Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (2 page)

“Craig,” Aldous continued, turning back to Old-timer, “she’s right. I have no right to ask any more of you. I’m sorry I disturbed your sleep. Goodnight.” He turned and lifted off the surface of the roof, his green magnetic field engaging almost immediately, facilitating his lightning-fast blast-off into the starry night. A second later, he was just a greenish twinkle in a sea of sparkling twinkles in the sky.

Daniella shook her head. “I don’t like that, Craig. I don’t like that one bit.”

Old-timer sighed. “It was…unorthodox, wasn’t it?”

“What makes him think he can just show up here like—”

“It’s okay, honey,” Old-timer replied, putting his arm around his wife, about to take her under his arm and back down to the ground before she stopped him.

“It’s not okay,” she insisted vehemently. “For him to come here, there must be something really wrong. Why does he need you to deal with it?”

“He’s just…” Old-timer paused as he tried to find the words to describe Aldous’s frame of mind. “He’s just having trouble adjusting to the new world, that’s all. We don’t have anything to worry about. You were right, James and the A.I. have this handled.”

“Exactly,” Daniella said, folding her arms and allowing Old-timer to gently lift her off the roof and float with her back down to their front porch.

“Still,” Old-timer began, “I should speak with James.”

Daniella suddenly went rigid and pulled away. “What? Why?”

Old-timer shrugged. “Because he’s my friend. Because I know something about the universe that he might not. I should give him a heads-up, don’t you think?”

She shook her head, her lips pulled into a tight frown. “I don’t want you getting involved in these things anymore, Craig. You were just supposed to be a terraformer, not a…” she stopped, her eyes darting back and forth as she, exasperated, tried to find the word.

“Not a what?” Old-timer asked, his eyes narrowed.

She looked up at him. “Not a superman. Not the world’s hero. No one can ask that of you, Craig. You didn’t sign up for that.”

Old-timer smiled. “The world doesn’t need me to be superman.” He put his arm around her shoulder and they walked back into their home. “The world’s already got that job covered.”

2

James Keats walked out of the A.I.’s mainframe building, utilizing the senses of his chrome-colored, dramatically enhanced body, his glowing, azure eyes scanning the night sky, his lips pulled back into a grimace.

“This is troubling to say the least,” the A.I. commented to James, both through James’s mind’s eye and also in the A.I.’s operator position, a position that James shared with him in cyberspace. As was now usual, James concomitantly controlled his superhuman body in the real world.

“Indeed,” James replied, waiting as he narrowed his eyes as he examined the picture that was forming in his mind’s eye, thanks to the millions of measurements his new body sent out into the space around him. “I can sense them. They think they’re getting the drop on us, but they’re disturbing space-time, and there are ripples in the gravitational field.”

“It’s an unexpected development,” the A.I. observed.

“It is,” James agreed, “which means we need to be careful. If we couldn’t predict this beforehand, then we’re missing crucial information.” James’s eyes shifted slightly, and he held his arm up, facing his palm up toward the night sky. “Something major is playing out,” he continued as he seemed to prepare for an arrival, “and we need to know what it is.”

An instant later, a wormhole opened up in the atmosphere, just dozens of meters from where James stood and above the mainframe. In real time, the events occurred faster than a blink of an eye, but when James shared the operator’s position in the mainframe, he could slow down his perception of time dramatically: his electric-fast thinking capacity allowing him to perceive the android ship, remarkably similar to the one the androids had used when trying to destroy the sun with an anti-matter missile just weeks earlier. Like the previous ship, its skin was translucent, and James could see the androids who’d either been forced or manipulated into volunteering, bracing for impact as they performed their suicide mission, the plan obviously to crash into the A.I.’s mainframe and destroy it, like kamikazes. James examined the contents of the ship and noted that it contained yet another anti-matter missile. Had he not detected it and intercepted it, this would’ve not only destroyed the mainframe—it would’ve destroyed the entire planet.

Fortunately, his early-warning system had allowed him to anticipate the exact moment the wormhole was about to open and to warp the gravitational field around the ship, creating a nearly impenetrable vice of space-time, catching the ship as though in a gigantic, invisible baseball glove. Unfortunately, he also knew he had to crush the ship and the device before it could detonate, and he closed the vice until all that was left was a tiny marble that appeared perfectly black. It floated gently into James’s gleaming hand as he further manipulated the gravitational field around it, drawing it toward him. James examined it when it reached him, almost expressionlessly, but the A.I. could see the pain in the post-human’s eyes.

“You had no choice,” the A.I. pointed out, his tone consoling. “If the anti-matter missile had detonated, not even your warp bubble could’ve contained it. You just saved every life in the solar system.”

“I know,” James replied, “but I just killed five people.”

“You had no choice,” the A.I. repeated softly. “And their patterns were no doubt recorded and uploaded to the collective before they set forth on this suicide run.”

“The fact that there are copies of these people being rebuilt by the android collective makes the deaths of these individual entities no less tragic,” James replied. “They’re still dead...by my hand.”

“My son, since we’ve yet to determine the mechanism they use to upload their patterns to the collective, we can’t be sure that these bodies they’re sending on suicide missions
are not the copies
, so to speak. You may have just terminated
drones
and nothing more.”

“You’re grasping at straws.”

“Regardless, even if these androids
have
died, their deaths are on another’s hands, and we both know who that almost certainly is.”

James closed his eyes for a moment before he turned and walked back toward the mainframe, most of his attention returning to his pattern, next to the A.I. in the operator’s position. There, his appearance mirrored his biological human form, the form he still preferred to present himself in when in cyberspace. “Yes, we do.
1
clearly survived my destruction of her body, yet I haven’t been able to detect her pattern in the android armada.”

