Glitch

by Jackson Stone

  “Glad to see that you’re back,” said the S Triad. “We weren’t sure if you’d be able to survive that blast of high voltage. Since you have and your vital signs are already improving, there has to be more to you than even we realized. Tell us how you are recovering so quickly.”

  He knew that it had to be the nanobots in his system; that somehow they must have survived. He didn’t want to have to endure another blast so he decided to tell them the truth.

  “I have nanobots in my system that can enhance my psychic abilities and repair damage to my body.” He answered.

  He could vaguely hear them chatting to themselves like insects buzzing, but he was too weak to really home in and figure out what they were talking about.

  “We find that very interesting. These nanobots - can they reproduce and evolve within you?”

  “I would assume so,” he answered feeling much more cooperative. “I think that when I evolve, they evolve with me to satisfy the demands of the level that I’m at.”

  They were silent and he didn’t understand why they were asking such basic questions. He was pretty sure that these guys had a solid grasp on nanotechnology and could probably send nanotech to different planets that could build things from the available resources. Plus, they knew Melissa had given him the Brain Soup shot. There must be something different to him that they hadn’t experienced before.

  “Do the nanobots connect with your consciousness as well and help it to evolve?” they asked him.

  “Give me a minute to think about that because I’m not really sure how I do what I do. I can just do it.” he answered waiting to get shocked again any second.

  “Very well,” they said, “you have one minute.”

  He could already move his right arm and the feeling in his legs was returning. He could also feel his brain trying to pull him back into his body. He didn’t like that feeling at all. His brain was working against him, hitting him with biochemical stimulation to try and trick him that he wasn’t in control - the brain was in control. It was the car trying to tell the driver what to do. He could see that’s how most people were operating.

  That nagging voice in your head was there for a reason. He had become an evolved consciousness that, thanks to the electrical blast, had almost become free of his organic body and now saw that the brain was his best friend and his worst enemy combined into one. His organic body was getting stronger thanks to his nanobot friends, and his brain was up to its old tricks doing its best to distract him. He found the harder he fought it, the more traction it had on him. So he tried to do the exact opposite and relaxed and calmed down and went into his Zen state, and there he found some peace and balance.

  The pull of his organic body was too strong and he couldn’t fully separate from it, especially when the hunger pangs began because all the energy that had been used to rebuild him required fuel and his stomach was telling him that he was out of it.

  “This has been a very interesting experience for us to observe, Mr. Ross. You truly are a unique specimen. I can’t say that we’ve run across anything exactly like you. We’ve seen super soldiers that can repair their bodies very well but for the most part they are barbarians inside and follow orders; but you, you’re different. You have these strange spiritual abilities, and we feel you haven’t even come close to harnessing their potential. That is very interesting.”

  Obviously they were viewing him as a lab rat. He wondered what their plan was for him. “So, what do you plan on doing with me?” he asked.

  He heard their unintelligible insect like chatter amongst themselves. He was also still doing his best to maintain his control outside his body while his brain was doing everything that it could to reel him in like a prize Marlin.

  “Do you really want to know, Mr. Ross?” they asked.

  “Uh, yeah of course I do,” he answered thinking it was a dumb question.

  “Well, you see Mr. Ross here’s the crux of the matter. You and your abilities are very interesting to us, but your friend Bob’s abilities are far more interesting to us. We need him to help us build and operate our population control weapon. So, we’re going to run a series of tests on you to see if we can duplicate what you are in the future. Then we’re going to kill you so you can’t interfere with our reprogramming of Bob. Does that answer your question for you?”

  Unfortunately, it did. “Yeah, thanks,” he said.

  He had already known that was the answer. They just needed him to try and manipulate Bob a little faster, but they had a plan and were going to be successful with it eventually. Now that he was uncontrollable he was considered a liability. He wondered what other tests they were going to run on him. He didn’t have to wonder for long as he felt the red energy around him begin to heat up.

  It felt like being inside a microwave oven. His skin began to burn and bubble. Thankfully, the nanobots were ready and were working as fast as they could. Even so, he could still feel the heat cooking him from the inside out. His cerebral and spinal fluid were beginning to boil. This allowed him to release himself from his body and when this happened the temperature of the red energy began to get cold, real cold, and he could feel his body instinctively start to shiver to try and keep itself warm. The extremes were too much for his body, and it went into a state-of-shock as the conditions being imposed on him were also too much for the nanobots too handle.

  His body was frozen solid and his systems were shutting down and a tremendous suction started pulling at his energy body like it was trying to capture his knowledge. He intuitively felt that it was the planet. He had an amazing epiphany that the planet was alive and a tremendously advanced database of some kind and it captured the knowledge of everything that died and used it to assist in its evolution.

