Entanglement
Page 37
Diane struggled with the decision. “No. We have to wait for both of you.”
Ridley looked at Diane in a way that said he would never leave Kelly. “Just go. We’ll be fine.”
“Ridley?”
“I’m never going to be scanned. I have a clone waiting.”
“You choose to terminate on Earth?” Lucy asked incredulously.
Ridley looked at his daughter. “Yes. We’re going to stay here.”
Lucy tried to convince him. “We can wait until…”
He interrupted angrily. “No. Absolutely not. You should leave now. Save yourself. Leave orbit.”
“Kelly,” Diane said, “I want you to listen to Ridley, no matter what happens. Just remember, that I love you. You will always be the light of my life.”
Tears flowed down Kelly’s cheeks. “I love you, Mom.”
“Take her out of the mansion,” Diane said, “Go down the hill to your old family home. They won’t look for you there. She’ll be safe.”
Ridley had known that the moment would arrive, but he still could not comprehend it. Diane’s death had been a prolonged departure mixed with both mourning and joy. His emotions were numb. Kelly stared at the image of her dead mother. Was it a digital recreation frozen in time? Or the soul of a woman who was now truly leaving the earth?
Lucy said, “We’ll wait for you on Io in case you change your mind. We’re leaving orbit now. Our connection will…”
The signal disappeared. The wall-screen went dark.
He slid the heavy iron bolts and opened the door. Ridley and Kelly walked up the steep stairs into the mansion. His mechanical legs moved swiftly, thankfully shielded from the EMP by the steel-reinforced bunker. The mansion was dark. No notifications sounded. No greetings from computer screens advised them of the weather or told them of the day’s appointments. There was no news of the war raging in the world around them. There was nothing but the quiet mansion and each other.
Ridley manually released the heavy metal shields one by one, revealing a blue sky.
“Why don’t you take a shower?” he suggested, “While there is still hot water.”
“Not yet,” she said.
They went into the kitchen and ate sandwiches.
Helicopters flew from the city towards them. Ridley knew their destination.
“Come on,” he said, “We shouldn’t stay here.”
Ridley peered out the front door cautiously. He motioned to Kelly. They walked through the thick trees to the ancient suburban home. Its front door remained unlocked. The hinges creaked as he opened the door. “We’ll be safe here.”
They sat together on the sofa. Kelly was exhausted. She fell asleep, cradled in Ridley’s arms. He continued to listen for the sounds of helicopters or drones. His mind wandered. He could tell that Kelly was dreaming as her eyes darted back and forth under closed lids. She murmured softly in her sleep.
The home had no power. His cell phone was dead. The lack of information was freeing. He leaned back on the sofa and propped his head up on an old pillow. His mind wandered as he grew drowsy. Would his clone remain intact? Or, had it been destroyed? Did any brain scanners remain in the world? Had soldiers destroyed them all?
Ridley looked up from the sofa in momentary confusion. The realization that the previous night had not been a dream washed over him. Kelly stood in the kitchen next to a pile of groceries.
“Why did you go back?”
“I was hungry.”
She poured milk over cereal. “Do you want some?”
Ridley joined her at the table.
She tried to turn the television on, but its electronics had been destroyed. He ate slowly.
Later, Ridley walked to the window. Smoke still poured from the city in wispy strands that brought him back to the Great Collapse. The room was chilly. “Let’s light a fire,” he said.
“Will they see the smoke?”
“There’s already smoke everywhere.”
Ridley gathered deadwood from the yard. In the shelter of a magnolia, a bipedal drone lay motionless, its electronics destroyed by an EMP. Had it run from the city in vain, seeking shelter at the home of its creator? Or, had it come to take him away? He walked further. Other drones littered the ground, their electronics disabled. The stone wall at the edge of his property had been breached by an artillery round. Several more drones lay outside his gate. He returned with an armful of firewood and a handful of twigs. “Don’t be afraid if you go outside,” he said, “The drones are disabled.”
Kelly looked out the window at the hints of steel glistening in the green. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Should we pull their processors?” she asked.
He studied her face and tried to decipher her thoughts. “The EMP probably destroyed them… But we can shatter them and let them rest in peace.”
Ridley hated lying to Kelly. The neural processors were designed to withstand an EMP attack, even if the infrastructure supporting them had been overloaded. Yet, there was nothing he could do for the angry souls within. Even if he could bring the solar panels back online, there was no hardware to support them. Lucy and her mainframe were surely on their way to Jupiter by now.
