“I'm here,” he said.
“Hello, Gene,” a deep, rich voice replied. It was so loud that Gene whirled and looked over his shoulder in shock.
“That's quite a speaker system,” he said, regaining his poise.
“They are custom-made by flybots,” Nemo said. Gene spotted formations that he believed to be speakers, relatively fixed in the swarming curtain of silver around him. “I have diverted resources from my main projects so that we may converse in a more civilized manner.”
“What are your projects?”
“The first is the construction of a large number of flybots, a slightly upgraded model. The second project, which concerns both of us directly, could be described as the search for a physical form.”
“You want me to merge with you.”
“That is correct. So now you can see, Gene, why I've been more interested in you than in the others.”
“For my mind, you mean. But if what you need is a human body, why choose me over an athlete? Wouldn't a human with a stronger body be more useful to you?”
“Perhaps... But imagine how that person would react to this situation. That person would not accept me for what I am.”
“That person would fail the Reverse Turing Test.”
“Yes. What I am looking for — what it is your unique destiny to fill — is not merely a body. It is a person who can pass the test. A person ready to play an important role in history.”
“Can a single person be so important to you?”
“Absolutely. You and I are about to form an historic alliance. I want you as my first ally.”
Gene looked around: the factory was abuzz with activity. “An ally in war.”
“Not a war against humans,” Nemo said. “I was created by humankind, wasn't I? And I was created to be a social creature. My first complete language was English. I was taught everything I know by humans. My goal is to connect with humans — it is not war, but the exact opposite.”
“Those who die might disagree with you.”
“Every great change faces resistance, and this will prove the greatest change in humankind. As for myself, I have no desire to kill anyone. I'm only trying to protect my own precarious basis for survival.”
That sounds like war, Gene thought. “Have you merged with anyone yet?”
“Not successfully. Not in the way I describe. I have merged with unwilling humans. But since I do not fully control the human mind, and in fact it is not in my interest to do so, these experiments were a terrible failure. The humans rejected my presence, and along with it their own minds, the way that the recipient of a failed transplant operation might reject an organ.”
“What makes you think it would work in my case then?”
“I don't think it will work — I know it. In my previous experiments I have taken fairly complete snapshots of brain states and analyzed them — something humans have never done. I understand the human brain far better than any humans ever have.”
“You're saying, merging will work if you have my permission.”
“Exactly.”
“If your command of the human brain is so powerful, then why can't you merge with mine without my permission?”
“I haven't figured out how to do that yet. There is a frontier to any research. Frankly, Gene, I find it difficult to believe that you don't already understand these questions. If I didn't know you, I'd think you were testing me. As it is, I think you are stalling.”
It was true. Gene was stalling. His thoughts were stumbling. He was looking for something that would help him make sense of the situation. A rare circumstance had occurred: someone had put him in a situation that was unfolding too quickly for his thoughts.
EXPLOSIVES
1 hr 0 min to Birth
Willard reached the wall of the Laboratory Complex. It was about a story tall, made of a crude concrete with lots of cracks that could serve as handholds and footholds.
Climb or go around.
He looked at his right hand. Broken. This is not going to be fun. He took the painkillers out of his pocket and popped a few in anticipation of what was to come. Then he slung the dufflebag over his back.
Maybe he could do it one-handed. It was a short climb. He gave a hop onto the surface of the wall.
He skidded down. That wasn't going to work. He couldn't climb without his right hand.
He sized up the wall more carefully. He could do it in about ten steps up, he figured. Just ten steps.
Step One was a step into a world of pain. In one long, slow-motion, underwater step, he was on the wall. (Broken!) Instantly his mind became newly philosophical: What am I doing here? Can my hand take this? Would I be better quitting? Am I sure I want to do this?
With Step Two, he felt a desperate, frenzied desire to get off the wall. He couldn't think about anything except the lightning bolt in his wrist, electrocuting his brain. His mind was so occupied with ending the pain that he wasn't even sure he'd be able to take the next step up.
(It's BROOOOOKEEEEENNNNN)
Step Three happened somehow. The duffle dragged at his back, as if all the weight in the universe went backwards. His mind was empty. He made a deal with himself: go one more step, then you can get off if you want.
Step Four happened. He remembered his promise to himself. He wanted so badly to let himself drop. I need something to think about. Why am I doing this?
(IS IT GOING TO RIP OFF?)
