“Turn his head to the side. Let any water in his nose or mouth drain out.”
She knelt behind James’s head and propped it up before turning it to the left side for a moment and then turning it to the right. The rain had become a downpour, and it was difficult to tell if anything was draining from him at all. “Now what?”
“We have to get air past anything that is clogging his airway so it can enter the lungs,” said the A.I. as he pinched James’s nose. “Breathe strongly into his mouth four times, as much air as you can give him, with as much force as you can muster.”
“Will it work?”
“It’s a very old method from before people had nans,” the A.I. replied. “But it’s our only chance, and his only chance. Do it now.”
Thel nodded and began breathing into James’s mouth. Each time she puffed, James’s cheeks expanded, but his chest didn’t rise.
“I don’t think it’s getting through!” she exclaimed.
“Shh. We must keep our voices low,” the A.I. replied calmly. He pushed James onto his side and began hitting him hard on the back, in an attempt to get water out of his passageways. “We’ll repeat the cycle until he breathes again.” He let James fall back again, making sure to protect his head before pinching his nose a second time. “Do it.”
Thel breathed hard four more times.
Again, James’s chest remained still.
She pulled up and put her shaking hand to her forehead. “Oh my God. It’s not working,” she realized, hope draining rapidly. “We’ve lost him.”
The A.I. pounded on James’s chest.
On the third try, James appeared to splutter, and a small quantity of water bubbled past his lips.
“James? Can you hear me?” the A.I. asked before turning his ear to James’s mouth to listen for breathing. He looked up at Thel and shook his head. “We have to try again,” he said, quickly pinching his nose.
Thel breathed into his mouth hard, four more times.
James’s ribcage seemed to rise and fall.
The A.I. put his ear to James’s mouth and kept his palm lightly on James’s chest.
“Is he breathing?” Thel asked in an urgent whisper.
The A.I. met her eye for a split second before his eyes filled with terror. Thel had just enough time to turn her head before a hand grasped her hair and pulled her violently away, impossibly fast. Before the A.I. could even get to his feet, Thel had been taken into the dark forest, completely vanishing into the black.
9
WAKING UP, seemingly from the dead, Old-timer sent a bolt of terror through both Rich and Djanet as they watched him sit straight up.
Rich shrieked.
Djanet turned from Old-timer, her shock at his resuscitation not enough to prevent her from raising an eyebrow at Rich’s reaction.
Rich caught his breath and placed his palm on his chest. “I know,” he said, nodding in acknowledgment. “Not the most attractive sound I’ve ever made. But that,” he continued, pointing at Old-timer, “…that was unexpected. We thought you were dead for sure.”
Old-timer stood to his feet. “Sorry, folks. Didn’t mean to—”
Djanet threw her arms around him before he could finish. “Who cares? You’re okay now and that’s all that matters! We thought you were dead!”
“What happened?” Rich asked. “You just collapsed. You weren’t even breathing.”
“Yeah, the new body doesn’t exactly need to breathe.”
Rich closed his eyes, an envious expression suddenly painting his face. “Damn. I really want my upgrade now. Do you even have to go to the bathroom anymore?”
Ignoring Rich’s question, Old-timer replied, “Listen, guys, something’s up. How much time do we have before we have to report back?”
“We crossed fifteen minutes, three minutes, and uh…” Rich trailed off for a moment as he read his mind’s eye. “And forty-one seconds ago.”
“Then you’d better go back quickly,” Old-timer responded. “Take the Planck back to Universe 1 and report back to James and the A.I.”
“What? You’re not coming with us?” Djanet asked, shocked.
“Those were their conditions,” Old-timer answered.
“Their conditions? Old-timer, what the heck is going on?” Rich asked, his confusion mirroring Djanet’s.
“When I stepped through,” Old-timer explained, swiveling to point at the magnetic field, “my consciousness was downloaded into something called the void. There were people there, people I knew.”
Rich looked down at the surface of the platform. “Jesus. How hard did you hit your head?”
“It wasn’t a hallucination,” Old-timer returned emphatically. “Look, Universe 332 is gone. Erased.”
