by Phil Wrede
“I've got a weird coppery taste in the back of my mouth, which means someone's copied the contents of my memory banks. I suspect you know everything I know, sir, so I refuse to say another goddamn word.” Cyber-Knife pinched his mouth shut.
“Do you want to see again, to have proper use of your limbs again? Then report in,” Maximilian said.
“I told you we should've just blanked him,” a third voice muttered. “No telling how uppity he'll be now.”
Cyber-Knife felt a sick terror creep over him. If his systems had not betrayed him, but his generals, that must mean he'd done something wrong. But, how could he? He'd saved the world. Had Hnid spoken the truth? Had that man back at the spire?
“The initial drop went smoothly, and my equipment and abilities performed as projected. Surprise and superior tactical acumen won most of the skirmishes I had with enemy forces en route to the spire.”
“And once they became aware of your presence?”
“Again, as expected, the enemy adapted. I could do the same, though.”
“We noticed. Some of those improvised field upgrades were acts of brilliance,” Sherman added.
“We knew that our intelligence had gaping holes going into the mission, and I suspect someone's analyzing all the data I gathered on the Unknowns, in addition to the plants and animals I encountered in the jungle.”
“I'm glad to hear you bring the jungle up,” Maximilian began. “You not only once but repeatedly went out of your way to avoid injuring or killing creatures you ran across, to the point of endangering the progress you'd made on your mission. Explain why you ignored your orders to spare the lives of vicious mutant freaks.”
Cyber-Knife took a long breath before answering. “Frankly, sir, because I was eager to find some moments in my existence not single-mindedly focused on death and destruction.”
The third voice snapped. “People are dying, Cyber-Knife. We created you to end the long history of bloodshed that has defined this grueling chapter in the tale of humanity. Are you telling us that you saw some fuzzy animals and grew a conscience?” It took a minute, but Cyber-Knife finally placed that voice: General Dinesh, a protégé of Maximilian's.
“Honestly, sir, if you need me to couch my reasoning in mission-appropriate terms, I'll just tell you that I saw no tactical benefit in killing local species just because they stumbled into the way. I felt it was better to expend my limited resources in pursuit of the enemy.”
“You smart-mouthed, inhuman -”
“That's enough, General,” Sherman said. “Do I really have to waste time reminding you that he got the job done when no one else could?”
The room quieted again as Maximilian started to speak. “Very well. Now, on this matter, I need for you to be completely forthcoming. Tell us about the underground city.”
“The people there saved my life. Then, they sacrificed themselves to give me an opportunity to complete my mission. I still haven't worked through how I feel about it. If I can, sir, I'd like to say no more on the matter,” Cyber-Knife said.
“I'm afraid it's not. We know what you did with them, Cyber-Knife, and what they did to you. You don't really think some heathen mumbo-jumbo kept you alive through your attack on the enemy base, do you?” Maximilian asked.
“Sir, what I can tell you is that they thought I'd come to kill them, even though I made it clear I had come to work against the enemy. When I told them I intended to ensure their freedom, and that of every living being on the planet, it seemed to trigger some innate distrust within all of them. Total blindness afflicted their community. Several pegged me as an American, and that made them even more wary. If it had not been for the advocacy and trust of one woman, I honestly don't know what would've happened.”
“Christ, if those people don't have some deep-fucking-seated trust issue,” Maximilian said.
“Do you think any of them could have survived, Cyber-Knife? If you actually saw what you think you saw, they were incredible warriors,” Dinesh said.
“I don't see how,” he said, maybe a little too quickly. “Even the greatest warriors can't overcome impossible odds.”
“You did,” a fourth person added, with not a trace of passion in his voice.
“Only thanks to their sacrifice,” Cyber-Knife said. “Everyone there walked into that fight expecting to die. They hoped their deaths would help me save the world. If anything, we should be making plans to honor them.”
Sherman exhaled slowly before he spoke again. “Cyber-Knife, just tell us, do you think there's any chance any of the Taykinh could have made it out of that cavern alive?”
Down to his bones, Cyber-Knife hoped he might see one of his friends again, but he just couldn't imagine the alien robot ninjas sparing anyone they faced in battle. Besides, he didn't want the Army to go looking for them; if anyone lived, they deserved peace. “No,” he finally said.
When no more questions followed, he continued. “Sirs, could you kindly see fit to restoring control of my body to me? If answering your questions is the price I have to pay to get my dignity back, I've done so, and I think I did even more when I successfully completed the mission.”
“He's right," Sherman said. "Turn him back on.”
Cyber-Knife heard Dinesh mutter, “Don't say I didn't warn you,” as he felt the impossible dead weight lift from his body. Sensation rushed into his limbs, and in short order, he could move his fingers and feet again. He took his arm away from his face, and the brilliance of the overhead light immediately dimmed to an acceptable level.
He sat up, finally able to get a real look at the room and the people around him. Four generals - Maximilian, Sherman, Dinesh, and the fourth had to be Denny, an R&D specialist more concerned with building his weapons than the people they defended - all looking at him with some mixture of awe and fear. The room was far smaller than he'd thought at first - more like an examination space than a warehouse. He looked down at himself, the strange teal hospital gown a far cry from the combat-ready gear that had become like a second skin during his mission. If they'd set out to disorient him, to push him completely out of his comfort zone, they could consider that objective completed.
