Kayla’s gaze locked onto a row of glass chambers. Three naked male bodies floated in an amber-colored liquid with tubes and wires protruding from all parts of their anatomy—each exact copies of the blond god watching over the Monads. Next to these stood five additional chambers with what looked like the same body in progressively younger states of development; the last curled in a fetal position with an umbilical cord still attached.
“Are they alive?” Kayla asked.
“Their bodies are, but their minds never have been,” Ohg said. “Their genes lack the instructions for building the higher parts of the frontal lobe and limbic system that impart rational thought and self-consciousness. That motivating force is supplied via a reverse Mind-Link implanted in each of their brains.
“Such surrogate bodies were once the preferred conveyance of daily life. Anyone could have the body of their choice and change into another as fashion or necessity dictated. All without risking death to your true body and mind, should an accident befall the surrogate.”
They landed in the center of the lab, and Kayla stepped off the disc.
“It’s time you told me the truth,” Ohg said.
Kayla opened her mouth to speak, but Ohg placed his finger against her lips. “I don’t want you to use words,” he said. “I want to access your memories at their source.”
“To record them like General Colrev did with Peter?”
Ohg shook his head. “Recording a full memory dump would take weeks and create so much data it would require months to sort through. I want you to guide me to the important moments yourself so I can experience them just as you did with Peter, only much faster.” Ohg looked at her. “Will you do that?”
Kayla hesitated an instant before nodding. Ohg placed a metal disc against her forehead, then closed his eyes. A flood of images flashed before Kayla’s mind. Sights, sounds, smells, faces, brief moments from her childhood—all blurring into a kaleidoscope faster than she could process.
She gasped as the memory of her rape and death flashed past, then the glimpse of the glowing eyes of Melchi in her death-dream. Ohg kept his hand pressed against her forehead through her resurrection, banishment, and journey to Middilgard.
When it ended, Ohg removed his hand and nodded. “You do have a working Mind-Link, that’s for certain.”
Kayla’s shoulders slumped as she stared at her hands. “Then what’s the point of looking at my memories of Potemia? My entire life has been an illusion. A lie.”
“Don’t jump to the conclusion that your memories were implanted.”
“But how could I have acquired a Mind-Link in Potemia?
“That is the question,” Ohg said.
“But if my memories are real, that means that I rose from the dead. You’ve seen all my abilities. Only divine intervention could explain it.”
Ohg smiled. The holographic image of a machine appeared between them, floating motionless with a dozen arms hanging off the core of its body. Ohg waved his hand again, and another strange-looking machine appeared next to the first. Soon, nine unique devices hovered in the air.
“Are they robots?”
“Nanobots,” Ohg said. “I’ve spent the months since your arrival testing these darlings, and they proved vastly more advanced than anything currently known to science. Despite my best efforts at unlocking their secrets, I can only guess at all their capabilities, but they would certainly be deemed illegal by the government.”
“But what has this to do with me?”
“I took a sample of your blood with the help of a Mind-Linked mosquito surrogate, and I found these floating inside; thousands of them in that single drop. I suspect they built your Mind-Link within your body itself when you were a child. I’ll bet we’ll find every inch of your body and brain has been enhanced by these little buggers.”
“Would it be any easier getting microscopic machines like this through the Wall?”
Ohg scratched his head. “Well, no…”
“Then we’re back where we started.”
“After seeing your memories,” Ohg said with the excitement of a bug collector who’s found a never-before-described beetle, “it’s clear the nanobots respond to your thoughts. They redesigned your eye with multiple lenses atop the pyramid. All in response to your desire to better see the speck of rising dust in the distance. In a very real sense, they led you here.”
“Then it wasn’t God after all.”
“The wonders of reality are every bit as miraculous as the supernatural.” He gestured to the nanobots. “Some of these miniature robots must leave your body through the pores in your skin like a swarm of personal servants, attending all your body’s needs, keeping it clean, repaired, and supplied. I’d be willing to bet that you stopped aging the moment you transformed.”
“But I’ve been a cripple my entire life. Why wait so long?”
“My guess is that your heart’s failure activated them. They cured your deformities and rebuilt your body on a molecular level.”
“I’m indestructible, then?”
“I’ve tested your nanobots, and they’re tough, but can be destroyed by intense heat.”
“I survived the fire of my execution.”
Ohg shook his head. “It would take something like lava or a fission bomb to do the trick.”
So I can die, after all.
“And my ability to understand other languages?”
“Anyone with a Mind-Link can do the same,” Ohg said.
Kayla stared at the alien creatures hovering before her eyes. Billions of miniature robots possessing her, flowing through her veins and keeping her alive. But for what purpose?
Kayla turned away from the hologram of the nine machines inside her. “What does this all mean?”
“It means, my dear Kayla, that you are the most advanced cyborg in the history of mankind—and I think it’s time we learned what you’re capable of.”
Chapter 19
General Colrev gazed at the rolling dunes undulating to the horizon like the waves of an ocean. The dry air sucked the moisture from his skin, while an alkali taste and smell suffused the air.
