Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (22 page)

33

Rich could barely move; only his left index finger twitched as he realized he’d been pushed beyond any of the extreme stress levels he’d experienced before. He’d faced death so many times, battled these androids before, but he’d
never
seen anything like what his eyes now beheld.

The wave of android bodies had swarmed the mainframe’s protective magnetic force-field once again, only to find themselves shredded by a dense, living fog of nanobots that ate each of them alive, relentlessly devouring the millions of android bodies just meters above Rich’s head. He watched as desperate android after android hit the surface of the field, only to have their flesh eaten within seconds, the metal skeletons underneath suddenly exposed as the flesh was consumed before the skeletons too were shredded. It was like watching them fall into a high-powered blender, their powerful bodies succumbing again and again…
but they just kept coming
.

“This makes no sense. This is absurd,” Rich whispered to himself, his lips trembling. “If this isn’t Hell, I don’t know what is.”

“Worse than Dante,” Aldous suddenly observed through their mind’s eye connection. “Worse than Blake.”

“I’ll take your word on that, Chief,” Rich replied, his mouth dry as he closed his eyes, blocking out the utter carnage and horror, trying to protect his mind from the trauma of the implacable chaos.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Aldous said. Rich noted that Aldous seemed to grunt, as though he were carrying some sort of burden.

“Good news first, please,” Rich replied.

“We’re going to survive this,” Aldous said, still huffing as he sounded to Rich to be hurrying as he carried whatever it was that caused him so much difficulty.

“That’s not fair. You’re double-dipping your good news,” Rich said, his eyebrows raised. “You already told me that good news earlier. You’re just dressing up the bad news that’s coming, aren’t you?”

“Well…” Aldous began, his voice no longer in Rich’s mind’s eye but coming from behind him as he hurried to reach him, Thel’s unconscious body over his shoulder. “I’m afraid we will have to endure the impact. As you can see, I’m no longer in control of the mainframe.”

Rich’s brow furrowed instantly. “Whoa, wait a sec’! Where’s James’s body?”

“I couldn’t carry both of them,” Aldous replied as he tilted his head toward the unconscious Thel before kneeling and laying her on the soft earth. He turned to the small ship Rich had arrived in. “We need to get her on board—”

“I’ll get him!” Rich shouted, cutting Aldous off as he started to fly toward the mainframe building. Aldous grabbed his ankle to stop him, pulling him back to the ground where the duo thudded hard to the ground, sending a plume of dust up around them. Rich noted that Aldous was stronger than he looked.

“No! There isn’t time! Look!” Aldous shouted as he pointed up to the canopy of the mainframe’s force-field.

Rich looked up to see the nanobot storm that had been defending them dispersing, the wisps of microscopic robotic warriors now blowing away, clearing like dust in the wind. When the dust cleared enough, Rich’s mouth dropped and he, likewise dropped to his knees. “For the love of God.”

The entire sky, right to the horizon line, was now taken up by the rust-colored, pockmarked hull of the android ship.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Aldous uttered. “I should’ve asked you to help me transport James’s body, but I didn’t realize the material it was made of would be so dense—it was heavier than you could imagine—I couldn’t move him an inch, even with all my might. But don’t worry,” he patted the black, square object that was attached to him via a black strap over his shoulder. “I downloaded their sim into this hard drive. It contains their patterns. We may lose James’s body and the mainframe, but
we’ll all
survive this. I swear it.”

Rich couldn’t respond. He looked up, wide-eyed, at the monstrous spacecraft, a ship that looked to him to be the size of an entire world—and watched the object that was about to destroy his home planet get closer and closer by the second.

“Djanet?” he finally managed to call out weakly through his mind’s eye. There was no response. “Edmund?” he asked. “Linda?” he spoke. No one spoke back.

“Richard,” Aldous finally said, in an unnervingly calm tone. “Do you trust me?”

Rich turned to him, still unable to speak or even nod his head in response.

