Absolution

by Peter Smith

  He nodded, “That would explain why it smells like shit in here.”

  “Air filtration systems are being replaced, air quality and facility cleanliness should be at designated levels in less that seventy-two hours.”

  “What caused the breach?” He asked as his mind ran through a series of increasingly dark scenarios where hostile spire drones had breached the facility and corrupted the network running it. Could he even be sure that what was happening around him was real. After all, he had implanted the neural link into his brain stem to absorb and process the vast quantities of information that his empire produced every second. It was more than feasible that someone could have hijacked his own technology to create an artificial world to trick him into divulging sensitive information that could be used against Maria.

  “A primary internal seal at maintenance access three was damaged during installation. Quality control units failed to assess the damage due to the degenerative effects that the local atmosphere has upon delicate sensory equipment. When the exterior door cycled to allow for replacement construction units to exit the facility, the intense external pressure eroded the seal and caused a catastrophic containment failure.”

  The drone finished strapping him in as it completed its statement. Both stood and stepped back to allow him the space he needed to test out the exoskeleton. He took a tentative step and then another. When he didn’t fall onto his face, he became more confident, lengthening his stride and shuffling toward the doorway the exoskeleton had come in through. His drones accompanied him, the medical unit following behind while the combat variant he had been speaking to the entire time walked at his side.

  “Why am I alive then, I would have been nearing the final stage of the maturation process at that point and the corrosiveness of the atmosphere should have destroyed my cloning pod.”

  “Within .3 milliseconds of the detection of the breach, a positive pressure environment was created within the cloning chamber as a precautionary step. As per your protocol all entrances to the growing facility are sealed unless being entered or exited through. The rest of the facility does not follow that protocol.”

  Jacob chewed on that, apparently he had made an oversight, “Update environmental breach protocol, all junctions near air locks and exterior rooms with windows are to remain closed unless in use for transit.”

  “Updated.”

  Another protocol sprang to his mind, one that was far more important to him, “You said there were other subjects, my wife and daughter bodies were to begin the process once any of us were transferred here, did that occur?”

  “Yes, both bodies are complete and awaiting Neural Network Data Transfer.”

  The door parted for him and he stepped into another small room and was immediately reminded of a dry cleaning store. To his left was a glass partition, a large sheet of metal covering it on the other side. That must have been an exterior window with its protective shield down. To his right was an entire wall taken up with three human sized pods, one of them was empty. He thought clearly about his virtual vision, but nothing appeared before him. He thought about the cloning chamber, but yet again nothing occurred. He blinked three times, purposefully and still nothing.

  “While your Neural Implant is utilized to upload your personal data into your cerebrum, it is strongly inadvisable to use it again until such a point as your neural pathways have solidified. Your virtual vision will not be available for at minimum seventy-two hours or until you opt to use enhanced contact lenses.”

  Jacob frowned, being so limited and tethered to outdated technology frustrated him, “Have my contacts brought to me.”

  “Production has begun.”

  Jacob walked forward, wobbling as he did, his balance not recovered. He stopped in front of the pods and waved his hand past them. A holographic interface popped into existence beside each chamber. He ignored the one that had likely been his own and focused on the one on the far right. Several commands were present to choose from. He could view vital statistics; perform medical procedures, retract the protective shell or even recycle the material within.

  He activated the casing and watched it retract, revealing the nude and hairless clone of Eva suspended in the neutral buoyancy fluid. Leads covered the body, monitoring its health and progress. The statistics bar noted that the clone was fully mature and ready for a data transfer. An act that would never occur. Neither she nor Maria had their neural links implanted when he died. His pulse hammered in his ears. Those fucking Marines had ruined everything. She and Maria could be dead, or worst, who knows what those savages would do to them.

  He placed his hand on the surface of the pod, tears beginning to swell within his eyes, “I’m so sorry I failed you”.

  The clone's eyes snapped open, and it beat against the glass, “You bastard!” It’s hand passed through the glass, stabbing at him with something that was reddish brown and green.

  He staggered backward, the exoskeleton keeping him from falling to the ground and hurting himself. His hands shot forward, outstretched to protect himself from the attack, but when he blinked there was nothing. Eva’s surrogate body hung in the fluid, peaceful and having never moved.

  “Do you require assistance?” The drone’s voice came to him, reassuring.

  His chest was hammering. What was going on? Why was he hallucinating, was he losing his mind, was this a side effect of the neural link? Why would he imagine Eva attacking him? His hands went to his face, and he began to frantically rub them over it and his hair, “What the fuck is happening to me?”

  Something switched in his mind. He hadn’t hallucinated it. His hands stopped their hectic movement, and his breathing intensified. His hands slid down his face as he looked up at Eva, “You fucking cunt!”

  He stepped toward her, his index finger stabbing at her, “You attacked me.”

  He stopped in front of her and slammed his palm against the material, “You betrayed me!”

  Tears streamed down his face, “Why would you do that? We were supposed to spend eternity together.”