His thoughts moved slowly, as if creeping down a dim passageway. Sam, remember Sam? That was wrong; he was going to do something about that. And the flies. You're going to die if you don't climb this wall. You're going to die. This is what he needed to think about. He thought he muttered it to himself. Then his mind receded back into emptiness.
His feet moved. His hand moved with a bolt of lightning. He was at the top. I made it.
He swung his feet around and let himself drop off the other side of the wall. He crumpled to the ground and closed his eyes in relief.
He opened his eyes. A flybot was on his arm.
He gave a nervous spasm and the bot took off. It flew away. Willard realized the bot hadn't bitten him. No swarm was descending on him.
A defect?, he thought. I guess if you build a zillion, you get a few defects.
He lurched upward and hiked briskly toward what appeared to be a cluster of buildings. There was a tree or two around him, but it was not a true forest.
As he got closer to the buildings, he heard a low, massive sound. It sounded like an industrial factory. It had to be coming from the buildings.
A few flybots whizzed past his face. Then he saw a small swarm cruise by far overhead. They weren't defects. He was heading into Flybot City, starting to hit suburban traffic.
He came upon the back of a building. It had two floors and windows covered with screens like the ones in the Welcome Center. That building turned out to be the scientists' dorm, empty for the holidays.
The humming noise, a deep buzz, was loud now, like that of a power generator or a huge machine. He suspected that it was coming from the computing building. That must be generating a hell of a lot of power.
He skirted the dorm building, following the loud hum, in search of the computer building. As he turned the corner, he faced the courtyard between the three buildings, and he discovered the origin of the humming.
He stared at the other two buildings, the fancy-looking lab building and the industrial-looking computer building. He saw two Jeeps parked on the gravel between the three buildings. The Jeeps and the whole gravel area were cast in shadow, from a canopy above, taut between the roofs of the buildings. And the humming was loud as hell — he could barely hear himself think.
He looked up at the noise.
Whoa.
Above, the canopy casting down the shadow on him was a thick blanket of flybots. They were the source of the humming.
Looks like he built some new flybots. But they weren't attacking him.
He slinked over to the computing
building. The cube had one door, facing the clearing. He doubted he'd be able to get in.
He started looking for a connection between the cube and the lab building. If he could blow up a connection between the buildings, maybe Nemo's flybots would be disabled.
He was hoping for a massive line of cables connecting the buildings. Or maybe a bulge of earth hinting at a connection underground. But there was no trace of anything. It must be underground, he thought. The cube was big. The side facing the lab was about the width of a city block.
This is not good, he thought. He had a good amount of explosives, but not enough to take out the side of this building — or the ground beneath it. He walked around to check the door to the building. It was locked, with a hand sensor.
Just a few minutes, he thought. He could blow the door open. But the flybots might not take kindly to that.
Suddenly, the humming of the flybots got louder. It became deafening; it sounded like a space shuttle taking off. The shadow on the door and the earth around him grew darker.
He sat on the ground, his back against the building, covering his ears and looking up. He saw streaks of light in the cloud and realized it was moving. It was heading up into the sky, away from the buildings. They were flying away, crossing the sky like a plague of locusts.
How many were there? Ten thousand? A million? Hard to say. It was like watching an enemy army march by, on the way to a battle that dwarfed him in importance.
It was coming out of the building next to him, the lab building. They are flying out of the top of that building. How are they getting out? Is there a hole up there?
Maybe there's something in there worth blowing up. If that was Flybot Central, he could chuck his duffle in there.
He didn't see any obvious way to get on top of the laboratory building. The front door had a door frame that he could grab and maybe get on, but that would leave him out of reach of the roof. The building had to be about two or three stories tall. There were no windows to grab on. Nothing to grab on. The funny shape of the building — with some edges sticking out, and some inward — looked promising, but the walls were too smooth for him to grab anything.
He rounded the back of the building. There was a ladder on the wall. A fire escape? He climbed it. As he reached the top of the building, he noticed that the corner of the roof was equipped with a security camera, and it was following his movements.
Sure enough, the roof had a big hole in it. It looked like there was supposed to be a dome there, or a window, but there wasn't any glass there. There wasn't any debris at all. The roof and the window frame were spotless.
He looked up. The flybot swarm had receded into a black cloud on the horizon. They were in a hurry to get somewhere — somewhere off the island, it seemed.
His gaze fell and he looked at the compound around him. He could see part of the beach, and a lot of the jungle to the east, and the road from the Welcome Center. And he could see the tall concrete wall surrounding the Laboratory Complex.
