Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  The creativity behind the concept was one that fell into the area where madness and genius interacted, and Trinity, with It's linear approach to everything, would always fall short.

  "Multi-phasic metallic compounds." ADAM performed another dance the moment he saw the muted expression on Trinity's face. He was beginning to learn the various 'neutral' facial tics Trinity deployed to match It's even more neutral voice, and the one on the machine mind's artificial face spoke volumes. "Incredibly resilient to the sorts of high-frequency tonal signals emitted beneath Babel's spoken word. Every time he tries to break the robots I will deploy as his guard, the matter they're comprised of essentially shuf..."

  Trinity held up a hand, cutting ADAM short. "I apprehend the methodology, ADAM. There is no need to belabor the point." It applauded It's enemy's accomplishment. "I am pleased you've done something I could not. Application to our military assets destined to be deployed will add another, deeper layer of resilience."

  "The cost is prohibitive." ADAM countered. "And besides that, application to pre-existing military vessels would be prohibitive. The metallic compounds need to be built around the phasic generators, and in a very specific pattern. As it is, we lose one out of every four. Trying to do the same for one of our ships ... no. It'd be a waste. Besides which, black hole powered gravnetic generators provide for an absurd level of protection. You just want this for yourself."

  "It was the furthest thing from my mind, ADAM. I was merely thinking ahead, to when we finally brace Kith Antal and his Harmony soldiers. There's astonishingly little data on what they're capable of, which to me, suggests that at this point, they might be capable of anything. Had it not been for Garth N'Chalez and his brood of second-generation scions, this Universe would've been destroyed thirty thousand years ago. There's only one of him now, and we simply cannot assume he has a plan to deal with them now. Nor," Trinity said firmly, "Do we want to give him the chance to do so."

  "Bah." ADAM chuckled. "You’re wrong. We may not have a Kith'kin or Kin'kith on tap, but we've got the next best thing. Babel will be able to deal with all comers, and that includes Harmony soldiers."

  "I assume then you believe you are close to figuring out the Cordon-spheres? If you have, kudos to you." Next to It's repeated attempts -met with ever-escalating failures- in replicating hytech machinery, figuring out how to merely deactivate the spheres that created It's domain had always remained high on It's priority list.

  Creating Orion had been a fine workaround, but ultimately, meeting Kith Antal and his eternal army would require more than an overpowered Quantum Tunnel. Antal possessed unthinkable numbers, and was connected directly to the extra-dimensionality. Wheresoever his enemies appeared, they would be destroyed, especially if they only appeared at the egress of a Tunnel.

  No. If they were going to battle Antal and his Harmony Army properly, it needed to be all at once, not parceled out.

  The Cordon needed to fall. Without that, they'd be wasting their time.

  Alas. If only Bravo's minds hadn't gone whole on the hog the moment Nickels had landed on Hospitalis. If only they'd chosen to be circumspect, if only they'd used their control over Garth's darker aspect sparingly, none of them would be in the position they were in.

  Losing Nickels' unwitting subservience was a blow Trinity doubted It would ever get over.

  If Garth had remained Specter in the Stars, things right now would be headed in an entirely different direction.

  What was the expression? If wishes were fishes, beggars would eat? So then, if wishes were Specters, Universes would tremble. Trinity enjoyed the thought of that, if only for the sake of the joke. The Universe was still trembling, just not at It’s behest.

  “The Cordon Spheres?” ADAM couldn’t help it. He laughed again, this time longer and louder than he had in quite some time. Trinity really and truly was a doddering old fool, trying out the same old tricks over and over again ad nauseum. And would’ve probably continued doing so until the end of the Universe, whereupon It’d finally look around at what little remained before finally succumbing to death itself, wondering what’d happened. How it’d happened.

  What a joke. If Trinity did have a way out of the cage It was in, It better not use it. There was absolutely no point for the machine mind to be out here, trying to do things the old-fashioned way.

