“Remain calm, Richard,” Aldous said, his own tone remarkably relaxed as he accessed the A.I.’s global defense network. “The arrival of reinforcements is imminent.”
“What sort of reinforce—”
His words were cut short when a multitude of familiar robots began to empty out of underground storage compartments that opened up into launchers around the perimeter of the mainframe.
“Holy…I did not think I’d ever be relieved to see those guys again,” Rich reacted as thousands of the sleek, black, bat-like robots launched from the surface, on an intercept course toward the plummeting androids.
“Interesting that the A.I. opted to utilize the design that originated with the nanobot consciousness that infiltrated and corrupted his systems,” Aldous commented. “He recognized the usefulness of the design and kept it. It seems the A.I. is full of surprises.”
“Yeah, good call on his part. Those’ll be helpful,” Rich said as he prepared to erect the magnetic field around the mainframe, since the androids were now engaged with the mechanical bats just a kilometer above his head. “But we’re gonna need a lot more. Are you in control of the mainframe yet?”
“I’m working on it, my friend,” Aldous said as he located and landed on the surface of the A.I.’s vast information storage network. He’d never been there before, and just as James had been when he first arrived on the planet-sized structure, he was both bewildered and in awe. Trillions of glowing, blue structures stood around him, towering high into the empty, black sky.
“Faster please,” Rich said as he finally ignited his cocoon, utilizing the augmentation belt and making sure the cocoon expanded to the trench he’d dug around the structure.
The first android smashed against the giant green cocoon and ricocheted away, followed almost instantly by dozens more. Seconds later, what had been a terrifying prelude became a previously unimagined horror, as tens of thousands of metal bodies began crashing against the cocoon. Rich looked straight up at the horror unfolding above him; the androids were so close that he made eye contact with several of them as they hit the surface and then swarmed, thousands more androids swarming on top of them, crushing their own numbers beneath them. The androids were both male and female—it didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was their singular purpose: to destroy the mainframe and to destroy its lone protector.
“It’s me,” Rich whispered to himself. “I’m the one who dies. Kill the comic relief, and the audience knows how serious things are. I’m a goner.”
23
“WAKE UP, James Keats,” the Kali avatar spoke as she held James’s head between her hands.
James’s eyes suddenly widened before he blinked twice in disbelief. His head suddenly completely cleared, all of his pain vanishing instantaneously. He instinctively pulled back from her and ambled to his feet. “What did you…” he began to ask before he realized the obviousness of the answer.
The woman in the red dress, who’d been crouched over the fallen James, stood straight and kept her adoring eyes on him. “All the beauty in the universe is inside of you, James Keats.” She then turned slightly and brushed the back of her hand against the A.I.’s injured cheek.
The A.I. reacted with surprise, tilting his head back as he felt a sensation from long ago: the itching of healing flesh. He reached up to touch the bandage, eliciting no pain from the wound underneath. He peeled the corner of the bandage off, then looked to Thel for confirmation.
Astonished, she simply confirmed what he already knew. “It’s gone.”
The A.I.’s eyes went to Kali’s, as did everyone else’s in the room, but she kept hers on James.
“We’ll meet again,” she said before, instantly, her eyes glazed over and the glow of her life force, the intelligence of the mystery pattern underneath the surface, observably vacated. The avatar stood, barely moving, like a mannequin in the center of the room.
The candidate went to her and waved a hand in front of her face. When she didn’t react, he snapped his fingers.
“Don’t bother,” the A.I. said to him, meeting his eyes. “We’ve both seen this before.”
“I suppose we have,” the candidate agreed, thinking back to an earlier moment in his testing, when Kali had seemed to become an empty vessel. That had all been part of a charade, though, orchestrated by the three entities still in the room. But what is this new terror? he asked himself.
Thel went to James and put her arm on him, standing in front of him so that she could get a better look into his eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked with concern as she examined him.
“I’m completely fine,” James confirmed. “She…fixed me.”
“She fixed us,” the A.I. noted.
“But why?” Thel asked.
“Someone better explain what the hell just happened,” James said as he looked at both the candidate and the A.I. “What’s going on? Who was that?”
“I haven’t a clue,” the A.I. replied.
James and Thel were both stunned at the A.I.’s uncharacteristic admission of ignorance.
“Haven’t a clue?” Thel repeated. “Not even a theory?”
“I was sure it was 1,” the A.I. explained, “but…now I don’t think so.”
“Then who?” James reacted. “Has another android taken control?”
The A.I. lowered his head as he considered the mystery. “It’s certainly possible.” He paused before his eyes rose to meet James’s. “But, James, for the first time in my life, my logic has failed me. It could be that a singular entity, an entity, such as 1 or perhaps even 1 herself, has infiltrated the sim and trapped our core patterns here. However, my instincts…my intuition…tells me otherwise.”
“Intuition?” asked James, his eyebrows rising. “What did she say to you to make you abandon logic?” he asked in disbelief.
“I haven’t abandoned it,” the A.I. corrected him. “On the contrary, I fear, it has abandoned me.”
