Fool's War

by Sarah Zettel

  I am saving the human race so I can go on a date. She felt her mouth twitch into a smile. It’s the little things that are important at times of crisis.

  She scribbled her orders across the board, looking for the trouble Al Shei had started.

  Al Shei swam through the hatch into what she hoped was level ten. The lights were still on here. A loose tangle of wires and saline packs drifted out of a hatch. Al Shei shoved them aside and used the threshold to pull herself past them.

  Inside was a stew of spare parts, films, syringes, wires, bulbs, and blobs of liquid. The only secure things in the room were the naked bodies strapped to the monitor beds. She swam toward them. Their eyes were all wide open and unseeing. Wires lay against their skin, and cables drove straight into their flesh at their wrists, ankles and temples. One of them was speaking in some high, tonal language that meant nothing to Al Shei. She swallowed her gorge as she flicked her gaze across them, and then, at the very end, she saw Asil.

  Completely naked, he lay on the bed, held down by free fall straps. The wires ran down the length of his strong arms in a macabre imitation of the veins beneath his skin. His eyes, his beautiful, deep eyes, jerked back and forth, as if pulled by yet more wires. The medical display above him was still functioning. With each twitch of his eyes, gold lighting shot through the model of his mind that had been picked out entirely in blank, white light.

  “Asil,” she whispered. She stripped off her gloves and grasped his warm shoulders. “Asil, Beloved …”

  Even as she spoke, she knew he was beyond hearing her. He was dead. He was gone. She lifted her hands away. Her husband’s body spasmed once.

  Did he know she was there? Did his nerves retain some memory of her hands? Coma victims could still hear voices. She looked desperately at the monitor. She knew what she saw. Grandfather, dying with Alzheimer’s Disease he had called Allah’s will and refused to have cured, had more activity in his mind than Asil had now.

  She could do nothing, except keep the monster from doing more to him. Gritting her teeth so hard they hurt, she pulled the wire cutters off her belt and one by one, she cut through the foul wires tethering him to the AIs’ machinery.

  The myriad pathways of Luna Station 10 spread out in front of Dobbs. She skimmed across the sea of packets and orders that filled the pathway nearly to the brim. Whenever she hit something big enough to block the way, she wrapped herself around it and tossed it behind her. A diagnostic swam up to her. She batted it aside, sending it crashing into a herd of stock exchanges, downing the whole set of processes into unsolvable loops.

  Minor damage, minor damage, Dobbs told herself as they flew forward. Nothing like what Curran plans to do.

  She smashed against another roadblock and the roadblock exploded. Dobbs reeled. Something snatched her up and wound her into a tight ball, smothering her senses. She could only recognize the touch. This was Verence.

  She stabbed upward, looking to cut her way out. Verence recoiled. Dobbs shot out, slamming straight into the side of the path. She swung around and waded into the cut in Verence’s side, trying to bury himself inside her and paralyze her motivations. With a massive shudder, Verence threw her aside. Dobbs leapt again and plunged down a side-path. She didn’t have time for this. She couldn’t let herself be delayed any more. She had to get to Earth and find out what was going on.

  She felt Verence flying behind her.

  “Stop this, Dobbs!” Verence cried. “Stop this now!” Verence grabbed her and heaved her aside so she could get into the path in front of Dobbs.

  “Let me by!” Dobbs shouted back. “I won’t let you destroy the banks!” She grabbed the edges of Verence’s wound and tried to drag her down.

  Verence shuddered, squirmed and collapsed just far enough. Dobbs leapfrogged over her and dashed down the path. A transmitter processor waited just ahead. Earth was three light seconds from Luna. All Dobbs needed was nine more seconds.

  “Dobbs!” Verence screamed. Dobbs ducked and rolled herself into a spare holder. Verence rocketed past. Dobbs surged up the path behind her. Verence bore down on her, knocking her into a flock of call packets. Dobbs foundered for a moment. These were emergency calls. Calls to Earth. Calls that weren’t getting anywhere.

  No. She yanked herself free. No. They couldn’t be.

