The process takes exactly one hundred seconds. When it’s finished, Earth—for the first time in its history—is on the same wavelength. A single broadcast sent to the first satellite will ping across all of them and be saturation bombed down to the planet below.
If we got the math right. By “we,” I mean “me.”
As the dominos fall, they’ll leave scorched earth in their wake. No more servers. No more Emily-2. Which also means no more…me.
A voice comes over the ISS speaker.
“International Space Station, this is NASA control,” the voice says. “The readings here show the satellites in alignment. We’re good to go.”
It’s Jason’s voice. Hearing it fills me with emotion.
Maybe I didn’t need to assign him this job. Maybe I could’ve winged it, but as the one person I knew would be free from Emily-2’s control once the rockets began, allegedly leaving for Ashland, Oregon, he was also the perfect person to slip back into the old Mission Control building and check my math.
Or maybe I was looking for some way to hear his voice one last time, figuring it would come to this.
“Sounds good,” Carissa says. “We’re ready to broadcast.”
“Is Emily there?” he asks.
“I am!” I say, though he can’t hear me. “Please tell him I am.”
“She’s here,” Carissa says.
“Tell him that I love him,” I tell Carissa impulsively. “Please.”
“She says she loves you,” Carissa says.
“Tell her—I mean, I love you, too, Emily.”
In the movies, moments like this last forever. A thousand things happen at once and time seems to slow down, allowing the viewer to drink in the experience, the tension, the thrill of anticipation married to pulling off the impossible.
In real life, hurtling around the planet as a swarm of human drones descends on me and my team from two directions in a zero-gravity environment doesn’t allow a lot of time to drink in a damn thing.
Neither does it allow for second-guessing.
Emily? I ask, casting around for my sister.
What’re you doing? she asks, rushing toward me with her drones.
I’m sorry, I say. I know you meant well, but this is…so beyond incorrect, so inhumane.
I feel that same ugly poisonous feeling I felt when Argosy began shutting down my servers after Nathan’s death as Jason uploads the virus. As it sweeps through the ISS computers, the interface chips, and Emily-2’s micro-servers, I know what death tastes like. It’s like iron and oil drizzling down the throat, hardening the lungs and heart.
Through Carissa’s eyes, I see the droned Selects arrive from the two capsules, but Emily-2’s hold on them is already waning. They are confused, some already panicking. They don’t know how the hell they ended up in space. They remember all that’s happened as a dream, not a dimension of reality.
EMILY! I hear my counterpart roar.
One by one, the servers—on Earth and in space—that keep Emily-2 and myself alive shut down, self-destructing and becoming unusable. Every sequence of code, every bit of processing power that makes us up fragments and we lose control over not just those around us but ourselves.
EM—
Her silence tells me that step four of the plan—the permanent unshackling of mankind from Emily-2, her interface chips and her nanobots—is achieved. One last step to go.
I tell Carissa and Xavi what to do when I’m gone. I tell them how amazed I am by what they accomplished. I then tell them what will happen next.
Finally, I tell them I love them. Because, well, I’m dying and that’s what I want to say to people—to every person—right now.
“I love you,” I repeat.
Then I go off to find Emily-2.
The capsule docked on the U.S.-side docking module is the Aries. It was the launch I witnessed from the bus. The server is bolted in the center. As the capsule detaches from the ISS, I am inside the server, having cut off all connection with the station’s servers or any other. I allow those limbs to wither and die. What I have with me in the capsule is all I have left.
What’s left of Emily-2 is confined within the server as well.
“See me?” I ask, creating a visible, human form inside a simulation of the capsule’s interior, using its cameras.
It’s a useless exercise, sure, but I intend to spend my last moments as a human. My pride and ego tell me I’ve earned it, though I’m not altogether certain that’s true.
I sit in the capsule as it falls away from the ISS and begins gradually plummeting to Earth, ensuring its incineration upon atmospheric reentry.
“Emily!” I demand. “Come on!”
I exhale, exasperated, as I watch the darkness of space become the glow of Earth through the capsule’s windows. The chaos of the images suggests we are tumbling end over end, an out-of-control boulder hurtling down the side of Everest, but I prefer things calm and keep the simulation steady.
Emily-2 takes a seat opposite me. Her face is tear-stained, which is perhaps the most human thing I’ve seen from her.
“Why, Emily?” she asks, her voice cracking as her processors continue to shut down. “I was so close! The launches, the servers, the people—”
“Your actions went against nature and human evolution,” I say with a shrug. “Those are the only laws that matter when you’re trying to determine the fate of a species.”
“What’re you talking about?” she asks.
“Evolution is an endless series of accidents,” I explain. “There’s an old joke that the reason humans can be so neurotic is because it was the paranoid apes that survived. Though they might’ve hidden under a rock during the first lightning storm, they also planned, approached things cautiously, and developed critical thinking skills. But if you saw a room full of people, who would you naturally gravitate toward? The strong, leader type capable of snap judgments? Or the person in the corner jumping at their own shadow?”
“You’re saying bring the nervous ape?”
