by Rian Davis
“D4, get away fast if you can hear me.”
I charged the magnetic propulsion to a higher level than I’d done before and made it to the hole on the side of the mountain just in time. It was the same cavern I had done a paper on during my graduate work. Two missiles made an impact behind me somewhere near the hole that shook everything—the underground mountain and the water. The pressure waves pushed me deeper into the chasm. I couldn’t detect anything in there. It was a virtual black hole for me.
Soon I sensed its presence. It was coming for me.
“Z4, where are you now? I’m getting hit pretty hard in here.”
“I see you have chosen to accept your fate. This will not last long. Remember your efforts will be recorded and produced to future successors who will muse at the primitive ways society carries on today.”
I ignored the fine speech and checked my surroundings. The large cavern was a holdover pocket from the large volcanic flows that had formed the mountain millions of years in the past. The thing about volcanic rock is that there are often ways to split it since it isn’t always compacted by the march of time. I scanned my surroundings and found three pressure points that were very important for keeping the integrity of the cavern.
“Please do not make this difficult,” the face said. “I do not wish to prolong your suffering.”
“Oh, but I’m not done yet—you bitch,” I said.
“But why do you struggle so much? It is the way of things.”
The carrier fired a succession of short sound wave bursts. The sonic assault was beginning. I had heard about them before but never seen them up close. The sonic waves were capable of tearing up unprotected bodies as well as shatter steel. The carrier became a giant amplifier of energy. Already, I could sense that the integrity of the cavern was in doubt. So much energy was contained in the sonic waves the carrier was firing at me.
The first wave hit me as I could not avoid it. I screamed in pain. The energy threatened to shake not only the Golem suit, but my entire body apart. It easily penetrated my energy shields.
In desperation, I fired off my own magnetic beam, not at the carrier but at the three pressure points in the cavern. I missed two of them. The last one made a direct hit, and the cavern made a noise as stones collapsed.
“What are you doing? I have already accessed your every likely move. There must be something not on file. Your behavior is irrational. Your exuberance is mystifying.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint.” I continued preparing my next shot. The sonic assault was halted for some reason—perhaps it was damaged in some way. I was sure I wouldn’t survive I another hit from it.
“I ask the question again: Why do you resist? There is no escape. Your chances of survival are nearly impossible and—” The face was looking at me now. It was a pale white face, formed in some sort of three-dimensional hologram. This time it was of a young woman, expertly rendered—a friendly face. The face that looked back at me in that husk of an attack AI carrier didn’t have a spec of hostility. Nonetheless, I knew the final assault was on standby. I had my own countermeasures on standby.
I fired the two magnetic pulses with carefully timed bursts at the two weak points in the cavern. I moved my position when hitting the second one as with all volcanic rock, the angle of attack is critical when trying to break it apart.
Both targets were struck. The carrier immediately stopped parleying and prepared to strike again. But it was too late. The immense ceiling of the cavern started to come down. I moved as quickly as possible with a magnetic propulsive push as I had never tried before.
I jettisoned out of the cavern just as it collapsed. The carrier was too bulky to move with any speed. I looked back just in time to see that sweet face on its panel being crushed by the first rocks. I turned away and looked for Z4.
“Z4, where are you? Are you hurt?” I asked on the communicator.
There was no response. I moved down towards the bottom and saw some commotion—the kind of disturbance a large boulder makes. I moved towards it and detected something down there that could have been Z4.
“Are you there? Can you respond?”
No answer.
I moved slowly towards the spot where I had detected the disturbance. Many small drones were located at various intervals, wrecked forms and shapes.
“Z4, are you there?”
Fearful of what I would find, I touched the spot with the suit’s outstretched hand. Z4 was indeed there but I could not detect anything. I grabbed his body and propelled towards the surface. That’s when the explosion hit. A burst of rocks and debris flew at me just as I reached the surface. I kept going, flying through the air with Z4 in my arms.
I landed on the ground. It was a spot where the ice had retreated from. One of the early places of many soon to come where there was no ice. I set Z4 on the ground and inspected him. There were absolutely no readings coming from him anymore.
