evolved from place to place and generation to generation.
And there were so many people! What was the point of it all? Ryan had heard so much nonsense about what human beings could do when they worked together, but really, they worked together so poorly. The varcolac had it right. And it wasn’t until it had merged with Ryan’s mind that the varcolac realized just how many people there really were. It was only beginning to comprehend how packets of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen could think or interact at all. There didn’t seem to be enough data passed to achieve the complexity of anything like intelligence. It had previously recognized as human only those individuals who had interacted with Higgs particles in productive ways—Brian Vanderhall, Jean Massey, Jacob Kelley, Alex, Sandra, and Ryan himself. Now it knew better. There were billions. And the varcolac was appalled.
And in that moment, Ryan knew what the varcolac was. It was the last of its kind, but at the same time, it was all of its kind. Its people had consolidated their minds for the greater good, first in pairs, then in communities, then ultimately in a single creature of incredible intellect and power. Those early individuals had been barely sentient, but merged, they were aware, omnipotent, indestructible. In the varcolac’s mind, consolidation was the greatest moral good. The elimination of waste. The alliance of disorganized and unproductive parts into one glorious, unified equation. There was only one varcolac, could be only one varcolac. It was, by definition, one.
Humanity was conflicted, disorganized, fractured, a staggering waste of resources. Now that it knew just how bad things were, the varcolac could see the enormity of the task it had before it. To combine, to merge. To make for itself a companion intellect, equal in perception and understanding. The varcolac would make humanity what it should be. And it wanted Ryan to be the first. All other minds would be shaped around his. They would be consolidated into his own. And he, Ryan Oronzi—a greater Ryan than he was now—would soar through the dimensions of space and time, bodiless and eternal.
Ryan laughed. If he told anyone this, they would mock him or refer him to a psychiatrist. But he knew it was possible. The varcolac itself was proof of that.
That didn’t stop him from a moment of sheer terror when the woman in the orange jumpsuit suddenly teleported into his lab.
“You bastard,” she said. “I should kill you where you sit.”
He wheeled his chair backward, away from her, but there was nowhere to go. “Who are you?” he said. “How did you get here?”
She gave him a withering stare. “Don’t give me that,” she said. “Don’t you dare pretend you don’t know me.”
He stared at her. It wasn’t fair. He had forgotten her long ago, had promised himself never to think of her. She couldn’t be here. She was gone forever. “I don’t know you,” he insisted. Even to himself, it sounded feeble.
“You pathetic little child,” she said. “What’s my name? Say it!”
It came out of his mouth against his will. “Jean . . . Massey.”
And it all came flooding back, filling his mouth with acid and making his stomach hurt. He had to get away from her. But how could he? He could teleport, but she would just follow him. It was, after all, her technology.
She lifted her hand, and he felt the eyejack contacts tear out of his eyes and go flying across the room. “I gave you everything you needed,” she said. “All the research I did, enough to build your own Higgs projectors. I even gave you the software. Everything I had fifteen years ago and more.”
Ryan took a deep breath and calmed his panic. He was a varcolac. She couldn’t hurt him. “And it worked,” he said, trying to smile but knowing it wasn’t working. “You did a fantastic job. You should feel proud.”
She advanced on him. “Proud? You think? I didn’t share it with you so I could feel proud. I shared it with you so you could get me out of prison. Like you promised. That was the deal. I did my part, and you didn’t do yours.”
“I would have. Eventually. I was scared.” He was almost whispering now, and he felt like a weakling. “I’m not an action sort of person. I had to work up the nerve.”
She shook her head in disgust. “And here we are again. I do the work, and the world thinks you’re the genius. I can’t believe that for the second time in my life, I gave my best work to a man who would betray me.”
“I am a genius,” he said, a little strength coming back into his voice. She didn’t know about the varcolac’s vision, after all. She didn’t know who he really was now. He was the One. He could face up to Jean Massey. “You laid the groundwork, sure,” he said. “But you didn’t do it. I created the baby universe. Me. You think just having the idea is all it takes?”
Jean smiled like a predator. “I killed the first genius who crossed me. And I’ll kill you, too.”
“No, you won’t,” Ryan said. His voice came out like a squeak.
“No? You think you’re better at this than I am? You think you can block me if I decide to teleport your coffee mug into your soft little chest?”
Ryan swallowed. “If you were going to do it, you would have done it already. So what do you want?” He tried to sound brave, but he wasn’t at all sure it came out that way. If she did try to kill him, would the varcolac protect him? Could he get the varcolac to kill her?
“Well, you’re right. I do need something. I need all of your Higgs projectors,” she said.
“All of them?” Ryan blinked. “But you already have one.” He wondered which of the twins she had killed to get it, but it didn’t seem important to ask.
“I want every last projector you’ve created. And you’re working for the military, so I know there are a lot of them.”
He was genuinely confused. “What are you going to do with them?”
Jean cocked her head. “I hardly see why you need to know. But I would have thought it would be obvious. I’m not wanted here in the United States. Any of our government’s allies would turn me over to them in a heartbeat. So I’m going where my skills might still be appreciated.”
“Turkey? You’re going to give all the Higgs projectors to the Turkish government?”
“I think they may be willing to pay handsomely for them. And I suspect they will be glad to put me to work for the cause. A cause I’m passionate about, by the way. Crushing the country that screwed me.”
“I’ll give you what I have,” Ryan said. “But most of them aren’t here. They took them to the front already. To use in the fighting.”
“There isn’t any fighting.”
“There will be. In fact, from the questions they were asking me, I�
�m pretty sure they’re planning some kind of preemptive—”
A monitor behind him shattered in a fountain of glass. “Enough chatter,” Jean said. “I can find them without you. If you want to live, then make it worth my while to keep you alive.”
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it.” Ryan crossed to a safe and entered a long series of numbers on a keypad. The safe popped open. Inside were a stack of cards kept together with a rubber band. They were the Higgs projectors he had held back for his own further research, although he had told the government people that he had surrendered all of them. In fact, this stack wasn’t all he had left, either. Ryan knew the value of redundancy.
“Happy?” he said. “Now take them and leave.”
It didn’t matter. She was welcome to them. All he needed was one. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he needed that anymore.
Jean snatched up the stack of projectors. “What are you grinning at?” she said.
“You can’t hurt me,” Ryan said. “I’ll be alive long after you and your kind are gone.”
“My kind?” She stared at him as if he was insane, but then her face cleared. She chuckled softly. “Oh, I see. It’s been talking to you.”
Ryan was so astonished he didn’t try to hide it.
“Been promising you things?” Jean went on. “Let me guess—it plans to consolidate all of humanity into your mind and make you eternal, bodiless, beyond pain and death. Do I have it right?” Her mocking smile collapsed into a scowl. “I’ve been listening to it for longer than you have.” She leaned forward, invading his space. “A lot longer.”
Kill her, Ryan thought at the varcolac. She’s a threat. Kill her.
“It’s been talking to me for years, in the prison, subtly speaking inside my head.” She leaned away again, and the mocking smile returned. “When you think about it, I have a lot more to offer than you do. I have the projectors, for one thing.” She held them up for him to see. “I’m smarter than you, more relentless, more ruthless. Less weak. Not so afraid of the world I can hardly step outside my door. You think your mind is a blueprint for the ultimate human? Please. I’m surprised you can tie your shoes.”