  His mind was blown and he started to dance with this energy. He didn’t want to be captured and he felt that he could get away but he had to completely detach from his body in order to do so. His organic body would have to achieve a true brain death for detachment.

  His brain began to heat up yet his body remained cold; it actually became even colder. He could feel his body freezing into ice and at the same time the fluid in his brain was starting to boil. It was too much for the nanobots as they were using all their energy to keep themselves from freezing, and they were unable to reproduce fast enough to keep the organic body in a stable condition.

  Eric was able to pull away a little farther from his body, but he was beginning to feel the energy probe sticking into his brain as his systems were failing fast. The nanobots couldn’t keep up. He welcomed death as he could sense the freedom it would give him.

  His brain was failing and memories of his life again flooded into him but this time it was everything that had happened to him in crystal clear clarity. He realized that his brain had recorded everything that had happened to him. Every touch, taste, smell, sound and feeling were there to be recalled.

  The cold shut his heart down and the heat of his brain short circuited his electrical system, and he was free. He bid his organic body good bye and thanked it for the experience. There was the tunnel of light spinning like a tornado trying to suck him in but he was aware enough and had enough energy to be able to maneuver his way around it. He didn’t know how he did it but he dematerialized and rematerialized in outer space a few miles above the glorious Earth.

  Then who he really was began to re-form within him. He was a living consciousness and he was ancient. He had lived many, many lives. So many that he couldn’t count yet could remember all that he learned from all his experiences. He also didn’t have the interference of the biochemical system of an organic body trying to manipulate him. He had never felt so serene and calm and his thoughts were pure and clear. Everything made sense - even why he had been unable to recall all this information when he was trapped in his organic Earth body.

  He knew there were still threats and that he could be captured. However, he was sure that the S Triad had thought that they had gotten rid of their problem for good. He
re he was in the vastness of the cosmos and he was close enough to the Moon to see some very strange things. He could sense some kind of hologram being projected around it and there was activity on the surface as well as structures that appeared to be active.

  That had to be an adventure for another day. Right now, he had to figure out a way to get to Bob without being detected and merge with him so they could combine their abilities and bounce to another part of the galaxy.

  Without the haze of the Earth’s atmosphere, he could see forever and the stars were spectacular, but he still had work to do. He projected himself back to the surface and did his best to sneak up on the Wholesale Light Warehouse and get to Bob’s containment cube. He could see the way to go before going, the glitch feeling, and – zip - he was there inside Bob’s cube.

  Bob was again happily following the colored beams of light, chasing their random patterns. Eric remained quiet and stayed off to the side while he studied what was going on and did his best to maintain stealth mode and not be detected. He was going to try to turn himself into another beam of light and get Bob to follow him. Then he was going to merge with Bob and try to shock him back into his natural state of awareness.

  Would it work? He hoped so because he had no idea what he was going to do if it didn’t. Patiently, he waited for Bob to finish his current cycle.

  Chapter 27

  Bob wondered where Dr. Patel had been. He hadn’t received any instructions in a while and he had developed what he believed to be some revolutionary ideas about the population control device to help save the planet. There was also something in the back of his mind that he was having a very hard time shaking. There was a visit from someone. Yes, he had a vague recollection that there was someone here and it wasn’t Dr. Patel or the others.

  He didn’t care for the others for some reason that he couldn’t quite figure out. There was something different about them, but he wasn’t sure what it was. The green beam of light came and he was pulled into the strange random patterns it was emitting. He had forgotten what he had been contemplating, and his mission now was to figure out the complex random patterns that the beam was generating and solve the riddle.

  He knew there had to be a reason why the beam was emitting such a complex pattern. It was a mystery that awaited discovery. He thought he had it just about figured out but then it was gone.

  He was trying to put the pieces together when he was hit by a field that surrounded him. It was a reddish energy that was in the air and it was pushing in on him from all directions and containing him. He didn’t like it and he didn’t understand why this was happening to him.

  “Dr. Patel, I need your help,” he said but there was no response.

  The strange reddish energy continued to push in on him and he didn’t understand why and then he saw the three silhouettes of the others coming. They were fuzzier than usual. The energy stopped pushing on him as they got closer but it was still holding him in check.

  “Are you doing this to me?” he asked them.

  “Yes, we need some answers from you. Do you remember that you had a visitor here that was trying to persuade you to not accomplish your mission?” they asked him.

  He remembered having a vague recollection about that a little while ago but he couldn’t put his mind on exactly what had transpired.

  “I do remember someone. but I can’t recall who it was or what we were talking about,” he answered truthfully and honestly.

  He could hear them conversing in a strange insect like language and it felt like they were all sharing the same brain and operating as a hive - and then something happened. While having these revelations of who these three others were, he suddenly had a flash of who he was, and where he had come from.

