by Scott Cramer
“Behold, Eve. They are free of disease and not in want of food. They are among the company of loved ones for all time. Paradise.”
She spun around, hoping she could put a bullet in Petrov’s brain, but she was alone.
She faced eight large cylinders suspended from the ceiling and filled will green liquid. The lab was silent except for the hypnotic hum of pumps releasing bubbles into the fluid. She turned back to the monitor. Her family members looked like zombies.
“Honestly Eve, I expected you might thank me.”
She waved the Glock. “I’ll show my thanks with this. Are they on the other side of that door?”
Petrov cackled, “If Farouk were a bear, he’d bite your nose off.”
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 15
Ashminov repeatedly pressed DELETE with his left index finger while using his right to tap out M-code syntax, determined to finish his hydraware program before Petrov’s surgical team showed up.
What are they planning to do to me? He could live without knowing the answer.
He had made little progress with his program, and while deleting files was saving lives, many more were dying.
He concentrated on the hydraware. Even though focusing on it meant millions of deaths, a program that would fight an endless duel on the battlefield of random access memory offered the only real solution.
Devoting all his mental energy to writing the program, he stopped after producing only twenty more lines of M-code. His fingers hovered over the keys, lost and confused. With the hot blade of his infection slicing through the strands of logic in his mind, he was unsure of what to press next. His mind was blank. Defeated, he resorted to using two fingers to strike DELETE.
A new option presented itself: the explosives belt. If he detonated it, he would take the server offline. Petrov would start up a new transmission server, but it would buy time.
Time for what? He’d be dead, and he didn’t think Raissa was in any position to continue the mission. Caleb certainly couldn’t. Ashminov glanced at the leading edges of the ricinware flood. The death toll was ratcheting ever higher. Is it best to just let the population expire? Petrov was too powerful, too insane.
He exposed the detonator button—his last resort—then resumed tapping DELETE with two hands.
“Big Brother, congratulations on guessing the password.” Petrov’s voice came from the mindport speakers in front of him.
Ashminov held his breath. Can he see the button? “Baby Brother, you’re too predictable.”
“Am I?”
“Why did you steal my M-code?” The question had nagged Ashminov for twenty years, and he was running out of time to get an answer.
“You still don’t know?”
“You were jealous that I was a better coder,” Ashminov offered.
Petrov’s laughter invaded his ears. “I was jealous, but not of your technical skills. I loved you, Christian. You were all I had. The Captain and Colonel were failures as parents. I worshipped you, but then you grew distant. I realized I had competition; you loved M-code more than you loved me.”
Ashminov recalled the thrill of writing M-code in the early days. He supposed he might have neglected his only sibling. “Couldn’t we have talked it over, Baby Brother?”
“Let's forget the past and look to our future together.” A new image appeared on the monitor. Tiny bubbles were streaming up through a pale green liquid that looked something like tryp. A blurry object came into view. Ashminov squinted to see it. A human brain came into focus.
“I changed my appearance years ago,” Petrov said.
“Future together” and “surgical team” took on new meaning, and Ashminov wondered if his brain would soon float next to his sibling’s. The words of Nicholas echoed in his mind: “Trust me, you’ll fare better than Father Baldini.” Ashminov would have preferred meeting his fate in a lion’s intestinal tract over what he believed Baby Brother was proposing.
What if I can hack the Citadel network and identify the right controller? Ashminov boiled with excitement, thinking he could cook his brother like an egg. Before that could happen, he needed more information.
“Are you floating in tryp, Baby Brother?”
“Heavens, no! Synthetic placenta and chlorophyll. The gas you see is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen.”
“How are you able to communicate?”
“My Version 9 chip sends neural impulses to a software module that translates my thoughts into binary language.”
Ashminov suppressed a smile. His brother’s cylinder was a node on the network.
“Christian, your questions reveal your intentions.”
