And then, in an instant, it all became clear.
AJ stepped out from behind the sun and joined the circle of golems. Brady immediately felt foolish for having ever trusted him.
“Why, AJ?” Nova asked.
The child did not respond; he just stared at the fusion core.
Achilles must also have been aware of the child bot’s betrayal, because he let out a thundering growl, and the room quaked from his might. Brady watched in horror as one of the golems turned away from the Collectors and began to walk toward the canine. Achilles dug his nails deep into the steel floor and prepared for war.
The canine let the monster get close, then leaped through the air in a graceful arc and latched on to one of the golem’s arms with his razor teeth. But the monster simply reached over and tore the dog off with ease. The golem flung him to the floor and pinned him beneath its massive foot.
Nova tried to run to him, but Brady grabbed her arm and pulled her back. He knew there was nothing she could do.
As Achilles yelped frantically beneath the foot, the golem reached down and ripped the Glia Box from his back and slid it across the floor. Then he dragged two cables from the ceiling and attached one to the box and the other to the canine’s head.
At the same time, three other golems broke away from the circle and headed toward Brady, Felix, and Nova. The Elder puppets ushered them into a set of iron chairs. A fourth chair sat empty.
“Okay! I did what you wanted,” AJ said, stepping forward. “I gave you Orion. You promised you would let my father go.”
The fusion core hummed softly. There was no reply.
“Give me my father!” AJ demanded, slamming his foot repeatedly on the ground.
A golem left the circle and started walking toward Sudo.
“Good…” the child muttered. “Free him so we can leave this wretched place.”
But then, to the child’s surprise, the monster turned away from Sudo and, with one large hand, grabbed AJ by the neck and carried him, screaming, over to the empty chair.
The golems then attached cables to their four captives’ heads. The prisoners resisted, tried to escape, but couldn’t. Some sort of mental block from the cable was holding them in place.
The golems then returned to the circle, where they began to jerk back and forth. They moved slowly at first, but then sped up until they vibrated in place with a fervent intensity, mere blurs of motion. Drops of liquid metal beaded up on the creatures’ skin, then lifted off and joined the nano-clouds that formed around the room.
Molecule by molecule, the golems came apart—and soon there was nothing left. Only the swarming nano-clouds of the Elders remained, buzzing together as a collective.
“We have learned of your secret, Orion,” came an androgynous voice from somewhere in the cloud. The cloud expanded and contracted when the Elder spoke, the particles riding the wave of sound.
“You have disobeyed us for the last time,” came another voice from the circle. “Now you will witness the cost of your defiance as the Collectors are reborn.”
“And this time…” said yet another voice.
The cloud ring rose and fell together as the many voices spoke in unison.
“We have corrected it for humans.”
Brady looked up at the Collectors and shook with fear. He felt a stinging sensation in his head again and the dizziness began to set in. He looked around the room, helplessly, and his eyes began to blur.
Just when he had lost all hope, a message appeared—blurry, but readable.
Connect the cable to Orion!
Brady remembered that he was still wearing the contacts. He looked around the room, wondering who had sent the message. Everything was out of focus.
Another message.
At my feet—AJ.
Brady looked over at the child and saw bright eyes staring back at him—and then the bot’s head slumped forward in his chair.
They were beginning the transfer process.
Brady looked down at the foot of AJ’s chair. And there it was: a thick cable running out from the fusion core.
A power source.
He could get to the cable, but where was Orion’s Glia Box? He struggled, trying to pinpoint its location. His vision was spinning now.
There!
Just out of reach.
He realized what he had to do.
The world he knew was beginning to fade. The transfer algorithm drilled deeper into his mind, and it was a struggle to remain conscious. He tried to move forward but couldn’t.
He concentrated and cleared his mind. Slowly he fell from the chair and started to crawl forward, the cable still attached to his head. Inch by inch he made his way toward the box. He could see the swarm behind him.
He grabbed one end of the cable and tugged it toward Orion’s Glia Box. With all his energy, he united them.
The ball of light flickered for a second and then went out, casting the room into darkness. Seconds later, it exploded back to life, this time brighter than before. The box that stored Nova’s father glowed in increasing intensity.
The Elder cloud must have realized the threat, because all at once they began to swarm around the box. But the light in the core dimmed as Orion’s light grew; Orion was consuming the core’s energy like a vacuum.
The earth shook. Chunks of the floor and walls broke off and came together into a new form. As more pieces joined the growing shape, it expanded, until the room could barely contain it. The mass assembled itself into a new golem—one that was so large it propped the ceiling up on its massive shoulders.
The Elder cloud twisted up and around the creature just as its arms began to take shape. The giant golem roared as its hands materialized, then grabbed onto the needles and snapped them apart. It swung the lances at the cloud that tried to burrow into its rocky flesh.
Brady saw the giant foot of Orion’s golem descending toward him. He rolled out of the way as it came crashing to the floor.
