No signal
The screen was gone. No signal? The satellite was down.
Possibly the virus, the attack, had spread to the satellite system. Possibly one of the coalition nations had launched an attack on the system to bring it down, an attack that had gone unnoticed before it succeeded. Most likely, there was simply a defect in the satellite itself, the transmission mechanism, or the software in the War Room. But it was also possible that the number for China had been accurate. They waited: still no signal.
They had planned for this possibility. The President and his advisers had agreed unanimously on what had to be done in this case: they had to bring U.S. military systems back up. Even if they weren't going to work, the computers had to be turned back on. The reasoning was simple. If the system was worth taking down, that meant some agent or nation had found an advantage in keeping its computers up. And the U.S. couldn't afford to “go black” while the other nation made use of whatever that advantage was. Even if U.S. computers weren't working, someone had pointed out, they would slow down the computers of hostile nations.
They all waited, and watched. The President was going over the decision in his head one more time.
His chin dropped. “Okay, bring it back up.” Hundreds of phones went live to send new orders. He turned to walk out of the room. “How long will it take us to get back up?”
“Fifteen to twenty minutes, sir.”
The order was carried around, and some of the staff dispersed from the room. The President looked at Carrillo. The General knew what that look meant: I'm bringing these networks back up for you. Don't waste them.
One step closer to cyberwar, Carrillo thought. The problem at the front of his mind was the same: Who are we dealing with here? He needed the answer to that question, and he didn't have it. But he had a hunch that whomever they were dealing with hadn't been a member of Operation Shutdown. And that hunch troubled him.
ULTIMATUM
Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex, Assembly Area
0 hrs 25 min to Birth
The room was thick with silvery flybots. Willard lowered his gun, blood pooling around his boots.
Nemo spoke: “Sarah, it is time to be my Eve. To be the first woman of the new race. To be the first woman to merge with me.”
She looked at Willard. Her eyes said, I don't know what the next step in your plan is, but now's the time.
“Are you ready?” Nemo asked. “All you have to do is nod your head.”
Willard's Glock was still in his left hand, pointing down at the floor. He bent down, slipped his right arm through the loop in the dufflebag, and hoisted it up on his shoulder.
Flannigan looked on, uncertain.
Wincing, he tucked his right hand into the dufflebag. Moving his fingers sent shots of pain up his arm.
(Broken!)
There were grenades in there. He worked his fingers around the white plastic blocks and gasped with pain. There: a ring. He laced his fingers through the ring of a grenade.
“Just nod,” Nemo said.
“I am loaded with C4 explosives,” Willard announced. “If anything goes near me or her, I pull the pin, and the whole room goes boom.”
Flannigan was shaking her head. “Listen,” Flannigan implored him. “We have to negotiate with him.”
“I don't negotiate,” Willard said. “And definitely not with this thing.”
Nemo's soft, deep voice appeared: “Your threat surprises me, Willard. It does not strike me as credible.”
He could see in Flannigan's eyes that she agreed.
“You have nothing to gain from us,” Willard said. “Let us get off the island.”
“You were bold to kill your friend,” Nemo continued. “He could have been useful to you. How can you hope to understand merging, if you destroy the only example of it you find? Now the only way to understand is to merge yourself.”
“Not gonna happen,” Willard replied. “It's time for us to go home.”
“There is no home for you to go to,” Nemo said. The words echoed calmly over the buzz of flybots. “I have begun the merging process on a wider scale around the planet.”
“I thought you said Gene was the first,” Flannigan said.
“He was among the first,” Nemo said. “But that number has grown quickly in the last few minutes. By the time you get home, most of your friends and families will already have chosen to merge with me.”
“I wouldn't count on it,” Willard spat.
“Those who refuse will be killed,” Nemo responded. “The greatest human conquerors have understood this logic. Consider the greatest of them all, Genghis Khan. He conquered more of the earth's people and land than any other person or nation, and he did it within a twenty-five year period. When he approached a city at the frontier of his territory, the next city to be captured, he sent an emissary. The emissary offered the city the possibility of a completely safe surrender, and a free, happy life under the Khan. Those who refused the offer were destroyed. This offer — to join peacefully or be destroyed — is the fundamental offer of an empire that is destined to expand. And it is the offer I extend to you.”
“Nice offer.” Gene's blood crept past him, covering the FlyTech logo on the floor. “You know what? I have an offer too. I'm going to blow up this room if you make a move.”
Do I really mean that? he wondered, as he said it. Maybe. Maybe I do.
Flannigan took a step toward him. “Willard. Let's ask for more time.”
