Post-Human Trilogy Part 10

Craig huddled close to the fireplace in the t.i.tanic's first-cla.s.s smoking section. He removed his jacket and left it crumpled in a wet pile at the foot of the flames while he held his numb hands up to the fire, rubbing them in an attempt to bring back feeling; he'd never been so numb in his life.

Behind him, the room was empty, other than the two unconscious stewards who had tried to prevent his entrance. The tuxedo-clad gaggle of men who'd gathered in the room previously had made a hasty retreat, dumping their brandy snifters in the process. The scent of the hard liquor still hung in the air, intermingled with the cigar smoke.

"Craig? Can you hear me?" the A.I.'s voice suddenly spoke.

"I can hear you. What are you doing in my head?"

"Apparently, Samantha has administered my mother program to you rather than herself. I'm trying to establish a better connection to your synapses so I can access some of your systems."

"My systems?"

"Craig, I'm getting an internal temperature reading now. Do you realize that your body temperature is only 32.9 degrees Celsius? You're hypothermic. This is very dangerous. You need to seek warmth immediately."

"Way ahead of you," Craig replied, his eyes beginning to droop from fatigue. "I'm by a fireplace."

"Excellent. I'm still trying to establish a connection to your optics so you can see me and I can see through your eyes. I'm currently blind to your surroundings. Craig, are you still s.h.i.+vering?"

His eyes continued to droop as he stared into the fire. He'd let himself out of his crouch and was now sitting down, legs open in front of the warm tangerine glow. "No. I stopped s.h.i.+vering. I must be warming up."

"No," the A.I. replied. "That is a bad sign. You should still be s.h.i.+vering. Your body is currently in the midst of moderate hypothermia, but you are on the edge of suffering from profound hypothermia. If you aren't s.h.i.+vering, your body temperature is going to drop even further, and quite rapidly at that."

"I'm in front of a fire. I'm fine," Craig replied sleepily. "Don't worry. I'm a doctor. I just need some rest."

"If you sleep now, you will die," the A.I. warned.

"Get out of my head, will ya? I know what I'm doing."

"Craig, your judgment is severely impaired. You have to listen to me. Being uncooperative is a cla.s.sic symptom of-"

"Shut up!" Craig suddenly shouted, annoyed as he curled up on his side in front of the fireplace, his clothes still dripping wet with water that remained at the freezing point.

"Craig, I'm afraid I can't let you sleep. Craig?"

Craig gave no response; he'd lost consciousness.

"Craig? Craig!" The A.I. knew he only had moments before Craig's body temperature loss would become catastrophic for both of them. Having lost consciousness, Craig's body temperature would now drop rapidly, dipping toward cardiac arrhythmias at twenty-eight degrees Celsius, before plunging to twenty degrees Celsius, at which time his heart would stop completely, resulting in death. The nans would work to repair the damage caused by the various systems of Craig's body collapsing, but there was no guarantee that they would be able to keep him alive, especially once his heart stopped. At that point, repairing tissue in the heart as well as the brain might turn out to be a forlorn enterprise, depending on how long the oxygen deprivation would have persisted by then. Post-humans were indeed very difficult to kill, but it was not impossible.

For the moment, the A.I. refocused his attention away from establis.h.i.+ng a visual connection and toward Craig's power system. He knew if he could gain control over Craig's spinal implant quickly enough, he would be able to stir his host into waking. If not, the A.I. would be trapped inside a corpse. Once that happened, not even the A.I. could survive in those conditions indefinitely. Eventually, the nan.o.bots that carried the A.I.'s core pattern would begin to shut down, overwhelmed by the toxic processes that would be present in Craig's body as rigor mortis set in, followed quickly by decomposition. Indeed, the A.I. was also difficult to kill-but not impossible.

Meanwhile, the s.h.i.+p's master-at-arms arrived at the threshold of the room with his pistol drawn. He crouched down on one knee and felt for a pulse from the two stewards who'd been shocked unconscious; each man had a strong pulse.

He stood to his feet, turning his attention to Craig's unmoving form at the foot of the fireplace. It had been a long time since the master-at-arms had dealt with a situation that disturbed him as much as this. The man had appeared on the s.h.i.+p, soaked as though he'd been in the drink, yet somehow he was able to climb aboard a vessel that was traveling at over twenty knots. As bizarre as those circ.u.mstances had been, even more alarming were the descriptions of the witnesses of the unexpected a.s.sault on the stewards. Indeed, reputable gentlemen of the highest esteem and regard had sworn that their a.s.sailant had thrown electrical sparks from his body as though he'd conjured them from within himself. The master-at-arms had seen such demonism before-a presentation a few years earlier by none other than the madman Nikola Tesla-and he'd sworn then that he would never again put himself in the presence of such evil. Now, his duty forced him to break that oath, as the more important oath was to protect the pa.s.sengers on his s.h.i.+p. That, above all, took precedence.

"You there!" he commanded, trying to muster authority while his voice quivered, strangled by uncertainty. The figure lay, still unmoving on the ground, but there was something about the circ.u.mstances that curdled the master-at-arms's blood. There was evil in the room-he was certain of it.

He stopped, inches away from the fallen figure and nudged him with the tip of his shoe, making sure his gun remained aimed squarely at the figure's back. The nudge didn't stir the figure, man or demon. So far, so good, he thought, and he decided that was all the invitation he needed to pull out his handcuffs and get to work securing the perpetrator's wrists. He snapped one of the bracelets around the figure's left wrist before pus.h.i.+ng the body over onto its stomach, intent on freeing the right arm and pulling the two wrists together behind the man's back. Just as he did so, and just before the second cuff was secured, the body suddenly became animated.