Ashminov flagellated himself for tipping his hand. He should have teased the information. Now his plan—his only plan—had failed before it got off the launch pad.
“You envision your brain next to mine,” Petrov continued. “But nothing could be further from the truth.”
Ashminov let out a sigh of relief. “Why do you say that?”
The monitor revealed the folds and creases of Petrov’s brain. “You're looking at one thousand four hundred grams of dead weight. I can make do without ninety-nine percent of my cerebellum.”
Ashminov's left hand cramped, and he switched to using his right to tap DELETE.
“Christian, imagine paring the brain down to its essentials. My Beyond Eden research team identified fifty-seven thousand neurons that support pure consciousness.”
“Fifty-seven thousand?”
“Over the course of history, a small number of people have come close to experiencing pure consciousness. They were called mystics, shamans, saints, insane. They spoke of entering into the mind of God, of encountering their animal spirit. In truth, they had accidentally found a way to harness these fifty-seven thousand neurons. Big Brother, you and I will commingle as one hundred and twenty-one thousand neurons in our carbonite orb.”
Orb? Ashminov switched to his right pinky. “Your math is wrong, Baby Brother. Fifty-seven plus fifty-seven is 114. One hundred and fourteen thousand.”
“I’m adding some spice. Seven thousand magical neurons.”
The fever was taking a toll on Ashminov’s optic nerves, casting his surroundings into ever darkening shadows. He had to start coding before he went blind, but he couldn’t rush his brother. “Seven thousand,” he mimicked.
“Indeed, “Petrov said. “Early on, the team hit a wall. Test subjects kept going mad and dying. Computer modeling identified the structure of the new neurons required, but the researchers couldn’t engineer them. Next, they tried harvesting the neurons from females who were in love. But, in half a million test subjects, the quality of neurons was always substandard.”
“What happened to the test subjects?” Ashminov asked.
Petrov ignored the question and said, “I've gone to great lengths to find the perfect female from whom I can harvest the neurons. Eve is fighting her heart as we speak, but once she lets herself fall in love with Adam, we’ll pluck them from her brain as if they are ripe figs.”
“What will happen to Raissa?”
“Eve,” Petrov corrected. “More importantly, what will happen to us, Big Brother?”
“I want to know about Eve.”
“Yes, I know you are fond of her. Eve’s brain will continue to function in the lab. She'll be with Adam and both their families. Adam will love Eve, but Eve won’t be able to return his love.”
“Because you took her magical neurons?”
“That’s correct. But you and I will put them to good use as we advance to the final stage.”
Ashminov didn’t think he needed to prompt Nicholas to explain the final stage, and he was correct.
“Gabriel will inject Raissa’s neurons into our orb, and we shall exist in Heaven for all eternity, circling a primitive, pristine planet while sharing a love that has been absent from our lives for far too long.”
“I can't wait, Baby Brother,” Ashminov croaked. “But what happens if Eve doesn’t fall in love?”
Petrov chuckled coldly. “Oh, she will. I've got a surprise in store for her. You know how much she loves children.”
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 16
Farouk is right in front of my nose? What did Petrov mean? Raissa wasn’t about to ask for clarification.
She turned to check on her family, but the monitor now featured the spinning globe. The number of dead was staggering. Petrov had murdered more than two billion people with ricinware.
With nausea blooming in her gut, she stood before a cylinder and peered into the green liquid.
“Raissa.” Caleb’s voice exploded in her mind like fireworks.
“Caleb! Where are you?”
“Look down,” he replied.
Raissa scanned all around the lab floor. There was no sign of Caleb, so she dropped to her knees and held her head to the side so she could see into the nooks and crannies under the lab bench.
“I’m right in front of you.”
Flooded with dread, she focused on a dark object floating near the bottom of the cylinder.
“Raissa, that’s me.”
She moved closer. “No!” she gulped.
“Yes,” Petrov interjected. “That is the boy who loves you with all his soul.”
