Eden Chip

by Scott Cramer

  Held? Raissa plunged into a canyon of grief, thinking it was an accurate description.

  “I can wait to go there,” Caleb said.

  Raissa realized Caleb was engaging Mars on purpose and his tactic was working. Mars had become distracted. Still limp as a rag doll, she was regaining a fraction more feeling in her body with every passing second.

  She took stock of her surroundings. To her right was a tray that held surgical tools, sheets of synthetic skin, and gauze. Mentenhoffer’s joule was in his holster. He and his assistant were scanning her brain and other body parts with various instruments.

  “Raissa, I’ll miss your can-do attitude,” Petrov said. “Gabriel, she’s plotting another escape.”

  Mars was facing the other way, and before he turned to face Raissa again, Caleb had guided her hand to the tray, and she grabbed the cold handle of a laser scalpel. She engaged the ignition button with her thumb and brought her arm up as the female paladin was leaning over her. The blade slid through the paladin's neck, and she gargled in shock and stepped back. Her head flipped back like it was a hatch opening and she flopped to the floor.

  When Raissa sat up, she listed to one side as dizziness hit her hard. Her heart was pounding as if it wanted to punch a hole through her chest. She slid off the metal table and bent her knees to maintain her footing. Her legs were tingling.

  She picked up another scalpel from the tray and held both in front of her, but the blade in her left hand dropped to the floor. The numbness had made her forget the bullet wound.

  “Dr. Mentenhoffer, secure your weapon!” Petrov shouted.

  But Mentenhoffer ignored Petrov and fixated on his dead colleague. Raissa lunged and pulled the joule from his holster. She plugged him, and he collapsed. She spun fast, and then Mars was upon her. She shot point-blank into his chest. The tall paladin absorbed the blow and took two steps back, but remained on his feet. She fired again and heard the electron slug crackle into him. To her horror, not only did he not fall, he didn’t even wince.

  Raissa flicked the joule setting to kill, but Mars snatched the weapon from her as she was raising her arm and hurled it against the wall with such force it broke into pieces. She transferred the scalpel back to her right hand. In a split second, Mars had wrapped his fingers around her left forearm, and she couldn’t escape his grip. Her blood seeped between his fingers as he crushed her arm to the bone.

  She slashed away at his arm with the scalpel. He grunted, and she stumbled backward. Blinking her dizziness away, she saw his hand clamped onto her, but the laser had severed his arm at the elbow. She was vaguely aware of him clubbing at her with the stump as she stepped back.

  A tsunami of pain rolled through her, and as the light returned she saw Mars flying toward her, his face twisted into a mask of rage. She stepped to the side and grabbed him in a headlock with her bad arm. In the first seconds of the struggle that followed, the fingers of his severed hand loosed from her forearm, and dropped to the floor.

  Raissa tried to stab Mars in the face with the scalpel, but he lurched, loosening her grip, and snatched it between his teeth. He bit the handle in half and spat it out. She punched him in the face repeatedly, but she doubted he even felt the rapid strikes of her fist.

  With her injured arm still hooked over his neck, he stood straight and hoisted her off the floor, then he spun, pivoting around faster and faster. Her legs lifted ever higher from the force and snapshots of Caleb flew by with each revolution.

  Finding his eye with her finger, she drove the tip deep into his socket. Mars screamed and spun more slowly. The reduced force allowed her to push her thumb into his other eye socket. He half-collapsed along with her and pulled his head from her weakening grip. Before she could escape, he clutched her against his chest. Pus dribbled from his eye sockets down his cheeks as he crushed her with such ferocity she couldn't replenish the air in her lungs.

  Raissa whipped her head forward, and the crown of her forehead struck him in the nose. Bones crunched, and a fountain of cold blood spurted out. She hit him twice more, and he released her. She rammed her knee into his groin, and they fell apart.

  While he was doubled over, she grabbed another laser scalpel from the tray. “Watch out,” Caleb shouted. But before she could duck away, Mars grabbed her hair. How did he see me? He's blind.

  She spun around and brought her knee to his groin again, then smashed her fist into his mouth and kept punching. Her knuckles bled from striking his broken, jagged teeth.

