by Scott Cramer
He took two steps and fell to his knees before the injector filled with tryp. Careful not to disturb the plunger, he picked it up and balanced it in his palm. The eerie light illuminated the pale green liquid inside the cartridge.
For Petrov’s benefit, he voiced his thought process. “Should I inject a few milligrams at a time to boost my confidence, or should I consume the entire amount at once?
“If I choose the former, I risk the sepsis claiming me before the tryp is gone. What a waste.
“The latter option, injecting all at once, would rocket me to a lofty, but shortened state of exultation. I might find myself still alive with the tryp supply exhausted. What should I do?”
Petrov cleared his throat. “Follow your heart, Christian.”
“I suppose I should,” Ashminov replied, tightening his grip on the injector. “A final question. Did you reach Raissa in time?”
“Raissa is dead; Eve arose from her ashes.”
Ashminov brought the injector to the crook of his arm and issued a groan of pleasure as he toppled onto his side.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 08
Even though Petrov hadn’t spoken to Raissa since she’d left the crash site, she sensed him lurking in the shadows of her mind. Tension knotted the muscles in her neck and upper back, and an urge to dig the Eden Chip from her brain with her fingers persisted.
The glimmer of sunshine coming down through the leafy canopy was her compass. Knowing that she and Ashminov had crashed to the east of the buildings, she was heading west.
She stopped periodically to rip off the ends of large leaves. Surrounded by thick vegetation and with no defined pathways through the garden, it would be easy to wander in circles, and this way she would know if she were repeating her steps.
She detected motion on her right and spun that way as a torrent of adrenaline flooded her body. She raised the Glock and decapitated an orchid with a single shot. Bees were causing the flowers to sway.
She jumped back as her heart jumped in her chest. Goldstein stood before her.
She almost didn’t recognize her trainer. Frail and stooped over, he had aged a decade since she’d seen him three days ago.
“Goldstein?”
He looked right through her.
“Eve, Goldstein is nine thousand kilometers away.
Suddenly, she found herself facing the cemetery in Jerusalem where Farouk and her parents were buried. The garden had vanished, but Goldstein was still there. She told herself it was an illusion, but the odors persuaded her otherwise. The air smelled of red clay earth and olives ripening in the grove behind the cemetery.
Goldstein hobbled past her, as if she didn’t exist, and entered the cemetery. He walked up to her brother’s gravesite and went down on one knee.
“In exchange for serving as your trainer, Goldstein asked for only one thing.” Petrov startled her. “He wanted to visit Farouk’s grave without being punished by his chip.”
“Goldstein, do you feel guilty?” she cried, immediately wishing she had stayed quiet. In the rush of anger that flared behind her eyes, Raissa forgot this was all an illusion.
She walked over and stood behind the ghost who had murdered her family. Real or not, he was trembling. Then he broke down and sobbed. His pain touched her, and she reached out to comfort him. No matter what he did, he is human.
Hearing Petrov’s peals of laughter, she wondered if he was laughing at her, at Goldstein, or both. “Sadistic,” she muttered.
“A label for small minds,” Petrov replied at once. “Eve, I expect so much more from you.”
“And sick,” she added.
Goldstein’s sobbing had turned into violent shudders.
“The irony, Eve, is that Chaim Goldstein did not kill your family. But he still believes he gave the order to fire the missile.”
She pulled her hand back. “Who gave the order?”
In an instant, Raissa was seeing her home from across the street. Goldstein was gone. An emergency vehicle had parked by the door.
The door looked different. It had two vertical planks of wood rather than three. Misty memories drifted up from the past. That was the door she had passed through as a little girl before the missile strike. Have I gone back in time?
“In the mind of God, there is no past or future; only the present.”
She spat and then lifted her eyes, searching the sky for the incoming warhead.
The door opened, and a paladin stepped outside, holding her brother in his arms.
“Farouk!”
The paladin placed him in the vehicle.