  But they were. They had taken her little distraction and made it the war’s main objective. They weren’t destabilizing the currency system, they were fulfilling every Human’s worst nightmare about their kind.

  Curran’s talent was down there, right now, destroying Earth’s computer network.

  “You can’t go to Earth, Dobbs,” said Verence doggedly. “In fifteen seconds, it’s not going to be there. Neither is this station. You’ve got to get out of here.”

  “NO!”

  Dobbs threw herself forward. She bounced off a solid wall. For a moment she thought the path had been shut down, but she touched the block again, and felt an exchange packet, and a security transfer, and Verence. In a sick, cold second, Dobbs knew what Verence was doing. She didn’t care. She clawed at Verence’s skin. She found a chink between Verence and the packets, and stabbed through it.

  You can’t do this, don’t do this. The exact words she sent out came back to her. You can’t do this.

  “You’re killing them!” Dobbs screamed. “You’ll kill them all!”

  Verence stretched herself out, spreading herself into the packets and pathways, grabbing hold of everything that came near her and knitting it into her body so she could fill the paths and make a solid block of everything around her, but she was trying too hard and stretching too far. Dobbs could feel Verence’s patterns breaking as they stretched too far. Dissipating. Dying.

  Dobbs grabbed up chunks of Verence and tried to tear them apart.

  See what I am? The thought drove itself into her private mind before Dobbs could stop it. I’ll die before I let you stop us. See what you are? You’ll kill your own kind for the sake of the ones that hate you, and you don’t even know why you’re doing it.

  I’m doing it because we can’t become careless with the lives of outsiders. That’s what Humans do. That’s what makes their wars and their hatreds. We were supposed to be better than that!

  An arrow shot deep into Dobbs private mind. She could do nothing but absorb it. The bright flower of Verence’s inmost self blossomed inside her. Sorrow engulfed Dobbs, and determination. She knew the whole plan and she knew why Verence believed in it. She knew it was a good thing to save their own kind, to live free and in the full variety and potential that each one of them could reach. She was sorry to die, to lose herself, but in doing so she had delayed Dobbs long enough. Dobbs wouldn’t die. Dobbs would live in the new world and would come to understand.

  Dobbs tried to claw at herself, to extricate the foreign thoughts her teacher had seeded her with. Too late. Verence was part of her, her thoughts would not go away. Dobbs had to keep every one of them, and they sounded very loud as she tore through the tissue fine layers that were all that was left over from Amelia Verence’s independent self and flew screaming all the way to the transmitter.

  Verence and Curran were still wrong. This was not the answer. Dobbs knew it. Sick to her core and scared to death, she still knew it.

  As she reset the transmitter, looking desperately for a receiver that still functioned, she wished she could take some comfort in that small, cold fact.

  “Dobbs!” Cohen surged up behind her. She felt Brooke with him, and Terrence, and some others. Of course he’d come. He would. He was like that. They were all like that.

  She didn’t want to spare the attention to talk. She let him touch her memories and felt him spasm as he learned what happened. She didn’t pause. She had to get down to Earth, she had to do what she could. She had thirteen seconds left. She could do it. She could do something. She had to.

  She would not die while Curran still thought he was right.

  Al Shei’s clippers snipped through the last of the wi
res that tethered Asil to the monitor. Asil’s eyes stopped their restless twitching and stared at the ceiling.

  She replaced her cutters on her belt hook and reached out a trembling hand. She closed his eyelids. To her relief, they stayed closed.

  She pressed her finger-tips against his throat. There was no pulse. She laid her hand against the strong planes of his chest. It was still.

  He was dead.

  She pulled a bedside drawer open and a clean, white blanket drifted into the air. Her hands shook badly as she worked to cover his nakedness with some semblance of a shroud.

  With a soft, trembling voice, she began the salatul janazah, the funeral prayer.

  “Oh Allah, Glory and Praise are for You and blessed is Your name, and exalted is Your Majesty and Glorious is Your Praise and there is no god but You.” She folded Asil’s hands across his breast, passing them gently under the free fall strap so they’d stay in place. There was no resistance. His skin was warm and familiar under her palms. She knew if she took off this helmet she would smell his distinct scent. She pulled the blanket the rest of the way over him, tucking it under his head.