“The mainframe’s magnetic field will fail because the mainframe is embedded in the earth, and when that monstrosity collides with it, the ground will be obliterated.” Aldous grabbed Rich’s shoulders and tried to get the dazed man to look him in the eye as he continued, “But
your
magnetic field
can
withstand this. We need to get Thel on board and then you’ll need to cocoon the ship. The android ship is moving at four kilometers per second and will hit us in twelve seconds. It’ll be the first giant impact the Earth has experienced in four and a half billion years and, just like the last time, an incident that gave birth to our current moon, it’ll vaporize the water in the oceans and cause the Earth’s surface to become an ocean of magma.”

“Are you—what the fu—“ Rich uttered, his lips quivering.

“Listen to me, Richard!” Aldous shouted as he dragged him with one hand while literally dragging Thel with the other. Rich was aware enough to know to help him, and together, they began dragging Thel’s unconscious body onto the ship. “We can do this! Are you ready?”

“No,” Rich replied as the platform raised up into the ship, taking Aldous and Thel with it.

Aldous sighed.

“Too bad,” he replied through their mind’s eye as Rich stood alone in the darkness, outside the ship. “We’re out of time. Use your magnetic field, Richard.
Save us
.”

Rich, in a trance-like state, ignited his cocoon, making sure that he protected the entire ship, along with himself.

In the next instant, the whole world flashed white as though they were on the surface of the sun, Rich was knocked upside down, and a second later he was in utter darkness.

PART 3

1

“What the hell am I seeing?” Old-timer asked as he stopped, images from the shared android collective communication network streaming into his field of vision.

The images appeared to be of Earth, after the impact of an android ship the size of Brazil, right on the western shore of North America. The giant impact was so intense that a shockwave of superheated, red-hot gas was surrounding the globe, eating away the blue oceans and the green, living continents and leaving a smoldering-hot magma glowing in its wake. Giant pieces of debris, some of them the size of entire countries were being flung from the surface, and the android ship was in the process of disappearing completely, partially embedding itself under the crust of the Earth and partially disintegrating due to the force of impact and the unimaginable heat and destructive energy produced in the collision. Androids all over the serene setting of the city hidden safely at the center of the
Constructor
cheered as though they’d won an important battle in a war.

“Tell me
this
isn’t real,” Old-timer whispered to Anisim. “Tell me this is a simulation.”

“It-it’s real,” Anisim admitted, reluctant as he considered the pain he might feel as a result of Old-timer’s instinctual desire for instant retribution, yet equally afraid to lie. “It’s live, a live feed.”

The duo stood in the shadow of a beautiful, modern building that towered high on the edge of a body of water that shimmered in the light of an artificial sun that glowed overhead. There was a breeze that felt as real as anything Old-timer had ever felt on his skin on Earth, perhaps even more real.

Old-timer sneered and pulled Anisim with him into the empty alley between the building and its equally beautiful neighboring structure, and once he was sure no one was watching, he pushed Anisim roughly against the cool concrete of the building in the shadow of the false sun. “My wife was down there, you son-of-a-bitch. Your people just murdered her...and they’re cheering?”

“They’re happy. You don’t realize it but those people—your wife included—were
saved
,” Anisim protested. “Not to mention countless more people in countless other universes. My Earth was destroyed, too, but I’m grateful for it. Friend, look, we’re not your enemies.”

“My
wife
was down there,” Old-timer repeated, twisting the tendril embedded in the back of Anisim’s skull.

“She wasn’t down there,” Anisim protested, barely able to respond and wincing painfully as every movement of the tendril inside his skull seared with pain. “You’d lost contact with her, which means she must’ve been assimilated, and if she was assimilated—”

“Then there’ll be an android body built for her here?”

“Yes,” Anisim replied with a grunt after aborting an attempt to nod.

Old-timer looked up at the building Anisim was pressed against. “Your girlfriend lives here?”

“Not my girlfriend, but yes,” Anisim replied, regretfully. “Her name is Jules.”

“She can locate my wife?”

“Yes,” Anisim confirmed again. “She can locate all your friends and awaken them early.”

Old-timer bit his bottom lip as he considered this. They’d lost the Earth, and Daniella and Djanet had been lost with it, but if they’d been assimilated, at least he could spare them the so-called
education
to which the androids subjected their newest members.

“Okay,” Old-timer relented, falling back on plan B as there was no other option, “get us up to her apartment.”

