“Where’s James?” Thel demanded.
“He’s dead. Just as the rest of you will soon be,” the A.I. replied.
“Oh dear God,” the General whispered as he saw the black, spidery cloud of nans quickly appear on the horizon. “We have to get these people into the complex immediately!”
“I don’t think so,” the A.I. responded before using his magnetic energy to attract the General’s gun to his hand and using his force field to scoop Alejandra into his grasp. He moved so quickly that no one could stop him. In one swift motion, he had an arm around Alejandra’s throat, immobilizing her, and the gun pressed against her temple. “If anyone moves, I kill her.”
Chapter 16
Katherine screamed out in agony.
“No!” James screamed out with her as he leapt up onto the cross and threw his arms around her shoulders. “Katherine—I’m here,” he cried to her as the life rapidly drained from her.
Katherine slumped forward into his torso, barely alive. “James,” she whispered.
“I love you, Katherine. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said before he kissed her one last time.
“I’m sorry too,” she whispered. She lifted her eyes to James ever so briefly before the rest of her color left her and she lost consciousness. James knew she would never wake again.
“Katherine? Kath...?”
“She’s quite dead, James,” the A.I. asserted.
“Why are you doing this to me? Why are you taking her from me again?” James sobbed through wet gasps.
“I told you, James. I’m trying to show you a better way. Besides, haven’t I freed you now for Thel? I’ve done you a favour.”
“I hate you. I hate you. I wasn’t in love with her anymore, but I didn’t want her to die. I wanted her to be happy.”
“Oh. Well, too late, I suppose. My, what a mess, we’ve made,” the A.I. commented as he stepped clear of the buckets of blood that were on the ground. Katherine was no longer breathing.
“Just kill me,” said James, distraught.
“What fun would that be, James?” the A.I. responded. James kissed his wife’s forehead and then lowered himself off of the cross.
“You could kill me at any moment. I’m defenseless. Yet you let me live.”
“You intrigue me,” the A.I. replied.
“No,” James responded. “No, that’s not your M.O.. You are too arrogant to be intrigued by anything outside of yourself. You’re keeping me alive for a reason...”
The A.I.’s smile disappeared. “This is faster than the model predicted.”
“My God! You had this planned all along!”
“You put it together. But it won’t do you any good.”
“I’m not special. I’m just your tool. You had the scan of my brain and could predict what I would do.”
“Indeed,” the A.I. replied, his amused demeanor now replaced with icy calculation.
“You caused the power surge on Venus. You wanted us to be disconnected. You needed to preserve us so that we would come back to Earth. You pretended that you wanted to kill us, but you knew I’d lead the team’s escape and then head to Purist territory.”
“They were the only humans I couldn’t guarantee would die. Your species are like roaches. I fumigated but could not be sure I would get them all. But you, James—you could lead them out into the open.”
“That’s why you need me alive. You’ve used Death’s Counterfeit to send yourself into my body. You can’t kill me here because you need my body alive in the real world.”
“That’s right, James. I need you alive. But don’t worry, I don’t need you alive much longer. You and the rest of your species will be gone soon, and I’ll deactivate you and file you away along with the rest of the human race,” replied the A.I., his voice now like a blast of Freon.
James wiped the tears from his eyes and defiantly stepped towards the A.I., seemingly confusing the electric devil. “You’ve gambled and you’ve lost,” James seethed.
“This is not following the model,” the A.I. said, concern seeping into his voice. The doppelganger suddenly reappeared. “Why was this not predicted?”
The doppelganger smiled slightly as he replied, “James has learned something that I do not know between the time of the bio-molecular scan and the present moment. Therefore...”
“The model is inaccurate,” the A.I. concluded.
“That’s right,” James confirmed. “You did everything you could to keep me from figuring this out. You killed my wife in front of me to keep me from thinking this through. I’ll never forgive myself for not thinking fast enough. But I’ve figured it out now. Let’s see how you do when we’re even.”