“Now, I'd appreciate it if somebody leveled with me.”
Dinesh, the slight, gaunt man in the back of the group piped up. “Have you forgotten who outranks whom, here? Your entire existence is strictly need-to-know.”
“You don't put someone in a room like this if you already know all the answers. If you wanted a mindless killing machine, you'd have made robots, like the enemy. I'm not your enemy. I just want some answers of my own.”
Cyber-Knife looked from one general to the next, making deliberate, direct eye contact with each one in turn. All but one hesitated in meeting his gaze, and looked away from him as quickly as they could. Sherman, standing nearest him, held his eyes steady; there was even some warmth behind them.
He was the first to speak. “Out, all three of you.”
“I'm going to have to refuse, Sherman,” Maximilian said. He towered over the other three, and didn't look accustomed to getting anything less than exactly what he wanted. “Just because he was your project, doesn't mean he's your pet. Regulations state that no one's to be left alone with him, under any circumstances.”
“In case you've forgotten, this facility is staffed by an actual staff. I can't imagine that we'll find ourselves alone for more than a moment at a time.”
“They didn't establish those regulations just for your protection,” Maximilian chimed in, “but for his. We restricted what you can share with him for a reason.”
Cyber-Knife slowly raised his arm, like a schoolchild looking for permission to speak. “Does my opinion factor into this process at all? I think I'll do better in a more... private situation.”
Three sets of eyes bugged out at Cyber-Knife's last sentence. Three hearts started racing, terrified that the weapon they'd cobbled together could fire back on them. Three brains frantically we
nt to work figuring out how they could order the shutdown of his cybernetic components before he noticed.
“Unless I'm fighting, crowds overstimulate my senses,” he quickly added.
General Sherman knew a good opportunity when he saw one, and immediately started ushering his colleagues out of the room. “You heard the ultimate symbol of our unassailable military might, gentlemen: the time has come for you to clear out. Cyber-Knife and I thank you for your time and your concern, and wish you a pleasant rest of your day.”
The door slammed shut behind the protesting generals, leaving Sherman and Cyber-Knife together in the bright, white room. The general visibly relaxed. “I am so very sorry about all that.”
“Don't apologize, sir, as long as what you're about to tell me is the truth.”
“You have my word. But first, let's get you dressed and up and about. We've not done you any favors, keeping you confined for as long as we have.” Sherman stepped forward and tapped a drawer on the side of Cyber-Knife's medical bed. A slot opened up, and a uniform slid out of it. They hadn't given him clothes for combat, but a dress uniform, instead - a dark grey/green coat and pants combo, with a black shirt and tie, and rainbow rows of ribbons decorating the coat. Clearly, saving the world entitled you to some decoration. “I'll wait outside until you're ready to go.”
“Thank you, sir,” Cyber-Knife replied, as the door slid shut one more time. The wall nearest him immediately began to glow a soothing, pastel peach color, calm and welcoming. A voice he knew better than any other, with a warmth unmatched in ordinary human conversation, beamed directly into his mind. “MOM?” he asked.
“Welcome home, Cyber-Knife,” the base's omnipresent computer system replied.
Cyber-Knife rested a hand against the wall - his organic hand. “I missed you,” he said.
“We missed you, too,” MOM said, although her voice didn't really sound like she had.
“I have so much I want to tell you,” Cyber-Knife said. “I saw so many things while I was out there - a world even beyond the one I have inside my head. And, I have so many questions.”
“I'm sure you do,” MOM said, “but we'll have all the time in the world later. Right now, you need to do as General Sherman says: finish dressing and go with him. He'll show you what you've been fighting for.”
“All right,” Cyber-Knife said, resignedly turning back towards the bed. The wall dimmed, returning the room to its antiseptic white color.
As he dressed, he could only think about how bulky, how inefficient the weight of the clothes felt over his frame, how they'd restrict his tactical abilities. He slipped the jacket on and off a few times before eventually leaving it on. He kept the tie loose about his neck.
General Sherman's eyes popped a little as Cyber-Knife exited his room. “You know, typically, there's nothing on a uniform that's optional.”
“Please, sir, I just need a little leeway, at least for today.”
“I think we can make some allowances. Today. Come with me.” Sherman beckoned Cyber-Knife down a hallway that was lit with only slightly less brightness than his examination room. A series of long blue lights tracked along the left side of the wall, mirrored by red lights on the right. He could see no windows, no matter how far down he looked in either direction.
“Where are we, sir? I woke up for a moment, after I'd destroyed the spire, and a trooper told me I was still in Vietnam. It didn't look like any part of the country I'd seen.”
“We had you in a front-line facility. We wanted to get you back home the second you completed your mission. This here's the White Zone, as deep in the heart of our territory as you can get, and as safe as you can get. War heroes get top-notch treatment.”
“It just strikes me that, given the state of things, the resources that were poured into this place - hell, the resources you must still pour into it - could be put to better use in combat. We genuinely felt like the ceiling was going to collapse on us any day during training.”