“There’s a small problem,” Anisim revealed.

“It better be small,” Old-timer growled threateningly.

“There’s no reason for her to expect me, and she’s gotta invite me in. I can’t just walk into her building unless she clears me.”

“So put on the charm,” Old-timer insisted.

“And what about you? You’re a complete stranger.”

“No, I’m not,” Old-timer said with a sardonic smile, “we’re best pals. I’m your oldest friend in the world. Got it?”

“Got it,” Anisim replied, acquiescing once he realized his protests were falling on deaf ears.

Half a minute later, they stood side by side at the front door of the high-rise, Old-timer keeping just one wiry connection to Anisim, jacked into the back of the android’s skull, practically working him like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Jules’s surprised visage suddenly appeared on a view screen next to the door. She appeared young, though one never knew with an android, her hair a strawberry blonde, slightly darker, but still reminiscent of Samantha’s. “Hello? Anisim? What are
you
doing here?” she asked.

“Uh…I-I know this is a bit awkward, Jules, but—”

“Shouldn’t you be taking part in the rescue?” she asked.

Old-timer kept smiling, not even flinching at the euphemism the androids clearly used instead of the more accurate word:
attack
.

Anisim shrugged. “I was called back. As you can see, it went really smoothly.”

“Yeah, it really did,” Jules replied, a hint of a smile crossing her lips. Old-timer couldn’t help but think it was a look of pride. “1 must’ve pulled off some sort of brilliant tactical
maneuver
again, but what else is new, right?”

“Ha-ha. Yeah,” Anisim agreed, his tone nervous, the interaction awkward. Old-timer knew he had to interject.

“By golly, you are
far
more beautiful than Anisim could possibly have described,” he said, stunning the young woman.

“Wh-what?” she reacted, the smile vanishing, replaced by a look of shock.

“I-I didn’t—” Anisim began to try to explain.

“Anisim didn’t want to put you out,” Old-timer continued, “but I insisted.” He put his hand on his heart to feign earnestness. “Please forgive him. Look, we’re really old friends, and he’s always said Jules was the best girl he ever went on a date with and, with the rescue happening today and all, I said to him, ‘Look, Anisim, if we get called back today because things go really well, I want you to finally introduce me to that girl you won’t shut up about.’” He smiled. “And so…” he made a grand flourish with his hand to emphasize the point, “we’re here.”

Jules put a self-conscious hand up to fix her hair before beginning to utter a response, “I wish you’d let me know first—”

“I’m sorry—” Anisim began to apologize.

“He really is,” Old-timer cut him off, “he tried to talk me out of it. But I wouldn’t let him. We were just so happy that the rescue went so well and, well, Anisim thought we’d be perfect for each other and, I just wanted to meet you so gosh darn much. But look, I can see we’re putting you out. Maybe we can just come back another time?”

“No, no,” Jules replied, her face coloring. Old-timer marveled that an android’s face could flush. “It’s okay, I’m so flattered.” Her eyes went to Anisim and she added, seemingly embarrassed, “Anisim, I had no idea.”

“Me neither,” Anisim replied.

Old-timer resisted the urge to twist the tendril.

Luckily, Jules didn’t seem to catch the verbal misstep. “Just pardon the mess, okay? But come on up.”

“Oh, thank you. You’ve made a couple a fella’s days, milady.”

“Aw, shucks,” Jules replied as the door unlocked. “See you in a minute.” Her image vanished.

“That was close,” Old-timer noted, his faux, flirty smile completely vanished.

“I’m going to burn in Hell for this,” Anisim replied as they made their way to the inner, hollowed out core of the building. They began to float upward toward Jules’s apartment. “She’s a nice girl. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“Hey, I don’t remember us calling the android collective and asking you to ‘
rescue
’ us, for Christ’s sakes. You people are so deluded, it’s—”

“We’re not the deluded ones,” Anisim replied. “I promise you. Please don’t hurt her.”

They arrived outside Jules’s door, floating to the ledge at her doorstep on the thirtieth floor.

“I’ll be as gentle with her as your kind have been with mine,” Old-timer replied coldly.