She lowered the arm reluctantly. Three-foot steel talons popped out of her fingertips, and the blaster mounted on her shoulder whirred and clicked.
“Trust me, Mollusk. I’ll find a way.”
Buddy said, “You should be honored, Venusian. You stand beside the greatest—”
“So I’ve heard. Mostly from him. I don’t need to hear it from you too.”
“Give her the sword,” I said.
A drone handed her the scimitar.
“I kept it for you,” I explained. “It is a Venusian soldier’s soul, isn’t it?”
She took the weapon in her hand. “I have no place to put it.”
“You’ll find a retractable scabbard in your right leg,” I said.
The scabbard opened, and she tucked away the weapon. “How did you know?”
“It’s how I would’ve designed it,” I said. “Or should I say it’s how I will design it at some point in the future?”
The control room went pitch black. Only for a moment. The lights snapped back on. The data scroll continued. A bell sounded. The ready light turned green. And everything vibrated, almost imperceptibly.
Snarg perked up. Her antennae twitched, and she squeaked.
Buddy, his voice barely an awed whisper, spoke.
“It’s ready.”
“What’s it doing?” asked Zala.
“An excellent question,” I replied. “I don’t think it’s doing anything important at the moment. Just idling, waiting for someone to start it.”
“Yes, Lord.” Buddy gestured to the dramatically large lever built into a console. “All that’s left for you to do is turn the machine on. And our new glorious future begins.”
Zala stepped between me and the lever. “You can’t do this, Emperor.”
“I have to do this. Causality demands it.”
“So you’re doing it because you have to do it.”
“Step aside,” said Buddy.
“No, it’s fine.” I studied the rows of blinking lights at the heart of the machine. “Space-time is greater than any one of us, Zala. Even I’m not beyond it. This machine, that message from the future, everything we’ve gone through has led up to this moment. This is how it’s meant to be.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” She had no face, but I could picture the sneer. “I didn’t think anyone told the brilliant Emperor Mollusk what to do. You’ve never lived by anyone else’s rules before. Why start now?”
“Shall I deactivate her?” said Buddy.
“No. She has a point. What would happen if I didn’t throw that switch? Can I choose not to become my future self? It’s an intriguing possibility.”
“If anyone could spit in the eye of destiny,” said Zala, “it’d be you.”
Buddy remotely powered off her exo.
“That was tiresome. And pointless. You will throw the switch. You know you want to. You need to see what this machine does. Your curiosity doesn’t allow you any other choice.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I admitted.
“You know I am, Lord Mollusk.”
For a moment, I wasn’t so certain. Mysteries of fate and possibility danced at the tips of my tentacles, and while I was confident I knew the answers to them, I also did love a good experiment. But throwing the switch or not throwing the switch, there was no way to know for certain which I was supposed to do. If time was fixed, if the only difference between the present me and the future me was a matter of vantage point, then there really was nothing I could do to prevent myself becoming him. I already was him. I just hadn’t arrived there yet.
I couldn’t outsmart myself. Especially a version that had the benefit of everything I knew and everything I would know. The logic was flawless, unavoidable. Whatever I chose, it would lead to future me. And if that was true, I might as well turn on the machine and see what happened.
I grasped the lever, but hesitated to throw it. I looked at Zala’s brain, hovering in the bubbling fluids. “You’ll understand.” I yanked the lever. “One day.”
The machine hummed to life. Flashes danced across the webs of wiring as something deep within the machine rumbled. The machine vented huge clouds of steam while multicolored lights running along the towers crackled to life. But the exact purpose of the great invention remained hidden.
“Thank you, Emperor.” Buddy laughed. “Thank you for being every bit as foolish as we knew you would be.”
He reactivated Zala’s exo, and she stirred to life. “Mollusk, you fool. Your own scientific curiosity has finally undone you.”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” I replied.
The image of my future self appeared on the monitors.
“Yes, Emperor, it was. We both knew this day would come.”
The camera zoomed out to show the Council’s robotic henchmen had been just out of frame in the previous transmission. The guards held their weapons on me.
“As you’ve discovered at this moment, the future the Council of Egos has promised you comes with a few provisions. Indeed, they want our science and our genius. Our leadership? They could do without it.”
“Did you really think that the greatest minds in Terran history would bow down to an alien overlord?” asked Buddy.
“I had doubts,” I said, “but then I thought if you genuinely were the greatest minds in Terran history, then it would be a logical conclusion. But I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. Why should Terrans be any brighter than any other race in the system?”
“We were bright enough to trick you,” said Buddy.
“On a positive note,” said Future Self, “it’s not all bad. As the Council’s chief scientist, you’ll be afforded the luxury of focus and unlimited resources toward research and development of technology for the Council’s use.”
“Focus means I’ll be your prisoner, I assume,” I said.
“We can’t have you running free, causing all sorts of trouble, can we?” said Buddy.
“No, I suppose you can’t.”