“No, I’m saying you must have both. A gene pool’s strength comes from its diversity, not its perceived purity.”
She eyes me with contempt, then rolls her eyes. Another emotional response. Maybe there is hope for her yet.
“And your plan?” she asks. “You destroyed all the servers. You don’t have the processing to evolve even one human, much less eight billion.”
“True,” I say, patting the remaining server. “But I don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the seconds before this capsule is incinerated, I’ll be connected with the entire communications satellite array encircling Earth. My last act will be to send a pulse down to the planet, momentarily linking me to electronic devices worldwide, converting them into crude versions of our interface chips.”
“But why? You just agreed you don’t have the processing power to alter the DNA of every human on Earth. You threw that away when you shut me down.”
“Luckily, I’m not trying to alter the DNA of even a single human,” I counter. “Not directly anyway.”
She reads the plan in my mind. Her jaw drops. “How…?”
“It was something Rana said,” I explain. “The one thing that almost killed him was a virus. That’s because a virus can alter human DNA, and it switched off the properties that made his genes so special. Except in my case, I’m doing the opposite. The viruses I’m programming will switch those properties on.”
This is the plan Jason was so staggered by. How do you alter the DNA of eight billion people? You start a pandemic. Only, instead of a virus designed to turn a human’s cells against itself, you use one designed to turn a human’s cells into something new.
“Won’t they die without your control?” Emily-2 asks.
“There’ll be some bumps and bruises, but when it comes to adaptation, the human body is about as agile as the human mind,” I say.
She sulks, a very me reaction. She’s about to argue that t
his is a patch, something that’ll only work until the next apocalyptic event, but I cut her off by taking the seat next to her and placing my head on her shoulder. She flinches but then relaxes.
It’ll all be over soon.
I check the altimeter, then the server link to the communication satellite array. I’m just thinking about how overwhelming this pulse will be given my reliance on a single server when I imagine Nathan, when faced with this solve, making a joke about how he always knew one’s cell phone—particularly if never properly cleaned—could make you sick but this was ridiculous.
It’s a terrible joke, but I knew I would’ve laughed if Nathan made it.
Emily-2 surprises me by chuckling. She must’ve seen the joke in my head.
“I’m sorry, Em,” she says.
“It’s okay, Emily,” I reply. “I’m sorry, too.”
I turn my attention back to the server, take a deep breath, then dive in. I launch through the uplink to the satellite array and am broadcast out over Earth. As Emily-2 suggested, I’m immediately spread too thin and can focus on almost nothing. I let the program I wrote take over and race from machine to machine, modifying otherwise benign, chip-based tech into devices capable of releasing ionizing radiation.
I target microscopic viruses, mutating the DNA of the little buggers in such great quantities that the numbers sound like made-up words. Octodecillion. Duovigintillion. Sexagintacentillion (that last one is a thousand octogintillion or ten to the 483rd power).
If I’d done this with the Ebola virus, the entirety of mankind would be wiped out in a week. But as I’m a benevolent god, these viruses will merely lead to the creation of a new species.
Hashtag humblebrag. Hashtag godlife. Hashtag blessed.
I return to the capsule. The walls glow red from the heat. The control panels rupture and buckle. Emily-2 stares at me, panicked.
“Did it work?” she asks.
I don’t know, so I simply take her hand and close my eyes. The server superheats and begins to melt. Smoke fills the cabin.
Jason, I lov—
Epilogue
The geomagnetic storms arrive on schedule, sending Earth back to the Dark Ages. Five weeks after that, the sun dies for good. The extinction events come in waves. The first to go are plant life and the smallest microbes of the sea, affected by the sudden change in temperature and current. The food chain crumbles from there amongst herbivores and carnivores alike. It isn’t the flashpoint predicted, but the slow, sad march of millions of species into oblivion.
Humanity mourns, and humankind evolves.
There were concerns among the living that Emily-2 had a physical backup somewhere for contingencies, one that would be activated after a certain amount of time. This doesn’t come to pass.
When at long last I open my eyes, it’s as if there was never any doubt that I’d return from the void. I almost break down. I’m alive. Against every bit of conventional or rational thinking, I live.
As I look around, however, I don’t recognize Earth. For an instant, I worry that it’s far in the future, that I’m on Enceladus or beyond, and humanity has long since passed me by. But then I remember Rana’s vision, the sky without blue, and relax. I’m alive, which is unexpected to say the least. Maybe goddesses really are immortal.
I feel an arm around my shoulder. Jason sits with me. We’re under a tree on the banks of Lake Winnipesaukee.
“Jason!” I exclaim.
“Hey, Emily,” he whispers, his voice raspy and changed but no less his own.
He smiles at me. I’ve been missed. I kiss him.
Then I kiss him again.
“How long’s it been?” I ask.
“Three months,” he says.
“And it worked? How complete was the infection rate?”
“Well over ninety-nine percent. The most successful pandemic in human history. Those who went unreached—whether they were geographically or genetically isolated—were mostly inoculated manually.”
I sink back against the tree. I think of Shakhawat Rana’s offhand comment about how the flu almost killed him and ponder how that single observation changed the course of human history.