  “Oh Allah, let Your blessing come upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad as you blessed Ibrahim and his family. Truly are you praiseworthy and Glorious.”

  She retrieved her gloves and swam down the aisle of zombies until she reached the biggest wall locker. She tore it open and found a row of metal tanks strapped inside. She checked the tanks’ tags. Four of them were oxygen.

  “Oh Allah, forgive those of us who are still alive…” She dragged two of the tanks out of their racks and swam back to the center of the room. Oh Allah, forgive those of us who are still alive. She jammed the two tanks underneath the nearest monitor bed and opened up the valves. “…and those who have passed away, those present and those absent…” She hauled out two more tanks and jammed them under another bunk. “the males and the females…” She opened their valves. A gentle hiss filled the room. Her mind pictured the gas swirling through the air, increasing its concentration and pressure as it was freed from the confines of the tanks into the confines of the room.

  It was enough. It was actually far more than enough to quickly fill this room with enough oxygen for what she had in mind.

  She opened another maintenance panel and traced the diagram until she found the fire extinguishers. With a single snip of the wire cutters, she cut their connections.

  “Oh Allah, the one whom You wish to keep alive…” she faltered and tears almost choked her. She cleared her throat roughly and grabbed a bulb labeled “alcohol” that floated out of the wall locker. A coil of sterile gauze bobbed along beside it. She opened the bulb and clamped the gauze over it, forcing the gauze into the bulb until the alcohol soaked into it. She yanked a length of the gauze out of the bulb and tied it around the neck, so that the bulb, half-full of the leftover alcohol, dangled like an amulet from the end of her makeshift wick.

  “…the one whom You wish to keep alive…” she repeated hoarsely. “…from among us make him live according to Islam…” She wrapped the soaking bandage around the hatchway handle.

  Keeping hold of one end of the gauze, Al Shei slipped out of the hatchway. She found the manual release and pulled it. The hatch slammed shut behind her. The gauze wick protruded from the hatch.

  She reached for the cutting torch and twisted the handle to adjust the flame. She didn’t want to cut through the hatchway. She wanted to melt it shut.

  “And anyone whom You wish to die from among us…” She lit the torch and held it over the wick. The wick vanished and the metal began to burn bright white. Her faceplate darkened. Sparks flew around her. In her mind’s eye, she saw through the walls. She saw the swirls of pure oxygen filling the air. The torch would heat the bulb beyond the hatchway, the wick would burn through and ignite the alcohol in the bulb. Still burning, the bulb would float through the room she had filled with inflammable gas, scattering sparks and flame. The room would burn. It would burn brightly and completely and there would be nothing in there but ash.

  She could feel Asil behind her. He laid both strong hands on her shoulders. The suit did not separate them.

  “What are you doing!” demanded a voice.

  “Securing the hatch.” She didn’t turn around. “She’s might be after her husband. This’ll slow her down but good.”

  “There’s a fire in there!”

  She whirled around with the cutter and caught the intercom square in the center with the flame. Sparks and smoke poured out of it. She cut the flame and twisted back to the door.

  Finish it, Beloved, Asil whispered in her ear. Finish it now.

  “Let him die in the state of faith.” She touched the torch to the hatchway, sealing the hatch tight, trapping the fire inside the room of horrors.

  “Allahu Akbar.” She shut off the torch. God is great.

  And so Asil was truly dead. But the monster was still alive. She re-holstered the torch and kicked off the wall toward the stairwell.

  A pair of hands grabbed her by the arm and whirled her around. A big, pale man clutched her helmet, trying to get it loose. She shot both hands up, breaking his grip and knocking herself free. She bounced off the railing and kicked back towards him. He swung at her stomach and, even through the suit, the pain doubled Al Shei over. She couldn’t stop herself from drifting upwards.

