by Kir Lukovkin
He suddenly coughed, picked up the glass again as it quickly filled up with water and drank it down.
Rick used the break to add, “There was no information about this in the Thermopolis archive. I also didn't manage to get access to the data here in Atlantis.”
“That's right,” Nivan put his hand over the glass, pushed down and it dissolved into the surface of the table. “This is confidential information which is only for the keepers of the project. All of this was set up in the interests of security. Security is paramount.”
Paul and Vasilevs glanced at each other and then at Rick when they heard these words. This was a strange coincidence, as the graybeard up top explained things in a similar way.
“So, this means that the towers can turn into spaceships and cities?” Rick confirmed/
“Yes.”
“But how is this possible?” Vasilevs asked in surprise.
“Believe me, the human mind is capable of creating great wonders. Mahsood's chemical engineers created a universal construction material that Spanidis' builders used in the architecture of the towers. Basically, all that remained was to construct the building themselves and that was it.”
“But then, how does a tower turn into a city,” Vasilevs frowned. “I have seen this tower and the city around it with my own eyes.”
“The first thing you need is technology. Everything is controlled by automatic processes and active programs that transform the tower when required. Look at this.” He called up a menu for all to see. “The requisite code is entered into the computer and the program is selected. Additional options can be entered, such as a greater or lesser number of residential modules, increasing the size of food synthesizer reservoirs or adding a parking zone or a hydroponic zone instead. Anything that's required. The machine then starts to form the blocks in the tower, as it has the standard blueprints already loaded. Everything was planned to create a mobile world suitable for autonomous existence, a technological universe. You must understand that much of what was meant to be done was not. The last citadel was not completed, while the one that Rick saw had been destroyed. The project,” and here he shook his head with regret, “is still unfinished.”
“It turns out that there are four of them left in total?”
Nivan nodded.
“And who are the keepers of the project? Are you one of them?”
“That's right. My duties are to monitor the current state of the towers and to keep in touch with the keepers on location.”
“So who was the keeper of Thermopolis? Is he still on location or did he fly away with the ship?”
“You don't know him. Once upon a time, this man violated the instructions and wanted to fix everything, so he went up into Thermopolis, joined the council of one of the clans and got killed as part of an internecine war.”
“That's a shame,” Rick sighed sadly and lowered his eyes. A moment later, he looked up again and asked excitedly, “Then could you explain what happened to Atlantis?”
“The Gaia program was activated in Atlantis after the first wave of madness. This citadel contains the culture and peoples of the so-called European world. The transformation of Atlantis went quickly and without issues — the contents of the tower were transferred onto the plain. The rings and the segments were established in accordance with the blueprints. Drones built agglomerations outside the perimeter — sanctuary cities that imitated the settlements of the ancient world. The landscape that was created is a matrix that can be grown layer by layer and ring after ring can be built as much as the population requires. Canals and roads can be laid and new agglomerations founded, connected to each other changed and added to. The balance of the consumption and use of energy is calculated to the smallest detail. Atlantis existed for a long time. It was dynamic in its development. And then...”
“Another explosion of insanity,” Rick said. “One of the people from the outer settlements told me about this.”
“Yes. A new focus of the disease appeared for the first time in many years.”
“Why?”
“That is unknown. Any perfect system created by man always has an imperfect part,” Nivan nodded sadly. “Which is man himself.”
“You knew this!” Rick suddenly got angry. “You could have...”
“No. We do not have the right to involve ourselves with the affairs of the polises. Everything must happen as it does.”
“So this is why you silently watched your world disappear.” Rick shook his head in despair. “Watched people dying. So this is your mission? Just sitting there and watching?”
The old man sat there quietly, then sighed and told him, “When the Mindstorm virus appeared again, we were ready. We knew that humanity was vulnerable and that no one was immune to the disease. In the case of a new epidemic, Spanidis left an encrypted message, which needed to be opened and the instructions acted upon. It said what the Mindstorm virus actually was.”
“Where did he find out the truth?”
“That is unknown. It remains a secret.”
“So what is the Mindstorm virus, Keeper?”
Nivan suddenly let out an unpleasant, grating laugh.
“Haven't you understood yet? Insanity is the reverse of sanity.”
“You're going to stop laughing at us now!” Vasilevs raised the blaster.
The old man's face changed, as he raised his hands and asked, “Please calm down. I will explain everything. A defensive mechanism activated. Nature used a fail-safe because we are part of it. It turned off our sanity. We were so stubborn and methodical at destroying the biosphere, that the law of system preservation made nature take our main weapon away from us. That's all it is. The population was reduced to a safe minimum.”
“Does that mean that the process has started anew?” Rick asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Tell me, what is memory?”
Vasilevs started to look gloomy. This conversation, which he did not understand very well was obviously beginning to irritate him. Paul shrugged. Rick decided to stop trying to be clever and listen to the old man.
