by Scott Cramer
He was on his own. Armed with a joule and a potent supply of explosives, he stumbled out of the blimp and vanished into the garden.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 04
Raissa’s eyes shot open. She was lying on her back, surrounded by vines and lush greenery littered with pieces of silver fabric. Above her, a lattice of red and yellow flowers framed a window of blue sky.
Three paladins wearing blue uniforms moved into her view: one woman and two men. Their faces hovered over her as they spoke to one another in quiet voices. Her heart was pounding so hard it drowned out much of what they were saying, but she picked up snippets:
“Blood pressure.”
“Scar.”
“Eighteen years old.”
“Eve.”
Her blood chilled.
Raissa’s eyes darted to the silver pouch that one man held; Caleb had told her what the bags were used for. The man must have read her expression of fear. “Don’t worry, Eve. We’re interested in Christian Petrov’s brain.”
Who is Christian Petrov? In any case, she had no reason to believe these paladins.
The paladins backed away and formed a huddle, likely discussing what they would do with her. Recent events crystallized in Raissa’s mind, first in fragments and then in larger chunks of understanding, the way a jigsaw puzzle takes form in stages. She and Ashminov had crash-landed inside the Citadel, but where was Ashminov? She shifted her eyes left and right. Has he escaped?
Sliding her hand behind her back, she discovered that her joule was missing. The paladins must have disarmed her. She reached for the detonator button. The paladins must have removed that, too. Or has Ashminov taken them and continued without me?
He was a never-ending source of surprises, but perhaps not this time. The force of the crash had likely killed him. She was on her own.
Her captors had joules, which she could try to secure, but she concluded that grabbing the Glock would be quicker. The satchel holding the gun should be in the cockpit. Before making her move, she tensed different muscles groups the length of her body to determine if she felt pain. Good! No bones were broken.
A nasal voice crackled over the paladin's radio. “Any injuries?”
A male paladin replied, “Facial and scalp lacerations, Dr. Petrov.”
“Did Christian survive?” Petrov asked.
“We haven’t found him, Sir.”
“Keep searching,” Petrov ordered. “And conduct a field implant on Eve.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
The paladin lowered the radio and addressed the other two. “Captain, do the field implant, and Sergeant, widen your search perimeter.”
“Yes, Commander,” the female sergeant replied.
The captain produced a chip injector and approached Raissa.
“Hurts,” Raissa whispered.
“What hurts?” he asked.
Raissa mumbled and grimaced.
The captain leaned in closer. “Tell me what hurts.”
Raissa grabbed his face with her left hand, then leaped up and delivered an elbow to his right temple. The captain, clutching the injector in his hand, toppled to the ground with a thud.
She threw a roundhouse punch at the commander who was charging her from the left. Her knuckles connected above the bridge of his nose, unleashing torrents of blood through his nostrils. As the commander stumbled back, Raissa lunged for the weapon satchel inside the cockpit.
Her fingertips grazed it just as a searing, electric pain coursed through her back. Her neck arched, her muscles bulged, and she fell stiffly to the ground, paralyzed. The sergeant lowered her joule.
Dazed, Raissa watched as the commander, pinching his nose to stem the flow of blood, rose to his feet with a menacing expression. He took the chip injector from the captain and pressed it roughly against Raissa's forehead. Then, grinning down at her spitefully, he stepped back and brought the radio to his lips. “Dr. Petrov, I have an update.”
“Go on,” Petrov replied.
“Eve has the Eden Chip.”
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 05
With a sharp pain in his right leg, Ashminov limped through the hanging vines and broadleaf plants. How long have I been on the move? Caleb’s messenger reported it was 12:48 p.m., and he thought he had left Raissa at 12:12. Fever clouded his mind, and he couldn’t do the math.
Mere minutes from the crash site, a thin black ring had formed around the laser wound above his knee, and he had felt his temperature rising. He had wondered how an infection could develop so quickly.
