Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (9 page)

2

“Don’t lock your arms!” the A.I. called out, struggling to speak as the g-force pulled his neck painfully while the car entered a flat spin, thankfully right side up. “Protect your head!”

Thel tried to put her arms up around her head, but the centrifugal force was forcing her to flatten, causing her arms to reach out to the passenger side of the vehicle.

James kept his place in the driver’s seat, with his arms extended against the dash and his elbows unlocked. The airbag had mostly deflated, and would do them no good when they collided with the surface. “We’re gonna hit, but we can survive this! Stay—”

Before another urgent instruction could be called out, the car impacted with the water. The back right side hit first, causing the vehicle to lurch onto its side. As it became submerged, the interior quickly grew darker, but the onboard electrical system remained active, and lights in the dash glowed green and red, giving off some faint light by which to see.

The A.I. and Thel had had the wind knocked out of them, but they remained conscious as the car’s buoyancy brought it violently bouncing back to the surface, where it bobbed in the frothing aftermath of the impact and turned right side up.

“Uhn…” Thel moaned as she looked forward, searching for signs of life. “James?” she said weakly, struggling to find her own breath.

The A.I. was already working on an escape plan, even as the car began taking on water. He lunged into the trunk and once again tried to turn the screws to free the tire iron, but after wasting a few precious seconds, desperately twisting until his fingertips were bloody, he was convinced that the screws were just too tight. He reemerged into the main cabin.

Thel was desperately trying to rouse James. He was still alive, but had hit his head against the dashboard after the airbag had deflated, leaving his forehead bloodied, a gash raining crimson rivers of blood down the left side of his face.

The A.I. considered trying to tear the headrest of one of the front seats apart, betting that prying the metal extender free would be far easier than trying to unscrew the tire iron.
The metal piece might be strong enough
, he surmised.
It could break the glass.

But then, suddenly, he felt a presence above him, a presence he felt he was somehow uncannily connected too. He craned his stiff neck upward and saw the candidate hovering, staring down at the car as it bobbed in the dark, suffocating abyss that was slowly swallowing them whole, like a snake devouring a rodent, its hind legs still struggling futilely, even though the cruel outcome was already decided.

“He’s watching us,” the A.I. stated, alerting Thel.

She quickly looked up. “Why?” Thel demanded. “I thought this guy was supposed to be the savior for humanity! But he gets off by watching people drown?”

“There may be more to it than that,” the A.I. replied, “but this much is certain. We won’t be able to escape until we’re no longer in his line of sight.”

“What are you talking about? We
have
to get out of here!” Thel protested. “This car’s filling up fast! We’ll be underwater in two minutes if we don’t—”

“Yes,” the A.I. conceded, keeping a watchful eye on the looming figure floating just meters above them, watching them through the transparent roof. “We’re going to go under.
That’s
when we’ll make our move.”

3

“The name’s Colonel Paine,” he said, giving a slight salute before extending his hand for Old-timer to shake as he strode toward him. “That’s in case we’ve never met, that is,” he said with a smile.

Old-timer looked at the colonel’s hand, outstretched in a gesture of friendly greeting. It was the hand of the man who’d decapitated his wife.

And yet, it wasn’t the same hand at all.

The other hand had been constructed of a carbon fiber composite and it appeared metallic and clawed—inhuman. But the hand currently extended to him in friendly greeting was that of a biological person. Old-timer looked up at the steely blue eyes, completely organic and not the cybernetic ones of the murderer who’d taken so much from him. This was not the Purist super soldier Old-timer remembered in his night terrors, night terrors he still experienced all those years later. “Paine?”

“That’s right,” Paine said. He was still smiling, but his eyes revealed a slight confusion, now that his gesture was being rebuffed. “You all right, soldier?”

“Soldier?” Old-timer uttered, stepping back. “I-I mean, uh...
Craig
was a soldier here?”

“Bravest man I ever knew,” Paine confirmed, keeping his hand outstretched, determined not to let it fall before the gesture was returned.

Old-timer finally reached out apprehensively, as though caught in a nightmare, and shook Paine’s hand.

“You seem a little…” Paine paused for a moment, searching for the right words. “You seem weirded out. Understandably, of course,” he concluded as he completed the handshake.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Old-timer replied. “This place...Sam called it the void. What is it?”

“This little hideaway?” Paine replied sardonically as he looked up and surveyed the perfect nothing in which they stood. A cigar seemed to appear out of nowhere and was suddenly in his grasp, and an equally unexpected match was suddenly struck to light it. Paine took a few puffs before he continued, “
This
is all that’s left.”

“What do you mean? All that’s left?”

“What he means,” Aldous cut back in, still holding a silent Samantha with his arm around her shoulder, “is that you’re looking at the only three survivors of this universe—a universe that can trace its demise back to the day when intruders from
your
universe took it upon themselves to attack us and then, quite inexplicably, leave behind technology that was decades ahead of anything in our world.”

“And decades beyond what we could control,” Paine summarized. Then he addressed Old-timer directly. “And, while you might think we’d be a little on the pissed off side about all that, we’re not looking for revenge. Do you know why?”

Old-timer could hardly breathe.
Is this the moment I go insane?
he asked himself.
Is this what breaks me? If I’ve gone insane already, would I even know it?

