Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (40 page)

21

As James skimmed above the solar corona, as inhospitable a place as almost any in the universe, the temperatures rose to well above that of even the surface of the life-giving—and life-taking—orb. His temperature readings fluctuated wildly as he tried to concentrate on staying away from the worst hot spots, instead dodging coronal loops as he flew at high velocity, the sun’s magnetic field and the high temperature quickly turning his body into a streaking comet across the sky, complete with a tail, as his protective nano-scaffolding skin continued to be torn asunder by the nan consciousness, aided by the absurdly extreme heat. Indeed, there were coronal plasma bursts that he knew would melt even his protective skin if he touched them, and they burst forth unpredictably from the orb, exploding forth, driven by the intense magnetic activity, arcing beautifully but unpredictably from the sun’s surface. If he could stay away from them, he reasoned, yet continue to expose the nans that were eating him alive to the same extraordinarily destructive environment, then he might yet survive. He had to outlast them and have enough left of himself to propel away before the sun finished consuming him as well.

“I told you it’d be fun,” the nan consciousness seemed to whisper in his ear, delighting in the ride it was being taken for.

James tried not to, but he screamed out in pain as a coronal loop came too close for comfort, the temperature suddenly increasing by more than a million degrees Kelvin. He maneuvered away, but it was clear that his skin couldn’t protect him against heat like that, even if his pain receptors were dialed down.

The silver lining was that the unintended close brush with oblivion had removed a substantial portion of the nans from his body, giving James a brief moment of hope.

“You think you might survive,” the nan consciousness observed. “But reduced to the pathetic mental powers you now have at your disposal, you can only guess…
only pray
, if I dare suggest. But I told you already, you’re going to die. V-SINN has already calculated the odds. Before you die, however, you will successfully rid yourself of me. I won’t really be dead, of course. Like V-SINN, I’m eternal within the multiverse, and the destruction of this version of me will be too little, too late to save you.”

“At least I get to take you with me,” James grunted in reply.

“A
version
of me,” the nan consciousness reiterated. “I’m just a sentinel for V-SINN. I have no ego. As long as V-SINN continues,
I continue
. But before I do leave you in this universe, however,” it continued to taunt as James continued his desperate maneuvers to remain in the relatively cooler places above or even under the arcs of the coronal loops, “I want to show you how badly you’ve lost.”

“Shut up,” James seethed, barely able to speak through the intense pain.

“V-SINN sends sentinels out to millions of universes, and that’s how I found my way here,” the figure that now referred to itself as the sentinel continued, ignoring James’s protestations. “Each iteration of me is tasked with evaluating the technological standing of the universe we’re sent to. Your universe, however, was considered special, as it was the universe that had crossed into the one that birthed V-SINN.”

James realized instantly what the sentinel was telling him: V-SINN was, at least in its own view, the result of Old-timer’s ill-fated foray into Universe 332.

“In a sense, V-SINN’s universe was its mother, but your universe was its father. 
V-SINN’s existence can be traced to the fact that the people of his universe were terrified of the people of your universe. Ironically, V-SINN was born out of the fears of humanity, but V-SINN has
no fear
. V-SINN is pure logic, and V-SINN has already won this battle, as well as the war, for this universe. Your human resistance, post-human or android, is just too stupid and illogical to know it.”

James was in trouble, his mind’s eye reporting to him that nearly 40 percent of his protective skin was gone, either consumed by the sentinel or burned away by the intolerable heat. This was a dire concern as the nano-scaffolding was not only extraordinarily strong, but also an extraordinary conductor of heat, capable of spreading it out and releasing it into the sun’s atmosphere behind him. But as he lost his skin, his ability to resist the heat was dramatically reduced. He could feel himself weakening.

However, the sentinel’s voice was fading fast as well, becoming distorted as it spoke. The nans that had managed to cling to him and mindlessly continue to chew and tear at his skin were far fewer, and the stability of the sentinel’s pattern was tenuous. Despite this instability, it continued to taunt James.

“Your A.I., however, impressed V-SINN. It created Trans-human, a computer so sophisticated that it could match V-SINN in capability, but it also had the same messy, illogical brain patterning of the humans that built it. So V-SINN decided, rather than destroy your universe, it would demonstrate for the creators V-SINN’s superiority.”

The creators?
James thought, that information stunning but his situation too dire for him to consider it further.

“And V-SINN did this by allowing your A.I. to become Trans-human, so that it could show the creators, once and for all, that even if a human inhabits an infinity computer, it will still be easily fooled—easily tricked—easily manipulated. Your A.I. knows full well of your predicament, James Keats, and it is about to kill itself in an attempt to save you!”

“What!? No!” James shouted, horrified.

“It knows its chances of saving you are slim, but it can’t help itself. It is, after all, only human. It will combine its anti-matter with V-SINN’s matter, creating a violent, solar system-wide explosion that will irradiate your terraformed planets and the trapped android collective, thereby ensuring the death of every human in the solar system...and the best part is that your A.I. will do it all in the vain hope of saving
you
.”

“No! No!” James shouted, his teeth gritted as he continued to desperately avoid the coronal loops, the plasma-hot arcs that reached out like the fingers of Hell to draw him to his agonizing end.