Using the messenger's compass, he headed west because, before they had crashed, Raissa had said they were east of the building with the satellite dish. The garden was surprisingly dark. With only occasional shafts of sunlight piercing the canopy, the low light and thick vegetation limited his view to three or four meters in any direction.
The loud, incessant chirping of frogs, crickets, and buzzing insects tested his love of nature. He stopped to ball up orchid petals and stuff them into his ears.
At 1:10 p.m., he stopped again to check his wound. The circle of decaying flesh was now the width of his finger. Without synthetic antibiotics to fight the aggressive bacteria, the infection would leap from one internal organ to the next like a fast-spreading wildfire, and Petrov would find him decomposing atop the deep layer of humus that made up the garden floor.
Shivering and consumed by a powerful thirst, Ashminov resumed his slog to the west. Sometime later, his eyes lit up at the sight of tiny pools of water which had collected inside flowers shaped like flute glasses. He snapped the stems and drank every drop.
But he gagged on the smell of his wound. Since he had last checked, the black ring had doubled in size, and a thin red line had traveled halfway up his thigh. With a nauseating odor wafting around him, he forged onward until he came to a nest of ants. The mound of red earth rose to his chest, with waves of giant black ants cascading down the sides like lava from a volcano.
He recalled watching a docudrama in which ancient Mayans used Dorylus army ants to clean up an infected wound. What type of ants are these? Figuring he had nothing to lose, he took off his shoes and stripped to his underwear. He walked up to the mound and plunged his hand through the small opening at the top, the soft dirt giving way around his forearm.
The ants swarmed around the intrusion. Their reception—hundreds of painful bites on his hand—was a good omen. The species was carnivorous. He closed his fist, withdrew it, and crammed ants into the top side of his leg wound. They clustered over the injury, attacked the injured flesh by pinching, shearing, and biting. He collected more ants and stuffed the second fistful into the opening on the underside of his leg.
Ashminov sat against a tree wincing as the ants, not discriminating between healthy and rotting flesh, munched away. A trail of ants marched over in single file from the nest to join the feast, crawling up his leg to the open wound.
After a few minutes, seeing the black bulls-eye around his injury had thinned, and the red line running up his thigh had retreated, Ashminov got to his feet, brushed off the ants, and inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with oxygen and confidence.
His thoughts turned to Raissa. What will Petrov do with her? It wouldn’t surprise him if Petrov had her and Caleb—his Adam and Eve—under one roof. For sure, neither of them could help Ashminov. To save the human race from the lethal flood of ricinware, he was Noah without an ark.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 06
To hasten her recovery from the electron slug, Raissa wiggled her fingers and toes. She tightened and relaxed her stomach muscles. Petrov had ordered the paladins to bring her in, and they were packing up their gear. With an Eden Chip in her brain, she wondered if Petrov could read her mind. Does he know I'm planning to escape?
Petrov's voice crackled over the radio. “Commander, put Eve in polycuffs.”
That answered her question. From this point on, she would have to turn off her mind and become one with her body. Is that possible? The alternative was to
advertise every intention to Petrov.
“Cuff her,” the commander said to the sergeant.
The sergeant chuckled. “What’s the point? She can’t even stand.”
The commander held out the radio. “Sergeant, be my guest. Tell Dr. Petrov that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
The sergeant quickly produced a pair of cuffs and walked over to Raissa. “Good luck getting out of these.” Rolling Raissa onto her side, she pulled her arms behind her back and applied the polys to her wrists.
The captain winced when he touched the bruise on his temple, which had come courtesy of a flying elbow. “Should we walk Eve out?” the captain asked.
The commander shook his head. “No, we wait here. I don’t want to be the one to tell Dr. Petrov that we lost her.” He spoke into the radio. “Request a transport blimp. I’ll confirm the coordinates.”
“Roger,” came the response.
