Post-Human Trilogy

by Simpson, David

  “There’s gotta be something wrong with the facial recognition though, Captain.” The airman who stood closest and had his gun trained on Aldous enthusiastically turned back to the captain and the other airmen as he spoke. “Aldous Gibson is seventy-four years old. This guy’s thirty at most. There’s no way this is our VIP.”

  “Maybe it’s his clone or something,” the captain replied. “Who knows with these freaks?”

  “Well,” the closest airman replied, as he moved one hand up to scratch under his helmet, “we either let him power back up and escape or we take him out. What’s your call, Cap?”

  The captain nodded as he mulled over their dilemma.

  Aldous clenched his fist and gritted his teeth.

  “Cap, with all due respect, sir, we need a call on this now.”

  “If we shoot this guy and he turns out to be a VIP, we’re gonna catch hell, but we also have one hell of an excuse. He doesn’t look like Gibson to me. The computer’s got to be glitchy. Let’s take him out.”

  “Affirmative,” the nearest airman said, turning back to his target and raising his rifle to aim a kill shot squarely at Aldous’s temple.

  Aldous’s mind’s eye suddenly flashed salvation into his field of vision. The screen read, “Full Power Reestablished.”

  As the airman’s knuckle twitched on the trigger, Aldous’s cocoon suddenly reignited, blocking the bullet as it left the barrel of the rifle. Half a second later, he sent out a powerful wave of energy that overwhelmed the airmen, overloading their synapses and sending them crumpling to the snow, unconscious.

  Aldous blinked twice before drawing himself up to his feet, not sure whether he was even really still alive. He’d been saved by less than a second of indecision by the captain. Had the airman made up his mind just a moment earlier, Aldous would have been dead. He suddenly thought of all of the universes in which this was, indeed the case. He thought of the A.I. and Craig, who had crossed into one of those infinite parallel possibilities.

  Suddenly, he realized that the universe was about to split again as he reached yet another fork in the road. Just as he had split the universe when he’d decided to save the crippled harrier, separating himself from his wife and leaving her unprotected in the process, leading to her death, now he had to make another fateful decision. He turned back to his wife and watched her unmoving body in the snow, circled with that ghastly crimson ring of blood, her spilled life. The firefight continued all around him, though the green energy blasts of the post-humans were now few and far between. The Purists were overwhelming them, and their victory was inevitable. He had choices: reenter the fight and fall with his friends and colleagues; or fly to his wife, gather up her body, and hope that her nans—no doubt still functioning—could somehow repair her and bring her back to life. He stepped forward when he thought of that option, but he froze when he calculated the chances. While the nans would be repairing her body, he’d seen how hard she’d been driven into the rock face, vulnerable since she hadn’t yet ignited her protective cocoon. No human could have survived such an impact, but could a post-human? Aldous wanted to believe it was possible, but they’d never tested the nans under such harsh conditions. Not even Craig Emilson, whose body had been riddled with bullets and whose spine had been broken, had endured as much damage as Sam. Could they repair that much damage before her brain is completely lost, if it isn’t already? Impossible.

  And even if he tried to salvage what was left of her, he knew he’d almost certainly be caught by the Purists in the attempt.

  No, I can’t. There was only one reasonable course of action. No one had eyes on him. He could escape on foot, and the Purists wouldn’t be able to track him. Then he could reestablish contact with the A.I. and Craig when they returned to Universe 1.

  Even though it felt wrong—even though he felt like a coward leaving her behind—he knew it was the only logical course of action.

  He turned his back on the facility and began to run through the snow, away from the battle, away from the Purists, and away from Samantha. His eyes locked on a dark patch of sky between two mountain peaks in the distance and he ran toward them, not daring to break his forward stare.

  14

  Craig huddled close to the fireplace in the Titanic’s first-class smoking section. He removed his jacket and left it crumpled in a wet pile at the foot of the flames while he held his numb hands up to the fire, rubbing them in an attempt to bring back feeling; he’d never been so numb in his life.

