by Sean Platt
“It struck us as inefficient. It’s not that we were unable to deal with it. We found it irrelevant.”
Liza bobbed her head, not believing Divinity at all.
“So when you tried to make us forget,” Liza continued, ignoring her, “it’s like you got the plant but not the roots.”
“The Internet was already gone.”
Liza tapped her head with the canister. “But it was already somehow in here, wasn’t it? We’d internalized that way of thinking. The Internet was training wheels for us. Or Dumbo’s feather. Even after it was gone, the core remained. The Internet had taught us how to work together non-locally, just like your own collective consciousness.”
“It’s not the same,” Divinity said, insulted by the implication. But then again, wasn’t the fact that she was able to be insulted proof that Liza’s argument had merit — that the roots of human consciousness had survived beneath the surface?
“No. It’s not the same.” Liza tapped her chin. “Maybe it’s better.”
“Ridiculous.”
“All I know is that this little computer virus, delivered by this little device made by one long-dead man, disabled the entirety of our remaining tech infrastructure. It took us years to get satellite communication back up, but even then it was all through your technology, not ours. And, hell …” Liza rolled her eyes back, as if perusing the ship’s collective mind, now available for her to trespass. “It seems to me that you couldn’t stomp human memory out, just like our Internet was always forever. I don’t suppose you spied on us long enough to see a celebrity nude photo leak? Where some stupid PR agent and team of lawyers would try and erase all those naughty pictures from the net, but all it took was one nerd in Duluth to save them to his hard drive then re-upload them?”
Divinity was getting tired of this. But as much as she hated Liza and her posturing, the woman was making sense.
“Right now you’ve got human consciousness and this … hangover … from the Internet. Its permanence. And they’re like this.” Liza held up her hands, fingers toward each other, and interlocked them, fingers moving like tangled cords. “The problem is, you were only prepared to deal with this one.” She separated her hands and held one high. “The consciousness part. But you’re not prepared to deal with the other — the persistence, left over from our old way of thinking online.”
“It’s the Lightborn,” said Divinity. “With the Archetypes propping them up and the Archetypes feeding the Lightborn, the whole thing gets stronger.”
“I agree. But if you can’t get rid of the Archetypes?” Liza frowned. “Well then. Now you’ve got a problem.” She tapped the silver canister. “But this? This will knock out the Internet thinking same as it knocked out the Internet itself. Then you can make them forget, easy as pie.”
“So plug it in. Try it.” Divinity nodded toward a meaningless console in Control, knowing that anything in here could adapt to accept the input, once asked.
“Two things bug me. Like I said, once I’ve done what I said I’d do, you’ll get rid of me. You won’t keep your promise.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” said Divinity. “You’ll just have to trust me.”
Liza nodded seriously, seeing their mutual predicament. Damned if you do; damned to both of us if you don’t.
“But the second thing that bugs me is that I had to clean up the mess from the first Canned Heat infection. I know how thorough Terrence Peal made his virus. It’s a nuke. So the question is, will it knock human consciousness out enough to let you implement your Forgetting and reset your experiment? Or will it shred our minds like a Cuisinart and turn us all to mush?”
Divinity met Liza’s eye.
“That is a problem,” Divinity said.
“Which is it? Do you know?”
Divinity knew. She’d been fiddling with controls the entire time she’d been leading Liza to this place, locking them in the way Eternity had tried to lock the door to her posh, overly human quarters. What they’d all become, over the years of occupation, was despicable. Unforgivable.
She’d run the scenarios. She knew precisely what would become of humanity once the virus was run.
The experiment on Earth would be over forever.
But at least they could leave, clean and intact.
“No idea,” said Divinity.
Liza watched her.
“I need time,” Liza said.
“There is no time.”
Liza slipped the canister into her pocket, crossed her arms, and said nothing, tapping her toe on the sterile white floor.
CHAPTER 48
Piper caught up to Kamal while the other four were distracted.
Breakfast, such that it was (nuts and water, eaten while sitting in the sand) was over, and everyone was packing up. They hadn’t made themselves at home under the small group of rock overhangs they’d found and hadn’t gone terribly far from the freighter after realizing the Reptars weren’t going to follow. Packing up was more about procrastination: shuffling the contents of their bags, wondering in tandem about the remaining water supply and why, after taking five losses, they didn’t just go back to Kamal’s camp and call it a day.
Stranger was at one end of the cluster of overhangs, speaking with Logan. Clara and Kindred were at the other end. After last night, Piper could swear she could see the force stretched between Stranger and Kindred, pulling them together as the men fought a losing battle of wills to stay apart. Whatever was happening between them — whatever compulsion-turned-obsession seemed bent on uniting the two half men — it was getting worse. She could feel deadly energy wafting off them like heat.
Kamal moved away by himself, and Piper saw her chance. She took his arm, approaching from behind.
Kamal jumped. Then he saw it was Piper and relaxed. They were all a bit jumpy. After Trevor had left, Piper spent the remainder of her night in a half daze, certain that every fire-thrown shadow was a Reptar closing in for the kill.
“Jesus. You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was just going to take a leak.”
