Post-Human Trilogy Part 11

"I think the man-the possessed man-is fighting against the demon that resides inside him," the priest replied.

"More pictures," Stead said to his photographer. "As many as you can get."

"He's keeping pretty still, sir," the photographer whispered. "These should turn out quite well."

"If they do, you'll be the most famous photographer in the world, my boy."

"There's definitely more than one ent.i.ty inhabiting that body," the priest observed, nearly breathless.

"What should we do?" asked the master-at-arms.

"I think we need to let the man try to get control of his body. Be on the ready."

"Craig," the A.I. began, in a neutral, informative tone, "I can tell you that 1,503 pa.s.sengers and crew die after t.i.tanic hits an iceberg. It is exceedingly likely that these witnesses will all die in the sinking and that those photographs will be lost."

"So?"

"So, you still have a chance to minimize your impact on this timeline. We can still retreat and allow this timeline to continue unaffected."

"Unaffected? That's a h.e.l.l of an insidious euphemism. What you're talking about is letting all of these people die-hundreds of men, women, and children-when we could prevent it."

The witnesses were jointly disturbed by Craig's second reference to their ultimate demise. It would have been easy to dismiss such ramblings, given that the ship had been deemed unsinkable, but coming from a man who was so obviously spiritually afflicted, the prophecy had a palpable direness to it that the men could not ignore.

The master-at-arms turned to one of the stewards. "I think it's time the Captain learned about this."

"Craig, you haven't fully considered the consequences of interfering in an alternate timeline," the A.I. urgently began to explain.

"Spare me," Craig said, cutting off the voice in his head. "There are thousands of people onboard and their lives are no less valuable than yours or mine. I'm going to save this ship whether you like it or not."

17.

WAKING UP, in this instance, was akin to resurrection. Samantha's eyes opened, but the room in which she found herself was as black as the inside of a coffin. Her first instinct was to ignite a pulse of green energy on her fingertips to illuminate the area, but it was to no avail. She opened her mind's eye, glad it was still functioning at least. A few clicks later, she had selected the night vision setting, and the room suddenly appeared before her, green and black.

She was sitting upright on a concrete floor. The room was nearly perfectly square, only a handful of meters by a handful of meters. Her hands were covered in some sort of liquid-it appeared black in the fluorescent green hue night vision. She rubbed her thumb and index finger together before darting out her tongue to taste it.

Blood.

What the h.e.l.l is going on here? she thought. She flipped through to a search screen on her mind's eye, searching for anyone else nearby. A signal was quickly approaching her position: Sanha.

The door to the room began to open, and she closed her eyes to shield them from the bright light as she switched back to normal vision. When she reopened her eyes, Sanha was in the doorway, but he wasn't walking. A Purist super soldier held him by the back of his neck, suspending him above the floor with only one of his cybernetic prosthetic arms. The soldier tossed Sanha roughly to the ground. Pale and covered in blood, Sanha crawled pathetically to the far wall and propped himself up against it before looking up at Samantha. "Hi, Sam."

Samantha looked up at the super soldier. He was leaning casually against the door frame as he lit an already half-smoked cigar. His helmet was removed, revealing his head of thick salt-and-pepper hair. Samantha's lips curled downward with disgust as she regarded the crosshatch of stretch marks that surrounded the soldier's cybernetic eyes.

"You don't know me," the soldier began, "but I know you." He stepped into the room and grinned as he shook his head. "Or at least I knew your former husband, Doc Emilson."

Samantha nearly gasped at the mention of Craig-what did this man know? Did he know Craig was back? How could he?

"I was his commanding officer fourteen years ago when he gave his life for his country-and all of humanity. Maybe he mentioned me?"

"Colonel Paine?"

Paine smiled. "That's right. That's right. Good memory." He scratched his head with his clawed fingers and then placed his mechanical hand on the back of his neck. "He gave his life. He gave his life." He looked toward the door as he spoke, as though he were conjuring the image of Craig's sacrifice in his imagination. He appeared genuinely moved. "Good solider. The best. Better than me."

His mouth shifted, forming a tight grimace as he turned to Samantha, the golden irises of his cybernetic eyes burning into her. "And here you are, p.i.s.sing on his memory, exchanging wedding vows with the devil himself." He shook his head, true disgust in his voice as he spoke. "Lady, I don't have one d.a.m.n ounce of sympathy for you."

"Samantha? Sam, it's me," Aldous suddenly said over her mind's eye. "Don't react. Don't let him know you're in contact with me."

Samantha's eyes were wild with astonishment.

"I thought you'd been killed, my love," Aldous continued. "I'd never have left if I would've known that you were still alive. It's bordering on miraculous."

Aldous had escaped? The Purists had overwhelmed the complex? What did they want with her?

"You know," Paine continued in his gravely voice, "I warned him about you. The day he gave his life to destroy all A.I. and save the species-I warned him. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, lady. Your husband was a hero. How could you betray him like this?"

