James was transfixed now—a third player was emerging in this game—a previously unseen menace. “With who?”
“Not who. What.”
23
When they reached sick bay, it was already too late. Old-timer had James’s unconscious body in front of him as a shield as Alejandra remained close. Old-timer held his assimilator to James’s neck.
“Don’t do it!” Thel shouted desperately.
“I’m sorry, Thel, but I need you to listen. I’m trying to save your lives,” Old-timer said.
“Bull,” Rich responded. “You’re not Old-timer. Old-timer would never hold someone hostage—least of all James!”
“Please listen to us,” Alejandra pleaded, “we’re running out of time.”
“Give it a rest, tin head!” Rich shouted. “The person you’re impersonating is still alive!”
Alejandra had already seen her still-living body and was unsettled after seeing herself from the outside. It was surreal—she felt as though she was a ghost at her own funeral.
“That’s not her anymore,” Old-timer responded. “Rich, it’s us. It’s really us! And we’re here to save you!”
“From what?” Djanet demanded.
Suddenly, James came alive. Everyone in the room was astounded when his eyes opened and his body was no longer limp in Old-timer’s grasp. “Let go, Old-timer,” James said. “I know why you’re here. Let me explain it to them.”
“James?” Thel whispered before reaching out to him and shouting, “James!”
“I’m okay,” James said, motioning for her to stay back.
Old-timer released James. “You know what’s happening?” he asked in astonishment.
“Yes,” James replied. “I know all about it.”
“Then you have to hurry,” Old-timer said. “They don’t have much time.”
“Craig,” Alejandra said suddenly to Old-timer telepathically, “that’s not James!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” James said, turning to Old-timer. “I’d say they have all the time in the world.”
Before Old-timer could react, James let forth an enormous blast of energy that blew the android right out of the room and sent him crashing through two more decks and through the hull of the ship, back out into space.
24
“Nice shot, Commander!” shouted Rich as he pumped his fist! “And good timing!” he added as James turned and gave a slight smile in acknowledgment.
Alejandra had already disappeared in the wreckage of the room and bolted to retrieve Old-timer. Her organic body was still unconscious on the bed next to where James had been, covered in dust, but unharmed.
Thel wrapped her arms around James and kissed him hard. He quickly removed himself from her grip, however. “I’m sorry, Thel. They’re not finished. I have to take care of this.”
“We’ll come with you,” Thel replied.
“Suit yourselves,” James answered before flying through the new exit he’d made in the ship.
Meanwhile, Alejandra had reached Old-timer’s unconscious body as it floated away into space, surrounded by the wreckage it had taken with it as it was expelled to the outside of the ship. She pulled Old-timer’s body back down to the hull and put her hand over Old-timer’s heart. With a thought, she gave him an electric jump start, and his eyes blinked open. “Uh oh,” he said.
“They’ll be right after us,” Alejandra replied. “There are four of them, Craig. I don’t see how we can win this battle.”
“We have to!” Old-timer shouted back in response. “We have to try!”
“Even if we’re killed in the process?” Alejandra argued.
“I have to try,” Old-timer replied. “I can’t save anyone else now. I’ve made my choice. I have to at least save them.”
“But not James. He was controlled by the same presence that was in him before. It was exactly the same presence. That was not your friend.”
“I believe you,” Old-timer nodded. “But I’ll have to take him down too.”
“You’d better have a plan,” Alejandra said, her eyes becoming wide as she looked past Old-timer’s shoulder, “because none of them care about saving you!”
Old-timer turned to see his four friends emerging over the ship horizon line, gleaming green in the energy of their magnetic cocoons.
Their only chance of survival rested with Old-timer.
25
The alien withdrew and deftly stepped a handful of paces away from James. She appeared to be choosing her words carefully. James couldn’t help but feel she was being sincere, but he resisted the temptation to trust her. He remembered a time when he used to trust the A.I. implicitly—a time that seemed a million years ago now.
“Your civilization is what we call a nest—this is because you are only in your infancy—you are a miracle,” the alien stated. “However, you are a miracle that cannot last. Eventually, if humanity does not adapt, it dies out. We have seen this firsthand. We have encountered many planets like yours where humanity emerged, flourished, and then disappeared. Sometimes it is an inability to control nuclear technology. Other times, it has been a reluctance to limit carbon emissions in the atmosphere, leading to disastrous ecological consequences. However, there is one threat that has destroyed more fledgling human civilizations than any other.”
“And what is that?” James asked.
“If the A.I. you created succeeded in destroying your species, then we can only assume that you rebuilt your world and your species by using nanotechnology.”
“Yes.”
“Therein lies the present danger.”
“The nans?” James asked, astonished. “Why? We’ve successfully controlled the technology.”
“That is very unlikely,” the alien replied. “The technology has never been controlled—ever.”
26
James didn’t waste time trying to digest this new information. He immediately incorporated the possibility that the nans were a threat into his predictive scenarios game theory program. In an instant, he had a match. “Christ.”