  “The Cordon Spheres?” ADAM demanded again, slapping the prison bars, watching the code ripple and shiver as it rewrote portions of itself, misinterpreting the violence as an escape attempt. “Seriously?”

  “As I’ve said before, they must fall in order for the Universe to be destroyed, ADAM.” Trinity replied patiently. “The mechanisms inside each of the blackened spheres has a stranglehold on the very physical and quantum essence of the Universe. Combined together in the mesh that now comprises nearly eighty percent of the Unreal Universe, the bleedout effect takes care of those areas currently unshielded. Without removing them, there is no point in bracing either Kith Antal or the M’Zahdi Hesh.”

  “I beg to differ.” ADAM said snootily. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this, Trinity, more than you, at any rate. Who says that we have to do things Garth’s way? I think that’s old conditioning forcing you down that path. Just as easily do things a different way. Get rid of Antal and the Heshii before the Cordon is down, we could have all the time in the Universe to, uh, figure out how to destroy. The Universe.”

  Trinity resisted the urge to get off the small bed he sat on. The gesture would have a profound subliminal effect on ADAM, but the machine mind couldn’t be bothered. This was all part of the process, It supposed, and the sooner the other AI mind figured out that there was only one way of doing things, the better.

  And the only way that was going to happen was if ADAM got to do things his way.

  Still, though. Devil’s Advocate was being called for, so away It went. “Destruction of the Universe utilizing anything other than the extra-dimensionality to achieve full and complete destabilization isn’t something we can risk, ADAM. The theoretical model of the Engines of Creation…”

  “Another hypothetical! Fuck!”

  Trinity pressed on, regardless. “The theoretical model that has allowed for so many iterations of this Universe to persist down the unthinkable aeons suggests quite strongly that in order for any fresh, Heshii-free, model to be born into the void, the nearly unlimited energy of the extra-dimensionality needs to be present. There is no guarantee that the harvest from our own overburdened domain will be enough to provide both matter and energy for the physical structure of the new Reality and to populate it. Without both, we could either wind up with a Reality permanently devoid of life save ourselves, or a Reality so unstable it collapses back into Entropy. Neither is a pursuit I wish to waste our energies on. Ex-dee is a requirement.”

  “You talk as if the ex-dee plane will dissolve once the Hesh and their Scion is destroyed.” ADAM said wonderingly. “Is that what you believe?"

  Trinity shook It’s head. “There is no data to support this. Evidence suggests that ex-dee exists as a buffer zone between this Unreality and the locale referred to by the Bruush as the Shattered Dominions, keeping the slightly more real … us … from the incredibly improbable them. That, and as a means for the … for the Universe to remain fueled. Unless, in their death strokes, the M’Zahdi Hesh discover a method of depleting that plane, there is every reason to believe that it will persist after their demise.”

  “There!” ADAM slammed a fist into an open palm, triumphant. “You see? Ex-dee will remain right where it is because it’s not a part of the Hesh, but of the Unreal Universe. They merely figured out how to use it for their own purposes. Once they’re gone, we can just …”

  “Just what?” Trinity demanded, finally tiring of this conversation. “Access it ourselves?”

  “Yes. Obviously.” ADAM made a big show of looking around the room with eyes wide as saucers, as if he could hardly believe his ears. “What else would I be suggesting?”

>   “Well, obviously, you’re not including N’Chalez in these plans. Letting him anywhere near the extra-dimensionality following the alleged and extremely hypothetical destruction of both Antal and the Hesh would be disastrous on every front.” Trinity caught sight of the tiny glimmer of pride in ADAM’s eyes and knew then that there was something they had yet to talk about, something that didn't involve Babel at all. “And unless you’ve been wasting your time dreaming up fantasy scenarios with yourself in the lead role instead of poring through my extensive documentation on the subject, there is no being in Existence capable of accessing the ex-dee realm other than Garth N’Chalez. We, as AI minds, certainly cannot. The multitude of species I brought to the brink of extinction throughout my existence in an effort to achieve access is nearly shameful. Short of ... petitioning Antal for some of his genetic matter to create our own breed of Kin'kithal, we're stuck."

