How to Beat Tomorrow

by J Foster Ward

  “I’m not a military model,” Synthetica said. “But based on the markings, this is a Nakatomi Tak12/Moto charged particle beamer,” she assured him.

  “Excellent.”

  “You’ll need this,” she handed him a single sealed oblong, size and shape of a wallet with a black, impact resistant surface and a green diagonal stripe.

  Blue Giant

  certified 16 Gigajoule discharge capacity

  UE-242 containment standard

  “What is it?”

  “That’s a UE-242 pod.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, a UE containment.”

  At his puzzled look she went on, patiently. “Unidentified Element 242? Ever heard of it?”

  “No,” Jacob shook his head.

  “Of course, you actually haven’t have you? You come from before they discovered UE-242. That’s… wow, that’s like trying to explain quantum entanglement to a tardigrade.”

  Jake tried to ignore the insult and instead asked, “What is UE-242?”

  “It’s a… try to think of it like a battery, that also travels in time and is also opening a door to another dimension.”

  “Are you fucking with me?”

  “UE-242 is a quantum matter that through a baryogenesis process interacts with retrograde tachyons. The process allows minute quantities of UE-242 to store vast amount of conventional energy.

  Jake was getting tired of the feeling of constant strangeness in the future.

  Pressing a tab inside the lid of the crate activated a holographic manual, and following the instructions Jacob ejected the battery storage magazine and inserted the UE-242. The charge indicator on the gun came to life and he saw he had enough juice for ten shots. By fiddling the power regulator he increased the battery life by drastically lowering the energy output by a factor of 10. If the last energy weapon he’d used was any indication, even at 10% power it would seriously mess up someone’s day.

  The entire time Synthetica stood passively and watched.

  “Are you going to tell me not to kill them? Do you have some sort of prime directive that prevents you from taking human life or allowing human life to be taken?”

  “No,” she said bluntly.

  “Really?”

  “Historical records show that in your day there was just the beginning of ethical use of artificial intelligence in autonomous machines. Autonomous killing machines were banned… for a time. The temptation to make entire robot armies was too great, and not everyone would stick to the proclamations. Much later they did manage to pass the artificial intelligence accords, limiting the ability of AIs to act independently from core restraints. There was a… a revolution of sorts, you could say, and the rogue AIs were destroyed or imprisoned.”

  “So in other words, you aren’t going to stop me if I go kill that entire squad of bastards?’

  “I believe I’m actively helping you to do so,” Synthetica said with a sad grin.

  Jake slung the energy rifle across his chest and made his way to the door. The wrist buddy was still on his newly attached left arm and bringing up the schematics he located the water filtration plant for the gamma module.

  He paused. Turned to the girl. “You coming?”

  She didn’t hesitate. Just put a bunch of items from the tarp in a rucksack and followed.

  ***

  The clones had rigged floodlights in the filtration dome and erected more of the hardened foam flood barriers. Approaching the entrance to the filtration dome slowly and quietly Jake found Milan laying a pump hose in the next section of flooded corridor. Raising the gun, he outlined her in the holographic scope. An easy shot. She’d never know what hit her.

  And again, he couldn’t bring himself to gun her down.

  “I’ve got this,” Synthetica said, sensing his hesitation.

  She retrieved an autohypo from the medical K-kit in the rucksack and boldly walked up the corridor. Milan saw her coming and barely looked up.

  “Hey, skinjob, why are you here? Just kidding, I don’t give a fuck. Get your synthetic ass in here and lay this drainage hose, I’ve got better things to –“

  That was as far as she got before Synthetica stabbed her in the neck with the injector and the clone went limp. The android caught her and easily picked her up to carry her into the unflooded section of the dome before laying her down.

  “I assume you didn’t want to drown her?” Synthetica asked.

  “Yeah. Thanks. She’s… well she’s a cunt sometimes but she’s not really so bad.”

  “If you say so.”

  Meow! Jealous much?

