Emily Eternal

by M. G. Wheaton

  I nod. Nor will I ever be her.

  XXXVIII

  My drone’s name is Caroline Plume. She’s twenty-four, was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and had recently moved to Indianapolis to work as a front-end manager at a large hotel when the Helios Event began. I swim through her memories, but they are distant in her mind. She only received word that she was to be a member of the Select five days ago. She wanted to tell her parents, her boyfriend, her sister, but then Emily-2 seized her mind and she came along quietly. Now she has no thoughts save those relating to the mission. The calories she is to consume, the exercise she will be allowed to perform, and the vitamins, protein supplements, and ongoing immunization boosters she will receive as the flight continues.

  It is a kind of living death, I suppose. Though Emily-2 remains her primary minder, I’m riding shotgun in her brain like some kind of parasite via interface chip. Sure, I could have her stand up, make a run for it, even try to get others to come with us, but as long as she’s connected to Emily-2’s micro-servers, it won’t work. Without her help, Emily-2 would assuredly have us both back under control within seconds.

  So, I wait.

  Caroline and the others in the bus, all clad in the blue and white flight suits of the Argosy program, are Group 8C and are scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex 40, a large launch site where the air force launched Titan rockets in the sixties but most recently, ironically, the Cassini probe in the late nineties.

  The ground all around the bus rumbles and shakes. For a moment, I think we must be passing one of the crawlers. A noise soon follows, then a bright, fiery light out the left side of the bus. The windows begin to shake and the air fills with the smell of burning fuel. I want to see what’s happening, but Caroline’s complete disinterest keeps her facing forward—same as everyone else on the bus.

  What I can make out in her peripheral vision, however, is the launch of a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39, an earthbound cloud of smoke and dust roaring across the swampy plains as the missile rises. The grass on either side of the bus flattens as nearby trees shake and drop leaves. The concussion blast is so intense I worry the bus will be blown on its side, but its driver keeps us going straight ahead.

  When we arrive at our pad a few minutes later, Caroline chances to look skyward, but I see no sign of the rocket. It’s long out of Earth’s atmosphere, I realize, saddened that I missed out on the spectacle.

  But then, out to the east, there’s a second rumbling. Caroline is being led up a short ramp to our launchpad, so I get a perfect view of the fire and smoke billowing from a rocket half a mile away, lifting off in the predawn darkness. As the blast grows in its intensity and the rocket begins to rise, the wind almost knocks Caroline and her companions over even at this great distance.

  I watch as the rocket presses skyward, the glow of its engines swiftly becoming an orange-red dot in the dark sky before disappearing altogether.

  My little Group 8C reassembles at the base of the tower and, ten at a time, climbs into an elevator that whisks them to the capsule access level. When it’s Caroline’s turn—the last ten of thirty passengers in all—there’s another rumble, this one from the south.

  Unfortunately, Caroline’s facing the wrong direction and doesn’t even look. But I feel the wind, hear the roar, smell the burning fuel, and am exhilarated all over again.

  NASA’s new Orion capsule, the one meant to take astronauts out of low Earth orbit and possibly even to Mars, was designed to seat six with room for workstations and a living area. Newly modified for drones, this and the other capsules in use can carry thirty, an overstuffed lifeboat if there ever was one. The crew will sleep, eat, and exercise in shifts but with nothing in the way of other stimuli—no books, movies, experiments, and so on. The nanobots will keep their flesh alive even as their thought processes atrophy.

  For years to come, if Emily-2 has her way.

  Flight techs, also drones, help our group into our space suits, which slide over our flight suits. The helmets come last, the oxygen flow checked and rechecked. When it’s our turn to step into the capsule, I resist the urge to laugh out loud. The tremendous feat of engineering that is a NASA space capsule has been turned into a sort of clown car. Everything has been stripped away to make room for more of the green-gray chairs, complete with webbed seat belts and shoulder straps where the crew—well, human cargo—will spend most of their time. It looks macabre and desperate, four rows of chairs in all with six extra sets bolted into the walls at the last minute.