Kelly helped him to build a fire. Ridley struggled to light it. She intervened. “Girl scouts,” she said as she stacked twigs under the logs.
Ridley looked up the hill to the mansion. No troops arrived. The oak crackled. They roasted marshmallows and ate s’mores. “What do we do now?” Kelly asked.
“Let’s gather some mussels at the water. We can roast them. That’s what your mother and I did during the Collapse.”
Kelly was cautious as she walked on the rocks, but not scared. They carried the mussels back in a plastic bucket. Ridley gathered some seaweed, tasting a piece and offering it to Kelly. “It’s salty.”
“You can eat that?”
“You’ve never had sushi?”
“No.”
They returned to the home. Ridley placed the seaweed and then the mussels directly onto the red coals. Steam filled the air. The room was warm and cozy as dusk came. He added the last of their logs to the fire. “We’ll have to gather more driftwood,” he said.
“What happens when winter comes?”
“We’ll figure it out. I’ve done this before.”
Kelly walked into the kitchen and turned on a burner on the gas stove with a match. “How big is the tank?”
“It’s big enough to last,” Ridley said.
She turned the flame off.
Kelly slept in the old guest-room. The stars gleamed outside the window. Ridley sat on the edge of her bed. “Do you think they’ve left for Jupiter yet?” she asked.
They both looked at the stars. “I’m certain of it.”
The sun rose the next morning against a brilliant sky feathered with pink and purple streaks. As Ridley guessed, the troops arrived at the mansion. He greeted them with an uncertain smile.
“We’ve been told to dismantle your AI.”
“You’re too late,” he said, “Cerenovo took Lucy into the city months ago. The stole her from me.”
“Can we see anyway?” the soldier insisted.
Ridley led them into the mansion and down the stairs to where Lucy’s processor had resided. “See. She’s gone.”
The men took the remaining computer hardware just in case.
That evening, Kelly found a shelf of books next to the great fireplace in the mansion. The books were written on paper and bound in leather with gilded titles. Ridley did not remember the last paper book that he had read. The bound volumes held the world’s classics—works from authors like Shakespeare, Poe, Steinbeck, Whitman, Wells, and King. She read the words in the light of the sun.
Ridley worked through the winter to prepare the garden. In the spring, they planted it full of vegetables and flowers. Ridley grew fig and lemon trees in giant pots in the old greenhouse.
When the batteries in his legs indicated that they would need
to be charged, he and Kelly rode the ferry into the city. Cerenovo’s headquarters was dark. Ridley stood at the door wistfully.
At the hospital, he exchanged the failing neural prosthetics for two simple blades that would never need any more power than that which his body provided. He walked on them at first reluctantly, but soon found his stride.
“You’ll be running a marathon in no time,” Kelly said.
She was growing tall, like him. Her skin had become freckled from hours spent in the sun. She helped him walk along the steep streets back to the ferry facility, catching him when he fell.
“Are you certain you don’t want real legs again?” she asked.
“These are fine.”
Kelly was less certain. “It seems a waste not to use the clone. Don’t they terminate them when they turn twenty-five?”
“The clone isn’t old enough anyway.”
As they waited for the ferry, Kelly and Ridley ate a meal of salted peanuts and chips from a vending machine.
Fang appeared from the shadows. “Ridley?”
He had not expected to see his old friend. “You survived?”
“Barely.”
He went to hug her. Fang balled up her fist, pulled her arm back, and tried to strike him on the chin.
Kelly grabbed her arm just in time. “We’ve had enough violence.”
Fang barely recognized the young girl. “Kelly? Is that you?”
One night, Ridley sat by his parent’s grave and stared into the stars. Kelly had followed him; she knew what he was thinking.
“Do you think they’re still there on Io, waiting?” she asked.
“I suspect that Lucy would wait a hundred years just to be sure. All they have is time.”
“Maybe we should try to contact them. Jupiter will be in the sky tonight.”
“I doubt we’d reach them.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to them when you die?” Kelly asked.
“I’m sure,” he said, “Plant me in the garden with my parents.”
As the year’s passed, age crept into Ridley’s bones and gnawed from within. His hunched back strained as Kelly walked next to him along the water. In the distance, Seattle remained, but its glory had faded. He suspected it was like the Phoenix and would rise from its ashes once again.