“What the hell?” Djanet reacted in a stunned whisper. “What do you mean? How could someone erase an entire universe?”
“I don’t know,” Old-timer replied, “but they said that the thing that did it has the same plan for our universe.”
“What!?” Djanet reacted again, even more stunned.
“You’ve gotta haul ass back to Universe 1 and report to James and the A.I. The people in the void are just consciousnesses, stored in some sort of mainframe. That’s all that’s left, but they want us to bring them back to Universe 1.”
“What if they’re lying?” Rich asked. “What if it’s a trick? A trap?”
“Do you trust them?” Djanet asked.
“I-I really can’t say one way or another. I just really don’t want to be the decision-maker here,” he stuttered nervously, his confidence having been rocked to its core. “It’s definitely not my place.” He shook his head and sighed. “I might be the worst person in the world to make a call like that.”
“You said you know them,” Djanet said, studying Old-timer. “Who are they?”
Samantha flashed into his memory and he shut his eyes tight, trying to blink the image away. “Two of them, you guys don’t know—they’re people I knew a long, long time ago. But the other is Aldous Gibson.”
“Gibson!” Rich reacted. “The chief?”
“The one and only,” Old-timer said, nodding.
“And that’s it? There’s only three of them left?” Djanet asked.
Old-timer nodded again. “As far as I know. Look, I don’t know what’s goin’ on here. I don’t know if…” he trailed off. He was about to say he wasn’t sure if he’d gone crazy, but he thought better of it. “Whatever’s happening, James and the A.I. need to know. James needs to cross over and help us out. But the condition for you two crossing back over without bringing them along was that I stay to make sure someone comes back for us.”
“Okay,” Rich replied, “but what about your body—”
“It’ll go with you too,” Old-timer interrupted, anticipating the question. “It’ll be fine. Like I said, it doesn’t need to breathe. It’s not indestructible, but it’s damn near close. I’ll be able to reenter it when James comes to get us.”
“What if they’re trying to trap James?” Djanet suggested.
Old-timer shrugged. “James and the A.I. will figure this out. There’s nothing those two can’t solve. We’re out of our depth here, guys. It’s time to bring in the big guns.”
10
The A.I. charged into the depths of the dark forest, blindly searching for any sign of Thel, the rain and the implacable black of the night making the terrain terrifyingly foreign and quite possibly lethal. The steady impact of heavy, wet droplets on the leaves and bark of the trees made listening for signs of struggle almost impossible. He wanted to call out for her, but he knew he couldn’t risk giving away his position.
He crouched down and put his face low to the ground, desperately waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness as he looked for patterns that might interrupt the randomness in the nearly black, soaked earth. He looked for claw marks, a footprint, or broken branches, but there was nothing to be discerned. He felt naked without his connection to the mainframe—without his connection to
his brain. Like a human stripped of his neocortex, the A.I. had been cut down to size. His consciousness was small and limited. He felt like an animal—an animal in the woods, at night, vulnerable. He felt like prey.
“Get back!” he suddenly heard Thel shriek out in a guttural scream.
He turned his head to the right, in the direction he thought the scream had come from. In the rain, with plenty of boulders, trees, and embankments for the sound waves to echo from, he couldn’t be sure. There was no time to waste, so he sprung into a sprint, holding his arms up to guard against the sharp branches that cut into his clothing and raked painfully across his skin. He knew that his endorphins would kick in and dull the pain—he could push it out of his mind. He thought of what Thel had said back in the car as it sank into the simulated ocean. “There is no air.” She’d been right; there were truly no endorphins, no scratches, no body that leapt over a creek and sprinted to save another ghost with no body. They were playing a game—just some sick game—and he wondered who was really in control.
Thel appeared out of the darkness, the figure of a man having pinned her to a tree where she desperately fought to keep him from clawing her eyes out. She was seconds from losing her fight, and the A.I. knew he had no time to grab a weapon. He built up as much momentum as he could with his stride and made sure to collide with the NPC’s side, bringing the hollow man down hard into the mud and sliding with him through the drenched, cold foliage.