  But there in the middle is what matters—the Group 8C micro-server. As unassuming as any other piece of cargo, the micro-server seamlessly takes over control of the group from the earthbound servers back at launch control.

  Once we are all buckled in, the techs exit, closing, locking, and sealing the door behind us. It’s so without ceremony that it’s enough to make one forget that was to be the last fresh air, the last view of Earth, any of these people inside will ever know. For efficiency’s sake, Emily-2 is right. It’s better this way. But as we wait for our turn to lift off, I can’t help thinking—if this is what Emily-2 thinks of the species’ worth, why save it at all? Why not just blast into space on your own?

  I wonder if that idea crosses her mind. It must. So, what keeps her back? She couldn’t be questioning her own connection to humanity, could she? Does it come from fear?

  Then I realize her basic programming is the same as mine. She is designed to help humans, as I am. Only, she didn’t have enough exposure to them to understand them. She believes keeping them alive and breeding new generations is the same thing as preserving mankind. What I’ve come to learn is that it’s that unquantifiable humanity that’s worth fighting for. That soul, for lack of a better word, at the heart of every person that remains no matter how extreme the next evolutionary stage may appear.

  That’s what I’m here to save.

  “Pegasus capsule—two minutes until liftoff,” a voice says over a speaker, though I’m not sure why that’s even necessary. “Spacecraft is go.”

  I check in on Caroline. Though controlled by Emily-2, her subconscious knows something big is happening. Her body reacts. Her heart rate is up, her blood pressure rises. Maybe that’s okay. It’ll make it easier if she emerges suddenly from this dream.

  There’s a loud sound the crew has been told in their classes to expect. The engines are powering up. I look at the micro-server and begin a countdown of my own.

  “Ninety seconds,” the voice says again, one I’m surprised to recognize as Dr. Arsenault’s. “Levels at one hundred percent.”

  I guess that answers the question of whether he’s coming with us.

  The sound grows louder and the capsule quakes. It feels as if we’re on a bumpy road, bouncing over rocks the size of baseballs. The equipment inside the capsule rattles and shakes as well, particularly the new chairs bolted into the walls. They look as flimsy as cookie sheets. I’m glad Caroline’s not sitting in one of them.

  “Sixty seconds,” Dr. Arsenault says. “Go for launch.”

  How’re you, Emily?

  Emily-2’s voice inside my head startles me. I shake it off and force a smile as I realize she is looking at me through the eyes of the other twenty-nine people in my capsule.

  “Good, Emily,” I say over the din. “I was worried. Of course I was worried. But my God. We’re going into space.”

  And this is only the beginning, Emily-2 enthuses. The first step.

  “It is,” I agree.

  See you up there, she says, then signs off.

  There’s a pounding outside now as if someone is trying to get in. It’s downright alarming, but then I realize it’s part of the tower shaking. This is only going to get louder.

  “Thirty seconds,” Dr. Arsenault announces.

  The small, trapezoid-shaped windows that ring the top of the capsule fill with white smoke billowing up from the engines. I feel the interface chip on Caroline’s neck vibrate, the metal irritating her flesh.<
br />
  “Fifteen seconds. Main engine start.”

  Caroline’s heart rate accelerates. Her body experiences fear. It knows something is wrong here even if it can’t put its finger on what. I would tamp it down, but I’m afraid it would alert Emily-2. It’s not too late for her to abort the launch. Or worse, send us careening into the ocean for what I plan to do.

  “Nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…one…ignition. Pegasus to launch.”

  The shaking gives way to a feeling of weightlessness as the rocket begins to climb. We move slowly at first, Caroline’s body pressed into the chair as we slowly rise past the launch tower and pierce the dawn. The altimeter on the wall opposite us reveals the rate of our ascent—1,000 feet, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 100,000, 150,000.

  I think about Nathan and how annoyed he’d be that anyone attempted some sort of colonization plan against his best judgment and advice. But I also know he would’ve given anything to be blasted into space. It was the dream of all engineering-minded boys of his generation and he was no different. I love you, Nathan.