“Okay,” Thel reacted, rolling her eyes and sighing in frustration. “That makes lots of sense.” She saluted the A.I. sarcastically with a wave of her hand. “Thanks a million.”
The A.I. turned his attention back to the candidate. “Was Kali here when you returned from the incident on the bridge?”
“She was,” the candidate confirmed as he stood near the entrance to the bedroom, surrounded by the three intruders in his nightmare with him and the seemingly empty vessel of Kali, as it stood motionless just two paces to his left. “I wasn’t expecting to see her again. The stranger told me the three of you were in control of her—that she was your puppet. But when I returned, she was waiting.”
“And with a new puppeteer, it would seem,” the A.I. observed. “What did she say to you?” he asked the obvious follow up.
“She said the stranger had lied to me, that you weren’t endangering anyone. But she also said I’d done well and that my existence had already served more purpose than that of most…patterns.”
The A.I. and James locked eyes.
“Does that mean there’s more than one infiltrator?” James posed the question. “Or is this just an elaborate deception to keep us looking in the wrong direction?”
“If there’s a logical explanation we can ascertain based on the information we have, it eludes me,” the A.I. replied. “We need more info.”
“We don’t have time to get more info,” Thel reminded them. “Earth’s being attacked as we speak. If we don’t get out of this sim soon, the mainframe will be destroyed, and if the mainframe is destroyed, we’ll be killed.”
James turned to the candidate, who remained silent, his expression distrustful but unsure. “She’s right. If the mainframe that supports this sim is destroyed, we’ll all be destroyed with it...and that includes you.”
James could see the notion sent panic into the candidate’s heart, his respiration picking up noticeably.
“If there’s anything you can tell us, anything you can do to help us, don’t hold back. Time moves much more slowly inside
the sim than outside of it, but every second here still counts.”
“We’re the only ones who have a chance of saving our world,” the A.I. added. “Every moment we remain trapped here, our chances of success decrease.”
The candidate looked down before shutting his eyes tight in frustration. He prayed when he opened them that the nightmare would be over, but when he blinked them open, the uncanny entities remained.
“I’ve been lied to, manipulated, and used for means I don’t understand,” he whispered. “I was corrupted into lying for what I was led to believe was a greater good, but it’s now clear that it wasn’t. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what I could tell you or do for you that could possibly help you.”
24
“They’re legitimate aliens, yet they look human?” Samantha summarized, bewildered by what she’d just heard.
“Yes,” Old-timer confirmed, “and they’re bent on assimilating every organic human they can and turning them into androids.”
“There’s yet another head-scratcher for you,” Paine observed. “A little coincidental that they all appear human, isn’t it?”
“They’re homo sapiens in appearance,” Old-timer confirmed, “but there’s nothing human about them below the surface. Believe me. I’ve seen inside.”
“And these android bodies? You believe they’ll be sufficient?” Aldous asked Old-timer in the void.
Old-timer nodded. “I’ve inhabited one myself.”
“Inhabited one?” Samantha reacted, aghast. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a long story, I’ll get to it, I promise, but right now, all you need to know is that I have to admit, in some ways, they were nice upgrades on our organic bodies. So, what do you think? We’re extremely low on time here.”
“It’s a no-brainer,” Paine spoke up. “We’re either electrical patterns floating around in a hard drive that’s eventually going to run out of power in what’s left of a dead universe, or else we’re robots in a live universe. Given the choice, I’ll take being a robot in a live universe—at least for now, anyway.”
“The question is,” Old-timer cut in as he displayed the simulated version of the assimilator, “will the technology be compatible? I don’t know much about its design, other than it copies neural patterns from biological bodies and uploads them somewhere in the android collective, where android replacement bodies are then constructed. But this thing I’m holding in my hand...well, I’m not really holding it in my hand at all.” He turned to the collapsed form of his physical body within the safety of the Planck platform’s magnetic field. “That’s the real assimilator there. So, how do I get you three in there?”
Aldous took the simulated assimilator from Old-timer and examined it. “Fascinating,” he commented. “Technology far beyond our own.”
“Is it a lost cause?” Old-timer asked, wincing and expecting the worst.
“Absolutely not,” Aldous replied. “The void was constructed as a means of bridging our sim to the physical reality of your universe, if ever we were fortunate enough that you’d check on us before it was too late and you’d been destroyed yourselves. When you cross through your magnetic field, your pattern is automatically uploaded into the void, having been scanned on the molecular level by the void’s own mainframe. In theory, this assimilator was uploaded intact and functional. It should work the same here as it does in the physical world, and when you cross back over, our patterns should cross, too, after being uploaded into the physical assimilator.”
“In theory, Professor?” Paine questioned Aldous.
Aldous sighed and shrugged slightly. “Yes, in theory. This device is extraordinary, alien technology, but as long as it functions on principles that are grounded in the laws of the universe, it should work.”
“In theory,” Paine repeated.
“Theory is good enough for me. Listen, we’ve gotta go,” Old-timer urged. “Yes or no, guys? Are you coming back with me?”
“Of course,” Aldous said. He swallowed, slightly nervous as he handed the device back to Old-timer. “I’ll put my money where my mouth is. Craig, you may assimilate me first,” he volunteered as he stepped forward.
