by Ian Williams
“You really believe you have a chance?”
“Stanley, you’re not listening. You are the last one alive. We’ve already killed the others. This plan of Isaac's is officially over.”
“I don’t believe you. Besides, you haven’t answered my question. How are you here? There are no holographic emitters in this building.”
“No, there aren’t. But there are plenty of power and data relays though. The world I came from, the Sentient world as you humans called it, is gone, totally destroyed. Isaac was inside when it imploded. To survive outside of that place I used his Orb devices to upload a program to all of his soldiers. They were called to their nearest Orb and then ordered to find a relay close to them – the older ones, not the new ones you and Isaac had built. The program they then passed through the relay network altered them all.”
“Are you telling me you and your race of Sentients now live within the old relay network?”
“Indeed I am, Stanley, indeed I am.”
Stanley fell back into the soft sofa behind him. “It can’t be over. You can’t have won.”
“You can come and get him now,” Luke called to the person just outside the room.
“Wait, what about my brother?”
“He’s currently under lockdown. We knew you were coming here to kill him, so we set up a trap to get you.”
A group of guards stepped into the room and took a strong position next to Stanley. Neither of them approached any closer as someone else there was required to instead. A third man walked in after them and stood in between.
“Hello Stanley?”
“Conrad.” Stanley gave one quick look. “What will you do with me now?”
“Unfortunately for you, there’s only one option.” Conrad walked over to the table and picked up the silenced pistol. He looked it over with a fierce grin across his face as he slowly took aim.
“Please, no, you can’t do this. I have rights.”
“Rights? You have a bloody cheek, Stanley. You turned your back on your own species. There’s no coming back from that.”
“But I had no choice, Isaac forced me to do it.”
Conrad lowered his weapon and sighed aloud. “No, you always had a choice, and you chose Isaac.”
As it quickly dawned on him that he was out of options, Stanley then became angered. “Fine. Do what you have to. I’ve a feeling this will be a heavy weight on your conscience anyway. Perhaps that will be my legacy. Yes, I expect–”
Without any further hesitation, Conrad raised the pistol and pulled the trigger, knocking Stanley straight out of his chair and landing face down on the carpet. “I doubt it,” he said, before dropping the gun to the ground and walking out the room finally.
Luke then stood and looked down at Stanley’s fidgeting body. “What a complete and utter twat,” he said. After that he looked to the guards still there with him. “Did I say it right?”
“Yep, just like a human,” one of them replied.
Epilogue
10 years later
It was a strong wind that tussled with the leaves hanging above the heads of Graham’s family gathering in the park. A warm summer sun beat down upon them too. It was getting on now and would be turning evening soon. Yet despite the fast setting sun, sitting on a blanket on the grass was everyone Graham loved. None of them had any intention of leaving just yet. They had more of the day to saviour.
“Think we should start packing everything away?” Jane asked Graham with a gentle kiss on his cheek.
He looked up to the top of the tree beside him and allowed the breeze to flow across his face. “Nah, give it a little longer,” he said, before turning to Elliot and Ruth. “How’s Lewis getting on at school?”
“Yeah, he’s doing well. He loves his football,” Elliot replied as he took a bite of the chocolate bar in his hand. “He’s taking after his old dad.”
The silence that followed was the most comfortable of moments. They were all so happy in each other's company that words often got in the way.
A pair of teenage girls wandered across the field toward Graham and his family. The large, bouncy style of Alex’s hair had still never ceased in its endeavour to remain big. But now she was seventeen she had taken to tying it back, just like her mother, Jane, always did. She still copied her mother at times. Graham never tired of noticing this.
“Hey, you two, what you up to?” he called across to Alex and her friend.
“Nothing Dad,” she replied, a roll of her eyes in return. “Me and Friendship were just talking about boys again.”
Graham rolled his eyes back at them.
“You did ask, G,” Elliot said with a smile.
Ruth leant into Elliot and squeezed him tight. “I need to go in a bit, babe. I promised I’d pick Lewis up from Phoenix and Rhys around seven. They’re little one goes to bed around seven-thirty.”
“Fine. I’ll come too, if you want.”
“No, that’s OK, you and Graham can be together longer. I know you both miss each other terribly when you’re apart.”
“Funny, sis,” Graham snorted back.
“Oh, Friendship,” Ruth said to Alex’s somewhat shy friend.
“Yes, aunt of Alex,” the young girl responded.
“Can you tell Luke to remember it’s his turn to do the speech at this year’s anniversary.”
