After Life (Power Reads Book 2)

by Dean Crawford

  Han fired a single 9mm bullet into a rebel’s back as he desperately tried to open a side door. The kid fell, his hands clasping the door handle, just as a bullet smacked into Han’s ribs from behind him and ripped the breath from his lungs.

  Han spun in mid–air, the impact hurling him back against the nearest wall as he aimed wildly at a shadowy figure in the doorway.

  Malcolm’s grotesque face glared at him as he propped himself up on one elbow, trying to maintain an aim on Han to fire again, his features twisted with agony and rage.

  ‘We’re still human beings!’ he yelled.

  Han fired, three rounds that smashed into Malcolm’s ruined face and splattered his brains out across the tiled floor behind him.

  Another rebel fled across the room and tried to duck behind a stack of old pallets near a far wall. Han fired several shots, the wooden pallets splintering and offering no protection to the crouching man. Han heard a strained cry of agony and then the man slumped in silence where he crouched, the pistol in his hand clattering to the floor.

  The gunfire ceased, ringing in Han’s ears as he slumped, trying to draw breath and clasping his side. His hand came away slick with blood and he was momentarily surprised by its warmth against his skin.

  ‘He’s in there!’

  Han heard the voices rushing down the stairwell. Somehow, he managed to haul himself to his feet and staggered across to the basement door. He slammed it shut, then dragged one of the wooden pallets across to it and wedged it under the handle before ducking down and creeping through the basement.

  He saw a second doorway, saw light emanating from within and a man’s face peering out at him through a small window.

  ‘Open the door!’ Han yelled, wincing at the pain bolting through his ribs. ‘She’s in danger!’

  The man shook his head, eyes swimming with panic. Han aimed his pistol at the glass and the man threw his hands up. ‘Okay, okay, don’t shoot me!’

  The door swung open and Han tumbled through as the man, wearing a doctor’s white coat, slammed it shut behind him.

  Han saw Arianna laying on the gurney nearby. ‘Get her out of there!’

  The doctor gaped at him as though he were mad. ‘I can’t just switch the machines off, she’ll die. She needs warming at a steady and constant rate for at least…’

  Han whirled and shoved the pistol he’d acquired directly into the doctor’s face.

  ‘If you don’t, I will,’ he hissed. ‘Revive her, now!’

  ***

  45

  Arianna stared down at her son, Connor’s beautiful big brown eyes looking back up at her, still young despite the passing of so many years, still innocent enough to be unsullied by the cruelty of life, still himself before the digital psychosis would ruin him forever.

  Kieran Beck and Alexei watched her in silence, their holographic images just transparent enough to see the endless ranks of growing foetuses sparkling like distant stars in a bizarre blue universe.

  Slowly, one hand resting protectively on Connor’s head, Arianna stood and faced them.

  ‘You think that this is somehow the future?’ she asked, gesturing over her shoulder at the new lives growing in the spheres. ‘This is the end, Beck, don’t you understand? This isn’t the way that humanity is supposed to evolve. This is just a playback, a warped facsimile of who we are.’

  Kieran Beck chuckled. ‘It’ll do for thousands of holosaps who would rather exist like this than be reanimated as human beings.’

  Beck twisted the last two words and spat them out as though he were describing a particularly nasty taste in his mouth. Arianna realised that Beck was long past seeing humanity as anything other than a stain upon the world, perhaps upon the universe, something to be scoured away by the clinical swab of science.

  ‘You wouldn’t be here at all if it were not for human beings,’ Arianna pointed out, desperately trying to think of a means of escape.

  ‘Yes I would,’ Beck corrected her. ‘I would willingly choose life as a holosap over that of an ordinary human being. Change comes to us all Arianna and those who move forward, those who survive are those who do not oppose change but embrace it. Look at your church, for instance.’

  ‘Our church has not been corrupted by your self serving agenda and…’

  ‘The church has always been corrupt,’ Beck snapped, ‘never more so than in its dying days when its priests and popes tried to enforce their archaic ways on an ever more intelligent and disbelieving population. We laugh now at their final, desperate efforts to enforce celibacy, birth control, homophobia and their God upon a disinterested populace. Your church, like all that have gone before it, will erase themselves from history by their own inability to understand the difference between what is real and what is false. This is reality, Arianna, right here, right now. It’s us, standing here, and if you do not embrace it…’ Kieran Beck once again gestured to the quantum storage devices surrounding them. ‘You die, forever.’