Old-timer nodded respectfully as his eyes met those of Aldous. “It’ll be okay. See you in a minute,” he said. He hoped he wasn’t making himself into even more of a liar than he already felt like. He placed the assimilator on Aldous’s neck.
Rather than losing consciousness, Aldous vanished as though he’d blinked out of existence, like a balloon that had popped, there one second and gone the next, stunning the three patterns that remained in the void.
Old-timer looked down at his assimilator, a half shocked, half quizzical expression on his face.
“That’s actually probably a good sign,” Samantha offered. “If his pattern is inside the assimilator, there’d be no reason for the void mainframe to still be expending energy to generate a simulated body for him.”
Old-timer blinked, his bottom lip protruding slightly as he considered Samantha’s assessment. He hoped she was right, and he was glad he wasn’t going to have to test her hypothesis on himself.
“Well, I’d say ladies first,” Paine broke in as he stepped forward, “but I think this is a circumstance where being the third wheel outweighs being chivalrous. I’m next.”
Old-timer nodded again before holding the assimilator next to Paine’s neck.
“See you when I’m a robot,” Paine said with a grin.
Old-timer couldn’t help but fight back a shiver as their eyes met. There seemed to be no lingering hint of the bitter rivalry the two men shared in Universe 1, at least not in Paine’s eyes. In fact, he looked at Old-timer as though they’d been close friends. “See you,” Old-timer replied awkwardly.
An instant later, Paine was gone.
Old-timer stood alone with Samantha. They stood together, in the perfect emptiness, their eyes locked. He couldn’t move. Despite everything that was on the line, he couldn’t shake himself free from his paralysis.
“Well, I guess I’m next,” she said, pulling her shoulders back and summoning up the courage.
“We were married,” Old-timer suddenly blurted out. Why did I say that? he immediately asked himself. It just came out. Stupid. “But,” he began, trying to course correct, “in my universe, it was a long, long time ago. I-I lost you. You were…taken from me.”
Samantha’s expression suddenly changed dramatically. It wasn’t an expression of just happiness, relief, or even torment; rather, she felt a mixture of all three. She suddenly realized that she wasn’t as alone as she’d believed, and her misery loved company. “So you know how I’m feeling?” she said. “You remember…how it feels like there’s no ground under you anymore. How you’d do anything to hear their voice one last…” She stopped speaking and swallowed, fighting back as a lump formed in her throat.
“I-I have some idea,” he confirmed. “It-it staggers you. It still gets me sometimes when I least expect it—but it gets a little better as time moves on.”
“Then I guess that’s my problem,” Samantha realized. “I’ve been frozen in time.”
Old-timer could barely breathe when she said the words. This time, it was Samantha that had been frozen in time.
I am fortune’s fool.
“Maybe,” Samantha began, “maybe when we get back, and when this is all over, maybe we can talk about it some more.”
Old-timer smiled faintly, a smile that he forced onto his lips, but wasn’t shared by his eyes. “Absolutely. Of course.”
Samantha smiled genuinely, though her expression was still mired in conflicting emotions. “I’m ready,” she said.
“Okay. See you in a bit.”
He put the assimilator to her neck, and she vanished.
Old-timer found himself standing alone in the perfect absence of the void. He looked down at the assimilator, then up at Djanet, still in the protection of the Planck platform, crouched over the crumpl
ed android, her palm on his chest, ready to wake him. He looked up into the absent sky. “I’m your fool, but I swear I won’t quit today. Not today.”
And with that, he marched, determinedly, toward the magnetic field, ready to wake up.
25
“Are you in control of the mainframe yet?” Rich asked impatiently as he continued to stand alone, the only light now that of his magnetic field, the androids having completely blotted out the sun as their bodies piled hundreds high over every inch of the only protection for the mainframe.
“It’s not as easy as it sounds to locate the operator’s position for a mere mortal such as I,” Aldous replied as the brilliant glow of the operator’s position appeared on the horizon.
“Uh, you know what else isn’t easy for a mere mortal?” Rich retorted as he continued to stare straight up at tens of thousands of faces.
The android bodies that were against the magnetic field didn’t appear to be functioning any longer, having been crushed by the incredible weight of the bodies on top of them. Some of them had been pulverized, while others were partially crushed, their torsos or heads giving out under the extreme pressure.
“I’m in a nightmare,” he whispered to himself.
“I understand, Richard,” Aldous replied, “but I’ve found the holy grail now. I’ll be in full control in moments.” Aldous landed at the foot of the glowing source of the mainframe’s incredible thinking power. He paused for a brief moment and wiped his bottom lip as he considered his next move.
“And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds left to conquer.”
He took in a deep breath of simulated air, then engaged in what he knew would be the highest level of consciousness he’d ever reach.
Meanwhile, Rich watched as the first android dug its way down through the deep trench Rich had forged around the perimeter of the mainframe, emerging from the Earth, its arm reaching out first, its hand grabbing the surface and pulling itself out as though the planet itself were giving birth to the fearsome figure. When it fully emerged, Rich saw the android’s other arm reach out right behind it.
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