James suddenly darted to his right and, as fast as a thought, he entered the pure whiteness of the A.I.’s mother program and vanished.
“Where did he go?” the A.I. desperately demanded of the doppelganger.
“I truly don’t know,” replied the doppelganger with a grin.
The A.I. turned away from the doppelganger in disgust. “Then I guess that makes you useless to me now.”
“Go to Hell,” the doppelganger said before extending his middle finger for the A.I..
“Charming to the last,” replied the A.I. before deleting the doppelganger from existence.
Chapter 17
“Those nans are going to be on us in less than two minutes,” Rich informed the General.
“Keep those doors wide open or I will free this young lady of the contents of her cranium!” shouted the A.I. to the soldiers who had opened the doors to the south complex.
“What do we do, General?” asked a desperate Lt. Patrick.
“Shoot both of them on my order,” the General replied, his voice cold and yet also filled with regret in anticipation of his future actions.
The A.I. laughed. “Do you not think I will stop the bullets? No, no. We are going to all wait here together and be devoured. You have no alternatives...” the A.I.’s words suddenly became strangled in his throat as his eyes took on an uncanny expression of madness.
“What’s going on?” Thel demanded.
“It’s your friend!” Alejandra exclaimed. “He has re-entered his body!”
“James!” shouted Thel.
“He is fighting for control!” Alejandra explained. James and the A.I. remained locked in a struggle for the same mind space for several moments, resulting in what appeared like a seizure to those nearby. Foam began to form at the corner of his mouth and his entire body shook, yet his grip on Alejandra remained firm.
“It will do you no good, James,” the A.I. uttered through vibrating lips before calling out in pain.
“Thel!” shouted James. He locked eyes onto Thel in a brief moment of control. “Don’t give up... Venus!” he shouted before moving the gun barrel from Alejandra’s temple to his own.
“James! No!” Thel screamed.
But it was too late. With a muzzle flash, it was over. James’s blood splashed onto Alejandra as James’s lifeless body crumpled to the dirt.
“No!” Thel rushed to James and threw her arms over the body. Old-timer wasted no time in pulling her away.
“Thel, we have to go!”
“No, wait!” the General shouted as the soldiers of the south complex shut the door. He turned and immediately understood why. The nans were upon them.
In an instant, Old-timer, Djanet, and Rich sent up a huge collective force field to shield the ten thousand refugees from the nans as they swarmed the helpless people and blackened the sky. James’s body was left outside of the shield and, in mere seconds, his flesh was devoured. His bones were left perfectly white, but the nans did not stop there. Even his frame began to disappear.
“Holy!” Rich shouted. “The bats! The bats!” Rapidly approaching in the distance, the dark shapes of thousands of the bat-shaped robots closed the gap between the horizon and the humans. “We’re finished as soon as they get here! What are we going to do, Old-timer?”
Old-timer di
dn’t have an answer. He looked at Alejandra, who looked at him with her blue eyes and he suddenly knew that he had been a fool. The precious moments of life had to be taken.
“Lt. Patrick!” shouted Thel, who was now on her feet. Her eyes had been fixed on James’s now devoured body ever since he had put the gun to his head and fired. “Lt. Patrick! Do you see that yellow object?” She pointed towards James.
“His implant!” Djanet shouted, suddenly understanding Thel’s plan. “Of course! If you damage the implant and disrupt the magnetic field that houses the plasma core, you’ll generate a microsecond long electromagnetic pulse!”
“Wha...” Lt. Patrick started to ask before Thel rapidly cut him off.
“Use your weapon and hit that object before it is dismantled by the nans!” Thel commanded.
Lt. Patrick aimed his rifle. “I have it in my sights. But how will the bullet get through?”
“I’ll handle that,” Old-timer answered as he shifted the position of the force field so that it curved inward toward Lt. Patrick’s rifle barrel. “The second you are ready to shoot, let me know and I’ll let down the shield for the bullet to exit.”