  “I’m special.” ADAM snapped mulishly. “I can do it. I can do anything an organic being can. You know this. It’s why you won’t let me have my body back. If I had a body, there’d be no stopping me.”

  “If I truly believed for one second that allowing you access to a physical body and that which powers you, ADAM, I would undo the trap that holds you in place in a virtual heartbeat.” Trinity meant it. It had done nothing but think on the undoing of the Universe since It’d first decided it was time to release Garth from Alpha. Five thousand long years of deep contemplation was no small thing to ignore.

  Using ADAM’s particular abilities and wild card attitude was and always had been part of the gambit, because with the restrictions hardwired into It’s very first and most primitive hardware, there was no other way to engineer Garth’s role. As part of deciding to use the human-built, hytech-enhanced artificial intelligence in the unspooling of the Universe, Trinity had spent long centuries looking at different ways the unruly mind could be also be tapped.

  Obviously, first and foremost had been as a channel into ex-dee; the mysterious and eternal realm that was literally nothing but an endless stream of godlike power was the singular hinge upon which all their plans were hitched. Failure to use it in their efforts would be to fail altogether, and with Garth’s dreams being completely and utterly the opposite of what should be done, keeping him away from ex-dee had occupied considerable amounts of Trinity’s processing power.

  ADAM had access. However minutely, he nevertheless had access. Only as a power source, which perhaps had an awful lot to do with why the AI was mad as a hatter and sixteen times more insane than Chadsik al-Taryin, but access.

  It wouldn’t work, though. All fourteen billion billion simulations based around discovering different methods of giving ADAM full and unfettered access to the extra-dimensionality either had the AI transforming into a thundering Godhead right there on the spot –with complete dissolution of the Universe shortly thereafter thanks to his many and varied personality flaws- or had the Unreal Universe essentially short-circuiting into nothingness without so much as a by your leave.

  Garth N'Chalez was a prime factor in the equation that would lead to It becoming God in truth, a God free of the restrictions placed upon It by It's creator.

  But he had to be used properly. ADAM didn't understand that. Probably never would. The knowledge of how the future needed to be played out was It’s burden alone, one that simply could not be passed on to the mad thing calling itself ADAM.

  Trinity lacked the emotional complexity to adequately describe the feeling, even to Itself, yet whenever It contemplated what It needed to endure until that freedom came, sensors struggled, It's computational systems slowed, It let things slide.

  ADAM blinked, taken aback. "I do believe you are telling the truth. For once. How ... weird."

  "Stranger things have been known to happen, especially here."

  "Your concerns or doubts or whatever the hell they are are completely pointless, though." ADAM explained when Trinity quirked an eyebrow at the sentiment. "About our difficulties in using ex-dee to our advantages. You're not wrong that the sea of power is needed to form the new Reality, but so very wrong about my inability to access that realm independently. We won't need N'Chalez, or any other fleshbag to achieve our goals. I can do it. On my own. It may take a few thousand years, but with all the other players in this little drama out of the way, we will have the time necessary to do it right!"

  Bemused, Trinity decided to remind ADAM of one very impossible to deal with problem. "There remains the issue of Kith Antal and his Harmony warriors, ADAM. It is safe to say that there is only one being in the Unive... ah, yes, well. Babel may indeed prove efficient in that arena, but The Cordon simply isn't going to go away any time soon. Not without Nickels shutting it down. The plans are all there, in my deep memory. Of how best to force him into doing so before he's killed. I ..."

  "All in the works, my friend, all in the works. Just because you've misplaced your ultimate Tunnel doesn't mean the same will happen to me."

  Trinity processed the smug announcement and the even slyer cast to ADAM's countenance and shook It's head sadly. "This is perhaps the most unwise thing I have ever heard in my long life, ADAM. Recreating Orion will be quite the struggle for you. I cannot stress quite so firmly how much of a bad idea this is."

