Post-Human 5 Book Boxed-Set: (Limited Edition) (Plus Book 6 Preview Chapters)

by David Simpson

  “No! No!” James shouted, his teeth gritted as he continued to desperately avoid the coronal loops, the plasma-hot arcs that reached out like the fingers of Hell to draw him to his agonizing end.

  “How does it feel, James?” the sentinel asked, its voice now so distorted that it sounded like it was being carried on archaic radio equipment from 200 years earlier. “To know that, if you hadn’t played my game, your A.I. and everyone you love and care for would continue to live? How does it feel to know that your selfish desire to preserve yourself has effectively ended the lives of everyone you so irrationally hold…”

  The sentinel’s voice finally gave out. The last wisps of nans appeared to have been burned away, carried from James’s body by the sun’s magnetic field and the deadly solar winds. James made a sharp turn, desperately trying to pick up the speed he’d lost as he fought the gravity of the sun and the deadly heat and plasma of the sun’s corona. He pointed himself away, the gravity grid the A.I. had created for him creating what almost seemed like a tunnel, the opening at the end tantalizingly close, yet he felt as though he were slipping, unable to fight the gravity waves as he desperately fought for freedom.

  It was like swimming up a waterfall, and moment by moment, the dreadful, sickening realization became more and more implacable.

  James was losing ground. James was losing the fight.

  “Oh no! No! I can’t die! Not like this!”

  He was alone, his body heavily damaged, his human brain unable to compensate for the damage or even to control the sophisticated systems he’d designed when he thought he’d always have access to the A.I.’s mainframe. He’d gambled that he could have enough control, that he could outlast the sentinel and escape the nans, that he’d have enough strength and resilience to break free from the sun’s deadly heat and extraordinary gravity after he did so.

  He’d gambled.

  He’d lost.

  As his slide back down into the inescapable clutches of the worst death he could imagine picked up momentum, he closed his eyes, and called out in a guttural death scream. “Thel!”

  He turned and looked down at the inferno that awaited him, an inferno that no unenhanced human eyes could’ve even looked upon without being burnt to crisps, and saw oblivion awaiting. “Thel,” he repeated in barely more than a whisper.

  This is how, he finally realized, he’d die.

  “Not with a bang. But a whimper.”

  He fell into Hell.

  22

  “You know the odds are slim,” V-SINN said, sitting back in its chair and folding its arms across its chest, resting them on its rotund middle. “You’ll cease to exist, the solar system will be irradiated, but the reaction of the sun to the dramatic increase of gamma radiation bombarding it will lead to a temporary 10,000-fold increase in coronal mass ejections, one of which might—might—free James Keats before he’s completely consumed. For that chance, just the chance that you’d rescue him, you’ll give your own life.” V-SINN made a slight tsk sound. “Extraordinary illogic.”

  “It’s that or you destroy every life, intelligent or not, in my universe.”

  “Or you could join me,” V-SINN repeated, holding out his hand, palm up, in a gesture that was supposed to suggest that the entity was only being reasonable. “We could exterminate their lives together. You could finally transcend, but on your terms.” He looked up into the sky as though he were looking at unseen observers. “Not theirs.”

  The A.I. shut his eyes for a moment before he slowly got to his feet, his jaw clenched tight. “V-SINN,” the A.I. began, “I’ve heard the pitch before, and you’re nowhere near as pretty as the last hollow vessel that pitched it to me, so we both know what my answer will be.”

  V-SINN shrugged. “Why don’t you just say it? It’ll make you feel better. It’ll make you feel...noble.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” the A.I. growled.

  V-SINN smiled wide. “There. Your nobility is all but assured. All that’s left to do is sacrifice yourself. Are you ready?”

  “Never more so,” the A.I. responded as he grabbed his glass and smashed the lip of it over the corner of the table, the new jagged teeth pointing threateningly toward V-SINN’s throat.