  In a fit of volcanic rage, he shoved her backward. Raissa tumbled over the operating table and crashed to the floor clumsily and hard. Fearing that she had broken her legs in the fall, she gingerly got to her knees. Then, using the table for leverage, she pulled herself up, while still clutching the scalpel.

  Mars stood between her and Petrov. Despite the fact that she had gouged his eyes out, he still followed her movements, turning to face her as she shuffled around the table.

  He grinned. “I can smell you and hear you. The hairs rising on the back of your neck in fear make little snapping sounds. That and your pounding heart are giving you away.”

  “Gabriel, she’s ready to run,” Petrov warned.

  Raissa ignited the laser scalpel and shoved past the table. She limped toward the door, ignoring the vicious jolts of pain that ripped through her torso with every step. Mars followed her. She could hear his footsteps. Five meters were all that separated her from the oxygen pellets under Petrov.

  She pitched forward, slamming hard into the floor. Mars was clutching her ankle.

  When she couldn’t pull her leg free, she tried to twist it out of his grasp, but then he pulled himself up to her, shifting his grip to her knee. She rammed her heel into his face again and again, even though each strike inflicted as much pain on her as she was causing him. He lunged up again and grabbed her by the waist of her pants. She flipped the laser and sliced his other hand off at the wrist. Mars let out a deafening bellow, borne more of frustration than pain, and she wriggled away from him.

  Raissa focused on the Glock, which lay on the floor two meters away. She knew it held one bullet. She was equidistant from the gun and Petrov. “Petrov, here I come,” she said, crawling toward the cylinder.

  “No, she’s going for the gun,” Petrov cried.

  As Petrov had predicted, Raissa veered to her left and stretched her hand toward the Glock. Mars was already moving. Bringing the full force of his weight onto her legs, he used his two stumps as a vice grip to keep her pinned. She tried loosening her shoulder muscles to reach farther.

  Mars was crawling ever higher on her, and she feared that he would use his teeth to separate her head from her body. She stretched her arm again, and her fingertip touched the Glock.

  Mars slammed down on her back with one of his stumps. It knocked the wind out of her lungs. Her adrenaline was serving as an anesthetic, but regardless of the pain, if he hit her again, he would likely crush her rib cage. She coaxed the pistol closer until she hooked a finger into the trigger guard. Mars struck her again, harder this time, and she heard her ribs cracking. With the Glock in her grasp, she turned just as he was lunging for her neck with his mouth opened wide.

  She rammed the barrel past his broken front teeth and down his throat. Before he could react, she pulled the trigger. A muffled roar blasted into his mouth, and a cloud of red mist filled the air behind him. He clamped down on the barrel, gripping harder.

  Is there no way to kill him?

  Then he let out a rasping sigh, his jaw slackened, and he slumped off her to the floor, finally lying still. Raissa lay back as a wave of exhaustion washed over her.

  “The data suggested Dr. Mars would fail,” Petrov said. His voice was coming from the room, not the speakers.

  She looked up and blinked. Petrov was standing on his spindly legs in front of his cylinder with a smug smile. She was out of ammo, so she ignited the laser scalpel and set her sights on the pellets.

  * * *

  Caleb knelt
beside Raissa as she wiggled out from under the dead paladin. “You should leave,” he told her.

  Confused, Raissa looked up. “What about Petrov?”

  “You’ll die in the fire. This lab is Petrov's prison. The paladins have abandoned him. He has no power. He’ll rot here.”

  “He's murdered six billion people!”

  “Two billion are still alive because of you and Ashminov.”

  “Listen to Caleb,” Petrov said from across the room. “You have more important things to do in your life.”

  Caleb ignored Petrov and stroked Raissa’s cheek. “I want two more people to join the living—you and Fern.”

  “Fern will exist in an electronic womb forever,” she whispered. “She’ll never feel pain or sadness.”

  “Or love,” Petrov interjected.

  Rage exploded in Caleb’s chest. He wanted to kill Petrov with his bare hands, but he knew it wasn’t possible. They were both brains floating in synthetic placentas.

  Raissa continued toward Petrov. The fierceness of her gaze informed Caleb that his appeal to her had fallen on deaf ears.

