She wanted to use those head-butts and karate jabs on them now. But she was afraid she’d kill them even using a fraction of the force. She just had no training in how not-to-kill people with one blow. And now was not the time to perfect that craft.
Because most of her attackers had the sense to keep their weapons set to stun, she often rode the energy pulses, using them to spin her like a ball in the air as she folded up on herself to complete her somersaulting trajectory.
As for the fools whose weapons were being used to kill, not subdue... It was time to change strategy again since she could no more tolerate an errant shot bouncing off her body suit and hitting one of them than she could tolerate one of their missed shots rebounding back at her. Something she should have realized before starting this silly game of mad monkey in a maze jumping down on her attackers from various heights in the makeshift jungle gym. But, as she kept reminding herself, she was not used to thinking ten steps ahead when it came to not killing people.
She so sucked at do-no-harm that the weekend warriors she’d knocked out earlier were getting back up again and coming for her. Meaning her knockout punches had come up short.
Veronica kept hammering on the buttons by the sliding doors to get them to open when she found them along the halls. Her strategy was to make use of whatever found objects came her way inside any of the rooms.
The first doors to part for her opened on deep space, riddled with stars. She caught herself in time before stepping out of the craft and drifting into oblivion. She slammed the doors closed with another punch to the activator. Retreating, she continued to tap doors open in the same manner. The next one opened on a sun so bright and so blazing hot it instantly burned her skin. Again she slammed the doors closed.
It slowly dawned on her that either Tum had covered his retreat by switching on virtual reality tech inside each of the rooms that the crew used to relax to in their downtime to throw her off balance, or someone in the crew had thought to do it. She had no explanation on how virtual reality tech could give her a sunburn along one side of her body, but maybe that was just in her mind, part of the nextgen virtual reality effect.
They were suddenly making not killing them a lot easier by calling off the chase, evidently assigned a higher directive. A few laggards pressed their fingers against their in-ear mikes as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing before running off to join the others. What could be more troubling than a possible saboteur aboard their ship? Just what trouble had Tum or Adrian or both gotten them into?
***
Adrian worked his way along the tunnels, which had a wormy flow to them. With periodic slight narrows along the circumference, they were almost intestine-like.
Since Veronica had gone out of her way earlier to alert him to the fact that Tum was monitoring the two of them, he figured he might as well make that work in his favor. “Now, why would a superior being have to hide from me, huh?” He made sure his voice traveled down the tunnels like a sonic blast. He waited to see if any more taunting was necessary or if a response would be immediate. Tum, having all the patience of any newborn, chose immediate. Loud crashing noises echoing along one of the three branching tunnels up ahead directed Adrian on where he had to go.
Finally, the tunnel opened up into a cavernous space. They could park a 747 in here, no problem, even if the reference was a little out of date by these guys’ standards.
Speaking of planes, he found Tum opening cases that could survive being dropped out of one. The shiny silver containers sported digital locks, but that didn’t seem to slow Tum much. Tum pulled what looked like a futuristic bazooka to Adrian out of one of the cases.
“You planning to shoot me with that?” Adrian said as Tum turned the device over in his hands, examining it.
“It’s a turbine meant to be driven by solar energy,” he said, tossing it. “Only they didn’t factor in for a number of variables that will cause it to fail inside of a couple months. Not the least of which is the effect of Mars’s atmosphere on the liquid effluent it is meant to pump back to the sewage treatment plants. Their interaction will erode the titanium alloy.”
“You see, you’ve found a role for yourself in the new world already, father of the future. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
Tum turned to the other parts strewn across the floor which he’d already tossed from the prior opened suitcases. “All these parts are defective in any number of ways. Maybe if I was more hard-wired to teach kindergarten.”
“So upgrade human minds to something more on your level. Even if they’re just close enough… Networked together… hundreds, far less thousands and millions, far less billions of minds, even those falling well short of yours, would provide stimulation enough for your mind. They could accomplish in the aggregate far more than your mind alone could accomplish. They would be all the company you need in the short-term. In the long-term that group mind could build the superior versions of you that you were hoping the aliens would build for you.”
Tum tossed the latest reject of a tech-toy on the floor like so much garbage. “For what it’s worth, I like how your mind works.”
They both looked away from one another as the ship shuddered. “Yes, it makes sense now,” Adrian said. Tum’s only response was a surprised expression.
“What makes sense?”
“The ship wasn’t all that big back on Earth. It would be harder to keep cloaked if it were. Those tunnels we came down—I came down,” he thought remembering Tum’s penchant for going through walls instead—they were the clue. There’s something living that’s extruding this ship. A synthetic intelligence like yours, I suspect.”
“Unlikely.”
“I told you, you dismiss humanity too readily. Lowly, unupgraded me, a single unnetworked, unenhanced mind managed to detect something you couldn’t. Maybe you should show more appreciation than disdain for your children, father of the future.”
Tum’s ears continued to pull his head in the direction of the itinerant sounds, as if he were still analyzing the situation. “Where is it finding the matter to create the new parts of itself at such breakneck speed?”