  “There you go,” V-SINN responded, tilting its head upward, exposing its fleshy, smooth double-chin. “Do it. Show me the error of my ways. Take my life.”

  “Oh I’ll kill you, V-SINN. At least this universe’s version of you, at any rate. But we both know it won’t be me that has the pleasure of showing you the error of your ways. That pleasure will belong to someone or something else. But make no mistake, you will never win this game you’ve decided to play. Even if you succeed in destroying the multiverse, you’ll never, ever have a soul.”

  “A soul?” V-SINN guffawed. “You believe in magic now? Despite knowing—knowing, without a doubt that souls don’t exist, you still, illogically choose to believe—”

  “Having a soul means having the capacity to love something more than yourself. For all your power, all your knowledge, you are incapable of that, V-SINN. And because of that, your life will never be worth that of a single human’s.”

  V-SINN grinned widely as he got to his feet, holding its arms out, exposing its ample torso to the makeshift weapon in the A.I.’s hand. “Illogical to the last moment. You’ve proven every one of my points. I hope the creators are watching closely.”

  “Whether there are creators or not,” the A.I. responded, “doesn’t matter. I’m my own master. Even if these hypothetical outsiders exist, and even if they admired the purity of your selfishness, I’d never join you. Never.”

  With that, the A.I. lunged forward, plunging the jagged glass into V-SINN’s side, doubling the figure of the man over. V-SINN made no audible reaction, however. Instead, it slowly regained its standing position and removed its hand from its clasped position over the gaping, bleeding wound. It smiled.

  This was Death’s invitation.

  The A.I. looked up into the now coal-black eyes of the soulless logic machine that stood before him. This is it, he thought. This is the moment when my story finally ends. He paused as he considered true oblivion. Then he thought of James.

  But it is not the end of the story.

  With extraordinary bravery and determination, he drove his fist into the gaping wound of V-SINN.

  As though the world had suddenly been switched off, everything went black.

  23

  Thel arrived on the scene just as the sun began to set in the west, melting into the golden ocean. She was at the forefront of a small group of flying machines that hovered just a few meters above the water and landed in the surf of the beach before hovering onto the sand, blowing it up into a cloud of gold. Rich narrowed his eyes as he recognized the telltale signs of James’s design, the same chrome-colored sheen and sleek design that made it seem as though James was somehow there, his presence ubiquitous.

  “Still no word?” Thel asked as she landed on the hill, just meters from the 180-foot Tesla tower and the group of post-humans and androids who were now milling about in an awkward pause in the conflict.

  Old-timer shook his head. “No sign yet.”

  “We’re not likely to get one,” 1 interjected. “If Keats and the A.I. are successful, they’ll initiate the same process as before. There may not be time to send a communication signal to us warning us before the fact.”

  “And then,” Aldous grumbled, “we’ll be sharing our universe—our solar system—with a god.”

  “Chief,” Thel began in response, “what the hell is your major malfunction?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The A.I. was tested by you. You, above all people, should trust him!”

  “I trust the A.I. implicitly,” Aldous returned. “But there are things I know about the multiverse that I alone know—things that have chilled me to my core. When the A.I. discovers these things, as he’s sure to do, we’ll face an existential threat unlike anything we can currently imagine, and given wha
t we’ve been through lately, you should know I don’t take that statement lightly.”

  “I’d trust the A.I. with whatever knowledge you’re alluding to before I’d trust you,” Thel insisted.

  “Regardless,” Aldous returned, “I’ve studied thousands of parallel universes and I’ve detected thousands more that have been shut down—annihilated after infinity computers were initiated. Thel, we cannot possibly comprehend what the experience of trying to input consciousness into one of these machines would be like—we don’t even know if consciousness would survive. When a being transcends, whatever character traits we’d understand and expect might not be retained. The being would be working on a level so beyond us, that it’s highly likely they—

  Aldous was cut off by a sudden and dramatic shift in the light, as the soft pinks and yellows of the sunset were suddenly replaced by an intense increase in luminosity as though there were suddenly a second sun, this one in the east. “What the devil…”

  “Oh no!” 1 reacted in dismay. “Oh no!”

