Unkillable

by Dean C. Moore

  David exchanged looks with Ed who shook his head to indicate David might want to try another tack.

  Klepsky had to admit, glowering at Biyu for betraying him like that, it was hard to ignore the fact that she seemed suddenly submissive and serenely accepting of her work duties. Where before every little thing disturbed her focus, triggering endless tirades, he doubted if an atomic blast could distract her right now.

  “Ah, for the record,” David said going off Ed’s cue, “she has some unresolved oedipal issues I thought I’d just help her navigate so she would more properly reject me in place of a more appropriate suitor, namely you, when those early-life emotional scars were healed.”

  Ed was suddenly nodding at David and sneaking a thumbs-up.

  Once again Klepsky wasn’t sure whether to admire his fast-footwork recovery, or to give credence to David’s latest theory, just in case it hadn’t been manufactured on the spot. The truth was it sounded credible enough to be true. But so it was with the best liars.

  “You might want to get to the part where you got some choice intel out of her,” Ed coached David, with a “move it along” hand gesture.

  “Oh, yeah,” David said, acting as if he was still trying to get past the faux pas of the century, as if that might not be sleeping with Biyu, and instead something he’d said. “According to Biyu, a big part of Tum’s brain is dedicated to self-evolution…”

  Ed made a stretching gesture as if pulling taffy apart with his bare hands to indicate that David might want to elaborate. He was certainly taking his big brother mentoring responsibilities seriously if no one else in this family could get their roles straight.

  David picked up the cue and expanded on his earlier remarks, saying, “His efforts to evolve himself are chiefly of a scientific nature, addressing his anatomy and physiology, and not of a Machiavellian nature. He’s not looking to make himself smarter by gaming with us, as we might be inclined to believe by how things have played out so far. If that’s the case…”

  “It suggests some possibilities,” Klepsky said, turning over the revelation in his mind, seeing how he could fertilize it with some related ideas. When his eyes focused again, he could see they were waiting for him to speak first as opposed to bombarding him with their own theories. Leave it to them, they had some instincts for survival. It wasn’t all self-destructive behavior of the epic proportions variety.

  “We need to focus this investigation,” he said, “on how Tum could best evolve his mind from a scientific viewpoint. Help him isolate some of the breakthroughs he needs. If he could see us as key allies instead of enemies, we could have him coming to us instead of us trying to find him.”

  “Um,” Ed and David said at once.

  Ed took the lead, “It’s a brilliant idea, sir. Only we’ve ruled it out already.”

  “When? While you were standing here?”

  Ed and David looked at each other guiltily. Ed “ummed” him then said, “Yes, sir.”

  “He was built to take over his own evolution,” David explained, “at least according to Biyu.” Klepsky thought the kid sure knew how to milk the “I can get Biyu talking” card to the fullest. Maybe setting the stage for his next segue into her vaginal canal. “Biyu understood early on that she couldn’t evolve him as fast as he could evolve himself. That no one could.”

  “We’ve got an entire department of brainiac scientists we can throw at the problem!” Klepsky protested vehemently.

  Both Ed and David shook their heads in sync. If these two were annoying one at a time, ganging up on him like this was positively insufferable.

  Ed whistled as if trying to vent his overheated brain. “Compared to a supercomputer DNA mind? We could probably throw the entire world at the problem and not…” Ed flicked his fingers. “Of course! He’s in Iceland, working with Earth’s military-industrial cabal and the aliens.”

  “What?” David and Klepsky said in tandem, turning to Ed at the same time.

  The communications link had been down between the FBI-FD and Adrian and Veronica for a while now, Klepsky thought. Maybe with the lack of internet access and the constant stimulation of fresh incoming data, Ed had just lost it.

  “Um, yeah, been meaning to brief you on that,” Ed said. “In my defense, it’s not like there has ever been a particularly good time.”

  “Spool out the rest of it, Ed,” Klepsky said.

  “Presumably, the aliens would have tech that would allow him to fulfill his prime directive,” Ed said.

  “In which case?” Klepsky goaded.

  “Oh, in which case he’ll be headed off world and by my calculations,” Ed checked his watch, “the end of the world should come probably less than two months from now. That’s how long I give them to replace every human on the planet with a supersentient clone of Tum, only better than the original. Of course, I could be off by a couple weeks here or there on my calculations of the limits of what can be done with biophysics in this part of the universe, even allowing for the most powerful supersentience imaginable.”

  “But the supersentience could be powerful enough to break the laws of physics,” David said.

  “I know! Like how cool would that be, right?!” Ed said excitedly, forgetting Klepsky was even standing there until Klepsky cleared his throat, the sound something like the growl of a wolf.

  “Oh, my God,” Ed said, “I mean, how terrible would that be, you know. Yeah, I’d really hate to see that happen,” he added shaking his head for good measure.

  Klepsky ran his hand through his hair. “I can’t believe I’m standing here talking to you about aliens, like there might be an ounce of sanity to the notion.”

  “I assure you it is the most logical conclusion, sir,” Ed said. “I mean, who the hell goes to Iceland anyway? If not to meet up with aliens in private? Unless of course you’re just into dining in those restaurants they situate at the base of inactive volcanoes.” He looked over at David, “I mean how cool is that?”