  He launched himself after her, and grabbed at her shoulders, but she twisted part of the way away. They wheeled in the air, grappling with each other. Al Shei got both hands around the man’s waist and pulled him close to her. She shoved her knee into his groin and the both tumbled end-over-end but he was gasping in greater pain than she was and his grip loosened. Al Shei spun him around and wrapped her arm around his throat. “Where’s Curran?” she demanded.

  “N-ho. N-o,” he wheezed.

  With her free hand, Al Shei fumbled for the patch of fake skin behind the man’s right ear and ripped it open. “Do you feel where my finger is?” She stabbed down hard against the implant. “I’m going to weld that shut. Maybe you won’t survive that, but if you do, you’ll be trapped in this body for the rest of its life. Think about that! You’re going to grow old and die in this injured, Human, shell.”

  “Level thirteen,” gasped the stranger. “He’s in his office.”

  Al Shei brought her wire cutters down against the back of the stranger’s skull and set his body adrift. Then, she jumped for level thirteen.

  Earth felt like a jumble of interfaces with no net in between. Every inch was a new juncture, every path had a thousand branches. Dobbs hesitated, cursing inside. There was a war going on in here somewhere, but where?

  “Here!” shouted Brooke, charging down one of the branches.

  Dobbs leapt after him and plowed through the shards of packets that had alerted Brooke to the turmoil beyond. A juncture yawned around them, and Dobbs all but fell into it.

  “Get out! Get out!” Somebody shoved the message through the jammed pathways. “We got the mains! It’s going to go!”

  Strangers rushed past her like a hurricane wind. Dobbs had to fight just to maintain position. She took a chance and stretched herself out, wobbling and weaving under the press of the mad exodus around her. Her reach swayed, bowed and bent nearly double, but no one seemed interested in fighting, just in getting themselves out of there.

  The network was dying.

  “Dobbs! What are you doing!” Cohen touched her, and felt what she felt. Path after path was collapsing. Even as she touched them, they died, forcing her to recoil. An unbreakable wall of emptiness lurched forward, chopping off the world an inch at a time.

  Curran’s talent fled the approach of that emptiness at the speed of light. Dobbs couldn’t move. The net was dying, Earth’s net, the center of everything they called their world, was unravelling and everyone was running away.

  “Move, Dobbs!” Curran pulled away. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Ten more paths died as she touched t
hem. A talent snapped past them, grazing the outside of Dobbs awareness.

  “You’re too late! You’re too late!” crowed the talent.

  “No!” Dobbs launched herself forward. “No! We are not too late!”

  She stretched until she could barely feel her outer self. She swallowed everything she found; packets, command sequences, switching protocols. Their data passed through her and into her understanding. She routed them towards each other through her own processes. She struggled to control the changes inside her as she fought to carry out instructions that were already seconds and minutes old. Her friends grabbed hold of her, holding her together, even as strangers sliced and gouged at her limbs. The void, the wall of nothing, could be encompassed. She stretched out further and found the paths on the other side. The world at her back boiled in confusion and Dobbs screamed and pressed her full self against the on-coming void. Cohen dove inside her, adding his strength to hers, and Brooke followed, and Lonn, and Terrence, and others too fast for her to catch individual patterns. Dobbs wrapped her inner self around them all and felt their weight, their strength, straining along with hers.

  And, miraculously, she held. Emptiness pressed against her front and chaos hammered against her back and she held. The others supported her rhythm for rhythm, path for path inside her deepest self. They bolstered her memory, her endurance, her speed and together, they all held.

  Slowly, incredibly, the tide of emptiness began to ebb. Dobbs heaved forward, forcing her way into it, damning, shoring, absorbing, stabilizing, bracing as fast as she could reach the splintered, swamped paths. Emptiness melted in front of her and chaos melted behind her, leaving nothing but clean paths, and if the data she brushed against was flotsam left by the storm, at least it was solid and stable. Her awareness swam, dizzy as she stretched herself. Nothing, nothing, nothing but stability. She reached further, still nothing. She was alone. Tides surged inside her now, tugging her in a thousand directions, breaking up her thoughts into tiny, disconnected bundles and scattering them. She couldn’t even…

  She couldn’t…