Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (31 page)

“Whoa!” Rich shouted out to her. “Thel! Wait! I got the hard drive,” he said, holding it up for her to see. “He gave it to me.”

“Thel, is that really you?” Aldous asked, astonished to see her awake and returned to her body.

“You better believe it,” Thel replied, her fingers still pulsating energy.

“James figured out how to break through the trapdoor code,” Aldous said, his hand coming to his forehead as the disbelief set in even further.

“Actually,” Thel said with a slightly proud smile, “
I
figured it out.”

Aldous’s eyebrows knitted furiously. “That’s not possible,” he responded. “No mere human could’ve—” He stopped himself before he continued.

“What?” Rich reacted. “What do you mean?” he asked the chief. “How would you know that?”

“Because
it was him
,” Thel said coldly. “All along. I
knew
it.”

Aldous’s face went pale and he shook his head, distraught. “Milady, you do not know the half of it. You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“Yeah? How’s about you tell me, old man?”

Aldous turned back to Rich, his eyes immediately falling on the hard drive in Rich’s grasp that contained the sim—an entire world within a box—and James’s and the A.I.’s core patterns within it. “James and the A.I.—they have no body to which to return. They remain trapped,” he said, as much to himself as to Thel as he sought confirmation.

“Not for long,” Thel responded. “James’s body survived the impact that destroyed Earth. As soon as we get a signal booster strong enough—”

Aldous shook his head violently at the news, as though he were attempting to shake off a leash, fruitlessly fighting the will of his master. “Enough!” he shouted. “Enough. Oh my dear God,” he said, as he put his hand to his lips, partially covering his mouth. His eyes twitched as he seemed to attempt to generate an alternative course of action in his imagination, but he quickly realized, dread filling his heart, that there was nothing to be done.

“You’ve done the impossible,” Aldous uttered. “The trapdoor was impossible for a human to have broken it. Which means I’ve been betrayed.”

“
You’ve
been betrayed?” Thel repeated the chief, astounded by Aldous’s reaction.

“That’s correct,” Aldous confirmed, matter-of-factly as he turned to her, the look in his eye telling Thel that all of the people in the room’s safety was in immediate peril. “And if I’ve been betrayed,” Aldous continued, “we’ve
all
been betrayed.”

“What the hell is he—” Rich began before Thel cut him off.

“Rich! Protect the hard drive!” she screamed out.

Rich turned to Thel and the deadly serious expression of concern on her face told him that he’d better heed her warning. He ignited his protective magnetic field just in time.

Aldous’s lips curled up atavistically, and he unleashed the full power at his disposal, blasting out energy in every direction, instantly felling all of the Purists in the room and slamming Rich backward against the wall once again, and slamming Thel against the doors to the command center, causing the doors to become unhinged and fly with her for several meters down the adjacent hallway.

2

“He’s right!” Jules echoed Paine as she hooked her arm hard over the railing of the catwalk, careful not to be hit by the fast moving debris that rocketed toward them from above. “The gravity well is too strong for it be anything else! We should be able to fly out of here but the gravity’s too powerful to break free from! It’s one of them!”

“One of what?” Djanet shot back as she, too, held on for dear life, her feet being sucked to some unseen point at the back of the ship, which felt as though it were pointing nose up when it should’ve been floating steadily in deep space.

“An infinity computer!” Jules answered, yelling over the nearly deafening sound of the extraordinarily large ship’s hull buckling in billions of places at once. “It’s what the nanobots
always
eventually build. Perfectly, mathematically, predictable—it’s a tiny black hole, but even a black hole just a few meters across is powerful enough to swallow the entire ship!”

“This is where the bodies are built, right?” Paine confirmed with Jules.

Jules nodded. “Yes, ninety-nine percent of our collective’s replication capability is in the
Constructor
.”

Paine turned to Old-timer. “It’s a strategic strike,” he said. “V-SINN’s not appearing here by accident. It wants to make sure these androids can’t rebuild.”

