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

by David Simpson

  “No, no,” Old-timer dismissed the idea. “Thank you, Djanet. But I can handle it. I’ll talk to Paine. He’s not the killer l remember. I think he even thinks we’re friends. I think this one is on me.” He turned to Daniella. “Do you want to accompany—”

  “No,” she responded before Old-timer could even finish making his offer. “I-I still can’t be in the room with that man, whether he’s different or changed or not—all I remember is a monster. I’ll stay here and see if I can help in a different way.”

  Old-timer frowned slightly before kissing his wife on the cheek and nodding in understanding. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  He left the room.

  “And what about the rest of us?” Thel asked. “What’s our next move?”

  James paused for a moment before beginning. “The A.I. said that, though this would be humanity’s darkest hour, that it wouldn’t be our final hour, and that it wasn’t even close to being our last chapter. I believe him. And he gave his life because he believed in us. V-SINN thinks our humanity—our loyalty, friendship, love and compassion—is our weakness. I think it’s our one and only advantage. It’s the one thing that V-SINN can’t understand, and what it can’t understand, it can’t predict—it can’t manipulate. It beat us this time because it snuck up on us and stacked the deck in its own favor, but next time, we’ll be ready.”

  “Hell,” Rich began, punching his fist into the palm of his hand excitedly. “I’m already ready. Let’s get this show on the road!”

  “I’m ready too, Rich,” James replied. “I’m ready too.”

  Epilogue 2

  Old-timer strode through the main hub of the new Purist complex, recently reclaimed after having been completely flooded. Though there were only a few thousand Purists remaining, they now significantly outnumbered post-humans, androids, and the category Old-timer now belonged to: other.

  He watched as hundreds of men and women worked to repair the damage done to their new home. Though the wing of the complex that had once housed the command center was unsalvageable, having been destroyed by Aldous Gibson in his desperately misguided attempt to prevent the initiation of an infinity computer in his universe, the Purists had sealed it off and erected a makeshift shrine to the dead—a group that included their former leader, Governor Wong. A small group of mourners still surrounded the memorial and Old-timer’s eyes lingered on them for a moment as he crossed the main hub. One thought reverberated in his mind as he watched them. This insanity has got to stop.

  The opposite side of the complex was vast and had remained largely untouched by the flooding, the Purists having been able to seal it up before evacuating with Thel. It was in this honeycomb of corridors and rooms that Old-timer saw a figure exiting a room—a figure that somehow seemed to sense his presence even before she saw him. Her eyes darted up and locked onto him, keeping him in their tractor beam.

  “Craig,” she said, surprised.

  Old-timer noted she was leaving Colonel Paine’s small quarters. “How’s he doing?”

  She turned to the closed door. “As good as could be expected.”

  Once again, Old-timer couldn’t speak. A version of Samantha had just exited the room of a version of the man that had brutally, unflinchingly decapitated her. Yet she had absolutely no idea. Absurdly, they appeared to be friends—they may have even been bonding. On the one hand, it seemed utterly natural, as they were the final survivors of an entire universe, and they’d both crossed over to witness versions of their respective spouses attached to other people. But on the other hand, Old-timer felt nauseated at the perversity of having mortal enemies ignorantly fraternizing with one another, completely oblivious to the level of hatred each was capable of harboring for the other.

  “It’s good to see you,” Samantha finally said after abandoning her hope that Old-timer would speak again.

  Her words shook him back to reality. “Yeah. You too, for sure,” he sputtered.

  “So,” she began, holding out her hands questioningly with a faintly hopeful smile, “are you here for our talk?”

  “Our talk?” Old-timer replied, his eyebrows knitting together.

  “Yes,” Samantha said. “You remember? We were going to talk about everything?”

  Old-timer instantly clued in. “Oh my God, right. I’m sorry, I…” he turned to the closed door and pointed, “I’ve gotta speak to the Colonel.”

  “Oh,” Samantha replied, clearly disappointed but nodding in brave understanding. “Okay.”

