by Isaac Hooke
I'm so sorry Ari, I did my best. I did everything. I crossed worlds for you. I—
Wait.
This wasn't Ari.
He released the body in shock.
The satoroid was lobotomizing the wrong one?
He floated over to the pod just next to it, and saw that Ari remained alive and untouched inside, the viral transformation of her body essentially complete.
If Graol had possessed legs, he would have collapsed. As it was, he just drifted in place, shocked, relieved beyond comprehension.
My daughter. My dear, dearest daughter.
He wrapped his tentacles around the pod and gently squeezed, the closest he could come to a human hug.
Graol topped up the placenta's oxygen supply and then untethered the pod from the mooring. He carried it in his tentacles, holding the pod a small distance from his body so as not to interfere with the undulations of his torso.
Ari was alive. Alive. He could hardly contain his joy. He practically danced through the room, weaving between the other hosts.
But it wasn't over yet.
He left the Farm and emerged into the metallic passageway, making his way back toward Waterlock 21. The Shell was no longer projecting a three-dimensional map into his head at each branch. All Graol received from the A.I. was an incoherent stream of garbage, so he had to proceed from memory.
He passed a satoroid on the way—the thing drifted lifeless in the waters.
Ahead, the outer door of Waterlock 21 remained open.
Good. Graol eagerly jetted through. He was almost there.
Fhavolin waited inside.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Graol released Ari's pod and positioned himself protectively in front of it. He'd need all his limbs for this confrontation.
"What have you done, Graol?" Fhavolin transmitted.
He sent nothing back. He flexed his stinging tentacles instead, hoping the threat was clear.
Fhavolin seemed unimpressed. "You will give me the antivirus to the infection you've placed in The Shell."
"There is no antivirus."
Fhavolin floated forward. "Then you will give me the virus source, and help me program an antivirus."
"We don't need The Shell," Graol said. "The ship is still functional. For now."
Fhavolin edged closer still. "For now? The Shell is the embodiment of the Council, and carries out its commands while we sleep. I cannot allow its destruction."
"I no longer have the virus source," Graol said. "The autopilot functions independently of The Shell, and can still take us home."
Fhavolin's tentacles twitched. "You would betray your own race?"
"If it is betrayal," Graol said. "Then why do I feel like a liberator?"
"I know you have the virus source, Graol," Fhavolin said. "Just give it to me. If not for your race, then for me. For the love we once had. Still have." Again, the human word for love.
Graol contracted his torso in the Satori equivalent of a sigh. "You just had me sent for execution. If that's what you call love, you have a strange way of showing it Fhavolin."
Without warning Fhavolin attacked. Graol had only a moment to see the blur of stinging tentacles, and then agony filled his body, worse than anything he had felt from the spike.
Graol swiveled sideways, and unleashed his own barrage of tentacles. It was a satisfying sensation, feeling the slap of his stingers against her epidermis.
Fhavolin flinched, and relaunched her own tentacles.
Graol exhaled the water from his torso, and barely jetted out of range. A few more strikes from those tentacles would leave him adrift—the venom in the nematocysts contained a potent neurotoxin. Her venom was far more powerful that his own, a luxury allowed her because of her position as head of the Council.
His sideways movement proved a mistake, because he'd let Fhavolin get too close to Ari's pod. Before he could stop her, Fhavolin thrust straight for the membrane. Graol managed to sting her a few times, but he was too late, because Fhavolin wrapped her tentacles around the pod and began to squeeze.
Graol raised his tentacles in a gesture of surrender. "Please!"
"Help me or I kill your 87A female," Fhavolin said.
Graol stung her again.
She squeezed tighter. It wouldn't take much to burst Ari's pod. Graol wasn't worried so much about the lack of air—the umbilical would keep her oxygenated—but it was the sudden change in pressure that would kill her.
If he kept stinging Fhavolin, there was a chance he might stop her in time.
There was a greater chance that he would not.
"All right," Graol said. "Stop. I have the antivirus."
Fhavolin studied him with her Upper Lens Eyes. "Give it to me."
"It's in the flyer. Let me transfer it to the outside."
Fhavolin loosened her hold on the pod slightly. "No games."
"None."
Part of his body paralyzed by the attack, Graol floated limply over to the egg-shaped vessel of black steel. He reached the external interface on the far side of the flyer, and initiated access.
The flyer's inner compartment appeared in his head and he steered the internal robotic arms toward the object he sought, and put it in the airlock. He flooded the airlock and released the interface.
He floated over to the opposite side of the flyer and when the outer door spiraled open he retrieved the object, supporting it with one tentacle and wrapping the fingers of another delicately around it.
"Bring it to me," Fhavolin said.
Graol floated over.
Fhavolin's eye-stalks shifted in alarm when she realized what he held. That's not a—
Graol pulled the trigger. An energy bolt tore a hole through Fhavolin's translucent epidermis, cutting through her lowermost radial brain.
Fhavolin remained in place, black liquid oozing from the hole, her tentacles slowly unwrapping from Ari's pod.