Before he could get to his knees, the NPC elbowed him hard in the face, just missing his nose, which surely would’ve broken. Instead, his cheek took the brunt of the impact, resulting in a likely fracture. Stunned by the power of his vicious opponent, the A.I. scrambled backward on his back, attempting to put as much distance between himself and the mindless apparition as possible. He tried to get to his feet, but the NPC moved so quickly, with such animalistic ferociousness, that he had no chance to prepare to defend himself. He was quickly tackled back down into the mud, the powerful NPC’s arms wrapping around him, bear-hugging him and eliminating any chance the A.I. had of using his limbs to fight back.
The A.I.’s eyes went wide as the NPC’s mouth opened wide, prepared to take its first bite. This is how I die? The entity that was supposed to facilitate the transcendence of man to a higher state of being, consumed by a mindless beast?
The NPC’s first bite was excruciating, when it sank its teeth into the enflamed flesh of the cheek it had cracked with its elbow. The viciousness of the bite caused the A.I. to cry out, forgetting himself as he did so, forgetting that he could be giving his position away to the candidate if the entity were still looming nearby. He forgot that he was putting Thel and James—if James even still lived—in jeopardy too. Those sorts of thoughts didn’t enter into one’s mind when the first bite of one’s flesh had been taken. Rationality went out the window when one was being eaten alive.
Thel, however, made sure there wouldn’t be a second bite. With a hard blow to the back of the head, she rocked the NPC’s skull, causing its body to slacken.
The A.I. shook him off and freed his arms, then scrambled to his feet. He looked up appreciatively and relievedly at Thel, who was still holding the large, muddy rock she’d used as a blunt-force weapon to rescue him. He could see on her face that she was stunned by the damage the NPC had done to him, by the blood that was gushing from the torn flesh where his right cheek was supposed to be.
“Dear God. Are-are you okay?” she asked him.
He stepped closer to her and took the rock from her hands before turning to the nearly motionless NPC. He held the rock above his head, sprung up with his knees, and then brought every ounce of strength he had left in him down hard on top of the figure’s skull, caving it in instantly.
The body twitched slightly for a few seconds, but the NPC was finally finished wreaking havoc.
The A.I. then turned back to Thel as he tossed the rock aside. “I’m feeling a little better already.”
“We’ve gotta get back to James,” Thel urgently exclaimed. “Was he breathing?”
The A.I. nodded. “Very faintly.” He turned to survey their darkened, muddy surroundings. The only perceptible patterns were the random, jagged twists and turns of branches, stripped of leaves by the winter cold, backdropped by a sky that was the darkest shade of gray. “I’m afraid I’ve gotten quite turned around,” he admitted. “What direction?”
Thel was searching for something familiar to trace her route back to James as well. She crouched down like a hunter, looking for the drag marks in the coal-black mud. Her eyes widened when she thought she saw the wide gash and shallow trench left in her wake when the NPC had brutishly and mindlessly dragged her into the small clearing where they now stood. “That way!” she said, springing forward.
The A.I. followed her, but he’d never felt so lost in his life. Thel was only two meters ahead of him at any one time, but he feared that if he lost her, he’d lose her forever and would be left to bleed to death in the dark woods. He desperately pumped his legs, trying to stay on her tail, but the terror that he might lose her and die caused him to recklessly rake his body further against the sharp, low-hanging branches. He held his arms up above his face to shield his eyes from the onslaught of sharp, unforgiving branches and thorns. Every moment, he felt his survival was threatened. He felt humbled. For the first time in ages, he felt merely human.
He sighed with relief when Thel emerged on the rocky embankment where James was still lying on his back, motionless, the rain still pelting his unconscious body.
Thel dropped to her knees and placed her ear to his mouth, then put her hand on his chest. She looked up, relieved. “He’s still breathing.”
“We’ll have to watch him closely,” the A.I. cautioned. “The next forty-eight hours will be very dangerous for him. Any inhalation of water into his lungs could cause pneumonia, infections or heart failure. If only we could—”
“What’s pneumonia?”