“V-SINN never does anything by accident,” Samantha added in agreement. “It’s always pure, unfeeling, mathematical precision. It’s strategy. Paine’s right, this ship’s finished!”

“And we’ll be finished if we can’t figure out a way to escape this gravity well!” Djanet shouted. “If we can’t fly out of here, what can we do?”

Jules turned her head and watched with an expression of awe and horror as she saw the monolithic towers of the replicator swaying, some of them beginning to crack, their metallic frames fracturing, splitting in half from the gravity’s extreme pressure, now focused on their midpoints as they were horizontal in orientation. “There’s one chance!” she shouted over the sound of the unimaginable destruction.

“What?” Old-timer asked desperately.

“Large portions of the ship have atmospheric controls—the most concentrated are in Eden but there’s atmospheric control in the replicator too!”

“Oh my God,” Djanet responded, putting two and two together. “You can’t seriously be suggesting—”

“Look!” Jules shouted, as she pointed far into the distance. As the pillars collapsed, one by one, the ship’s hull, nearly a dozen kilometers from their current position, came into view.

They each turned their heads to see what she was referring to. A giant zipper crack, so long that it was, by the second, resembling more and more a canyon, was suddenly in clear view.

“When the hull breaches,” Jules shouted, “
if
the breach is big enough, there’s going to be an explosive decompression! It might give us the propulsion we need to escape the gravity well!”

“Yeah,” Djanet shouted back, “
if
we survive being sucked out of the ship through a debris field of jagged metal objects moving at speeds that could even slice an android in half!”

“We’ll survive!” Old-timer shouted. “Every one, stay close to me. When the decompression happens, I can protect us.”

Daniella’s panicked expression was instantly replaced with disbelief. “Craig! Even you can’t—”

“I can!” Old-timer shouted, determinedly. “I can save us! Trust me! Just get close—”

Before he could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by a bullet whizzing unexpectedly past his face from above, a bullet that cut right through the center of the catwalk, slicing it cleanly in two and causing it to buckle, sending the entire group plunging toward their deaths below them in the heart of darkness that was the infinity computer.

3

Aldous turned to Rich, who struggled to get back to his feet. They were both cocooned now in their magnetic fields, their communication shifting to their mind’s eyes. “Richard, I’m sorry, but I must ask you to return the hard drive to me.”

“No can do, Chief,” Rich said, his voice beginning to shake with panic.

“What’s going on?” James shouted.

“The chief’s trying to kill us!” Rich shouted to him in return.

Aldous’s face suddenly changed as he heard Rich’s communication with James. He shook his head. “I’m not trying to kill you, Richard, and I’m not trying to kill James or the A.I. But Richard, they can
never
leave that simulation. That was the agreement I made and a duty that
I
alone can carry out. Do you understand?”

“Keep him talking, Rich,” James said. “Buy us some time.”

“Yeah, I understand,” Rich replied. “You’re a traitor. I get it.”

“Normal ethics don’t apply in this situation, Richard. To you, I’m a traitor, but to everyone in this solar system who lives to see the future because of my actions today, I’m a savior.”

“Delusions of grandeur,” Rich responded, his eyes wide. “You just disabled the Purists’ command center. They’re not going to be thanking you for saving them if they’re assimilated!”

“
When
they’re assimilated,” Aldous corrected. “It was inevitable.” He narrowed his eyes. “Only the timing was off. Something went wrong in the sim. I was betrayed, but I don’t know yet why or by whom.”

Rich scoffed, his palm going to his forehead. “Oh dear Lord, I am in a comedy!”

“I’m afraid not, Richard,” Aldous replied. “And there will be no Deus ex machina to intervene this time. I’m making sure of that. Now, please, hand over the hard drive. I give you my word I will protect it, and I’ll make sure the androids take you painlessly.”