Raissa raised her Glock. “Step back.”
The paladin climbed behind the wheel.
“Get out,” Raissa commanded.
“Eve, save your bullets,” Petrov chided. “You’ll need them later.”
Just then, four more paladins emerged from inside the house, two carrying Raissa's mother on a stretcher, two with her father. Her parents were asleep or in a coma, likely medicated. The paladins loaded them into the back of the vehicle.
“They’ll all go to Gabriel’s lab,” Petrov said. “Next stop, Paradise!”
“Mom, Dad, Farouk.” Raissa was walking over to them when a young girl raced from the house and wrapped her arms around Raissa’s legs, looking up at her with teary green eyes. It took Raissa a moment to recognize herself as a six-year-old. After years of seeing a scar in the mirror, it was strange to see her face so smooth. The girl’s heart—which Raissa felt beating like that of a hummingbird—had yet to incur the deeper scars of grief.
“Eve, allow me to show you the birth of your scar.”
Her home exploded—the blast sending fragments of stucco through her as if they were air—and when the dust settled, she was in a different location. She saw her younger self on an operating room table, sheet up to her chin, hair bunched up under a cap, her head held in a vice group. A tall paladin with blonde flowing hair ignited a laser scalpel and burned a line in her cheek at an angle, from the right side of her eye to her lip. The sizzling over, Raissa breathed in the odor of her burning flesh.
When she heard a whistle behind her, she spun around and faced the stove in her kitchen, steam hissing from a teakettle on the burner. Again, Petrov had moved her through time and space.
A loud wail came from the room where her grandfather prayed. She rushed to the door and opened it. Her grandfather was sitting on his prayer rug, gasping for breath and sobbing.
“Eve, dear, you are seeing Jaddy in real time. He is free to pray to his God.”
“His chip is punishing him,” she countered, noticing he held a photograph in his hands.
“Your grandfather loves you more than he loves his God. You broke his heart when you left him.”
Raissa dropped to her knees and wept when she saw the picture Jaddy was clutching. He had taken it when she was in hospital, her face and arms bandaged. The memory of him holding her hand and singing to her—“Jaddy is coming, He is almost here, He is bringing toys and gifts”—filled her with light.
Petrov’s voice plunged her back into the darkness. “Shall I scrub Jaddy’s memory? He’ll look at the photo and wonder, who is that child? What green eyes she has ! Say the word, Eve, and I’ll delete you from Jaddy’s mind.”
“Do it,” she shouted, unable to watch her grandfather suffer any longer.
When Jaddy’s sobbing grew louder and his breathing more labored, she rushed to hug him but wrapped her arms around a tree instead, the bark rough against her face. She was back in the garden.
“Eve, there’s no place like home.”
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 09
Keeping his fingers wrapped around the tryp injector, Ashminov pressed his cheek flat against the floor and remained still. He had no plan, and his head was swimming with fever. Focus!
The door opened, and he watched a pair of operating room slippers pad toward him. When the slippers were a meter away, he shifted his eyes up to a female paladin wearing hospital scrubs and a side hols
ter. She pulled the joule and bared her teeth.
Now what? This paladin had evidently received the Hadesware V2 code with his images, and her chip was firing electrochemical impulses deep into her brain, creating in her a craving to murder him. He imagined Petrov was watching the unfolding scene with delight.
To Ashminov’s relief, an idea popped into his mind. Put her chip into overdrive. He rolled onto his back and arched his neck to submit to his slaughter. The paladin inhaled sharply and leaned down, her eyes widening. She was drunk with bloodlust. He reached up and snatched the joule from her hand with surprising ease.
“Back up.” He rose to his knees.
Her crazed expression did not change, and she took a step forward.
When Ashminov got to his feet, he wobbled. “Where’s the transmission server?”
Except for heavy breathing, she remained silent and stared at his carotid artery.
“Do you have medical supplies?”
The paladin smacked her lips.
