Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (23 page)

2

It’s the moment of truth
, James thought.
Will the candidate help us or turn his back?

James reached up, his eyes locked on those of the candidate as the A.I. and Thel stood, their necks craned upward as they watched the unfolding of the telling events while the NPCs crashed and clawed against the elevator door. It sounded as though the outside door of the elevator had already partially given way and only the thin interior door stood between them and their prey. They were seconds from breaking in.

To the shared relief of the A.I. and the post-humans, the candidate did, indeed, reach back, his gloved hand grasping James’s, and James turned to grab Thel’s hand, who in turn grasped the hand of the A.I., who, inexplicably to Thel, made sure he grabbed the hand of the Kali avatar.

“Hang on tight,” the candidate said as he began to fly upward, through the hole in the roof that the A.I. had blasted with his gun, de-patternizing it. The cold rain pelted them as they lifted off into the night, leaving the candidate’s building below them—a building now crawling with NPCs. It was a sight the A.I. had seen before, the walls seeming to move with the untold number of bodies scaling the outside of the structure.

“Where do we go?” Thel shouted out.

James turned to the skyline of the sim city. The tallest rooftops were obscured by the heavy cloak of cloud and rain. “Head to the highest buildings,” James yelled to the candidate. “We’ll lose them in the canopy!”

The candidate nodded as he flew, slowly and cautiously, into the dark, gothic sky. He chose the tallest building in the city and they landed on the roof, the A.I. and Kali touching down first, followed by the others.

“Are we stuck now?” Thel asked, as she brushed the gravel from the rooftop from the knees of her new, black body armor. “We just have to wait here to be rescued by Aldous?”

“I don’t believe that would be a wise course of action,” the A.I. returned.

“Why not?” James asked. “We’ll already’ve lost the mainframe by now, not to mention Earth.”

“Because Thel was right earlier,” the A.I. returned. “Aldous,
is
a suspect, and a strong one at that.”

“What?” Thel reacted, astonished. “You said there was no way—”

“I was lying. He was listening in on our conversation,” the A.I. answered. “I couldn’t let him know we suspected him, but you
were
spot on. Aldous does indeed benefit from keeping James and I trapped in the sim, and he also benefits from the destruction of the mainframe.”

“How?” James asked, flabbergasted. “If the mainframe’s destroyed, it can’t be a power grab. He’s just as powerless as any of us—”

“It wasn’t power that he wanted for himself,” the A.I. replied, “but power he didn’t want you and I to have.” He turned to the candidate. “And power he didn’t want you to have either.”

“Trans-human,” James realized. “You’re suggesting he did all this—gave up the Earth—caused us to be assimilated by the androids—all because he didn’t want Trans-human to be reactivated?”

“Possibly,” the A.I. replied cautiously. “I’m only suggesting that Aldous is a suspect, not that he’s
definitely
the perpetrator responsible for our current circumstances.”

“I don’t know,” James dubiously replied. “I’ve butted heads with that obnoxious, pigheaded egomaniac ever since I was a child, ever since the council identified me as gifted. But betraying his race? I just can’t believe he’d—”

“We can’t depend on belief, James,” the A.I. replied. “We have to depend on the facts, no matter how cold and hard they are. Indeed, Aldous is not a perfect suspect. He knew Trans-human had already been activated and that it operated in an exemplary manner when I was in charge of it. His fear of it then, would seem to be irrational.”

“Unless there was something he was afraid of in particular,” Thel pointed out, “one aspect.”

James nodded. “He warned Old-timer just last night about Planck technology, but as dangerous as parallel universe-hopping might be, was he so afraid of it that he’d destroy the mainframe and leave us defenseless just to stop it?”

“And it begs the question, what does Trans-human have to do with Planck technology?” the A.I. added.

James’s arms were crossed as he began to pace across the rooftop, his head bowed as the rain drenched his hair and ran down his face, dripping from his chin. “Trans-human would have almost infinite computing capability—a mind that could unlock innumerable mysteries. What if there was a mystery he didn’t want unlocked?”

The A.I.’s eyebrow raised as he considered the question.

“Perhaps,” the candidate suddenly spoke up, “this Aldous person feared that Trans-human might be the mind that would destroy the universe as the stranger warned me?”

James’s mouth opened slightly as he snapped his head around and locked eyes with the A.I. “
Aldous
was the visitor that the candidate had in the sim?”

“It’s plausible,” the A.I. agreed. “It’s plausible indeed.”

3

WAKING UP underneath the Earth’s crust was akin to waking up in the ninth level of Hell as far as Rich was concerned.

Aldous tilted his companion’s head up to help rouse him. “You’re alive,” he said.

Rich turned his head to see that Aldous had brought him inside of the ship after Rich had been injured in their fall. His forcefield had remained on despite his lack of consciousness, performing correctly according to its design, but it couldn’t protect him from the ship he also cocooned and the structure had hit him, knocking him unconscious and temporarily blackening his eye. A few minutes had since past and the nans had recovered him sufficiently that Aldous knew it was safe to wake him.

Rich turned from Aldous and looked outside of the view screen to see the perfect blackness all around them outside of the green glow of their magnetic field. “Tell me that was a nightmare,” Rich spoke.

“I’m afraid not,” Aldous replied as he inhaled deeply and puffed out his chest, once again stoically pulling his shoulders back. “We’ve lost the mainframe. We’ve lost Earth, but we haven’t lost our lives, and that, in the end, is what counts.”

“Yeah,” Rich forced a sarcastic smile, “you’re right. Things aren’t so bad. Just lost Earth and everyone we know and love, not to mention our whole way of life. We’re buried under who-knows-how-many kilometers of earth, but that’s okay, because even if we can make it to the surface, we’re officially the androids’s bitches for all time. Thanks for cheering me up, Chief! You always know how to look on the bright side of life.”

