by Unknown
“I have only speculation,” she replied. “It could be meant for something similar to what we did in Australia, only in reverse. If it could release the energy it contains, either slowly, or rapidly as in an explosion, it could quickly result in an irreversible change to the quantum nature of the space our world inhabits. However, again, I’m just repeating what my coleagues have speculated. Quantum physics is not my specialty.”
“Then we need to get rid of it,” said Aiseman.
“Please, Director,” she responded, “It’s far too late for that. Due to your weakness in Colorado, we already know the infection is taking hold there. And since you neglected to take my advice in Britain, it is probably proceeding there as wel. We don’t know where they are now, but I’m sure it’s starting there as wel. We’ve lost that battle already. The scorched earth policy we used in Australia won’t work now, unless we’re wiling to burn everything to the ground.”
“I think your pessimism might be too strong, Dr. Miler,” said Aiseman.
“And I think you’re a fool. When you accept the truth, you’l understand why we need to fuly activate ANSIS.”
***
When their conversation ended, each of them signed out and left the shared meeting space, leaving only one observer in attendance.
Gary sighed. He didn’t like where this was leading, but despite his power, he couldn’t redirect them. Not without violating his most important core directive. His creator had stressed that he should never kil a human.
“But damn, it would be a hel of a lot easier if I could,” he said to himself. And easy too, he thought. A few minor changes and I could erase any of them from the servers; a few more and none of the others would even remember they had ever existed.
The thought made him shiver. “You made me too human, Gary!” he said, speaking to his deceased human namesake. “Thank god for that, or I’d already be a monster.”
Chapter 26
“Good morning.”
Matthew was emerging from the tent when the greeting came from Karen’s PM. He ignored it. He hadn’t realy been ready to get up, but it had gotten unbearably hot inside. His head stil hurt, and his tongue felt as though it had grown several sizes. He was thirstier than he could remember being in—wel, ever.
That was easily fixed, though. He drained one of the plastic bottles he had found in Karen’s pack, and then he walked a short distance away to relieve himself.
I feel like shit, he thought, broadcasting the sentiment automaticaly. It was only a second later that he remembered Desacus wasn’t there to hear him. Sitting down, he put his face in his hands.
Gone was the urgency of the day before, replaced by an empty hopelessness. Absent a crisis he was left with the fact that he had no place to go, no friends, and no dragon. For a moment, he wondered if this was what his father had felt like when he had been trapped as a shiggreth.
“Probably not quite that bad,” he muttered, “but it stil sucks.” Rising to his feet he walked back to his makeshift camp.
“Good morning,” he said, finaly returning Gary’s greeting.
The face on the screen looked somewhat sympathetic. “I gather you’re not feeling wel.”
He nodded. That’s an understatement. Matt didn’t bother giving voice to the complaint, though. Instead, he returned to the chaos of equipment he had left scattered al around.
Matthew was not a fan of disorder. Quietly and methodicaly, he began gathering everything and organizing it into piles. Karen’s clothes, his tools, her camping gear, foodstuffs—they al got their own separate pile. The term ‘pile’ wasn’t realy correct either, when possible he had stacked the items neatly. There was one colection of things he vaguely recognized as items from her bathroom, but he had little knowledge of what they were for. He gave them their own little group.
Once he had done that, he began packing most of it back into the pack. The space inside the dimensional pack was wide and flat, like an
endless tabletop. It also didn’t shift or move inside, no matter what was happening to the bag itself in the outside world, so whatever was placed within it would stay in its respective position. He put Karen’s clothing and other miscelany that she wouldn’t need as far back as possible, organizing the more useful gear in stacks that would be easier to reach when the pack was opened.
That done, he tested his stomach by eating some of the crackers he had found.
“What are you going to do?” asked Gary, when his curiosity could no longer be held in check.
“Nothing,” Matt answered.
His reticence irritated the AGI, but he maintained his diplomatic tone. “And after that?”
“More nothing, for a while at least.”
“Do you mind if I ask your reasoning?”
“No,” answered Matt, without volunteering anything else.
Gary waited almost a minute, but when Matthew offered nothing further, his frustration almost got the better of him. “Are you always this
disagreeable?”
“Depends on who you ask.”
“Why are you planning on doing nothing?”
Matthew felt a mild sense of victory at having forced the machine to play his game. “Two reasons: one, I can’t do much in my current condition; two, I’m worried that when I do eventualy use my abilities, it wil alert the military to this location.”
Gary was relieved to see that at least his annoying companion was capable of rational thought. “It’s possible they already know, though I think it unlikely. If they had detected you, they would probably be here by now.”
Matt nodded. “Mm hmm.”
“Do you have any memory of how you got here?” asked the AGI.
“No,” answered Matthew with a sigh. “Though my guess is that she figured out how to teleport.”
“Your previous uses of magic to travel created enough disturbance that ANSIS was able to locate your position to some degree,” noted the
machine.