  “Way cool,” David acknowledged, the both of them snickering for one another’s amusement.

  The fact that Klepsky was willing to roll with this wild idea just attested to how desperate he was to close the gap between the FBI-FD and Tum.

  “What are the odds that Adrian and Veronica are already on location to confront Tum?” he asked.

  “Oh, a hundred percent,” Ed said. “If we got there in this time, it’s a cinch they came to the same conclusions ahead of us, far enough ahead to already be on location. I’m thinking they suspected an alien craft was landing, they just couldn’t track it. Which is why they had me engineer technology that could penetrate any cloaking device.” With the ugly look Klepsky gave him, he quickly added, “Um, prior to killing the COMMS link between them and us, of course.”

  “So there’s really no more that we can do then,” Klepsky said. “It’s all on them now.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, sir. I mean I could go pump Biyu for more information,” David suggested.

  “As in literally pump,” Ed said chuckling. “Lucky you. You get the one for whom sex brings about meditative calm and clarity and insight. I get the one that stares into an abacas to the point of drooling.” He frowned like he’d won the booby prize.

  “You get back to pumping her for information,” Klepsky said to David. “But don’t think you’ve won this battle of wills between us. Of the two of us, I’m far better at playing people than you are. You’ll learn that soon enough.”

  “I guess I’ll just have to suffer the painful learning curve until then, sir,” David said.

  Ed was giggling before Klepsky could mount his retaliatory scathing grimace.

  Klepsky stormed off thinking that one of the best ways to get the upper hand on those two might be to figure out how to rein in Tum without their help. So he headed out of the building to think, picking up his brown bag of walnuts from his desk to crush as he already put his mind in the park where he was headed.

  On his way back out of the office he could already
hear David and Biyu grinding away at one another, their moaning and carrying on dialed up throughout the entire floor now. It dawned on Klepsky that David might be running his B. F. Skinner routine on the whole department. Soon, it would be like church, with the congregation coming in sync with David and Biyu, their responses every bit as conditioned as Biyu’s. Which meant if Klepsky tried to put an end to his pumping of Biyu, he’d have a revolt on his hands. Very clever, kid, very clever. Klepsky was actually spurred on by the challenge. What made the whole thing doubly annoying was that the kid had managed to mount an erection in less time than it took Klepsky to reach for his bag of peanuts. He sighed. Maybe he’d win Biyu away from him with better foreplay. He’d better hope so if he was ever going to correct this dysfunctional family dynamic.

  Then again, he thought, hitting the elevator, if he were going to fix this busted ad hoc family it might take more than better foreplay with Biyu; he could benefit from more penetrating insight into why it was so dysfunctional in the first place.

  He pressed “1” for the ground floor. The elevator began its descent. His thinking about his ad hoc family raced along at a far faster rate.

  Perhaps, like him, they’d gone so long without deep, meaningful human connection, they were afraid those connections might dissolve as readily as they formed without the extra glue of sexual attractiveness. They were whoring themselves to anyone who would have them in the name of loving and being loved.

  If so, it was a behavior that could be stamped out with behavioral conditioning, in which Klepsky was becoming an even more ardent believer with each passing day. It wasn’t going to be easy. His audience was smarter, and just as determined to use behavior modification on him. It might take months, it might take years, but this was a battle he knew he could win; in this one area, they were not smarter than him.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “You buried it just three feet down?” Adrian said incredulously, panting, as his shovel hit metal. In her defense, it was nearly solid ice, not soft snow, he was chiseling his way through. “You’ve heard of global warming, right? They must lose three feet of top layer here a year.”

  She yanked the case out of its storage box. “It’s rigged to explode if you get the combination wrong on the first try.”

  “Yeah, I guess that explains it.” If his words were drenched in any more sarcasm, they’d drown. “Especially since no one will be qualified to publish my life story outside of Gonzo Comics.”

  Veronica keyed in the combination. She wasn’t panting. She wasn’t even sweating. Adrian could feel the sweat running down the back of his neck turning to icicles, forming stalagmites or was that stalactites hanging down off his shoulders? Only his panting kept the icicles forming on the tip of his nose from growing any longer by exposing them to the blast furnace.

  She pulled out a couple spray cans, tossed him one. “You can do me after I’m done doing you.”

  “I believe that’s how we’ve handled it from day one.”

  “The world is ending, Adrian. This is no time for humor.”

  “I beg to differ. Never has humor been more desperately needed.”

  She ignored him, pulling the cap on the canister, and spraying him top to bottom as she walked around him. When the spray was audibly depleted, she said, “Your turn.”

  He returned the favor until his can was exhausted. “How is this going to save us from the end of the world?”

  “By bringing theirs to an end first, hopefully. The nano-overcoat we just sprayed on is replete with every pandemic-causing virus and bacteria we could think to throw in. Plus the nanites mutate the DNA of the bacteria and viruses to suit the genes of anyone we encounter. So if Tum so much as breathes on us, the nanite hive mind will get to work on tweaking the killers in its employ to get around his synthetic biology.”