“Richard, I know this is difficult to process, but we’ve all lost our home and, if I may be so bold, your negative demeanor makes it very difficult to enjoy your company.”

Rich’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Oh my God. Kettle. Pot. Black!”

“At any rate,” Aldous said, ignoring the jab as he refocused himself and looked down at Thel’s unconscious body, “your magnetic field held, just as I’d calculated it would. We’re safe.”

“James isn’t,” Rich shot back. “His body was obliterated, and without the mainframe, there’s no way to reconstruct a body for him.”

Aldous patted the black hard drive on his hip. “But he
is
alive, Richard, lest we forget.”

“Wow. You’re a ray of sunshine and positivity today, Chief,” he said as he sat up, rigid with fury. “You know, we should hang out more. I know this great place in San Francisco at Fisherman’s Wharf—oh wait. IT WAS DESTROYED! What are you not getting about this, Chief? We just lost Earth!
We failed!
”

“We saved lives,” Aldous countered, his face like stone, only his brow furrowing slightly. “Humanity hasn’t been wiped out. Mars is terraformed. The Purists were given the newly terraformed Venus by James. All is not lost, Rich Borges. Humanity will endure.”

Rich took in a deep breath. “Apparently, Chief, you live in your own world. Wish I could hang out with you there, but I’m in this place called
reality
. And speaking of,” he looked straight up. “We’ve got to get back to the surface. I don’t want to be stuck down here for a second longer. I’m just now realizing that I’m definitely claustrophobic.”

“Agreed,” Aldous replied, “this would make anyone feel claustrophobic, including me.”

He held out his hand for Rich and helped him off of the table he was on, not far from where Thel was lying motionless.

Rich moved to the pilot’s seat. “It may take a few minutes to move all of this debris and rubble aside. We better get going.”

They set off, flying upward slowly, the earth giving way in front of them like ice giving way in front of an arctic icebreaking vessel before the post-human era. They continued making their way up for several minutes before either of them spoke again.

Rich, grumbly, broke the silence. “Do you have a large family, Chief?”

Aldous hesitated before answering. He’d usually brush off questions about his personal affairs as intrusive and rude, but he knew that the usual customs didn’t apply in that instance. “I don’t,” he answered, uncomfortably. “It’s just my wife and I.” He quickly steered the conversation back to Rich. “What about you, Richard?”

Rich’s eyes stared forward, unblinking. “Yes. Big family. Kids. Grand kids. Great grand kids.”

Aldous had no words to comfort a man who he knew had to be crippled with worry. He stayed silent.

“Why no kids?” Rich suddenly asked. “I mean, no offence, but you’re old as all hell, aren’t you? Like 150 or something? And you never had children?”

“164 actually,” Aldous answered. “And I didn’t…” Aldous paused as he struggled to find sufficient words. “I’ve seen very different eras. Eras when children just didn’t seem to make sense. And by the time I found the person I knew I’d love forever, children made even less sense.”

“Why not?”

Aldous licked his lips as he carefully considered his words. “By then, I felt everyone in the world was
my
responsibility. I didn’t want to have anyone else in my life that I favored over my people. Does that make sense?”

Rich nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird. It’s sad. It isn’t really true. But it makes sense. What about your wife? Was she okay with this?”

Aldous thought of Samantha; then, almost as quickly, he thought of Craig Emilson, the ghost who had haunted their relationship for three-quarters of a century. “Children didn’t seem natural to either of us. It was a mutual decision.”

The ceiling above them suddenly went from a perfect blackness to emanating an orange glow. It was a glow that grew in intensity, veins of liquid magma becoming more and more prevalent the higher they climbed. They each remained silent as it became clear that they were only seconds from breaching the surface, seconds from seeing the remnants of the Earth.

When they emerged, they emerged spectacularly, the green cocoon of their magnetic field engulfed entirely in glowing, orange magma that quickly cooled and broke away in smoldering, coal-black chunks of what used to be Earth, the smoke trails of the chunks spiraling down to the orange surface. When enough of the magma had cooled and broken away, they saw the full extent of the damage to their home—and it was total.

They slowed as they climbed above the new, magma ocean, and marveled as they saw what was left of the android ship, a structure that was two-thirds destroyed, the tail end of it sinking slowly into the liquid surface of the planet, melting as it became one with the body it had destroyed, trillions and trillions of fragments of debris forming a plume all around it, most of it still glowing red hot even as it orbited high above the Earth itself.

“Look out,” Rich said as they narrowly avoided the body of an android woman, unconscious as it dropped to the surface of the Earth so far below. It was a body that Aldous surmised must have been blown into what used to be the stratosphere in the wake of the impact of the android vessel, and was now being pulled back down by the Earth’s gravity to the lava’s surface below.

Rich flipped on the rearview so that they could regard the totality of their surroundings. The whole Earth was glowing orange with debris—red hot dust had been catapulted into orbit, some of it at rates so fast that they’d escaped Earth’s orbit and were hurtling away from the Earth into deep space. Chunks of Earth the size of mountain ranges had also been expelled and were spinning, wildly out of control as they burned like hot coals, orbiting the planet they’d been a part of for billions of years.

“The Earth,” Rich began, “the greatest miracle the universe has ever seen—is gone.” He turned to Aldous. “It looks like you and your wife were right not to have children. At least you didn’t have to live through witnessing their death.”

Aldous shook his head, his face pale as he took in the enormity of the destruction. “No Richard,” he corrected, “I saw my children vanish too.” He steeled himself again, clearing his throat before speaking in as strong a tone as he could muster. “Your children aren’t dead. You can’t give up hope.”