by Isaac Hooke
A message flashed on his aReal.
Hull integrity, five percent.
The robots abruptly released the submersible. The internally emitted frequency altered slightly, compensating for the absence of tentacles on the hull.
The satoroids drifted away, activating their rotors to depart in what seemed a random direction.
Hoodwink disarmed the remote and waited several moments with his fingers in his ears. When he was satisfied that the satoroids were a good distance away, and weren't coming back, Hoodwink turned the volume down and continued onward.
The formerly silent hull creaked occasionally, and he hoped the weakened frame lasted long enough to complete the mission. At least the Mk210 itself seemed to be holding up, though of course if Hoodwink was crushed he'd never be able to detonate it.
Thirty tense minutes later he found himself inside Laranth proper: a complex series of tunnels and caverns carved into the coral. Unlike the human cities there were no cameras or other surveillance devices anywhere: such was an offense to Satori privacy. The satoroids were the only form of surveillance that the Shell was allowed.
The submersible passed more of the robots; Hoodwink turned up the volume and plugged his ears on those occasions, praying that the vibrations wouldn't further reduce hull integrity. He also floated by a couple of Satori, their pear-shaped torsos pumping away. It was very likely the Shell hadn't notified the populace of the threat. It was simply not the Satori way. The aliens probably assumed he was some harmless human surrogate simply exploring the frontiers of existence.
He steered toward the 'servant house,' a towering structure of rock, metal and coral located beside the governmental palace. He aimed for the base of the structure, toward the tunnel assigned to the lowest of classes. There were no guards, of course. Who would guard servants?
He proceeded about five hundred meters inside that rocky, branching tunnel, and then halted the vessel.
It was the best possible spot to place the bomb. It didn't require passing through the tough security measures of the main governmental palace, and the blast radius would easily eliminate the entire Hivemind in said palace, as well as the Shell's computer core.
He attempted to eject the arms attached to the submersible and thereby release the bomb.
It didn't work.
He tried again. Still nothing.
Damn it.
Well, he'd simply have to manually remove the Mk210 from the arms on the outside, then. Unfortunately, the pressure suit provided with the submersible wouldn't handle those depths, as it was designed more for operation in outer space.
Always the hard way...
He twisted to the side and grabbed the drip feed line. He stabbed the needle into the cephalic vein in the crook of his right arm, as per the instructions he'd watched earlier. He placed the excretion collector in his groin area, shifting uncomfortably as he installed the twin tubes. The needle in his arm twisted slightly with every movement, stinging him. He cursed softly.
Should've inserted the drip feed needle last.
Finally, when all the tubes were in place, he armed the remote detonator and set the timer to thirty minutes. His finger lingered over the green activation button.
He lay back in his chair and glanced at Sarella's body.
"Good-bye, Sarella," he said sadly. "I wish there was some way I could find you before the bomb went off."
He inhaled deeply and then pressed the button.
29:59.
29:58.
29:57.
He closed his eyes and thought of the Satori code word that would disconnect him from his surrogate. The word was a series of squeals and pops that no ordinary human could ever give voice to, let alone even form in the mind.
But he was no ordinary human, of course.
Jeremy, or rather Javiol, stared at his three-hundred-and-sixty degree surroundings, momentarily disoriented. His human body had died moments before when the submersible finally succumbed to the massive external pressure, crushing him. He had tried to recall the code word that would expedite his return, but in his fear he had somehow forgotten it.
No matter. Dying gives the same outcome.
He was moored in exactly the same place where he had begun his long journey, surrounded by glowing Satori attached by the thousands to those seemingly infinite horizontal tracks. The two satoroids he had left behind continued to watch over him.
As the fleshy moorings retracted from his body, he transmitted a rapid series of clicks, pops, and moans to the robots. The satoroids in turn transmitted the code to the Shell.
Is Graol conscious? Javiol asked it.
Yes, the Shell returned.
I had instructed you to awaken me the moment he emerged!
With his three-hundred-sixty degree vision, Javiol attempted to peer through the rows of bodies, searching for Graol—Hoodwink. But all of the fish looked alike to him. Still, he noticed an empty mooring nearby, three rows down, which corresponded to where the satoroids had shown him Graol earlier. So he was already gone.
Where is he? Javiol demanded.
The Shell responded immediately. I am no longer accepting new programming. Both of you are under arrest.
The satoroids abruptly wrapped their long tentacles around him.
What? Cease and desist immediately! Javiol sent.
No reply.
The satoroids began to carry him from the chamber.
Had Hoodwink done something?
No. Likely its self-patching mechanism had discovered the backdoor Jeremy had placed: an error-correcting background process would have started the moment Jeremy overrode the Shell's command protocol. That the background process had taken so long to find the offending code was a testament to Javiol's skill and ingenuity. Obfuscation was always one of his best traits. Then again, maybe the Shell simply hadn't devoted enough computing resources to the process, and that was why it had taken so long.
Whatever the case, the Shell had finally broken free of his hold.
That was completely fine.