  Adrian snorted. He knew what nanites were, of course, tiny microscopic robots invisible to the naked eye that looked something like bed bugs under a microscope. If they were small enough they could manipulate individual molecules, even individual atoms. The kind of technology she was talking about was also a good ten years off by all reasonable accounts. But what he was really struggling with was the notion that this was some poor man’s solution to the apocalypse. As in: if some other country had nuked you and you had to get back at them, if only out of fairness, but your entire infrastructure was down, this was a way to do it. Besides, it was hard to hide a nuclear arsenal, but stuff like this—like she said, it could be stowed anywhere.

  One nightmare future at a time, Adrian. Focus!

  “I hate to ask the obvious question, but what keeps these nanites from attacking us?”

  “A keen sense of territoriality. Nothing gets past the outer perimeter they set up. Nothing.” She had already thrown the suitcase back in the hole and was shoveling over it with the ice and snow.

  When she was satisfied, she said, “You ready to get on that spaceship?” she asked.

  He surveyed it through the cover of the woods. “I presume you want us to look like we might have an actual reason for doing so.”

  “Yeah, I figured we’d take out a couple of those guys loading and unloading the cargo. Pick up some boxes to carry on ourselves.”

  “We’re not exactly dressed like them and thanks to your poor man’s defense system, we can’t exactly change either.”

  “You’d be surprised what can be overlooked in a rush to get back into outer space. And they look like they’re in a rush. Possibly there’s a satellite due to pass over that the ship’s cloaking device can’t fool.”

  Adrian followed her, marching through the snow to the hole in the ground that the laborers were carrying things out of to load on to the ship, and that people were carrying things into from the ship.

  As she was about to step into the hole, he grabbed her by the arm. “You know, that could be another spaceship buried underneath the snow they’re dismantling, removing the evidence piece by piece.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we’re way past the ‘There are Aliens Among Us’ problem.”

  It took him a beat but he finally conceded, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  They descended into the hole.

  He was somewhat relieved to find it was just an underground warehouse, of admittedly vast scale. There were forklifts in use, and the fork lift drivers were consulting their GPS units for help navigating the maze. The high ceiling was supported by columns of ice. Actually, the cavern was a naturally chiseled out structure. The whole place reminded Adrian of those underground salt mines in the Midwest. Escalators assisted workers in and out of the hole above their heads. They were likely solar powered. Giant batteries could store up energy from the faint sun for the few days a year when they’d be depleted almost all at once.

  Adrian and Veronica picked up two cases coming straight at them along the conveyor belt situated near the escalator to the surface. They were surprised to see how little effort it took to lift the large cases. Suspiciously little.

  “Anti-gravity cases?” he shout-whispered at her over the din of the moving escalators, mobile forklifts, and workers making swishing noises like the ocean crashing against the shore with their cold-air respirations.

  “Maybe this is some kind of technology exchange. And keep your voice down,” she whispered back, in a more appropriate tone. Perhaps better attuned to the rising and falling din.

  They climbed their way up the escalator, right past all sorts of workers suited up differently than them, but the fact that there was more than one suit type down here worked to their advantage.

  They trudged through the snow towards the space ship.

  That turned out to be the bigger give away. Because all the other laborers were practically skating over the snow. They were apparently wearing anti-gravity boots, dialed down just enough to keep them from breaking the surface of the softly packed ice crystals, as opposed to having them floating away. “This is going to get us noticed,” Adrian bitched, sinking a good fo
ur to six inches into the snow with each step, “if the uniforms didn’t do the trick.”

  “Why? When have you gone to work and found everyone arrived without forgetting something from home?”

  “You have the complete calm of a sociopath, you know that?” Adrian barked. “I can’t believe I’m actually envious.”

  A few minutes later, which felt more like a few eternities later, they were boarding the spaceship by way of its lowered cargo bay door.

  Once inside, it was a matter of ducking behind the storage boxes without anyone catching on. Easy enough to do as it turned out, with everyone focused more on loading and unloading to some ticking clock whose moving arms only they could hear.

  One of the package handlers got too close and Adrian was a little shocked to see him turn blue and collapse, only moments before the nanites started eating their way through his coveralls. At the rate they were going, he wouldn’t even be dust in another few minutes.

  Veronica stowed the body out of sight while Adrian busied himself opening containers, hoping the same rules didn’t apply as with their case—that any unauthorized person would trigger an unscheduled explosion.

  As he unsnapped case after case he found a distinct theme emerging. “They’re trading weapons technologies, alright. Hard to tell from this stuff which is alien. But my guess is they’re trading their last year’s tech for our nextgen tech.”

  A little more qualified than he was to make such a statement, Veronica came over to inspect the cases for herself. She ended up nodding at him.

  The ship’s door was closing.

  The spaceship was taking off.

  “I suppose it’s too late to reconsider,” Veronica said.

  “In more ways than one,” he quipped.

  “We’ve got to find Tum before he gets to where they’re taking him.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “If we have to go door to door, better here than wherever they’re taking us.”

  Adrian didn’t care for her tone. “You sound like you’re expecting some mother ship up there that will swallow this thing like an afterthought.”