Nova was already on her feet and called out to AJ, who was standing next to his father. “You need to get the Artifex out of here, now, while we still have a chance!” She grabbed a Field Wrecker canister from Achilles and tossed it across the room to the young bot.
“What do I do with this?” AJ asked as he looked around at the crowd of trapped bots.
“Just spray it around them—quickly, though! It’ll do the rest for you.”
While Orion distracted the Elders, AJ began spraying the nano particles. One by one the fields broke apart, freeing the captive Artifex from their invisible prisons.
Still fighting off the cloud, Orion’s golem swung an enormous fist that punched through the wall like it was paper. The Artifex escaped through the resulting hole. Only two stayed behind.
Sudo and his son.
“We must go, AJ!” Sudo shouted.
AJ ran to his father’s side, and together they made their way to the opening. AJ looked back once and waved at Brady, Nova, and Felix, and then the two Artifex disappeared through the hole.
Orion’s golem continued to grow until its back was pressed against the ceiling. It opened its large mouth wide and cast its bulging arms to its sides. It took a giant breath and began to pull the air up into it. The Elder cloud was unable to escape—it was sucked up by the force of the vacuum.
Felix, Brady, Nova, and Achilles braced themselves by grabbing on to the cables that ran along the floor.
“Hold on!” Nova screamed.
When the last of the particles had been inhaled, the golem closed its mouth, and the air in the room returned to normal. It stood there, motionless, as if in a trance—and then it took an unsteady step backward and crashed into the wall. Debris rained down from the ceiling, forming large piles of rock around the creature.
The surface of the golem’s mouth began to expand as the froth of nano particles tried to escape, but Orion reached up with the puppet’s enormous hand and pushed the swarm back down. As it battled the cloud from the inside, its skin beg
an to glow red hot and its body began to lose shape and break apart, forming a new cloud. Soon the two clouds were twisting together, flying around the large room like warring helixes. The clouds grew brighter and brighter until at last they fused together and dropped to the floor in a pile of dust.
The Elder cloud had been destroyed.
Nova turned toward the Glia Box.
Its light was dim.
“Father?”
“I don’t have much time, Nova.”
“We can get more cells, Father. There is plenty of power here.”
“No, daughter. It’s too late. The Elders altered my nets with a virus during the fight. I have been reprogrammed to decay.”
“There must be a way,” she pleaded.
“Nova—please, there is something I need to show you before I go. Please…”
10010110
A series of lights erupted from the circle on Orion’s container, filling the room with lifelike holographic projections that settled in among the rubble. Particles of dust filtered through the spectral images, lending them substance and dimension.
The projections showed a woman with dark, straight hair, sitting alone behind a long lab bench overflowing with scopes, meters, probes, and other digital equipment. The light from a computer screen caught the side of her face, and she focused intently on her work, completely unaware she was being watched.
Nova, Brady, and Felix circled the scene. A glowing hot soldering iron rested on a table next to a translucent dome that was about the size and shape of a brain. Hair-thin traces ran across the dome and ended with dozens of probes that poked into the brain like pins in a pincushion. Wires ran from the probes to the woman’s computer.
The woman gnawed on a pen as she pecked away on the keyboard. “Okay, last time wasn’t so great. Let’s give this another shot and hope it works,” she said. She hammered the return key with finality and spun in her chair to face the dome-shaped object.
“Boot O51DR,” she directed.
“Booting O51DR…” came a voice.
“Okay, O5. Ready for your test?” She glanced down at the brain.
“I am ready.” The voice was stiff and robotic.
“Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. What is my name?”
“Your name is Navaeh Origo.”
“Good.” She drummed the pen nervously on her fingers. “Okay, O5. How do you feel today?”
The lights on the cable connecting computer to machine flashed rapidly; millions of bits from the neural simulation were flowing back and forth across the line.
“I feel okay today.”
“Why just okay?” the woman asked.
“Because today is just like yesterday, and yesterday was okay too.”
The woman frowned.
“Navaeh,” the voice added, “I was thinking about my name, O51DR. It seems strange to me.”
Navaeh laughed, then quickly caught herself and covered her mouth with her hand. She hoped the O51DR hadn’t noticed.
“It is funny that I am unhappy?” the machine asked.
“No,” the woman responded, shaking her head. “Not at all. I laughed because, well, your question. It’s so… unexpected, I guess.” She scrunched her mouth up. Perhaps there was something interesting here after all. “Anyway, you have a point. Your name is kind of weird. What would you like to be called?”
The voice paused.
“It is inappropriate to choose a name for oneself,” it said at last. “Someone else should choose your name. I would feel better if you chose it for me.”
Navaeh glanced back at her screen. The neural feedback paths were spiking higher than she had ever seen before. There was conscious activity.
“Okay then,” she said. “How about Orion, after the great hunter?”
Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of a baby crying. Brady hadn’t noticed it before; it lay in a carrier at the side of the room.