Raissa jumped back. “Caleb, I’ll keep looking for you.”
“It's me,” he said.
She recognized his tone and articulation, but Petrov could easily mimic Caleb’s voice. Raissa fixed her eyes on the brain immersed in green liquid. “How did we run through the garden together? Whose hand did I hold?” A shiver traveled down her spine. “Who did I come close to kissing? I felt your breath on my cheek.”
“Raissa, that was my hand and my breath and my lips. I exist in your mind as you exist in mine.”
She blinked back tears.
“Raissa, I now know what happened to me. Petrov let me into his mind and showed me. You sang to me in the taxi, and I died in your arms. Paladins brought me to the Citadel, where Dr. Mars brought me back to life.”
She shook her head, even though she knew in her heart it was Caleb—Petrov was incapable of speaking with such conviction. She reached out and pressed her fingertips against the cylinder's clear carbonite. Caleb's love for her traveled into her hand and up her arm and into her chest, flooding her with brightness and warmth.
“Raissa, I love you.”
She pulled her hand back and using her voice said, “Where’s Petrov?”
“I don’t know, but I can feel him.”
She could, too. Her eyes shifted to the dark mass in the next cylinder. Another human brain hovered near the bottom.
Petrov’s voice crackled with glee. “Face to face at last with the enchanting Eve! Shall I introduce the others in Paradise?”
To Raissa’s horror, every cylinder housed a human brain, and Petrov served as a sadistic tour guide. “Farouk is next to me. Next to him is Julian. Your mother is next.”
Raissa stared at her mother’s brain. Given a choice, she knew her mother would not want to exist like this. None of them would, except maybe Farouk and Julian. They weren’t old enough to know there was anything better.
“Eve, dear, you and Adam will join your families soon.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” she hissed.
Petrov chuckled. “I’ve been holding it for ten years, and I’ll hold it for a million more.”
“Caleb, how do I kill him?”
Petrov replied, “Raise the temperature of the liquid inside the sarcophagus. The controls to regulate my environment are right in front of you.”
She glared at Petrov’s brain. “Caleb, is this a trap?”
“It might be.”
“Call my bluff,” Petrov taunted.
Raissa stood before the instrument panel and scanned the blinking lights and switches and digital readouts until she found what looked like a temperature reading: 31.5 degrees.
“That’s the one,” Petrov said.
She reached for the button with an up arrow.
“By the way,” Petrov added, “if you raise the temperature in my sarcophagus, the temperature will increase equally in the other seven.”
The monitor came to life with Petrov’s prisoners. Raissa's mom and dad, Farouk, Zoe, Jack, and Julian—all shells of their former selves. Although death would set them free, Raissa couldn't do it.
Petrov laughed. “I know you too well, Eve. But, in the case the data was wrong, I had already disabled the controller. Big Brother wanted to hack the network and cook me like an egg.”
Now, what’s he talking about? “There’s more than one way to cook an egg,” she said, peering up through the bottom of Petrov’s cylinder, wondering if she could cut off the oxygen supply. But she couldn’t locate any tubes or valves or openings of any kind.
She dragged a stool over, stood on it and took out her Glock. She pounded the butt against the top of the cylinder. The gun bounced back after every blow.
She hammered harder without success. Finally, she reared again and swung as hard as she could. The Glock nearly jumped from her hand. The cylinders were too strong to break manually.
She had a better option: a forty-five-caliber, fast-moving lead projectile. She climbed off the stool, backed up three meters, and aimed at Petrov's brain.
“Raissa, be careful,” Caleb shouted.
BOOM!
The bullet bounced off the cylinder and fired up sparks as it rebounded off the wall next to her. She fired twice more in quick succession. One bullet ricocheted and whizzed by her head. The second sent up sparks by her feet. She took a step forward.
“You’re too close,” Caleb cried in her mind.
BOOM.