  ‘I’d rather go to my grave and meet my Maker,’ Arianna replied, ‘then see you take over control of the fate of our race.’

  Kieran raised an eyebrow as he looked down at Connor. ‘Perhaps a different kind of sacrifice would prompt a more favourable point of view?’

  Arianna instinctively put herself in front of Connor. ‘Leave him out of this.’

  ‘Why, Arianna?’ Beck asked. ‘Surely, if all of this is so pointless, if being a holosap is so horrific and unacceptable to you, then why would you worry about Connor here? Is he not, surely, just a glowing light of no substance and no interest to you?’ He smiled again. ‘You need to decide, Arianna, which side of the afterlife you’re on.’

  Arianna glanced down at Connor, who was looking up at her with confusion etched into his young features.

  ‘What does he mean, mummy?’

  Arianna felt her heart tear inside her as she realised what she must do, must say to the man who willingly no longer considered himself a man, and at the same time say to her dead son who was no longer dead. The bizarre, counter–intuitive nature of her dilemma did nothing to alleviate the crushing grief she felt coursing like acid through her veins as she clenched a fist tight and turned back to Beck.

  ‘My son is dead,’ she said.

  She heard the tremor in her words, felt it in her throat, felt painful tears stinging her eyes even though she had no eyes and could not produce tears as she stood her ground in front of Kieran Beck.

  ‘Mummy?’

  Arianna closed her eyes shut tight, tried not to hear the tiny voice or feel the little hand clinging tightly to hers.

  Beck’s monotone drawl reached across to her. ‘You would sacrifice your own son simply for a belief? And you call me inhuman?’

  ‘Connor Volkov died eight years ago,’ Arianna said, her eyes still tight shut. ‘I miss him more than I can say and will love him with all of my heart until the day I die, but he is not coming back and whatever you’ve created here is not my son.’

  A deep silence drew out around her. The darkness in her mind and the silence proved too much, and she opened her eyes to see Kieran Beck and Alexei still watching her in silence, still felt Connor’s hand holding on to hers.

  ‘This,’ Beck said to Alexei, ‘is what used to happen to the religious mind back in the day. They’d murder, maim and torture, all for beliefs with no more substance than dreams.’

  ‘You have no more substance than dreams,’ Arianna pointed out. ‘My son died of The Falling. I buried him in a mass grave in Leadenhall eight years ago. It broke my heart but it can never be undone, even if…’

  ‘Mummy?’ Arianna looked down at Connor, who was still staring up at her with those baleful eyes. ‘Am I dead?’

  Anguish ripped across Arianna’s chest as she fought back tears and nodded. ‘Yes, honey, you died a long time ago.’

  Kieran Beck stepped forward. ‘It is time to decide, Arianna: your son’s life or eternity for us all. Where is the kill–switch?’

  Arianna’s tears f
looded down her face. She felt them even though they had no more substance than thin air, hot against her cheeks, the neuro–optical links in her holographic brain piecing together ever more complex sensations. She clenched the fingers of her left hand tighter, the fist a dense ball of light, and this time she felt her fingernails digging into her skin. This time, she felt pain.

  Pain. It had never occurred to her before, that holosaps might feel physical pain. A new and horrifying fear for Connor swept over her as she looked down at the little boy staring up at her, a canvas of hope and confusion, of the need to be held and loved. She realised that it didn’t matter whether this holosap was really her son or not. He could suffer at the hands of men like Kieran Beck, just like any other child.

  ‘What happens to Connor, if I tell you everything?’

  ‘He lives,’ Beck replied without hesitation, ‘so to speak. I have no wish to erase either of you.’

  Arianna’s mind raced as a new realisation dawned within. ‘How did you obtain Connor’s DNA? He died without an upload.’

