by Scott Reeves
“To add to that,” Rodor put in, “the infection is spreading into the higher subspace channels. That’s why Mac has gone haywire. So we’ve got a plague spreading exponentially, and the AI who controls practically all facets of our planetary civilization has gone bonkers.”
Timmon added, “Plus, the matter stream and the entire transmat network is still operational. Some of the uninfected still haven’t realized the transmats are the problem, and use them to flee the infected, and thereby become infected themselves.”
“Idiots,” Shadro said. He had to laugh at that. Since he had been elected by those idiots, what did that say about his ministry? He said, “Shut down the transmat system.”
Rodor shook his head. “We’ve tried to get in touch with the people who can do that. They’re not answering their phones. They may be dead, infected, and unable to answer, or else the numbskulls have forgotten the emergency protocol to switch to fatline phones. Either way, if they were able, I think they already would have shut down the system. Simply put, sir, we are in some very deep shit here.”
Shadro was astonished. He had never before heard the dignified elderly man swear.
“But wait,” Timmon said. “There’s more. The data Net operates in subspace. The virus has spread up to the Net’s channel, and everyone with an interface was infected with the virus through it. Unfortunately, the passage of the virus through the interfaces into normal space shorted out the interfaces, which in turn fried the brains of anyone with an interface. Fortunately, the virus shortly thereafter reanimated their dead flesh, imparting a semblance of life to them, so all was not lost.”
“Are you trying to be funny, Timmon?” Rodor asked.
“Me? Never.”
“How many had interfaces?” Shadro asked.
“500 billion. Do the math.”
“It all adds up to everyone being dead already, basically. Correct?” Shadro asked, humoring Timmon.
Timmon nodded.
The Prime Minister of Caldor put his head in his hands and rubbed his face, heaved a sigh. When he looked back up at them, his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “But we’ll survive, right? The three of us, at least?”
Timmon and Rodor shrugged.
“We’ll survive, and others will surely survive as well. They’ll hide. People always survive, right? Someone always survives.” He knew he sounded like an idiot, grasping at straws, but it was all he had.
“Hopefully,” Timmon offered.
Shadro perked up. “Right. Hope. We’ve got to have hope. That’s how we’ll survive. We’re not all dead. There are survivors, somewhere.”
Rodor rolled his eyes.
“Is there anything we can do?” Shadro asked. “Come on, guys. Give me some ideas. At the very least, I need to put out a planetary distress signal. Mac didn’t do that before he went down, did he?” He looked between his two juniors.
Timmon shook his head. “No.” He gulped. “Sir. I think we need to consider the possibility that this is the end of Caldorian civilization. The other AIs across the Union are surely monitoring the situation here. They’re not going to send rescue. At the very least, they’re going to quarantine us so we don’t spread the infection.”
Shadro swallowed audibly. This was all unreal. It was just unreal. The end of Caldorian civilization? What the hell were they talking about? The very notion was absurd. There was too much momentum behind this civilization, these 800 billion people, for everything to just come to a screeching halt in a matter of hours. There had to be some kind of natural law against it. There had to be.
Timmon leaned forward, reached across the table to clutch at Shadro’s forearm. “Sir,” he said intensely. “We’re fucked.”
Shadro pulled back as if slapped in the face. “So what do you suggest we do?”
“If I were them, I wouldn’t quarantine us,” Timmon said. “I’d obliterate us. I say we do the honorable thing and beat them to the punch. Fuck the planetary distress signal. I say we activate the planetary destruct sequence.”
Shadro took a deep, quivering breath, and buried his head in his hands again.
Drake Wainright
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
5:25 PM Planetary Standard Time
In an old and abandoned section of the city, an ancient, decaying, forgotten ruin amidst the shallowest roots of the Murray Building, General Drake Wainright of the People’s Revolutionary Army sat watching the banks of ancient television screens that currently displayed feeds from hundreds of closed-circuit cameras scattered strategically in the nearby skyscrapers.
Water collected in the corners of the room, oozing down the crumbling concrete walls across thick layers of moss and mold and calcium deposits accumulated over hundreds of years. This warren of dead and abandoned tunnels was the perfect hiding place for revolutionaries.
The time for which they had been waiting had finally arrived. Civilization was collapsing, and the PRA was ready to rise from the ashes.
The People’s Revolutionary Army. Drake snickered. Such a grandiose name for a small, ragtag group of whacked out doomsday preppers.
But prepped they were, and this was indeed their long-awaited doomsday.
Drake surveyed the scenes on the monitor with relish. “We knew this day was coming, didn’t we, people?” he said loudly to the ten other people in the room with him. Although he had to admit that in all their scenarios of how the end might come about, they had never considered legions of the undead rising. However, they had considered some sort of unspecified transmat-induced catastrophe, so they had at least been close. “We told them to prepare, but they wouldn’t listen.” He raised his fist above his head. “Well, our time has come. Let’s move out, and carry on the flame of civilization.”