"Don't listen to him, Sam," Aldous cautioned. He'd stolen a Jeep and was now speeding through the mountain pa.s.s, away from Mount Andromeda and toward the nearest city. "That man is a killer. He executed more than a dozen people without a second thought. Listen to me, Sam. You have to get away. Whatever you do, you have to get away. He's going to kill you if you don't."

She couldn't reply, but her throat was too knotted with fear to speak anyway. She looked toward the open door. Why weren't her powers working? If she could just fly- Paine watched her eye line and grinned. "Heh. Want out?"

She looked up into his cold, lifeless eyes.

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the small, spherical MTF generator that had previously been inside her. He tossed it to her, but it slipped out of her hand, the surface of the generator still wet with blood and tissue, and rolled to the corner of the room. Paine laughed. "While you were recovering, I had to do a little impromptu surgery," he said as he held the sharp fingers of his hand up like pincers to punctuate the point. "I think you've taken your last flight."

18.

"What time is it?" Craig asked the priest.

Befuddled, the priest looked to the master-at-arms, who pulled out his pocket watch.

"11:36 p.m.," he replied.

"What time does the ship go down?" Craig asked the A.I.

"Go down?" the priest replied, pale and terror-stricken.

"It strikes the iceberg at 11:40 p.m., Craig," replied the A.I.

"What?" Craig grunted in frustration. "Why didn't you tell me? Jesus! Let's go!"

"Craig," the A.I. calmly began in protest, "I cannot help you interfere in this timeline. It would be highly unethical."

"Unethical? You've gotta be kidding me. Letting more than 1,000 people die is ethical, then?"

"If you interfere here, Craig, you will open a Pandora's box the likes of which you do not comprehend-"

"Just spare me, okay?" Craig shouted in return. "This is simple. We have the power to act, to stop a tragedy, so we act. Got it?"

"I cannot partic.i.p.ate-"

"Fine, but don't get in my way."

The A.I. fell silent, but Craig remained floating in a stationary position just above the floor, still at the mercy of the A.I.

"Are you going to let me go?" Craig asked.

"I-I'm not sure I could stop you if I tried," the master-at-arms uttered in response.

"I'm not talking to you," Craig said. He pointed to his temple. "I'm talking to the computer in my head."

"What the devil?" the master-at-arms reacted in dismay.

"Computer?" William Stead suddenly spoke, his head c.o.c.king as he shook a memory loose-one buried deep. "You mean, like a difference engine?"

Craig's eyebrows knitted quizzically.

"A machine that computes?" Stead elaborated.

"Yes," Craig answered, "a machine that computes."

After a short moment of stunned silence, Stead finally guffawed. "d.a.m.n it, man, that's as daft a notion as I've ever heard. A difference engine is nearly ten feet tall and weighs a ton."

"It's not daft," Craig replied. "Remember this: when it comes to computers, the technology always gets a lot smaller and a lot more powerful-and in a hurry. And I'll prove it to you, if the machine in my head will release me."

"He's out of his mind," Stead whispered to the master-at-arms. "If he's as powerful as you say, we've all had it."

"You hear that?" Craig asked, speaking to the A.I. "Do I no longer have the right to free will? Can I not make choices anymore because you've decided to make them for me? Are you going to take that right?"

Another moment of silence pa.s.sed. Then, suddenly, Craig lowered to the ground and his green aura dissipated.

"Thank you," Craig said as he walked past the master-at-arms. "Tell the captain he's about to hit an iceberg and this 'unsinkable' ship's going to go down. If he turns now, he'll give himself a chance."

"That's lunacy!" the master-at-arms fired back. "It'll take a h.e.l.l of a lot more than an iceberg to sink this ship!"

Craig shook his head. "That's what I thought you'd say. Excuse me while I save your a.s.s." He pushed his way out of the room, then opened the doors to the outside deck. The night was moonless and dark, and the ocean was so calm that it appeared smooth, like a mirror. "I've never seen the ocean so calm," Craig commented as he gripped the railing, preparing to launch himself over and into flight. "I can actually see the individual reflections of stars on its surface. It's almost like gla.s.s."

"They are in a ma.s.sive ice field, but they do not even know it," the A.I. observed. "Simple logic should dictate that water can never be this calm in the open ocean and that, therefore, the t.i.tanic is no longer in the open ocean, but it won't occur to anyone on board."

Craig nodded. "Look, you don't have to help me if you don't want to," he said in a low voice to the A.I., "but this would be a lot easier with some a.s.sistance."

"You give me no choice, Craig. I'll a.s.sist you in order to keep you from killing yourself and me in the process."

Craig opened his mind's eye. The A.I. had taken the liberty of setting the clock to synch up with the master-at-arms's pocket watch. The display flipped from 11:38 to 11:39 p.m.