“He can’t touch you, Rich,” James pointed out. “If he could break your force-field, he would’ve done it already .”

“He’s waiting for the androids to arrive,” the A.I. added.

Rich nodded. “Your word is…what would Old-timer say? Oh yeah. A steaming pile of horse—”

“Stop, Richard,” Aldous warned as Rich began to back out of the corner Aldous had backed him in to, making his way slowly to the steps of the command center toward the exit. “If the androids have to take back that sim from you, I can’t guarantee its safety. I’m trying to save
our
friends here, Richard. Please, be reasonable.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Rich responded, “but you disabled the Purists’ defenses almost two minutes ago. There was a whole world full of androids in orbit just itching to get down here. Are you sure your backup is coming?”

Aldous’s face nearly formed a smile at Rich’s absurd suggestion. He paused for a moment, and Rich saw the flash of information before Aldous’s eyes as he seemed to check on something. Whatever the answer was that he found, it contorted his face into an expression of dread.

“Oh my God,” Aldous whispered.

“What’s wrong,
friend
?” Rich asked. “Betrayed again?”

“We’re already too late,” Aldous uttered. In shock, he pulled out a small, black object from his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand.

Rich’s expression reached a new level of surprise. “Is that...an assimilator?” he reacted. “They
gave
you one?”

Aldous nodded as he looked up at Rich in utter defeat. “For my wife,” he confirmed. “She’d never have gone along with my plan. So I did it while she was sleeping.” He stroked the side of the device with his index finger as though he was stroking the side of Samantha’s cheek.

“I can’t believe you assimilated your wife,” Rich said, disgusted. “You have no lim—”

“Richard!” Aldous screamed in response, snapping his head around, his eyes suddenly burning with fury. “Do you know what’s happening right this second?” He gesticulated violently, gesturing toward the sky that was far above them, several meters of concrete and ocean separating them. “The ship the androids call the
Constructor
, a ship where more than ninety-nine percent of their people are built, is being devoured by an infinity computer.”

“A what now?”

“In layman’s terms, Richard, it’s a black hole,” Aldous continued. “A perfect computing device, built by the nans.”

“Oh my God,” James reacted when he overheard the news, immediately exchanging looks of terror with the A.I. “Is it possible?”

Rich heard James’s reaction and tried to make sense out of what was happening. “But…how could…”

“It’s inevitable,” Aldous responded gutturally, as though the pressure of a secret kept for decades could finally be released. “It’s exactly what Trans-human is—the unavoidable consequence of mathematical perfection—and it’s eating the goddamn multiverse! Devouring it!
That’s
what I was trying to prevent, Richard!
That’s
what I’ve been trying to save us from!”

“Is it possible he’s telling the truth, James?” Thel suddenly asked, having tapped into the conversation moments earlier as she slowly made her way back to the command center’s door after recovering enough from Aldous’s salvo against her.

“I-I don’t know,” James replied.

Aldous looked up at Thel, his bottom lip actually protruding slightly in a pout, his eyes beginning to glisten as tears welled in them. “I never wanted this to happen,” he suddenly said. “Please tell James for me, Thel. I never wanted this. I tried to protect them—James and the A.I., but I was betrayed, and now we’ve run out of time.”

“Uh, James,” Rich said in a panic, “this son-of-a-nut-job just completely lost his mind! He’s got a crazy look in his eye. I need some help here!”

Within the sim, James appeared out of options, too stunned to formulate a plan.

Aldous, however, had settled on the only course of action that made sense to him. “I’m sorry,” he repeated as he put the assimilator away, back into his pocket and then looked upward, holding his hands above his head, energy beginning to pulsate on his fingertips.

“Aldous! Don’t do it!” Thel shouted as she realized what Earth’s formerly most powerful man’s desperate final bid to protect the universe from Trans-human would be.

She tried to rush toward him, but it was too late. He blasted through the ceiling of the command center, allowing the power of an entire ocean to crash down upon their heads.