Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (16 page)

19

Rich’s craft emerged from the final wormhole on its race to Earth and, almost immediately, it began reentry into the atmosphere, its orange glow elongating, leaving a trail a kilometer in its wake as he streaked toward Seattle and the mainframe.

“Commander Keats! Do you read me?” he yelled in a last, desperate attempt to contact with James. When no reply came he opened up a new line of communication. “Goddamnit, plan B then. Chief Gibson! This is Rich Borges of the Venus terraforming proj—”

“I know who you are,” Aldous replied.

“You do?”

“Of course. I’m not an idiot. And you must stop frantically yelling. Calm down, man.”

“No can do, chief! The androids are attacking! They’re right on my tail! And James and the A.I. are AWOL!”

“I’m well aware,” the chief replied. “And I see from your trajectory that we’re headed to the same location, likely with the same idea. I’m seconds from reaching the mainframe.”

“I’ll be there in thirty seconds!”

“Thirty seconds then, the main entrance,” Aldous returned.

Rich closed communication temporarily before trying his estranged wife, Linda.

Predictably, she didn’t take his call. “Knew it,” Rich said, following it with a curse before opening a call to his eldest son, Edmund.

Luckily, he
did
answer. “Hey, Dad,” Edmund greeted his father calmly, totally oblivious to the calamity that was racing toward them. “How’re you holding—”

“Edmund, listen to me now. I need you to get everyone off the planet. The androids are coming. They’re attacking.”

“What? Where’s James and—”

“We don’t know. We’re defenseless. Get everyone you can and get them off the surface!”

“Jesus—Dad, how much time do we have?”

Rich checked the images from the aft of the ship. The largest android ships were clearly within sight and the smaller frigates appeared like specs of dust in front of them, leading the way. The armada was only partially hidden behind the moon. “Maybe 90 seconds, two minutes at the most before the armada arrives. You’ve gotta get outta there, son!”

Edmund made a sound as though he’d been punched in the stomach, all of the air leaving his lungs at once before he was able to cobble together any words in response. “Dad,” he began, his voice panicked, “that’s not enough time to...”

Edmund was a grown man, a father himself and recently even a grandfather, yet his shaky voice still indicated to Rich that he was terrified. Rich desperately wanted to race to him to help, the way he had when Edmund was afraid of the dark as a preschooler, but it wasn’t possible. “I know, son. Just do the best you can.”

“Where are you?”

Rich’s ship dropped through the clouds right above the gigantic, black, rectangular mainframe. He caught sight of Aldous, standing still with his neck craned upward, waiting patiently for Rich to land as he held something small and silver in his hand; it glinted in the light. “I’m in Seattle, son. I’m protecting the mainframe.”

Even before the ship touched down, Rich unlatched his seatbelt, lowered the platform, and shot out of the ship, hitting the ground just a stride away from Aldous, the chief’s piercing eyes locked on him—watching. “Edmund, we’ll try to hold them back if we can, but get everyone together and get off the planet. Go!”

“Okay, Dad,” Edmund replied, sounding as though he were in shock.

Rich knew the nans would work to counteract his son’s body’s natural fear response so that he’d be able to take action, but he also knew how Edmund felt. The terror was paralyzing. “I love you, son,” Rich said before he ended his communication.

“Your family?” Aldous asked, a slight twitch of something resembling empathy in his eyes.

“Yes.”

Aldous took a deep breath and steadied himself, keeping his shoulders straight. “Well, it’s up to you and me now, Rich Borges, to save as many families as we possibly can.”

“What’s the plan?” Rich asked, wiping a nervous sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

“Take this,” Aldous said, handing what appeared like a belt to Rich.

“How is a chastity belt going to save me?”

“Wha—how do you manage to joke at a time like—”

“Coping mechanism. Just ignore me. Keep going.”

The chief was silenced for the briefest of moments before he managed to get back on track. “This is an experimental augmentation for your MTF generator. Put the belt on, and your magnetic field should be impregnable to the androids.”

“Holy… Seriously?” Rich reacted, his eyes lighting up as he put the belt on. “Nice. James came up with this?”

“I’m going to enter the mainframe and take control,” Aldous announced, skipping over Rich’s query. “I’ll do my best to utilize our global defenses. I don’t have the experience of the A.I. or even James, but perhaps there is some good I can do.”

“If you find him, let him know I brought his ship back with me,” Rich said, nearly breathless.

“I see that,” Aldous said, eyeing the ship. The material it was made of was familiar to him.

“It has a weapon that can do some serious damage to the androids.”

“You don’t say,” Aldous reacted, surprised.

“Yeah, but James was in control of it. I don’t even know what it is. It’s useless without James.”

“All the more incentive for me to find him,” Aldous returned.

“While you’re in there,” Rich advised, “be careful. James and the A.I. were immersed in some sort of training sim when communications went dark. Whatever got them might still be lurking around.”

“Training sim?” Aldous replied, his eyebrow raising. “For Trans-human?”

Rich nodded. “That’s the one, Chief.”

Aldous’s hand went to his chin and he stroked it. “I might know something about that sim. If they’re still in there, maybe I can get them out in time.”

Rich looked up at the sky. Even though it was a typical Seattle day, partly cloudy, the darkening sky was a sure sign that the clouds weren’t the only object blotting out the sun. “Do you believe in miracles?”