“Now then, memory is the ability to store information,” Nivan continued. “Over time, the accumulated information is layered and lost. We think that we have lost what we forget, but that isn't so. The information remains in our heads but we lose our path to it. Everything that we remembered over the course of our lives remains here,” he touched his temple with his finger, “in our heads. The purpose of the new wave of the Mindstorm virus is not to rid you of your mind, but to awaken it and take it to a new level. The Mindstorm virus has increased the mnemonic abilities of the afflicted and they remembered everything they knew and what their ancestors knew before them. The Mindstorm awakened collective memory in people.”
“So this is why I sometimes almost lost my consciousness and seemed to hear voices,” Rick understood.
“Yes, those fits are unavoidable. We are now remembering everything that disappearing humanity managed to create in its entire history. The diseased are not insane. They are awakened. While we are still hibernating, but on our way to the awakening.”
“But...” Rick looked at Paul and then at Vasilevs. “What about the fits of pain and aggression?”
“It's a threshold. Some are strong enough to go over it, while others are not. Many are balancing on the edge right now,” a cunning sneer formed on Nivan's face.
“All right.” Rick frowned yet again, as he sorted through what he heard. “Then why is Atlantis going into hibernation?”
“The machines can't recognize the awakened as humans and make the logical conclusion that they are enemies. The machines are just not programmed to deal with the awakened. This was a serious oversight, which can become fatal. But who knew that everything would happen this way?”
“A city without people must be sealed,” Paul suddenly said.
“That's exactly what is happening here.”
“Stop this,” Vasilevs demanded coldly. “I know t
hat you can do it.”
The old man's face went hard as he leaned forward and snapped, “That's impossible! Only Spanidis and his descendants...”
“That's it, the games are over!” Vasilevs exploded. “You're going to listen to me now, understood?”
The Landmaster flushed red. His eyes suddenly went wide as his face streamed with sweat. Something was definitely wrong with him.
“Do you understand?” Vasilevs screamed, spraying spittle. “Where is the button? Show me and I'll press it myself! How do we get to Thermopolis? What's going on in the other towers, where are they? Answer my questions, you old bag of bones!”
Vasilevs was slowly bending over, as if he was held down by a great weight. His head was pushing down into his shoulders and his hands trembled. His voice was hoarse and the sentences became short and fragmented.
“Bastard!” Vasilevs pulled him by the collar, running out of breath. “It's all your fault! All of it!”
Nivan did not look at him anymore, as his eyes turned towards Rick and Paul.
“You must understand the future of humanity. Its future is in your hand. I waited for this moment for a long time and hoped for a miracle, but there is no more time to wait. This is happening everywhere. We must...”
There was the report of a blaster. The charge hit the old man in the chest, piercing his body and the back of the chair, which made the blood spray onto the white floor in a myriad of misshapen blotches. Nivan's head tilted back, his mouth opened and his eyes closed.
Vasilevs threw the blaster away, let out a wild scream and fell to his knees, swaying from side to side. He was caught by the Mindstorm. A moment later he hit his face on the floor and went quiet.
Paul was frozen in a stupor. Rick ran up to the old man, who was barely breathing as his end was near.
“Rick,” Nivan said hoarsely. “I was an agent in Thermopolis once.”
“What?”
“Initiate the Jericho protocol.”
The old man exhaled loudly, arced his back and went still.
“Hey, Rick!” Paul called out as he got himself together. “Look!”
A three dimensional picture of Atlantis with a view from above rotated above the table.
The outer ring was no more and even the roads were gone. The middle ring was sinking underground at an unbelievable speed. The streets disappeared, whole quarters were folding in on themselves, water-filled canals were getting covered with protective screens and the flyovers and ramps were going underground. The city was disappearing before their eyes, only leaving a bare plain divided into quadrants.
Rick touched one of the core sectors, zooming the picture in. Human figures were climbing the roofs of the buildings that had not yet been deconstructed, but the transformation had reached the core as well. Rick and Paul quietly watched the changes in the landscape. It was only now that they knew the secret of Atlantis and they did not know if they could turn the lifeless plain into a flowering city again.
Vasilevs' terrified scream made them both flinch and tear themselves away from observing the hologram. The Landmaster stood on his knees and looked at them with horror.
“Beasts!” he spat out. “Monsters!”
A thread of spittle hung down from his twisted mouth onto his chin and hung there. His face was burning as his eyes radiated fear and blood flowed out of his broken nose.
“Away! Get away from me!” He waved his hands around and then started to crawl backwards to the edge of the platform.
Paul stepped after him.
“Leave him,” Rick called out. “Your Landmaster is not the commander of his own mind anymore.”
Paul slowly turned around.