He waved the joule in her face. “I need antibiotics. Now!”
She narrowed her eyes and showed her teeth again.
“Face the wall,” he barked.
She lunged at him, hands stretched out like claws. He jabbed her in her neck with the injector. He had only pretended to inject himself with tryp, dribbling a few milliliters onto his skin. He depressed the plunger.
The paladin, awash with both tryp and a murderous fervor, dropped to the floor. She alternated grunts of pain from the forbidden substance in her system with wails of frustration at the ecstasy he had denied her. She’d recover, but not before the infection claimed him if he didn’t find antibiotics.
Ashminov moved in haste to the door through which the paladin had entered, but before he pulled it open, Petrov’s voice bellowed from above. “Christian, the data predicted you wouldn’t have the strength to resist using the tryp.”
“Surprise.”
“Surprise, indeed,” Petrov crowed.
“Nicholas, it would have been a bloody mess if that paladin had sunk her teeth into my neck.”
“Do you honestly believe I’d let you die? My surgeons would have patched you up nicely.”
Remembering the explosives belt around his waist—his final surprise for Nicholas?—Ashminov pulled the door open and immediately brought a hand to his mouth, gagging on the strong odor of roses.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 10
Raissa cast off from the tree, trying to push Jaddy’s suffering from her mind. The best way to help her grandfather—the rest of the population, too—was to keep a clear head and kill Petrov.
Continuing west, she soon heard running water, and when she parted a curtain of vines, a stream flowed in front of her. She recognized it immediately as the spot from which Petrov delivered his enlightenment wall lectures.
She walked along the sandy bank, thinking the stream would lead her to the isolated lab building or to the mound of earth with the satellite dish. Unfortunately, fewer plants in her way also meant greater exposure, and she tightened her grip on the Glock.
“Do you know how I selected you and Adam?” Petrov asked.
Raissa no longer had the urge to spin around and look for him, knowing his voice was inside her head. “Is Caleb alive?”
“Caleb is dead. How does that make you feel, Eve?”
Manipulated. Petrov enjoyed jerking her around this way and that. Instead of ignoring him, she’d try something else. She’d engage him in conversation to see what he might reveal. Everyone had a weakness. I’ll find out his.
She scoffed: “I don’t care how you selected Caleb and me.”
“An algorithm parsed trillions of bits of data before identifying you two as a perfect couple,” Petrov said, telling her anyway. “It considered your likes, dislikes, DNA, brain volumes, family histories, favorite nursery rhymes.”
Raissa stubbed her toe on a rock.
“Eve, you do care!”
“Trust me. I don't.”
His voice took on a serious tone. “You and Adam were four years old. Literary tastes play a significant role in matchmaking. Adam's favorite nursery rhyme was ‘Jack and Jill.’ You preferred ‘I’m a Little Teapot.’”
Raissa vaulted over a root ball. “Sure, my hero is a teapot.”
“You tickle my funny bone,” Petrov said in a perversely jovial tone.
She reached down to splash water on her face. Keeping her head still, she shifted her eyes left, then right, to scan the surrounding vegetation. It wouldn’t surprise her if Petrov wanted to distract her and then spring a unit of paladins on her. All clear.
She continued along the bank. “Seriously, I find it hard to imagine you have a sense of humor.”
“Delicious irony is my favorite.”
A bird with blue wings and an orange breast flitted by, and Raissa came close to blasting it out of the air, her nerves taut. “Is exterminating the population ironic, or just plain hilarious?”
“Both!” Petrov’s laughter filled her head. “Eve, I love your feistiness.”
“Love? You? Petrov, you are incapable of love.”
“Without love, life has no meaning. Ask Jaddy.”
She spat out. “Leave my family out of this!”
“I admire your grandfather. He is pure of spirit, unlike some so-called worshippers of religion.”
A sudden chill of fear passed through her. Had it come from Petrov? “You know worshippers who are not so pure?” she asked, probing into the madman’s mind to see what she might stir up.
