Post-Human Trilogy Part 36

"You bet."

Rich walked briskly across the complex, Thel pushing them to move with a purpose. Rich noted the looks of the people in the complex who saw them as they walked by. They were back in their black uniforms now, and everyone knew who they were. The people were afraid, and Rich couldn't understand why. Those people were the ones who ate flesh.

Thel was oblivious, almost not seeing where they were going, just worriedly staring into her imagination. What could have caused James to get up after suffering from such a terrible trauma? "Why is he in a lab?" she asked.

"I honestly don't know, Thel. Things have been moving really quickly. I'm not in the loop, but something is going down."

They reached the door to the lab, and two guards moved aside to let them enter. Thel stopped for a moment when she saw James, back in his uniform, leaning over a countertop strewn with mechanical equipment and ancient computers. Old-timer and Djanet were working on nearby equipment. General Wong himself was there, his arms folded and a look of intense concern painted across his well-lined face.

James didn't notice her come in at first and instead remained fixed above some sort of contraption, peering into a cylindrical protrusion.

"James!" Thel shouted.

James looked up then and smiled. "Thel," he replied weakly.

Thel rushed toward him, but he held his arm up with a grimace to keep her at bay. "Slow! Go slow."

Thel slowed her approach and embraced him gently. "You must be in agony."

"It hurts," he affirmed before kissing her.

The general looked across the room to Rich, as though Rich could explain the scene to him. Rich just shrugged and looked down at his feet for a moment while the kiss continued.

Thel broke from James's lips and asked, "What's going on?"

James took a deep breath before answering. "I'm going to kill the A.I."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I want to show you something," James said to Thel and Rich. He took Thel by the hand and guided her over to one of the strange contraptions on the counter. "This is a microscope. If you look into the eyepiece, you'll see a magnified view of one of my nans. I brought it back online, and look what happened."

Thel looked into the eyepiece and watched the nan spin wildly, its sharp instruments thrashing violently. "Oh my G.o.d. This is how they died?"

James nodded in reply. "They were ripped apart from the inside."

"That monster," Rich whispered. A painful moment pa.s.sed. Old-timer and Djanet had turned away from their work and held their heads down as an impromptu moment of silence was observed.

"I'll get him," James promised.

"How? You can barely move!" Thel protested.

"I'll have that remedied in a few moments, though it doesn't really matter. I won't need my body for this."

"Well, it's official. I'm lost," Rich admitted.

"We've been working on the nans. We're going to reactivate them. We've figured out how to neutralize the virus."

"Speaking of which, Commander," Djanet interjected, "we're ready to do that now."

"Then do it," James replied.

Djanet turned to a computer console and hit a single b.u.t.ton. "Done," she informed the group.

"That's it? I don't feel anything," Rich observed.

James groaned from the other side of the room. When he suddenly doubled over, Thel reached for him immediately. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong-they're just busy. I need to lie down."

Thel and Rich helped to guide James over to a makeshift bed near Old-timer and Djanet.

"Rich, help me get my shirt off. You guys are going to want to see this. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."

Rich helped James remove his shirt. James lay as still as he could while the group, including General Wong, stood and observed; his ma.s.sive incision seemingly vanished before their eyes. His st.i.tches were pushed out of the skin and the bruising appeared to evaporate.

"My G.o.d," General Wong uttered.

James watched with hungry fascination as his body was repaired. "Amazing," he whispered. His color returned. He closed his eyes for a moment once the process seemed to be finished before saying, in his returned, strong voice, "That's better." He sat up and got off the bed. "Okay, guys, let's finish the final preparations."

"Final preparations for what?" Thel demanded.

"I'm going to enter the mainframe," James replied.

"What? How is that possible? It's guarded by millions of those machines. You'd never get close-"

"I'm not physically going to enter it," James replied.

"Then how?" Thel asked. Again, James took a deep breath before beginning his explanation. "Thel, this is going to sound a little...strange, but you know that in my position, I was privy to top-secret information."

"Yes," she answered, beginning to sense that she was not going to like what she was about to hear.

"I was also part of many different projects. One of them was codenamed Death's Counterfeit. The goal of the project was to send a person's consciousness, literally, into cybers.p.a.ce."

"That's impossible," Thel replied, only half-believing her own words.

"It's possible, Thel. I know, because I was their test subject. I've been there before."

Another moment of silence filled the room, but Rich broke it. "You mean you're actually going to kill that b.a.s.t.a.r.d? I love it," he said, smiling.

"But he might kill you," Thel protested.

James put his hands on Thel's shoulder and looked directly into her eyes. "No he won't, Thel. I'm going to enter his mainframe on a signal the A.I. doesn't know about. That smug b.a.s.t.a.r.d thinks he knows everything, but the Council was smart enough to keep some information away from him. I'll enter as a signal he won't be able to detect, and I'll isolate his mother program. Once I've done that, he won't be able to access any of his defenses, so I'll be able to delete him."

"When you do it, tell him I said, h.e.l.lo," Rich said, contempt dripping from his lips.

"Don't do this, James," Thel pleaded. "I just got you back. I can't lose you again."

"You won't lose me, Thel...and I have to do this."

"Why? Why can't we just stay here? Why can't we start over here?"

"We can't escape him, Thel. Believe me, right now, the A.I. is breeding. He's using a process I invented to reproduce exponentially. He can reproduce far faster than any organism in the universe. Robots don't need to terraform. He can populate the solar system in a matter of days. He won't need Earth, and then there won't be anything stopping him from destroying it. He'll move on from there. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the terror we've unleashed? There is life out there, Thel. We may not have contacted it yet, but it's a mathematical certainty that it's out there. It won't just be us he destroys."

Thel stepped away from James and sat down on a nearby chair. "I can't believe it. It's actually worse than I thought."