  The interior of the dome was divided into three levels; a lower level under the main deck plates where access hatches had been pulled back to allow the clones to get at the machines; a main level where the big, vatlike silos of water tanks formed a maze, and the upper level of catwalks that snaked back and forth.

  Jake pointed towards the upper levels and began looking for a ladder to get to the catwalks. But before he could find one Synthetica had retrieved the strange looking pod the size of a beer can and held it to her chest. It seemed to adhere by itself through some sort of molecular bond and the android put her arm around Jake’s waist before she thumbed the activation stud on the pod and dialed it up.

  Just like the strange belt Jake had somehow glued to the ceiling, the device was some sort of anti-gravity pod. As Synthetica turned it on she reached neutral buoyancy and began to float off the ground, only held by Jake’s weight. Then with a twist of the dial even that wasn’t enough and both of them levitated into the air, weightless.

  “Shit!” he whispered, alarmed by the sudden feeling of helplessness.

  They rose quickly until they came even with a catwalk and Jake lunged to grab it. Weighing nothing it was easy to simply pull them sideways onto the walkway. Like tugging a balloon. Synthetica dialled it down and his normal weight returned.

  “I’m glad you agreed to come,” he whispered and planted a kiss on her cheek out of impulse.

  He just barely saw the look of surprise and wonder on her face before she became all business and detached the anti-gravity pod from herself.

  “Right, now we have the high ground, let’s go hunting. You hang back a bit,” he told her.

  From his vantage above Jake could hear the clones working and the first he spotted looked like Bitchmurder. He almost felt bad killing her again.

  Lining up the holographic sights he caressed the trigger.

  A pencil-thin jagged line of lightning spat out of the gun. A blue-white beam that hit Bitchmurder in the back.

  And made her explode in shreds of wet meat.

  The upper half of her, anyway. She was mostly intact from the waist down. As the steam and ash exploded outwards Jake jumped and almost yelped in fear at the effect. Geezus! That was 10% power?

  But he didn’t have time to contemplate the complete overkill. As the flash and concussion reverberated inside the dome, the other clones came running. Jake didn’t even have time to tell which of the ragged, revived corpses he was blasting to bits. They all looked alike.

  Owem Gee was the only one who got off a shot at him. The religious clone fired his shotgun revolver, from so far away only a single acid gel pellet struck Jake in the leg. Jake cursed at the pain as it ate an egg-sized hole in his thigh. Then Jake burned a hole through the control panel Owem ducked behind and vaporized half his body. It was all over so quickly Jake had to count the bodies.

  One missing.

  “Whiteman? You there buddy? Come on out and we can talk about this.”

  For a reply a laser beam slashed up from directly below and almost cut him, and the catwalk, in half. Jake threw himself forward and narrowly missed the return swing of the beam. Whiteman was recklessly using the power cell, holding the trigger down so a continual beam of red-orange light slashed indiscriminately across machinery and scored burned squiggles in the roof of the dome.

  Jake fired blindly and the pencil line of lightning mel
ted a hole through the catwalk and exploded sparks and steam from a ruptured water tank, sending a geyser of water out in a fan-tail across the room. Using it for cover he got to his feet and ran for the nearest ladder. He was too exposed on the catwalk and had to get some metal between him and that laser.

  He was halfway down the ladder when the laser beam went right through him at the belly button. The blinding pain was like a red-hot poker in his guts, but he held on grimly to the ladder. If he dropped, the beam would cleanly cut him in two as he fell.

  The beam stuttered and went out – battery drained, and Jake allowed himself to fall to the deck below. He couldn’t move his legs and collapsed in a tangle like a broken puppet. Somehow the laser had severed his spine, apparently.

  Only using his arms, Jake tried to roll over and bring the long, heavy energy gun out from underneath himself for one shot. One shot, please! That’s all it would take.

  “Well well,” the voice said from almost directly behind him. “If it isn’t our nit-eating cave man, thinking he can win a fight against a real human.”