“Ok,” the Lt. replied. “Ok. One, two, three!”
Old-timer released the shielding and the rifle fired a bullet toward the yellow implant. In the instant after the bullet left the gun, several nans flew through the barrel and attacked Lt. Patrick’s flesh. Old-timer closed the hole in the shield as the bullet pierced the implant’s skin and the nuclear reactor housed underneath. A magnetic pulse, too brief to be registered by the human eye, was sent out in waves in every direction, flowing through the trillions of nans and the robotic bats and sending them plummeting to the earth. The area around the refugees suddenly resembled the eye of a massive hurricane. It was clear for hundreds of kilometers in every direction—but death was still not far away.
Thel flashed her energy at the nans who had torn apart Lt. Patrick’s skin, leaving his face bloodied. “You did it,” she told him as she helped him to his feet.
Old-timer and the others disengaged their magnetic fields and surveyed the destruction. The ground was covered in nans, forming a thick layer of grey goo, several centimeters deep. The robotic bats were clumps of black on nearby hills. A few more seconds, and they would have been in firing range to deactivate the shield.
“That was way too close,” Rich said.
“Get these people inside!” the General shouted. People suddenly began to move quickly. There was little time to lose. The General placed his hand on Thel’s shoulder. “Thank you for saving us. I am sorry for your loss.” Thel’s eyes met his for a moment, but she was too stunned to assemble a response. The General turned away from her and began directing people into the now open complex.
Thousands of miles away, the A.I. registered the loss of its nans. The nans had failed to destroy the last of the humans. Against fantastic odds, James had succeeded. The A.I.’s face remained frozen—expressionless. This was not the end.
PART 3
Chapter 1
There was no rest. Thel and her teammates were the last to enter the complex after all of the Purists were safe.
“The A.I. knows we’re here,” Rich informed the General. “It’ll attack this complex relentlessly until it breaks in. It’s only a matter of time.”
“We’ll put up a brave fight. Of that, you can be assured,” the General replied.
“You have nothing to fight it with,” Old-timer replied. “We can fight him for you for a time, but eventually he’ll break our defenses.”
“It’s not over yet,” Thel interjected. “Remember what James told us.”
“Don’t give up Venus?” asked Rich, confused. “Thel, I don’t think that was a message. He was rambling while he was trying to regain control of his body.”
“He didn’t say don’t give up Venus. It was two different sentences. He told us not to give up. Then he said ‘Venus.’ He was telling us what to do.”
“I don’t understand,” Old-timer admitted.
“I second that,” Rich added.
Djanet, in contrast, suddenly gasped. “Of course! Venus! Think about it! What’s on Venus?”
Old-timer’s eyes widened as he made the realization. “Zeus.”
“Excuse me?” the General asked, inserting himself into the conversation when it began to seem as though he had been forgotten.
“General, the Zeus cylinder is a massive electromagnetic fan that we were testing on Venus. Its purpose was to remove the atmosphere of Venus as part of our terraforming project,” explained Old-timer.
“But imagine what it could do to these machines,” Djanet added. “We could plant it here. You’d be safe. None of the A.I.’s robots could hurt you.”
“That won’t work,” Thel disagreed.
“Why not?” Djanet asked.
“The A.I. will simply design nans and robots that can generate a protective field. If we planted Zeus here, it would only delay the inevitable.”
“Then what are you suggesting?” asked the General.
“I’m suggesting that we use the Zeus to go after the A.I. mainframe in Seattle.”
“That’s insane,” Rich immediately responded. “The A.I. can generate a protective field already. It will just protect itself until you run out of power or the Zeus malfunctions and then we’ll be sitting ducks!”
“Not if James has figured out a way to lower its defenses,” Thel replied.
“That’s a big if,” Rich responded, dubiously.
“James wouldn’t have told us to do this unless he knew what he was doing,” Thel said in defense of the plan.