"Do you see why I have to go?"

"But why alone, James? We could come with you!"

"It will take too long to configure a signal that can carry more than one person's neural pattern. Besides, I need you guys here to watch over my body. I'll appear to be in a deep sleep, but there won't be anything you can do to wake me. Only I can bring myself back."

"Will this nightmare never end?" Thel said.

James bent to one knee in front of Thel and lifted her chin. Her eyes were glossy with tears. "Thel, I promise you, I will destroy him...and I will be back."

Thel shook her head and shut her eyes tight. "Then go! Go right now! Because I can't stand this anymore! Kill it, James!"

James kissed her for a long moment on the cheek, then turned to the others. "Are we ready?"

"We're ready," Old-timer replied.

"Then let's do it." James took his place on the bed once again.

"Are you sure about this, buddy?" Old-timer asked his friend in a whisper quiet enough that Thel couldn't overhear.

"As sure as I can be."

"I don't like the sound of that," Old-timer responded grimly. "Take care of yourself. You still owe me that beer."

James smiled. "I never break a promise," he replied. "Okay. I'm ready."

"Wait!" Thel shouted before Djanet could initiate the transfer of consciousness. She sprung out of her chair and grasped James's hand tightly with her own as she kissed him hard. "You come back to me, you hear me?"

"I'll be back."

Thel kept her eyes locked on James, even as tears fell and landed on his neck.

"Do it, Djanet," James said.

Djanet hit a b.u.t.ton, and the life seemed to drain from James's body as though someone had unplugged the drain. His pupils shrank as his eyes shut, and his head turned slightly to one side. His grasp on Thel slackened to nothing.

"Is he okay?" Thel asked Djanet.

"He's perfect, Thel," Djanet replied as she looked at the read-outs on her computer screen.

"He's in," said Old-timer.

12.

Thel's love-drenched eyes gave way to a perfect blackness-a blackness so complete that, had James not experienced it before, he would have panicked, believing he were dead. "Death's counterfeit indeed," he said out loud.

He opened his mind's eye and began to navigate. He was in cybers.p.a.ce now-an endless eternity of infinite s.p.a.ce. He could reach any mainframe he wanted in the world, although most, if not all, had been taken over or destroyed by the A.I. It didn't matter. There was only one place he wanted to go anyway. He located the A.I. and clicked.

In an instant, he saw a blue orb in the distance. An instant later, the blueness had given way to a ma.s.sive, planet-sized circuitry. He had just enough time to make sure his feet were under him as he came into contact with the surface of the A.I. He stood to his feet and looked around himself at the colossal structure. The A.I. appeared like a planet of rectangular buildings. To James, it resembled the downtown cores of ancient cities in which boxy skysc.r.a.pers towered above paved streets. Each structure represented a file filled with information. James stood in one of the streets now, except there were no people or automobiles driving by; there was nothing but blackness at his feet. And as he peered upwards, there was perfect blackness in the sky. The buildings glowed an azure blue, but their light had nothing-no atmosphere of any sort-off of which it could reflect. The sky was empty and pure.

"Now where the h.e.l.l are you?"

James flew upwards to obtain a better perspective. He picked the highest structure he could see and came to a perch on top of it. Gold laser beams were flashing above him, streaking across the sky. They flashed so quickly that he couldn't tell where the starting point was versus the ending point. The lights comprised of information going to and fro from the mother program. He needed to find that program and to build a firewall around it to isolate it from the rest of itself so it could be deleted. The golden laser lights weren't helping. He turned a full 360 degrees, trying to get a sense of where the mother program might be. Far away in the distance, he made out what appeared to be a faint glow, almost imperceptible from where he was.

He lifted off and began to fly again, just skimming the rooftops and moving toward the white shape of light. As it became stronger, James knew he had found the mother program. "There you are." He moved quicker now. In cybers.p.a.ce, s.p.a.ce is almost irrelevant. With no wind or any objects to block progress, one's body essentially became an electric signal that could move virtually, at the speed of light. In mere moments, he was hovering overtop the mother program.

Its white light was phenomenal, and even in cybers.p.a.ce, James found himself having to squint. Thousands of golden beams of information were flashing in and being absorbed by the program every second. "Amazing," James whispered to himself before lowering down to the surface next to the whiteness.

It was time to build the firewall. James opened his mind's eye once again and began inputting the instructions and the location of the mother program. In seconds, it would be over.

"Are you looking for someone?" asked a familiar voice from behind.

James wheeled around in terror. The terrifying countenance and black eyes of the A.I. stared back at him.

13.

"Oh come now, James. Are you really surprised that I antic.i.p.ated your little plot? Surely you knew it couldn't be that easy."

James stepped away from the A.I. and pulled down the drop-down menu in his mind's eye to find the location of the computer back at the Purist complex. "Yes, of course. I've discovered you, so run back home. Lick your wounds," the A.I. said drolly. James clicked on the icon for the computer at the complex, but nothing happened; he couldn't escape. His eyes darted to the A.I. "You already know the answer, James. You've turned yourself into a virus, so I have quarantined you. You aren't going anywhere."

"How did you-"

"Know you were coming? You really can't guess? I know everything you know, James."

"Oh my G.o.d," James said, suddenly realizing the truth.

"That's right, James. The bio-molecular image of your brain that you so generously donated to the Governing Council. The map of your mind that was being used to improve the mental functioning of the rest of your species. I have it, James, and I've been able to reproduce a fully functioning working model of your mind. Say h.e.l.lo, James."

James whirled to look behind him and saw himself-his doppelganger. "What have you done?" James asked the A.I. as he looked at the worried face of his ghostly twin.

"I've re-created you. All I need to do is ask him if I wish to know what you are thinking or what your next move will be."