Because Javiol still had one more trick left up his sleeve.
Shell, initiate reboot sequence. Passcode zzzZZzzzaaAaaaLlll. The latter word was a series of hisses and squeals.
The satoroids powered down an instant later, and he shucked off their metal tentacles. If he had lips, he would have been grinning from ear to ear.
31
When Graol awakened, two satoroids immediately wrapped their metallic tentacles around him and ported him away from the mooring area. The Shell told him he was under arrest for high treason, and he was to be de-brained immediately to determine where he had placed the bomb.
Graol allowed himself to be carried through those murky tunnels. The Shell had already lost. By the time Graol was de-brained, that place would be nothing but empty sea.
The cave branched up ahead. Unexpectedly, the satoroids failed to change direction and the three of them crashed into the cave wall. As the robots slowly rebounded, Graol realized their rotors had ceased turning. The steel tentacles held him loosely as well, as if unpowered.
Graol squeezed his torso and flicked his tail to break free. He didn't know why the robots had deactivated. There were certain scenarios he could think of, the most likely of which was a system shutdown or reboot. He didn't know why Javiol would trigger such an operation, unless perhaps he was losing control of the Shell. The cause didn't really matter all that much—Graol would take whatever bone fortune threw his way.
He proceeded through the tunnel, pausing to get directions from oblivious Satori along the way. He gave any satoroids he found a wide berth, even though the machines floated inert in the water.
He made his way to the servant house beside the governmental palace. He took the lower class tunnel and finally arrived at the submersible, which had drifted deeper, its weight easily supported by the water pressure at that depth.
By his reckoning, there were only about fifteen minutes left before detonation.
He swam to the Mk210 that was lodged between the pincer-like arms at the front. Carbon fiber cables secured it tightly in place.
Graol extended his tentacles, whose ends were divided into two feathered fingers, which he used to manipulate objects. First he unclasped the locking mechanism, and then he began unwinding the cables from each metal arm. It was a painstakingly slow process, and Graol could literally feel the seconds ticking past.
Not going to make it.
Finally he had the cables completely unwrapped and he discarded them. He twined all of his tentacles around the inverted cone containing the warhead and jetted the water rapidly from his torso while whipping his tail. The Mk210 refused to budge from the arms.
Graol placed half of his tentacles against the front of the submersible for purchase and tried again. He pushed and pushed, repeatedly squeezing his torso and flailing his tail. Finally something happened: the weapon didn't break free, but the arms that were supposed to release from the submersible in the first place did.
That was good enough.
He released the Mk210 and jetted to the far side of the lightened submersible. He secured his tentacles around the ladder rungs that ran along the outside and began to port the craft from the servant house. He moved as fast as he could, but the drag from the submersible hampered him.
It took him another ten minutes to reach the underwater hangar bay. It was filled with flyers of various sizes. The satoroid guards were still disabled, as were all the other fail-safes, and Graol easily loaded the submersible onto the larger flyer he picked, choosing one that had all the necessary equipment for remote surrogate interfacing. Well aware of the timer ticking away, he boarded and sealed the waterlock behind him, leaving the submersible inside it.
He activated the engines and navigated the flyer to the tunnel egress painfully slowly—the onboard AI capped the speed for safety reasons.
Come on. Come on.
When he exited into the outlying ocean, he immediately pointed the nose upward and opened up the throttle.
The inertial compensators cancelled out the acceleration and he felt nothing.
He moored himself to the hibernation lines. Several moments later the flyer burst from the ocean.
He glanced out the portal at the greenish-tinged sea. He caught a glimpse of the aftereffects of the bomb, which had no doubt detonated by then: several massive tsunamis spawned on the surface below, caused by a combination of the ocean moving in to fill the vaporized area, and the outward shockwave from the detonation. He could only imagine the devastation at the impact site.
Goodbye, Hivemind. Goodbye Shell. I leave the Earth in the hands of the common Satori. And humankind.
With the demise of the Shell, the robots that kept the human populace in check would cease to operate, or they would revert to their original programming from the days when humankind ruled the Earth.
He could only hope a new era of peace awaited human and Satori-kind. He knew that at first, surrogates would be hunted down and killed by real humans, but he hoped humanity would eventually realize that such killing was only detrimental in the long run. The surrogates allowed them to communicate with the Satori, and only through them could the humans negotiate a peace. When that initial purge was done, he could only hope humanity chose the high road. And that the Satori did the same. It might be wishful thinking, but that was the best he could offer to both sides at the moment.
Graol continued into space. He was unmolested by the orbital platforms. Without the primary Shell, the air defenses would have gone offline.
Not unexpectedly, the mothership had already departed. Though his flyer possessed a relatively high maximum speed, he doubted he'd beat the new mothership to Ganymede. He just hoped the human defenses would hold out until his arrival. He wasn't yet sure how he planned to defeat that mothership, which would have its own Shell operating independently of the destroyed one on Earth, but he would work with the humans to come up with something.
I will see the human colonists liberated. I swear I will.
He would do it for Ari.
