“We don’t know that for sure,” James cautioned.
“It’s well within the realm of possibility, however,” the A.I. pointed out.
“Exactly,” Thel said, gesturing to the A.I. before looking adamantly at James. “We can’t just sit here. We have to do something!”
“We are doing something,” James responded, holding up the coding.
“Are you kidding me?” Thel reacted. “That?”
James, exasperated, shut his eyes tight for a moment in frustration. “Look, Thel, we’re cut down to our core matrix programs here. We can’t—”
“Core matrix programs?” Thel countered. “Are you kidding? Why don’t you just say what you really are? You’re human. Human!”
“Okay, we’re human,” James admitted, “We’re all genius level, but it’s nothing compared to what we were when we were connected to the mainframe.” James dropped the sparkling, golden, powdery filaments on the table in front of him. “We could’ve processed this in seconds and found the secret to getting out of here, but now we’re just looking at millions and millions of lines of code. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”
An idea suddenly crossed Thel’s mind, and her expression changed as she worked it through. “We’re always talking about Moore’s Law, but what about Murphy’s Law?”
“What?” James responded. “Are you kidding?”
“No,” Thel replied, shaking her head. “You said it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Well, the best way to do that is to just dive in. Murphy’s Law suggests you’ll get stuck with the needle in no time.”
“I don’t follow,” James admitted.
“I think I do,” the A.I. suddenly said, turning away from his own search through the codes to face Thel. “You’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, are you?”
“Wait...what’s she suggesting?” James asked, suddenly frustrated that he was a step behind instead of a step ahead.
The A.I. kept his eyes on Thel.
“I’m suggesting,” Thel spoke, “that one of us merge with the Kali avatar.”
“Merge with—” James began to react before the A.I. interrupted, speaking to Thel.
“Absolutely not,” he began. “That’s an entirely untested hypothesis. Yes, it’s true that whoever or whatever inhabited the Kali avatar was able to circumvent the trapdoor code, but there’s no guarantee that we could merge with it and have the same results. Our ability to manipulate code within the sim was one of the abilities we lost when the trapdoor cut us off.”
“And even if we could merge with it,” James furthered, now that he’d finally understood Thel’s audacious suggestion, “there’s no way to know if attempting to leave the sim would lead to the destruction of our patterns. It’s completely illogical to take a chance like that.”
“Illogical?” Thel replied, her arms still folded, her demeanor impatient. “How’s this for logic? How many lines of code do you think you can go through in an hour?”
James looked down at the pile in front of him. “A few thousand,” he replied.
“A few thousand,” Thel repeated before gesturing to the A.I. and the candidate. “Between the three of you, maybe 10,000 lines in an hour? And you said there are millions of lines of code.”
“That’s no reason to go committing suicide,” James responded. “We could find the code we’re looking for five minutes from now.”
“Or five hours from now,” Thel countered. “And Aldous is with the Purists. If he finds a way to disable their defenses—”
“Assuming he’s the perpetrator here!” James shouted out.
“Oh, good grief!” Thel guffawed. “Who else could it be?”
“1!”
“If she’s still alive,” Thel pointed out. “Remember, we all saw you kill her. And even if she is still alive, why would she imprison you in the sim? James, sooner or later, as much as you don’t want to admit it to yourself, you’re going to have to face the fact that this is a mystery we already know the answer to. Aldous cut a deal with the androids, and that son-of-a-bitch is with the Purists as we speak. We don’t have hours or even days for you to pore through code.”
“This isn’t even a discussion worth having,” James responded, dismissing the idea. “Even if your idea worked, the signal wouldn’t be strong enough to reach Earth and my body, so it’s a moot—”
“I wasn’t talking about your body,” Thel replied.
James’s eyes widened. “Thel,” he spoke slowly, realizing he was too far away to reach her before she did something rash. “No!”
Thel unfolded her arms, revealing that she’d been holding her de-patternizer during the entirety of the discussion. “I’m sorry, James. I love you. But I have to do this.”