Suddenly, the lookout bell rang three times from the crow's nest high above the deck.

"The alarm bell just rang!" Craig shouted.

"They've spotted the iceberg," the A.I. replied. "If you intend to save the RMS t.i.tanic and its pa.s.sengers, you've less than a minute to do so."

19.

Aldous gripped the steering wheel of the Jeep as the vehicle sped dangerously through the several centimeters of slush that still covered the road, despite the late summer temperatures. The nuclear winter had reduced the temperatures in the area by twenty degrees Celsius for the past decade and a half, resulting in winters so bitterly cold that they were nearly unsurvivable. The summer months, usually hot and dry beyond the mountain pa.s.s at the edge of the prairies, now hosted temperatures barely above freezing. Luckily, precipitation in the area was low enough in the winter that, by the late summer months, the roads became briefly pa.s.sable once again.

He'd reached the eastern edge of what had once been the city of Calgary. The majority of the once-thriving metropolis had been bombed out during the war, the Chinese government hitting the city in an attempt to cut the Democratic Union off from its prime source of oil and gas. There was a tinge of irony in that strike, considering that Chinese firms actually owned most of the Athabasca oil fields that they were attempting to neutralize; however, the D.U. had nationalized the oil only months before the breakout of the war in an attempt to get China to capitulate and cease their attempts to develop strong A.I.

Calgary, despite the devastation wrought by the nuclear strikes and the years of nuclear winter that followed, refused to die. Indeed, with the strength of the sun having been reduced globally by the fallout in the upper atmosphere, severely negating solar reliability for power, the oil sands remained as an attractive source of energy. Using CO2 emissions to warm the planet seemed like a good idea, even to the scientists of the D.U. who had previously warned against them. It was now the era of geo-engineering, and warming the planet to combat the nuclear winter had seemingly taken the sin out of gasoline-powered engines and other fossil fuels.

As a result, Calgary remained a place of commerce in that new normal, populated by only the hardiest of individuals, especially those who were attracted by the chance to make a lot of money in a short period of time. Life in the city of just under 100,000 souls was nasty, brutish, and short. Something wicked that way went, and-as always seemed to be the way-thrived.

While he drove through the bombed out edges of the city, veering away from abandoned vehicles, most of which were nothing more than rotting metal husks, he continued to monitor his wife's plight. His chest was tighter than it had ever been as he operated on the edge of insanity while trying desperately to stay on the road, simultaneously watching his wife struggle for every breath.

Indeed, Samantha could see nothing as she remained tilted backward on a table at a forty-five-degree angle, her face covered with a large blue cloth, soaked with water, a super soldier holding a nozzle by her face as he sprayed her with more. It had been thirty seconds since Samantha had last taken a breath, and Aldous held his breath along with her.

Finally, the soldier released the pressure on the hose trigger and removed the sopping wet rag from Samantha's face.

She didn't breathe immediately; she needed to prepare herself for the deep inhalation that was to come momentarily. The torture had caused her to lose her ability to regulate her breathing. When the breath did come, it hurt her throat and chest, but it was a good pain, and was followed quickly by many shorter, life saving, beautiful breaths.

Samantha's eyes darted to the super soldier who was conducting the water-boarding, leaning on one hip, watching expressionless as she breathed. She suddenly recognized him. She hadn't before because of his cybernetic eyes and his helmet, but as he removed his helmet and placed it on the ground, the hairline, albeit slightly thinner, was a dead giveaway. Quickly, the pattern of his chiseled jawline and his narrow nose, along with the thin line of his lips registered with her.

"O'Brien!" she suddenly shouted.

O'Brien seemed to sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly as he grimaced. "That's right."

She smiled. She shouldn't have-she knew it was no laughing matter-but she suddenly smiled widely. After all, was this not the very definition of absurd? A moment so ridiculous inserting itself into reality that the serious narrative to which all involved clung-this battle between Purists and post-humans-was suddenly interrupted, making it impossible to carry on with the facade. Indeed, she smiled, then laughed uncontrollably.

"You just won't let it go," O'Brien said, not sharing in the joke. Indeed, he seemed extraordinarily annoyed by the interruption of his serious business.

"If you'd just..." she began, unable to finish because of her laughter. "I'm sorry, O'Brien, but if you just read the book, you'd understand why I'm laughing. I mean...I mean it's ridiculous! This coincidence! O'Brien in 1984 tortures Winston-just like what you're doing! I mean...G.o.d, just read the d.a.m.n book!"

O'Brien's grimace tightened as he stepped forward, deciding to forgo the rest of Samantha's scheduled breathing break and to continue with the water-boarding, tossing the sopping wet towel back onto her face, covering her mouth and nose. She screamed out under the towel in protest, but O'Brien squeezed the trigger on the nozzle of the hose, the jet of water silencing her instantly.