She did not take her eyes from her son. “Be careful,” Kelly yelled, “Don’t slip on the rocks.”
Her husband scooped Beckett up and placed the boy onto his shoulders. The child held onto his father tightly as both laughed. Sea lions called in the distance.
Ridley sat on a boulder and watched Kelly join her spouse. They stared into a shallow tidal pool. His father pulled out a starfish and let Beckett hold it in his hands.
Their dinner came from the garden. Fresh eggs and a tangy salad of spring greens filled their plates.
That night, the pain in Ridley’s chest came to him suddenly. It hit him all at once, sweeping away his breath, and knocking him to the floor. “Kelly,” he called feebly.
His lung implant whirred as it tried to save him.
A Sneak-Peek at Book 4: Entropy
Part 4 of The Cerenovo Series, Entropy, will be released by October 2018. It is currently available for pre-order.
“Remember,” she had called.
The light had faded and then returned in brilliance.
Ridley finally remembered her words, but could not discern if this was the past or the present? “From great calamities do new ages emerge.”
The words swam through his head as if they had just been spoken. He was most certainly conscious. Alive.
The vista swirled around him in streaks until it resolved into a dizzy stance. He barely stood in the digital landscape, his legs weak and new. The sky was perfectly bare of stars. A campfire burned in front of him, its flames a digital video that repeated. In the distance, more campfires were lit in every direction, spreading in perfect lines until they disappeared into the horizon. A solid black plane stretched before him, its surface glossy. The shimmery reflection was barely his own.
Ridley’s nude body was young again, his skin free of blemishes and his red hair full and coarse. The scar on his left hand was gone and his legs showed no sign that they had ever been amputated. He knew that he was artificial; his corporeal form was too perfect and too much like an idealized memory. His body was a picture of youth even though his mind was scarred from decades of struggle. Was he dreaming? Ridley knew his dreams, and this was not one.
In the distance, dark figures circled the campfires, their faces hidden in the midnight landscape.
He quietly studied his predicament. The silence was impenetrable and absolute. His heart no longer beat its familiar cadence, a defect noticed only when missing. Holding his breath had no effect. Tapping his foot on the glossy terrain produced no sound. He tried to speak but the words were silent.
Had he died? He remembered pain radiating through his chest and a pattern of colors swirling through his vision as his neural framework decayed.
The fire had no smell. The flames were repetitive and perfectly patterned, a repeating tessellation. He placed his hand into the flame, expecting pain, but it passed through without incident. He was a ghost or else the world surrounding him was a hallucination.
If he could speak, he could control the simulation. He tried mouthing the words instead. Computer. Exit.
Nothing. If he was alive and this were virtual reality, the programming had been altered. If he were dead, he was trapped. He would have panicked but there was no heart to beat or nerves to rattle.
Had he gone deaf? Had that part of his brain died before it could be recovered? Or, was the sound in this simulation turned off? He paced back and forth. His muscles were mechanical. His bare feet were neither warm nor cold. His existence had been altered but he could not be dead…
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About the Author
Michael S. Nuckols' first novel, The Winter Calf, was inspired by his childhood in the hills of Virginia. The eerie story of a woman haunted by her lost son continues in the 2016 sequels, The Wasted Grave and The Whispering Souls. The Wasted Grave revisits Iris Littleton in the years just after the loss of her son. The Whispering Souls opens two years after the conclusion of The Winter Calf.
Michael has published two stand-alone novels. Frozen Highway tells the contemporary story of a militia leader threatening a former soldier and her family in rural Alaska. Similarly, The Last Buffalo Soldier follows a war-hero fighting discrimination in the segregated South of the 1950s through the end of his life in the 1990s. His short stories include Old Momma’s Alaskan Buffet and Primitive. In 2018, Michael published the Cerenovo Series.
Michael currently lives with his spouse on a farm in northern New York State. He has lived in coastal Virginia, west-central Georgia, and, most recently, rural Alaska.
Be sure to check out Michael’s website at www.michaelsnuckols.com. Sign up for his mailing list to find out about new releases and free stories as they are available.
If you enjoyed Entanglement, please help support his work by leaving a review on your favorite website. Reviews are critical to the success of independent authors and are greatly appreciated. Honest reviews also help other readers find works that interest them.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
>
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
A Sneak-Peek at Book 4: Entropy
About the Author