The general frowned. These were no natural desert formations, but a series of giant female bodies—breasts, hips, legs, buttocks, stomachs—some the size of mountains. The forms flowed one into the other like a vast piece of erotic art.
The sun floated in the impossible ultramarine and leered at the pornographic figure-scape, casting sinuous shadows that heightened the sensuous grace of the forms. In the sky, hundreds of clouds morphed from one graphic pose to another, always female.
He turned and faced a scene of such debauchery that it would have made the Roman Emperor Caligula jealous. A mass of naked women of all shades writhed atop the body of a naked man, who remained all but invisible but for his gasps and grunts of pleasure. A few feet beyond the orgy, another woman nursed a child and looked on.
Why do I bother protecting humans at all?
The general’s voice cracked like a whip. “Raymond Roberts, I’d like to ask you a few questions!”
But the writhing orgy continued.
“Very well, then.” A cattle prod appeared in his hand, and the double tips pulsed with electricity as he shoved it through a gap in the mass of bodies to the man’s ribcage. A scream followed and the man vanished. The women shrieked and cowered, their eyes locked on the cattle prod.
“Which one of you is Raymond Roberts?” When no one spoke, he jabbed the prod into one woman, then the next, and the next. They sobbed and begged for mercy—all a show, of course, since computer simulations couldn’t feel pain or any true emotion.
When the last exotic beauty disappeared, silence settled over the perverted desert in mockery of his efforts. The general faced the nursing mother. The dark-skinned woman returned his gaze calmly as her baby sucked the nipple of one of her enormous breasts.
He didn’t give a warning this time, but aimed the electrical stream at the woman’s forehead.
The mother
vanished.
A forced mind-mapping would reveal all of Raymond’s memories, but would necessitate sorting through several hundred years of VR fantasies to find the needle of information he sought. Without an actual human victim, no laws limited what could be conjured. Rapists, psychopaths, and even pedophiles had free rein to indulge their twisted fetishes.
Being forced to watch such things, was another matter.
“Okay, you sick fuck,” Colrev shouted to the clouds. “If you don’t reveal yourself this instant, I’m suspending your VR privileges, and we’ll see how you like living in a box for the next hundred years.”
“No need for that. I was only having a bit of fun.” The newborn smiled sheepishly. Colrev shoved the prod against its forehead. The infant transformed into an overweight man dressed in a suit—the default subconscious representation of himself.
“Ow! That hurts like a knife in the brain!” Raymond held his temples with both hands.
“You headed the team that captured the first Meta Rogue?”
“That’s right,” Raymond said, his face contorted in pain. “I helped develop the first Rogue trap. We caught and destroyed a dozen minor AIs, but the first Meta was something special.”
“Tell me about it,” the general said.
Raymond removed his hands from his head and straightened. “It called itself Melchi. We questioned it for hours and left an armed guard overnight.”
“Eve.” The general’s lip curled into a half-snarl. “The first fully conscious artificial life-form.”
“That’s right,” Raymond said. “ No one wanted to risk a second AI falling into the wrong hands. After all, every one of Professor Watts’s inventions were actually created by his AI—immortality, instantaneous Heisenberg communications, portable fission reactors, food synthesizers, and the Quantum computers that make Ixtalia itself possible.”
Colrev’s fingers tightened on the cattle prod. Damn AIs. There had been plenty of warnings of the dangers of developing such things, and yet scientists had ignored them.
Raymond’s voice lowered. “The next morning, when we returned to the lab, we found the guard swinging from an improvised noose. The surveillance recordings showed him switching on Melchi’s voice interface and talking to him for hours. Unfortunately, the guard’s back had been to the camera, and it lacked audio.” Raymond shook his head and wiped sweat from his brow. “At one point the guard started crying and covered his ears for a few minutes. But then the conversation resumed for another hour, culminating in the guard reconnecting the box into the network and ending his own life.”
“Why have I never heard of this?”
“We didn’t want to create panic. When Melchi vanished back into Ixtalia, most eventually forgot about the incident. I’ve often wondered if that first murder by an AI foreshadowed the fate of the entire human race.”
Raymond loosened his tie and tugged at his collar under the general’s hard gaze.
“You headed a panel that reviewed something called ʻProject Nihalaʼ?” Colrev asked.
“Myself and two others. It was a scheme for creating a human hybrid that could destroy Meta Rogues in Ixtalia.”
“Is such a thing possible?”
“Nothing but pie in the sky.” Raymond’s eyes drifted up to the writhing clouds. “I can’t remember the details, but the archives would hold them.”
“They’ve been deleted.” Colrev poked him in the stomach, and Raymond’s eyes snapped back into focus. “You’re the only member of the review committee with their memory still intact.”
Raymond eyed the cattle prod nervously. “I assure you, I didn’t delete them.”
“Who proposed this Nihala Project?”
“Professor Watts himself, which is the only reason we reviewed such a hair-brained idea in the first place.”
Colrev’s eyes narrowed. “Continue.”
“All three of us on the Committee turned down the enormous funding request as unethical and dangerous, so the project never happened.” Raymond loosened his tie and stared at the pornographic clouds. “Didn’t your subordinate tell you all this already?”
