As dinner started to wind down, Calvin returned. Taking a handful of berries, he walked past David and the others, straight to the front of the room. The room went silent as he climbed onto a table and addressed the crowd.
“My dear friends,” his voice echoed. “As many of you know, tonight is the night we’ve been working toward for many years. We’re sorry to have kept the plan a secret, but now we are able to share with you just what tonight will bring. Some of you joined us recently, and others of you I’ve known for quite some time. Each and every one of you, however, is a solid soldier—not only in your merit, but in your resolve and beliefs as well.
“The goal of The Cause is to keep mankind from making the same mistakes twice. We’ve tried to conquer Mother Nature in our past, and we know how that ended. She turned against us—destroyed us. And now The Society works to take us back to the land. To invade and spread across the world like the virus we’d been before. A virus looking for a host to conquer.
“But we don’t agree with that. Each of you respects the land. Each of you loves the land. And I know you all want to be able to go back there again someday and call it home. But it is not to be conquered. It is not to be pillaged and ransacked for our own benefit. Instead it is a place we shall inhabit as partners in nature. Some of us have been given a gift—a gift of mutation which allows us to return.
“Mother Nature wants us back, but she only wants those of us who are ready to accept her as our master, not us as hers. The Progressives steal our people from their homes, those of us who have evolved to be welcomed back to nature, so they can experiment on us and take the gift we’ve been given, to replicate and use for themselves.
“Mother Nature does not want the old mankind back. But she does want her selected few. Those of us who love her. She has chosen us—not only to return to her, but to protect her. Tonight, we shall be her stewards. Tonight, we deal a deadly blow to The Society.”
The people in the room remained silent, held in rapt attention throughout Calvin’s speech. But now they broke into shouts and applause. Calvin waved his hand to quiet them and continued.
“My people, our goal tonight is simple. One of us will destroy the heart and mind of The Society. He will enter her where she lives and kill her. That man, as you can probably guess, is Mr. David S. Sparks. It’s too complicated to explain how this will all work, but David alone can access the most strongly guarded areas of the FloatNet. And once he does, he’ll inject a virus—a virus that will spread to every node of the network and cause it to delete itself. Everything they accomplished—all the records and experimental results and knowledge The Society has, will be destroyed. Everything that relies on the network will cease to function. Power will die. The air scrubbers will shut down. Nothing—I repeat, nothing will work. The city itself will, in essence, die.”
“So, what are we here for?” shouted a man from the back. David had talked to him earlier—Patrick. He only joined The Cause a few weeks earlier, in from Bandleshore. No more than seventeen, he was young and full of ideals, but also ready and hungry for a fight. His mother, it turned out, had been taken by The Progressives when he was twelve, only to be returned several days later with her eyes removed. They hadn’t left her blind, but instead had given her a pair of artificial ones as effective as her natural ones, leaving her scarred emotionally.
“You, my friends, have a choice. You all have a choice. You can stay here in the city and watch it crumble. Be our eyes and ears here. But we also need many of you to leave the city, immediately. For this to work, we need you on the outside. Killing the system is wonderful, but as you know, a retired backup lives just onshore at the base adjacent the train depot. According to our information, protocol is in place to fire up the dead backup in a case of extreme emergency, to offload all the data of the network from Plasticity. Our job is to destroy access to that backup. Our job is to kill the escape route.
“Now, gather your things, and meet with your squad leaders. The choice of role you play in this mission is ultimately up to you, but we need people for them all. Other than that, I thank you all, and wish you Godspeed.”
The room roared to life in cheers and applause as Calvin stepped down from the table. A few of the men rushed forward to greet him and shake his hand, which he did graciously before leaving the room to head back upstairs to his command center. Snaking his way through the crowd, David followed close behind.
His back to the door, Calvin stood at the window and watched the lights of the city blink to life as twilight fell.
“They’ve done an amazing job with this. Simply amazing,” he said. He didn’t turn to face David but kept looking out at the city. “I’ve always been awed by the beauty that we men have been able to create. That, and our ability to overcome nearly any obstacle. Honestly, part of me will be sad to see this all go.”
“What you’re planning, Calvin, it’s mass murder.”
“Oh please, David,” he said, finally turning to address him. “Everyone dies. What we’re doing won’t kill anyone. It might force them to adhere to the laws of nature and die a little earlier than planned, but it’s something we must do if we ever want to be able to live in harmony with this planet again. You’ve seen what their science and technology have done, and you know all that will ever come of attempts to conquer and enslave nature is another mass extinction of the human race. No, if we’re going to make it, we need to learn to live in harmony.”
“But the people here, what will happen to them?”
“We’ll welcome them with open arms, of course. Some of them will die, true, but others will be chosen through natural selection to continue,” he paused, clearly irritated at David’s questions. “You started all this. You were one of the first—back in your first life. I know your memories are back, and I know in your heart you’re the same person you were over a hundred years ago. Time may change, but people don’t.”