It felt like a sledgehammer had cracked her left forearm. Grimacing, she grabbed her arm, and blood trickled between her fingers. The ricocheting bullet had buried itself in bone.
“Raissa!” Caleb cried.
She experienced the cold fear Caleb was feeling, in addition to the pain radiating into her shoulder and chest.
Reeling from a surge of nausea, she forced herself to move past the pain of her wound. “I'm fine,” she lied, realizing that Caleb would know immediately she wasn't. Before he could protest, she jammed the barrel against Petrov’s cylinder.
“Wait!” a girl cried. “Please don’t do it.”
Raissa whipped her head to the right. The little girl with the green eyes stood four meters away. A smattering of freckles covered her cheeks, and two pigtails fell to her shoulders. She did have Caleb's nose.
“Fern, say hello to your parents,” Petrov said.
The girl locked eyes with Raissa. “Hi, Mommy.” She turned to Caleb's brain. “Hi, Daddy.”
“Fern is an animation,” Caleb said. “She’s not a real child.”
Petrov tittered. “Fern exists in the genetarium database. She’s the daughter of the world’s most perfect couple, waiting to be born and see the light of day.”
Raissa’s head spun. She knew about genetaria. Couples ordered up offspring the way you ordered off a restaurant menu. The practice repulsed her, but the children born were innocent. They had no say in the method of their conception. Petrov’s words signaled that her greatest fear had come true. “Caleb, he wants to breed us. He’ll keep us like a family of pets in his garden.”
Petrov sniffed. “Breeding is for zoo animals. I’ll compile Fern’s code and allow her to gestate long enough for her brain to form. Then Fern can join you in Paradise. If you’d like, Eve, I’ll place your daughter’s brain in your sarcophagus—a whale and her calf.”
Flooded with horror, Raissa gritted her teeth. “Give her the gift of life so you can kill her?” She shook her head. “No!” Looking at Fern’s eyes, Raissa could see they were the same shade of green as hers. She told herself that Fern was a computer file, but in her heart, she knew that she and Caleb had conceived the promise of a precious daughter.
“Fern, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“I don’t believe you, Mommy!” Fern screamed and
then vanished.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 17
When Ashminov's pinky cramped, it kicked off a domino effect of muscles knotting from his palm to his shoulder. He was running out of energy, and the fever was consuming him rapidly now. Hoping to buy a few more minutes of flexibility, he slammed his hand on the server console, but it only curled up all his fingers into a paralytic mess of ligaments and bones.
Tragically, his program to boil the brain of Baby Brother would remain a dream uncoded, thwarted in part because of disobedient fingers, but also because his fever was making it impossible to untangle M-code syntax. He blinked sweat away and wiped his brow. The keyboard was getting blurry, and he had to question whether he could still find DELETE. He rested his cheek beside it, his epic humiliation at the hands of Nicholas nearly over.
Ashminov detected movement out of the corner of his eye. Two surgeons, recognizable by their green garb, had arrived. The one with curly red hair held a laser scalpel. The second brown-haired man clutched an organ transplant pouch. The effort to lift his head was daunting as the muscles in his neck frayed like worn threads, and his head remained angled forward.
They stepped up beside him. “Christian Petrov, are you ready?” Red asked.
Christian Petrov. Nobody has called me by my real name in nineteen years. “Almost,” he said and reached for the detonator button. When he pressed it, the explosion would scatter his brain in such tiny pieces that nobody could piece them together again. A Bulgarian Humpty Dumpty.
“Look at his expression,” Red said.
“Dr. Petrov said Christian would be happy and submit willingly,” remarked Brown. “He doesn’t look happy.”
“Not at all,” Red concurred.
“Should we contact Dr. Petrov?” Brown asked.
Red ignited the laser. “Let’s just do it.”
Ashminov tried to press the detonator by thumping his stomach with his right fist, but his arm hung limply by his side. Panicking, he tried using his left fist, but that arm also disobeyed his mind's command.