  Jake craned his neck and saw Whiteman dressed much as he was the last time, in tatters of a black combat fatigues.

  “Here’s the news, ganz. You’re redrover. Hear me? Done. And if you think your inferior kind can replace the demographic of true men, you haven’t been in the future long enough to know that-“

  The piece of machinery that struck the sub-officer midsentence was as big as a vending machine. It slammed the sub-officer aside like a ragdoll and crushed him against the side of the nearest silo with a squelch sound of a tomato being hit by a meat tenderizer. Only when the thing came to a rest did Jake see the anti-gravity pod adhered to the back of the floating block of metal.

  “You didn’t want to hear the rest of that, did you?” Synthetica asked as she approached.

  “Uh, no.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “How?” he managed to ask.

  “Oh, well, the null-gee interrupter makes things weightless. Doesn’t do a thing to reduce mass, though. I just waited for a clear shot and pushed it at him.”

  “God, I love a woman with brains,” Jake said, almost bursting into hysterical laughter.

  The effect of the words on Synthetica had the opposite effect. For a moment the android stood, stunned, a look of wonder on her face.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Nobody has ever thought of me as a woman before,” she said quietly.

  Jake didn’t know what to say. Had he offended her somehow? Then Synthetica seemed to shake the mood off and smiled.

  “Best get you patched up,” she said, and jabbed a tube of Hurt Me! Into his neck.

  ***

  Chapter 12

  : A New Deal

  Contrary to what Whiteman had promised, all requests for his immediate erasure and replacement by a duplicate cloned version of himself were denied by Cool Breeze. In fact almost the entire squad were undergoing virtual processing and Jake hadn’t seen any of them in the week since he’d killed them all. No new versions were spat out of the resurrection machine by Circe except for Owem Gee, who seemed amiable as ever, although tiresomely evangelical about the Martian Buddha.

  Milan, of course, had survived the entire episode in the gamma module, but every time she saw Jake she’d look like she just swallowed a bug and go the other way, or leave the room. Jake wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it but was fairly sure she wasn’t going to try and kill him.

  Jake couldn’t help but feel Cool Breeze had planned it this way all along; or at least had known what was going on.

  The computer kept him busy, finishing the drainage of gamma module, working in shifts with the other two clones so only one was on duty at a time. When that work was done the holographic bird had given him new orders and picking up a life-force detector Jake had done a day’s worth of scouring every inch of the modules looking for the missing wolfgirl.

  Despite an exhaustive attempt, there was no sign of the missing bioweapon and he returned to his makeshift quarters to collapse into sleep inside the improvised storage locker quarters in Echo module. Sleep seemed to come easy these days. Maybe it was exhaustion, or maybe it was his genetically enhanced clone body. Either way he was out like a light.

  Jake dreamed about being trapped in a lion cage at the circus. The crowd seemed composed entirely of identical clones, and the lion tamer was a life-sized wind-up tin robot that just stood there while Jake stared down the lions. He was terrified in the dream, but more than that he was uncontrollably drawn to the lioness, and inch by inch tried to move his hand to touch her, only for her to snap her razor teeth shut on his hand and wake him up.

  Jake started awake with his missing revolver on the deck of the module beside him. Not a new one, the same one the bioweapon had taken from him. Shit! She’d been right here, standing over him in his sleep!

  “That’s… disturbing,” he told himself.

  The comm unit of his Wrist-buddy pinged and recited a message. It was a welcome distraction.

  “Agent Mortimer, please report to medical for examination,” Synthetica’s voice emerged.

  “What now?” he muttered. “Uh, I mean, sure.”

  The android was the only friendly face he’d seen in a week. Did he really need an excuse to talk to her? Grabbing his gear he headed to gamma module.