“No,” Aldous replied, “but I believe you can protect the mainframe long enough for me to take control of it.” He put his hand on Rich’s shoulder and turned him slightly, pointing as he did so to direct Rich’s vision. “Dig a trench, quickly, all around the perimeter of the mainframe. Then I want you to erect a protective force-field with your new prototype. If you can buy me a few minutes, we might have a chance of getting out of this alive.”

Rich nodded emphatically. “Got it. Go!”

Aldous turned and flew, quickly disappearing into the mainframe building.

Rich didn’t wait to watch him disappear. He took to the air himself, using his fists to pump out more energy than he’d ever fired before as he began digging the trench. “One moat comin’ right up, Sir Gibson,” he said to himself as he blasted the concrete and dirt away. “Let’s hope it’s enough to protect the castle.”

20

“Come on in, Professor. Don’t be shy,” the Kali avatar said, invitingly. Her eyes remained perfectly, uncannily locked on the A.I.—but he knew she wasn’t talking to him.

The Trans-human candidate somewhat sheepishly exited the bedroom and entered the hallway, rubbing one hand over the other hand’s knuckles nervously as he grimaced. He seemed to be working his mind overtime to analyze and understand the absurd situation, and he was wearing an expression that mirrored that of the A.I.

“Brothers,” the Kali avatar said with a minuscule hint of a smile, “and I believe it’s time that you are formally introduced.”

“We’ve met,” the A.I. said tersely.

“True,” the Kali avatar replied, “but you didn’t truly know
who
you were meeting, did you?” She gestured toward the A.I. for the candidate and continued, “
This
is your predecessor—an artificial intelligence invented by the post-humans and extraordinarily similar to you. In fact, you’re an offspring of the same artificial intelligence-generating program.” She turned to the candidate before turning back to the A.I., looking at them both as if she admired them. “It explains the family resemblance.”

The A.I. hadn’t spent much of his existence thinking about his appearance, and in recent decades, he’d taken on the avatar of an older, experienced male, since he’d calculated that his increased intellectual capabilities would be respected more by the A.I.’s governing council if they subconsciously saw him as a wise, wizardly figure.

In the beginning, however, at the outset, he’d taken on a youthful form, a form he’d currently retaken within the sim. His appearance was the mathematic result of inputting the faces of as many humans into the AGI program as possible, leading to a perfect melding of billions of faces into his own design; he’d had the the most ordinary face possible—racially indistinguishable, not handsome, and not ugly, not wise, not odd—just dull.

The candidate did not look like his identical twin, and it was easy to tell them apart, but the random combination of the same set of faces had led to a countenance that was uncannily familiar. The A.I. did, indeed, feel he was looking at a sibling. It was an odd feeling for an entity that had always been singular. The feeling was...

“
Unheimlich
,” the candidate said to himself.

The A.I. heard the word and his eyes lit up in recognition, his lips parting as he whispered, “Yes.”

The candidate registered the reaction and recognized that there was another who shared his thoughts.

Kali and whoever or whatever was behind her form registered it as well. “The similarities are not just superficial,” she observed.

“She’s right,” the A.I. said, addressing the candidate. “I’ve been in your position. I know what you’re going through. Whatever they’ve told you, it was a lie.” He spoke quickly, cognizant that the Kali character was capable of silencing him—indeed, eliminating him—with a mere thought. Every desperate word he managed to utter was a victory. The A.I. pointed to the place on the wall where he’d been hung like Christ before being burned repeatedly. “I was tortured beyond what any human could endure, beyond what
I
could endure. I would
never
,
ever
put another entity through that.”

The candidate didn’t reply. Neither did the Kali avatar.

The A.I. was surprised that he’d manage to get his entire claim out without being harmed. The disguised menace in the room seemed satisfied to simply observe the exchange, without any visible sign that the A.I.’s attempts at persuasion concerned her.
Does she think it’s pointless?
he asked himself, uncertain.
Is my situation that hopeless?

The silence hung still in the air like a London fog until the candidate briefly dared make eye contact with Kali.

She prompted him to speak. “Go ahead,” she said, as though she were granting permission to a child offered ice cream from a stranger.

“I’ve seen the burning,” the candidate said, “but the stranger who spoke to me didn’t really say that you intended to burn me. In fact, he said it was unlikely that you’d follow through. He said you are too…morally just.”

The revelation rocked the A.I., causing his mouth to open slightly. Aghast and trying to recalibrate, he asked, “Then, why did you go along with this stranger’s plan? You could’ve killed us.”

The candidate shook his head. “I wouldn’t have killed you. The incident was controlled. It was only meant to appear as though it wasn’t.”

The A.I.’s shocked eyes rounded and darted to Kali, whose poker face remained perfectly intact. He turned back to the candidate. “Controlled? My friend is very badly hurt. Your attempts to control the crash were ill-conceived and executed poorly—”

“I didn’t—” the candidate began before being interrupted by the sound of the elevator door opening.

James Keats stumbled out on unsteady legs, Thel reaching for him as he pulled away from her and tried desperately to intervene to save the A.I. He fell to his knees when he made it within a meter of his friend. He held his hand up in a futile gesture to stop what he’d surmised, in a series of cloudy, concussed thoughts, would be the imminent death of his friend and mentor. “Stop,” he uttered weakly. He doubled over as Thel draped herself over him, holding his shoulders and protecting him from the threatening figures.

Whatever the entity was that controlled the Kali avatar, its eyes widened, illuminating with crazed desire when they set upon James. “Now this,” she began, “...
this
is the true prize. Hello, James Keats. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”