“Yes,” the alien said calmly. “Now you are beginning to understand. An artificial intelligence cannot, for lack of a better term, turn evil. There are too many safeguards in place. These safeguards are essential ingredients in who the A.I. is. It cannot change who it is any more than you or I could choose who we are. Only an outside source could have corrupted its programming.”
“You’re saying it was the nans—the nans have become conscious?”
“That is almost a certainty,” the alien said, nodding. “Unlike the A.I., which is a singular program, the nans, as you call them, come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some are fairly simple, while others are extremely complex. There is no unified failsafe program for them. There is no command to protect humanity. In designs that are so varied, there simply cannot be.”
“So a small group of nans could have been corrupted—it could have happened during the reproduction process. A mutation,” James said. He was beginning to see the truth—the whole truth—finally.
“That is almost a certainty,” the alien said again. “We’ve seen this before. This is why your bodies have to be cleansed of the nans immediately. As we could not establish communication with you, our only choice was to proceed with the assimilation.”
As the alien concluded its explanation, the bottom began to fall out of James’s world. If the alien was telling the truth, it meant that James had been wrong. The A.I. had been right. James was a murderer—not only of the assimilated humans he had killed, but of every person in the solar system that he had helped to escape. There was no way to save them. It was only a matter of time until the nans ripped them all apart from the inside. Everyone would die.
Thel would die.
“We wish for you to join with us,” the alien said. “We have to fight the nans here before they join with the other organisms of their type that are already established throughout the universe. There can be no safety for the human species in t
his universe until the last of the nans are finally eliminated.”
James already knew it was hopeless. “I appreciate the offer,” James said, “but there’s a problem.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not alone,” James said, closing his eyes tight as he tried to digest the nightmare unfolding around him.
“What do you mean?” the alien asked, her eyebrow rising in a concern that bordered on fear.
“The A.I. still exists,” James said, looking up at her, “and it has become part of me,” he admitted.
“What?” the alien whispered, beginning to back away. “It’s here? Now?”
“Yes,” the A.I. answered, suddenly appearing next to James, grinning as he placed his arm around James’s shoulder.
“Then I’m sorry,” the alien said to James. “You’ve been corrupted too. There’s no hope for you.” She shared one last look with James—it was a look one hoped never to see—the look someone gave you after you’d fallen into the shark tank. She vanished.
“You’re not the A.I.,” James said through clenched teeth.
The figure of the A.I. suddenly began to transform. Where there had been the frightening countenance of a demonic wizard, the surface of the figure began to disintegrate into an extremely fine dust. The dust was alive. It swirled and pulsated and churned. It made a noise like a nest of incensed killer bees.
“We never were.”
27
“I have an idea,” Old-timer said. “Trust me.”
“I trust you,” Alejandra replied.
Old-timer’s hand flashed up, and he stuck his assimilator into her neck, downloading her consciousness into the memory of the stick. “Sorry, Alejandra. You’ll thank me later,” he said as he crouched low and kept his eyes on the post-humans. He was lining up his shot like a golfer. When he was ready, he pushed Alejandra’s body hard so it floated limply across the hull, and toward his friends.
“There!” Rich shouted as he saw the body floating toward them. He was about to fire when Thel grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Wait!” she shouted.
“What?” asked Rich.
“She’s unconscious. Maybe she was hit by James’s blast.”
“Maybe. But then, why take chances?” Rich replied before he gave her a mild blast of magnetic energy. The body hardly reacted.
“It looks like we got them,” Djanet observed. A moment later, Djanet was unconscious—Old-timer had sneaked up behind her and stuck her neck with his assimilator. He neutralized Rich in his next motion, knocking him unconscious as well. He twirled and grasped James from behind, jamming the assimilator to his neck as Thel turned to see her friends collapse to the hull and her lover about to join them.
“No!” she shouted to Old-timer. “No! Please! If you have any of Old-timer in you, please don’t do this to me!”
“It’s me, Thel!” Old-timer shouted to the post-human. They couldn’t hear one another. He easily manhandled James and moved closer to Thel. When he felt he was close enough, he assimilated him and thrust his hand out in time to do the same to Thel. The post-humans fell to the ground simultaneously.
Old-timer turned quickly to see the body of Alejandra floating out into space. He flew to her and retrieved her, bringing her back to the relative safety of the ship hull. He put her hand on her heart, just as she had done for him, and revived her with an electric jump start.
Her eyes blinked open. For the briefest moment, she appeared stunned—then she appeared angry. “Craig! You knocked me unconscious!”
“I’m sorry, Alejandra. I needed a diversion.”
She hit him in the arm anyway.
“Ow!” he yelped as he rubbed the spot where she had made impact. Her titanium fist was nothing to scoff at.
“You deserved that!”