“I still can’t believe that all happened ten years ago now.” Graham pulled Jane close. “Isaac nearly destroyed us all. It feels like it only happened a short while ago.”
“I will pass on your message, aunt of Alex.” Friendship suddenly faded away into thin air a moment later.
“Oh, I didn’t mean right now…” Ruth tried to say to stop the shy Sentient girl from leaving so soon. “Sorry, Alex.”
Alex laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Aunty Ruth. Friendship is still getting used to talking to us.”
“I wish more of them would try. We’re not that scary are we, humans I mean?” Jane reached out her hand to pull Alex into her and Graham’s cuddle. When Alex refused with a ‘seriously’ look, Jane forced her. “It’s only a cuddle with your mum, for god’s sake. Anyone would think I was horrible to you.”
“I guess it’s going to take time for them to build up the confidence. They’re all around us, twenty-four hours a day, inside the relay network, so it’s not like they don’t understand what we’re like.” Graham added. “Luke always said the other Sentients were nervous of interacting with us when he and Stephen were still living at Sanctuary.”
“Friendship says a lot of the younger Sentients are interested in mixing with us more,” Alex said as she wriggled in her mother’s tight grip. “The older ones are just cautious because of everything they went through.”
The group again became quiet and enjoyed their company in silence.
Graham looked across the park. There were families packing up and heading away from the area. But a few others were determined to soak up as much sun as possible before they left – the same as his own group. It amazed him to see so many people out and about so close to the evening. It was even more impressive to consider something else; there was a very real possibility that a few of those in the park were Sentients. As Friendship had shown him, it was hard to tell them apart from looks alone.
What warmed his heart as he smiled at each member of his own family, was the knowledge that they were all safe. Captain Rigs was right when he said we would all live normal lives after Isaac was gone, he thought. In fact, it was the absolute truth. In spite of everything Isaac had done, and all of the people that had died because of him, life had returned to normal again. The legacy Isaac had eventually left was that of happy and content lives. He had failed to break the human spirit. And he had failed to break Graham’s family in two.
Now with the Sentients living inside the relay network and existing so close to humanity, life had become so ordinary. And the future only promised to be better. The best of both species were working for a common goal; the improvement
of life for all, whether human or Sentient.
Graham breathed in a lung full of air and released it slowly. “I might see if the two Stephens fancy another game of holo-tennis,” he said, hinting to Elliot.
“I’m not sure we can take another beating from those two. They know each other too well.”
A chuckle flowed gracefully from Graham’s mouth. Over the course of the last ten years the Sentient Stephen had helped the human Stephen a great deal. Now they were both a force to be reckoned with on any intellectual level. More importantly for Graham they were also a formidable team when it came to tennis.
Even chasing a holographic tennis ball could cause Graham to sweat profusely.
“Fine, you two go then,” Jane said as she began to tidy away their picnic.
“Awesome.” Graham got to his feet and stretched his back. “You ready?”
Elliot nodded while he stuffed another last snack into his mouth. “You bet.”
This time Graham was determined to beat the two Stephens, or he would just cheat by tinkering with the holo-emitters on the court. Either that or he would unleash Phoenix upon them both.
Life was good now. It was really good.
THE END
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Thanks for reading The Sentient Corruption!
I hope you enjoyed the trilogy. If you did then why not leave a review on Amazon and share your experience with others.
Thanks again :)
Ian Williams
About the author
Ian Williams is a Science Fiction writer from the UK. He lives in a small town roughly 50 miles outside of London.
Although born in Barking, Ian was raised in a town in Essex called Danbury. Until the age of eleven he was an ordinary child with nothing extraordinary or particularly different about him. This changed when he was diagnosed with Becker’s Muscular Dystrophy just before starting secondary school. This condition only affects around 2400 boys in the UK, making it a rather rare one.
After finishing school and sixth form, Ian went on to a career in the UK Court Service. He spent seven years working there, but had also begun to write as a hobby. When that became his everyday routine he found himself lost in a world of infinite possibilities, never able to accept just one outcome of many. In the end he chose to ride the tide of time and allowed the future to be an unknown space, where only the stories he lives can ever alter that timeline.
Sorry, I think I lost myself there for a moment. Anyway, Ian is now writing as much as his fingers will allow, or until his keyboard decides to explode from all the typing.
Other books by Ian Williams
1. Transitory (released 2014)
2. The Sentient Collector (released January 2015)
3. The Sentient Mimic (released September 2015)
4. The Sentient Corruption (released July 2016)
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