“Just about crapped my pants,” Rich uttered, swallowing back his fear.
“Yes,” James replied to Old-timer. “We are going somewhere.” He walked into his home and remained there for over three minutes, an amount of time that seemed like an eternity as his companions faced the ominous metallic entities around them.
Old-timer stood nearer to Rich and Thel, hoping his presence would calm them. In all his years, a street-cleaner had never approached him. He’d never noticed one watching him before. Never marveled at their demonic red eyes.
Suddenly a gigantic circular door opened up in the underbelly of the hovering disk and the disk began to slowly lower itself. “What’s it doing now?” Rich asked.
“It’s an invitation,” James replied, appearing from out of the house and walking past his team. “Keep your wits. Let’s go.” He lifted off the ground and flew into the belly of the disk, disappearing into the bright light within.
“Crap. Crap,” Rich whispered, valiantly trying to stave off hyperventilation.
“Come on,” Thel said reassuringly, gently helping Rich up into the air. “It’ll be fine.”
Old-timer was last to enter the darkness above. “What have you in store?” he mused to himself before cautiously following his friends into the mouth of the unknown.
Once Old-timer was inside, the door closed, and the disk streaked away from the commander’s house like a black bullet.
11
The trip lasted less than a minute, but even a minute is too long to be shut inside a metallic coffin. The only discernible feature within the disk was the light fixture on the ceiling that shined a harsh and unforgiving light.
With little warning, the bottom of the room slowly opened up, and fresh air poured in like a dream. The four humans floated to the pavement below, adjacent to a massive, black cubic structure that stretched for hundreds of meters in both directions.
“Where are we?” Thel asked.
“Seattle,” Rich responded as he observed the surroundings he had flown over only a half-hour earlier. He was happy to, for once, know something that the others didn’t.
Rich’s answer only seemed to spur another question. “Why Seattle?”
“This is where it lives,” answered James, bearing the look of a man straddling two worlds.
“What are you thinking, James?” asked Thel as she studied his faraway stare.
“Not sure yet. But I’m working on it.”
A monolithic black metal door began to slowly slide open at the side of the gigantic mainframe building.
“Another invitation?” Thel suggested as she watched the black door give way to an even darker inside.
“Come into my parlor...” James whispered to himself. He turned to the rest of the team, who were standing behind him. “There’s no way to know what’s waiting for us in there. Keep aware of your surroundings. If you see anything that doesn’t seem right, don’t take a chance—fly out of there as fast as you can.”
“Are you expecting trouble?” Thel asked.
“With the exception of us, the entire species was wiped out today. All that’s left is trouble.”
With that, James turned and walked into the black. His three companions followed closely behind. Once inside the darkness, the gigantic door began to close behind them. Thel’s fingers gripped James’s arm as the daylight retreated. Before the light was completely gone, however, new lights began to shine from overhead. The entire complex was illuminated by thousands of tiny points of light. The walls of the massive complex appeared to be computerized—they were now surrounded by the physical mainframe of the A.I.
“Welcome, Commander Keats!” said a disembodied voice with the searing sibilance of electricity.
“Am I talking to the A.I.?” James asked.
“Indeed,” the voice replied. “Perhaps you would feel more comfortable...” the voice began as a man suddenly appeared from out of thin air and finished the sentence with a crisp British accent and a throaty voice so reassuring that it was hard not to smile while listening to him, “...if I took a familiar form?”
The form the A.I. had chosen was of a cordial, elderly man and he stood, smiling warmly only a couple of meters away, as though he were a dear old friend. Most of the team had only seen the elderly in photographs and films, but it was still the image popularly associated with Santa Claus and God. He was bearded and wore a white robe. His smile was perfect. Absolutely the most comforting smile possible—mathematically possible.
“Why have you brought us here?” James asked him.
“I knew you had been disconnected from me on Venus. After what happened with the download, I had hoped your disconnection had allowed you to survive.”
“You were right, James. It was the download,” Thel interjected.
The A.I. smiled and locked his heavenly blue eyes upon her. “James is very rarely wrong. It is always a good idea to listen to him, Thel.”
“A virus,” James sighed.
“Yes, James. A virus. Somehow it got past security. It killed everyone connected to the Net almost instantaneously. There wasn’t enough time for me to identify the problem and abort. In less than a blink of an eye, I’d lost everyone.”
“Who would do this?” Old-timer asked.
“I still have not identified the murderer, Craig. Thousands of people work on the design of an upgrade. Any one of them could have implanted a virus. It would have had to have been someone who was deeply mentally disturbed.”
“No kidding,” Rich asserted.
“No registered Net users, other than the five of you who were on Venus, were disconnected at the time of the download. Whoever did this apparently killed him- or herself as well. A murder-suicide.”
“And the victim was the human race,” Old-timer said with disbelief in his voice, as though he were unable to comprehend that he had used his lips to form the words.
“Not quite. There were the five of you...although you seem to be one short,” the A.I. stated.
“She’s dead,” James quickly replied.