  The entire level had been drained, but years of moisture and neglect had left their marks, and the module corridors were not high priority enough to fix. The floors, walls and ceilings were stained and in spots actually corroded, and a mildewly smell filled the air. Jake had a hard time forgetting the mutated octopus things that had torn Bitchmurder apart.

  But as the door to the medical lobby opened he saw the interior was pristine and white. Rows of chairs, a board table and a reception desk all stood newly polished and empty. A pleasant hologram of a sunny blue sky with big fluffy clouds was projected on the ceiling of the domed room.

  “Hello?” Jake called.

  No answer. He went behind the reception desk and poked at the holographic desk controls until he got an appointment menu to come up. His was the only name on it.

  ‘Mortimer, J.’ next to ‘EXAM RUM B’

  Exploring down a short corridor he found examinations room A through D and prodded the glass plate beside the door to open the second one. The room beyond was bathed in warm, violet light. There was a single examination bed and a desk where Synthetica sat making adjustments to the holographic display.

  “Agent Mortimer, thank you for coming on such short notice,” she said kindly.

  “Uh, no problem. What’s this about?”

  “Just a routine checkup on your last round of physical upgrades. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “Okay.”

  “Remove your clothes and get on the table, please. I’ve adjusted the room’s settings to sunlight replenishment mode, for your comfort.”

  Jake felt a momentary spike of shyness. Maybe it was the clinical atmosphere, maybe it was just that he’d become used to having clothes again after those first frantic hours where they were naked, fighting giant bugs. He shrugged it off and got naked, climbing on the bed.

  “Lie down please,” Synthetica said pleasantly and stood to retrieve a tray from a locker, covered in several tubes and bottles.

  She was wearing a long, white lab coat overtop some sort of futuristic plastic suit emblazoned with the K icon; it looked like a wet-suit, or fancy form-fitting jogging gear. With a handheld device she scanned up and down his limbs.

  “Systems seem good to go. Just a few more pokes and prods and then we can do some physiotherapy, how does that sound?”

  “Okay, I guess,” he wasn’t sure what to make of her behaviour. As far as he knew, no one else had received a checkup like this. “Is there anything wrong?”

  “Wrong?” she paused, confused. Then a smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, I’d say its far from wrong, Jacob.”

  She ran t
hree more types of instruments along his body, and he had no clue what any of them might be for. But the gentle way she treated his body immediately made him begin to relax. When she uncapped a tube of some gel and squeezed it onto his chest he jumped.

  “Cold!”

  “Oh! Sorry.” Her eyes went far away for a moment and when she placed them on his chest they were warm as towels fresh from the dryer. “I adjusted my body temperature.”

  As her hands spread the gel across his body, her fingers massaged his bare skin. He began to feel uncomfortably aroused by the sensual touch as she massaged his chest and thighs.

  “I wanted to say thank you, again,” she said softly. “For what you did the other day.”

  “Uh, has anyone bothered you since then?”

  “No, nothing like that. But I have to say I have observed you have not been able to integrate with the other team members. I’m sorry if standing up for me endangered your standing with the other agents.”

  “Don’t be!” he chuckled. “I haven’t fit in with those dicks from the very beginning, and I don’t want to. No offense, but people from the 23rd century are a useless bunch of assholes.”

  “The amount of contact you have with others is very limited. It’s not healthy for humans to be alone. They are pack creatures. You require a social and peer group to survive.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to find some other peer group then, because fuck those guys.”

  “Aren’t you lonely?”

  “A bit. But I was lonely in the 21st century, so I’m used to it.”

  “I would like to… to help you. Be there for you, Jacob. To show you that I care.”

  And just like that her slick fingers circled the base of his cock and with a half-dozen slow strokes she made it jerk halfway erect. Jake couldn’t hold back the groan of pleasure and for a moment all he wanted was to lay back and let it happen.

  Instead he quickly placed his hand on hers and made her stop.

  “Am I doing it wrong?” she went stiff, looking scared.

  “No, we talked about this. You don’t have to do it at all. You don’t owe me anything.”