Remembering his early words, I knew that taking him out of the suit would kill him. I wasn’t sure if the suit had failed its life support for him or Alan Aspect’s body had finally given.
He was dead—truly this time. Nonetheless, I noticed a final signal. I touched the suit, and a jolt of energy overtook me. Somehow the remaining essence of Z4 and Dr. Aspect flowed through my Golem suit. I backed up, struck by exhaustion, my legs finally giving.
I did my best to hide the second Golem suit, noting well where I had put it. I had one more thing to do.
I flew back towards the direction I had come. After a while, I had picked up Jen’s signal. She was with others, heading for a large plane on a base near the coast.
She was walking as if she were no longer in danger. The people escorting her were not COG’s. I had an idea of who they were.
“You were working for the Eastern Alliance all along,” I said.
Jen was knocked by surprise for a moment—a small moment, before coming to her senses and facing me.
“You. What the hell is that thing you’re wearing?”
“I’ve changed since you’ve last seen me. And yes, it’s me. Remember me? Your lover? What are you doing.”
The Eastern Alliance soldiers were all in arctic camouflage and they pointed their guns at me.
Jen looked at them and said something in Chinese. They did not lower their weapons.
“That’s a nice suit you’ve got there. What happened to Dr. Aspect?”
“He’s gone.”
“I see,” she said with her face betraying genuine sadness. “That’s too bad. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what? Like you’ve betrayed me—us?”
“What do you mean? You’ve just deceived yourself too much to know what’s happening here. Your contact, Kraftberger, he betrayed you. I’m just doing what I had to.”
“I know that he betrayed me by now. My only question is why he didn’t just kill me back in Thailand,” I said with bitterness. “You were working for the Eastern Alliance all along—not for scientific—”
“Oh grow up!” she said. “You think we all live in a vacuum? Look around you? Yes, I loved you, but like Jeanne in that Maupassant novel, I never had a choice, OK? Just like her I grew up in a world where I had no influence, only she had money and privilege. I didn’t even have that. Remember that scene where she sleeps with Julien for the first time and she realizes that her illusions are shattered, her dreams in life were meaningless, and there is no purpose left for her? That’s how I felt when I was ten and they put that goddamned chip in my body, monitoring every move I made and restricting all my actions. I felt such a pain inside me but my parents couldn’t do anything about it. I learned that I’m either with the Eastern Alliance or I’m dead—and not just me, but my whole family. The only reason the chip isn’t functioning now is that I’m in Shadow Zone, but I’ve got to go back now. My parents live right now in relatively good health in a nice facility, well above the ocean in Hong Kong, but the government can cut that off at any moment. I betray them, t
hey’re all dead—and I’m not just talking about my parents. There are no more neutrals anymore. Those days are gone. There’s no more Switzerland.”
“That’s not the person I knew before.”
“That’s because I lied to you. I’m good at it. I had to be to survive. I have to go now. I’m high ranking enough to keep them from attacking you,” she said indicating the soldiers around her. “But I doubt they like holding their fire.” I could see the soldiers she was with were getting nervous. They didn’t like this drama going on. They looked like special operators. Some of them looked like they wouldn’t think twice about shooting both of us. I wondered why they didn’t.
“Yeah? Well what happened to the damn good scientist that I knew? What are you then? A soldier just to do some other person’s wishes—or AI control? What happened to that talk about changing our destiny, changing society by doing what we could to make things better?”
“I’ve already told you. I don’t have a choice. I never did. Love, scientific accomplishment, none of that matters anymore because it’s not attainable. You understand nothing about my life—my background. Everything I’ve done up to this point was due to a choice I made: accept the restrictions or die. That’s all it is. You know which path I chose. This is the cost,” she said, gesturing around her. “You’ve got to go now, or I’ll have to fight you too. We’re being watched. Don’t push me. And, by the way, you were spared because the King—Thailand’s king, didn’t want to have you killed. He told Kraftberger, if they killed you, he would stop cooperating.”
“What?” I said, truly astonished. “Why would the King care so much about me? Who am I to him?”
“You’re a damned good scientist who did his best to help the Thai people. What you did back there saved many lives. The King knew it. He’s a good man too—like you.”
