The Machinery of Light

by David J. Williams

  “Save your own,” snaps Lynx.

  He can barely follow the conversation, but he can see that things are coming to a head. He’s aware, too, of these creatures in his mind, and they don’t seem to be able to make up theirs. One’s struggling to absorb the infernal machine. The other’s not coming through too clearly. It sounds like the woman from earlier, though. Even though Linehan can barely hear her. He can remember even less. But there was a woman. It’s her face—on the screens in front of him. And on the vast screen beyond all of that …

  You really want to know that price,” says Sinclair.

  “I think I already do,” says the Operative.

  “Then how about spelling it out?” says Lynx.

  “We climb aboard and ride it,” says Sarmax.

  “More like get plugged in,” says the Operative.

  She straining at the tethers, but the Room’s not coming with her. It’s still attached with part of herself—Sinclair’s still got her in lockdown. She increases her energy, grinds against the shoals of limitless ocean, but all she’s doing is expanding her purview and not her power—

  “Too bad,” says Sinclair. “You’ve got the world’s best view, but you just can’t seem to get to grips with it.” He gestures at the three pods on the tripod that sprouts off around her, looks at everyone else. “Sentimentality’s a bitch: I’d like it to be the original triad, but—”

  “And why the fuck would we be stupid enough to climb inside?” says Carson. “We’d be your playthings—your pets—”

  “Earth to Carson,” says Sarmax. “We’ve been that all along.”

  Everyone looks at him. He can feel energy pulsating through the Room—practically radiating from the screens. He can only assume they feel it too. He struggles to keep his mind off Indigo, struggles to stay focused.

  “Matthew intends to absorb Haskell the same way he absorbed Control,” he says.

  “But he still needs us why?” asks Lynx.

  “Buffers,” says Carson.

  “Let’s not get carried away,” says Sinclair.

  He doesn’t need any of you,” says Haskell. “Not anymore.”

  “It just makes it easier,” says Sinclair. “Think of it as outriggers on a canoe. Helps keep the balance. I’ve prepped your minds since inception to be the amplifiers in the grid I’ve formed around Claire. Even one of you would be useful, but all three would be just peachy—as specialized a set of neurotransmitters as I could orchestrate, and Linehan’s chowed down enough psychedelics to qualify as a spare tire. In return, you’ll get—”

  “Consumed,” says the Operative.

  “Transformed,” says Sinclair. “Into godlings.”

  “Under your direction,” says Lynx.

  “The alternative being I butcher you all right now.”

  “Butcher?” says Haskell. She’s making one last effort now. She can feel something start to give way. “Butcher? If you absorb me—the amount of energy—the psychic backwash when the Room breaks free of its last moorings will kill every living thing back within the Earth-Moon system—probably wipe the slate clean out beyond the radius of Mars—”

  “And it’s all just fuel for the engines,” says Sinclair. “Necessary to attain our Archimedes point on all else. You came through a labyrinth to get in here, but the real labyrinth is everything that’s beyond: all of it just interlocking computations. And your last-ditch efforts are merely strengthening my hand. So you better take a good look, Claire, because it’s the last you’re going to get with eyes that aren’t fucking mine—”

  “I don’t think so,” says Haskell—she reaches out—

  “I do,” says Sinclair—flicks his wrist. A dart whips toward the Operative’s head—

  —who ducks out of the way. Shakes his head.

  “Now why did you have to do a thing like that?” he asks.

  “Take him,” says Sinclair.

  Lynx and Sarmax move toward the Operative. But Linehan heads in the other direction, dropping down to where Haskell is. Sinclair whirls, hurls another dart after him, but just misses as Linehan ducks behind the pod that contains Haskell.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Sinclair asks.

  “Fucking your whole day up,” says Linehan—

  —by doing what Haskell’s telling him to. She’s managed to shield his mind with hers, managed to convince Sinclair that he’ll do whatever he asks. But the cat’s out of the bag now. And Sinclair’s coming right after him—will be on him in seconds. He starts grabbing at the piping around Haskell’s pod, ripping it straight out of the paneling—

  The Operative’s scrambling up the side of the inner Room, Sarmax and Lynx in hot pursuit. A knife thrown by Sarmax just misses his head. A dart flung by Lynx whips past his leg, skitters past him. He snatches it from the floor as he clambers up. They’re down to basics now. Behind him he can hear Linehan going to town on Haskell’s equipment—can hear the belching of pneumatic pipes torn asunder while something presses in upon his mind—

  “You can’t escape us,” says Lynx.

