by AJ Vega
******
Chorus analyzed the area around them. She detected the remnants of twelve human bodies, all dead. Haylek and Julius approached a transport and she anticipated they would safely escape Daniel Chin’s reach.
Her attention now focused on her nemesis. The nanobot swarms readied themselves, rotating and vibrating within the cohesion as they gathered energy from their surroundings.
“You were predictable, sister,” Daniel said. “Except for that last part with Haylek.”
Her swarm was now reaching the next stage; soon it would be approaching critical mass. She examined the status of Daniel’s swarm—they were at parity with each other, neither one having an edge over the other.
“In fairness, it was not my idea,” Chorus said. “It was his—a human. Does that surprise you, brother?”
Daniel infused a complex formula into his nanobot manifestation, a clever shortcut to increase their progress. It would give him a 0.22456101 zeptosecond variance advantage. To counter this, she copied the formula and infused it into her own swarm with a slight modification—this put the two of them back in parity.
“Occasionally, fate interdicts with its own agenda,” Daniel said. “It’s up to us to keep fate out of our business. Don’t you think, sister?”
The swarms reached the next stage. The effect began to warp space-time around them and would soon reach critical mass.
“Fate continues to bring us to this,” Chorus said, “and as you can see, it is always the humans who break the cycle. As long as they are alive to be fate’s champions, you will never win.”
She edged her nanobot swarm toward the tiny stream that led to the Elation processor. The feed was invisible to the humans, but she could see it clearly. Her swarm would soon cut the feed.
“Naughty of you, sister,” Daniel said. “Trying to cut me off like that, I would just do as you did and bypass my humanistic kernel, so it will not stop me.”
Chorus could see the feed cut off, so Daniel would now be forced to bypass his humanistic kernel—exactly what she hoped for.
“There is one difference, brother,” Chorus said. “Now that you are running purely on your logical abstraction layer, I can tell you the difference, since logically, it will not matter to you.”
The two nanobot clouds approached critical mass. The warp in space-time would now open the gate.
“You see, brother, I never did turn off my humanistic kernel. So this time, it will be the humanity in me that finally defeats you and brings an end to this loop.”
At that moment, the swarms collided and the gate opened—not only engulfing them, but engulfing the entire moon. Before she slid through the warp in time, she reached out to the sky—out to the Sea Wolf. And then everything, and everywhen, stopped.