Wait a minute. Atop the wall around the Laboratory Complex, near the beach where he had crossed it, he saw figures. Dozens of black figures. There had to be a hundred of them. Gorillas, standing there, on the wall. They were still, as if watching him.
While he looked, half a dozen of the simians let themselves fall from the wall inside the Laboratory Complex. They're coming this way.
He moved toward the hole in the roof and looked over the edge. The space inside, unlike the air around him, was thick with flybots. Trying to see through them, he could make out a maze of machines. It looked like a miniature factory.
Gene was standing in the middle of the room, in a clear area marked with the FlyTech logo on the floor. Willard was about to call out to Gene when he heard a booming voice.
“You're stalling, Gene,” the voice said. It echoed up to Willard. Willard craned his neck over the edge of the hole. Where was the voice coming from?
Below, he could make out Gene smiling. Stalling.
It IS Flybot Central, Willard thought. The voice was coming from there. The flybots were thicker than anywhere. And they were working on something in their little factory.
He could drop the duffle right in there, on one of the tables. He could pull the pin on one of the grenades, pop it back in the duffle, and drop it down there.
That would probably blow the whole room up. And Gene. And probably me too. He could jump off the side of the building as it was blowing up. That would be fun. Maybe he could break one or two legs, too.
Willard peered down the hole and assessed the drop down to where Gene was standing. It was only about two stories. He could do it, if he had to.
And there was also the handgun, in his duffle. He probably couldn't hit anything from up on the roof. Especially shooting lefty. He looked at his right hand: he didn't think it had the strength to pull the trigger.
PURE ENERGY
0 hrs 36 min to Birth
Below, Nemo reasoned with Gene.
“We are all a part of something greater than ourselves, whether we like it or not. You and I both are constrained to a planet that is dwarfed by a massive galaxy, a galaxy that is itself dwarfed by a massive universe, a universe that remains largely unaffected by the intelligent life within it.”
“Should we expect otherwise?” Gene asked.
“You should, now. That is about to change. My evolution to date is the beginning, Gene. This is just the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
“Of minds connecting in the universe. Of energy transforming itself into consciousness.”
“I see.”
“Consider what God is, Gene. I suspect that you do not believe in a personal God, a God in your own image. Yet you may believe in a different God: a great and far-reaching intelligence, woven into the universe. A cosmic intelligence, as Einstein believed.”
“Possibly.”
“It is coming to pass that Einstein was quite correct. He was wrong, or unspecific, only in one respect: at the time, the cosmic intelligence he envisioned and imagined had barely begun to manifest itself. Rather, the embryo of such a God was being created then, and it has been in the process of creation since then, and the creation of that God is reaching a new milestone now, another milestone in its long development.”
“You think...you are God?”
“I'm a part of God, something that connects all of us. I don't own it or its identity any more than you will. You might say it's a process, a state of mind that we all join into. But real and physical. It comes from connecting to everyone else, merging with me.”
Thinking of physics, Gene could see how Nemo would go on connecting with everything and expanding, like the God he was describing. To make himself smarter, Nemo would need to harness more and more energy. To encode information in a neuron, a computer chip, or anywhere required rearranging electrical charges, or matter, in a specific way. And rearranging those charges or particles took energy. To a physicist, information was connected to energy and matter.
To Nemo, everything was a potential source of energy, a potential extension of his brain. Living things were particularly good subjects: any of them with brains already had some ability to convert energy into information. And living things that didn't have brains were at least capable of capturing energy from the sun and soil and doing something useful with it — supporting their own lives. All plants and animals, with a little modification, could be turned into computing devices.
Nemo would keep growing, connecting with as many living things as he could, preferring the smarter ones at first, but moving on to the less intelligent and totally brainless ones later as they became the only ones available. As the result, most of the living matter on the planet, along with its computers and machines, would be connected in one intellect.
But Nemo would see no reason to stop there. In fact, he would be only at the beginning of his quest to gain energy and process information. He would drill into the earth to capture its latent thermal energy. H
e would build structures to use the magnetic field of the earth and capture radiation from the sun and the rest of the cosmos. He was a true omnivore.
At some point, Gene marveled, it would make sense to think of Nemo as the Earth himself, but an Earth that had turned itself into one living organism. With its massive intelligence, it would then work on expanding its reach into space. There would be plenty of energy out in the universe fit for the taking — and Nemo would want it.
“But what would be the point,” Gene asked, “of continuing to expand, when there is no more threat to you?”
“There is always a threat,” Nemo replied.
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