“Thel!” James shouted as he jumped to his feet.
At the very same moment, Thel shot her own hand, de-patternizing it and screaming out in agony as her hand disappeared in an explosive pulse of golden coding. In her next motion, she reached out to the Kali avatar and joined her handless arm to Kali’s, the severed limbs instantly connecting and sending a pulse of energy through both of them as their patterns began to fuse.
The A.I. intercepted James, holding him back as he tried desperately to reach her. “No, James!” the A.I. shouted. “If you touch her, you could make it worse!”
“But she’ll die!” James protested as he fought to get free.
The candidate jumped to his feet as well, aiding the A.I. as they worked to hold James back, keeping him several meters away from the figure that was slowly, spectacularly melding into one entity before their eyes.
“Perhaps, James,” the A.I. conceded with enormous sympathy in his tone. “But it’s already done.”
15
“WAKING UP as a robot wasn’t exactly on my bucket list,” Colonel Paine gruffly spoke as he opened his eyes and held his new android hands in front of face, “but it beats kicking the bucket altogether.” He stepped out of his pod and turned his head to see that Samantha was standing next to Old-timer and two females he didn’t recognize.
Then something extraordinary happened and the breath caught in his throat. There was a third woman, a woman he did recognize, and from her disbelieving expression, she clearly recognized him too.
“Daniella?”
“Colonel Paine?” Daniella replied, terrified.
Paine stepped toward her, his hand outstretched as though he were going to grab her, but she quickly stepped behind Old-timer, fearing for her life. “Craig!” she shouted.
“Daniella?” Paine repeated again. “Do you know me?”
“She knows you,” Old-timer confirmed. “And, believe me, she doesn’t want you to touch her.”
Paine’s expression was one of complete and utter confusion as his lips trembled while he tried to assemble a response. “But…why? Daniella,” he said to her as she stayed behind Old-timer, barely daring to peek an eye out to examine the monster from her distant memories. “Baby…”
Old-timer’s eyes widened like saucers. “Baby?”
“Baby?” Djanet echoed, stunned.
Daniella’s eyes widened with utter disbelief.
“Yes,” Paine said, licking his dry lips before he continued, gently, “in my universe, Daniella is—was—my wife.”
“What?” Daniella finally, reacted. “That’s impossible.”
“Why?” Paine responded, perplexed as he held his hands to his head.
“Because you’re a murderous piece of—”
“Honey,” Old-timer cut her off, quickly, “this isn’t the same man you knew.”
“Honey?” Paine reacted, his head jutting back as though he’d been punched.
“Colonel,” Old-timer turned to Paine, “Daniella is my wife in this universe.”
“What?” Samantha responded, equally stunned. She turned to Paine. “This is insane.”
Paine’s eyes darted to Samantha quickly before he looked around at their surroundings, the endless catwalks and pil
lars of the Constructor’s replicator facility. He bent over, propping himself with his hands on his knees to keep from falling as he shook his head. “This has to be a nightmare. Tell me this is a nightmare.”
“Uh, you guys all swapped wives?” Jules reacted, both perplexed and visibly amused.
“They’re from another universe,” Old-timer responded harshly.
Jules’s eyes widened. “Oh. This is fascinating,” Jules suddenly said, the pieces coming together for her. “The parallel universes we travel to are virtually identical—that’s why they’re so close to each other in the multiverse—but something must’ve happened in the universe you brought these two from that drastically altered their destiny.”
Old-timer cringed as he remembered the drastic event Jules’s didn’t even realize she was referring to.
“You’ve traveled vastly different paths since then,” Jules observed. She shook her head, marveling at the coincidences. “Yet, socially, you must’ve still intermixed with one another. We’re going to have to study this in greater detail at some point. We could write volumes on—”
“We’re not your damned science experiment!” Old-timer shouted, shutting her down. “This is our lives. And speaking of, there’s still one more person from their universe that needs to be awakened.”