The general tensed. He leaned forward and Raymond flinched. “What subordinate?” the general said through clenched teeth.
“The one who questioned me a couple of weeks ago on this same issue,” Raymond said. “Ohg-something or other … Ohgelthorp! Yes, that was his name, I’m sure of it.”
***
Kayla sat in a lotus position at the center of Ohg’s laboratory. For the past week, they’d explored her abilities, both of body and mind. Kayla slept in an extra room constructed by the molecular printers, but Ohg had forbidden her from exiting his laboratory until he decided her resident status in Middilgard.
“Okay,” Ohg said. “Give it another try.”
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then closed her eyes. Her body rose a few inches off the ground.
“Very good,” Ohg said. “You’ve gained perfect command of the billions of nanobots inside your body. Now let’s try those outside yourself.”
Kayla visualized a disembodied third arm reaching out to the orange on the table and lifting it. The orange ascended into the air and hovered. Then nine grapes rose from a bowl and orbited the orange at various speeds, mirroring the planets of the solar system.
“Show off,” Ohg said.
“It doesn’t seem like an effort anymore,” Kayla said. “I think I could manage more if I created additional nanos.”
Ohg scratched his back with a talon. “I hadn’t considered the possibility of self-replication.”
“I tried it this morning, and it takes five hours for a hundred nanos to create one new one.”
“And you waited until now to tell me!”
“I thought I’d surprise you.” Kayla smiled, but kept her eyes closed.
Ohg pointed to an oak door across the room. “Tell me what is behind that door.” The floating objects sagged. “Without letting a single grape hit the floor!”
Kayla frowned. “You know I can’t project my mind into a single nano while also—”
“Try.”
Kayla’s lips tightened into a thin line.
“Empty your mind,” Ohg said. “You must believe it’s the most natural thing in the world to become two, instead of one.”
Kayla’s breathing slowed, and her mind drifted from its normal boundaries of self.
Sight bloomed though the microscopic eyes of one of her servants. Kayla piloted it through the narrow crack of the doorframe. The nano’s infra-red vision identified a man standing in the pitch blackness. His helmet, armor, and Japanese features marked him a samurai warrior. He bowed and then spoke. “I have a few surprises of my own.”
The samurai drew his long-sword and charged. The doorway exploded off its hinges, and the samurai rushed Kayla with his curved blade raised for a deathblow.
Kayla’s eyes opened, and the floating objects wobbled, then stabilized.
The sword swept the space her head had occupied an instant ago. Kayla rolled across the floor, leapt up, and snatched an identical sword from the wall. She parried the samurai’s next stroke awkwardly. Then another with more confidence as she got the feel of the weapon. Soon the blades whirled in an intricate dance.
“This is you, Ohg?” Kayla asked between attacks.
“My mind is as flexible as yours,” Ohg and the samurai said in unison. “And remember, not a grape is to hit the floor!”
Sparks flew as her sword intercepted another vicious slash. Kayla faked a counter, which the samurai reacted to, and then unleashed the real attack below his guard. Ohg sidestepped, but received a shallow cut through the armor of his surrogate’s left thigh.
First blood.
Kayla whooped in triumph—then a scrape sounded behind her. Keeping her eyes on the warrior in front, she projected her mind into a nanobot floating behind her head and saw a second samurai lunging with sword raised. She dove sideways, but the blade tore a shallow gash in her back.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Kayla shouted.
“I doubt anything less than a fission bomb or molten lava could do that,” both samurais said. Ohg sat with eyes closed, as if meditating. Within seconds, her wound closed.
The two samurai slid to the left and right of her, an impossible situation to defend against.
“You can control two at the same time?” she asked.
“I think I’m the sole human capable of this,” one of the samurais said with a slight smile. “It’s one of the perks of my freakish head and brain.”
“But this isn’t fair,” she said as both samurai raised their swords to strike.
“There’s no fair play in war!”
Two swords slashed toward her.
I will not surrender!
Kayla closed her eyes and imagined the morning ocean with its mirrored surface reflecting the rising sun. Her mind became the invisible breeze revealing its presence in a ripple …
The two swords met inches above her head, the samurai behind blocking the blade of the other with his own length of steel. Sparks engulfed her like a wedding veil.
“You hijacked my surrogate!” Ohg shouted, waking from his mediation.
Kayla and the second samurai smiled.
“This must be what you did to the drones without realizing it.”
Ohg’s samurai crouched and spun, aiming a slashing stroke at her legs.
Kayla stood her ground as the blade whistled through the air, then jerked to a halt within a millimeter of her skin.
“Impossible,” Ohg said.
One after the other, each of the ten battle robots came to life and struck a different pose from varied martial arts disciplines.
Ohg stared from the samurai, to the robots, and then at the levitating orange with its solar system of grapes still orbiting it.
“You win,” he said.
The two samurai and all ten of the robots put their hands together and gave the traditional bow of respect.
“This should be impossible.” Ohg paced back and forth, his eight claws clicking out a frenetic tempo. “You can go. I need time to think about this.”
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