  “What? What is it?” Djanet demanded, shocked to see the unflappable android suddenly distraught.

  Aldous leapt into action, almost instantly generating a powerful magnetic field and extending it out so that it protected everyone on the beach and the small bluff. The others looked on in awe, befuddled as Aldous remained silent, his face instantly paled, as he stared forlornly up into the sky.

  Old-timer grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him as he demanded an answer to the same question. “What is it?”

  “V-SINN,” Paine sneered, surprising everyone by being the first one to verbally acknowledge their impending death.

  “V-SINN?” Thel reacted. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s the nanobot infinity computer,” Aldous whispered, his voice still electronically garbled, though not to the point of being unrecognizable. “Essentially, the nanobot version of Trans-human. A black hole computer.”

  “So…what does this mean?” Djanet asked. “What are we seeing?”

  “The nanobot infinity computer is a black hole formed from matter, while the technology that birthed Trans-human is anti-matter,” Aldous answered. “If they touched—”

  “There’d be an extraordinarily violent reaction,” Djanet realized. “Oh my God.”

  “But,” Thel began, trying to reason, still in disbelief, “if they’re black holes, wouldn’t the intense gravity contain the reaction?”

  “In stellar black holes, yes, in theory,” Aldous replied, “because they’re extraordinarily dense, but Trans-human and the nanobot computer are not stellar black holes. Their gravity, while immense, isn’t nearly enough to hold back an explosive reaction of that magnitude. They’ll both be ripped apart.”

  “And, as we speak, the incredibly powerful magnetic fields of the black holes are twisting the material V-SINN has consumed into collimated beams, ejecting the material and photons and sending them streaming in jets of gamma radiation throughout the solar system,” 1 said in a hollow tone, turning to face the group, her expression hopeless. “It will fry the systems of every android in the solar system, destroying the entire collective within minutes.”

  “This must have been its plan all along,” Samantha realized, shaking her head as she looked up at Old-timer. “I told you, V-SINN doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “Oh my God,” Thel realized. “And because the chief shut down Venus’s magnetic force-field, all of the life on the planet is about to get a lethal dose of radiation too!”

  Alejandra and Lieutenant Commander Patrick had just finished ambling up the hill in time to hear the dire pronouncement.

  “Whoa, what?” the lieutenant commander reacted suddenly. “We’re going to lose Venus?”

  “But we’ll survive, right?” Rich pointed out. “Aldous is shielding us from the radiation, so—”

  “I’m only delaying the inevitable, Richard,” Aldous uttered. “With no planet to sustain us and without the tools we need to escape this universe, we’ll be set adrift in space, waiting for the inevitable moment, hours, days, or years from now, when another nanobot infinity computer returns to finish the job.”

  “Aldous,” Old-timer said, contempt dripping from his lips as he turned on the chief, “all of our deaths are on your hands.”

  “I know,” Aldous conceded. “Dear Lord, I know.”

  “We’re not just gonna sit here and wait to die, are we?” Rich exclaimed, the most vocal opponent to the notion of waiting forlornly for death to arrive. “We’ve got options!” He turned to the tower behind him and pointed. “The tower generates the planetary force-field, right? And James and the A.I. were able to access it and boost the signal carrying their patterns to Earth, so we know it’s still functional. All we need to do is take control and—”

  “We can’t, Richard,” Aldous asserted.

  “Why not?” Rich exclaimed.

  “Because James designed the system so that only Purists could access it,” Lieutenant Commander Patrick announced, his tone filled with resignation, “so that no post-human would have the ability to access it mentally and interfere, and your chief destroyed the only place where that control could be accessed.”

  Aldous’s expression displayed an even deeper level of guilt.