  His hands wrapped around his torso, and he twisted violently from side to side within the exoskeleton. His face reddened and the veins in his neck and forehead bulged outward as he struggled to maintain control over the feelings that were bursting to escape.

  His palms shot out and hammered at the surface of the pod, Eva’s clone not once reacting, “You fucking hate me, you always fucking hated me!”

  The holographic control caught his eye and his hand stabbed at the ‘recycle’ button. The system introduced an acidic compound into the chamber that immediately dissolved Eva’s flesh. It ate away at her eyes, breasts and fatty areas first. Then consumed muscle and bone. The fluid in the tank took on a blood red soup texture as she was broken down before his eyes. He watched every second of the action as she was reduced to her component molecules. He didn’t move once for the process, staring in fasciation as she dissolved away to nothingness before him. The material was cycled out of the chamber until nothing but the neutral buoyancy fluid remained.

  He stepped back from the empty pod and stared at it for a moment. A pang of guilt came to him then, but he shook his head as if trying to dislodge it, “You made your choice, if Maria is still alive I’ll save her but you”, he paused, “you can enjoy whatever fate the universe has given you”.

  He turned and walked toward the window. When he was a meter from it he flicked his hand upward, and the external shield rolled upward. He would find out what happened to his little girl and if she were still alive he’d save her from the monsters and savages that held her and then he’d make them all pay. If she were dead, then they’d still pay, but only this time he’d make sure they suffered for eternity.

  He would trap each and everyone of them in one of the pods and dissolve them alive while preserving their mental profile. It wouldn’t be difficult to create an automated program that transferred them into a new body once the old was discarded. Placing them into a perpetual cycle of pain.
He wouldn’t even have to be aware of the process after initializing it. With self repairing systems, the agony could literally extend into perpetuity for those who harmed Maria.

  The shield finished its journey into its housing and a hard baked, wind ravaged vista was revealed. Sulfuric acid poured from the sky, battering rock formations and the machines that crept between them. Everything was tinged a dirty mustard yellow as the light of the sun fought its way to the surface of the planet. He watched to his right as machines made their way to a large facility partly covered in displaced volcanic material. Large trucks were delivering it from a massive pit being dug before him and hauling it up the grade of the earthen berm surrounding the building until they dumped the soil against its walls. The soil would act as a natural barrier between the newly constructed facility and the outside atmosphere.

  Drones covered the landscape, performing jobs such as laying power and data lines between the facility he was in and the other. As he watched a drone’s knee snapped sending the unit tumbling to the ground. The others continued about their tasks as the damaged unit crawled its way back toward an external airlock for his facility.

  He looked back at the new construction. A memory came back to him. It was called an Atmospheric Modification Module. The air cleared enough for him to make out the large stack that rose from the facility and reached skyward. He had to put his face to the glass and look up to see it vanish into an oppressive layer of clouds.

  When the facility was finished a colossal intake pipe at the base of the pit that was being excavated would be opened sending high pressured atmosphere underneath and then up into the facility. A large valve at the top of the stack, located in the upper atmosphere where the air pressure was a small fraction of surface level, would open simultaneously creating a vacuum effect that would pull the poisonous atmosphere up through the building.

  The air would pass through pools of genetically engineered bacteria, grown to withstand the blistering temperatures long enough for them to use the more caustic chemicals in the air as a part of their food source and then reproduce, their waste products being nitrogen, oxygen and other trace elements.

  The super-heated air would continue to rise through the central stack, pulled that way by the natural vacuum effect of the low pressure at the top of it and the tapered shape of the shaft it was rising up. As it cooled, what little water molecules there were in the air would be trapped in condenser plates to be stored and later dispersed in such a way as to not escape the planet's atmosphere and be lost to space. The very heat of the air itself would propel turbines which would then provide all the power the facility would need for constant operations. There were actually two identical paths for the deadly corrosive air to follow, with only one being used at a time to allow for maintenance of the other and uninterrupted operations.

  Thousands. He had planned on constructing thousands of them. His memories were coming back more frequently now. He had hoped to use this one as a test bed to complete the future designs and have terraformed the planet into a habitable world within a hundred years. Given that his life span had no limit now, such a stretch of time was trivial. Now, dragging Europa from Jupiter and placing it into a stable orbit so he could impart a rotational spin to this planet, that would take longer than changing the atmosphere.

  He chuckled, he wasn’t sure what would be harder, dragging a moon similar in size to Earth’s across space in a feat of solar system spanning engineering or figuring out how to give the planet a magnetic field. Geology had always been this planet’s greatest problem, but he was happy to explore the ins and outs of that solution. There was the easiest option, building magnetar satellites in orbit to create an artificial field, but the power requirements would be staggering. The most efficient option lay with the planet’s own core, which hopefully spinning the planet up to an appropriate speed with a new moon would solve. He knew it was a project that Maria would love to be a part of.

  His eyes looked to the pit as he contemplated the problem of the planet’s stationary core, “I love you daddy”.