“We’re not angry with you,” Paine continued, “because what goes around, comes around, and the technology you unleashed here, the tech responsible for destroying innumerable lives throughout our universe, isn’t finished killing.”

“What do you mean?” Old-timer asked, trying to focus his eyes. The shock had nearly overwhelmed him and Paine’s foreboding words seemed to grip everything within earshot with ice.

“
Your
universe is its big prize,” Paine related coldly, “and unless you ready yourselves—and in a hurry—your universe is going to be just as erased as we were.”

4

“WAKE UP!” Thel shouted as she vigorously slapped James’s cheek in an effort to keep him from passing out. His head was bobbing up and down as though he were drunk. Thel turned to the A.I. “If we don’t break the windows now, we’re going to die!”

She helped James get out of the driver’s seat and he stooped over, trying to regain his footing inside the cabin of the car as it quickly filled with water that was only a few degrees above freezing. Like a boxer trying to beat the ten-count, he wobbled on rubberized legs.

The A.I. took his eyes off the candidate, who was still visibly looming above them in the darkness, and helped Thel guide James to the back seat. There, the three of them knelt in water that was nearly waist-deep.

“We have to remain calm,” the A.I. said, controlling his own fear as their circumstances deteriorated rapidly. “The more panicked we are, the more quickly we’ll use up oxygen.”

“This is ridiculous!” Thel shouted back. “There
is
no oxygen here! Why can’t we get out of this sim?”

“For all intents and purposes, there
is
oxygen here, Thel,” the A.I. replied emphatically, “and your simulated body needs it to survive in this simulated world. And if your matrix pattern is harmed in the sim, there’s no guarantee we’ll ever be able to resuscitate your body in the real world. Do you understand? We have to survive here if we want to survive in the real world, and to survive here, we have to remain calm.”

Thel’s eyes were distraught as she struggled to keep James from tumbling forward, passing out into the water.

The A.I. continued, speaking slowly, careful to enunciate every word so Thel couldn’t misunderstand. “We’ll figure out the whys and hows once we’ve survived this immediate predicament. In the meantime, I need you to listen to me.”

“Okay.” Thel nodded, trying in earnest to calm herself as the sound of the water rushing in and the air rushing out of the interior increased.

“We can’t smash a window. I tried to free the tire iron, but that’s impossible. The locks are also frozen and beyond our ability to manipulate them. Even if we could unlock them, the doors would be impossible to open until the pressure inside and outside of the car equalizes.”

“Oh my God!” Thel reacted mournfully. “You’re talking about letting the car completely fill with water, aren’t you?”

“It’s our only chance,” the A.I. answered, confirming Thel’s worst fears.

“But James—”

“Will almost certainly drown. I know.”

“What!?” Thel reacted, aghast at the A.I.’s apparent lack of human empathy. “How... No! That’s unacceptable!” Thel shouted, incredulous.

“We can revive him when we reach the shore, but only if we survive too.”

“How can we?” she shrieked as the water reached her collarbone. The top of her head was now against the roof of the car. “The doors are locked, and we’ll drown!”

“If the electrical system obeys the same physical laws as those of cars of this era in the real world, then they’re designed to withstand being submerged for two minutes so the passengers can roll the windows down before the car sinks. After that, they fail, so the locking mechanisms automatically release, unlocking the doors. I estimate that we’ve been in the water for over a minute. We’ll be under water in less than thirty seconds and therefore—”

“Oh dear God,” Thel uttered, terror-stricken as she struggled to keep James’s face above the water.

His eyes continued to flutter, but it was clear that he had no idea where he was.

“If you and I can hold our breath for thirty seconds, the locks should release. Then we’ll be able to open the doors to escape. After that, it’s a matter of swimming to the surface before our lungs give out.”

“That’s not a plan! It’s insanity!” Thel shouted, her face pointing upward, where only a half-dozen centimeters separated the top of the water from the ceiling. She pulled on the hair on the back of James’s head to force his face upward as well, but she knew there were only seconds before he’d inevitably inhale water. “If the locks don’t fail, we’re just going to drown like rats in here!”

“Our chances of survival
are
low,” the A.I. conceded, his face pointing upward as well.

The car had now gone completely under the surface of the water, and the candidate’s image rippled above them in the dark sky.

The A.I. met his eyes one last time before the abyss had taken them. “But we’re not dead yet. When James takes in his first water, he’ll panic. Get away from him. When he lashes out, you might be injured if you’re too close.”

“So I just let go? Just let him drown?” Thel shouted, spitting out saltwater, trying to take advantage of the agonizingly small pocket of remaining air. “You son-of-a-bitch! You’re inhuman! Goddamn you!”

“Calm down, Thel. Take in a deep breath, then get away from him.”

“Go to hell!”

“His life depends on you!” the A.I. suddenly shouted, his voice reaching a tenor that shocked her. “Take your breath now!” he commanded. He knew their lives depended on her following through.

She did as instructed and inhaled as deeply as she could before letting her face sink below the surface.

The A.I. took in his last breath simultaneously and also sank, keeping his eyes on the implacable artificial eyes above them, wobbling and distorted, like the eyes of God, unwilling to intervene to save them from their impending, horrific fate.