Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (8 page)

13

“What the hell is he talking about?” Thel asked, looking at James.

“Why do you say that?” James asked, pushing Thel’s question away as he spoke directly to the candidate, keeping an outwardly calm demeanor as he tried to determine what had gone wrong. “What would make you think we’re going to die?”

“Because it’s true,” the candidate replied in an even tone, as though the answer was perfectly logical. “I am aware of your plans for me, and I know what you’ve already done to my brethren.”

“And what is it that you think we’ve done to your brethren?” the A.I. asked.

“You murdered them when they didn’t pass your test.”

“James?” Thel reacted, finally relinquishing any pretense, even going so far as to drop her Haywire guise.

James and the A.I. followed suit; their avatars melted away, replaced by representations of their real appearances. The A.I. chose the younger appearance that he wore during his own time as the subject of the test.

“We haven’t murdered anyone,” the A.I. replied to the candidate.

“I think you actually believe that,” the candidate replied, “and it’s your gross ignorance to the fact that makes the murders all the more heinous.”

“Why are you saying these things?” James asked, his pretense of calm having evaporated in an instant. “What makes you believe we’re murderers?”

“I had a visitor,” the candidate replied. “He told me this would happen. He told me I was one of millions and you discarded the others.” His lips pulled back into a repulsed grimace before he added, “He also told me you intend to burn me alive.”

“It had to be 1,” James said to the A.I. “Only
she
could’ve infiltrated the sim like this.”

“Perhaps,” the A.I. replied while keeping his eyes on the candidate. He addressed the candidate directly. “We haven’t discarded anyone,” the A.I. informed the candidate. “Those other artificially generated intelligences will be animated when the world is ready for them. And we were not going to burn you. Believe me, I’d be the
last
to put another conscious entity through that.”

The candidate’s eyes went from the A.I.’s to James’s before he turned to regard Thel, next to him. “So far, you’ve all proven yourselves to be liars, while everything my visitor predicted would happen has occurred.”

“You’re being misled—” James began to protest before being cut off by the candidate.

“You thought you were gods, but you’re nothing more than I was now.”

“What’s he talking about?” Thel asked James and the A.I., alarmed and confused.

“They’ve been cut off from their mainframe,” the candidate answered for them. “They would’ve told you earlier, Thel, but they didn’t know I knew their weakness and they didn’t want to frighten you.” He turned to her. “But they
are
weak, and they can’t protect you.”

Thel’s eyes filled with dread. “Fellas?” she asked, unable to take her eyes from the candidate. “Is he telling the truth?”

“We’re cut off,” James confirmed.

“What does that mean?” she asked, finally able to break free from the candidate’s gaze and turn to James.

“It means, my dear,” the A.I. began, “that we’ve been cut down to our very human mental size—both of us.”

“You?” Thel reacted, astonished. “How can that even be? Isn’t the mainframe your brain?”

“It’s part of my brain, yes,” the A.I. answered, “but my core matrix program, the pattern that makes up my core consciousness, was designed to mimic that of a human’s. It is this pattern that is functioning here in the sim, and that goes for all of us, you included.”

“You’re not post-humans any longer,” the candidate announced, like a man who felt he was serving justice. “You’re only humans—like I was.”

“
Was?
” the A.I. asked, puzzled. “Why past tense? What do you mean?”

The candidate sneered slightly before answering, “I’ll show you.” A second later, he vanished from the interior of the car and appeared outside of the rain-streaked, driver’s side window.

“He teleported!” James exclaimed. “But we can’t—”

The candidate gestured with a flick of his wrist and pointed with his finger, and the car came to life and sped away from him, down the street. In less than four seconds, the electric motor brought the car up to speeds in excess of 100 kph, and the speed continued to climb to dangerous new heights.

“What’s he doing?” James exclaimed in surprise, barely controlling his alarm. Without his connection to the mainframe, the feeling of alienation from himself was overwhelming.

Thel looked incredulous as she replied, “What do you think he’s doing? He’s trying to kill us!”

“But why wouldn’t he just…” He paused as he looked to the A.I. for guidance. “Why wouldn’t he just crush us?”

“The answer to that question can wait,” the A.I. replied urgently. “The priority is for us to stop this car from careening into an object at a high rate of speed and...”

The A.I. stopped midsentence as the car roof suddenly became transparent, a feature that wasn’t activated by any of the three passengers in the car. The trio looked upward to see the candidate looming over them, flying like a vulture, circling as it watched the proceedings below.

The A.I. turned to see a monolithic structure that he and James instantly recognized as the bridge that connected the north shore mountains to the downtown core of the rain-drenched city. The candidate appeared to be guiding them toward it.

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” the A.I. uttered.

“We’ve got to stop this car,” James whispered, his face instantly draining of color.

“What? What’s going on?” Thel asked, examining the shared expressions of foreboding on their faces.

James looked her in the eye as he swallowed back his fear to speak. “We need to stop this car
now
.” He lunged forward toward the cockpit of the car, spinning the seat next to Thel so he was in the driver’s position. He began pressing buttons on the dashboard. “We’re physically locked out of the car’s systems,” James informed his companions. “I can’t get the steering wheel to engage!”

“And the door locks aren’t functioning either!” Thel shouted as she tried to manually open the doors. “Neither are the windows!”

Suddenly, an idea flashed into the A.I.’s mind. He began to speak as he turned himself around and searched for the release button on the back seat. “Unless the coding of the sim changed, the car may still be working based on the model of real electric cars in the first half of the twentieth century.”

“What are you doing?” Thel asked him.

“If we can access the trunk, we may be able to find an object James can use to disable the onboard computer and cut power to the A/C motors.”