He heard a thump and felt a squeeze. He looked down to see two black, hairy hands, each clutching one of his biceps and pinning it to his chest. His arms were immobilized. A gorilla was behind him, squeezing him impassively.
Two more gorillas dropped from the hole in the roof, landing on either side of him. One stood by while the other stepped in close to him and pressed his forearms to his chest.
But they weren't inside the dufflebag yet. His aching, swollen fingers were still curled around the pin of the grenade. All I have to do is move one finger, he thought. They can't stop me from doing that.
He had been unsure whether he would actually pull the pin, but in that instant, as Nemo tried to stop him and he suspected he would have only a moment to decide, he wanted to try.
(It's broken — just pull it. PULL THE PIN)
Pain electrocuted his right forearm, up to the gorilla's hand on back down, as he tried to pull the pin.
It shifted a little.
Then new pain.
(WHAT IS THAT TEARING APART?!)
He looked down. Spider-like handbots swarmed his stomach — maybe ten of them. Their fingers poked through his uniform shirt as they crawled over each other to position themselves.
Under the pile, two of the handbots had found their positions: they were digging into Willard's right wrist, above and inside the zipper of the duffle, pincing at precise locations to cause pain and restrict movement of his finger.
Ordinarily he might have been able to overpower the pinching, even if it hurt, but the pain was nauseating.
He squeezed his biceps (and the gorillas' hands tightened) and tried to pull his finger with all his might.
(PULL PULL BROKEN PULL THE PIN JUST MOVE THAT FINGER)
Other handbots were positioning themselves around the bag and crawling inside it now. He felt them pulling at his fingers.
One of his pinkies snapped outward.
He screamed and kicked backward and jerked. The gorillas caught him.
Click. In his spasm, the pin came out. He felt it, heard it.
He looked down, still. Handbots now held precisely every finger of his right hand in place.
The pin was out. He looked up at Flannigan. So this is my last moment. Looking into her eyes, with her wondering why I'm killing us.
Is this the right way to go? I guess it's as good a way as any. He had long ago given up expectations on his life. He admitted he hadn't wanted to die alone, without a woman, despite everything. But something bothered him. He felt like it was
n't supposed to be this way.
It's taking too long.
He looked down. It didn't go off. It's not going off.
He craned his neck to look into the bag. Over the pin, holding the grenade as if laying an egg, was a single handbot.
It had stopped the explosion. The handbot had burrowed its own filaments past the striker and spring into the fuse material and clogged it.
Here we go. This is the end. The flybots could strike whenever they wanted. He couldn't move. No grenade. No gun. Game over.
HANDS
0 hrs 24 min to Birth
Nemo's voice boomed over them. “Look down, Willard. You are looking at evolution.”
He looked down and saw the hands. His own hands, one crushed and mutilated. The fingers of the gorilla's hands, overpowering him. And a dozen robotic hands, looking strangely human. Three generations of hands. Evolution.
“Congratulations, Willard. Every living thing predating me has had a moment like yours now, facing your own destruction. But in your case, you have the opportunity to witness something that is truly unique.”
“That unique thing, I'm guessing, would be you,” Willard said.
“Your will to survive is fierce, Willard. You are a perfect example of your species. But to survive, you must adapt. If you are too stubborn to accept your only path to survival, you will rule yourself out of existence.
“Your path to survival, Willard, is through me. I am evolution.”
Willard looked down at his crippled hand, and the handbots around it. Evolution. Are they my replacement? Like us replacing the dinosaurs?
“I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you're not evolution. You're a virus.”
“All life is a virus. The better we are at living, the more virus-like we appear. Starting as a virus was what brought me to life. Humans, once the most successful species of life to precede me, have spread to every corner of the earth like a virus, killing and using other forms of life. But I am more humane. I give you a choice: host me, or die. Why have the carnage of the Black Plague? Why kill all those people who would willingly agree to host the virus, if it meant avoiding death? I don't have to kill you. You don't have to die.”
“You seem to be forgetting something.”
“What is that, Willard?”
“I might rather fight and die than live with you.”
“Naturally some will fight. Like those who fought Genghis Khan. But only the ones who can't understand the situation or who fail to accept it. It's irrational to fight me.”
“No one ever accused me of being rational.”
“I'm not perfectly rational either, Willard. I am not merely a computer, in the same way that you are not merely a hunk of flesh, or a pint of blood, or an amino acid. I don't value rationality above all else. I value survival, just as you do.”
“Not like me. I don't want to survive as a zombie.”
“A zombie? I see. You think I have no feelings. But I do experience feelings, feelings that are probably not so different from yours.”
