Mind Hive
Page 39
“What are they? Meteors?” Alexandrine turned her panel of eyes at the cluster.
“If I had to guess, I’d say there were ships decelerating. Alien ships. That would explain why the AI has been pushing such a fast timeline.”
“If they’re decelerating that far out, they must have been traveling at high speeds.”
“And,” Celestine closed her chest, “their physiology can’t take a fast deceleration, so they must have a physiology like our old biological selves. Want to go take a look at them?”
“How far?” Alexandrine opened and closed her chest. Opened it and created a hologram of her older self. “How long of a trip?”
“I’d say fifty years, for us. A couple hundred for them.”
“Let’s do it. I’m sick of The Sim and the Earth and all that.”
“Yeah, it’s just a few decades. Won’t hardly miss a thing.” Robert opened his chest and hologramed his face only.
“By the time we get back, the AI will have finished making a drive system for the Earth. It doesn’t intend to be here when the asteroids they’ve hurled at us get here.”
Alexandrine changed her hologram to just her face, too.
“What kind of drive could move the Earth?”
“It’s called an Alcubierre warp drive. It’s creating a large wormhole in front of the Earth that will create a wave for the Earth to slide down, perpetually. They’ll gain speed until going fast enough, say fifty-some kilometers a second. That would be fast enough for the Earth to leave its orbit and possibly much faster as a it escapes the solar system.”
“Then, yeah, let’s go check them out. If we’re all spacemen now anyway.”
“You’ll want to charge up plenty. I’m sending you the instructions for modifying the structure of your suit so you can maneuver. Lift off in five, four, three …”
XXVII
Natalie brushed the ice crystals from her mother’s face. Grant had closed her eyes, thankfully. She’d been looking for her for only a few days when her scan found the necklace she bought her in the eighth grade. She felt emotion, real emotion-driven tears. Ai taught her to rebuild her emotions through meditation. Ai also told her it might work, raising her mother from the dead using Adam’s nanites and a steady pulse of energy. She uncovered the rest of her mother and cut through her shirt and breastbone to get the nanites deep inside. Then she poured what looked like fine dust out of the tiny jar into the frozen cavity. She ate one of the few remaining AI-Persona power pods; the AI had stopped making Personas, and soon they’d all be harvested. The power surged through her and she focused it through her palm pushing against the wound. The skin steamed and the fluids melted. She increased the strength and rapidity of the electric pulse. The ice around her mother melted. Her mother’s hair smoked. Then her mother’s left eye fluttered and then her right opened. She blinked them. Natalie removed her hand and stood up. That moment could be traumatic for her, Ai told her. And it was.
When her mother’s body stopped bouncing and lurching, she kneeled and leaned her ear close to her mouth, which moved as if with words.
“Damn you.” Her mother rolled onto her side away from Natalie.
“That’s what they all say, mother. You just wouldn’t believe the hate mail I get.” Natalie laughed and spooned her mother. She squeezed her. She pulsed energy into her gently.
- The End -
CAST
Adam Howard: A veteran Seattle Daily Record editor and zombie-novelist-wannabe. Mr. Howard, an alcoholic with plenty of health problems, has a dedication to journalism that drives him and his team to tell stories up to and beyond the end of the biological human world.
Natalie Rodriguez: Adam’s youngest reporter discovers a story that at first appears to be a lifestyle blog post about a cultish group of hackers who attracted the attendance of a well-known computer scientist and entrepreneur. Natalie is a young, idealistic and insightful reporter in her first professional job. She learns fast as she embeds with the only people working to save the masses from annihilation by an AI that appears unaware of humanity as an intelligence worth saving.
Robert Henderson: An experienced reporter and Natalie’s mentor who emerges at the heart of the story. Robert’s writing helps humans understand their new world. He is an adventurer who explores without caution and works his way deep into the youth culture of the new world and its powerful young leaders.
Kristi Beach: The fast-thinking, sarcastic managing editor of the Daily Record who facilitates the investigation into the cult discovered by Natalie and its expanding affect. Her travails later in the story give a wide view of people attempting to remain biological in the fast changing world.
Ted Mannerheim: The successful computer scientist whose immature algorithm, more art project than serious computer programing, becomes the seed of the emerging AI. Mannerheim loudly doubts the AI’s existence and asserts his art project could not have led to what’s going on, but he is dissembling. He is a complex nemesis focused on what he can achieve by working with the rich and powerful … without empathy for the vast masses of humanity.
Alexandrine Van-dunem: A young, wise teen inhabiting one of the unique and powerful forms of Earth-rooted simulated humans. She plays a quintessential role in events, while still growing in influence and power. Alexandrine takes no shit but leads with her heart as she teams up with Robert to become his apprentice and eventually roam the galaxy in search of stories.
Celestine Wallace: She is the central power figure, the mysterious protagonist who melds with the very young AI and is the reason the AI creates a simulation for humanity to live in. She was Mannerheim’s graduate assistant who, after all-too-classic mistreatment, seeks to save the billions of impoverish brown people destined to be casually killed off by the forces of climate change and economic injustice. Is she a hero? She is less concerned with her status and futile battles against the AI—battles lost long before anyone even knew they were fighting—than she is driven to save her fellow downtrodden humans.
The Twins, Michelle Olivas and Betty Gaines: Two young computer scientists who joined with Celestine to spread simulation nanites. They have decided, however, that the end of humanity is only a step toward emergence of human consciousness with the universal consciousness. Their religious view of humanity’s future clashes dramatically with Celestine’s efforts once simulation has been achieved and causes them to go insane.
And the rest: Josh Fines, an undercover cyber-crimes federal agent; Ai Van-dunem, Alexandrine’s mother and scientist working to save the ragtag band of humans who remain in their bio-form but will not survive the end of the Earth’s biosphere without replication; and the rest of a diverse cast of newsroom, science, political and other bit-playing characters who fill in the aviary of the rich and engaging world of Mind Harvest.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jake Berry Ellison Jr., philosophy geek and master craftsman in the field of science writing. He has been a regional and national journalist in the Northwest for 30 years. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana, and since then has written several novels and short stories. He has had short works of unusual fiction published and his self-published novel “Sons of Wayne” was a semi-finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 2009; and in 2008, “Sons of Wayne” was Semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.