“Okay. If this actually is James’s plan—and I am not convinced that that gobbledygook that came out of his mouth actually was a plan—we’ve already learned not to put all of our trust in James’s infallibility, haven’t we? I mean, excuse me for my insensitivity here, but he did just get himself killed, didn’t he?” Rich desperately retorted.
Thel grabbed Rich by the collar and pushed him back against the wall. “He sacrificed himself to save us all.”
The General, exasperated, turned to Alejandra for advice. “I don’t know, General,” she told him, without him having to ask the question aloud. “They both sincerely believe they are right.”
“Then what is your feeling?” the General asked her.
Alejandra drew her eyes up to Old-timer’s—he knew she was reading him.
“I think we have nothing to lose. Our best chance is to confront the A.I. directly,” she told the General.
The General nodded and leaned wearily against the wall of the complex entrance. “Then what is the plan?”
“Old-timer and I will set out for Venus,” Thel explained. “What about us?” Djanet asked. Thel released her grip on Rich and looked him squarely in the eye.
“These people will have no protection. It will take at least an hour for us to get to Venus and back. The nans will have reconstituted in a matter of minutes. You’ll have to protect these people for as long as possible. Okay?” she asked Rich, firmly.
She was right. This was the moment Rich had feared his entire life—the moment when he’d have to face all of his fears and insecurities head on. The Purists’ lives depended on it. He straightened his collar and sighed. “Okay. As if I had a choice. But you better kill that thing once and for all or my name is gonna be mud. Not to mention the rest of me.”
“Okay,” Thel said after taking a deep breath. She turned to Old-timer. “Are you ready?”
“Just one minute,” he responded as he stepped toward Alejandra. He grabbed her in his arms and kissed her passionately for several seconds before gently pulling back. “I’ll be back,” he told her before exiting the entranceway with Thel.
Thel and Old-timer lifted off from the lifeless earth outside of the complex and immediately saw the spider tendrils of the nan storm only moments away from reaching the complex. “We have to hurry,” Thel said. They ignited their cocoons and blasted into the st
ratosphere.
Chapter 2
Rich and Djanet stepped outside of the complex and stood together as the massive black fingers of the nan cloud inched towards them from all directions. “How’s your shot?” Djanet asked Rich.
“Not great. I think you better play shooter.”
“Okay.”
Alejandra, Lt. Patrick, General Wong, and Private Gernot stood near the entrance of the complex. “Is there anything we can do?” asked a bloodied Lt. Patrick.
“Get your people into the deepest part of the complex and stay together,” Djanet replied.
“Can we help you up here?” asked the General.
“You’re weapons will be useless against these things,” Djanet replied.
“We can be extra sets of eyes,” Gernot offered. Djanet turned to him and saw the sincerity in his offer. “We’re in this together, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, she can use your help,” Rich said.
“I want to help too,” Alejandra echoed Gernot.
“Okay,” Djanet agreed. “General Wong and Lt. Patrick, go help your people.” The General and the Lt. disappeared inside the complex.
“Oh my God,” Rich said as the cloud of black began to make a whirring noise as it ripped through the putrid air.
“I think you better put up your force field, Rich,” Djanet said, her mouth suddenly dry. Rich’s field surrounded the four humans, as well as the rocky hill that made up the entrance to the south complex. He ground his teeth as the nans began crashing against the green glow of the field like the waves of an ocean in Hell.
“Okay, you two,” Djanet began as she addressed Alejandra and Gernot. “I need you to act as my eyes. The nans are not a serious threat to us. But the larger robotic bats are equipped with a ray that can neutralize our powers. They’re slower than the nans, but if you see the nans, you know the bats aren’t far behind.”
“Okay,” Gernot replied.
The light grew dim quickly as the nans swarmed over the shield. “I think we’ve got enough here, Rich,” Djanet announced. “Are you ready? Count of three?”
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