  ‘Ah,’ Kieran smiled. ‘Let’s just say that we needed to experiment on people to perfect our holosap re–generation project, and it was decided that people who could not afford an upload were likely to be willing subjects. Your son’s blood was available, via the genetic records of all citizens kept on government record. We simply obtained these and went from there.’

  ‘You obtained them?’ Arianna echoed in disgust. ‘You mean you stole them, illegally. That’s where the Prime Minister came in, I suppose?’

  ‘He proved instrumental,’ Kieran Beck confirmed, ‘in obtaining both genetic material and of course the brains of those who had died from The Falling. They were recovered from the bodies before burial, and transported most bravely through underground networks by my people.’

  ‘The police will arrest your human self on sight,’ Arianna shot back at Beck. ‘You’ll be in prison for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Beck replied, ‘but of course those among the police who favour our cause will always be able to cover up anything we do. Corrupt police officers are not so difficult to come by these days, didn’t you know?’

  Arianna stared at Beck and felt the weight of utter defeat upon her shoulders. ‘Han Reeves?’

  Beck shook his head. ‘Myles Bourne. A vibrant and determined young man who just happens to possess an upload. He was smart enough to request one before we put him to work, as insurance. Or futurance, as we like to call it. We will not be stopped, Arianna,’ Beck insisted. ‘Mankind will live on in a purer form.’

  ‘You’re re–animating the dead,’ Arianna whispered in horror. ‘That’s what these foetuses are.’

  ‘In a sense,’ Beck confirmed. ‘Imagine, a world where Einstein or Hawking lives again – both men donated their organs to science. Or perhaps great world leaders or thinkers whose brains even now lay in cryogenic preservation, awaiting just this kind of technology. The future possibilities are endless and will only continue to grow. This, Arianna, is where we need to be. This is our time, the time of man’s future, of Homo immortalis.’

  Arianna, her body feeling empty of feeling for the first time in days, stared blankly down at Connor. The little boy clung to her hand in silence and she knew that she simply could not abandon him to oblivion.

  She looked at Kieran Beck.

  ‘Where are you now?’ she demanded. ‘Really, I mean?’

  ‘Westminster,’ Beck replied. ‘The vote is in progress as we speak and parliament will undoubtedly back the holosap’s Bill of Rights.’

  ‘Then let’s do this there,’ Arianna replied. ‘If you’re to keep your word, I want to be where everybody can see both myself and my son. I won’t trust you until we’re in plain view.’

  ‘You might betray me,’ Kieran pointed out.

  ‘You have my son,’ Arianna whispered, ‘and I want him alive. How badly do you want your kill–switch, Kieran?’

  Beck glared at her for a long moment and then he smiled once more, a smile utterly devoid of anything that Arianna could define as human.

  ‘You will tell parliament of the kill–switch and its purpose. I shall send Alexei here with your son. Fail me, Arianna, and I will extinguish Connor’s life just as quickly as I did your father’s.’

  Arianna opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came forth.

  She tried again, but nothing happened.

  She saw a brief glimpse of confusion on Connor’s face, and then suddenly she was yanked from the room into a swirling maelstrom of spirals and lights plunging into an impenetrable blackness through which she flew, screaming in her mind for her son.

  ***

  46

  New Orleans

  ‘Kerry!’

  Marcus dashed to her side. Her legs were completely limp, her eyes filled with sudden terror. Marcus realised that her wound had split open, the flesh beneath her skin festering and black.

  ‘I can’t move my legs, Marcus,’ she whispered, tears spilling from her eyes.

  Dr Reed’s voice reached them both from nearby.

  ‘As I said, the sickness was slowed but not reversed. The animals that remained in the laboratory at the compound have since died,’ Dr Reed smiled as Marcus turned to face him, Kerry in his arms, ‘very long, painful deaths.’

  ‘If the disease can be slowed it can be stopped,’ Marcus shot back. ‘Tell us what you know or we’ll blow your storage unit right here and now.’

  ‘Send my storage data back to New York,’ Reed snapped, ‘or Kerry dies right here and now.’

  Dr Reed stared at his quantum storage unit. Chad glanced at Marcus.

  ‘How come you’re not on your knees yet?’ the soldier asked him.