  He might just have a point. Sarmax alone would still be more than a match for him. And with Lynx in the equation, it’s even more of a long shot. Especially when there’s no zone left for him to access, his mind pressed back into his skull by the vortex the Room’s becoming, his brain once more having purview over nothing save his body. The Operative depresses a trigger in his mouth, feels a needle slide into his cheek, one last shot of grade-A combat drugs surging through him, a rush that’s intensified by the certain knowledge that Sarmax and Lynx are riding the same wave, too, building still further as he thinks of Claire at the center of it all … remembering her on the edge of seventeen, a mind like nothing he’d ever seen, a single endless summer …

  Hide-and-seek: Linehan’s on one side of the pod, Sinclair’s on the other. Linehan’s doing his best to keep it that way, moving back and forth to prevent Sinclair from coming to grips with him. He knows the only reason he’s still sane is because Haskell’s offering some protection. But this is a game that can have only one ending. So he’s smashing against the equipment with his bare fists, rending metal as Sinclair starts bellowing like a wounded animal and Haskell’s mind starts convulsing—

  The Operative feels it too: a mind in meltdown, flailing against him as Lynx and Sarmax close in from both directions. It’s like all surfaces are twisting around him now—mentally and physically—more darts flung by Lynx and Sarmax slicing past him as he struggles to breathe and the walls along which he’s climbing seem to be somehow bending—

  “What the fuck is going on?” yells Lynx.

  “The no-room’s crashing,” mutters Sarmax.

  The Operative shoves off one of the screens, straight back toward his pursuers—Lynx draws a knife, slices it in toward him—

  —just as Linehan doubles back again—wrong way this time. Sinclair’s right there, scuttling in toward him like some kind of demented crab, hands looking more like claws—and Linehan does the only thing he can do: leaps at him, burying his teeth in Sinclair’s neck—

  —as the Operative ducks in under Lynx’s killing blow, smashing his fist into Lynx’s face, puncturing the skin with a fingernail that hides a needle that extrudes—

  “Fuck,” yells Lynx—the last coherent thing he says as the poison enters his brain and he starts frothing at the mouth—

  “Good riddance,” says Sarmax.

  “Just us now,” says the Operative.

  “Like it should be.”

  Teeth tearing through flesh that’s really something more—Linehan feels Sinclair’s claws rending him but he’s still pushing the man-who’s-no-man backward, shoving him up against the canopy-door as Sinclair’s blood gushes into his mouth, turning to acid as it does so—burning, overwhelming him with pain even as his teeth clash together, even as the thing he’s fighting keeps on rending him—

  —even as Sarmax feints left, goes right, then lashes a kick against the Operative—who pulls his l
eg out of the way as the blade that’s extending from Sarmax’s ankle just misses hamstringing him.

  “Oldest trick in the book,” he mutters, as he stabs Lynx’s dart at Sarmax’s face—

  “This one’s even older,” says Sarmax, knocking the dart flying as he unleashes an almost impossibly strong punch—but the Operative ducks, grabs that arm, hauls Sarmax in as they start to grapple—

  “Like we’re back in the ice,” he says.

  “Ice is all there is,” says Sarmax as he gets the Operative in a headlock. The Operative tries to break free, but it’s no use. Sarmax always was the stronger. And now his former mentor is cutting off his air.

  “Over soon enough,” says Sarmax.

  “Like right now,” says the Operative—he shoves backward, smashing Sarmax through one of the screens. Shards of plastic fly. Blood’s all over the back of Sarmax’s head. But—

  “Won’t save you,” says Sarmax.

