Patterns of thought and codes of defiance. Guise of eternal life.
Flailing, screaming masses…
this has to be a dream.
she’s dead.
He remembered the feel of her death, the sound of her agonized mechanical scream coming from so, so far away. The feel of part of his soul excised. The feel of all that had given him hope and love and the power to continue in a world of chaos and blackness and impossibility. My god, the helplessness he had felt. But…
Before then, there had been a time…
Voices, from above and somehow within.
“Who are they? How could they have—”
“Quiet. He’s coming around.”
“Their patterns aren’t in the registry. They could be one of the—”
“No. No, they aren’t one of the machine codes. I know them.”
“How could you possibly—”
“Shh.”
Simon opened his eyes slowly, painfully. First blackness, then the impression of television static in the form of two human outlines. He blinked and it was gone. One of the men reached out, gently touched Simon’s forehead and cheek.
“Solid enough for now, but there was a hell of a lot of signal degradation in the transfer.”
“But how could you know them?”
The dark man turned, gazed icily at his companion with silver eyes.
“I told them they’d get here eventually. I never expected them to arrive so soon. This wasn’t a part of the plan.”
Simon watched this conversation through the haze of his aching mind. He finally placed where he had briefly seen the larger man before. Diablo.
“I know them because they came from the same world I escaped from. They’re monsters just like me.”
Simon frowned, unable to gather enough strength to say anything. The dark man leaned down, whispered into his ear.
“Welcome to heaven, Simon Hayes.”
He touched Simon’s soul with his own, giving him life anew.
Richter.
Simon fell back into the void.
Waking, sitting up. A hand wipes sleep from eyes. Searching surroundings for familiarity, finding a precipitous lack thereof. Gnawing, thudding pain from behind silver eyes.
“What do you remember, Simon?”
He spun to face the source of the voice and found him sitting in a darkened corner of the room. He sat up in his chair, face falling partially into the light, but bands of shadow concealed most of it. Richter folded his hands in his lap, regarded Simon with a palpable mixture of curiosity and pity.
“Where’s Maggie?”
“She’s close. What I just can’t figure out is how you two got here. Please, tell me what you remember so I can piece together what happened. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Where’s ‘here?’”
Richter smiled sadly, shook his head. “What do you remember?”
Simon shrugged his shoulders. “Not much. You disappeared into that light in the Diablo ship, and everything started to fall apart, so we ran to the surface. Those aliens were everywhere, except we found out they weren’t aliens when Maggie—Oh Jesus, she was wounded so badly, we tried to pull her into the ship—”
“The ship? The Diablo vessel?”
“No, there was a spaceship that came from above, not one of the alien ships, but one with other people in it who came to help us. They pulled us in and we tried to pull Maggie up but she was covered in blood and she fell—Is she really all right? She was bleeding so badly from—”
“She fell from the vessel?”
“Yeah, into the mountain. Most of it was coming apart anyways, being pulled into the sun, and she fell into the crack made in the earth. I saw the light from that vessel, the black sphere, just before she fell, and when she fell I let go of the man’s hand and fell after her.”
“She fell into the sphere?”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up.”
Richter touched Simon’s mind with his own and saw that Simon was telling the truth. He saw more than the truth, and he looked away for fear that anyone could possess within him the destiny of futures and not yet feel them trying to tear him apart.
“Where’s Maggie?”
Richter looked soberly into Simon’s eyes. “She’s very badly wounded, but she’s alive. We’ve been able to stabilize her, but she can’t maintain her pattern in that state for long. There’s been so much signal degradation.”
Simon frowned his incomprehension. “What do you mean? Signal degradation?”
Richter’s hands unfolded, and he walked over to sit next to Simon. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Simon shook his head, face acquiring a veil of suspicion and distrust.
Richter sighed. “Of course not. How could you? I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“Tell me.”
Richter nodded slowly, resigned. He cleared his throat.
“Do you know what an emulation is, Simon?”
Simon shook his head.
Richter told him.
Simon shut the door behind him, leaned against the wall, overcome with emotion and exhaustion and horror. The chamber was a vacuum of sound, and every inhalation and exhalation was magnified disgustingly. How could it still sound so real?
The table at the center of the room was illuminated by a harsh light that came from above. The still figure on the table looked so small and peaceful and utterly still. They had contained her in stasis until the transfer could be performed. She was alive, but barely so.
She lay before him, eyes closed, her body covered with a thin medical blanket that was stained with her blood. The erupting Enemy armor had torn her midsection apart. In her comatose state, she looked very peaceful. Unsettlingly peaceful.
“Oh, Maggie…”
Simon bent, crouched down. His face was at the level of the cold table she lay on. He reached out and touched her hair, brushed it away from her face. The unruly curl… A thin line of blood trickled from the right corner of her mouth. Simon wiped it away.
“What am I supposed to do, Maggie?”
Her face held no answers. Her breathing was strained, and it hurt him deeply to hear her in pain. Simon knelt and held her. Her eyes remained closed.