  Behind him, the room was empty, other than the two unconscious stewards who had tried to prevent his entrance. The tuxedo-clad gaggle of men who’d gathered in the room previously had made a hasty retreat, dumping their brandy snifters in the process. The scent of the hard liquor still hung in the air, intermingled with the cigar smoke.

  “Craig? Can you hear me?” the A.I.’s voice suddenly spoke.

  “I can hear you. What are you doing in my head?”

  “Apparently, Samantha has administered my mother program to you rather than herself. I’m trying to establish a better connection to your synapses so I can access some of your systems.”

  “My systems?”

  “Craig, I’m getting an internal temperature reading now. Do you realize that your body temperature is only 32.9 degrees Celsius? You’re hypothermic. This is very dangerous. You need to seek warmth immediately.”

  “Way ahead of you,” Craig replied, his eyes beginning to droop from fatigue. “I’m by a fireplace.”

  “Excellent. I’m still trying to establish a connection to your optics so you can see me and I can see through your eyes. I’m currently blind to your surroundings. Craig, are you still shivering?”

  His eyes continued to droop as he stared into the fire. He’d let himself out of his crouch and was now sitting down, legs open in front of the warm tangerine glow. “No. I stopped shivering. I must be warming up.”

  “No,” the A.I. replied. “That is a bad sign. You should still be shivering. Your body is currently in the midst of moderate hypothermia, but you are on the edge of suffering from profound hypothermia. If you aren’t shivering, your body temperature is going to drop even further, and quite rapidly at that.”

  “I’m in front of a fire. I’m fine,” Craig replied sleepily. “Don’t worry. I’m a doctor. I just need some rest.”

  “If you sleep now, you will die,” the A.I. warned.

  “Get out of my head, will ya? I know what I’m doing.”

  “Craig, your judgment is severely impaired. You have to listen to me. Being uncooperative is a classic symptom of—”

  “Shut up!” Craig suddenly shouted, annoyed as he curled up on his side in front of the fireplace, his clothes still dripping wet with water that remained at the freezing point.

  “Craig, I’m afraid I can’t let you sleep. Craig?”

  Craig gave no response; he’d lost consciousness.

  “Craig? Craig!” The A.I. knew he only had moments before Craig’s body temperature loss would become catastrophic for both of them. Having lost consciousness, Craig’s body temperature would now drop rapidly, dipping toward cardiac arrhythmias at twenty-eight degrees Celsius, before plunging to twenty degrees Celsius, at which time his heart would stop completely, resulting in death. The nans would work to repair the damage caused by the various systems of Craig’s body collapsing, but there was no guarantee that they would be able to keep him alive, especially once his heart stopped. At that point, repairing tissue in the heart as well as the brain might turn out to be a forlorn enterprise, depending on how long the oxygen deprivation would have persisted by then. Post-humans were indeed very difficult to kill, but it was not impossible.

  For the moment, the A.I. refocused his attention away from establishing a visual connection and toward Craig’s power system. He knew if he could gain control over Craig’s spinal implant quickly enough, he would be able to stir his host into waking. If not, the A.I. would be trapped inside a corpse. Once that happened, not even the A.I. cou
ld survive in those conditions indefinitely. Eventually, the nanobots that carried the A.I.’s core pattern would begin to shut down, overwhelmed by the toxic processes that would be present in Craig’s body as rigor mortis set in, followed quickly by decomposition. Indeed, the A.I. was also difficult to kill—but not impossible.

  Meanwhile, the ship’s master-at-arms arrived at the threshold of the room with his pistol drawn. He crouched down on one knee and felt for a pulse from the two stewards who’d been shocked unconscious; each man had a strong pulse.