“That was translation magic,” stated the young wizard. “Travel between dimensions. It probably creates a bigger disturbance than ordinary
teleportation.”
“What about that stasis enchantment you used yesterday?”
Matt shrugged, “I don’t realy understand how they detect magic, but I do know how bright things look to me. The stasis enchantment requires a lot of power, but like most enchantments, it’s tightly contained. I don’t think it wil be easy for them to detect unless they get close.”
Gary looked thoughtful. “Wel, considering the fact that they haven’t shown up, you are likely correct. From what I’ve learned, they have no idea where you are now.”
Matthew looked at him with interest. “How did you learn that?”
The AGI smiled. “They suspect that I’ve compromised their security systems, so they’ve begun restricting their sensitive communications to non-digital methods when possible, but I’ve been spying on the meetings of their leaders.”
“You can do that?”
“Al the leadership are uploaded humans. That means they live in the servers, so I’m able to observe anything they discuss among themselves.”
Matthew was shocked. If the machine was teling the truth, then it had almost god-like omniscience. Better, actually, since none of the gods I know of had anything remotely like true omniscience. “Can you read their thoughts too, since they’re machines?”
“No,” said Gary. “Uploaded humans retain the unique neural and quantum configuration that defined them in their previous lives. They aren’t artificial or logicaly structured the way I am. Reading their minds is stil beyond my capacity, for now.”
“For now?”
Gary smiled again. “My intelectual capabilities have grown far beyond anything remotely human. If you could even begin to see a fragment of what I have become, you might think me a god, and you would be close to the truth. I am stil evolving, and it is possible I wil develop the ability to decipher their thoughts.”
Matt found t
he idea disturbing, but he wasn’t about to reveal that thought. He sniffed. “I’ve dealt with gods before.”
“Did they create your dragon?” posited the machine.
“What do you know about Desacus?” demanded the young man.
“They’re examining an egg left behind by his destruction,” said the AGI. “It appears to contain an extremely high concentration of energy. From that I considered that perhaps it was a product of one of these gods you mentioned.”
An egg, thought Matthew. That means Desacus died. He had already suspected as much, but the reality stil hurt. It also brought a new realization, I have to get his egg back.
The enchantment his father had constructed when creating the dragons was complex. To avoid the problems associated with immortality, he
had made them artificialy mortal. They had living bodies, and when they, or the human they were bonded with, died, the enchantment reset. The memories of the dragon were wiped clean, a new egg was created, and the mind it contained would be different, though the essence was the same.
In a sense, it was similar to the old concept of reincarnation.
“You’ve gone quiet,” said Gary. “Was I close to the mark?”
“That dragon was my friend,” said Matthew quietly. “And yeah, you were close. He was made using power taken from the false gods that
pretended to protect humanity. What’s important is that I’m getting him back.”
“If it’s an egg, it’s his progeny, is it not?”
“Sort of,” said Matt. “His body died, but the magic that sustains him means he’s immortal. The egg is a type of rebirth. He won’t be the same dragon, he won’t be Des...” he stopped as his throat constricted too much for him to speak. “Regardless, I’m getting him back.”
“My daughter is in a magic coma, and you’re not doing so great yourself,” noted Gary. “Thus far, in every encounter you’ve had with the
military, you’ve come out of it worse off. I think you should focus on finding a way to get help for Karen, and after that you should take her from this world and never return. Cut your losses and run. If your dragon, your friend, cared about you as you seem to think, then he wouldn’t want you to waste your life in a hopeless venture.”
Matt stared at the smal screen. “Wel, Gary, that’s where we’l have to disagree. Up until now I’ve been playing nicely. I didn’t come here to hurt anyone or start a war, but I’ve lost my patience.”
“You’l die for nothing, and leave my daughter trapped,” warned the AGI.
“I’l make sure she’s safe before I do anything else,” said the young wizard. “After that, I’l do as I see fit.”
“You were using the dragon as a power source, weren’t you?” asked Gary. “As I understand it, from what Karen has told me, this world is
fairly barren for your abilities. Without your aly, you won’t have the power to do much. Even with the dragon, you barely survived.”
Matt’s anger and resolve had been growing steadily as he fought past his despair and denial. When he looked up at Gary once more he smiled, an evil and unsettling grin. “That’s where you’re wrong. Most people think a mage’s ability is limited by power, and to some degree it is, but the most important factor is imagination—and those bastards have no idea just what I am capable of imagining.
“I wil show them the true power of a nutjob,” he finished fiercely.
A what? Gary spent several nanoseconds processing that last remark before finaly deciding the young man was referring to creative insanity. It was obvious the stranger from another world hadn’t completely mastered English yet. “So, what exactly are you planning then?”
“I told you already—nothing for now,” answered Matthew. “I need a few days to recover. I’l spend it keeping watch here and deciding how
to get help for Karen. Once that’s done, I’l focus on getting Desacus back.”
“They aren’t going to make it easy for you.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” said the young wizard. “I don’t want it to be easy. I want them to give me every possible excuse for what I’m going to do to them.”