Piper let go of his arm. Heat flushed into her cheeks. “Sorry,” she said again. “Go ahead.”
Kamal turned. “Nope. No good now. I’ve got a shy bladder. I get stage fright. Makes things hard with all the drug testing we do in our village.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” Kamal’s face became serious. His eyes moved beyond Piper, and she turned to see that he was looking at the subjects of her own pondering from moments before: Kindred and Clara on one side, Stranger and Logan on the other. He seemed to be puzzling, edging an observation. And he was squinting a bit, as if trying hard to make out something he could barely see.
Force lines between the two of them, perhaps, strung between Kindred and Stranger like lines on a bomb.
Piper shifted on her feet, the two of them awkwardly standing between last night’s camp and, apparently, Kamal’s restroom. She wanted to sit but had nowhere to do so. And the reason she’d chased him in the first place was the same reason she didn’t want to go back by the ashes, where the others could hear.
“When you were going through all of Mara’s old research,” she said, “did you see anything about a weapon?”
“A weapon? You mean, not guns?”
“Not guns. Something else.”
“Give me context. Help me out here.”
Piper thought back to what Trevor had said the night before: There are only two Reptars protecting it now. And you have a weapon. She’d wondered when he’d said that, but then got sidelined — asking how Meyer had somehow used the Ark’s power to project Trevor, Lila, and Heather before their last botched attack as guides. She’d never circled back, and now that a new mission to the same deadly spot was upon them, it seemed like an unforgivable omission.
“You know how Stranger said he saw Trevor and Lila yesterday?”
Kamal did something that was half nod, half shake of his head. They all knew what St
ranger and Kindred had claimed, but whereas Piper and likely Clara easily believed it, Kamal had a much harder time. He’d accepted it all as academically true — the proliferation of Reptars that were actually duplicates of only a few, the way Piper and the others had supposedly teleported after Lila’s death, and of course the arrival of dead sons and daughters — but he hadn’t been there like Piper. Kamal had seen a lot, but such things didn’t belong in a rational world.
“I saw him last night.”
“In a dream?”
Piper waited, letting the moment settle. Finally she half shrugged.
“So, not in a dream.” Kamal put his hands on his hips, looked toward the others, and dramatically sighed. “Did Trevor eat all the marshmallows?”
“I know you don’t believe it.”
Kamal raised his hands, palms out. “Hey. I’m not trying to be the doubting Thomas. You say your twenty-plus-years dead stepson was hanging out in camp last night, whatever. I’ve already said I’m cool with going back to that death trap. Stranger sent me across the ocean to tell Clara something I’m not sure why he couldn’t just tell her himself, and we’ve got two people in this little group who seem to have some seriously pent-up bro-love, but if they shake hands, I’m pretty sure the universe will find itself with a new asshole. So please, tell me all about Trevor. Lay it on me. Tell me what he had to say. I’m all ears.”
Piper waited to see if Kamal was finished. Finally he lowered his hands and seemed to listen — for once in earnest.
“Meyer sent him, I think,” Piper said. “He might somehow be … controlling … the Ark. But I also think it was the real Trevor. Like his soul was stored in the Ark, and Meyer let it out.”
“That was nice of him.”
“He confirmed what Kindred and Stranger and Clara keep saying: There are only a few Reptars on that ship, not hundreds. The Ark does something to the space around it. I think that’s also how we were able to … hell, teleport, I guess.”
“Is that the weapon? Do you think we can teleport back in there? Take them by surprise?”
Piper shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve asked Stranger and Kindred about it. Somehow, they did that for us, but neither knows how. They say it was like a flash of inspiration: obvious then; impossible now.”
But that was only half the reason she knew a teleport sneak attack was off the table. Now that Trevor had identified the energy inside her — the “key” the Astrals had given her on that ride between Moab and Vail almost thirty years ago — she found herself noticing all sorts of other things that had been there all along, just out of sight. Her forgotten empath’s powers, for one. And using those feelings, she could sense both Kindred and Stranger, living each day now with pressure and tension. To Piper, both were holding their breath, fighting each moment not to inhale. They could barely function, let alone focus. And whatever was building between them was growing worse by the second.
Kamal seemed to think. Then he said, “I don’t remember anything about a weapon.”
“What about poison?”
“Clara’s plan,” Kamal echoed.
“But in Mara’s files. Was there any mention of poison?”
“It wasn’t a set of instructions. I might have given you the wrong impression. So much was conjecture. A lot of guesswork. Metaphorical more than anything.”
“It’d be metaphorical poison,” Piper countered.
“Something to gum up the Ark’s works, you mean?” He made a puzzling face. “Hell if I know. Clara’s a little Kreskin. I figured she’d just go up to the thing and think at it or something.” Then Kamal caught the look on Piper’s face. “Why?”
Piper looked across the open area. She’d wanted Kamal alone for a reason. Given her conclusions, each of the other four was a poor choice of confidant. Kindred and Stranger would try to stop her from doing what she needed to do, taking the burden upon themselves. Clara would practically drag her away to prevent it; with the exception of Meyer who might or might not return from the mothership, Piper was all she had left. And Logan wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. It wouldn’t be his fault, but what went into his mind had a curious way of leaking right into Clara’s — and all the remaining Lightborn.