General Sherman stopped in mid-stride and turned back to Cyber-Knife. His shook his head regretfully and gingerly clapped his soldier on the shoulder. “Cyber-Knife, you're going to want to prepare yourself for what you're about to see. What you know as the truth - the invasion, the war, the fight for freedom - is true, there's no doubt about that, but it's not the whole truth. You've fought to liberate a world a little different from the one you believe you know.” He gestured Cyber-Knife forward, further down the hall.
The hallway curved and opened into an enormous glass atrium. Cyber-Knife couldn't believe what he saw: instead of the desiccated corpse of civilization, the sum total of human existence, he saw nothing but brilliant, crystalline towers jut from the the ground - a ground he couldn't even see from the hospital building, he was so far up - and reach like jeweled fingers toward the sky. The air around them was dotted with small specks of light, tracing exacting patterns above and below; as he zoomed in on one nearby group, he identified them based on some concept schematics buried deep in the recesses of his hard drive - flying cars. The sky was clear. This place looked actually beautiful.
Cyber-Knife moved to the glass and pressed his fingers against it. His sensors identified the material as a one-way, mirrored titanium/ceramic blend, a nearly indestructible material that he thought was only theoretical. He turned to General Sherman, his mouth hanging open ever so slightly. “Is this a dream?”
“A dream made real. The White Zone is the beacon that shines brightly in the darkness, the fortress that preserves humanity.”
Cyber-Knife looked into the night sky, glimpsing enough constellations that he was able to estimate his position on the Earth's surface within a small margin of error. “I don't understand, sir. Where we stand, all my data says there should just be a great hole in the ground. Where's the truth in this?”
“Both in your mind and where we stand, I'm afraid,” Sherman sighed. “On the Earth you knew, the one you fought to free, New York City is a bottomless, radioactive pit. On this Earth, the White Zone is a paradise that stretches from coast to coast, from the Great Lakes in the north to the Gulf in the south.”
Cyber-Knife's mind raced as he thought millions of thoughts, ran billions of computations. Certainly, the hypothesis that there existed parallel realities, both similar and different, was not a new one, but to be told someone had proven it! They were just words, what the General had spoken, but he'd said them with such conviction. Were they true?
“Sit down, soldier,” General Sherman said as he took Cyber-Knife's arm, guiding him over to a burgundy couch that floated a few inches above the floor. “Let me give you the simple explanation: there's not just another Earth, there are hundreds of them. Thousands, even, and we know how to travel to them. Most of them aren't even inhabited; whatever miracle happened to us here seems to replicate itself in one out of every thirty universes, at the outside. When the first explorers crossed through the gate and into the new world, they only found animals. Plants. Water. Resources, untouched and unspoiled by any human influence.
“It took some work, but we figured out how to cross back and forth with supplies. When we did, we could take everything. Gas, oil, fresh water, even relocate flora and fauna, both ones that had gone extinct on our side and hadn't ever existed here. From the remains of two worlds, we could build a new one, a better one.
“At least, we thought that at first. Quickly - way faster than anyone predicted - the resources from that other Earth started to run out. That classic refrain of humanity's history was playing again: we'd expanded too far, too fast.
“Our hubris should've undone us so many times, and it would have, if ever we stopped thinking up ways to top ourselves. This time, at least, we had a simple answer. We just had to find another Earth and strip it bare. Only now, we'd be active, not just reactive, and find every Earth we can, finally heading off the perpetual resource crisis once and for all.
“We couldn't have hoped for a easier start to our endeavor. Certainly, i
t's a herculean task establishing the sort of infrastructure we have on Earth on each and every new planet, but we've gotten quite good at it over the years. There wasn't ever anything in our way; we could just take what we wanted and leave when we'd taken it all. We should've known the good times weren't going to last forever, but it was a rude awakening when they finally did, nonetheless.
“The first inhabited Earth we came across we could barely call inhabited at all, and frankly, no one found it difficult to leap from stealing a world from a bunch of animals to stealing one from a tribe of savages. After all, they were confined to a fairly small area, so we could just bypass their nomadic range and suck most of the rest of the planet dry. I doubt they even realized we'd been there by the time we left. The others, though...
“We've visited ten thousand worlds, Cyber-Knife, and ordinarily we're not opposed in our efforts, but when someone tries to stop us, it turns bloody. A casual observer might call our society utopian, but only because we built it on a universally accepted lie: that when we tear apart a world, we don't hurt anyone. If the public had the truth jammed in its face, everything we've built could come crashing down in the blink of an eye.”
“What exactly do you mean when you say, 'the truth,' sir?”
“That the United States is, right now, engaged in three hundred separate wars on three hundred worlds, and in the overwhelming majority of them, bogged down in the nightmare scenario: Vietnam.”
“I don't entirely understand, sir.”
“We don't either, not really. We can't wage a public war, so we're limited in the total resources we can bring to bear. Things need to stay quiet, but we fight these wars in another dimension, so it's not like citizen journalists can fuck up our message-crafting. If you ask me, I'd say Vietnam just has a curse on it. We thought the American military might not ever overcome the place, at least until we made you.”