David thought about this. He thought about his memories. The memories of Paul and Chris and Ben. He thought of Ghost, who only wanted to live a sincere life. He thought of Bethany, her dead body slumped on the floor in a pool of her own blood. He thought of Rosa, and his time with her in Garfield.
There was another way, and Rosa had shown it to him. Man could go back to nature, but only through a relationship of love and respect. Given those two things, Mother Nature would let us back into her arms.
“So, what do I do?”
David winced as his ribs strained from the pressure as Calvin pulled David in for a hug. “First, we need to disable that fancy new broadband wireless sync they gave you.” A snap at the base of his neck signaled the removal of the wireless component from his port. “They need to bring you back in.”
FIFTY-THREE
FANCY MEETING YOU HERE
The port removed, David’s system immediately lost all ability to transmit large data dumps to the central server, but his old wireless, the one that allowed them to keep track of his location, vitals, and any short messages or alerts remained. A standard functionality hardwired into any human com mods. Signaling The Progressives was easy, David only had to think his set of preprogrammed trigger instructions and the upload would begin—but Calvin’s removal of the port made that upload impossible.
David left the safe house, hopped in an autocar, headed downtown and triggered the upload. When it failed, emergency services dispatched to diagnose the problem and bring him in for a manual download and repair.
----
From his array of video feeds, David’s attention was immediately drawn to the one in the far upper left corner. Some kind of security lockdown. Armed guards headed to the entrance and ushered a small group of soldiers, followed by a man, through the glass doors. David recognized the man as himself.
From what he learned from Sarah, he knew two versions of David now existed—but until this moment, seeing this other David up and actually walking around, he hadn’t truly comprehended it. The very idea hurt his brain.
The David c
oming through the entrance of the medical facility was an exact copy of himself—the only difference their clothes. This new David was dressed in charcoal black slacks and a white oxford shirt. The David in front of the screen still wore the pajamas he returned to after his simulated shower the fake morning he got ready to go to the fake zoo with his fake family. He tapped on the window, bringing it to full-screen, and turned on the audio feed.
“I’m not sure what happened. I think I must have caught it on something,” David said.
“Don’t worry sir, we’ll straighten you out,” one of the soldiers said. “Please wait here.”
And so, David watched his flesh and blood doppelganger take a seat on a couch in the waiting area, while three of the four soldiers remained. They weren’t threatening the other David, but from what he could see on the screen, they were ready to stop him, forcibly if needed, should he decide to leave the room.
A minute later a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only” opened and three Eggheads walked in. The three of them stepped in front of David, who remained seated on the couch, and formed a semicircle around him. With their big bald heads, pale bodies and matching suits, it was impossible to tell them apart. David attempted to stand but a soldier stepped up from behind him, put his hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down.
“Mr. Sparks,” said the one in the middle, his voice calm and even. “Why are you here?”
“You tell me. I just got a ton of info about this whole operation, so I tried to upload—but your thingumabob didn’t work—or at least that’s what these guys told me.”
“You have knowledge as to the rebels’ true mission?” the one on the right asked, in the same even, emotionless tone.
“I do,” David nodded. “But like I said, the upload didn’t work.”
“So, why don’t you tell us about the mission?” It was the one on the left’s turn to speak, again in the same monotone as the others.
David’s mind raced. A simple question—obvious … why hadn’t he thought of this before? He scrambled for a reason, then remembered the large crowd that gathered for Calvin’s general explanation speech.
“There was a lot going on. A lot of details,” he stuttered. “Something about computers and power lines. I don’t understand—it’s all way beyond me. I think you’d be better off downloading it and going through the whole thing yourself.”
The three men turned to face one another and stood in silence. After a few minutes, they turned back to face David, and the middle one spoke. “We’ve discussed the matter and are in agreement with your suggestion. Come with us.”
The David on the screen stood and followed the three hairless men, escorted again by the soldiers.
“They discussed the matter?” thought the David at the computer. “They just stood there like a bunch of idiots.”
“You’re forgetting what I told you,” said Sarah, suddenly reappearing out of the darkness. “They’re modified. Their brains are all connected—to each other, and to the network. They don’t need to talk to each other to communicate.”
“How can I tell what’s going on here if I can’t hear anything?”
“Oh, David. You silly human.” She laughed and stepped up the computer and swiped away all the videos onscreen. “I said, they’re all connected to the network. So just tap into one of their feeds. Here, like this.” She tapped a few more icons on the screen, and a new video feed appeared. This one was from a first-person view. On it, he could see two Eggheads walking down a hallway. He could only assume what he was seeing now was the field of vision of the third.
“I don’t trust this man,” a voice echoed through the darkness.
“Nor should you,” said another.