“I hope this is the right thing to do. I hope…”
A tear slid down his face. He buried his face against the unmoving, cold mask that her face had become. He shuddered with the grief flowing through him.
He kissed her cold, cold lips one last time.
“I hope our deaths aren’t for nothing.”
He closed his eyes and knew it was time. He left the room and left humanity behind. His life was forsaken; his love was forsaken.
Simon Hayes became Judas Simon. Maggie Flynn became Judas Magdalene.
“What do you mean, ‘transfer’ her? Where?”
“If she stays in her present form, she’ll die. There’s nothing we can do for her. Her signal was almost lost in this transfer, and I’m surprised she came through at all.”
“What does it involve?”
“She’ll be transferred into a Judas vessel. Her body’s pattern will corrupt soon. If that goes, then there’s nothing we can do to retrieve her, but if we transfer her to the pattern cache within a Judas, we can at least save her essence, and she can be emulated by the program.”
“Why can’t you just put her pattern into the—the things you—”
“The download generators.”
“Why can’t you put her pattern into one of your generators and make a full emulation of her, like you?”
“Her signal’s too weak as is. She wouldn’t last as a full emulation. The only hope is to put her into a shadow.”
“Please save her.”
“We’ll do everything we can, but I can’t promise—”
“How long until my pattern breaks down?”
Richter looked away, down at the floor, back at Simon. “Your signal isn’t degr
ading as fast as Maggie’s, but it’ll break down soon enough. The transfer was pretty hard on your pattern.”
“Upload me too. I’ll do it. I’ll be one of your Judas. I can’t live here without her. I have to go with you, and if that means becoming a Judas, then I’ll do it.”
“But there’s no turning back. Once the pattern is uploaded, the physical is wiped from the registry. You can’t—”
“Do it, Richter. For me. For Maggie.”
Richter smiled. “I could feel it before. You really do love her, don’t you?”
Simon said nothing, but his mind reached out and Richter knew all.
“I can’t live without her, Richter. Upload us.”
Richter nodded slowly, knowingly. “I’ll do it. Go see her.”
Screaming. Confusion. Agony.
(WHERE AM I?)
“Please, please, calm yourself. You’re safe, and everything’s going to be all right. If you’ll just—”
(WHAT AM I?)
“…”
(WHAT AM I!?)
“You’re a Judas vessel.”
(a—a what?)
“You’re an emulation of Maggie Flynn. Your body was dying. Your mind was uploaded into a compressed black hole, a Shadow. All of your memories, all of your experiences, everything that you were has been transferred. You’re a Judas now. Your body died, and your soul was saved.”
(where—where’s simon?)
((i’m here, maggie.))
The sensation was unlike any other. More than physical. More than mental. The words he spoke to her were fire in her mind. His soul touched hers in a way it never possibly could have before, a sensation even more intimate, more powerful than when they had shifted together in front of a campfire countless aeons ago. Everything that was Simon was for an instant Maggie. Everything that was Maggie became Simon.
They had never been closer, but they had never been such an eternity apart. The physical was dead; the echoes of the electrical impulses that had comprised their souls was all that remained. There was a palpable mechanical chill in the interaction between them. They were machines now, and never again could they hold each other.
Only ever really one story: a boy, a girl, and the end of the world.
Their minds touched, and each tried to console the other as they realized the extent of the sacrifice they had made. Their souls touched, and it was almost like they were together again. Almost.
They were Judas.
They had abandoned the planet, left it to the dying masses and their fading patterns. They had escaped before the upload and the fury and the terror of heaven.
They had become Judas.
They had begun this insane chase through time, struggling to prevent the machinations of the damned, determined to destroy those that would be gods.
They had forsaken their humanity to prevent the Purpose.
“Damn it, Simon, reweb. For Richter’s sake!”
The monitor before him remained blank except for the navigational screen, which displayed a dark field of unknown stars, spiraling around them as they pirouetted in the void.
Zero-Four nervously ran his fingers through his hair, or what little there was left of it. He sensed eyes upon him and spun around.
Jennings and his daughter stood in the doorway. Behind them, West. Of course. Simon had downloaded and printed them all. But why?
“What happened?” The look on Zero-Four’s face was one that Jennings had not yet seen. Jennings’ brow furrowed with anxiety.
“Simon initiated an emergency Shadow break. The tether snapped. We were torn out of the Stream. I don’t know why, and now he’s silent, and he won’t reweb.”
“Where are we?”
“Sensors are dead, but we’re close to the coordinates sent from Malachi. We might be there already. We won’t be able to tell until Simon rewebs.”
“But why would he break from the Stream with such force—”
“I don’t know.” Zero-Four glared at Jennings. “Unless there’d been something in the Stream…Enemy forces, an accident, a new strain of virus code, I just don’t know.”
Patra’s eyes snapped upward.
“What is it, Patty?”
“I…I thought it was a dream. A nightmare. In the stasis—I heard a voice. Faint. Whispers.”
“A voice? What did it say?”