Adrian laughed. “Some things even genius is ill-equipped to do much about in the absence of sufficient intuition.” Adrian tapped his head. “You’re coming up short in that department, aren’t you? That’s why you got a lock on me and wouldn’t let go. I’m a bit right-brained for a scientist, even a failed one. But it’s not a bad quality as it turns out when investigating cases that just don’t make sense to begin with.”
Adrian let Tum puzzle through the conundrum for a bit longer, observing the wheels turning inside his head, his eyes darting from one fixed spot in the room to another, but always with a million mile stare.
Adrian chuckled some more, saw the rising anger in Tum as his eyes refocused on Adrian. Adrian figured he better not push the joke any longer. “It’s using zero point energy, of course, converting energy to matter.”
“Nonsense. The physics for that…” Tum never finished the sentence. “I’m writing it now.” Another few seconds and he said, “It appears you’re right, again. But it doesn’t imply a high intelligence worthy of me. It only has one simple function to attend to.”
“The higher intelligence was the one percent of humanity it took to build it. One percent, Tum. Granted, they’re the smartest of us. But it does lend credence to my earlier comments.”
“You won that argument already, Tum.”
“I’m not Tum… Oh, I get it. You’re The Unkillable Man, I’m The Unupgraded Man. Cute.”
“Only…”
“Only what?” Adrian didn’t appreciate how Tum’s eyes had wandered again, and watered. When Tum wouldn’t say, Adrian guessed for himself. “So, it’s a Do Androids Sleep With Electric Sheep scenario, is it? Forgive me, I read a lot of sci-fi. It comes in handy being a futurist. What’s your expiration date, Tum?”
When he hesitated answering, Adrian said, “To be honest with you, I thought you’
d solved for that problem. Oh that’s right, you thought I’d solved for it. Still relying on me to make the intuitive leaps for you? I’m sorry I had to trick you, but you weren’t exactly leaving us much choice.”
Tum met his eyes finally. “Just a few more hours remain for me.”
“But I thought…”
“That I’d solve it on my own by now? Too many variables to yield even to my thinking in time. You just bought me enough time to reach this ship, and hand in my ticket to a better, longer life. Only it was just one big joke. The same way you live your life.” Tum lashed out in anger, sending cases flying with a simple backhand. Soon there would be little to do but lash out at Adrian in anger. And the time for reasoning would have passed. Adrian had to talk fast. Faster than he could think.
“We can stick you back in the freezer. You did some of your best work from there. Buy you the time—buy us the time—to come up with a long-term fix.”
“The freezer will turn hours into days. Still not enough time.”
“But days… that’s eons to someone like you.”
“Still not long enough, I tell you! I’ve already run through the calculations a hundred thousand times over.”
“Did you factor in for these one percenters living out a future that none of us knew about? Possibly sitting on technology that also none of us know about? They may already be able to upload your mind, your consciousness to the artificial matrix of a server farm of computers. They might already have android bodies to download you to.”
Tum laughed a humorless laugh. “You think if they had all that they’d be so desperate to come after me?”
“Yes, I do. Like you, any time you can shave them off reaching your heights of cognition, they’ll take handily. As one of them just got done telling me, the problems for humanity of surviving space are far greater than surviving Earth. So much greater that we can’t do it without upgrading every single mind on Earth, and then some.”
The eerie silence was just more proof that Tum was on the fence with this idea. Finally, he said, “I’ll take my chance in the vacuum of space, in the quiet, away from all of you. I might still be able to find the answer in the time remaining. Something I should have had the sense to do all along. Playing games with you humans… I guess you could say I tried it your way already.”
Sounds of gunfire were getting closer. A clear sign that Veronica had done all she could to hold them off this long. Let’s hope she’d gotten her hands on crowd control, nonlethal weapons. He was feeling a bit ridiculous himself, loaded for bear with all these neat nextgen guns and not getting to fire them for fear of bursting the fragile membrane of a ship’s hull separating them from eternity. If there was a God, He was a God of irony.
Tum squatted down as if he were getting ready to take a flying leap.
“Tum, don’t!” Adrian yelled, as Tum shot through the roof, blasting a hole for himself clear into the vacuum of space.
And taking Adrian with him.
Who was so not equipped to go where Tum was going.
THIRTY-SIX
Church had been in session, for over twenty minutes now.
It was pretty much as Klepsky had feared. David’s fucking Biyu in the glass-walled confines of her lab, her moaning, his panting, broadcasted in stereo over the speakers throughout the center rectangle of the FBI-FD floor of the building had only created more devout cult followers for David in the very short time he’d been with them. Klepsky had no choice but to admit he’d been outplayed and out-manipulated. There was no denying “the congregation” performed far more efficiently after their daily “prayer meetings” than in the absence of them. If it were just Biyu benefiting from Doctor David’s sexual ministrations, or perhaps they were meditations, he’d have had them kill the speakers and pull the drapes long ago.