For Sarella.
He glanced at the sealed waterlock behind him and pondered the precious cargo it contained. His humanity lay within, alongside the dead body of his former lover. He felt a moment of sadness, though Satori were not supposed to experience such emotions. His neuro-pathways were changing, then. Becoming more and more human all the time. He wouldn't have been surprised to learn that his quadmind functioned more like two hemispheres than four these days.
Good bye, Sarella.
Through the portal, he watched the rising sun crest the Earth. Such a beautiful planet. It put him strangely at peace.
This is what I fought for.
The human side of him choked up inside.
He queued the sedating agent into the mooring lines, and the Satori dream world soon wrapped him in its gentle embrace.
32
Javiol collected a fresh surrogate from the Farm, choosing a pod that contained a human body already stowed in a spacesuit, and then he made his way to the flyer hangar.
When he arrived, one of the other flyers immediately took flight. Hoodwink, no doubt.
Javiol loaded his surrogate pod aboard another flyer and then assumed the controls. He proceeded out the far side of the tunnel and accelerated upward through the ocean.
Before he reached the surface, the bomb detonated. Javiol knew because the craft was first slammed forward, and then reversed when a powerful downward current sucked it backward.
The flyer broke free of the current and in moments burst from the surface. Behind him a series of massive tsunamis swept from ground zero. He wondered how any of the fish in that underwater city could have possibly survived such an explosion.
He was aware that disabling the Shell had allowed Hoodwink to complete his little mission. Javiol might have been able to stop it, but he didn't want to risk his life. What did he care if a few fish died? In fact, he kind of wanted the ghastly things to perish. Because despite what Hoodwink had said, Javiol himself was not a fish. The body he currently resided in, well, quite simply, it was not him. He was human. Perhaps a somewhat twisted human, but human nonetheless. Why else would he still feel the strong human emotions of love and hate if that were not the case? A love for power, money, and all things that evoked terror and fear. A hatred for Hoodwink.
The flyer crested the atmosphere and he gazed through the portal into the stars of deep space, searching for Hoodwink's craft. He couldn't see it. The distraction of three-hundred and sixty degree vision wasn't helping.
The onboard AI helped him find Hoodwink. Another craft was traveling at high speed ahead of him, toward the planet known as Jupiter. Perhaps Hoodwink had been telling the truth about the ship that had crashed there, then. If so, that meant Javiol would be seeing Ari and all the others once again. And One. His master.
With a contraction of the torso that was equivalent to a sigh, Javiol plotted a course for Ganymede, resolving to stay awake for most of the journey: he dreaded the Satori dream world with its harems of ugly fish that kept trying to mate with him.
Suddenly agitated, he wrapped his tentacles around his lower appendages and squeezed tightly. As he stared at those empty stars, one thought echoed repeatedly in his head.
You're going to pay for this, Hoodwink. You're going to pay for everything.
His tentacles and lower appendages abruptly relaxed.
And if not you, then Ari.
Part III
The Pendulum Swings
33
Ari lowered her fire sword slightly. "Hoodwink?"
The man standing before her in the ruined square wore a leather jerkin clasped over a purple shirt with ruffled sleeves. He carried a glowing fire sword over one shoulder and seemed oblivious to the searing heat that no doubt emanated from the weapon. His black pantaloons flared above the ankles where they tucked into boots of a similar shade. A red bandanna wrapped his head. As for his features, he had thick brows, and a h
ooked nose bent very slightly over a mustache and goatee. He looked for all the world like a pirate. She'd never seen him before.
And yet he was grinning like a madman. Though his face was different, that crooked grin was unmistakable. Of all the things about her father, she remembered that trait about him the most fondly. And yet, was it really him...?
The man glanced at the charred remains of the square.
"I see you've kept the Inside in good upkeep while I was away, you have," he deadpanned.
When she heard that voice, she knew without a doubt that it was him.
"Dad!" Ari sheathed her weapon, tossed aside her shield, and wrapped her arms around him.
"It's good to see you, too, Ari," Hoodwink said, hugging her tight. "More than you know. The things I had to go through to get here..."
She pulled away from him and he wiped a tear from his cheek.
"I wasn't sure if you were dead," Ari said.
"Neither was I," Hoodwink said mysteriously. He glanced at Tanner. "Have you been taking good care of my girl?"
"For you, always, Hood," Tanner said. "Though to be honest, most of the time she's the one taking care of me."
"He's such a liar," Ari said.
"And who's the superhero?" Hoodwink nodded at the woman beside them who was wearing skin-tight blue clothes with the digits 100000 written onto the chest. Her outfit was completed by a red cape and belt.
"That's Renna," Ari said. "She's a Keeper." When Hoodwink blinked uncomprehendingly, she added. "One of the Children."
"Ah," Hoodwink said, scooping up the shield Ari had thrown aside. He examined it uncertainly, testing its heft. "Lots of things have changed in my absence, I suppose. You'll have to catch me up, sometime."
"You'll have to catch us up, too."
"I suppose I will."