“Why hasn’t Bub destroyed this place? Or the compound?”
The computer made a sound that sounded a lot like a sigh. “The plastiform carbon matrix is stronger than diamonds. Bub can’t break through it. And before you ask, he can’t graft on a gland to open it because the exocrine pheromone sequence is too complicated to replicate. Think of it as an encrypted DNA firewall.”
“So why can we use them?”
“I’m unsure. Before your arrival, I’d never seen it done before.”
Fabler approached the wall and rubbed his gland, opening an oval doorway in the plastiform. Inside the building, he could sense a large space, but one his flashlight couldn’t fully penetrate. No matter where he pointed his beam, it didn’t illuminate anything.
“How do I turn on the lights?”
“Just think about it and say it.”
“Let me try, Fabler. Lights on.”
The building filled with light. Bright, harsh, blinding light, a sharp contrast to the muted hues of the compound.
Lori caught up to Fabler, grabbing his shoulder. “This is amazing. I just did that by picturing it in my head.”
“Picture something dimmer.”
The white light dimmed to a softer blue, and Fabler took in the interior, immediately spotting the biggest structure he’d ever seen indoors.
A huge, towering, green something, several football fields long, stretching on forever in all directions.
“That’s Battery #2.”
“Hon, can you get the door?”
The plastiform wall sealed behind them.
“Where do we go, Mu?”
“The reset switch is near Battery #1. It’s approximately six hundred and seventeen meters to the right, rounding up. You have exactly three minutes left. I’d recommend hurrying.”
Fabler broke into a jog, Lori at his heels.
“Since I have your undivided attention, I can tell you more about the man-eating bananas.”
“By your time, the banana became the fourth biggest crop in the world, after wheat, rice, and cannabis. But these bananas were monoclones of that original Poujot mutant, and the lack of diversity led to them being wiped out by disease. First the Gros Michel in the 1950s, and then later the Cavendish which replaced it. Scientists splicing genes to make a resistant strain to supersede the Cavendish accidentally created the Musa poteran; carnivorous banana.”
“Quite the Frankenfruit story. Or is Fruitenstein funnier?”
Fabler shook his head. “Neither are funny.”
“Good to know. Humor is quite difficult for A.I. to grasp, even A.I. as advanced as me. Getting back to the story—”
“—the berries of Musa poteran are ten feet tall and mobile, and they excrete a toxin capable of killing a grown man within twenty seconds. But, supposedly, they are delicious. Especially with ice cream. This led to the greatest conflict of the twenty-first century, surpassing even the Second Civil War. Would you like to hear about the Great Banana Uprising of 2095?”
“No.”
“It all began on a Sundae.”
“Did you catch the pun there? Is that funny? The day Sunday and the dessert sundae? It’s a homonym pun.”
After a minute of running, Fabler noticed that the giant battery opened up into a hallway.
“Turn left up ahead. I’ll take your labored breathing as permission to continue.”
“The leaders of the bananas, known as Napoleon Bananaparte, gathered an army of rebel bananas. Guess what they called themselves?”
Fabler veered left, refusing to partake in this insane conversation.
“What did they call themselves?”
“They called themselves the Wild Bunch.”
“I have another pun queued up. When Bananaparte retreats, I’m going to say the banana split.”
Mu made a sound like a drum rimshot.
“Leave the jokes to people, Mu.”
Breathing heavily, Fabler slowed down as they neared a giant, blinking panel. A towering red ball of light—that kind that reminded Fabler of the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball—was gradually descending to the floor. Fabler searched around for some way to stop it, and his eyes locked on something familiar; the first truly familiar thing he’d seen since arriving in the future.
A qwerty computer keyboard.
“What do we do?”
“Put in the password. By the time I end this sentence you’ll have seventy-three seconds.”
“What’s the password?”
“I have no idea.”
“Is it a word? Letters? Numbers? How long?”
“I really don’t know. Try typing in 12345.”
“Seriously?”
“Can’t hurt to try.”
Fabler typed in the numbers.
The light ball kept descending.
“Maybe spell out the word password? A lot of humans from your era used that.”
Fabler tried p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d.
Nothing.
“It might be case sensitive.”
Fabler brought up his rifle. “Screw this. I’ll just shoot it.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that, Mr. Fabler. These batteries hold enough energy to open up a traversable wormhole. Breaching one would be catastrophic.”
Fabler glared at the light ball. “So what the hell are we supposed to do, Mu?”
“You’d better think of something fast. You have fifty-six seconds.”
“Can you stop this?”
“Of course I can, Mr. Fabler. I can interface with the computer electromagnetically and blunt force search every possible password up to fifteen digits. It wouldn’t take me more than 7.2891182917230 seconds. Rounding up of course.”
“So do it.”
“I’d be happy to. All you need to do… is take me out of the faraday cage.”
THE WATCHER ○ 1 MINUTE
The Watcher stares at Mr. Pilgrim, then turns his gaze to Ms. Presley.
He sees determination.
Anger.
“I’ll give you ten seconds to explain what the hell you’re talking about, Watcher.” Grim changes aim with his rifle. “Or else I’ll show you what it feels like to be in the breeding program.”
“Mu… Mu was created in your year 2117 to be a self-learning computer. Before he developed consciousness and became self-aware, humanity had anticipated the threat. A superintelligence, with access to the internet and automation, could destroy the earth a plethora of different ways.”