  He stood to his feet, turning his attention to Craig’s unmoving form at the foot of the fireplace. It had been a long time since the master-at-arms had dealt with a situation that disturbed him as much as this. The man had appeared on the ship, soaked as though he’d been in the drink, yet somehow he was able to climb aboard a vessel that was traveling at over twenty knots. As bizarre as those circumstances had been, even more alarming were the descriptions of the witnesses of the unexpected assault on the stewards. Indeed, reputable gentlemen of the highest esteem and regard had sworn that their assailant had thrown electrical sparks from his body as though he’d conjured them from within himself. The master-at-arms had seen such demonism before—a presentation a few years earlier by none other than the madman Nikola Tesla—and he’d sworn then that he would never again put himself in the presence of such evil. Now, his duty forced him to break that oath, as the more important oath was to protect the passengers on his ship. That, above all, took precedence.

  “You there!” he commanded, trying to muster authority while his voice quivered, strangled by uncertainty. The figure lay, still unmoving on the ground, but there was something about the circumstances that curdled the master-at-arms’s blood. There was evil in the room—he was certain of it.

  He stopped, inches away from the fallen figure and nudged him with the tip of his shoe, making sure his gun remained aimed squarely at the figure’s back. The nudge didn’t stir the figure, man or demon. So far, so good, he thought, and he decided that was all the invitation he needed to pull out his handcuffs and get to work securing the perpetrator’s wrists. He snapped one of the bracelets around the figure’s left wrist before pushing the body over onto its stomach, intent on freeing the right arm and pulling the two wrists together behind the man’s back. Just as he did so, and just before the second cuff was secured, the body suddenly became animated.

  Craig, still unconscious, his eyes still shut, suddenly lifted off of the ground and into the air, his hands hanging limp at his sides, his head slumped over and rolling with the movement as the green aura of energy swirled and sparked in a phantom-like manner around him.

  Terrified, the master-at-arms fired his pistol twice at the otherworldly figure before him. The bullets did nothing to remedy the situation, bouncing off of the aura and whizzing dangerously past the master-at-arms’s head. He stumbled backward, falling to the ground on his hip painfully, just inches from where the two stewards continued their slumber. “Holy Mary, mother of God.”

  15

  Sanha remained on his knees, his head bowed toward the rough concrete, sweat and blood dripping from his face, and forming an expressionist masterpiece in his field of vision. He kept his eyes fixed on the ever-changing picture as, one by one, the post-human captives were executed. Point-blank shots to the temple felled them as the Purist super soldier paced up and down the rows of hapless victims.

  This is how my life ends? Sanha thought to himself as he watched the Jackson Pollock continue to change, the blood and sweat mixing into yins and yangs, little pieces of dark concrete dust getting picked up and shifted in the mess. I had immortality in my grasp, and now...I just die? I just die?

  He flinched as another shot ended the life of yet another one of his compatriots. He could feel the thud of the body as it collapsed somewhere behind him. In his mind, he was sure there had been children in the group—or had the little ones all escaped? Dear God, I hope they all escaped.

  Aye, there is the rub, he thought. God. Here I am, talking to God as I wait to die, yet I don’t believe in God. How ironic is it, that even as the men who claim God as their motivation for keeping the species pure are executing me, I still speak to a figment of my imagination? Even now, I can’t let superstition go.

  “Sanha! Can you hear me?”

  For a moment, Sanha thought his heart might stop.

  “Sanha, if you can’t reply but you can hear me, move your head and let me see what’s going on.”

  Sanha recognized the voice: Aldous! He turned his head slightly and craned his neck so he could catch a glimpse over his shoulder at the slaughter taking place behind him. He only dared a momentary look. He snapped a picture with his mind’s eye and placed it in his field of vision so Aldous could see it too. Half the people behind him had been executed, and the other half were huddled over on their knees, waiting for death.