“But you’re looking at it all wrong, Emperor. Your new position means you can finally indulge your scientific curiosity and apply it toward practical goals. I know that, for some reason, you’re reluctant to inflict harm on others. But the beauty of this is that you won’t have to. All we ask is that you design and create the weapons and tools we need to conquer the system. You don’t have to get your hands dirty. You can leave that to us. If you like, we’ll keep you blissfully unaware of the world outside your lab. You’ll never have to deal with the messy consequences of what you discover. You can live in a realm of pure theory and discovery, unfettered by pesky morality.”
“That does sound tempting,” I admitted.
“You aren’t going along with this?” asked Zala. “You can’t just absolve yourself of your sins by refusing to hear about them.”
“Guilt requires knowledge. You can’t feel bad about something you don’t know about.”
“That’s absurd. You can’t ignore the harm you could unleash if you give in to these brains.”
Buddy switched her off again. “She really is bothersome, isn’t she?”
“You get used to it after a while,” I replied.
The machine’s vibrations grew more intense.
“What does it do?” I asked. “You wouldn’t have let me turn it on if you didn’t know.”
“Of course not.” Barnum chuckled. “It’s a quantum certainty generator.”
“So I actually designed one.”
“Yes,” said Future Self, “and it works. The machine manipulates the universe at a quantum level. For any action, there are multiple outcomes of varying probability. With access to this device, an operator can reduce the probability of any unwanted event to less than one-thousandth of a percent. Entropy is, of course, always a necessary part of any system. But, for all practical purposes, this machine allows one to know the results of one’s actions with near absolute certainty. Its range of effect is only a few days into the future and a few
hundred miles at this point, but with time, as the molluskotrenic engine feeds more and more power into the Eiffel Tower, that radius will increase. With each passing moment, more and more of the universe falls under our absolute control.”
“Fantastic,” I said. “I’ll admit I didn’t even think such a device was possible. I could never get the math to work.”
“You will.”
Buddy laughed maniacally. I took advantage of the distraction to remove the strange component from a compartment in my exo. I snapped it into a plug on the console. The component sizzled around the edges as it fused with the machine. Buddy was too busy gloating to notice.
He continued his rant. “So you see, Emperor. With this machine and your genius at our disposal, there’s nothing that can stop us. We have harnessed the primeval forces of creation. Tomorrow, next week, and a thousand years. Eventually, the machine will make us unto the gods themselves.”
“You don’t expect us to just go along with this?” asked Zala.
“I expect you to do exactly what I already know you will do. Guards, take them away.”
Snarg rose to my defense. The guards blasted her with their rifles, and she fell limp.
Buddy laughed as the certainty generator’s hum rose to an ultrasonic pitch. The flashes dancing across its filament mesh burned brighter. The console smoked and sparked. Green coolant leaked from the banks of monitors.
“Wait. This isn’t supposed to be happening.”
“The future doesn’t always come out exactly how we think,” I said.
“What did you do? You sabotaged it somehow? But how—”
Snarg stopped playing dead. The guards blasted her with their useless weapons. She smashed them with brutal efficiency.
Buddy moved toward me. A slash of Zala’s mechanical claws severed his right leg at the hip joint. He hopped on his other leg until she kicked it out from under him.
“How is this possible?” he asked.
“It’s a bit complicated,” I replied. “Perhaps I’ll explain it to you some other time.”
The second tower caught fire. White-hot flames licked its sides as black smoke billowed forth.
Zala, Snarg, and I ran across the moving walkway as the machine continued to fall into chaos. The wires sizzled. The pipes belched steam. Fluids gushed. It continued to hum, and the hum grew into a fever pitch.
“What’s happening?” asked Zala. “And why is that humming so damned loud? It’s making my head itch.”
“Technically, you don’t have a head,” I said. “It’s your brain. Except your brain doesn’t itch. It’s a neurological reaction. The bad news is that it will get worse before it gets better. The good news is that your Venusian physiology will keep it from incapacitating you. It’ll be unpleasant, but you should be fine.”
Something exploded. The section of catwalk we’d just been walking on a few moments ago collapsed. It tumbled into the depths, smashing several other walkways on its way, sending scrambling maintenance bots into seething clouds of oblivion.
Another quake loosened the bolts on our own perch. It listed to one side. We edged our way onward as the walkway swayed.
“This was part of your plan?”
“Could be,” I said.
I plunged forward into a plume of black smoke and felt my way back. It was slow going, but even as everything fell apart around us, we managed to avoid getting caught in an explosion or thrown to our deaths. Only after we were back at the base of the steps leading back to the surface did I have to deal with Zala.
“Don’t you owe me an explanation, Emperor?” she asked.
“I’m not sure I do.”
“You removed my brain.”
“I had no choice. It was the only way I could convince the Council of Egos that I had fallen for their trick,” I said. “They had to believe they were manipulating me or else they never would have trusted me enough to turn on the machine. If you’re worried about your body, I can put you in a new one.”
“You can’t just promise to return me to normal and undo the profaning of my sacred warrior’s code. My body is not optional, to be discarded at your convenience.”
“I don’t think this is the right time to discuss this.”