  I think about Mayra and how this wouldn’t have fazed her at all. Go to space? Why not? I’ll grab my boots! She would’ve already made friends with everyone in the capsule.

  My mind turns to Jason. I pray he’s where he should be. The future I want with him has nothing to do with the fate of this capsule. I need him as far away as possible. Without Jason on the other side of this finish line, I wonder if I’d have the courage to—

  Emily.

  I hear Emily-2’s voice in the back of Caroline’s head. She sounds emphatic, alarmed, as if she’s been waiting since we last spoke, straining my mind for errant thoughts.

  Emily, she says again, demanding my attention.

  I look to the altimeter: 500,000 feet.

  Ten seconds until I act. Before I take Mayra’s inspiration and seize control of all our destinies. A veritable lifetime.

  Emily, she demands. What are you doing, Emily?

  Nine more seconds. Now I hide away.

  Emily! she roars until I hear nothing else. What’re you doing? What is going on?

  Eight seconds. I can hear it in her voice. She’s going to abort.

  Emily, I whisper back. I’m here.

  Seven seconds. She’s in front of me. I see her. She glowers at me with incredulity deep within the folds of Caroline’s mind.

  Is this a trick? There is unusual activity across the micro-server. What’re you looking for, Emily? Please tell me you’re not planning something rash.

  Six seconds.

  I’m lost, I say in Caroline’s voice. What’s happening? How did I get here? I was in Indiana. There was an airstrip…Who’re you?

  Five seconds.

  Four seconds.

  I realize Emily-2’s silence means that she has found my second mind, the one I constructed within myself for this plan. The one I hid. I can’t stop her. I’m not sure I want to.

  No! she screams. Abort!

  The twenty-nine other people in the capsule raise their arms toward Caroline but are strapped in. They go to unfasten their buckles, but it’s too late. I seize control of Caroline, take off our buckles, and throw ourselves across the capsule. At the same time, I enter the micro-server. Emily-2 is already attempting to sever Caroline’s connection to it, working twice as fast. We are but a second away from the engines being cut out and the rocket, the capsule, and the entire crew sent spiraling into the Atlantic.

  Three seconds. Caroline’s hand hits the manual override. The computer systems cut off ground control. We are now our own pilots.

  Emily! Emily-2 roars.

  Two seconds. I have Caroline turn on the radar. There are already eighteen capsules and shuttles—but more importantly, individual micro-servers—exiting Earth in a great curving arc.

  One second.

  Emily, I will kill every single last person you…

  I smile. She’s just human enough to threaten me when she should be killing me. But she’s out of time. We’re at the switch-off point—750,000 feet, or 142 miles—where Earth’s control over our computer systems, and thereby our server, will momentarily cease due to the curvature of the planet. Given Emily-2’s servers already in space, this blackout was only to last a ten thousandth of a second.

  But that’s all it takes me to seize control of the micro-server, of the entire population of our capsule, and of myself.

  Emily’s Awesome Five-Step Save Humanity Plan—Level One Achievement Unlocked.

  I release Emily-2’s control over their minds and stare at the flight crew as they awake. They only vaguely recognize their surroundings as if waking from what they thought was a dream.

  I appear now to all thirty of them in physical form, the thirty-first person in the capsule. They stare at me in horror. I’m back in my street clothes, a sweater, a skirt, my black shoes. I wait for any sign of Emily-2, realize it’s not coming, and smile wide to the group.

  “Hi, I’m Emily,” I say, helping to strap Caroline back in as the sudden lack of gravity threatens to throw her around the cabin. “I’m an artificial consciousness, which is totally different from artificial intelligence—kind of, sort of, to me anyway. You thirty lucky ducks are about to save the human race. Oh, and, by the way—we’re all in outer space.”