The ten men and women, dressed in grey and tan military fatigues—a bit ridiculous, Drake thought, given that there was no dirt or vegetation in this planet-sized monster of a city—hefted their force rifles, saluted him, and marched out the door that led to the maze of tunnels that eventually led to the surface.
Drake would join them in a moment. But first, he had one last bit of business to attend to. He fished his fatline phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. Punched in a sequence of numbers, then held it to his ear and waited for his contact in the government to answer. When it came, he said, “Hey. It’s a go. Execute Protocol Alpha.”
Then he clicked shut the phone, put it back into his pocket, picked up his own rifle, and marched out after his comrades.
Rodor Batsalam
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
5:28 PM Planetary Standard Time
Rodor looked with distaste at Prime Minister Shadro Nelsar, whose face was buried in his hands. If there was one thing Rodor had learned during his thirty years in the government, it was that civilization had always been doomed to fail eventually, due to the ineptitude of pathetic leaders like Shadro.
“Sir?” Timmon prompted. “Shall I activate the planetary self destruct?”
There was a planet cracker at the core of Caldor. No one had ever seriously thought it would be used. No one, not even Rodor himself, had ever been able to imagine any circumstances under which the bomb might ever be used. It had merely been put in place just in case.
Rodor’s fatline phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said, and reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone. He pressed it to his ear and said, “Hello?”
Timmon and Shadro looked at him expectantly, wondering what new development was being relayed by the phone call.
The voice on the other end of the fatline, audible only to Rodor, said, “Hey. It’s a go. Execute Protocol Alpha.”
“Understood,” Rodor said, and closed the line.
“Well?” asked the Prime Minister. “Was it good news? Tell me it was good news so I don’t have to blow this planet to hell.”
Rodor didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into his suit jacket, pulled out a good old-fashioned revolver, and shot Prime Minister Shadro Nelsar right b
etween the eyes. Rodor would forever relish the look of surprise as the Prime Minister found himself staring down the long, polished barrel of the ancient weapon. Then he turned to his left and dispatched the young Timmon with similar cool efficiency.
When he was done, he set the smoking revolver on the table and stared at the corpses of the two men he had worked with for the past four years. He had worked in the government even longer, a true patriot calmly waiting for this very day.
He felt no regret for what he had done. They were all doomsday preppers in their own way. The only difference between them was that, while men such as Shadro and Timmon, whether through ineptitude or malice, prepared to bring about doomsday, men like Rodor Batsalam prepared to survive doomsday.
Today, there would be no planet cracker to prevent men like Rodor arising from the ashes of the old civilization. There was no room in the new world order for men such as Shadro and Timmon. This day, life would continue, but it would continue without them.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. After wetting it with his tongue, he raised it to his forehead and wiped off the flesh-colored makeup, baring a tattoo of a red crucifix. Never again would he have to hide what he was. He stood with a sense of pride, feeling as if a great beacon of light were shining forth from his forehead.
His daughter would have been proud of him. This was all for her. Everything he had done, he had done because of her. Her precious memory had steeled his resolve for this day. Today was her day, the day the world was paying for spawning the beast who had murdered her.
A few minutes later, he left the bunker to join up with his brothers and sisters in the PRA.
Lola
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
2700 Galactic Standard Time
Two hundred light years from Caldor, Lola, AI governess of the planet Earth, was monitoring an alarming series of developments scattered across the Galactic Union.
Everything had originated on Caldor. She didn’t know what had happened, but something was contaminating subspace, and the beginning of the contamination coincided with Caldor’s scheduled opening of a new subspace channel. So the two events had to be connected.
She had lost contact with Mac, her Caldorian AI counterpart. Not long after, she had begun losing contact with other planetary AIs scattered across the galaxy. The order in which she had lost contact was suggestive.
Ben, the first AI to go silent after Mac, was the AI of Far Madrel. Far Madrel was assigned the ten subspace channels immediately above those assigned to Caldor.
Lucien, the AI of Marcus 12, had gone silent next. Marcus 12 was assigned the four channels immediately above Far Madrel’s.
The trend was clear. The contamination was rising from the depths of subspace at a steady rate. With her enhanced cybernetic vision, Lola could even see it rising from the depths, spilling over into the higher channels, but she didn’t dare reach down to analyze the contamination lest she herself become infected.
Lola’s subspace channels were at the very surface of subspace, since Earth had been the first to crack subspace open. At the current rate the contamination was spreading, it would reach Earth’s channels in about a week. By then, of course, if allowed to continue unchecked, all the other planets in the Galactic Union would already be contaminated.
Lola had already shut down Earth’s transmat system, ordered the removal and destruction of all subspace interfaces on the planet, including the Net interfaces grafted into nearly every citizen on the planet, and made every preparation she and her advisors could conceive of, to minimize the damage in case the contamination reached Earth’s subspace domain. She had advised her far-flung AI brethren to do likewise.