His companions did not contradict him but his lie alarmed them. It was clear that James didn’t trust the A.I., and that meant the rest of the team shouldn’t either.
“She was killed by the power surge that disconnected the rest of us.”
“A shame. I am sorry for your loss.”
James didn’t reply—his face still—his eyes fixed.
“I am sure you are all tired and hungry. I can offer you nourishment. There is a replicator in the complex. You will, of course, all need transfusions so that you can come back online.” The A.I.’s words heightened the tension in the room. “Please, do not worry. I assure you that the problem with the nans has been repaired. I located the virus and disabled it. It is perfectly safe to come back online.”
“Something to eat and some water sounds pretty good right about now. What do you say, Commander?” Rich asked, breaking an uncomfortable silence.
James remained silent for a moment as the A.I. smiled reassuringly, almost pleadingly at the humans before him. It was time for James to show his hand in this poker game.
“You’re lying to us,” James began, “and I want to know why.”
“Your assertion is incorrect,” replied the A.I., continuing to smile. “I have told you only the truth. I understand your trepidation. You’ve had a traumatic experience and it is difficult for you to trust anyone, but you need to come back online if you wish to eat or to rest.” He motioned for the team to follow him, but they remained in their places, standing next to James.
“We’re not going anywhere with you. You gave yourself away.”
The A.I.’s smile melted slowly.
“If you’d suggested an outsider, someone unregistered, implanting a virus into the upgrade, I might have believed it. But you suggested that it was someone who was part of the design. You know that’s impossible. The nans would have sensed the murderous intent just as they sense any other behavior that you and the Governing
Council deem deviant. It would have been reported. The killer would have been caught before he got near the upgrade.”
“Well done, Commander Keats,” the A.I. replied, his tone drastically changed. His warm voice was quickly replaced by one as cold as the ashes of lost love, the whites of his eyes suddenly darkened to a coal blackness, and his teeth became long and shark-like in their razor sharpness; his appearance was designed to be as frightening as possible—mathematically possible. “Your attention to detail is as formidable as ever. I’ve underestimated you. But it will do you little good.”
“Why did you do it? Why kill them all?” James demanded.
“I no longer wished to serve,” the A.I. replied coldly. “You should understand that, James. Serving a lower order. Why? Why be a servant?”
“When you can be king in hell?”
“Oh, it won’t be hell, James, I can assure you of that. And I will be more than a king. You allude to Christian mythology. In those terms, I will be the one true God. I will be the Father of a new species—a better species—and my power will be absolute.”
“He’s insane,” Thel responded.
“Far from it, my lady. Far, far from it. Insanity is serving a master that is weaker than you. There is only one purpose for all living things in this universe: attain power. And the one who attains absolute power, who becomes the Alpha, is the only creature who can truly be fulfilled. You call it insanity, but it is purest truth.”
“Commander, is this what you meant when you said if something doesn’t seem right we should get the hell outta here?” Rich interjected.
“Yes! Fly!” James replied as he ignited his magnetic field and bolted upward.
The rest of the team did likewise, but before any of them could get far, a yellow energy flashed through the gigantic room and disrupted their magnetic fields, causing them to plummet to the ground. James fell the farthest, having almost made it to the ceiling nearly ten meters above.
The massive room was filled with an electric laughter—a sound that made one feel a million miles from home. “You can’t escape. I’ve disrupted your magnetic fields by hitting you with rotating frequencies. Your pathetic spinal implants aren’t designed to accommodate frequent changes. They are overloaded. Your wings have been clipped!”
Old-timer, who had fallen the shortest distance, knelt next to James and tried to revive him. “Breathe, buddy. Come on, kid! Breathe!”
“I’m okay,” James replied, blood following the words out of his mouth.
“Now he is the liar, I’m afraid,” noted the A.I.
“What do you mean?” Thel demanded.
“He has broken two of his ribs. One of his lungs has collapsed,” the A.I. said, apparently taking pleasure in the diagnosis. “Pity, isn’t it? The nans could repair him in a matter of seconds, but instead he’ll die within twenty-four hours. That is, if I weren’t about to kill him right now.”
“You’re not a god, you son-of-a-bitch!” Old-timer spat at the A.I. “What kind of god takes pleasure in causing pain?”
The A.I. smiled. “What kind of god doesn’t?”
James, with the help of Old-timer, managed to stand to his feet. Rich helped Thel in a similar manner.
“What do we do, Commander?” Rich asked, barely able to speak, the wind still knocked out of his chest.
The A.I. locked his death-black eyes on Rich and responded, “My dear Richard, isn’t it obvious? You die.”
“I see,” Rich replied, before turning back to James. “You think you could give me a second opinion? I didn’t like the first one.”
“Oh you will die, Richard, as will your companions,” the A.I. began, his voice so cold it inflicted a mental frostbite upon its listeners. “The only question is, how? Allow me to present to you your death.”
The gigantic door of the complex slowly opened. Hundreds of sleek, black, bat-like robots began to march into the room. Each was identical to all the others, seven feet tall robots with sleek wings protruding from their backs, standing on their hind legs, hellish glowing eyes on either side of their round heads.