  “Think again,” says the Operative—he’s grabbing one of those shards, twisting his arm as he plunges it through Sarmax’s eye—

  He’s blind now, Sinclair gouging out both eyes, but still Linehan fights on, pure dying adrenaline pumping as his opponent starts crushing his skull with fingers that may as well be drills. As the bone cracks, the brain within processes images: temples opening into universes that unfold onto the ramparts of all the heavens, all of it falling past him like myriad shooting stars, far-flung patterns somehow coalescing into the face of the woman he’s giving his life for and even with his ruined mouth he’s still going out smiling—

  —whereas Sarmax just stares at the Operative for a moment with the one eye he’s got left. The shard protrudes from the other—

  “Bastard,” he says.

  “You just won,” says the Operative. “You’ll see her now—”

  “Always …” mutters Sarmax—trails off, his remaining eye rolling upward in his head. The Operative springs to his feet, whirls—takes in Sinclair standing at the base of the pod, facing him—

  “Time for your final lesson,” he says—just as Claire Haskell leaps from the pod—

  —her body manipulating gravity itself as she throws herself onto his back like some kind of wildcat, biting and scratching and clawing while his mind reels back before her and she tells him exactly what’s on hers—

  “Didn’t count on me getting out of jail, huh?”

  “Whatever it takes to tame you,” he mutters, but the battle between them isn’t really a function of what’s going on between their bodies. Their minds surge into each other—hers billowing in from every direction, his coalescing around the core of Control that he’s absorbed—straining against each other, seeking even the most momentary of advantages as they navigate endless quantum architectures of no-space and no-time, begetting infinite numbers of progeny minds that swarm in upon one another, a growing cloud of probabilities as the no-room goes ever further out of control and the multiverses start to blur. Somehow Sinclair’s staying focused. She’s not. It’s as though he planned for this. Her mind’s unraveling through labyrinthine chains of universe, infinite regressions prior to the one she’s left, each universe a chunk of false time that hangs in the true reality, each one a fragment of some greater picture that’s still blurry. But through that haze she can see the Operative moving in—

  “Stay back,” she mutters, knowing he won’t—

  —can’t—as he grabs a piece of piping and swings it with all his might down upon the rear of Sinclair’s head—yet as it impacts with that skull, there’s a blinding flash as untold energies run along the pipe back into the Operative’s body; he’s blasted backward, vision collapsing in upon him, the last thing he sees is those two inhuman figures grappling—

  —and it’s just the fraction of the merest instant, but she’s taking all she can get at this point—Sinclair’s distracted momentarily and she’s threading in through a wilderness of worlds to take advantage of that fact, diving in toward his center as—

  —he sees what she’s doing and—

  —shifts—

  —gets past her—

  —their positions reversed—

  —her mind dropping back into her flesh—

  —his accelerating out into the infinite—

  —receding jaws snapping at her and missing—

  —her brain blasting his body—

  —which catches fire. What’s left of his meat is going up in smoke. She’s scarcely had time to process this when the entire no-room shudders—

  —a force so great that even the Operative becomes aware of it, drifting back from death’s door, holding onto the writhing floor—

  “Carson?” says a voice.

  He opens his eyes. Haskell’s bending over him.

  Except it’s not Haskell. It’s something that wears the face of every woman. Yet somehow all of them are the Claire he’s always known—

  “Fuck,” he says.

  “Easy,” she mutters.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Ever heard of a crash landing?”

  She’s staggering out of the realms of no-space and it’s all she can do to maintain any kind of structural integrity as the wave-functions collapse and the membranes burn away and everything around her gets back to the business of being real, guiding this bubble universe back into the one that spawned it, infinite vectors all around and nearly all of them leading to the total destruction of her and everything else the Room contains. Her intuition’s now the only way out as she steers her own way back, all those existences flashing by until finally—

  Fuck,” screams the Operative—a huge muffled boom that seems to pervade his very soul. He stares up at the eyes of Haskell, sees the screens flicker back to life all around—sees something on them that he just can’t even begin to comprehend—

  “What the fuck,” he mutters.

  “We’re back,” she says.

  With a bang. As they reoccupy the space within the depths of the Moon—or rather, become that space again—compressed energy flows outward, the disintegrating membranes channeling a force that, thanks to her guidance, has almost no impact on what’s inside the Room. But as to what’s beyond—

  “Fuck,” whispers Carson.

