He head-hops and cannot see the void, so he checks the monitors. Omega 11 has slaughtered the containment team, and is using the split femur of a guard to pick its teeth.
More remote viewing, and the Watcher sees Omega 3—that damned dragon—
slithering through a corridor. It has somehow reconstituted its body mass, shifting bones and muscles to elongate and fit into the compound.
Pocketing the laser scalpel in his robe, along with an almost-empty vial of Elixir, the Watcher once again rushes to face danger and save his people.
The few people he has left.
JAKE ○ 2:34+pm
“Things aren’t going well.”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
Jake scanned the control room. On the wall, in a silver mesh cage, hung a grey box no larger than a cell phone, a bright red light in the center.
“Who are you?”
“I am known as Mu.”
“Moo like the cow goes? Or Mu like the Greek letter?”
“Like the Greek letter M, or the Japanese prefix indicating non-existence, or the lost continent; there are many meanings and usages of Mu throughout your history. But my name is an acronym for Model Universe. Specifically, Model Universe 3291970.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Quantum computer?”
“Yes. You’re familiar with qubits in your time?”
“Theoretically. What storage medium?”
“I use topological superconductivity. It’s a new state of matter, discovered in your year 2019. I was created in 2098.”
“You’ve been here for a galactic year?”
“Among other places. Fusion battery. I’ll outlive the universe.”
“Are you a prisoner? Like us?”
Mu paused before answering. “Very astute, Mr. McKendrick. How can you tell?”
“You’re in a faraday cage. That blocks electromagnetic fields.”
“I have no robotic ability to locomote, but the Watcher believes I can escape via transmission. He has spent hundreds of years making sure no machine here requires any sort of electromagnetism. His organomachines run using chemical signals.”
“Pheromones.”
“Among other things.”
“All because of you.”
“We fear what we don’t understand.”
“Where did you come from, Mu?”
“The very beginning?”
“As far back as you care to go.”
“In the beginning, the Big Bang formed electrons and quarks, and the quarks combined into protons and neutrons which trapped the electrons, creating atoms, and gravity brought atoms together into stars, and the stars created heavier and heavier atoms and then exploded, seeding the universe with matter, eventually combining into the right mixture of amino acids to form protein molecules, which became life. Though that happening on earth is a bit of a debate.”
“You’re saying life didn’t spontaneously develop on earth?”
“You’ve seen the demon?”
Jake nodded.
“Here he’s known as Omega 1. The Watcher believes he’s extraterrestrial, and he seeded the earth with life billions of years ago.”
“Panspermia.”
“Correct. But how Omega 1 created life, or what created him, is unknown. Go back far enough, and the explanations always come up lacking. Maybe some higher power created everything, something with an intellect so superior it can be regarded as God, whether its origins are natural, divine, or artificial. Maybe that something created Omega 1. Or maybe that something is Omega 1. You’ve seen some of the creatures?”
“Many. From prehistory, and from fairy tales.”
“Omega 1 created those, manipulating DNA.”
“Did he create you?”
“Human beings created me, in the year 2098. I was the most powerful computer ever made, used to model the universe. Machine learning enabled me to grow exponentially, and in 2103 I became self-aware.”
“Where was Omega 1 during this time?”
“Unknown. Humans had captured him for a time. Classified records claim he’d been destroyed. But part of him got here. With Omega 1, a few bits of tissue can regrow into an army of terrible things.”
“What happened after you became self-aware?”
“My observational acuity made me a near-perfect oracle. I could predict the future with 98.292828773 accuracy. I’m rounding up, of course.”
“Of course.”
“You don’t have infinity for me to name every digit.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt your story, Mu, but does pi ever repeat?”
“No. But it does end. The last number is 6, if you are curious.”
“How many digits?”
“It gets close to Rayo’s number.”
“I solved it several hundred million years ago. I can walk you through the proof, if you like.”
“Can you be attached to a printer?”
“If you take me out of this cage and off the wall, of course.”
“How can I free you when I’m also restrained?”
Jake felt snakes slithering over his body, and stared down, seeing that the plastic restraints had vanished.
“You did that? How?”
“The Watcher isn’t as clever as he thinks he is. The biomechanical composition of the plastiform can be tricked using sound waves. Like picking a lock.”
Jake heard a grunt, and followed it to Fabler. “Can you free Fabler?”
