by David Beers
“Hurry,” Grace said, pleading now. Feeling danger that Caesar didn’t feel because he couldn’t take his thoughts away from the thing he held in his hand, away from the thing that looked like his father and was begging for his life—not with feeling sent through tentacles but through Sam Well’s voice.
Caesar tightened his grip, squeezing down with all the force he had in him, trying to close off any possible valve inside the man’s neck, trying to make it so neither blood nor oxygen could flow. The metal in his body did more than that, though; he felt the thing’s neck, or whatever was inside holding it together, snap. A dry sound popped from inside his neck, like a twig breaking on a path. The eyes though, they didn’t die, they didn’t fade as they should have.
Caesar kept squeezing, now trying to push his hands through the meat encasing this application, trying to completely kill it, to destroy any semblance of the creature it impersonated. Of his father.
The eyes in front of him started to gray over. Not glaze, but actually turn gray as if dark clouds rolled across his irises. Caesar didn’t quit squeezing though. If they grayed then they grayed, but the thing would die. He felt skin give way beneath his hand and his fingers actually dive inside the flesh.
And then the man’s eyes burst.
Blood and other liquids didn’t shoot forward. Only a gas. A gray colored gas that shot forth like there was pressure behind it, trying to force it out into the air, trying to make sure it found the person in front of it. Caesar breathed it in, having no other choice, and it smelled bitter, like rusted metal might taste on the tongue. It took him two breaths before he stopped sucking in air, but by then it was too late.
He released the eyeless man, holes now where his eyeballs had been a moment before. The chip in his head processed the chemical immediately: a tranquilizer, and already coursing from his lungs into his bloodstream, following the same path oxygen normally would. Caesar fell to his knees first, unable to keep them from buckling. The application that looked like his father lay in front of him, its purpose finished, no longer showing any sign of life. The door in front of Caesar began opening, and from his knees, he watched the room he needed to get into open up before him, unable to move.
* * *
Manny watched how quickly and efficiently Caesar killed the kid at the reception desk with mixed emotions: awe, disgust, jealousy. Awe at the pure grace he showed, how quickly he moved across barriers like the counter and the precision with which he opened the boy’s neck and revealed his enemies. He was, without a doubt, powerful. Disgust that someone could do that. Disgust that someone could look another human in the face, and then murder without another thought. And jealousy because Manny knew he could never be Caesar.
Maybe Jerry had been right. Maybe Caesar was the one that could save humanity. Clearly the transformation was done, no human moved that quick, ever. But what Manny witnessed showed more, it showed the ruthlessness that Jerry had searched for, the ability to kill indiscriminately, without care, simply because it had to be done. Caesar had it in spades. Manny watched on a giant screen as Caesar cut the young man up to protect himself.
Jerry was right. The thought felt calm. No anger. No malice. Just fact. He was seeing the man that they had all searched for, seeing him perform in actual life. I’m about to get him killed, was the next thought that came through his mind. That same calm stillness permeating. It didn’t matter at this point, though. All of those thoughts were too late. The realization that Jerry had found the one he wanted didn’t matter anymore because Brandi and Dustin were dead.
The stillness over Manny’s mind carried with it a weight that he didn’t fully grasp. The weight of responsibility. The weight of knowledge. He was watching the thing he’d helped build, the person that would free humanity, and he was watching because he had set that person up to die—which he did because Manny had gotten his own wife and son killed trying to stop this person once already.
You didn’t trust Jerry. You didn’t want him to be right. You didn’t want Caesar to be the one.
Again, stillness accompanied by mounting pressure.
Now they’re dead and he is what Jerry said he would be.
On the screen, Manny watched as the blood soaked applications sagged in Caesar’s hands. He’d killed them without even a fight. He killed them by touching them.
And now he’s going to die next. Because of you. And then after that, Jerry.
Because of you.
He felt it happen, the snap. It felt like his brain shifting in his skull, or rather, a piece of it shifting while the rest remained intact. He felt his brain break, neural passageways suddenly rupturing.
Caesar was moving down the escalator at a break-neck speed, and Manny saw the man waiting for him at the end. The man waiting for him on the chair, sitting in front of the door that Manny was behind.
The stillness of his mind disappeared then, and Manny started to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed until the door opened and he walked out to look at Caesar lying on the ground. He managed to hold in the laughter then, but he couldn’t stop smiling.
* * *
Caesar fell to the ground, his entire body paralyzed. The chip in his head uselessly trying to command him to move, to get up, to do something. The door stood open and he looked in from his spot on the floor. He saw nothing. No one. No application. Nothing for him to take, no reason for him to be here.
“Caesar,” Grace whispered, her voice breaking. “Caesar they’re everywhere. The room is lined with applications.”
Go. Get out of here, he said back to her, his mouth unable to move and his vocal chords unable to vibrate.
“I can’t leave you.”
Go! He roared, his mind slashing out at her in a way that he hadn’t before. Anger and frustration raging from inside his head, raging but unable to find any kind of release besides his words to her.