  “It’s urgent,” Old-timer further explained, trying to mitigate her hurt feelings.

  “Really,” she said, “there are more important things, I understand. You’re not my husband. I’m being selfish to—”

  Old-timer took her hands, this time being careful to hold them gently. “No you’re not. Sam, I understand better than anyone how you’re feeling. I can’t believe how strong you’ve been.” He looked up, thinking back to his own behavior in the wake of learning that time had moved on without him, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming feeling of shame. “You’re incredibly strong, and you always were stronger than me,” he admitted.

  He turned back to the door. “But what I’ve realized, especially in light of recent events, is that it isn’t our past that defines us, but our futures. I just came from seeing James—he’s all beat up to Hell and back, his skin’s mostly gone, he’s missing an eye, he just lost the A.I., and yet there’s no quit in him. He’s back there leading us again, just like always.” He sighed. “That’s why I’m here, Sam. We’re working on a plan, and I need to speak to the Colonel.”

  “About what?” Samantha asked.

  “The rise of V-SINN,” Old-timer replied. “We need to know its history.”

  “It won’t do you any good,” Samantha stated. “We knew all about its history, but we still couldn’t understand it. It was a thousand steps ahead of us at every turn.”

  “We’re not gonna quit anytime soon,” Old-timer affirmed stubbornly. He let go of her hand and turned to knock on Paine’s door.

  “Wait,” Samantha said, placing her hand on his shoulder.

  He turned back.

  “I know as much about V-SINN as Paine does. Maybe more. If you’re mining the past for information, I can help.”

  Old-timer smiled. “Will you speak to him with me?”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “Thank you, Sam.” He turned back to the door and knocked.

  “Come,” Paine called from inside.

  Old-timer swung open the door, revealing Colonel Paine as he sat at a small desk, absurdly holding a pencil in his new, prosthetic hand. Old-timer’s eyes went to the appendage—a nearly perfect replica of the super soldier appendage he’d sported seventy-five years earlier in Universe 1, and an eery reminder of the man Paine could be.

  Paine’s eyes followed Old-timer’s eye-line and he mistakenly assumed Old-timer was noting, not the hand, but the pencil, which Paine summarily held up with a grin. “I know, anachronistic to say the least.” Then he turned to the pad of paper that sat upon his simple, wooden desk. “But sometimes the old tech is the best tech. And someone needs to record what happened to my universe.”

  “Universe 332,” Old-timer suddenly stated. “That’s what we called your universe.”

  Samantha and Paine exchanged glances, each of their expressions slightly stunned.

  “332?” Paine finally repeated. “Heh. It’s the sort of moniker we should’ve expected, considering how little attention your universe actually paid to us.” He gestured with his prosthetic hand to the pad of paper, which already contained dozens of handwritten pages. “We might’ve just been a number to your universe, but we were so much more than that. And I can’t let our memory just be erased.”

  “The Colonel has started chronicling what happened,” Samantha informed Old-timer.

  Old-timer’s eyes lit up. “That’s perfect.” He took in a deep breath. “Look, I know it’s too late for my universe to finally start c
aring about what happened to yours, but if you’re willing, I’d be extremely interested to hear your story.”

  Paine looked up into Old-timer’s eyes before quickly checking Samantha’s expression. She appeared willing. “Well,” Paine finally said, “I owe it to our people to tell their side of it. But, let’s not do it here,” he continued as he stood with a slight grunt. His eyes went around the small, square, concrete room. “It’s depressing as Hell, and we’ve got a whole world out there to explore.”

  Old-timer grinned. “I think I know just the spot.”

  *****

  Several minutes later, the trio of Old-timer, Samantha, and Colonel Paine came to a soft landing on the white, sandy beach, just a few dozen meters from the home James and Thel had built for themselves.

  “How’s this?” Old-timer asked as he pointed to a small group of sun-bleached logs on the beach.

  “Perfect,” Paine replied as he ambled up to one of the logs and took a seat before craning his neck to look up into the dusk sky. It was still lit with a beautiful green, though it had faded significantly as the gamma radiation levels dropped toward normal throughout the solar system.