“Neither have I,” the A.I. replied. “However, we both know that it’s possible to hide a pattern if it’s divided and kept in small enough portions.”

“That would explain how she avoided my detection,” James returned, “but it doesn’t explain how she’s still calling the shots. If her pattern is in pieces, then she’d be dormant. This was clearly a plan initiated by her, but we should’ve been able to detect her if she’s currently conscious and operating.”

“As I warned you before your last confrontation with her, she’s not to be underestimated. She’s a far more worthy foe than we previously realized.”

James nodded. “She is.”

“Still, attempting to destroy the mainframe and the Earth along with it, had no chance of success,” the A.I. began, his tone ponderous. “She would’ve known that we’d detect it and thwart it.”

“That’s not entirely true,” James countered. “She may have counted on me tagging along with our diplomatic mission. She may have gambled that my body is the only means we have of detecting space-time distortions, and with me too far away to protect Earth—”

“I think it is now you, who is grasping at straws. It’s highly unlikely that she wouldn’t have assumed that I also have the ability to detect space-time distortions. James, the fact that we’re both trying so hard to make sense out of these behaviors is extremely disconcerting. Her motivations for trying so desperately to destroy this solar system elude me.”

James nodded in agreement. “It doesn’t seem to make sense. With all of our vast ability to calculate probability, still, 1’s bizarre strategy has us on the defensive. As I said, we’re missing crucial information. We have to be on guard until that information is uncovered.”

“This makes Richard’s and Djanet’s diplomatic mission all the more important. It may provide us with the clues we need to start piecing together this puzzle.”

“Yeah,” James replied. “Speaking of, they’re almost there. Time to refocus our attention. Keep your eyes peeled and your ear to the ground.”

The A.I. nodded. “Indeed.”

3

“Rich, how’s it looking over there, pal?” James asked via his mind’s eye connection to his longtime friend and fellow terraformer.

Rich Borges sat at the front of the ship he and Djanet were piloting toward an android armada of ships that was so gigantic, its collective mass generated gravity that drew them in like a tractor beam. The ship they were closing in on at that moment completely filled their front view screen, and Rich’s repulsed expression mirrored the revulsion he felt in his gut as he observed the monstrosity in front of them. The ships reminded Rich of pictures he’d seen of cancerous tumors in the days before nans, when humans were subject to the whims of chance and their random personal genetic codes. Like a cancer, the ships didn’t appear designed; there was no holistic vision. Rather, they were simply masses in space, malignant structures that spread out in every direction—long, ragged, jutting structures sometimes extending like metallic rivers for dozens of kilometers in a myriad of directions. There was no symmetry or beauty; just a dreadful arbitrariness that increased the feeling of despair that neither Rich nor Djanet could shake off.

“It looks like…Hell,” Rich replied.

“I understand. It’s not pretty,” James answered. “I appreciate you guys volunteering for this.”

“Yeah,” Rich replied, “and that’s a decision I almost immediately regretted. The last time I saw these guys, even though it technically never happened, they turned me into a robot, so you know, this is…awkward.”

“The memory is real,” James answered, “so your concerns are understandable. That’s why I designed the craft you’re in to be a fortress. If they’ve scanned you, they know you can do severe damage to them if they behave hostilely. That should act as a deterrent.”

“Unless they squash us before we can use the weapons,” Rich countered.

“I’ve got control of the ship’s weapons. If they try to harm you, they won’t be around long enough to regret it.”

Rich considered the image of the ship’s weapons blasting a gaping hole into the side of the android ship in his mind and decided it was comforting enough to persuade him to continue with the mission. “Thank you, Commander.”

“We’re docking now, James,” Djanet informed him as the ship entered through one of the openings in the android ship’s demented architecture. “We’ll check in when we’ve reached the landing platform.”

“Copy,” James replied.

Djanet turned to Rich and let loose a long sigh. “It feels weird, huh?”

Rich nodded. “
Really
weird.”

“You know, we don’t have to be a part of this. There’s enough going on in our personal lives—especially yours—to keep us busy enough.”

“I know, but that’s the kind of ‘busy’ I’d like to avoid,” Rich replied.

Djanet’s shoulders slumped, an overwhelming guilt weighing them down. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to put you through—”

Rich forced a smile and looked up at her. “Nobody twisted my arm to do anything. I made a major life decision, and there’s no going back. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but I’ve got no choice. I can’t turn back time. James can, I can’t. And I wouldn’t want to if I could anyway.”

Djanet’s expression brightened. “You’re sure?”

Rich sighed. “I’m sure I’d rather be surrounded by a trillion androids that are plotting to kill me than be at home with Linda, who is probably also plotting to kill me.”

Djanet frowned. “It’s that bad, huh?”

Rich shrugged. “What’d I expect? It’s only natural.”

Djanet looked out the front view screen at the awe-inspiring, yet repugnant image unfolding before her. The ship was being guided by its navigation system to the coordinates that had been agreed upon with the androids, a destination that it was becoming clear was too deep within the bowels of the structure for comfort. Androids were flying through the open space, groups of them stopping to hover and stare as the post-humans’s ship flew past. In the distance, other androids stood on an endless series of walkways built to connect various structures in the interior. In totality, they appeared like webs of neurons connecting the innards of a madman’s mind, and Rich and Djanet were being sucked farther and farther inside the madness. “I don’t like the look of this.”

“Me neither.” Rich turned to her as he licked his lips nervously. “Maybe you’re right.”

Djanet turned to him with a quizzical expression.

“After this,” Rich continued, “we’re out. Someone else oughta handle this stuff from now on.”