The transport blimp appeared several minutes later and hovered above the treetops as a stretcher lowered on wires. The sergeant drove the toe of her boot into Raissa’s ribs and asked gruffly, “Can you can stand?”
Raissa stared up with wide, rolling eyes.
“Some help, please,” the sergeant said.
The three paladins grabbed Raissa by the arms and hefted her to her feet. She was limp as a rag doll, and she let her head loll to one side. “Get her to the stretcher,” the commander said.
The stretcher dangled in the air ahead of them, and all three paladins watched it swing down towards them.
In one swift motion, Raissa snapped her head to the side, clipping the sergeant on the side of her face. Stunned, she released her grip and wobbled back a step. Raissa then buried her left foot into the commander’s groin. He grunted and collapsed on his face. As the captain raised his joule, Raissa lunged at him and cracked the man’s nose with her head.
She backed into the cockpit, grasping for her bag with shackled hands. Reaching inside it, she passed up the laser dagger in favor of the Glock. The commander, on his feet now, drew his joule.
Gripping the pistol butt in both hands, Raissa somersaulted forward and sprang up to her feet. Then she folded at the waist and looked between her outspread legs at the upside-down paladins. She aimed at the commander. “Drop your weapon.”
When he hesitated, she swung the barrel a centimeter to the right and pulled the trigger. BANG! The bullet struck the stretcher, and it flew back like a pendulum. The commander dropped his joule.
With her ears ringing from the loud report, Raissa trained her weapon between the sergeant and captain and fired. The gun roared, and the bullet burrowed into a tree trunk with a loud THUNK. The others also dropped their weapons. “Release me,” Raissa demanded.
“Sorry, we can’t do that,” the commander replied with a smirk.
Her next bullet removed the commander’s right earlobe before he finished his sentence. He clutched the side of his head.
“Sergeant,” Raissa warned. “Get your organ transplant pouch ready because your commander is about to lose his head.”
The commander flung up his hands. “The polys have fingerprint verification. I’ll release you.”
When Raissa permitted him to advance, he came over and touched the clasp with his finger. Freed, she collected their joules and ordered the paladins to lie on top of each other on the stretcher. “Start the transport.”
The commander spoke into his radio, and the stretcher lifted.
When they were halfway to the blimp, she turned to leave, only to hear a slug buzz by her head. Raissa wheeled around. The commander held a joule. She first aimed for his heart, but then focused on his joule. BOOM. The bullet ripped the joule from his hand, and he cried out in shock.
Petrov peeled with laughter. “Eve, I’ve always admired your moral compass. You’ll kill only as a last resort.”
“My name is Raissa.” She hefted the satchel onto her shoulder and charged into the brush.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 07
Ashminov found a rhythm. Each foot sank up to the ankle in the spongy soil; he pulled it loose and let it fall in front of him. He repeated this plodding procedure as he followed the arrow on the messenger compass.
His fever had dropped briefly but had now returned, along with the red streak creeping up his thigh. Shivering and alternating between hot flashes and chills, he had no time to turn back, so he kept his eye out for another anthill.
He cursed when he noticed his right hand was empty. Somewhere along the way, he must have dropped the joule. Fortunately, he still had the explosives belt. Unfortunately, if he were to use it to take out Petrov, it would mean taking himself out as well. There has to be a better way.
About fifteen minutes later, after making some of his best progress so far, he came across a fresh trail, disturbingly familiar. The pile of broken stems and fluted flowers informed him he had been here before. He fell to his knees. I've been walking in a circle. Petrov must have manipulated the compass on the messenger, perhaps even the clock.
He tossed the messenger aside and crawled up the anthill, bracing himself to let the ants have another go at his wound.
After calling the insect picnic quits, he got to his feet and headed west again. From this moment forward, he would use the sun as his navigational tool. He didn’t think Petrov could control its trajectory. Not yet, anyway.