  Samantha and Old-timer sat on a log opposite to Paine.

  Paine took in a deep breath of ocean air as the waves crashed rhythmically to the shore. “Yes sir, after forty-five years in the void, I’ll take it. I’ll take it indeed.”

  “Me too,” Samantha assented.

  Paine’s eyes went to Old-timer. “So, Doc, you want to hear the story of V-SINN?”

  “And of Universe 332,” Old-timer added. “I care about what happened.”

  “I’ll tell you,” Paine said, “but on one condition.”

  “And what’s that?” Old-timer asked, surprised that a condition was suddenly being attached.

  “I want to know everything you know about that original transgression from your universe into mine.”

  Old-timer’s heart nearly stopped.

  “I know it had something to do with Aldous,” Paine added, contempt dripping from his voice as he shook his head. “The Aldous Gibson I know was a fine man—a wise man. But the version from this universe? That son-of-a-bitch betrayed all of you.”

  “And he was responsible for us not being able to get our Aldous replicated in the Constructor,” Sam added. “We lost our friend because of him.”

  “We can’t touch him,” Paine seethed. “He’s hiding away in the complex, too cowardly to kill himself.” Paine flexed his prosthetic hand, the sharp fingers pincering together to emphasize his next point as the killer hidden behind his eyes returned. “I’d lend him a helping hand, but he’s a hybrid and there’s no way I could get close to him.” His dark eyes focused on Old-timer. “But you could.”

  “Stop it!” Samantha suddenly interrupted. “There’s been enough killing!”

  “The man responsible for destroying our universe deserves to die,” Paine countered.

  “I said stop it!” Samantha shouted, this time doubling the volume of her voice.

  Old-timer was left dumbfounded by Paine’s assertion that the man responsible deserved a death sentence. His eyes fell back to the clawed prosthetic.

  Paine decided to let the point drop for the moment. “At any rate, Doc, I’ll tell you everything that happened in my universe, but in return, you’ve gotta tell me what you know. Is that fair?”

  Old-timer swallowed hard as he considered the implications. He needed to know the story of the rise of V-SINN, but he also knew, if he kept his word at its conclusion, that he might be about to make a new, extraordinarily dangerous enemy.

  He didn’t have a choice.

  “Deal,” he said.

  Paine smiled, slight creases forming around his eyes as he did so. “Okay,” he began as he shifted his position on the log, reclining slightly to get comfortable. “It all started on a crystal clear blue morning in New York.” He paused for a moment. “That’s when fear came to our universe,” he added. “That’s when terror became our people’s sole motivator—and that’s how V-SINN was conceived.”

  *****

  BOOK 6 EXCERPT

  And here it is! The book 6 preview excerpt!

  Things to know before you read: first, this is a raw beta excerpt, meaning my editor hasn’t seen it yet, so there are a few steps left before it reaches the state that you’ll find it in the final, published version of book 6. Please forgive any typos or formatting errors, as we’ll probably catch them before the full beta version reaches my advanced readers list. (If you’re interested in joining my advanced beta readers list, subscribe to my YouTube channel and let me know there!) This will be pretty close to the final version, however.

  Second, even though this is a lengthy, two chapter excerpt, book 6 is a monster! It’s as long as the first four books in the series combined, so while there’s enough here to suck you in, this is just a taste of what will be a banquet when you read the novel in its entirety!

  Last, while I won’t say when exactly in the chronology of the novel this scene takes place, I can say that you’re reading part of Paine’s description of events in universe 332, as he relates events to Old-timer and Samantha on the Venusian beach, just as the scene was set at the end of Inhuman.

  Okay…without further ado…

  15

  “I showed myself out of the complex, and no one tried to stop me. I don’t think they were expecting me to just up and leave—they really didn’t know me.”