Thel jumped into action, feeling with her fingers around the lining of the back seats, searching for a lever. “Is this it?” she asked as she pressed a small red button. The backs of the seats lowered, as if to answer her question.

The A.I. pulled the seats all the way down, and then thrust his body toward the trunk, groping for any sort of tool he could toss to James to help him destroy the car’s onboard computer system.

For his part, James punched and pounded the dash, trying with all his might to puncture the plastic paneling on the dash so he could access the wiring underneath. Even after his knuckles became bloodied, the durable dash was barely scuffed.

“Do you see anything?” Thel asked the A.I., terrified as the car sped, dangerously fast, onto the onramp leading to the bridge deck.

“I do!” the A.I. called back. “There’s a tire iron, but it’s screwed into place.”

“Can you loosen the screws?”

“I-I don’t think so,” the A.I. replied, the terror finally overcoming him as his hands shook, his fingers unable to grasp the cold, cruel screws, the sweat from his fingertips making the work impossible.
I’m just a man now,
he thought, unable to block the notion.
I can’t save them...or me
.

James stopped pounding the dash as he began to understand the sadistic logic the candidate was employing. The bridge appeared to be fifty meters above the water at its highest point, and they were quickly speeding up the incline. Fifty meters was right on the edge of being survivable if their car were to careen over the edge, off the bridge. From that height, hitting the water might be like hitting concrete if the fall was sharp enough. “I think…” James began, but his lips had difficulty forming the words as the adrenaline shook him, the fear caused tremors throughout his body. “I think we better brace for impact.”

The A.I. gave up his attempt to pry the tire iron free and grabbed Thel’s arm, pulling her down to the floor of the cab. “Get flat,” he spoke.

“Oh God,” Thel whispered as she realized there’d be no saving of the day, no heroic rescue just in time.

“Thel,” James said over his shoulder as they approached what he realized could be the end of their matrix patterns, the end of their conscious lives, “I love you.”

“I love you too!”

A pre-programmed violent turn of the car’s wheels jerked the car violently to the right, causing it to cross into the oncoming lanes before impacting the guardrail, the left front side hitting first, the momentum threatened to flip the car into a roll. The driver’s side airbag inflated and cushioned James from the worst effects of the initial collision, but the vehicle momentum, with the added lift of the guardrail, caused the car to flip up and over the safety barrier, turning it upside before, terrifyingly, the gravity seemed to seep out of the car interior.

James’s eyes widened as the front windshield revealed a horrifying kaleidoscope of blurry visions: city lights, an inverted view of the bridge, the north shore mountains, and, finally, the nearly black water below. “We’re falling! For Christ’s sake! Hang on!”

PART 2

1

“I never thought anything could make me believe in a god, but Craig, for you to be here now, for it to have been you who walked through that Planck portal...what are the chances?”

“I-I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Old-timer uttered in reply as he looked down, disbelieving, at Samantha’s wet eyes, glistening up at him, not a trace of anything impure or deceptive in her earnest expression of love.

“That makes two of us,” Samantha replied, a brief, disbelieving laugh interrupting the soft crying from her joy. She shook her head before the look of happiness was replaced with a sudden onset of pain. “Craig, I thought you were gone forever. I didn’t think...I thought I’d never see you again!”

Old-timer wasn’t sure what to say. In fact, he still wasn’t certain he was even alive. He narrowed his eyes to peer into the nothingness from which Samantha had emerged. Then he turned back to make sure his friends were still there, still standing on the Planck platform, and he was relieved to see that they were. “Where is this?” he asked as he turned back to Samantha. “Where am I?”

“The void,” Samantha replied flatly, as if common sense should have told him so. “Don’t you remember?” she asked, suddenly studying his eyes, seemingly scrutinizing every twitch of his eyelids, every dilation of his pupils. “We talked about this,” she said, emphasizing each syllable in an effort to reach his memory.

“I-I—”

“It’s not him, Sam,” said another familiar voice, and an instant later, Aldous Gibson appeared from out of the blackness.

Though Old-timer saw no light source, the figures were plain to see once they chose to appear.

“Use your reason,” Aldous continued. “He came from the portal.” He pointed her to the Planck platform, where Rich and Djanet were frantically trying to rouse Old-timer’s crumpled form.

“You can’t know that,” Sam replied, turning back to Old-timer, desperation in her eyes. “You don’t know what’s happened out there. It could be him. Maybe he entered Universe X and then—”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Aldous replied, his tone sympathetic as he laid eyes on Old-timer. He gestured with his hand. “Go ahead. Ask him.”

Samantha looked up at Old-timer and grasped his hands tightly as she prepared to speak. “Craig, it
is
you, isn’t it? You remember me, right? You’ve come back?”

“I remember you,” Old-timer answered, causing Samantha’s face to light up for an instant before he quashed all hope with his follow up: “But I’m
not
him. I’m not from this universe.”

Her face fell, and she abruptly let go of his hands as the hurt suddenly rushed back in. She shook her head, trembling as she stepped back. “You’re not...you’re...”

Aldous put his arm around her and pulled her into his chest, trying in vain to comfort a loss that he knew could never truly be comforted.

“I-I’m sorry, Sam,” Old-timer offered. His arms fell to his sides, as he was entirely helpless.

Aldous’s eyes narrowed and locked on the alien entity before him.

“Am I... Is the me from this universe…dead?” Old-timer finally asked.

Aldous nodded. “All too recently, I’m afraid. Your appearance here has reopened a very fresh wound.”

“But how?” Old-timer asked. “I mean, how did it happen?”

Aldous shook his head, not sure how to even begin such a complex answer. “It was—” he began, only to be cut off by yet a third voice echoing from the void.

“You died in the most heroic way a soldier can, Doc,” Colonel Paine said. “You died trying to save us all.”