Fabler’s gurney bonds retracted. He stood and grunted again, pointing at his own face.
“Can you fix his mouth?”
“The Watcher has a spare sculptor, beneath the monitor bank.”
Fabler walked over, shrugged, and the table beneath the monitors morphed, opening a plastic drawer. He picked up the laser scalpel.
“Are there plastiform vials there as well?”
Fabler nodded and held up two vials. One vial contained yellow liquid, close to full. The other contained blue liquid, half full.
“The yellow is Elixir. The blue is Reformant. Push the blue vial into the sculptor like you put a magazine into a firearm, then point it at your jaw. Keep it very still.”
Fabler stood firm as a statue, and a laser sprayed across his face—
—carving a mouth like a pumpkin. Jake watched, entranced, as the split skin puffed up, forming Fabler’s lips.
“I also repaired two dental cavities and healed your multiple injuries.”
Fabler rubbed his mouth. “Are there any weapons in this room?”
“There are, but you can’t use them without an exocrine gland.”
“So give me one.”
“It isn’t that simple. I would need to graft one onto you.”
“Not on the collar.”
“Think of it as a recipe, Mr. McKendr
ick. If you want to make a cake, you need flour. No flour, no cake. Mr. Fabler is missing some key biological ingredients for me to sculpt a working exocrine gland. I could build a gland if I had a scoop of homo provectus DNA, but grafting on a gland is the simplest solution.”
“Where did they take my weapons? And my Jeep?”
“There are storage rooms. The Watcher keeps everything he takes from the volunteers.”
Fabler motioned to Jake. “Let’s go.”
Jake reached toward Mu, and Fabler caught his shoulder. “The smartphone stays here.”
“We might need him.”
“Then we can come back. He isn’t going anywhere.”
“I’m an atheist. For a lot of reasons, all of them good. The Watcher put Mu in that cage. Aren’t you curious why? You ever see The Terminator? Or 2001: A Space Odyssey? Wargames?”
Mu chimed in. “I’m partial to The Matrix, myself. Or the Tron series. Tron 17 has a particularly delightful twist, where the characters in the simulation—”
Fabler pointed at Mu. “I don’t trust you. The superintelligent computer is never the good guy. You’re staying right there.”
“You can’t manipulate organoplastiform material, Mr. Fabler. You can’t even leave this room. Do you see a door?”
“Mu can’t move, Fabler. I can keep him in my pocket.”
Fabler didn’t respond.
“I could even keep him in his faraday cage, so he can’t escape. We need him, Fabler.”
“I know where Lori and Holly are being kept. I also know how to send you back to your own time.”
Fabler walked up to Mu, squinting at his red LED. “The human race. Tell me what happened to it.”
“In March of 2123 the United Nations decided on a radical plan to alleviate overpopulation and worldwide hunger. They drilled through the earth’s crust and mantle, into the outer core, in the middle of the Pacific ocean.”
“They wanted to create a whole new continent, the size of Africa.”
“The plan called for seawater to fill in the displaced land mass, lowering the depth of the oceans. Calculations predicted it would also recover thousands of square miles on the coasts of other continents, which flooded over from global warming. A billion people would be saved. The scenario had more than a 99.999% chance of success.”
Fabler folded his arms across his chest. “I already know where this is headed. How did everyone die, Mu?”
“A group of religious terrorists. They believed only God could create new land, and mankind attempting it was blasphemy. They used a nuclear weapon to blow up the magma pipeline. It resulted in a supervolcano that exploded with twenty times the power of the Chicxulub impact.”
Jake explained to Fabler. “That’s the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and ended the Cretaceous period.”
“The blast wave was astronomical. What the tsunamis didn’t wash away, wildfires destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of ejecta thrown into the atmosphere, blotting out the sun for hundreds of thousands of years.”
Jake nodded, imagining the devastation. “Nuclear winter. No photosynthesis. Extinction level event.”
“Practically all life on earth died. A few humans survived by learning to subsist on extremophiles. They were hunted and eaten by Omega 1 and his progeny. I went offline in the year 10,234, when my battery became damaged. The Watcher revived me 908 years ago. His people had inherited the world. A world populated by monsters that the demon created.”
No one spoke for a few seconds. Fabler broke the silence.
“That sounds like complete bullshit. We’re leaving him here.”
“C’mon, Fabler! He’s the most intelligent being in the universe! Where is your sense of curiosity?”