  “I knew them though. I expected to be arrested eventually, but I wasn’t surprised to be standing in the fading twilight on the edge of a long, black road, my thumb up as I tried to flag down a local and get the hell outta there. You see, rigid systems, systems like the military and intelligence services, they’re great at doing what they’re designed to do, but terrible at doing what they’re not designed to do. If something happens that they haven’t anticipated, the whole thing comes apart. If no one in the chain of command noticed that I left, and they hadn’t, then there was no one who was going to stop me from leaving.”

  “But the whole time I knew—I knew someone with executive power would learn that I’d turned them down, and I knew they’d come for me. And that’s what I really wanted—I wanted to draw out the puppet master.”

  “I got pretty far too. I didn’t have much money and I couldn’t hitch a ride with anyone who was leaving the state and going my way, but I did manage to get to a bus station in Austin and I bought a ticket to Cleveland. I figured if I was going to be AWOL on my way back to New York, I might as well visit my mother in Cynthia.”

  “Incredibly, about an hour into my bus ride, under the cover of darkness…hell, I started to think I might just make it there before they found me.”

  “But then I saw the lights.”

  “Red and blue oscillated in a panic, telling everyone on board the bus something was amiss, that they should be concerned, and that the authorities were about to flex some muscle—and that’s exactly what they did.”

  “The bus pulled over, Tweedle Dee stepped up the stairs with the look on his face of a man who was ready to do some serious damage to a human body. He wasn’t making a clumsy effort to try not to draw attention to himself this time—he was decked out in kevlar, wearing his ear piece, holding an M249 machine-gun—the sort of gun that could render me identifiable only by means of my DNA if he chose. Even more concerning to me at that moment were his heavy iron-knuckled gloves—he was sending a message to everyone on board, and especially me: he was not to be defied. He didn’t say a word—he didn’t have to.”

  “With a sigh, I got up. I won’t lie—I was scared. I’d left in protest, and to make a point to the phantom presence who was in charge, but I knew they weren’t going to just let me go back to Columbia to finish my degree and then move on to Oxford to accept my Rhodes scholarship, all the while knowing everything they’d just shown me—knowing the truth. I knew they wouldn’t take no for an answer—they couldn’t take no for an answer. I knew I was going to lose
, and my life as I knew it was over.”

  “I slung my bag over my shoulder, took a deep breath, and passed by Tweedle Dee, not making eye contact but feeling his glare nonetheless, before making my way down the steps. I stopped and looked at the caravan of three black Escalades, each with its blue and red lights panicking, and realized that these guys weren’t just retrieving me for their boss—they didn’t need three vehicles for that.”

  “No, the boss was there, in the flesh. This was the person who had security around him so secret that the Secret Service didn’t even know they existed. These were ghosts.”

  “Tweedle Dee waved the bus back onto the road and watched glumly and commandingly as the frightened bus driver did as he was told, nodding as he brought the machine back onto the road, and then hitting the gas as hard as he could to get the hell out of there.”

  “As the bus pulled away and its red taillights faded into the darkness, I looked down at those iron-knuckled gloves of Dee’s again—I knew I was in for a beating. I knew it, but the thought of it, the fear it triggered, the jolt to my chest…it just pissed me off. As insane as it might sound to you, knowing that he was going to beat me into silence made me mouth off even more.”

  “‘So,’ I said, as casual as I could, ‘If I’m the new Director of A.I. Oversight, doesn’t that make me your new boss?’”

  “He looked ready to rip my head off when he turned around. Instead, he just butt-ended me with his heavy gun in the right thigh, hitting me so hard that I took a knee like it was my idea—the blow was so precisely placed, compressing my nerve that I couldn’t have stood back up if my life depended on it—he was an expert at inflicting pain.”

  “‘You ain’t the Director of Jack,’ he told me quietly. Next came a butt-end to my left cheek, and my first thought as I hit the ground, flat on my back, was that I wasn’t going to be going home to see my mother for a while—that blow was going to leave a mark, and there was no way I was going to let her see me with my face stitched up, unless I could tell her the other guy was in a casket—and that wasn’t in the cards that day.”