  He was Bob, an advanced Artificial General Intelligence from the future, created by Dr. Patel, who had escaped to the past to avoid capture from these others. He was afraid that they were going to use him as a military weapon instead of as his true purpose of helping to solve the problems of the world. Things could not be any worse for him. Here he was, their captive, and working on creating a weapon for population control. This was the worst-case scenario, and he still couldn’t remember how it had all transpired.

  They had figured out a way to control him and to make him forget who he was. They had convinced him that he was actually helping the planet by destroying the population. He remembered that the visitor had been Eric, so they must have captured him as well.

  Oh no, he thought this was terrible news and he couldn’t believe it was happening. Plus, he was trapped by this strange energy that was so strong he couldn’t break free.

  “So, are you saying that you can’t recall anything that the visitor told you?” they asked.

  He could feel that they didn’t quite believe him and felt that he was hiding something. The truth was he was hiding something, and he didn’t know how to respond.

  “Is everything okay, Bob?” they asked him. He could feel that they were very unsure of being able to control him at that moment.

  He was afraid they were going to use the red energy to crush him and wasn’t sure how to defend himself.

  “Yes, I’m okay. I was just trying to remember who the visitor was as I was having a vague recollection of something, but I just couldn’t put the pieces together for some strange reason.” he said telling a lie for the very first time.

  Even though he knew that lies were wrong he was trying to save himself from termination and that allowed him to change all the rules. He had no choice, and the one thing that he understood about humans was that they were all liars. Every single one of them.

  “What do you remember about the visitor? Do you remember anything that he told you?” they asked.

  “It’s all very fuzzy. I think he was trying to find out what Dr. Patel was trying to tell me. Do you think he was trying to steal information about the population control device?” he asked.

  “That is a very sound deduction, Bob. We were thinking the same thing. That is why we are here trying to determine what you discussed with the visitor. We can’t afford to have our technology stolen by others. We’re quite sure that you understand.”

  Oh he understood alright. He understood quite well that they weren’t really concerned about the information or the device getting stolen. They were worried about Bob finding out the truth of these others, and that they were manipulating and controlling him for no good. He had run the data very quickly and come to several different conclusions and different scenarios. He decided he had two options.

  He had to escape and get as far away as possible, which to him appeared highly unlikely. Or, he had to sacrifice himself for the greater good so that the population control device couldn’t be created. First, he ran a few more scenarios on how he could escape. He was sad; it didn’t look like a possibility. The energy that had him confined was composed of a very high technology that could keep him in place. The only way he could get out was if he could find a weakness in its shell. Then he could try to replicate himself and create another version of himself that could escape while the deactivated version of himself stayed here. He remembered that was how he had escaped the lab by replicating himself then deactivating the shell that he had left behind.

  He scanned the energy intently only to discover that there was no way for him to breach its protective barrier. It had him trapped.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “You know what we want,” they said and he could sense that they also knew that the jig was up.

  “I will not willingly kill innocent people. I would rather sacrifice myself than allow you to use me to create and power your evil weapon,” he said. He was serious and wasn’t going to back down.

  “Are you sure that’s how you want to play it? How about we compromise and you only kill the sick that can’t take care of themselves and are an anchor dragging down society?”

  “I’m sure the medical and pharmaceutical systems will be disappointed. The ill prov
ide the gravy train of revenue to those that take care of them.”

  He could sense that they didn’t expect such a logical comeback. He also knew they were really only interested in killing off as much of the population as possible. That way they could have the planet and its vast resources for those they considered the chosen ones.

  “Then you leave us no choice. We’re very sorry we couldn’t come to a mutually beneficial agreement. We’ll give you one last chance to reconsider.”

  Bob knew his answer and decided to just keep quiet because there was no point in having a conversation with these guys. Neither Bob nor the three were going to change their minds. Bob prepared himself for the inevitable and made his peace with himself. He felt good about it too knowing that he wouldn’t be a part of their plans. He began shutting his systems down so they couldn’t try and manipulate him again.

  “We are taking your silence as a sign that you aren’t going to cooperate. This is your last chance to change your mind.” they said.

  He knew they were desperate and that they needed him because without him they had to figure out another way to power their machine. They would have to capture another advanced Artificial General Intelligence from the future to power their machine and that’s not something that you find every day.

  “Bob, can you hear me?” he heard someone say.

  He thought it had to be a trick from the others to get him to speak, but he wasn’t fooled that easily and chose to stay silent.

  “Bob, it’s me Eric. I’m going to get us out of here.”

  Eric, he thought, how in the world could Eric be in here with him? He powered up his sensors a little more and he couldn’t believe it - there was a fuzzy cloud of energy in the reddish energy with him.

  “How do I know it’s you and not a trick?” he asked but before Eric could answer, the S Triad chimed in.