“Something about troops. Ready for departure…And I felt them drawing near. Something terrible. Something black—”
“Of course.” Zero-Four’s eyes lit up. “Of course. She was webbed. You’re part of the Enemy program, so you share part of the mind-essence. You picked up their thoughts. The Enemy codes must be migrating Upwhen, and they caught Simon off-guard—”
“So does Judas Command know? Should we contact them?”
“Our codes might have been compromised. If Shiva really—”
“The voice.”
“What?” Zero-Four turned to Patra. “What about it?”
“The voice in my head. Their voice. I know who it was.”
Zero-Four visibly flinched. “How would you—You couldn’t possibly—”
“Richter. It was Richter.”
Zero-Four looked as if he had been slapped. His face turned an ashen gray, and he grabbed Patra roughly by the shoulders, looked her hard in the eyes.
“How do you know that name?”
Patra was startled, searched for words. “He—He was the dark man, at Diablo. The man who jumped into the light—”
“What light?” His grip on Patra’s shoulders tightened.
And suddenly West was upon Zero-Four, tearing him from Patra, slamming him to the wall, hard. He poised, one arm drawn back, ready to strike.
Zero-Four’s face was bathed in the flickering glow of West’s shifted arm. He looked oddly shocked in the aura.
“I think we all have some explaining to do, but you can go first, once you calm down. You can begin by explaining why you murdered two innocent people—”
“Wh—What?”
“Flynn and Hayes. I saw your eyes. You could have pulled them up, but instead, you let go and let them die. Their blood’s on your hands.”
“I…They—”
“They’re humans, aren’t they? They aren’t aliens. The people who destroyed our planet were god damned humans. How are we supposed to trust you? How the hell do we know that you aren’t the Enemy? You and these Judas? I had dreams in the stasis, too. Nightmares. But I’m not sure that they were dreams. Machines… Screaming, raging people…A war. And Richter…You have a lot to tell us. Get started.” West shifted down, backed away from Zero-Four.
“How do you know that the Judas aren’t the Enemy?”
West stood in silence.
“How do you know that I’m not the Enemy?”
Silence.
“This is how.”
Michael Zero-Four raised his forearms, which began to radiate a faint glow. The flickering aura of shifting emerged. Zero-Four looked at them with cold silver eyes.
Patra walked into the light. “He’s a Styx. Jesus, he’s a Styx.”
“I’m a Judas.”
“My time wasn’t like yours.”
He spoke quietly, unassumingly, even though they could all see the pain in his eyes as he told them the history of a future now long dead. The rage of just moments ago was nowhere to be found on his countenance.
Simon was still silent, and the vessel floated adrift in an unknown universe. Within, they sat in the control chamber, the viewscreens black and dead and hopeless. Each sound fell flatly into the strange gravity of the spherical room.
“I don’t know where to even begin.”
“You could tell us your name. And where we are. And how the hell President Jennings got on to your spaceship.” West looked over to where Jennings was sitting on the black floor, his arms draped around his daughter. She did not appear to care how her father had been rescued; she was simply content that he was there.
Zero-Four smiled weakly, nodded.
/> “My name’s Michael. Michael Zero-Four.”
“What kind of a name is Zero-Four?”
“What kind of a name is Adam West?”
West frowned. “It’s a human name. A real name. What does the Zero-Four mean? And how’d you know my name? I never told you my god-damned name.”
“That’s not all I know about you, Adam.”
“What else do you know about me?”
“Well, I know that you hate something called the ‘Batman.’ I know you cheated on your fifth grade geography test that you had to take a week late because you were in the hospital with a temperature of one-hundred six degrees and they placed you in a bathtub full of ice water and you couldn’t for the life of you remember the capitals of all fifty-seven states. I know you first made love to Abigail on the night of your high school graduation and when you woke up the next morning it was raining and you could hear the raindrops hitting the roof above you and she was there next to you, warm and sleeping and entangled in your arms, and you’ve never felt that content again. And I know that the suspicions David has about you and his daughter are unfounded. You’re a gentleman. I know everything that you were, and everything that you will be, Adam.”
West’s face was an emotional battlefield. His eyes were a subtle mixture of fury and grief. “Who are you?”
He blinked, eyebrows furrowed. “I’m Michael Zero-Four. Program Seven, pattern cache Judas Golgotha Simon, emulation zero-four, Michael.”
“You’re talking like you’re a fucking computer file.”
He laughed, more to himself than to his audience. “Aren’t we all?”
“I don’t—What are you talking about? No, of course I’m not a—”
“No, you wouldn’t know about it. How could I have been so blind? I just assumed since you’re—You don’t know yet because you haven’t lived it yet.”
Jennings stood, arms crossed, hand on chin. “Maybe I can do a better job of explaining it to them, Michael. It was quite a shock when I first heard it, myself.”
“Daddy, what’s going on?” Patra had gravitated to West’s side when her father stood up. “Where are we?”
“Patty, it’s not a question of where we are anymore. It’s a question of when and what we are.”
Patra shook her head, her face beginning to reveal the fear that lurked beneath its surface. “Don’t talk like that. It’s sometime in August, and we’re people. We’re human beings.”
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