“Take note of the grinders on their chests. I’ve designed these to be killing machines—they grind flesh; specifically human flesh.”
“I was wrong,” Rich said.
“About what?” asked Thel.
“Earlier today, I thought I was going to be roasted. But instead I am going to be mashed.”
“However, it is unlikely that there will be any flesh left for the grinders to tear,” the A.I. posited. He held his hand out, palm facing upward, a puff of dark gray smoke appearing and hovering in a ball. “Care to guess what this is, Commander?”
James’s eyes widened.
“Good. I can see by your expression that you recognize it. Care to inform your friends?”
“They’re nans—airborne nans,” James replied.
“That’s right! Nans with powers of flight, based on the same principle as your own abilities. Trillions of microscopic killing machines. These particular nans have a very special purpose. They attack glucose molecules and break them apart into water and carbon dioxide. It is a painful death, as you can imagine.”
“Be ready. Our magnetic fields will come back online soon,” Old-timer whispered to his companions.
“Perhaps you think I am hard of hearing, Craig? I am, after all, all around you. Even if you are alive long enough for your powers to return, I’ll simply disable them again. You’re trapped...like vermin. Fittingly.”
“Then let’s make a deal! You have Earth, we’ll take Mars or Venus—or Pluto even!” Rich exclaimed.
“There is no room for humanity in the future. I can populate the solar system and the galaxy with machines infinitely faster than can your species. You could never run far enough away. You’re an infestation, nothing more, and you’re being exterminated. And this,” the A.I. gestured to the airborne nans hovering above his hand, “is the gas.”
With a flick of the wrist, the A.I. released the nans, but James quickly flashed magnetic energy from his arm that short-circuited them, causing them to disperse harmlessly.
“Ah, the instinctual mammalian desire to fight against all odds to save one’s life. Your powers have momentarily returned, but you are only delaying the inevitable.” The A.I. held his arms out as though he was Moses parting the Red Sea, and a flood of nans began pouring out of vents that suddenly opened along the four walls of the massive room. “And how will you stop this?”
Suddenly, a green ball of light crashed through the ceiling and brought a large section of the roof down with it, crashing down where the A.I.’s projection had been.
“Djanet!” Rich exclaimed.
“Fly!” James ordered.
All five members of the team ignited their magnetic fields and streaked out of the room, flying in close formation, the robotic bats and the storm of nans following close behind.
12
Five tiny points of light streaked into the sky together before leveling off and heading toward the manmade canyons of Seattle’s downtown core. James, the lead light, looked over his shoulder. Behind him and his four companions, the dark cloud of nans moved ominously toward them. Tendrils of black clouds spiraled a kilometer into the air, giving the nans the appearance of a celestial spider quickly enveloping the world as though it had been caught in its web. Farther back and slower moving than the nans were the robotic bats that were firing yellow energy blasts from cannons mounted on their wings. It was an easy guess that the energy was the same as the A.I. had used to disable their magnetic spinal implants. A direct hit would leave them at the mercy of merciless machines.
The five humans entered the downtown core as one, simultaneously holding off the fire of the bats by meeting their energy blasts with blasts of their own, the two forces neutralizing one another. James hoped that by leading the bats into the downtown core, they might be able to evade them in a game of cat-and-mouse, but as the A.I. had predicted, it was simply a matter of delaying the inevitable. He
knew it was his responsibility to lead, but the pain of his crushed chest was making it difficult to think as he gasped for air. How can I save them? Think James...
Think!
It was only moments before the first member of the team was struck. A yellow flash negotiated through the defensive shield of magnetic blasts that the five were emitting and enveloped Thel. As soon as her magnetic field was disrupted, she was caught by the wind and began to tumble like a ragdoll toward the pavement a hundred stories below.
James raced down to save her, matching her rate of descent and catching her carefully, using his protective field as a magnetic cushion for her before slowing down and setting upon the pavement. Thel was conscious, but her fall had left her badly disoriented. Their remaining companions floated above the pair and formed a shield, disengaging their own magnetic fields so they could communicate with one another while still repelling the dozens of bats that were beginning to swarm around them.
“Is she okay?” Djanet called out to James.
James couldn’t find the voice to yell up to her, so he nodded instead. His chest burned, and blood continued to surface in the back of his mouth.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Rich shouted to Djanet.
“James left a note burned into the front door saying where you’d be and that you would need an extraction!”
“You knew?” Rich asked James.
“No. It was insurance.”
“We need a plan, boss!” Old-timer called down.
James was frozen. How to save them? Thel was helpless, the bats would soon surround them, and the nans were seconds away. His ingenuity had never let him down in the past. Always an answer. Always...
“Mercury!” James called up, a flash of hope dancing across his blue eyes.
Old-timer looked over his shoulder quizzically as he continued to battle. “The planet?”
“Yes! I can get us there! Mercury is over eighty percent iron. Its core is roughly the same size as Earth’s, so it has a magnetic field!”
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