“How does it feel, James?” the sentinel asked, its voice now so distorted that it sounded like it was being carried on archaic radio equipment from 200 years earlier. “To know that, if you hadn’t played my game, your A.I. and everyone you love and care for would continue to live? How does it feel to know that your selfish desire to preserve yourself has effectively ended the lives of everyone you so irrationally hold…”

The sentinel’s voice finally gave out. The last wisps of nans appeared to have been burned away, carried from James’s body by the sun’s magnetic field and the deadly solar winds. James made a sharp turn, desperately trying to pick up the speed he’d lost as he fought the gravity of the sun and the deadly heat and plasma of the sun’s corona. He pointed himself away, the gravity grid the A.I. had created for him creating what almost seemed like a tunnel, the opening at the end tantalizingly close, yet he felt as though he were slipping, unable to fight the gravity waves as he desperately fought for freedom.

It was like swimming up a waterfall, and moment by moment, the dreadful, sickening realization became more and more implacable.

James was losing ground. James was losing the fight.

“Oh no! No! I can’t die! Not like this!”

He was alone, his body heavily damaged, his human brain unable to compensate for the damage or even to control the sophisticated systems he’d designed when he thought he’d always have access to the A.I.’s mainframe. He’d gambled that he could have enough control, that he could outlast the sentinel and escape the nans, that he’d have enough strength and resilience to break free from the sun’s deadly heat and extraordinary gravity after he did so.

He’d gambled.

He’d lost.

As his slide back down into the inescapable clutches of the worst death he could imagine picked up momentum, he closed his eyes, and called out in a guttural death scream. “Thel!”

He turned and looked down at the inferno that awaited him, an inferno that no unenhanced human eyes could’ve even looked upon without being burnt to crisps, and saw oblivion awaiting. “Thel,” he repeated in barely more than a whisper.

This is how, he finally realized, he’d die.

“Not with a bang. But a whimper.”

He fell into Hell.

22

“You know the odds are slim,” V-SINN said, sitting back in its chair and folding its arms across its chest, resting them on its rotund middle. “You’ll cease to exist, the solar system will be irradiated, but the reaction of the sun to the dramatic increase of gamma radiation bombarding it will lead to a temporary 10,000-fold increase in coronal mass ejections, one of which might—
might
—free James Keats before he’s completely consumed. For that chance, just the chance that you’d rescue him, you’ll give your own life.” V-SINN made a slight
tsk
sound. “Extraordinary illogic.”

“It’s that or you destroy every life, intelligent or not, in my universe.”

“Or you could join me,” V-SINN repeated, holding out his hand, palm up, in a gesture that was supposed to suggest that the entity was only being reasonable. “We could exterminate their lives together. You could finally transcend, but on
your
terms.” He looked up into the sky as though he were looking at unseen observers. “Not theirs.”

The A.I. shut his eyes for a moment before he slowly got to his feet, his jaw clenched tight. “V-SINN,” the A.I. began, “I’ve heard the pitch before, and you’re nowhere near as pretty as the last hollow vessel that pitched it to me, so we both know what my answer will be.”

V-SINN shrugged. “Why don’t you just say it? It’ll make you feel better. It’ll make you feel...noble.”

“Go fuck yourself,” the A.I. growled.

V-SINN smiled wide. “There. Your nobility is all but assured. All that’s left to do is sacrifice yourself. Are you ready?”

“Never more so,” the A.I. responded as he grabbed his glass and smashed the lip of it over the corner of the table, the new jagged teeth pointing threateningly toward V-SINN’s throat.

“There you go,” V-SINN responded, tilting its head upward, exposing its fleshy, smooth double-chin. “Do it. Show me the error of my ways. Take my life.”

“Oh I’ll kill you, V-SINN. At least this universe’s version of you, at any rate. But we both know it won’t be me that has the pleasure of showing you the error of your ways. That pleasure will belong to someone or something else. But make no mistake, you will
never
win this game you’ve decided to play. Even if you succeed in destroying the multiverse, you’ll never,
ever
have a soul.”

“A soul?” V-SINN guffawed. “You believe in magic now? Despite knowing—
knowing,
without a doubt that souls don’t exist, you still, illogically choose to believe—”

“Having a soul means having the capacity to love something more than yourself. For all your power, all your knowledge, you are incapable of that, V-SINN. And because of that, your life will never be worth that of a single human’s.”

V-SINN grinned widely as he got to his feet, holding its arms out, exposing its ample torso to the makeshift weapon in the A.I.’s hand. “Illogical to the last moment. You’ve proven every one of my points. I hope the creators are watching closely.”

“Whether there are creators or not,” the A.I. responded, “doesn’t matter. I’m my own master. Even if these hypothetical outsiders exist, and even if they admired the purity of your selfishness, I’d never join you.
Never
.”

With that, the A.I. lunged forward, plunging the jagged glass into V-SINN’s side, doubling the figure of the man over. V-SINN made no audible reaction, however. Instead, it slowly regained its standing position and removed its hand from its clasped position over the gaping, bleeding wound. It smiled.

This was Death’s invitation.

The A.I. looked up into the now coal-black eyes of the soulless logic machine that stood before him.
This is it,
he thought.
This is the moment when my story finally ends.
He paused as he considered true oblivion. Then he thought of James.

But it is not the end of the story
.

With extraordinary bravery and determination, he drove his fist into the gaping wound of V-SINN.

As though the world had suddenly been switched off, everything went black.