“Version 1 of the chip dissolved childhood traumas. It was the first functionality I coded.”
She stopped, intrigued. He had ignored her question. That was significant. “Who said anything about traumas?”
A picture formed in her head that contracted her heart. A young boy was in bed at night, pulses of his fear emanating in the darkness. Had she entered Petrov’s mind?
“Yes, Eve. My vault of dark secrets.”
Through Petrov’s ears, she heard loud snoring coming from close by. Through his eyes, she saw the full moon out the window. A small gold crucifix and chain, gleaming in a shaft of light, sat on a table next to the bed.
“Eve, we are all shaped by our earliest memories.”
A final jolt of shock rattled her, and the boy—young Petrov—vanished.
“Petrov, I have horrible childhood memories, too, thanks to you.”
He jumped to a new topic. “Jaddy’s belief in God was born out of confusion. Throughout the ages, organized religion spread through the masses like cancer.”
She teased. “Petrov, you don’t want to discuss your childhood?”
“I am the one true God.”
“Fine, we don’t have to talk about it. Jaddy keeps his God alive in his heart. You implant chips in people’s brains so they’ll obey you.”
“Correction. So they’ll obey the data.”
“You even stole the M-code from a friend,” she said, eager to see if that might fire up his anger.
“Eve, in our little chat, have you identified my weakness? Something you might exploit?”
“Maybe.”
“Save your effort. Nobody can kill God.”
“We’ll see about that. Are you going to keep Caleb and me like pets in your ‘Garden of Eden’?”
“I told you Caleb is dead.”
“All that effort to find the perfect couple? I don’t believe you.”
“You can believe I have a better plan for my Adam and Eve!”
“I have a better plan for you, too,” she said, dropping her eyes to the Glock.
“Eve, how many bullets do you have?
“Enough.”
“The data suggests that you’ll need every last one.”
She reached a bend in the stream and squinted in disbelief. Twenty meters away, Petrov was sitting on a rock, his large head balancing on a thin neck: an excellent target. Taking deep slow breaths to quiet her nerves, she raised the Glock until the barrel pointed at his
head. She fine-tuned her aim, opting instead to put a bullet through his heart.
She crept closer, but something was not right. Petrov remained motionless. A trap? She scanned left and right for paladins. From five meters away, Petrov still seemed to be alone and defenseless. Would he run? Good luck. She’d cut him in half before he took two steps on those spindly legs.
He swiveled his head and gazed into her eyes. “Remember what Goldstein taught you: never look your victim in the eye.” He shifted his torso to provide her with a perfect target.
Looking directly at him, she pulled the trigger. BOOM. The garden soaked up the deafening roar like a sponge, and a flock of quail in the nearby brush took flight.
Petrov’s eyes brightened. Incredibly, she must have missed. BOOM.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
She fired repeatedly, but the bullets passed through him without leaving a mark. He was a figment of her imagination. The shots, beyond scaring quail, had likely called out her location to paladins.
Petrov grinned. “Imagine if the first Eve had packed a semi-automatic pistol. The story of the Garden of Eden would have been so much more entertaining.”
“Grab your popcorn,” she said and placed the barrel up against her temple. “Where’s Caleb?”
“You’ll join him in death if you pull the trigger.”
“Tell me!”
“Or what?”
“You’ll have your Adam, but no Eve,” she replied in a shaky voice.
“Yes, you are correct. Adam is alive and well. You are the love of his life; your passing will sadden him.”
The gun felt ugly and cold in her grasp. “I'm going to count. Ten…nine…eight…” Soon enough, Jaddy and the rest of the human population would follow her into death anyway.
“Seven…six…five…”
A young girl with bright green eyes appeared in Raissa’s mind; Petrov must have planted the image. At first, she thought she was seeing herself, but the girl bore a slight resemblance to Caleb. “Four…three…”