But Kamal would understand. He’d already done this sort of thing once before, surrendered his spot on the Ember Flats vessel so that someone else could have it, urging Jabari to go while he stayed behind as a dying set of eyes and ears.
Piper took a long, slow breath. Then, with sluggish lips she said, “I’m the new key bearer. Trevor said I’ll be able to open the Ark.” Another breath. “And I think I need to jump into the Ark as poison, like Cameron did.”
Kamal opened his mouth for concerns and rebuttals, but Piper beat him to it. Speaking quickly, she told him all about her suppressed memories of being in the strange room aboard the Astral ship, receiving energy that resonated with the energy in Cameron, what Trevor had told her about the Astrals and their inability to touch the Ark themselves — all of it.
“But it’s already been poisoned. You said Cameron did it.”
“And that bought us twenty years. But now they’re at their wit’s end. Trevor told me Meyer thinks they don’t feel we’re worth saving. We’ve caused too much damage. But who knows what that could mean? Maybe they’ll kill us all and be done. Or maybe they just have to kill Clara, who’s been the thorn in their side. Either way, we need to push them over the edge. Meyer says they’re sick. So let’s make them sicker. Then maybe it won’t be worth their time to try and fix us. Maybe, if we’re lucky, they’ll leave us alone.”
“That’s a big maybe.”
Piper’s lips pursed. She shook her head, feeling the same sensation that had been growing all morning.
“It’s right, Kamal. I know it is.”
He looked into the distance, roughly toward the freighter, and bit his lip, conflicted.
“I can’t tell anyone else. But I have to do this, Kamal. And when the moment comes, I might need help. I might lose my nerve. Someone might figure out what I’m up to and try to stop me. It’s not easy to keep secrets in this group. I’m afraid to get near Clara, sure she’ll be able to read me. But this is important, Kamal.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Meyer knows it. And you were the one who gave us all those reasons why Meyer, of all people, should know.”
Kamal silently watched the horizon. She didn’t like seeing him serious. Without his armor of sarcasm, he seemed so vulnerable.
“Kamal?”
He shook his head.
“Kamal? Can I count on you?”
After another few seconds, he nodded.
Then, without looking at her, he turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 49
Enough was enough.
Melanie had been in her quarters all night, noting the destruction, increasingly sure what had caused it, taking it all far more personally than she should. But instead of picking things up, she made the mess worse. She kicked. She stalked. Thinking and growing more furious, for hours on end.
Divinity, still locked inside Control, her doings unknown, calls still unanswered.
Meyer Dempsey, similarly locked in his cell, guards kept out as if he was choosing isolation rather than having it forced upon him. All night she’d watched energy stream from Meyer to the Nexus, from the Nexus to Earth. He was up to something, too — similarly unknown, calls to or about him likewise unanswered.
Hours and hours and hours. Anger building. The body needed sleep, but Melanie refused to accept it. Instead she stalked and fumed, circling her space, stacking fury like bricks.
She opened the door and found two Titan guards. Guards she hadn’t asked for or authorized, who seemed to be watching more than protecting her.
Melanie eyed them. They came closer. But she had things to do and places to go. She shoved the Titans out of the way, wondering if that would provoke them, knowing they weren’t exactly sipping from the collective as much as they all
should be — the same, of course, as she wasn’t and hadn’t been for years. She almost hoped they’d take offense the way only fragile individual minds could. She hoped they’d spin on her. Raise their weapons. Or turn to Reptars and attack one of their own. Mutiny made no sense in a species like hers. At least not until recently.
Let them try.
Let them come at her.
She needed to cross the ship to reach the place where her next steps would be most efficient, but she wasn’t so far gone — so far down the slippery slope of humanity’s disease — that she couldn’t reach through the haze if truly needed. The collective was made of minds that were equal in concept, but every wheel required a center. Divinity, as a whole, formed that nucleus. But even Divinity was merely an outer ring of Eternity: the heart of the middle.
If the Titans came at her, Melanie was fairly certain she could pinch them off, from inside, with barely a conscious thought. She’d learned anger in this surrogate body thanks to its human wiring. And she’d learned other things, too: spite, jealousy, vengeance, scorn. Volatile emotions blended with her abilities. Eternity gave her powers within the collective. And Melanie gave her reflexes, survival instinct, and a hair trigger.
She didn’t rule the hive but could purge its impurities. As long as they came at her one at a time like the malcontented individuals they’d become, she could knock them down without slowing her stride.
But the Titans didn’t try to stop her as she left the room. They simply watched her leave, like cowards.
Meyer Dempsey had somehow barred the door to his cell? He’d remotely accessed the Nexus and was using it, right now, to project the Ark’s power? He wanted to ignore everything she’d said — every warning she’d given?
Well, then fuck him.
Divinity wanted to launch little schemes? She’d found a second hybrid and meant to use it in ways unknown, without consulting the collective? Divinity, like Meyer, had barred herself in a room that shouldn’t even be lockable?