Graol himself remained still, too stunned to move. A lucky shot. He'd only meant to warn her off. He had retrieved a spare energy weapon from the flyer's armory, the one designed for the surrogate humans. He hadn't been sure if he'd be able to fire it with his wispy Satori fingers, let alone if the thing would even work underwater.
He was hardly aware as the weapon dropped from his grip. He went to Fhavolin. He still cared for her, despite what he had told her, despite that she was alien to him now.
"I'm so sorry, Fhavolin," he transmitted, even though he knew she couldn't hear him. "It wasn't supposed to end like this. I only needed to disable The Shell. But you threatened Ari. I had to defend her. You understand, don't you?"
But Fhavolin didn't answer. The dead couldn't transmit.
Why did Graol have to be tortured so? Losing everyone who had ever been close to him? And why was it always his fault?
He didn't have time to grieve.
He focused his attention on Ari.
At least he still had his daughter.
He carried Ari's pod over to the flyer and activated the extended airlock. A metal alcove descended from the ceiling, and the corrugated rubber edges formed a seal around the flyer's own airlock. He placed Ari's pod inside, closed the hatch, and initiated the pressure matching. Through the portal he saw the water draining out.
Almost there.
He turned around and began the return trip through the metallic corridors and the artificial sea beyond. Half his body was still paralyzed from Fhavolin's attack, and his movements were slow, halting.
He worried that Fhavolin might have awakened some of the other councilors, but he encountered no one else. She must have been watching his execution from her shipboard den, and would have had to race directly to the flyer to get there before him. She wouldn't have had time to return to the hibernation area, and with The Shell succumbing to the virus there was no way she could have awakened the others remotely.
That was her biggest mistake, he realized—abandoning the others and racing to confront him herself. Then again, she couldn't have known wh
at he planned. Perhaps she thought he had more nefarious ends in mind than merely saving the human daughter he loved. If The Shell had succeeded in lobotomizing his daughter, Fhavolin would have been right.
Finally he reached the upper-class hibernation area and floated among the sleeping Satori. He went to the empty mooring assigned to him, and allowed the fleshy cords to connect.
The three-dimensional interface appeared in his mind, and he began the process of reconnecting to his surrogate.
He paused before completing the final step.
What was he doing? He wasn't human. How could he be human when his real body had tentacles and he breathed acidic water and he communicated with telepathy? The humans were the aliens, not the Satori.
He could still go back on all of this.
He could still introduce the antivirus, restore The Shell, and give up Ari.
Give up Ari?
Graol activated the uplink.
***
Hoodwink opened his eyes.
Eyes. He had two eyes again. And two arms, and two legs.
He almost couldn't believe it. He flexed his gloved fingers in front of his face. Fingers, not tentacles.
Damn it was good to be human again.
Except that he was freezing.
And his neck and back ached from being slouched against the controls.
And he had a splitting headache.
He lifted his head. He wasn't sure how much time had passed. Satori sensed time differently than human beings. Slower.
His helmet lay on the console beside him. His breath misted, and there were icicles on his mustache. He must have accidentally changed the temperature when The Shell had disconnected him from his surrogate and sent his head crashing into the control pad.
Hoodwink increased the heat and turned around. The airlock's inner door was open. He rose, and stepped inside the extended chamber with some trepidation.
Ari remained asleep inside her pod.
Hoodwink pressed his gloved fingers into the membrane. The pliable surface bent inward, but didn't break. He shoved with both hands now, harder, straining...
His fingers pierced the membrane, creating a gash that swallowed the arms of his spacesuit to the shoulders. Organic muck spilled forth.
Hoodwink dug Ari out from the pod and lowered her naked body to the metal floor. Her arms flopped beside her. The umbilical was taut, trailing from her belly to the pod's innards. Slime flowed around her.
She wasn't breathing.
That was normal, because the placenta inside the pod still gave her oxygen.
He cleaned the slime from her eyes with a cloth, then he opened her mouth and breathed a mouthful of air inside. He waited a moment, then did it again. Again.
She still wasn't breathing on her own.
Come on Ari.
He felt her pulse. It was there, but weak.
Hoodwink put his mouth to hers, and this time he inhaled. Some of that organic ooze went down his throat and he coughed violently.
He recovered, and breathed another mouthful into Ari's lungs.
Come on Ari.
She coughed. Green guck spilled from her lips. She coughed again. More guck.
Her eyes shot open in terror, and her lungs inflated as she inhaled like someone who'd been holding her breath a lifetime.
Which she had been.
And then she coughed.
And coughed.
Organic sludge spurted from her lips, spraying everything nearby, including Hoodwink's face.
He didn't mind.
She was alive.
"Let it out, that's the way." Hoodwink lifted her upper body in his arms, and he held her as she hacked away. He patted her back encouragingly. She blinked rapidly, her eyes obviously burning from the ooze that got into them.