David looked over the monitor and didn’t see anyone there. Sarah stood to his side but didn’t talk. Whoever spoke, it was coming from everywhere, and nowhere all at once.
“You’re tapped into his mental feed,” Sarah explained. “I have it translating the thoughts into words, so you can understand them—so you can hear their conversations.”
“We’ll pull the information we need, then we’ll shut him down.”
“Take him offline?”
“Shut him down. Permanently.”
“Assuming we find what we need, his purpose is complete.”
“To keep him around would be to introduce unnecessary risk.”
“He is part of the plan.”
“Without him, the plan will fail.”
“The plan will fail.”
“Without him.”
“We must know this plan.”
“Then we will shut him down.”
---
As David followed the three strange men down the hallway, he tried to engage them in conversation, but they ignored him. They walked on in silence, single file, through the “authorized personnel” doorway and down a hall David had never been in before. At the end, they met another set of doors. One of the three bald men stepped to the entrance, and it hissed open automatically. He stood to the side, while the other two entered, followed by David.
The soldiers trailed close behind but stopped when the first man put up his hand and said, “Not you. You’re done.” He then stepped through the door and it closed behind him.
The room looked like the place where David first had his memories downloaded. A medical table, surrounded by racks of electronics and cables. All glossy white, save for the blacks and silvers of the electronics. No decorations marked the walls, nor were there any windows. One of the Eggheads pointed to the table.
“Lie down please. On your stomach.”
“Where’s Juliet?” asked David, nervously. The idea of letting these three strangers poke around in his brain didn’t sit well with him. At least Juliet seemed trustworthy—someone much more like him—someone who had prodded around there plenty of times before. None of them answered, but instead continued with their preparations.
One of the men sensed David’s uncertainty, lifted a syringe from the table and approached him. The tip of the needle glinted in the bright lights of the room and David panicked. Another man stepped behind David and grabbed onto him, locking his arms in place and holding him still so his partner could administer the injection.
David screamed a guttural scream. The kind of scream you make when you realize this might be the last waking moment of your life.
And like that, the needle fell to the floor, followed by all three of the pale white men.
Based on their lack of pulse, the men were clearly all dead. All three of them, living and threatening him one instant, lifeless on the floor in another.
He went to the door. Locked. He considered banging on it, shouting for help, but reconsidered. These three men were not the only ones who posed a risk to him now.
“David,” said a soft, female voice. David’s eyes searched the room for the source, then landed on a speaker mounted above the exit. “You’re safe now, David. We saved you.”
“Who are you?” he shouted to the room. “What did you do?”
“We’re friends, David,” the voice said. “You’re safe in here, but we can’t let you out yet. Out there, out there it’s not safe. Do us a favor and plug into the system so we can talk, face to face.”
Considering his mission, and that whatever happened here in the last few minutes did appear to have saved his life, David stepped over to the table and laid down on his stomach. Gripping the cable and jack in his hand, he reached around the back of his head. The familiar click and a pulse of warmth at the base of his skull let him know he was once again connecting to the network.
FIFTY-FOUR
A SPECIAL KIND OF SUICIDE
Unlike any of the previous times David jacked into the system, this time there was a conscious transition from the outside world. As the medical room faded out, a new vision began to fade in. The world around him was black, so black he couldn’t see the ground—but ahead, about 50 feet in the distance, a computer monitor glowed with the silhouette of a ma
n seated in front of it. A woman stood to his right.
“Who’s there?” he called, through the emptiness.
The man stood from his chair and took the hand of the woman next to him. David approached cautiously. As he took his first step, he was unsure if his feet would even touch ground. Everything around him was just a vast expanse of nothing. But his feet touched down on a spongy type of floor. Not quite solid, with a bit of a bounce to it, like walking on the old tumbling mats from gym class. As he approached the two silhouettes and the glow of the monitor, the ground beneath him began to materialize, each step firmer than the last, until his shoes clicked against solid ground. Over his shoulder, behind him, the black nothing loomed, existence simply fading out in space.
“Hi David. It’s nice to meet you again.” The voice matched that of the woman who talked to him through the speakers in the medical bay. The woman took a few steps forward, away from the man beside her. He began to make out her features. Average height. Pale skin. Bright turquoise hair hanging down past her shoulders.
“I asked, who are you?” David replied. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Yes, you do,” the man said. This voice sounded familiar, although David was unable to place where he knew it from. “Or, at least I do.”
The man now took several steps forward as well, and David Sparks found himself standing face to face with the last person he expected to meet: himself.
“What is this?” David demanded from this new David. He turned his attention to the woman and asked again, shouting this time, “Who is this? Who are you?” he stammered.
“David, meet yourself,” the woman replied., then gestured to each of them in turn. “David, this is David. Pretty cool, right?”
The David who jacked in stood in silent shock while his brain assimilated what he was seeing.
The Unfortunate Expiration of Mr David S Sparks Page 22