The smoke and flames forced us upward. But halfway to the exit, she pushed her way in front of me and wouldn’t let me pass.
“You’re right,” I said. “What I did was unforgivable. But I’ve done worse things, so you’ll excuse me for not being exceptionally troubled by it. If you want to destroy me for it, then we’ll work out the details later. Right now, I can only tell you it was necessary for the larger plan.”
“That’s your explanation? There’s a larger plan that you failed to brief me on?”
“I believe I’ve mentioned I’m not very good at working with others,” I said. “I’m inconsiderate that way. It’s well established. As for the larger plan, I’ll admit that I’m mostly assuming that at this point.”
“You didn’t sabotage the machine?”
“I think I did,” I said, “but I can’t be positive at this moment. Although I doubt it would have worked in the first place. Using a quantum certainty generator against the entropic forces of the universe is like paving over the ocean. It’s both needlessly difficult and unimaginative.”
Snarg pounced on a squad of guard bots.
I sighed. “If we need to do this here, we’ll do it here. I’m deactivating your protection protocol, Zala.” I pushed a button on my exo’s arm. “There. You are now free to harm me. I won’t lift a finger to stop you. Kill me if you want to, but you’ll never get your body back that way. Or discover the answers to any of your questions. I suggest you do it quickly while the guards are entertaining Snarg.”
Zala drew her scimitar. “One stab.” She tapped my exo’s transparent head dome with the flat of the blade. “With one stab I will avenge my world and myself for all your crimes, Emperor.”
“Well, do it or let’s go.”
She raised the sword, and for a moment, I thought she just might follow through.
Zala returned the weapon to her sheath. “Don’t think this means I won’t kill you the next chance I get.”
“Wouldn’t expect it to.”
“You didn’t disable my protocol, did you?”
“I’m not stupid,” I said.
We reached the surface. The Shambhalans stood around us. Zala aimed her weapons at them.
“Stand down,” I said. “They’re no danger.”
The Illustrious Master bowed. “We are in possession of our own wills again, Emperor Mollusk. You truly are the greatest friend Shambhala has ever known. And we must apologize again for our actions, and apologize for the inadequate nature of that apology.”
I bowed. “And I apologize for the headache you must be feeling now. That’s feedback from the disabled implants. It should fade soon enough.”
“You are most gracious, Emperor Mollusk.”
“You’ll want to get your people out of the city,” I said. “This isn’t over yet.”
“As you wish.”
We exchanged bows, and the Shambhalans went one way while we went another. Toward the center of the city.
“The machine disabled the implants?” asked Zala. “Is that what it was made for?”
“Among other things.”
We made our way to the central temple. Security clones tried to stop us, but Zala and Snarg made short work of them. The stone beneath our feet trembled and quaked. But Shambhala endured as it had for centuries before.
We reached the temple, and I threw open the doors. The Council of Egos bobbed silently in their globes.
“They’re catatonic,” said Zala.
“Incapacitated,” I said. “The machine is using the Great Gynoecium’s sap to generate a psionic wave. They’re lost in their own private fantasies, I assume. On their way to ruling the universe, if only in their own minds.”
“So that’s why I have a splitting headache.”
“Sorry about that. Can’t be helped.”
“You’ve beaten them?”
I nodded.
“You’ve beaten them with their own machine?” she asked.
“In point of fact, it’s my machine. They only built it for me.”
The steady hum faded, but the effect on the Council of Egos would persist for another week or two.
“Then that’s it?” asked Zala.
“Not quite. If I’m right, there’s one final thing we’ll have to do.”
A roar shook Shambhala. Just across the courtyard, a combot smashed its way out of the building it’d been stored in. The enraged robot lumbered toward the molluskotrenic engine. And she was in no mood to go around anything that stood in her way.
I activated the beacon in my exo. My saucer drifted overhead, and cargo beamed us upward.
“We have to destroy the radioactive brain of Madame Curie.”
25
Once in the cockpit, I double-checked systems. My last encounter with Curie had been a disaster, and I wanted to avoid a replay of it.
Curie stomped her way toward the Eiffel Tower, drawn by the m-rays it emitted.
“If your machine incapacitated the Council, shouldn’t it have stopped her?”
“Madame Curie is a unique case. The radioactivity and preservative elixir must have changed her on a biochemical level. It hasn’t had the same effect. Instead, it seems to have triggered some hyperaggression coupled with a ravenous appetite.”
The torches in any building she passed flared out as she absorbed their heat.
Curie’s massive exoskeleton wasn’t built for speed. Her movements were slow and clumsy. But what she lacked in grace she made up for in sheer size and power.
The fifteen-ton glowing brain flashed as she unleashed a blast, disintegrating a wooden tower in her path. I hoped the Shambhalans had already activated that section of their city.
I flew overhead, and fired a few shots at her. She absorbed the power, growing stronger from it.
“I thought you were prepared for this fight,” said Zala.
“Preparations only go so far. I’ll need to do a few more calibrations.”
Emperor Mollusk Versus The Sinister Brain Page 22