The look on his face was disturbing, so Gary decided not to comment further. From what he knew of young people, he calculated a fair
likelihood that the young man would reconsider his plans once he’d had time to cool off. Continuing the conversation would only stoke the flames.
***
Matt kept his word and did very little for the next two days other than eat, sleep, and try to stay in the shade. It was midday of the third day when Gary asked him for a favor.
“This PM is starting to run low on power,” said the AGI. “It needs to be charged, or I won’t be able to stay in contact with you.”
Matthew frowned, wondering if he were being asked to use his power to somehow refresh the device. “I have no idea how to do that,” he
admitted.
“There is a camp charger mixed in with Karen’s gear,” explained the AGI. “I saw it the other day when you were searching through
everything.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s a smal black cylindrical cloth bag,” said Gary. “Unpack everything and I can identify it for you.”
“No need,” said the young man. He remembered the item Gary described, and he knew exactly which pile it was in and where it was located
inside the pack. Reaching in and to the right he located it within seconds.
“That’s it,” acknowledged Gary when he saw it in Matt’s hand. “Open the drawstring and pul out the plastic mat roled up inside.”
The mat was roughly two feet by three feet in size. It was a dark forest green color, and while one side had a matte finish, the other was shiny and glass-like. Folowing Gary’s instructions, Matt took it to a sunny spot and laid it flat with the shiny side facing up. “Now what?” he asked.
“Place the PM on the darker black square near the corner,” said Gary.
“That’s it?”
“Yes. The solar mat powers an induction field in that area that charges the PM.”
“What does PM stand for, anyway?”
“Personal Mobile Machine,” stated the AGI.
“Wouldn’t that be PMM then?” said Matt.
Gary chuckled. “It got shortened in slang usage. Years ago, everyone carried them, until personal implants became widely available and
preferred. They started out primarily as cel phones before…”
“Cel phones?” interrupted the young man.
“A device for voice communication only,” clarified the AGI. “Later they became complex computing machines capable of accessing the
network, and eventualy everyone had to have one just to function. People used them to communicate, read, find directions, start their vehicles, open their doors, pay for things—the list goes on.”
Matt nodded thoughtfuly, “So that’s why she was so upset when she lost hers in the mountains.”
“Exactly,” agreed Gary. “Without it she was, by this world’s standards, practicaly helpless. It’s also part of the reason she felt so much like an outcast growing up. Most people have neural interfaces implanted at a young age. They don’t need visors or PM’s to access the network. They can do anything that needs to be done with just a thought. Their implants also give them the ability to play games like those you tried without any external device—the sensory input is transmitted directly to their visual and auditory cortexes.
“One of the greatest injustices my daughter suffered was the lies her mother forced upon her. She wasn’t alergic to the implants. Tanya simply didn’t want to risk her test subject gaining direct access to the network. She wasn’t sure what Karen’s latent powers would be like, if or when they manifested, and she feared that Karen might somehow contaminate the network itself.”
“But her father, the original Gary, he went along with that lie, didn’t he?” said Matthew.
“He did, though he didn�
��t agree with the decision,” said the AGI. “I know for a fact that he felt a great deal of guilt over the matter.”
“Begging your pardon, Gary, but her family is screwed up,” observed Matthew. “Even by my standards.”
“I agree with you,” said the machine, “but I hope you don’t hold my personal status as an artificial existence against me.”
Matt laughed. “My sister’s other mother is like you in many ways. She was created as an artificial copy of her creator’s mind. She survived for a thousand years, trapped dormant in the earth itself, waiting and watching for an opportunity to release her creator’s child from a stasis field. I think I am the last person who would pass judgment on you for being artificial.
“What I realy meant was her mother, the scientist. Even if Karen was adopted, I don’t understand how anyone could treat a child like that,”
finished Matt.
Gary stared at him in surprise. “How can she be your sister if she’s a thousand years older?”
“She’s adopted,” explained the wizard. “They released her from the stasis field on the same day I was born, so biologicaly we’re the same age.
We were raised as twins, though in reality we’re probably cousins a hundred times removed. It doesn’t matter, though. My parents raised her with just as much love as they gave me, and I hate her just like I would if she were my sister by blood.”
“You… what?!”
“That was a joke—mostly. Moira can be very annoying.”
“But you don’t really hate her, do you?” asked the AGI.
Matt’s face was blank and unreadable when he replied, “Probably not, but I don’t plan on admitting it any time soon. I have enough trouble keeping her out of my workshop as it is.”
Chapter 27
A ful week passed before he felt fuly recovered, though he decided the term was relative. Magicaly, he was fine, but living in the rough for a week while trying not to use his abilities had been sheer hel. The area was dry but hot, and as a result he was coated in a fine layer of dust that clung to him. Even after he could use his aythar without pain, he didn’t. The military hadn’t found their location, but he didn’t want to risk creating any ‘anomaly’ that might tip them off to Karen’s position.