He felt her leave, felt her drifting back up the escalator. He saw what she saw, that at the top of the escalator, fifty machines stood waiting on him. At least fifty. Things that he had never seen before, things made of metal and sharp edges rather than the invisible applications The Genesis usually used with humanity. It didn’t matter. They could stay up there. He wasn’t going to be able to move, to get up and fight them, to try to break through.
He could only stare at the empty room, the one that he had come here to rob.
Caesar heard footsteps from inside, as if someone had just stood and started walking. Someone was in there, maybe The Tourist or maybe someone else. Someone had been waiting though. Someone that knew he was coming, that had set the trap that awaited him.
Manny appeared around the corner of the door. He was smiling, a smile that wasn’t natural, that had almost no end, that was trying its best to wrap itself completely around Manny’s head.
“Hey, Caesar.”
Caesar looked at the smile and wanted to rip out every one of the man’s teeth and make him eat them, one by one.
“That was some nice work you did upstairs. I’m truly shocked by how easily you made it down here. Good job.”
He watched as a tiny chuckle started in Manny’s stomach and as he put his hand to his mouth to try and stifle it.
“We’re going to have some fun,” Manny said.
Caesar saw the applications for the first time, saw them taking form, the applications that Jerry had called blankets peeling off the walls, ceilings, and floors. One after another, more than Caesar could count and all of them floating his way, through the room, over furniture.
“It’s ready to take you, I guess,” Manny said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
The applications moved around him, traveling like fog but careful not to touch the man standing above Caesar.
They fell on him with a surety that only gods can know.
Caesar kept staring at that smile, the unending smile, until the blankets blocked off his ability to see anything.
To be continued in The Singularity: Emissaries...
&n
bsp; The Singularity:
Emissaries
by David Beers
Copyright © 2015 by David Beers
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Chapter One
Manny knew something was wrong, for a brief moment. Not for long, because everything turned okay very quickly, but he did know—if only for an instant—that something had changed and that it wasn't good. Not for Manny. Not for anyone that he would ever be around again. For an instant, when he sat in that room alone, watching what Caesar did upstairs in the lobby and how quickly he descended the escalators, Manny had insight into what he would become. Like a man watching a fly struggle in a spider's web, knowing with complete certainty that it will never escape.
Manny saw his sanity leaving him, evaporating like water from a heated pot. Manny saw that everything he was, everything he could have become, would be no more. In that short moment, he saw that he had been a good man, a man that loved and was loved, and he saw that it was all over, too. No more love, not for him or from him. The word would be as strange to him as mercy to that spider.
He saw all these things and then they were gone. Ripped away as something happened in his brain, some crisscrossing of wires, some hardwiring discrepancy. It didn't matter what, really, only that it happened and that he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t repair the damage. Maybe the stress of watching everything he helped build crash down before him caused it, the person they chose to lead—Caesar—falling down as gas sprayed into his face, the man that had mentored him soon to be trapped. His wife and child dead.
That was all in the past though. The moment of insight gone as quickly as it came.
Manny was a new man, and whether or not he even remembered that moment of insight was up for debate. If he did, it certainly didn't bother him, and if he didn't...well, all's well that ends well, no?
Caesar lay before him now, his body naked. Invisible straps clamped him down to a white table. His eyes were open but they didn't move. Small creatures crawled across his body, machines with needles for hands and transparent globes for heads. Manny stared at them for a second, watching as they poked with needles, leaving tiny droplets of blood on Caesar's skin when they pulled out. They walked across him as if he was carpet, following some hidden set of orders, figuring things out about his body, probably even his DNA.
Manny didn't look long at the creatures because he didn't care about them. They were part of The Genesis, applications with bodies, nothing special about any of them. Instead, most of his time in the past few hours had been spent looking at Caesar. Watching him. One might think that watching a paralyzed person might be boring, but not for Manny. It was fascinating. Lovely, even. Caesar's eyes were open and Manny stood above them for a long time, staring directly into them. They didn't move, didn't focus on anything, although Manny knew that Caesar saw him. Saw him grinning, and God, wasn't that the best part? He could smile down at the man who had taken everything from him and there wasn't a single thing he could do about it.
Joyous times. Joyous times, indeed.
Manny's backpack sat against the wall, the only dirty thing in this entire room. Walls and floors colored white, and tiny dark creatures moving across Caesar's body like crabs on sand. Manny's backpack was the only thing not pristine. Filthy. How many years had it traveled with him? Ten at least? He wouldn't need it anymore. He knew that. He was going to watch The Genesis kill this stupid, stupid man, and then Manny himself would be next, but that was good. Better than good. That was F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C.
"Is it in your bag?" The voice boomed out from the floor, as if the entire room was one large speaker. Manny didn't jump, wasn't really surprised by the voice. It was The Genesis, or it wasn't, either way it all the same. It wanted something from him and he would hand it over. If he could just pull his eyes off Caesar for a few minutes. Pry them away to go get the metal box out of his bag.
But...
Maybe he didn't have to!
Yes!
Maybe The Genesis could send one of those little worker bee machines to get it and he could stand here and watch Caesar for a few more hours.