  She says nothing, just cradles his head in her lap, watches on the screens in the Room as the entire Moon disintegrates—along with everything on it: the Eurasian legions on the cusp of victory, the Americans fighting with their backs to the wall, all the refugees caught in all the levels of that rock—all of them snuffed out, their minds caught within hers by Sinclair’s infernal machinery, her consciousness swelling ever farther outward, expanding now as pieces of the Moon churn out in all directions and the Room starts to sprout more guns and engines than the Eurasian fleet combined—

  Fuck,” he says again.

  It’s really all he can muster. Because now he gets it. Sinclair planned for everything. He set up the Room as something that could become a bubble moving past realities. But he also configured it as something that could wreak havoc in any real world it dropped into—

  “We’re in a fucking spaceship,” he says.

  One that sports the Stars and Stripes. She doesn’t know whether that’s Sinclair’s joke or whether it meant something to him after all: and now it no longer matters, because she’s at the helm of a behemoth to end all others, armored on all sides by more than half a klick of moonrock, looking more like a planetoid than a ship, and far beyond anything the Eurasians have left to throw against it. The monstrosity emerging from the resultant asteroid-field of rock and chunks of cooling magma is several klicks long, plasma drives blazing as it vectors in toward the remainder of the Eastern ships. And Haskell’s mind is racing ahead of it. It’s no contest. Nothing can stand against her anymore. She shudders as she suddenly sees there’s only one future left to her.

  “What’s wrong?” Carson asks.

  “You’re dying,” she says.

  “I know that,” he says.

  “Jesu
s Christ, Carson. Jesus fucking Christ—”

  “What happened to Sinclair?”

  “I think he pulled it off.”

  “Becoming God?”

  “Going off to find Him.”

  Maybe it was what he had in mind all along. Maybe he just improvised. Doesn’t matter—he got past her, changed places with her, became the nexus he’d created within her while she dropped back into the world she’d left. She’s scanning across this world for any sign of him, but she already knows he won’t be back. This place is a backwater compared to what he was going for. And she finally sees that he wasn’t even that interested in domination. It was all just a springboard for him. He was beyond the range of ordinary definition.

  Then again, so is she.

  “It’s going dark,” mutters Carson.

  “I’m still here,” she says.

  He reaches out with his arm, pulls her head slowly down upon his chest. She doesn’t resist, just lets herself lay there for a moment—and another—and another as his breathing gets shallower and the ship rains fire and brimstone into the Eurasian fleet. He’s struggling to form words—

  “I know,” she says. “I know.”

  “Took me way too long to admit,” he whispers.

  “Some things are buried deep.” She starts to weep—for him, for Marlowe. For all of them. She grips him tighter. “See, now I love—”

  “Everyone,” he says.

  “I never thought it would be like this.”

  “You’ll take care of them, won’t you?”

  “They’re all I’ve got left.”

  He smiles faintly. Tightens his grip on her hand, closes his eyes. Doesn’t open them again. He’s no longer breathing—his consciousness flickers out, past her—she tries to catch it, misses, knows that all she’s got is memories now. Maybe that’s all she ever had. She watches as the remnants of the Eurasian fleet scatter, stares at endless stars as tears obscure her vision. But she’s not blind. She’ll never be blind again. Her real vision keeps on expanding around her, encompassing all those other minds across the Earth-Moon system, all the scattered fragments of humanity that she’s now gathering up into herself: the soldiers who man the remnants of shattered war-machines, the survivors of the wreckage of the cities, the masses huddled throughout the globe—all of them abruptly aware of all others as group-mind coalesces under her guidance, the Earth shining like a star as suddenly she’s lifting humanity straight on through to a new phase of evolution. Collective consciousness coalesces; spirit and matter unite in final alchemy; archetypes shift and suddenly everything’s alive. As the light blasts through her, she finds herself wondering if Autumn Rain succeeded—finds herself smiling at the thought. She motors past the wreckage of the fleets of nations, sets course back toward the planet and her people.