The A.I. shook his head. “One of an endless multitude of vulnerabilities in human biology before the post-human era. We’ve been cut down to size here, Thel, cut off from even our most basic abilities. Our core matrix programs are as vulnerable as any other animals in this sim. It’s extremely dangerous.”
“If we’re cut off,” Thel asked, “then how did you know how to get James breathing again? How do you remember...what was it? Momonia?”
“Pneumonia. I seem to have some memories—imprints from my many decades connected to the mainframe, when I had access to virtually all of human knowledge. But I don’t have access to any facts, history, or skills, that are beyond what may or may not have left faint traces of knowledge on my core.” He shook his head and held his hand to his forehead, his wet hair dripping with the nearly freezing rain. “I really have no idea what’s left. It feels like...it feels like most of me is missing. And this entity before you? What is it? Is it me? Is this all I am? A frightened animal?”
“Is that how you see us?” Thel asked, amazed. “You consider humanity to be frightened animals?”
The A.I. narrowed his eyes, surprised that Thel seemed to be taking his comments personally. “I didn’t mean…” He stopped as he questioned himself further. Is it true? Have I been deluding myself, thinking I’m benevolent, when really I’ve felt a sense of superiority? He shook his head. “Of course not. We’re both limited,” he stated. “Neither of us have mind’s eye connections, we can’t fly, and there are no nans in this sim to repair our bodies. I don’t think of post-humans as frightened animals, but being cut down to the size of a Purist is causing me to feel extraordinarily vulnerable, not to mention anxious.”
“Well, speaking of vulnerable,” Thel began, “we need to get outta here. That NPC was in purge mode, which means someone or something has activated a purge.” Then she pointed to the A.I.’s cheek. “And we need to get somewhere to treat your injury, and for God’s sake, we need to get out of this downpour if James is going to have a fighting chance.”
The A.I. n
odded in agreement. He looked out to the other side of the bay, the glow of his old penthouse—or at least the one he’d created in his mind so long ago, when it was he that had been the candidate. He crouched down and took James’s arm, helping him up. “If you will be so kind, please get his other arm,” he said to Thel. “I’ve got an idea.”
11
Old-timer watched as the Planck platform disappeared in less than a blink of an eye, taking Rich and Djanet with it. There was no ripple this time; it was just hanging in the blackness one moment and then was gone the next. He turned back to the three ghosts standing near him in the blackness. “All right, folks. It’s time for a little game of twenty questions, and I need some answers.”
“Of course,” Aldous replied, “and answers will be provided.”
Suddenly, a campfire appeared out of the nothing, already strong and crackling warmly. There were logs around the fire, providing a warm, dry place to sit.
“Let’s make ourselves comfortable, shall we?” Aldous suggested as he walked to the fire to take his seat.
Old-timer followed the trio to the fire and took a seat on a log. Paine sat to his left on the same log, while Aldous and Samantha seated themselves opposite them. Samantha was quiet but studying Old-timer, her eyes betraying her obvious confusion and her continued torment. Old-timer tried his best to avoid eye contact.
“Now,” Aldous began with a sigh as though it had been a long time since he’d been able to have a seat and relax, “what question would you like answered first?”
Old-timer considered for a brief second. There was so much he didn’t understand. He decided to pose the most obvious question first and then to work from there. “You refer to this place as the void, but what is it and how did you come to be here?”
“Ah, good question,” Aldous replied, smiling ever so slightly, as though he couldn’t help but delight in the opportunity to explain his creation. “This is a modified version of a plan I was working on that, sadly, was ill-fated. I’d had the notion that if I could create a virtual world, one real enough to fool an intelligent occupant, then I could employ that world as a kind of training ground and mold a benevolent artificial intelligence within it. Sadly, I simply never had the chance to bring my plan to fruition.” His lips pouted for a moment as he remembered the tragedy that had befallen the three of them, and every other entity in their universe. “However, the technology proved invaluable in the end. I knew I could use the sim to upload our core consciousness into it, but I couldn’t create a fully functioning world. Our energy is limited, and we had to keep the doorway to Universe X open.”
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