“Uh, sorry, Craig,” Jules replied. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Why?” Old-timer demanded as he turned to the android, his tendril still jacked into the back of her skull.
“These two,” Jules replied, pointing to Samantha and Paine, “they’re most likely dead in this universe, but your friend, Adolf—”
“Aldous,” Old-timer corrected her.
“Aldous—much better name—he’s already been replicated. And we’ve got very strict rules about only replicating one individual from one universe at a time.”
“One individual from one universe?” Daniella reacted, astonished. “Craig, what is she talking about?”
“The androids aren’t replicating humans they find on different planets across the universe,” he explained, his eyes still locked impatiently on Jules’s as he answered Daniella’s question, “they’re hopping from universe to universe, assimilating Earths. That’s why they’re all human in appearance.”
“And why we can’t have multiple copies of the same person replicated from the same universe. We rescue one version per universe, that’s it,” Jules elaborated. “There are hundreds of versions of me from other universes, but there’s only one from each. You understand? We can’t let someone be replicated more than once in a universe, or they could build an army of themselves—”
“Make an exception,” Old-timer ordered through gritted teeth. “We’re running out of time here, Jules. We need to grab Aldous and get the hell—”
“I can’t,” Jules replied. “There are only two people who could overrule something like that. 1 herself, and—”
“Neirbo,” Old-timer growled, his eyes suddenly darting away from Jules, confusing her for a moment.
“Yeah, how did you—”
“Because he’s right behind you,” Old-timer replied.
Neirbo had, indeed, landed on the catwalk just a few short meters behind the group, a fully rebuilt Anisim at his side.
“Finally,” Neirbo said directly to Old-timer, with a gruesome smile, his face contorted by an ugly, twisted lust for revenge, “I get to end you.”
Jules moved away from Old-timer, though he didn’t release his tendril’s grip on her artificial brainstem.
“How’d you find us?”
Neirbo tilted his head toward Anisim. “Whenever a member of the collective is killed, a report is sent and we immediately review the last moments of their life in their mind file.”
“That’s why you didn’t resist,” Old-timer realized, turning to Anisim.
“I needed to stay alive long enough for us to know your plan,” Anisim confirmed. “I knew you weren’t going to succeed. You’re outnumbered, more than a trillion to the handful of you here. There was never any danger to the collective.”
Old-timer turned to Jules. “You knew this?”
She looked up at him and shrugged. “Everything I said before is true. I don’t want to die. But yes, I did know it was futile. I told you, resisting them is pointless.”
Old-timer nodded slightly before releasing Jules, his tendril folding back into his body.
Jules’s hand moved quickly to the damaged part of her skull and clasped over it. She was shocked by his gesture. “You’re not going to kill me?”
“I don’t want you to die either,” Old-timer answered. “Thanks for your help. I mean it.”
Jules was speechless.
“Who is this guy, Craig?” Paine asked in a low tone from behind Old-timer.
“Trouble,” Old-timer replied.
“Armed trouble,” Paine observed as he saw the weapon Neirbo held in his left hand.
“I’ve felt the gun’s effects before,” Old-timer replied over his shoulder. “Trust me, don’t get shot.”
“Copy,” Paine responded.
“You’ve felt the gun’s effects before,” Neirbo repeated, intrigued. “You do realize I don’t know you, don’t you? Yet you attacked me—tortured me—for no reason.”
“Oh, I had my reasons,” Old-timer replied, “and you better’ve brought more than just a gun with you, son.”
Neirbo’s eyes twitched as he scrutinized Old-timer with the laser-beam focus of a predator in the wild, sizing up his prey. “Indeed, I brought a lot more.”
With a gesture of his right hand, all of the pods opened around and above them.
Hundreds of androids leapt out, landing hard on the catwalk, which swayed and bounced with the vibrations, causing Old-timer and his companions to nearly lose their footing.