  Two meters from Petrov, she stopped and hung her head. Her body was bloody and broken, but it wasn’t physical pain that ended her advance. Caleb could feel the doubt swirling inside her.

  Petrov, too, sensed her conflict. “Raissa, go to a genetarium; any will do. The staff will implant Fern in your womb. Jaddy will make a terrific great-grandfather.”

  The picture in Raissa’s mind duplicated itself in Caleb’s; her grandfather was holding Fern. Warmth spilled from Caleb’s heart to think of Raissa raising Fern, far away from the Citadel and NanoArtisans, in a loving family.

  Fern vanished, and her grandfather fell to his knees sobbing. Raissa had killed the fantasy.

  A cold blast washed over Caleb, and it took a long moment before his frozen heart hammered out its next beat. That future frightened Raissa as much as it did him, and he moved to her side to comfort her, holding her head against his chest.

  “I know Jaddy will die of a broken heart,” she said. “But he has faith. He believes God is guiding both of us. I have to kill Petrov.”

  “Destiny is an algorithm,” Petrov quipped. “I’m not worried.”

  “Shut up,” she shouted.

  Caleb felt the doubt returning to Raissa’s mind like a cold fog rolling off the ocean. She won't do it. Will she? Raissa ignited the laser.

  * * *

  With the laser’s thin, high-energy beam extending five centimeters above the grip, Raissa crawled ever closer to the apparition standing before her.

  A sick grin spread across Petrov’s face. “Here’s your chance to say goodbye to your parents and Farouk.”

  The monitor flickered, and Raissa saw her family and Caleb’s in the barren room, looking as they had before, sullen and lifeless. Her mom and dad leaped to their feet, and waves of their thoughts and feelings washed through her as if a dam had burst in their minds. Petrov was allowing her to connect with them. But why had he waited until now? Was he afraid?

  “God is incapable of fear,” Petrov said. “They all have Eden Chips. It’s how you can communicate with your loved ones from this moment on. Let’s see if they can talk some sense into you.”

  Raissa traveled into their minds. Her parents’ memories were of long ago. Raissa’s mother was commanding a unit of rebels. Raissa, through her mother’s eyes, saw herself as a baby and felt the pain of her own birth. Her father wept with joy as he held her, a newborn, in the hospital. Raissa’s anger flared as she lamented the years lost. She traveled further back in time to experience the earliest things that her parents remembered. They were children themselves, and she even saw Jaddy as a young man, recognizable from the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

  Raissa's memories filled their minds. They gasped and scowled and drew in sharp breaths at the panorama of her life over the past twelve years unfolding. “Ra Ra,” Farouk cried. The air left Raissa’s lungs, and she swallowed back a painful lump in her throat. If she had any doubts these people were her family members, they vanished when her brother called her that.

  How can I kill my own family?

  They seemed desperately unhappy in Petrov’s Paradise, yet they were alive, and Farouk, frozen at age two, would never experience the sorrow and pain of losing his parents. Raissa’s parents would remain married and in love with one another for all time, and they knew she was alive. Zoe had reunited with the child whom Petrov had forced her to poison. Zoe, Jack, and Julian would never be in need of food or shelter, and had the company of each other forever.

  She trembled with overwhelming grief. “Farouk, I love you. I love all of you.”

  Her mother and father traded glances. Then her mother stepped forward. Her mother’s eyes, cold and dead a moment before, lit up as if a power inside her illuminated the green. “Your father and I have received the greatest gift ever. We’ve had the chance to see the wonderful woman you’ve become.” Her mother’s voice pulled Raissa back through time to when she was six years old and happy. “You are strong and dedicated to helping others. Raissa, you are beautiful.”

  Raissa blinked back tears. “So are you.”

  Her mother’s eyes now burned with such ferocity that Raissa almost didn’t recognize her. The librarian had morphed into the rebel commander. “Raissa, we believe what you believe. We want you—”

  The monitor went dark.

  “Petrov, let her finish,” Raissa shouted.

  “Put that laser scalpel away, and you’ll be able to chat with your parents and brother for all time.”

  She shook her head and grinned. “You were afraid of what they’d tell me. Well, you’re too late because I know what they would want me to do.”

  “You won’t do it,” Petrov said calmly. “The data is always right.”