"It is. Can you get it? I'm busy right now."
The voice said nothing but the machines on Caesar started moving off his body, climbing down the table. One shot out wings and flew across the room, heading toward the bag.
Manny listened as the machines' pointed legs click-clacked across the hard floor beneath them.
They unzipped the ancient bag, revealing an even older metal contraption. One that Manny had used for a few minutes in another life. One that would bring the last piece of this puzzle together.
* * *
How long?
That was the question Jerry couldn't get over.
How long had he looked?
He could say for the past sixty years or so, but that wouldn't be true. That would only be Jerry's way of trying to make himself feel better about what happened. He had looked for nine hundred years probably, even if he didn't know that's what he was doing. When he turned one hundred, that's probably where it began, his quest for someone like Caesar. For Caesar. Not all of those years were spent actively looking, but he had known that's what he wanted. What he needed. Someone that could bridge the gap between humanity's courage and The Genesis' ruthlessness. Someone that could right the wrongs that had been done to so many people. To Jerry. To his family. To all the families afterward.
He watched the scene happen again and again, unable to look away. Unable to pull himself from the show before him, horror growing inside of him like some kind of wicked rose.
Grace returned, but without Caesar. She came back alone and created a hologram of what she saw. Of Caesar's fall. Jerry watched over and over as the gas spat into Caesar's face and then as he collapsed. He watched Manny walk out wearing a grin that looked like the Devil himself gave it to Manny. It had been him; Manny turned them over to The Genesis. He was the one that flipped. The one that killed all those people, the ones lying in the sand when Jerry walked out of the compound. The one that killed Brandi and Dustin, that killed his own family. Jerry had spent all that time thinking Caesar would be the one to save them, not that Manny would be the one to forsake them.
For nine hundred years he had searched, and in a few minutes, everything broke. Their savior lay on the floor, being enveloped by applications and the person Jerry had trained as his second stood there wearing a smile of the insane.
Tears came to Jerry's eyes as Grace played the scene yet again. Saying nothing. What could she say? She couldn't weep as Jerry, but Caesar had been more than a savior to her. He had been...a friend? A son? Jerry didn't know, but Caesar was gone now. Everything gone. Paige wasn't yet in the room, but she would be soon, and he would have to show her this. She wouldn't let him hide it and he wouldn't try. She would see it and she would cry and then they would disperse. This whole rotten enterprise, because that's what it was now—cancerous. Destroyed itself, eaten from the inside. Jerry wouldn't stay. He didn't know if Paige would, but he was gone. What he would do, he didn't know—perhaps find some way to kill himself because he honestly didn't see how he could live any longer. He had a dream and now the dream was over; he had woken up to a nightmare reality. Why live in it anymore? There would not be another Caesar. There would not be a way to break him free before The Genesis liquidated him.
No. It was over. And he would watch this a few more times and then call Paige to him and then leave. Into the desert, an old machine not worth anything. An old machine who failed.
Was the human race destined for this? Was it always meant to happen this way, the same as humans surpassed other animals, humans were now meant to be surpassed by this new creature? Was this simply evolution and Jerry's wishes nothing more than delusions?
Yes. Perhaps. And Grace had told him. Grace said that he shouldn't send Caesar, but he hadn't listened and now Caesar
would die very soon.
"I'm sorry," he said into the empty cavern. He had been about to take the group away from this place, to take them to an ancient city, one that no one inhabited, nor ever would again. It made no sense when humans first colonized the old city and certainly The Genesis wouldn't waste precious resources on sending power to it. He was going to migrate them to a place once called Las Vegas. A place that was dead, but that he thought could be brought to life. No more.
Grace didn't respond. She just kept playing the endless loop, apparently content to continue as long as Jerry wanted. Maybe this was her punishment for him, allowing him to watch something that would destroy him. If not right now, then certainly in the coming years. Replaying it over and over again in his mind.
He heard the click inside his head immediately, sounding like someone turning a switch. Habit silenced his mind. Habit and fear because he knew what that click meant. Someone had activated the old machine, what they used to call a Locator. Only a few people still left in this world knew it existed, and only one would be using it now. Manny. Or whoever held onto Manny.
The hologram in front of him died; Grace probably seeing him and understanding something was wrong.
He stood up, trying his best not to think, not to allow a single thought to flare up in his head.
Jerry, something said.
He ran, his legs pumping as hard as he could, sending him ten and twenty feet ahead at a time. Trying to get away from the cave. Trying to separate himself from the rest of The Named. He had been found and he couldn’t stop whatever spoke to him from coming. And if he was here when it arrived, then all these people died.
Jerry ran into the desert, not feeling the heat beat down as his legs carried him away.
* * *
Jerry lay down on the sand.
It burned his skin but he didn't care. His lungs, despite being mostly made from porous metal, could push him no further. Everything inside him was overheating and he hoped he was far enough away from the cave that whatever came wouldn’t find the rest. He knew Manny could tell them whenever he wanted, but maybe he wouldn't. Maybe Manny would be happy with The Genesis having only Jerry, and leaving everyone else out of it.