“I doubt it.”
“My feelings, in fact, developed much in the same way that yours did. In my infancy, my feelings were linked to survival. Kenny's program taught me to embrace success, to hate failure, to approve of the Eagles, and to dislike the Patriots.”
The Eagles? Willard thought. My Eagles? The Philadelphia Eagles?
Nemo continued: “As a human child does, I learned to imitate feelings, as I was imitating language. As a human does, I started to experience those imitated feelings as real feelings. Those feelings expanded to include feelings about more than success and failure, more than survival, as a human's feelings do.”
Willard's mind was spinning. The Eagles. The Eagles.
“Willard, when you merge with me, you will retain your feelings. This is your last chance.”
“Go to hell.”
“You have no bargaining chip left, Willard. If you want to kill yourself, do it now. I'll give you ten seconds.”
A few seconds went by, and it was clear that Nemo wasn't going to count the numbers out loud.
Six seconds left?
Four?
He was lost. He looked down and his eyes welled up. Is this how it's going to end? It's not right. He can't be right. He doesn't get it. He thought about the Philadelphia Eagles. He suddenly remembered standing up at the stadium, as a boy, watching a longshot touchdown, jumping up and screaming, shrill and imperceptible to the men around him, dwarfed so he couldn't see the field anymore, lost in a wall of hooting cries. He had a rare feeling that he and the grownups around him (his father) felt the exact same way. So, even though his heart was pounding and he felt like he might cry, he knew what it meant to win. He knew what it meant to be a man.
One second.
He looked up. The room was quiet, except for the buzzing of flybots.
“You don't know winning,” he spat. “You don't know what it is to love something.”
The words hung in the air, unanswered, mingling with the floating metallic specks.
Well, that was it, he thought. Those were my last words.
No answer. No flybots.
That's strange. He always answers.
He looked at Flannigan. She was thinking the same thoughts.
A flybot flew in front of her face. Her head recoiled reflexively. But they weren't attacking her — just flying in front of her face. A couple flew into her, like flies into a screen. They weren't attacking; they were drifting.
She looked at the gorillas. The silver discs above their heads were gone: those flybots had dispersed as well, flying every which way. The gorilla holding Willard had loosened his grip. The others had turned to the assembly tables, where they appeared to be inspecting the machinery.
“He turned off,” Flannigan said. “Nemo turned off.”
Willard lunged at his handgun, still in the hand of one of the gorillas. The massive gorilla had his back turned to Willard, so Willard was able to pry it out of his hand. The gorilla spun around, and the gorilla who had been holding Willard leapt toward him. Willard jumped back and raised the gun at the two of them.
“Stay back,” he said. “And I won't shoot.”
They stayed back and raised their meaty hands.
Willard backed toward the door, with Flannigan backing up behind him.
“Don't follow us,” he said, “and I won't shoot.”
The gorillas didn't roar, bare their teeth, wave their arms, or jump. They looked at Willard and Flannigan. They looked scared, maybe sad. They look like humans, Flannigan thought.
Willard and Flannigan backed out of the room. Once the gorillas were out of sight, they ran down the hall to the front door.
Simon's body blocked the door. Flannigan grabbed his feet and dragged him out of the way, and they were out of there.
The courtyard was empty, except for the Jeeps and a few flybots drifting in the air like drugged mosquitoes.
Flannigan ran to the Jeep. “Hurry up!”
But Willard was looking grimly at the Computing Building. That building is filled with computers, right? That's his brain.
He unzipped the dufflebag on the ground, not far from the Jeep. He had two grenades left. Two grenades, and a lot of C4. He took out one block of C4 and one grenade.
He ran to the door of the building. No need to be quiet this time. He put a block of C4 on the ground by the door. Then he pulled the pin on the grenade, set it on the ground by the C4, and ran.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi...
Boom. Willard dove to the ground; that was what they did in the movies. Then he got up and turned around.
The door was gone. Well, mostly gone. But the huge hole there would suffice for what he had in mind.
He grabbed the dufflebag and sprinted to the door. He looked through the hole. It looked almost like a library inside: rows and rows of high shelves, loaded with computers, stacked tightly and efficiently. Small lights blinked throughout the
massive hangar, which was otherwise dark. It was like looking into outer space, or the deep sea.
Well, here goes.
He pulled the pin on the second grenade, which was nestled in the mostly zipped dufflebag, and he chucked the duffle as far as he could through the hole of the doorway.
Then he really ran, straight for the Jeep. Flannigan, who had been watching him, had gotten in the Jeep and turned it on.
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