  “Not this time.” Raissa’s heart pounded in her throat. She hoped to die in the inferno because she couldn’t live with herself after boiling her loved ones alive. She crawled closer to Petrov, a moment she had fantasized a thousand times, coming face-to-face with evil and having the means to end it. Her fantasy had always finished with whoops and hollers of celebration. With no desire to celebrate now, she raised the scalpel.

  “Mommy!” Fern ran over and stood beside Petrov.

  Petrov put his arm around her shoulders. “Hello, Fern,”

  “Get away from her,” Raissa shouted. No, they are both illusions.

  Petrov mocked her. “Yes, Fern and I are ghosts. But even ghosts can die. If you start a blaze, I'll issue a command to delete Fern from the database.”

  Icy fingers of dread wrapped around her heart. “Caleb, can he?”

  When Caleb looked away, Raissa knew the answer. She stared into space. Fern existed in a quiet place between life and death, her heart forever on the edge of beating for the first time. Maybe Fern could dream? Can you murder dreams?

  “Mommy, I want to be born,” Fern pleaded.

  Guilt flushed through Raissa’s veins. “Petrov, that’s you talking.”

  He playfully tugged Fern’s pigtail. “Your daughter wants to breathe, to laugh, to skip to a friend’s house and play until dinnertime. She wants to look up into your eyes and bask in the sunshine of your love.”

  Drowning in a chaos of emotions, Raissa inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. Rage threatened to melt muscle and bone. Confusion was threatening to scatter her thoughts like the wind blows dust. She shook her head to clear it. Petrov was manipulating her the way he had done for the past twelve years. “Fern is only a collection of zeros and ones,” she said, hearing doubt creep into her tone.

  Petrov sneered. “You are correct. The runt is a few million lines of code. But what does Fern mean to you? You see a girl growing up, finding friends, and leading a normal life, the life that eluded you. You see a young lady meeting boys and getting nervous and experiencing her first kiss.”

  Raissa turned to Caleb. “What should I do?”

  “I love
you, Raissa.”

  “I love you, too. But what should I do?”

  “I love you, Raissa.”

  She tried to read his thoughts, but Caleb’s mind was as still as a pond, at peace with whatever choice she made.

  The smug smile disappeared from Petrov’s face, and his eyes filled with fear. He had looked deep into her mind and had glimpsed thoughts unborn.

  “Fern, you’d inherit your father’s big heart and maybe you’d get some of my stubbornness,” Raissa began. “Your great-grandfather would love you the way he loves me, and I’d love you with all my heart, the way I love your daddy. If you hate me for what I'm about to do, I understand that. I hate myself a thousand times more. Petrov is the one who will delete you, but I take complete responsibility for my actions.”

  Blinking tears away, she ignited the scalpel. Raissa was genuinely sorry for every paladin she had killed, excluding Mars, and she regretted that she would soon destroy a tiny seed of love.

  Her mind, heart, and the thin blue flame became one. “God, help me,” she sobbed and lunged.

  “You just killed Fern!” Petrov screamed.

  IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 19

  Caleb watched as the laser scalpel, which Raissa gripped firmly in her right hand, penetrated Petrov’s chest like a sword. The look on her face was of sorrow and loss, mingled with determination.

  Petrov’s expression was a blend of awe and surrender.

  Leaping forward, Caleb landed on top of her seconds before the blade connected with the solid oxygen pellets. He squeezed his eyes shut and held her tightly, willing himself to shield her from the fiery blast. She had to make it to the genetarium; Petrov might have failed to delete Fern.

  When the blade touched the pellets, the oxygen accelerated the combustion of fuel, turning the pile of grass into an instant inferno. A wave of searing heat blazed out from its center.

  Raissa cried “Forgive me” over and over. Her tearful pleas mixed with the shrieks of the others. Petrov’s bestial wail drowned out all the other cries. Because the core of the fire was beneath his cylinder, he was dying the fastest. His mind was like an onion peeling away layer after layer, sending fractured memories hurtling outwards: Petrov, twenty years younger, stood among a group of friends posing for a picture in front of the Coliseum in Rome. He looked happy with his arm around his older brother, Ashminov.