  Marcus set his rifle on the floor and reached up to his neck wound. He pulled off the dressing. His skin felt cool and soft to the touch, no sign of necrosis. Marcus realised that his fever was long gone. He felt fine.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Kerry rested her hand on his arm and smiled weakly up at him. ‘I do. Don’t listen to anything Reed says, just get me to the control panel.’

  Marcus dragged Kerry to the control panel and hefted her into the chair. Her head sagged and her skin was drenched with sweat, but she rested her hands onto the keyboard screen before her.

  ‘This will change nothing,’ Reed snapped. ‘Humanity is over. This is the new future!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Kerry waved him off. ‘We’ve heard it all before. Give us the password to the control panel or we’ll blow your existence back into history, okay?’

  Chad checked his watch.

  ‘Vote’s due in a few minutes,’ he said. ‘We’re almost out of time.’

  Marcus walked across to Reed’s storage unit and lifted it out of the cabinet. ‘We don’t have time for this. We’ll figure out the passcode. Kerry, get started. I’ll blow Reed away.’

  Kerry began typing deftly. ‘Nice knowin’ you doc’,’ she said without looking over her shoulder at Reed.

  Marcus turned and tossed the quantum storage unit onto the floor as though it were a piece of trash, then clicked off the safety catch on his M–16 and took aim.

  ‘You’ll never break the code on your own!’ Reed yelled. ‘It’s quantum coded. It would take a thousand years using even the best conventional computers!’

  ‘Unless you’ve got me,’ Chad growled over his shoulder. ‘I’ve got security clearance, remember? I’ll find a way to get in.’

  ‘You won’t!’ Reed yelled, his voice increasingly shrill. ‘You’re done, you’ll never break it in time!’

  ‘If we’re dead anyway,’ Marcus replied, ‘we’ll die trying and we’ll be sure to take you with us if we fail.’

  Marcus was about to fire at the storage unit, just to shut the panicking doctor up for once and for all, when a sudden alarm claxon screeched out. He looked up to see a pair of rotating sirens flash bright red light through the otherwise gloomy control room, flickering weirdly and passing through Dr Re
ed’s holosap.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Kerry called out over the alarm claxon.

  Marcus looked at Dr Reed, who seemed also to be surprised by the commotion. Then the doctor looked at a computer screen and his features froze in a rictus of horror. Marcus glanced across and saw the message written there in vivid and flashing yellow letters.

  VIRUS DETECTED: SHUT–DOWN REQUIRED

  Marcus looked back to Dr Reed, whose expression was collapsing into something akin to panic.

  ‘Problem, doctor?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘A virus has been detected,’ he said, ‘infecting the quantum storage systems. But that’s impossible!’

  Kerry looked over her shoulder at the doctor. ‘Give us the password and we’ll shut you down until the virus is removed. Hurry!’

  Dr Reed looked at the screen and then up at another, larger screen that showed a map of Earth. Across the globe, the same communication systems that allowed the holosaps to appear were filling with red flashing markers that flashed across continents at the speed of light, leaping across optical networks in the blink of an eye.

  ‘Now, doctor!’ Marcus shouted, ‘or you really are history!’

  Reed whirled and called across to Kerry. ‘Alpha–Delta–India–Five–Three–Seven–One–Delta–Three!’

  Kerry tapped the password into the touchscreen and in an instant it illuminated with a bright blue light a series of screen folders to access the systems.

  ‘We’re in!’ Kerry shouted.

  ‘Shut me down!’ Dr Reed yelled. ‘Quickly!’

  ‘Shut you down?’ Marcus echoed with a sneer. ‘You got it, Doc’.’

  Marcus picked up the holosap’s storage unit and turned as he hurled it straight out of a nearby window.

  ‘No!!’

  Dr Reed’s scream echoed throughout the control room as Marcus heard the storage unit hit the ground outside the terminal with a crash of delicate quantum machinery as it shattered against unyielding asphalt. To his surprise for a moment nothing happened as Dr Reed stared at the open window where his lifeline to immortality had just vanished. Then, quite slowly, his image began to disintegrate before Marcus’s eyes.