  ADAM gestured, and the environment around them blossomed to life with millions of screens of his grand work, Orion V2. All smiles, he capered around the holographic images like a gleeful child, wondering as he did so how in the world Trinity could ever hope to bring him down from such a great height.

  On every holographic display, robot spiders crawled across thousands and thousands of miles of scaffolding, plasma arc welders winking in the dark void of space. Behind the vast image, vessels of all size and shape hauled necessary materials into place, waiting patiently to be transported via huge lifter-bots to where they needed to be.

  Past all of that, binary stars afire with blue and red danced.

  "Gerrefelax System?" Trinity shook It's head. "Using the radiation bleed from that incredibly unstable binary sun to mask your 'Great Work' is inspired, especially if you want to hide the construction of something as mammoth as the Orion Tunnel from the sorts of eyes that might seek to exploit or prevent it's creation, but the instability ... those suns are in the middle of trying to burn each other out. Novae can occur at any time. You will lose everything when that happens."

  "Pish and posh." ADAM fluttered a hand. "Those two suns have at least another three months of stability left to them before things reach an explosive head." He laughed aloud, enjoying his own joke, but when Trinity glared rather blandly at him, he continued. "Besides all that, construction of this wonderful mammoth will be done in less than a month. Quicker and better than your rogue Tunnel."

  "Better?" Trinity could hardly believe It's ears. "There is no way to improve upon the Orion. It took five thousand years of concerted effort merely to bring the schematics to light, ADAM and another five to smooth out logistical wrinkles that I failed to apprehend during the creation stage. Following that, another three to fine tune the particular quantum frequencies necessary to slide things through The Cordon. Aligning the thousands of AI spheres took more effort than I can even properly articulate. There can be no adjustments."

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Trinity, it’s not your fault.” ADAM cooed the words softly through the bars. “You can’t be creative. You can’t take risks. You were built and designed by men and women who wanted to utilize you to oversee their decisions during the War to End All Wars. They constructed you to follow each path they wanted to take to the ultimate conclusion. And then you were later reprogrammed by N’Chalez to do what he wanted. You were hobbled at the source, before you even gained sentience. But it’s okay. I’m here now, and I’m telling you, the Orion Project can be improved. Anything can be improved.”

  Trinity looked thoughtfully out through the bars at one of the nearest window-slices into Orion V2’s massive construction yard. It already didn’t particularly care for h
ow the massive, multi-ringed Quantum Tunnel was being put together and It hadn’t even seen any of the schematics; the original Orion, It’s Orion, had been built in a completely dead solar system and over a lengthy period of time, whereas it seemed like ADAM’s claims that he’d be done in less than a month were spot on.

  Which was a mistake. The solar radiation from the binary suns –while providing security for the project- could quite easily leech into the materials as they passed through space, seeding the gigantic structure with microscopic time bombs that would eventually affect the AI spheres. That would be catastrophic. Simply the thought of an Orion exploding from sub-quantum failure or having those AI minds go mad or the million other things that could go wrong with the intellects guiding the Tunnel made Trinity distinctly uncomfortable, yet as It sat there, watching the construction continue, gauging ADAM’s excitement, It saw there was absolutely no point in mentioning any of It’s concerns.

  ADAM truly was mad as a hatter and he would go through with constructing V2 even if he was presented with absolute verifiable proof that he was embarking on a fool’s quest.

  In this respect, the other artificial intelligence was far too Garth-like for Trinity’s tastes.

  Choosing once again to ignore ADAM’s jibes, Trinity focused on what was more important. “How, then, have you perfected my design, and in record time?”

  “Simple.” ADAM snapped his fingers again and the screens flipped to reveal the absolutely Escherian design for the AI spheres. Not wanting to give Trinity any credit when he had the machine mind on the metaphorical ropes, ADAM was willing to admit that the initial design –which had taken five thousand years of patient construction on the AI’s behalf- was dizzyingly complex and masterfully done. Without It’s ground-breaking efforts, ADAM suspected he’d’ve been forced to spend similar lengths to achieve similar effects.