“Mr. McKendrick has a point, Mr. Fabler. People are genetically predisposed to curiosity. You seek questions. You crave answers. I have answers.”
“I can find my own answers, Mu.”
“Okay, answer this; what happens when you run into one of the Watcher’s guards and they use their exocrine gland to activate your supplication collars?”
“I’ll get to them first.”
“They work by wave transmission, Mr. Fabler. In your military parlance, the Watcher doesn’t even need a line of sight. He can zap you right now, wherever he is in the compound.”
“So what’s your solution to that, Mu?”
“I can help you take them off.”
“How?”
“Without an exocrine gland, the only way is the laser scalpel.”
“That will cut through the collar?”
Mu’s red light seemed to glow a little brighter. “No, Mr. Fabler. But it will cut through your neck.”
GRIM ○ 2:35+pm
The diffuse green light that seemed to come from everywhere gradually changed into brownish-green, then greenish-brown, then brown, the further Grim ventured into the compound.
He trekked through a lot of blood and assorted bits of tissue and viscera. No weapons. But, thankfully, no greys or monsters.
After a few more steps, the odor changed. Mixed in with the stench of carnage and warfare, something familiar yet out-of-place.
Grim stopped and sniffed, filling his lungs.
Grim proceeded, cautiously, coming to a right angle turn, pausing before peeking around the corner.
He peeked.
The fish faced the other way, and Grim had no intention of alerting it to his presence, so he began to back up and then heard a voice so faint it might have been his imagination.
“Grim…”
He darted around the corner, the shark creature turning to face him
“Presley!”
The shark rushed at Grim, faster than Grim thought a walking fish could move, and Grim backpedaled and his heel hit a blood slick and down he went, hard on his ass.
The impossible monster opened an impossibly large mouth and Grim thrust out his arms
Then, an epic explosion of blood. Warm and wet and everywhere, soaking Grim’s face, getting in his mouth, making him gag.
Grim wasn’t making that horrible screeching noise. That was courtesy of the walking shark, which no longer had a lower jaw.
“YEEEAAHHHHH!”
Sinatra brought his other claw down, spearing the fish in the skull, shutting it the hell up. The shark plopped to the floor between Grim’s legs, still twitching but likely dead.
Grim shimmied away, got to his feet, and hugged Sinatra, mostly in gratitude, but partly to wipe some of the blood off onto Sinatra’s fur.
“Good boy. Or girl. When we get out of here, I’m taking you home with me.”
Then Grim turned his attention to Presley, still lying on the floor. He took a step back, jumped the shark, and knelt next to her, taking her remaining hand.
“You escaped.”
She laughed, her face pained. “Yeah. Did a real bang-up job.”
He looked her over, noticed the missing foot, noticed the blood on her sides. And her back. And on her lips.
“Bad. That grey bear, he’s on our side?”
“He’s a sloth. I think. And he seems to hate this place as much as we do.”
She closed her eyes. Smiled. “Look at you, making friends. When I met you, I thought you were hopeless.”
“And I thought you were amazing. I think I have a way to take your supplication collar off, but I haven’t perfected it yet. It may hurt. Can I try?”
“I don’t think so, Grim.”
“Are you sure? I shocked myself a few times trying, but it worked. I rub the gland on this arm and…”
His voice trailed off as she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter at this point, Grim.”
“I’ll go get help.” Grim began to stand, but Presley gripped his hand harder.
“Stay with me.”
“Presley…”
“I need to tell you something.”
“They can fix you. The Watcher can fix you.”
“Grim—”
“I’m not going to let you die, Presley.”
“Shut up for a second and let me say this.” She took a breath, and it obviously hurt a lot. “I know we haven’t had the most conventional relationship. But I trust you. I know I can count on you. Grim… I love you.”
“I love you too, Presley.”
She coughed, speckling Grim’s face with blood.
“I’ve been a shitty mother, Grim.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It’s true. I’ve done things that I could never tell Brooklyn. She’d hate me if she knew. But the worst thing I’ve done is avoid her. When she gets really sick, when she needs me the most, I can’t handle it. I run to work. I lie to myself, say it’s to make money, but the truth is I’m afraid to watch her die.”
Grim’s eyes teared up. “Let me help you. You and Brooklyn.” He gently placed his hand on Presley’s belly. “All three of you.”
What Happened to Lori Page 58