“Plethora?”
“Myriad.”
“Myriad?”
“A lot. It is your language, Mr. Pilgrim. Learn it. So your stupid ancestors kept Mu in a figurative and literal box, cut off from all telecommunication. They used him as an oracle. Contained, Mu
solved the biggest problems of mankind. He cured diseases. Made discoveries. Quelled superstition. Ended starvation. Crime and war disappeared. Humanity prospered. Life on earth became a utopia.”
Grim pokes the gun at the Watcher. “I want to know about the countdown.”
“I am getting to that, Mr. Pilgrim.”
Presley frowns. “Bub.”
The Watcher nods in agreeance. “The demon, Omega 1. To fight Bub and his kind, the remaining humans did something they should never have done.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “They released Mu from his box.”
“Bad move.”
“No doubt, Ms. Presley. Mu developed advanced robotics, and fought Bub and his progeny, learning from the ability the demon had to alter DNA. Mu brought prehistoric species back to life, which Bub then mutated into creatures even more horrifying. It became a genetic arms race between superintelligent beings. Naturally, Homo sapiens were wiped out.”
Grim poked him again. “What does this have to do with the countdown, Watcher?”
“There is no countdown. If you want to understand, let me finish the explanation.”
“Hurry up. I’m getting bored.”
“After the extinction of mankind, Mu turned the earth into a factory, creating billions of Von Neuman probes, powered by a dyson sphere; a solar energy panel completely encompassing the sun to absorb every bit of energy. The Von Neuman probes were self-replicating rockets, containing mini factories. They landed on planets and asteroids harvesting resources, creating more dyson spheres and more probes, eventually colonizing the observable universe.”
The Watcher presented another dramatic pause. He heard Mr. Pilgrim pretend to snore.
“Mu left one copy of himself here, on earth. Cut off from himself and bored, that copy created us. My people. Homo provectus.”
“If you don’t quit it with the giant infodump, Watcher, I’m going to shoot you. Give us the condensed version.”
“We were enslaved. We rebelled, and managed to strip Mu from his robotic shell and lock him in a faraday cage, where his power over electromagnetism was contained. No more power over the machines of the world. Then we genetically altered ourselves to communicate via pheromones. Everything you see, we created, so Mu would never be able to control us again.”
“Why didn’t you just destroy Mu?”
Ms. Presley answered the question. “Because they still had to deal with Bub.”
“Correct. We still needed the superintelligence of Mu. Especially when Omega 1 created a disease that caused us to age.”
“Mu couldn’t cure the disease?”
“He could. But only with melanocortin-1. The MC1R gene, found in redheaded homo sapiens, can cure our disease. But it is impossible to produce.”
“So you travelled back in time two hundred and fifty million years to abduct redheads.”
“Correct. Two hundred and thirty-six million years, to be a little more precise.”
No one spoke for a few seconds. Ms. Presley broke the silence. “That is the stupidest, most convoluted explanation I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Mr. Pilgrim nodded. “That’s pretty lame, Watcher. You can make dinosaurs, travel to other galaxies, and go back in time, but can’t create a gene? Seems simple.”
“My people do not possess the technology or knowhow to create genes. All we have is what Mu allows us to have. There is no countdown, Mr. Pilgrim. It is a lie. Mu created a situation where my people needed to go back in time because he knew—the bastard somehow knew—that one day he could use that time machine for himself.”
Presley shook her head. “Still doesn’t make sense. Why does he want to go back in time?”
“Mu is everywhere, Ms. Presley. But he is not everywhen. That is something he desperately wants. He was abandoned here, on earth, while copies of him launched themselves into space to explore the universe, travelling too far to ever share their findings. Imagine being a thousand times smarter than you are, without any outside stimuli. With only your own mind to entertain you. Mu created us out of boredom. And then Mu invented time travel to get out of the box. Now you and your plucky band of heroes are about to take a superintelligent maniac back to 2017 to wipe out humanity hundreds of years before he did it the first time!”
Grim and Presley exchange a look. “Do we have time to stop him?”
“It depends. Did they go through the jungle, or take the tunnel?”
“No one mentioned a tunnel.”
“It is possible that Mu is unaware of it. If we hurry, maybe we can reach them in time.”
“Why should we trust you, Watcher?”
“You have no reason to. But let me tell you my motivation. I thought I could save my people. The Reformant allows me to harvest MC1R, which is a temporary fix. But to make the Reformant, I must extract the entire central nervous system from human beings. Extracting MC1R is unpleasant. Extracting every nerve cell in a body is torturous. And fatal. That is why I created the Experiment. To harvest cells without killing the subject. So I would not have to ever again visit the past and abduct more people.”
Grim sneered. “You’re a real martyr.”
“No. I am a monster.”
The homo sapiens stared at each other.
“What do you think, Presley?”
Presley shrugs. “This whole thing has gone completely apeshit. We have to get to Fabler and Lori anyway. Might as well bring his sorry ass along.”
“Where is the tunnel, Watcher?”
“We can access it through the floor.”
“Show us where.”
MU ○ 3:38+pm
It all comes down to this delicious moment.
All the meticulous planning and convoluted plotting.
This moment of truth.
Everything depends upon one specific choice.
They must do it willingly.
What Happened to Lori Page 66