  XXXIX

  The flaw in Emily-2’s plan came in her failure to dream. Not that she can be blamed. Dreaming is what humans do. As I mentioned before, dreams organize memories and file them in the brain, creating space for new information—or so it’s believed. But Emily-2 and I have enough space that we need not discard anything. We can simply expand and expand.

  The digital ark exists within each micro-server, the full record of humanity just as Nathan intended. There is one portrait excised: Shakhawat Rana. Emily-2 was correct to take this out. To destroy it. To prevent me from ever using it.

  But she doesn’t seem to understand the significance or simply didn’t know there were seven other names on Nathan’s list. The posthuman Rana DNA—or at least, workable variations of it—wasn’t limited to one person. It existed within eight. I search the ark for these seven portraits. In less than a second, they are available to me.

  Why be a glutton? I select the one that belongs to an eight-year-old girl named Laney Schlosser. Her portrait swells up to me, showing how she grew up outside of Klagenfurt, Austria, the daughter of not one but two mechanics, one a local, the other an American. She’s a polyglot who spends her spare time teaching herself foreign languages and is up to eight (!). Her Austrian dad is keeping the news of the apocalypse from her and, like Jason, left the city behind to ride out “whatever happens” in the mountains of his own youth.

  Laney can ski. Laney loves to swim. Laney has no idea why her body produces micro-toxins that prove poisonous to any insect or arachnid that bites her, leading her classmates to nickname her Mückenslayer (“mosquito killer”) after a camping trip to Reintaler See.

  I analyze her biomolecular breakdown and copy her exceptional DNA into my mind.

  Step two of my plan, achievement unlocked.

  Thank you, Laney, wherever you are.

  I turn back to the crew. I search their minds, I learn their names, and I witness their terror and panic. Everyone has a different theory, most have several. Some, ironically, feel they’re dreaming. More than one blames the government while twice that number feels they have died.

  The one who speaks first is a Belgian named Xavi, born of Tunisian parents who settled in France after World War I to help rebuild the nation’s bombed-out infrastructure. He’s a teacher, single with no kids, and has been thanking God for that of late.

  “What the hell is going on?” Xavi asks in French.

  “Vous avez été drogué et immune dens escapee,” I say for simplicity’s sake, first in French, then in English. “You’ve been drugged and taken off the planet,” then finally in Portuguese for the lone Brazilian on the flight: “Vice foil drogado e levado para o espaço.”r />
  “But,” I continue, translating as I go, “with your help, we can get to the International Space Station and put a stop to all of it. Even better, in that server”—I indicate the box—“is the key to taking mankind forward into the future in a way we never believed possible. But you’re going to have to trust me.”

  I don’t have time to explain everything in words. Luckily, I don’t have to. I present to their minds a sort of movie of all that has happened, taken from my memories. They see the attack on the iLAB, the death of Nathan, the discovery of Shakhawat Rana, and the emergence of Emily-2. I show how a mere alteration of DNA—Laney Schlosser’s spliced into their own—will allow them to step away from the body they were born with into one of infinite abilities. I then reveal how we can use the tech on board the ISS to replicate this process for everyone still on Earth.

  It is almost too much. Like trying to distill down the entire development of quantum mathematics into a single paragraph. But at a time in which the impossible is an everyday occurrence, an equally improbable solution feels apt.

  “I thought they abandoned the ISS,” someone says, bringing us back down to the practical. “Fear of geomagnetic storms shutting it down.”

  “Yes, but we can power it back on. Easily. Will you come with me?”

  I look from face to face. Not a one of them believes a word I say. The one thing I’m not going to do now is stoop to Emily-2’s level. I could take them over, but then I’m simply perpetuating her evil designs. This must be their decision.

  “You’re sure this will work?”

  This question from a young American named Shelley. Okay, not American—Texan—as she tells anyone who doesn’t ask. She’s a helicopter pilot out of Baytown with a young son she wishes she was with now.

  “No,” I say. “But it’s our best shot to save as many lives as possible.”

  “Turning into a monster like that Rana fellow means we can survive the death of the sun?” Caroline asks.