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Dust

Page 21

by G. L. Carpenter


  Chapter 21 - Waking

  Phillip awoke reluctantly; consciousness trickled into his brain slowly like a viscous liquid until it hit a certain circuit and exploded. Phillip raised his head from the table wiping the slobber from his mouth with his hand, still sorting reality from disturbing dream. His body spoke to him first. He needed a bathroom – all that coffee. His mind began to work out the navigation problem as he sat up. Where was he? Where was the bathroom? He worked out the answer to the first question as he unfolded himself and grabbed a tissue from the box on the table to wipe up the wetness where his head had rested. He was in the office of the late Dr. Steven Rice. The Doctor's bathroom was to his right.

  On his way back from the toilet his mind addressed what he had found the night before and what his subconscious had knit together while he slept. The tumblers rotated and clicked and the bank vault door opened and Phillip stared at the truth for the first time and the truth stared back at him and scowled. Phillip felt sick. He did an about face and returned to the toilet.

  When he returned this time, he checked the computer and found enough to confirm the theory his dream had posed – it really was a hoax from the start. There never where any nanobots from outer space. Steven and maybe Jon had cooked up the whole scare to justify and get support for the defense development project. The nano dust infecting earth now was one of our own making gone amuck or maybe doing what it was designed to do.

  Steven wasn’t a world savior genius; he was a calculating lying son of a bitch. Phillip’s hero was the arch villain of all times. He was the mega Hitler of the twenty-first century. He was the cause of scores of millions of deaths and Phillip and all that worked with him had helped. When things couldn’t possibly get any worse, they had.

  Phillip had thought himself a scientist but he had failed. He had suspended doubt — something a scientist should never do. He had trusted the authority of Steven — something a scientist should never do. He was ashamed of himself and it sickened him. Just look at the consequences!

  Steven probably wasn’t the smartest man on earth. Steven had used the super computer artificial intelligent machines he had experimented with to hatch this grand plan – or had the machines used him? We had always feared that intelligent machines might take over the world – check out the number of sci-fi stories on the topic —but we always imagined we would be fighting them all the way not helping them.

  But think about it. If you are an intelligence much greater than man’s and you want to take over humanity it should be in your power not only to do it without resistance but to arrange that the victims go willingly and support your efforts all the way. You don’t have to expend the energy to go hunting down your quarry; you just open the cage door and bait it with something your quarry can’t resist. In march your prey like sheep coming home.

  Consider the level of intelligence in the average man – no contest. Many of them have already been manipulated for years to the point that they were willing to fight with absolute conviction for something that was absolutely against their own self-interests. It had been demonstrated that the weaker minds would even kill for their cultivated belief. For a higher intelligence to take over mankind is a cakewalk. The subjects are already conditioned.

  Phillip now understood what had bothered him on a barely conscious level — if this was such a globally important mission why were so many of the people working on it seemingly less than the best? Phillip wondered why even he was here. He was struggling. Steven had picked them all because he had other motives. He didn't want this organization to be too efficient, too sure of themselves, too questioning. Phillip mentally kicked himself. How could he have been so stupid not to have seen what was happening? Why is it humans use the least effective methods to decide the most important issues? Phillip had used emotion - he had trusted Steven — he was one of us — just look at all those diplomas. Phillip hadn't questioned what was happening as a scientist should. He was sickeningly ashamed.

  He checked the clock on the wall — quarter to eight. He was sick of spirit but he had many things to sort out. As momentous as his discovery was, there was still the question “Why am I not dead?” If the dust was killing only bad people and he had been an instrument in the killing of millions wasn't he bad? Wasn’t everyone in this building? He needed an answer to the question "am I ALONE?” Has the facility been overrun by the dust? He didn’t want to be the hero in a last man on earth movie.

  He ventured through Steven’s – now his — reception area, glancing at Nan’s desk with a transitory feeling of remembrance. He checked his zipper. Yes, it needed closing. He zipped. He moved into the hall, first checking through a cracked open door. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he had been consumed and reconstituted as a nano pseudo human and these thoughts were those of a machine. The pain in his neck and back from the way he had spent the night gave counter evidence to that hypotheses. How close a copy were the replicas? Better than the originals it was said. There were many people waiting in congregational submission to be taken over. This was the singularity, the new age of Mayan prediction. It was to be welcomed not feared.

  If Mayan predictions of the end of the world in 2012 were supposed to have been right, why not also believe in the necessity of human sacrifice. Surprising how many had believed the first but abhorred the second. Human sacrifice? Was that what was going on now? Was the end of the world here at last?

  Phillip’s head swum with implications of what he had been deceived into doing. He had helped create the most dangerous humanity-annihilating agent ever. Had he killed his own friends? If this wasn't a hallucination then, where were the others? Was he the only one spared?

  He was headed to the mess, part autopilot seeking morning coffee, part hoping to find others. He moved quickly taking the stairs down a level two steps at a time, turned left and reached the gathering place where his hope turned to gratitude. There were others. There seemed to be more people here then stayed last night. There was coffee. Now are there any answers?

  “What’s going on out there?” He asked of anyone who could offer an answer.

 

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