  “Oh no,” Aldous whispered as he froze in his tracks, hot breath jetting out of his mouth as he panted. He finally dared to turn and looked back. The faint glow of the spotlights from the harrier transports that remained around the entrance to the facility in Mount Andromeda remained visible over the tree line. He wanted to ignite his cocoon and speed back, blasting as many super soldiers as he could on his way in, hopeful that he could at least save one of the remaining post-humans—but he also knew he couldn’t. He had to survive—he had to be ready for the return of the A.I.

  “Sanha, I’m so sorry, my dear friend. I’m so, so sorry. It’s my fault you’re in that position. It should be me there instead of you.”

  Sanha listened but dared not reply. Every few seconds, the super soldier’s rifle thundered to life, and a post-human subsequently lost theirs. His eyes were now focused on the Pollock that continued to form on the concrete underneath him—but it seemed to be shifting away from the randomness and fracture ubiquitous in a Pollock and transforming into a Monet, the blobs of blood beginning to form patterns that seemed like something recognizable. Sanha was sure he could see what looked like a hand forming out of the dirty sweat, little drops of blood tricking from it—the blood looked like bright red coins.

  Finally, the super soldier made it to Sanha, his boot stepping into Sanha’s field of vision, wiping away the painting like a sandcastle in the waves. Sanha gulped hard before lifting his head up, squinting as the overhead lights hurt his eyes.

  Aldous watched through Sanha’s eyes as the super soldier looked down at his next victim. He looked like the worst perversion of the man-machine civilization. Straight out of Milton, stood a real life Beelzebub, complete with wings that spread out into a six-foot span. He wore a helmet that covered most of the top part of his face, and he flexed skeletal-looking prosthetic fingers on the trigger of his extraordinarily heavy and powerful rifle, carried by his carbon fiber cybernetic arm.

  Worst of all were the eyes—or lack there of. The super soldiers all had their biological eyes scooped out in favor of mechanical ones that were jammed unnaturally into their eye cavities, causing bluish stretch marks to snake outward into ugly, web-like patterns in every direction. The mechanical orbs were too large to simply replace the biological eyes, so the entire extent of skin surrounding the eyes, including their eyelids and the muscles around them, had to be removed. This gave the super soldiers an uncanny lack of facial expression, their eyes appearing almost as black voids. At their center, however, were golden irises that swiveled to and fro.

  The irises rotated perceptibly as Sanha looked into them, apparently facilitating some sort of visual process. The super soldier’s eyes remained locked on Sanha for an unusually long period of time, the rifle not firing as expected.

  Aldous felt as though he were in a Planck ripple—the time seemingly drawn out inexplicably as he waited for his friend’s life to end. The other executions had, at the very least, been quick. This time, it appeared the super soldier was savoring this one for some reason. Does he know Sanha has a rider? Aldous’s connection was aural only, so the white glow t
hat crossed over the eyes of post-humans while their minds’ eyes were flashing images shouldn’t have been present. Could the super soldier possibly detect Aldous’s presence anyway?

  Then, suddenly, the rifle barrel was lifted. “Professor Sanha Cho,” the super soldier announced, almost cheerfully, “today’s your lucky day. You’ve been classified as a VIP.”

  “Oh, thank God. Thank God,” Sanha whispered to himself.

  “Excuse me for a moment, will you?” the super soldier said as he turned to the post-human kneeling to Sanha’s right and unceremoniously shot him in the temple. Blood sprayed hot on Sanha’s right cheek, before quickly cooling and becoming a cold shock, running down his neck as the super soldier’s execution spree continued.

  Suddenly, a harrier transport emerged from above the tree line, headed in Aldous’s direction. It yanked him out of his stunned immobilization and sent his legs springing into action. He turned and ran for the nearest tree, reaching down with his hand to grab a few branches as he thrust himself down into the snow, pulling the branches up over himself like a blanket of camouflage as he did so.

  He knew the transport would certainly be equipped with sensors that could detect and recognize a human pattern amongst the trees, but Aldous hoped the snow and branches would be enough to keep the intelligent algorithms from recognizing his pattern.