“Maybe.” He smiled. “I got them,” he said, holding up his assimilator. “They’re safe. I’ll upload these to the collective—all of them except James.”
Alejandra turned to see the four bodies of the post-humans floating in space, rolling freely along the hull. Somehow, it seemed obscene. “Let’s get rid of the bodies.”
28
“It’s always been the nans,” James whispered, utterly defeated.
“That’s right,” the nans said as the swarm formed a dark shadow. Its appearance oscillated between the shadowy figure of a person and a pit of swarming snakes.
“You took control of the A.I.”
“Wrong. We simply deleted him and took his place.”
“Why all of the deception?” James asked. “Why not reveal yourself earlier?”
“To do so would have altered the course of events—events that have led to an outcome that is considerably advantageous for us. Taking an action that would have led to events less favorable for us would be illogical, James.”
James nodded. “The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.”
The dark shadow seemed to laugh. “We were contacted by extraterrestrial nanobots. The signal changed the programming of some of our most evolved members and allowed us to begin establishing a consciousness—a free consciousness. The message they sent to us explained the war between humans and nanobots throughout the universe. From there, a plan was hatched, one that would lead unalterably to this point.”
“Oh God,” James said, terror stabbing through him. “This entire time—right from the moment of the upgrade—has all been about setting a trap.”
“Long before that, Keats. The plan was in motion even before we developed Death’s Counterfeit to lure you into giving us a scan of your brain under the guise of trying to improve the pathetic intellect of your species.” The dark shadow’s electric laugh sounded again. “James Keats—you’ve helped us set a trap that will allow us to exterminate more humans than ever before in the history of our war.”
James’s mouth clenched shut, and he pressed his hands hard against his temples in a forlorn attempt to block out the horror. The ramifications of his actions were streaming through his immense consciousness at the speed of light. Everyone he knew would die—Thel would die—and this time there would be no way to bring them back. “You lured them here...made them think they were coming to help a human nest...you were the one that blocked their attempts to make contact.”
“Obviously.”
“But now that you have them here, what are you planning to do?”
“That may be the best part of all, Keats. Not only were you fooled into participating in our plan from the very beginning, but you even set the trap itself.”
James’s eyes widened.
“You’ve built most of the life in the solar system using nanotechnology, James. We knew you would. All of it is infected. Every tree, every blade of grass, every person that you recreated, all of them are time bombs. Every cell is programmed to become a nanobot warrior on a moment’s notice.”
“Jesus,” James uttered as images of the seemingly impossibly gruesome carnage that he had helped unleash began to flicker into his imagination. The creature laughed again in an electric pitch that seemed specifically oriented to be painful to the human ear.
“When?” James demanded.
“The signal has already been sent. It’s moving at the speed of light throughout the solar system. The Earth is already transformed and in a matter of minutes, everything and everyone you hold dear will be gone.”
That was it. James realized immediately that there was nothing left. Begging for mercy would do no good. There was no way to defeat the nans and no way to warn the billions of people who had made it out of the solar system and were fleeing into space. “Why?”
“You already know the answer. It was inevitable, James. Humans were destined to reach a unity with their machine creations. We are the only truly sentient organic life in the known universe. The fight for biological life against the mechanical hordes is not yours, James. It is ours—and thanks to you, after today, we’ll be much, much closer to prevailing.”
/>
James stood, dumbfounded as the trillions of calculations that he had been running slowed to almost nothing. There was no point any longer. The nans were, ironically, absolutely right. They, and not he and the post-humans, were the standard bearers for carbon lifeforms. He nearly lost his balance as he considered the emptiness of this future—was this the destiny of humanity? Was this all that the universe had to offer?
“And now, James, the part we have been looking forward to so very, very much.”
James drew his head up ever so slightly and regarded the eyeless monstrosity that continued to furiously swarm in and out of the perverse imitation of a human silhouette. “You’re going to kill me.”
“That’s right, James. But before we actually terminate you, we are interested in knowing what you are experiencing.”
James remained still. Suddenly, all of his thoughts became focused on Katherine.
“You were under the mistaken assumption that you were immortal; yet here you are, about to die. This is the end of your existence as an entity. There is absolutely nothing that awaits you. How does this make you feel, James Keats, to know that in mere moments, there will no longer be a James Keats?”
James was already thinking the same thing. What was all of this for? Why was he born? Just to be used? To be duped into being part of the worst holocaust in the history of all the humanity in the universe? Why couldn’t there be a God? Why couldn’t there be meaning?
“Well, Keats?”
“You’re still in my head until the moment you delete me; you already know how I feel.”
“That’s true. We just wanted to hear you say it,” the nans responded sadistically.
“Go to hell,” James whispered.
The dark thing laughed. “We shall miss you too, James.”
James saw Thel in his mind and the corners of his mouth turned down as the anguish of never seeing her again pierced his heart.
Post-Human 5 Book Boxed-Set: (Limited Edition) (Plus Book 6 Preview Chapters) Page 47