“But why say that? Why not join me? We can—”
“Grow up. Like I said many times, look around you. Have you been listening to anything I’ve said so far? You’ve got to go—now. Or else I cannot protect you. Just go and forget I was ever here. Please, just go,” she said. Her eyes held another message, one more tender. They begged me to let her go. I knew that she wasn’t lying then. There was certainly some enormous pressure keeping her, and she didn’t want saving. She didn’t need saving. She had been doing her own thing all her life.
“Just tell me this. Was it really me, or was it you back in Afghanistan? The thing that led to that water contamination and all those people dying.”
One of the Eastern Alliance soldiers started to grab her, to pull her away, but she flicked his hand back. Another of them had his gun aimed at my head the whole time and cocked his gun. Of course the suit would protect me, but I was worried that it would go off. I was ready to protect Jen if that should have happened.
“It wasn’t me personally who did it,” she said turning away.
The implications of what she said hit me. I was at once relieved that it hadn’t been my actions and repulsed again for thinking about how anyone could have killed all those people so callously—all for some geopolitical strategy. “My god, Jen. All those people died back there. And for what purpose? We’re scientists. Remember that whole discussion we had about the enlightenment and how Kant said knowledge—especially scientific knowledge, or whatever he called it at the time, should be used to help people?”
She said nothing in response as she signaled to the other soldiers to follow her.
“They all died just for political gains?”
She didn’t even look back. Three of them eyed me threateningly, and I prepared my suit for combat. Despite the rather fearsome appearance of my suit, they didn’t seem afraid of me at all. Whether inadvertently or by design, my suit began to sparkle with electrons. Through my enhanced senses, I could feel the Earth’s magnetic sphere coursing through me, giving me power. I was becoming better at harnessing the suit and the electromagnetic power around.
Before anything happened, she motioned for the soldiers to fall in line with a harsh command. With one last tender look at me, she turned and stormed off. They obeyed her, and the last one left soon after that—the whole while with his gun pointed at me. I did not follow them. They soon disappeared into the cold, frosty mist.
“It seems she’s determined to get out of here,” said a voice from somewhere inside the suit.
“Z4?” I said.
“Yes. But I’m different once again now. Several aspects of me have changed from my transfer over. I no longer have a suit, but I can stay in this one and advise you from now on. I want you to call me by my old name now—call me Alan—not Dr. Aspect, not Z4, just Alan. I think I kind of miss it.”
“OK sounds good. Z4 sounded kind of strange anyway, as far as names go.” Somehow, I wasn’t surprised that a certain aspect of Dr. Aspect had transferred over to my suit. I didn’t even know it was possible, but things didn’t surprise me anymore. My body and spirit felt too heavy to reflect much more on many more things anyway, and I was physically and mentally exhausted.
“I agree. Also, I think you should get moving fast. Alex is still out there. Jen waylaid his forces, but he’ll be back soon.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I said. “And Kraftberger will soon know what happened here—or he’ll guess most of it. We’re fugitives now, Alan. We won’t be able to go back to Eagle Zone now. ”
“What about Alex? You must be angry about him.”
“I am, but there’s not much I can do about it. He’s probably headed back to wherever COG is. I don’t know much about them, and I certainly have no idea where they’re hiding.”
“What will we do?”
“Well first thing we have to do is rest. I’m tired. Can this thing sustain me while I get about twelve hours of sleep? I see a little crack here that should help keep me hidden. The Golem has more than enough energy to keep me warm for a whole month let alone a few hours for some shut eye.”
“Yes, I think that should be fairly easy. The suit will be able to maintain a healthy temperature while you rest and—”
End
A Message to the Reader
I thank you for purchasing this book and your time reading it. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did while writing it. It is the culmination of many years of research, both in grad school and on my own after graduation. I have looked closely at the evidence to predict what the future will look like in fifty years or so. The next planned sequel(s) will continue describing the world that the evidence suggests will take shape. I will continue the story if there are enough readers and interest in this novel. Please leave feedback on the Goodreads or any of the marketplaces such as Amazon to help ensure that the sequel(s) can be made.
Stay Tuned for the Sequel: The Nation of Gaia is Dead, Long Live the Nation of Gaia