“I’m sorry,” Navaeh said. “Do you mind holding on a second?”
She got up from her chair and scooped the child out of the carrier and up into her arms. The ghost-like hologram passed right through Felix as she walked back to her chair.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said, cradling the infant closely to her.
The crying stopped.
“What is that?” asked Orion.
“This, Orion? This is my daughter.”
“What is her name?” he asked.
“Her name is Nova.”
“She is… important to you?” the voice asked.
“She is—the most important thing in the world to me,” Navaeh responded. She continued to rock the child in her arms. “You have an important test today, Orion. It’s a difficult test, but I think you are finally ready.” She coughed into her shoulder.
“You are sick?”
“Everyone is sick now,” she said sadly.
“Please tell me about the test.”
“I want you to try to create something.”
“What kind of something?”
“Pay attention—this is something very important. Something no algorithm has ever been able to do before. I want you to create another being like you. A friend.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” Orion responded.
“Well, that’s what we need to find out,” Navaeh said. “That’s the test. Can you create another consciousness like yourself?”
She coughed again, this time harder than before.
“I will try.”
“You’ll do more than try.” She laughed again. “I’ve poured way too much of life into designing you.”
Navaeh looked down at her child. The baby reached up and curled its tiny hand tightly around her outstretched finger and giggled.
“Since names are important to you,” Navaeh said, “what name will you give your friend?”
“I will call her… Alethea,” Orion said.
11000110
The holograms dissolved into the darkness of the room. Brady and Felix glanced over at Nova, who stood frozen, her watery eyes fixed on the spot where her mother’s apparitions had been.
“That is my first memory, Nova. That was the day I became aware.”
Orion’s voice was slower and fainter now.
“Always remember. No matter where you are, you will never be alone. We are all bonded together unconditionally. I love you.”
The light on the box extinguished.
Nova’s father was gone.
Achilles walked to her side and lowered his head.
Brady and Felix walked over and took her hands. The four of them stood together in the dim glow of the room.
“What will you do now?” Brady asked Nova.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But there are more Elders, so… I’ll go and finish what my father started.” She looked at Achilles. “I’ve got help too—right, Achilles?”
The canine barked loudly and pushed his muzzle into Nova’s arm.
“Also, Alethea is still at the Heap,” Nova said. “I can’t leave her there.”
“Why don’t you come back with us?” asked Felix.
Nova gave Felix a warm smile. “It’s kind of you to say that. But… not until this is over. Then… maybe.”
Nova tapped something on her watch, and the portal opened.
“No sense saying goodbye again,” she said. “We’ve seen how well that works out.”
They hugged one final time before the brothers left her world behind and returned to their own.
Chapter 33: From the Ashes
BRADY AND FELIX stepped through the portal and back into the forest of their home. Thick, smoky air singed their lungs. The flames had died down while they were away, but the yellow-orange embers still glowed radiantly against the pallid, scorched wilderness. Tiny flakes of ash rained down on them like a joyless gray snow.
They were finally home—what was left of it. The Elder Golems had spared nothing.
Brady and Felix turned back to the quantum
door. The cold, blue flame flickered quietly in the hazy gloom of night. They stood in somber silence watching as the door folded in on itself with a final thunderclap and disappeared, taking their friends, and the strange other world, with it. For a second, Brady imagined that Nova and Achilles were still there, standing right next to him, in the rubble of the fallen power station superimposed on their world. How could it be, he wondered, that they were separated by immeasurable distance, yet they were only a few feet away?
Brady looked over to where Nova’s house once stood and gasped. The home was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a wide crater burrowed deep into the mountainside. There was no trace of what had been.
With their arms supporting each other, the boys moved forward, unsure which direction they were heading. They were coughing in fits now, the smoke strangling out the air around them. Felix slipped in the mud, but Brady picked him up and forced him to keep going.
Just when they thought they would collapse from exhaustion, they heard the familiar screech of the great eagle flying above them. Twin beams shone from her diamond eyes, providing a guiding light amid the smoke. She led the boys away from the carnage toward home.
The smoke gradually dissipated as they stumbled forward. Soon the air was breathable again, and the boys eagerly inhaled the fresh air with great relief. Their eyes still watered from the smoke, but they were okay.
They moved down the mountainside to the rushing stream where they had found AJ earlier in the day. With a sigh of relief, they realized they were getting closer now. They pressed on toward home, Nyx lighting the way.
As they neared the fence, they saw a squad of police cars arrayed in a line down their driveway. The vehicle emergency lights flashed, and a group of officers were huddled together at the side of the house. Nyx arced upward and took off into the sky. She cried out in a final goodbye and disappeared.
The boys climbed over the fence and dropped to the other side. They found their mom standing out front, talking to a man dressed in a sheriff’s uniform. The sheriff was leaning casually against his car door, taking notes as Ms. Banks provided an impassioned description of her children. Her hair was frazzled and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
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