“You're right.” He still had a look over his shoulder and waited for the Landmaster to get to the edge and roll down the stairway. “I don't need Vasilevs anymore. His rank now transfers to the last soldier of the Division!”
Rick had an unpleasant premonition as he looked at Paul intently.
“We don't want conflict, do we?” Paul said. “We're on the same side, isn't that right?”
“Which side?” Rick spat out through his teeth.
“Enough!” Paul bent down and picked up the blaster. “That's the end of Atlantis. We're now going to establish communication with the remaining towers, assess the situation and declare our hegemony. Power is in our hands now. All the agents and keepers in the towers will obey us now. Look at what this old man did to our world! It's time to establish a new order and develop and apply a clear plan for salvation.”
“Is that it? So what are you going to say to the keepers? Hi, I'm Paul from Atlantis and you must obey me now?”
“You're mocking me! We are intelligent enough to rule the people.”
“You didn't understand. Such tactics are pointless.”
“And why is that?”
“Nobody is going to obey you,” Rick chuckled. “You also forgot about the Mindstorm.”
“What, did you believe what the old man said? It's ridiculous!”
“What about Vasilevs? And Gareth? What about the dozens of those who we saw in the streets? They are all changing to a new level. We will have to as well.”
“I don't believe it! That is impossible!”
“What about Black Ant? He was possessed once, but then he regained his sanity in front of your eyes! It was him that brought us here.”
Paul gritted his teeth as he had no reply. Rick touched the table with his hands and felt a prickling in his fingers, a special feeling as if the surface stretched out after his hand. He imagined the program module in his head and the menu opened up above the table.
“What are you doing?” Paul shouted.
Rick selected the correct section and calmly replied, “I am initiating the Jericho protocol.”
“What is it?” Paul angrily raised the hand holding the blaster and aimed at Rick's face.
“Our future.”
“You're lying! You don't even know what you're doing! Is that what that decrepit old man told you?”
Rick made no reply, but continued to use his mind to work with the program, looking for the most important thing — the part of the code that Nivan spoke about where the fatal mistake was written. The part which would give hope to humanity.
“Rick, stop!” The hand with the blaster shook. “No!”
Paul's face was contorted with pain. His eyes became bloodshot and veins stood out on his forehead.
“You're exactly the same!” he exclaimed. “You're a demon from the wastelands!”
“No, Paul.” Rick continued going through the code and filtering through terabytes of data, making it appear above the table. “You're just awakening.”
“I hate you! I hate you!”
Rick was no longer afraid of him shooting. He learned how to control the replicator. The only thing he was afraid of was that his strength would run out before they had the time to launch the program.
“Die!” Paul shouted.
The blaster popped. But the charge did not penetrate the wall which appeared in the way.
Rick swayed as the effort to create the wall made his head spin.
“Rick? Rick, where are you?” he heard from behind the wall which separated Paul from the table. Next, there was an angry shout, “I will still find you! Just you wait!”
Rick found the part of the program he needed. He opened the dialog, confirmed his identity, closed the “Genetic code confirmed. Source: Thermopolis” message. He opened a new window, ran his eyes along the tabs and found the one labeled “Emergency Protocols.”
“Armageddon Protocol, Sanctum Protocol...” his lips moved by themselves as he pronounced the names. “Here it is — Jericho Protocol.”
The main thing was going without pause, because if he hesitated he might start doubting and death would be assured. Rick mentally activated the program and exhaled with relief.
That was it. He did it.
“Here you are!” Paul exclaimed as he found his way around the wall. “I w
ill...”
Rick commanded the replicator to push the invader outside the sphere. The wall suddenly exploded in a cloud of shards. Paul waved his hands when his legs grew into the podium which extended quickly beyond the bounds of the platform.
“I hate you!” he heard as Paul was thrown away from him.
“Paul!” Rick shouted to him. “Draw! Draw this world!”
Z
THE SUNLIGHT REFRACTED through the lens of the protective dome and stroked the skin on his face with it warmth. Once he got used to the blinding light of day, Rick opened his eyes wider. This place was unfamiliar to him, a bare plain with structures strewn around here and there. Rick looked up at the clear sky and tiredly lowered himself to the ground.
All of his power went on replicating himself on the surface. Of course, it sounded wildly improbable, but he had managed to do it. He could not move any further though, as he needed a serious rest. His sight swam before his eyes — it seems everything was not as good as he thought at the beginning.
A drawn out droning sound came from the distance. The sound was familiar and it kept to one note. This was the sound of an electrical engine, Rick realized He soon heard the sound of wheels and the droning sound became quieter.
Rick noticed a large shadow nearby. His eyesight returned for a moment and he saw a rather large vehicle with a covered bed, a real truck. Something was written on the side, but the fog rose in front of his eyes again and Rick powerlessly fell onto his side.