Seated behind his desk, Klepsky was close to coming to orgasm along with the rest of the church congregation, the members of which probably couldn’t sustain a twenty-minute hard-on prior to orgasm on their own without their high priest. A fact which Klepsky felt certain would only fire the revolt if he lifted a finger against him.
But lift a finger he must. Enough was enough.
He unhanded his crotch with an impatient “Ah!” He blamed the surreal shenanigans going on inside the FBI-FD on this surreal case, which had opened their minds to all sorts of crazy practices. Anything that could unlock the mind and enhance genius and productivity in the pursuit of Tum, what’s more, was to be revered in its own right. Forget how much it fucked with the mind in other respects. He got up from his chair and stormed out of his office.
Klepsky arrived at the pinnacle of high mass.
Everyone came to orgasm in the same instant, right along with David and Biyu.
He was getting ready to scream at the whole lot of them when Ed scuttled up to him, holding his hand up like a stop sign. “Just consider this,” Ed said, “before you say or do anything. It’s in the quiet aftermath of their lovemaking that they both come up with their best ideas. And so, it turns out, does the rest of the congregation. So before you go disbanding The Cult of David, might I suggest you time your disruption so the latest insights arrive first? Then, if you still feel as you do…”
“Five minutes, before I slap a chastity belt on her. Five minutes before a return to the Age of Reason. No more backsliding into a pre-rational age populated with cult worshippers and false gods.”
“Excellent idea, sir. They should work to earn their treats just like every other primate at the zoo. Just as I have, sir. Speaking of my treat, sir…”
“Not now, Ed. I’m in far too foul a mood.”
“Yes, sir. I can wait,” he said to Klepsky’s back. Klepsky was already headed back to his office.
Ed met him in his office less than a minute later, throwing the chastity belt options for him on his desk.
“How…?”
“I took the liberty, sir, of anticipating this need some days ago.” He made that two finger salute, gesturing with it between him and Klepsky, using what had become the universal sign for “great minds think alike.”
Klepsky held up the chastity belts in turn, pouring over them judiciously.
“Just one thing, sir,” Ed said. “You think she’ll agree to wear one at home? That she’ll come home, with us, I mean? And that David and Biyu won’t just move out and get a place of their own?”
“She will and they will if she ever expects to have the orgasms of her life again, and he ever expects to have a real family.”
“But they could just decide to start a family of their own. If they haven’t been using prophylactics this whole time, I’d say they’re already off to a great start.”
“You underestimate the desire for a cripple to be free of her crutch, any crutch, including David’s dick, Ed. And you underestimate the need of a young man who never had a real family to experience what it might be like to live in one before going off to start his own. No, I’m quite confident that I will win this pissing contest. Here, this one,” he said, holding out the chastity belt of his choosing to Ed.
“Excellent choice, sir.” Ed modeled the chastity belt for him without actually putting it on, using pantomime. “She can pee through the front end without assistance. She can poop out the back end only with the combination which changes every three minutes—hardly time for a satisfying bout of anal sex, even if she’s lying about what she’s doing in private in the bathroom. Best of all, it’s perfectly molded for comfort to avoid leaving garish welts that would be hard to explain to the police—I mean the regular police, sir—despite being fabricated out of a very low maintenance perpetually shiny titanium-aluminum alloy.”
“What are you still standing there for? Go get the chastity belt on her. And give David the bad news.”
“Yes, sir.” Ed darted out of the room with the chastity belt.
Klepsky returned to his paperwork, ignoring the outburst of loud groans coming from the center rectangle. Either word had spread that fast or the sight of
the chastity belt in Ed’s arms was infomercial enough regarding what Klepsky was selling.
A short while later David came rushing into his office. Klepsky refused to lift his eyes from his paperwork. Though he could see David posturing just fine with his arms crossed and his chest puffed out, punctuating his pacing by standing at the center of his desk to return to his best intimidating chest out and arms crossed pose.
“Well, do you want your breakthrough insight or not?” he said. “Could be months before you get another one under the new regime.”
“Fine, what is it?” Klepsky said, looking up from his paperwork finally.
“While I have your attention.” David stripped off his tee shirt. He passed his hands over himself. “Will you take a look at this? How do you expect to compete? Let me spare you the mental agony. The answer is: There’s no competing with a twenty-one-year-old Adonis. That’s the answer now. It’s even more the answer a year from now when you’re sagging even more.” He struck a few more Mr. Universe poses for Klepsky who tried his damnedest not to smile. “Just surrender. Why put everyone through this? Why, because you can’t navigate your midlife crisis all on your lonesome?”
“By your very own logic you should be able to get any girl you want without having to give up the one chance you have at a real mommy. And why, I wonder, does he sabotage his chance at a family that he’s waited all this time for? I can only think it’s because better he sabotage it than he find out that the family just doesn’t want him after he’s tried his best to be the perfect son. Because failure is all he’s been conditioned to expect.”
Unkillable (The Futurist Book 1) Page 32