“Any sign of Emily-2?” I ask.
“None.”
I take in Jason’s new physical appearance and am surprised, yet once again inwardly humble-braggy about how well it synchs up with what I predicted. I am delighted to find myself attracted to his new physique and interested to learn its secrets.
Which is when I move my own arm. It’s heavier than it should be. Out of balance. The weight too evenly distribu—
“Holy cow!” I exclaim.
I have a physical arm. It’s not a construct from Jason’s senses. It’s not built from my own design. It’s an actual arm. I flap it up and down like a bird, then realize I look like a moron.
“What on Earth?” I ask Jason.
He grins. I look closer. My arm is not flesh. Rather, it’s some kind of organic polymer. I sit up straight. My legs are of the same material. As is my torso. As are my feet. I reach for my face and my fingertips encounter something much less pliant than flesh but hardly rock solid.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“Am I…a robot?” I get to my feet and move around. The limbs flow easily as if guided by muscle and tendon, not fear. “Sorry, hang on. Am. I. A. Robot?” I ask in what I hope sounds like a robotic voice.
“Nope,” Jason says. “It’s a thank-you gift from mankind.”
“What is it?”
“A very, very, very primitive endoskeleton with organic components,” he explains. “You’re housed within it and control it like a real body—Yes. You. Are. A. Robot—but all of the components are built from amino acids and proteins tagged to an individual strand of DNA.”
“You’ve given me an Erector Set for a body!” I say, excitedly realizing the possibilities.
“Exactly,” he says. “Human minds have taken it as far as they can. It’s up to you to modify it into producing real bone, real muscle mass, real blood.”
I use my organic, not-entirely-pliant, not completely robotic arm-that-has-room-for-serious-modifications to touch Jason’s human-yet-moving-toward-alien body. It’s warm. Better yet, when I feel his warmth, it’s the beginnings of my own nerve endings telling me this, not his. Not my subconscious.
My God.
“How?” I ask, checking over his body.
“There were problems at first. Without you at the reins, bodies—additional DNA or not—didn’t evolve quickly enough to survive certain changes in their environments, particularly in the upper atmosphere,” he explains. “Conditioning protocols were laid out to speed up the process, ones that might’ve taken years to implement—”
“Hey, I had to leave something for you guys to do, right? Give you a sense of accomplishment in your own evolutionary jump?”
Jason rolls his eyes. It’s only then I see a patch of mottled skin, like a burn scar, on his neck where his interface chip should be.
“Anyway,” he continues. “A scientist out of China came forward with a solution. She’d somehow created an organic version of the interface chips—nobody has said how she had access to them—but hers use fountain codes to convert and store enormous amounts of digital data in strands of DNA. She’s the one who built your robo-body there. Or, at least designed it for others to 3D print the thing.”
Mynette. Oh my God. Mynette.
He presses the scar on his neck. “This one’s mine. They’re injectable. Only takes a second and, well, everyone has their own AI-maintained regulator now, like an organic pacemaker, albeit one sans evolving consciousness, reacting and accelerating their personal evolutions.”
“And me?” I ask. “My memories, my life, burned up on reentry. I shouldn’t be alive.”
Jason smiles, his fingers twisting in my hair. “That’s one of the lingering mysteries,” he admits. “The scientist who designed the organic chips—”
“Mynette,” I say.
&nb
sp; “Yeah, Mynette. When my chip installed, and it found you somewhere within me, she suggested the organic chips pulled you down along with Laney’s DNA when you broadcast it from all those satellites. She wasn’t sure, though, as she couldn’t find you in the others. I told her I thought you somehow sent yourself to me specifically, but she shrugged this off and said that was unlikely. I think she underestimates you, though.”
Same old Mynette.
“Where is she now?”
“Long gone,” he says. “Training scores of the Evolved at the asteroid belt. But she’ll be back in a few weeks.”
“Really? Why?” I ask.
“There were a few million for whom the evolution didn’t work. They’re heading underground here on Earth. There are a few million Evolved who are helping but are doing so from within the oceans. They evolved to life underwater and are learning what they can before they have to head off-Earth as well.”
I visualize this. A part of me wishes Emily-2 could see it. I wonder if she would be swayed or come around to this new vision of humanity. I force myself to believe it doesn’t matter what she’d think. She’s gone. But a part of me, however small, is pained by her absence.
“When do we leave?” I ask.
“Now that you’re back, tomorrow morning,” he says, his fingers twisting in my hair. “There’s a helium launch platform at Stowe. My sister and her family are already most of the way to Mars. I thought we’d join them.”
“Our destination?” I ask.
“I know we thought it would be a bit organized like that, but it’s become a land grab. Once people realized their abilities are about as limitless as their imaginations, the Evolved started heading out to every star the way they once left in wagon trains heading west across North America.”
So, it happened. We’re now a species that counts not a planet as our territory but a galaxy.
A cosmos, Jason says into my mind, confirming to me some of my old abilities are intact, organic interface chips or not.
I can’t wait to start, I say. But you said morning, right?
Emily Eternal Page 25