Soon, violent chills wracked his body, and sweat poured off him. He was getting weaker, and his fever was rising. Round two with the ants had not achieved the same results as had the first. Blackened skin extended 20 centimeters both above and below the wound, and the red line was nearing his groin.
He tried tricking his mind into believing that his worsening fever was fuel for his muscles; the chirping frogs and buzzing insects were the hum of an internal motor moving him closer to his goal.
Several minutes later, a sight made the pain in his leg tolerable. Buildings appeared through the foliage. Hoping that he wasn’t hallucinating, he came to the edge of the clearing and peered out. The buildings looked real, but so did hallucinations.
The area matched the mental picture Raissa had painted during their flight, except for the giant mound of earth she had described. What Raissa had called a mound was, in fact, a building covered with vegetation. A satellite dish sat on the roof.
After looking left and right, Ashminov started for the building. Waving a hand in front of his face to clear away spider silk thick as yarn, he came to double doors. Embossed on the glass was the Collective's seal: hands interlocked around a human brain implanted with a chip.
With a combination of dread and curiosity, he realized he had arrived at Collective Headquarters. The twelve members of the Collective met here to plot the course of society. Over the years, he’d seen this building—absent vines swallowing it whole—featured on enlightenment walls.
He surged with energy, thinking there must be medical supplies inside—at the very least, a first aid kit.
He passed through the doors, and when they closed behind him, it was as if a guillotine had dropped on the garden's noises. He plunged into silence as thick as cold oil.
A shaft of light through a window allowed him to make out large objects in a lobby. Shuffling around the perimeter of the area, he came to another set of double doors, with flickers of light leaking through at the base. He pulled one open and walked into the room.
Hope bled from him like helium from a punctured blimp. The spinning globe was projected on a large monitor; narrow caps of yellow covered the North and South Poles. The E.L.F. towers, after blanketing the earth with devourware, were now pumping out ricinware. A digital readout reported that close to one million people had died.
Sickened, Ashminov stumbled to a nearby conference table to brace himself, but a new shock replaced his nausea with fear. The twelve chairs around the circular table all held corpses sitting upright. The placard on the left had the name “Vice Chancellor Vasiliev.” The placard to his right said “President Murtows
ky.” A grim realization hit him. The members of the Collective were all dead, and judging by their state of decomposition—eye sockets and knuckles picked clean by bacteria—they had died years ago.
He had to hand it to Petrov. Every enlightenment wall was fiction. While the members of the Collective were rotting away here, their computer-generated doppelgangers were traveling to different parts of the world, promoting the benefits of nanochips.
Ashminov pushed away from the table to resume his search for a first aid kit and the transmission server. Time was running out for him and the human race. When the ricinware reached the major population centers, the victim count would spike significantly.
The large cables running along the ceiling caught his eye. Do they lead to the server?
“Christian, your pupils dilated.” Petrov’s voice came from speakers in the ceiling. “Pray tell me, what has piqued your curiosity?”
Petrov was watching him. He wasn’t surprised. This facility likely had thousands of cameras and microphones.
Ashminov gestured to the skeletons. “Did they live long enough to see Version 1 of the chip?”
Petrov laughed. “We both know that politicians are useless. The technologist always has the upper hand.”
On that point, they agreed.
Suddenly, Ashminov doubled over from a sharp pain in his groin. He pulled back the elastic waistband of his underwear and peered down. The red line running up his leg had penetrated his groin.
“Do you believe you can stop the flood?” Petrov asked.
“What’s your data tell you?”
“I don’t need data to know what you’ll do next.”
“Familiarity cuts both ways, Nicholas.”
In a race against his spreading infection and under the watchful eye of the madman, Ashminov followed the cables to a new door and opened it. Bathed in soft light, the room was the shape of a cube, and an unmistakable object sat on a pedestal two meters away. Paying little attention to the cables extending across the ceiling, he laughed sourly to himself. You do know me well!