  A wave of vertigo and fear gripped at him and he staggered away from the window, his head spinning around the room looking for the source of the voice. He looked at the drone, “Where is the speaker located?”

  The drone merely looked at him, “There are no other biological life forms outside of this room.”

  He looked back toward the pit, at its oppressively dark depth, and could feel it pressing upon him, could feel her pushing against him. He shook his head. The wind ripped at his clothes, he could feel weightlessness and the roar in his ears became so deafening that he could hardly think. He closed his eyes, trying to force the sensory experience away.

  There had to be something wrong with the neural link, or maybe with the cloning process, why was he experiencing all this. The roar intensified until his hands clapped to the sides of his head, trying to shield his ears, and then abruptly ended. He gasped in pain, and his back arched. His eyes popped open and hovering just outside the glass window was Maria, dangling from Tobor’s grasp. Her face a mask of guilt as she stared down at him.

  “Maria” He cried, reaching for her, only to have his hand smack against the glass that protected him from the outside.

  The pain made her evaporate. He turned around the room looking for her, looking for the source of the voices and the sound of the wind. The drone took a step toward him, a hand outstretched, “Do you require assistance?”

  He stepped backward and away from the drone, his body shaking, “She…”

  He shook his head. No, she couldn’t have, she wouldn’t have.

  The feel of her weight shifted in his arms.

  “It’s not possible” He screamed at the drone and clawed at his forearms where the phantom sensation was the strongest.

  Vertigo overtook him again the sensation pulled him into weightlessness. Tears streamed down his face, she had. She had tried to kill him. No, she hadn’t tried. Maria, his reason for existence, his reason for sacrificing his soul and beginning this entire endeavor had murdered him.

  Red lines and torn skin formed on his arms as he frantically scratched at the flesh. Uncontrolled bursts of rage ripped past his lips, his hands flew sporadically to slap himself in the face, to claw at the sensitive tissue around his ears, his newly grown nails thin and sharp tearing into the flesh but also peeling back under the strain.

  The drone moved another step forward, “Do you require assistance?”

  He shot backward, “Stay the fuck away from me!” He shouted.

  “I love you daddy.”

  He turned on Maria’s tube, “No you don’t, you killed me!”

  He strode over to the clone, still safe and secure behind the cylindrical shielding, “I gave up everything for you, I sold my soul to give you a better life”

  Every step he took toward the maturation chamber got harder. The tears that streamed down his face blurred his vision, and it felt as if he were walking upstream through a strong flowing current. His hands reached out for the pod, waving frantically as they did “You were my everything” he gasped.

  Just as exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him, his outstretched hands fell onto the metal of the tube and he rested his face upon its cool surface, his eyes closing “And you betrayed me, just like everyone else.”

  He leaned against the device, resentment and loss fighting for control over his emotional state. A soft beeping caught his attention, and he slowly opened his eyes. Floating in front of him was the holographic control display.

  Then his eyes slid down the image until they fell onto the recycle option.

  He threw himself away from the pod, “no, no, no, no, no…”

  “It couldn’t have been her fault…” His eyes searched the room frantically, not knowing what they were looking for but desperately hoping to find anything that would allow him to reason this away.

  “They,” He paused, staring into the air, “they tainted her. Somehow they were able to corrupt her ag
ainst me.”

  He looked at the empty tube that Eva’s clone had occupied and his heart hammered in his chest, “You, you did this!” He screamed.

  His fist kept slamming into his chest, “You turned her from me, you made her susceptible to those degenerates.”

  A sense of calm clamped down over him, “And anything you and they ruined, I can fix.”

  He changed direction and stepped up to Maria’s pod, “I’ll save you, I’ll give you the chance to turn away from their poison and accept logic and morality again.”

  He rested his hand on the exterior of the machine and closed his eyes. Focused on his breathing, he tried to sense the body inside. It wasn’t his daughter, likely it never would be. But it was the closest he had to her, the last remnant connecting him to his dreams for the future of humanity.

  “You and I will save them all.”

  No longer controlled by rage and guilt but by cold and unrelenting will to fix what had been broken, to take back that which had been stolen from him. He would find out what was happening on Earth, he would rescue his daughter from the physical and psychological grip that those barbarians had on her. He would forgive her for what she had done. In fact he already had, she had been poisoned against him and was far too young and impressionable to resist forces that had controlled the world for millennia.

  Influences he was certain her mother had paved the way for, he wasn’t sure when she had gotten the time to conspire with the remnants of the old world, maybe she never had, maybe the problem was intrinsic. After all, he wasn’t beyond making mistakes; it was more than possible, in fact likely that he had missed Eva’s flaws as a result of his need to be with her.

  He looked at his hands. For all the knowledge and skill that he possessed, it was this that would always hold him back. This weakness, his flawed humanity, would always create the risk of mistakes. He had taken a step away from it when he incorporated the Neural Link into his brainstem but now, to make up for the losses he had suffered and the setbacks placed upon his long-term plans, he would need to improve himself even further. He could never hope to save Maria, to save the human race, if he, like Eva, was weak at a fundamental level.