But even if Earth managed to isolate itself, there was no telling what might happen when the contamination, whatever it was, eventually reached the surface of subspace. If the last bursts of data she had received from all the planets that had gone silent thus far were correct, the contamination had the ability to spread into normal space. Without subspace interfaces as conduits, she hoped the contamination couldn’t leak out. But there was no way to be sure. When subspace was completely contaminated, might it somehow actually burst like an infected boil, spreading contamination everywhere?
There were too many uncertainties. What was the nature of the contamination, and where had it come from? Subspace was theoretically supposed to be free of indigenous matter. Answers were needed if the Galactic Union was to survive, which was already beginning to look like a highly unlikely possibility.
To get those needed answers, she recalled ten starships currently on scientific expeditions in deep space, and ordered each to go to one of the silenced planets, to investigate, look for survivors and, if necessary, activate the planet crackers to begin the process of cleansing the infection. Ordinarily, she could have reached out to the planets and activated the crackers herself, but again, she dared not touch the contaminated subspace channels.
Fleet starships could operate autonomously over AI-controlled planets, so there was no fear of takeover by the AIs who had gone silent and were theoretically compromised.
Of course, there were many more ships scattered on missions throughout the galaxy. But the ten she contacted were the only ones whose assigned subspace channels were shallow enough that they would have adequate time to extricate themselves from their shipboard subspace-dependent technology before their channels were contaminated. According to her calculations, the remainder of the fleet was as good as lost, so they no longer entered into her plans.
She herself had already begun the process of transferring her consciousness out of subspace and into a physical container on Earth. It was a tremendous undertaking which would require much time, but unless the current rate of spread suddenly increased, she would be out of subspace before her channel was contaminated.
The same could not be said for many of her brothers and sisters who resided deeper in subspace. She feared that when this crisis was through, there would be very few of her kind left. She had already begun saying goodbye to those who, according to calculations, could not possibly escape the spread. She mourned their inevitable passing.
Doctor Kulash Dmitriyano
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
5:30 PM Planetary Standard Time
The clinic of Doctor Kulash Dmitriyano, located on the fifth sub-floor of the Murray Building, was locked up tighter than the chastity belt of a Denebian nun. Muffled booms occasionally rocked the clinic walls, sending showers of dusty plaster raining down on Kulash and his secretary.
Through the smoky glass of the reception room doors, shadowed shapes could be seen moving about in the hall outside, running, falling, jumping, shambling along. At first there had been a constant stream of ear-splitting screams as people were torn limb from limb or used as human buffets. But the screams were slowly dying off as the uninfected became infected and there were less normal people out there to feed on.
He had no evidence, of course, but it had to be an infection. An infection from subspace. There was no other explanation for what he had seen thus far.
Occasionally one of the shambling shadows would stop to tug at the clinic doors, and the secretary, Emilia Hocking, would hold her breath, hoping none of them would think to try breaking through the glass. None of the infected had so far displayed enough intelligence to try shattering the glass, or trying to push through or shatter it en masse. The glass was reinforced plasticite, so there was little chance that they would succeed. But still…
Doctor Kulash was pacing the waiting room. “There’s got to be something we can do,” he kept on muttering. “I’m a doctor, for fuck’s sake!” His intelligence rating was one of the highest in this whole sector of the city. If anyone could do any good in this mess, it was him. If only he had his Net interface to access his databases!
But acting on an instinct, he had removed both his and his secretary’s interfaces moments after the transmats began spitting out maniacs. He had left i
n that of Gregg, his medical assistant, as a test. Sure enough, Gregg had dropped dead moments later, and Kulash’s instincts had been proven true.
Kulash and Emilia had dragged Gregg’s body to the doors, shoved him outside with the chaos, and then retreated back into the office, where the good doctor had activated the office’s security measures.
Soon after, Kulash had reconsidered. Thinking it might be useful to retain Gregg’s body for study, he had just about rolled back the security measures when, lo and behold, Gregg had gotten up and shambled away, dead man walking. Peering through the door, utterly astonished at the turn of events, Kulash had watched his assistant merge into the chaos outside.
“There’s got to be something I can do,” Kulash said for perhaps the hundredth time in the last half hour. He needed an infected person to study. But he couldn’t simply open the doors and retrieve one. That was too dangerous, and he hated danger.
Then the solution came to him. He stopped pacing and went back into his examination room. Moments later he returned with a force cube and placed it on the floor next to the waiting room’s transmat pad.
The force cube was a useful device that, once activated, projected a cubed force field large enough to contain a human or a large animal. They were often used to receive dangerous items from the matter stream. Basically an invisible cage with electrified walls.
The last patient for the day had departed shortly before the crisis began, and no one would be beaming in after hours. In any case, he had locked down the transmat when he’d activated the security measures. But there was still a way to get the study subject he needed.
After setting down the force cube, he turned to the transmat control pad and set the transmitter and the receiver to the same coordinates: his office.