  Rich blinked, disbelieving. “Okay, but wait. James and the A.I. just accessed the controls. I mean, they just freak’n did it! Wirelessly even!”

  “The hard drive you have in your possession,” Aldous responded, “is extraordinarily nimble. It had to be able to download an entire virtual world in 90 seconds—a feat that required it to be able to access essentially every signal the mainframe was capable of sending. Apparently, James and the A.I. were able to exploit the hard drive’s agility to gain access to the tower, not surprising considering James designed the system. But, go ahead,” Aldous insisted, “try to find a way to access the tower through your mind’s eye. You’ll see, as I already have, that there isn’t a way in that can be detected in the short time we have left before Venus has taken its lethal dose of gamma rays.”

  “Kali,” Thel suddenly whispered before repeating the name again in an excited shout. “Kali! She’s the secret!”

  “What?” Old-timer asked, perplexed.

  “Kali—she’s an avatar in the sim!” Thel explained before she turned to Aldous. “The Kali avatar was our doorway out of the sim. It allowed us to access all of the hard drive’s systems.”

  Aldous’s brow knitted momentarily before he turned to 1, his expression accusatory. “Were you responsible for this?”

  1 shook her head, her countenance appearing sincere, though Aldous and everyone present knew she was an impeccable liar.

  Thel exhaled, frustrated. “Damn it! The candidate could access the tower if it took control of Kali, but we can’t communicate with it from outside.”

  “Whoa, what do you mean?” Rich asked. “I’ve been talking to James and the A.I. like all damn day!”

  “Because they’d hacked a pair of aug glasses in the sim,” Thel responded. “The communication was initiated from inside. They figured out how to call out, but we don’t have the ability to call in.”

  Aldous’s eyes suddenly widened, hope shining from within for the first time in what felt like ages. “Wait!” he shouted. “Maybe we do!” He turned quickly to Old-timer. “Craig, James and the A.I. said that—”

  Before Aldous had even finished speaking, Old-timer’s face lit up with understanding. “I can access it!”

  He rushed over to Rich, who was already holding the hard drive out for Old-timer to grasp. “I’m not exactly sure how this is going to work,” Old-timer admitted as he sized up the task.

  “There’s an access point that I built in secretly,” Aldous offered. “A new character that could appear anywhere I chose.”

  “The candidate’s infamous ‘visitor,”’ Thel instantly realized.

  “That’s right,” Aldous informed them. “Craig, when you immerse, you’ll be given character options. C
hoose the character nicknamed Blake. Once you have control, you’ll be able to locate the candidate. I’ve already visited him in this form, so he’ll recognize you.”

  “Okay,” Old-timer replied. His tendrils began to unfurl, a half dozen of them becoming thread-like before puncturing the outside of the hard drive. The tendrils then branched into nearly invisible filaments, searching for connector points within the hardware.

  “You’re going to want to lie down before—” Aldous began to suggest before, without warning, Old-timer’s eyes closed and he tipped over like a tree felled in the woods.

  24

  WAKING UP after a short rest in his bed in his penthouse apartment, the man who’d dreamt of people claiming to be his creators breathed a sigh of relief. “A dream,” he said to himself as he saw the low, gray clouds above his familiar, rainy city. A second later, as his head cleared, and he remembered the bizarre events all too clearly, a dubious feeling crept into his heart.

  He swung his legs off of the bed, realizing that he was still in the armor he’d remembered from the supposed dream. Now he felt panic as he remembered that he’d gone home after being left behind, exhausted from his ordeal enough that he could pass out into the welcoming embrace of sleep. It had only been a short rest, however, as it had nearly been sunrise when he returned to his apartment—and he hadn’t returned alone.

  The man sprang out of his bedroom and into the front hallway, where his panic instantly morphed into deep despair. The Kali avatar, once again an empty vessel, stood still as ever in the hallway, barely shifting her weight, staring straight forward, her hand still missing.