Neirbo shouted out his orders to the hundreds of androids that surrounded them, pointing directly at Old-timer. “That abomination is your target! He’s extremely dangerous, but your orders are to rescue him at all costs! Nothing else matters!”
“Rescue?” Paine reacted. “That doesn’t sound all bad.”
“Trust me,” Old-timer replied, “I don’t want to get rescued.”
“You got a plan?” Paine whispered to Old-timer.
“Oh yeah, I got a plan,” Old-timer growled through gritted teeth as he kept one hand protectively on Daniella, keeping her behind him.
“What is it?”
“I’m going to kill every last one of them.”
16
The bridge of their ship lowered itself, and Lieutenant Patrick stood, waiting to greet Rich and Aldous in the hangar, deep inside the Purists’ new fortress on Venus. He saluted the men and spoke quickly.
“Chief Gibson, I am Lieutenant Commander Patrick. The governor requests your presence in the command center. He would very much value your input and experience to help us battle the androids, sir.”
The chief nodded, then pointed to Thel’s unconscious body, still lying on a flat instrument panel at the back of the bridge. Luckily, Aldous had had the forethought to secure her with blankets and to strap her into place, making for a makeshift bed. “She needs to be transported to your medical facility. She’s still alive.”
“Yes, sir,” Patrick replied. “I’ll get my men on that right away.” He gestured for Aldous to follow him and Aldous, in turn, gestured for Rich to follow as well.
“Deep inside the bowels of a Purist hideout,” Rich whispered. “Déjà freakin’ vu.”
“How is the battle going, Lieutenant Commander?” Aldous asked.
“We’re holding our own so far,” Patrick replied. “We know you’ve lost Earth, and we’re devastated as nearly 40 percent of our citizens were still there.”
“They’ll have been assimilated,” Aldous pointed out quickly. “I know it’s not what anyone wanted, but you can’t think of them as dead. There’s still hope.”
“That may be, sir, but there’s no way in hell we’re going to let them take Ven
us without a fight.”
“How are you managing to do this?” Aldous asked.
“James Keats, sir. He fortified Venus with weapons like nothing we ever had access to before. Honestly, sir, even though we’re facing an enemy with an absurd advantage in numbers, I can’t see how they can possibly penetrate our defenses. Commander Keats seems to have thought of everything, sir.”
“Indeed,” Aldous replied. “Well, I’ll be very interested to learn more about this.”
Patrick nodded. “I know Governor Wong believes you’ll be an invaluable asset. We’re glad to have you here, sir.” He turned to Rich, adding, “That goes for both of you.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Rich replied.
“Lieutenant Commander now,” Patrick corrected.
“Right. Sorry.”
“Not a problem,” Patrick responded over his shoulder. “Promotions come fast and furious when all of your people keep dying.”
Rich had nothing he could say to such a morbid, yet true observation.
Patrick continued to lead them through freshly constructed, metallic corridors on their way to the command center. Rich noted that the design was reminiscent of their old lab on Venus, the one he’d worked in for years with James and the others in the small band of terraformers. He suddenly felt an overwhelming pang of nostalgia and wistful desire to return to those times. Little did he know that those would be days he’d think of as golden.
“Are you still with me, James?” Rich whispered. There came no reply.
“Did you say something?” Aldous asked.
“Just talking to myself. I do that,” Rich replied with a forced smile.
“Here we are,” Patrick announced as he breezed past two guards as they saluted him and entered through the double-doors that led to the command center. Governor Wong’s attention was glued to the dozens of screens in front of him as he stood at the center, surrounded by dozens more operators at workstations.
“Governor,” Patrick announced, “they’ve arrived.”
The governor turned, his face brightening when he saw Aldous, although he didn’t smile. He walked away from Alejandra, who’d been at his side, and held out his hand early, even as he was walking up the stairs that led up to the doors to the room, and spoke before they’d even shaken hands. “Chief Gibson, we’re so pleased you survived.”
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