Her coughs came with less and less frequency until she just sat there quietly in his arms, staring straight ahead. She breathed slowly, as if she relished each breathe, as if she couldn't believe she was alive.
And then those eyes tilted toward him. "Hoodwink."
He smiled. "That's me."
Ari just looked at him for a moment, taking him in. "You saved me."
Hoodwink grinned the happiest grin of his life.
"It was nothing," he said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Why do we exist?
Because of the will of some machine?
Because of a maker in the sky, beyond the heavens that we know and see?
Because of a random combination of chemicals that just so happened to fall together into the right place at the right time to spark that thing of ours called life?
Why do we exist?
To love. To hate.
To laugh. To cry.
To live.
To die.
Do we have some purpose that needs to be fulfilled? Some destiny?
Or are we just some pawns in a game devised by a higher being for its own entertainment?
Life.
Such a simple word for such a complex state of being.
A loaded word.
Life.
You are alive if you have signaling and self-sustaining processes.
You are unalive if you are inanimate.
A tree is alive.
A rock is not.
Or is it?
A laughing child is alive.
A dead man is not.
Or is he?
What about an Artificial Intelligence whose inner workings are complex enough to warrant the quantum state that results in consciousness?
If it thinks, is it alive?
Can it laugh? Can it cry?
Can it know love? Madness?
And if it is alive, what happens when the machine dies?
So many questions. Too many.
What is life?
A simulation? A grand video game? Something for the universe to do when it's bored?
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the universe constantly tends toward higher entropy or randomness. Life is a violation of that law. As is the birth of stars and the creation of planets. Order in the chaos. But Laws are made by living beings and thus are meant to be broken.
Life is simply this:
The love a father feels for his daughter.
A love that allows him to cross worlds to save her.
That is life. That is what it is to be human.
Human.
That's what we call ourselves.
But are we human if we simultaneously exist in another form?
Are we human if the body we inhabit is just a shell, or mask, which our real self inhabits, a real self that is somehow displaced from the body and hidden from view?
Some call that displaced self a psyche.
Others, a soul.
***
Hoodwink gazed out the view screen at the rapidly approaching surface of the moon below.
His debt to Ari was finally repaid.
Now he just had to repay his debt to humanity, for teaching him what it was to be human.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tanner led a score of humans who were garbed in black coats with the curved-tooth needlework of the Direwalkers on their breasts. The children had properly marked the "unit leader" flag of Tanner's avatar alone this time round, setting the avatar flags of the men so that they would appear as ordinary units to the other Direwalkers. The men all wore fully-charged lightning rings on each finger, but only Tanner carried a sword openly—in order to mimic the weaponry of the original squadron they replaced, the others kept their fire swords hidden beneath their coats, alongside the special collars needed to bitch One. Cap, Al, and Briar were among the men, while the rest were uncollared recruits Tanner didn't know.
The group advanced through the city streets, making for Jeremy's estate. It was late evening, but even at this hour a long column of Direwalkers continuously streamed from the manor gates.
"He's keeping busy," Cap muttered, breath clouding in front of him. His ordinary front teet
h betrayed his humanity.
"He is." As usual Tanner was the only one in the group with Direwalker canines. He probed one of those teeth with his tongue to assure himself of that fact.
The overcast sky hadn't loosed its threat of snow, though the clouds made the street appear darker than usual at this hour. If there were any ravens out, he couldn't see them in the waning light.
Bracketed torches lit the main gates ahead, and Tanner was reminded of the first time he'd come here. Ari had been at his side then, and the two of them had forced their way inside with swords swinging. It seemed a lifetime ago.
He wished she were here now. He wished she could fight with him to the end. She would have come, despite the danger. She would have led the charge.
But now it was up to him.
He wouldn't let her down.
"Well, here goes nothing," Tanner said.
The iron gate was open to allow the outpour of the endless ranks, and a Direwalker guard was seated cross-legged in the snow beside the emerging column.
The guard rose as Tanner and his group approached.
"Report, unit leader." The guard stood a head taller than Tanner and looked down on him scornfully. Behind the guard, some of the other Direwalkers snarled at Tanner as they passed the gate. He did his best to ignore them.
"Squadron 114 returning from patrol areas 5C and 5D," Tanner said. The New Users had ambushed that squadron earlier, and brought the survivors back to the sewers for interrogation. With the help of the children, they'd determined the precise time the squadron was to return.
"You're late," the Direwalker at the gate said, baring its teeth. "Any problems?"
So much for the precise time. Tanner grinned, making a point of showing his own canines. "Feasted upon a fresh herd of krubs we caught hiding in an abandoned alleyway."
The Direwalker smirked. "I'm sure you're proud of yourself. Proceed to area 6C with your squadron. The unit leaders have requested assistance in delousing a krub Safe House."
"Done," Tanner said. "But first, we have news to report to the Great One."
"News?" The Direwalker narrowed its eyes.
"Yes. Extracted from one of the krubs before he died. News of an uprising."
The Direwalker appraised Tanner a moment. "It doesn't matter. We will quench all uprisings."