Craig, still unconscious, his eyes still shut, suddenly lifted off of the ground and into the air, his hands hanging limp at his sides, his head slumped over and rolling with the movement as the green aura of energy swirled and sparked in a phantom-like manner around him.

Terrified, the master-at-arms fired his pistol twice at the otherworldly figure before him. The bullets did nothing to remedy the situation, bouncing off of the aura and whizzing dangerously past the master-at-arms's head. He stumbled backward, falling to the ground on his hip painfully, just inches from where the two stewards continued their slumber. "Holy Mary, mother of G.o.d."

15.

Sanha remained on his knees, his head bowed toward the rough concrete, sweat and blood dripping from his face, and forming an expressionist masterpiece in his field of vision. He kept his eyes fixed on the ever-changing picture as, one by one, the post-human captives were executed. Point-blank shots to the temple felled them as the Purist super soldier paced up and down the rows of hapless victims.

This is how my life ends? Sanha thought to himself as he watched the Jackson Pollock continue to change, the blood and sweat mixing into yins and yangs, little pieces of dark concrete dust getting picked up and s.h.i.+fted in the mess. I had immortality in my grasp, and now...I just die? I just die?

He flinched as another shot ended the life of yet another one of his compatriots. He could feel the thud of the body as it collapsed somewhere behind him. In his mind, he was sure there had been children in the group-or had the little ones all escaped? Dear G.o.d, I hope they all escaped.

Aye, there is the rub, he thought. G.o.d. Here I am, talking to G.o.d as I wait to die, yet I don't believe in G.o.d. How ironic is it, that even as the men who claim G.o.d as their motivation for keeping the species pure are executing me, I still speak to a figment of my imagination? Even now, I can't let superst.i.tion go.

"Sanha! Can you hear me?"

For a moment, Sanha thought his heart might stop.

"Sanha, if you can't reply but you can hear me, move your head and let me see what's going on."

Sanha recognized the voice: Aldous! He turned his head slightly and craned his neck so he could catch a glimpse over his shoulder at the slaughter taking place behind him. He only dared a momentary look. He snapped a picture with his mind's eye and placed it in his field of vision so Aldous could see it too. Half the people behind him had been executed, and the other half were huddled over on their knees, waiting for death.

"Oh no," Aldous whispered as he froze in his tracks, hot breath jetting out of his mouth as he panted. He finally dared to turn and looked back. The faint glow of the spotlights from the harrier transports that remained around the entrance to the facility in Mount Andromeda remained visible over the tree line. He wanted to ignite his coc.o.o.n and speed back, blasting as many super soldiers as he could on his way in, hopeful that he could at least save one of the remaining post-humans-but he also knew he couldn't. He had to survive-he had to be ready for the return of the A.I.

"Sanha, I'm so sorry, my dear friend. I'm so, so sorry. It's my fault you're in that position. It should be me there instead of you."

Sanha listened but dared not reply. Every few seconds, the super soldier's rifle thundered to life, and a post-human subsequently lost theirs. His eyes were now focused on the Pollock that continued to form on the concrete underneath him-but it seemed to be s.h.i.+fting away from the randomness and fracture ubiquitous in a Pollock and transforming into a Monet, the blobs of blood beginning to form patterns that seemed like something recognizable. Sanha was sure he could see what looked like a hand forming out of the dirty sweat, little drops of blood tricking from it-the blood looked like bright red coins.

Finally, the super soldier made it to Sanha, his boot stepping into Sanha's field of vision, wiping away the painting like a sandcastle in the waves. Sanha gulped hard before lifting his head up, squinting as the overhead lights hurt his eyes.

Aldous watched through Sanha's eyes as the super soldier looked down at his next victim. He looked like the worst perversion of the man-machine civilization. Straight out of Milton, stood a real life Beelzebub, complete with wings that spread out into a six-foot span. He wore a helmet that covered most of the top part of his face, and he flexed skeletal-looking prosthetic fingers on the trigger of his extraordinarily heavy and powerful rifle, carried by his carbon fiber cybernetic arm.

Worst of all were the eyes-or lack there of. The super soldiers all had their biological eyes scooped out in favor of mechanical ones that were jammed unnaturally into their eye cavities, causing bluish stretch marks to snake outward into ugly, web-like patterns in every direction. The mechanical orbs were too large to simply replace the biological eyes, so the entire extent of skin surrounding the eyes, including their eyelids and the muscles around them, had to be removed. This gave the super soldiers an uncanny lack of facial expression, their eyes appearing almost as black voids. At their center, however, were golden irises that swiveled to and fro.

The irises rotated perceptibly as Sanha looked into them, apparently facilitating some sort of visual process. The super soldier's eyes remained locked on Sanha for an unusually long period of time, the rifle not firing as expected.

Aldous felt as though he were in a Planck ripple-the time seemingly drawn out inexplicably as he waited for his friend's life to end. The other executions had, at the very least, been quick. This time, it appeared the super soldier was savoring this one for some reason. Does he know Sanha has a rider? Aldous's connection was aural only, so the white glow that crossed over the eyes of post-humans while their minds' eyes were flas.h.i.+ng images shouldn't have been present. Could the super soldier possibly detect Aldous's presence anyway?

Then, suddenly, the rifle barrel was lifted. "Professor Sanha Cho," the super soldier announced, almost cheerfully, "today's your lucky day. You've been cla.s.sified as a VIP."

"Oh, thank G.o.d. Thank G.o.d," Sanha whispered to himself.

"Excuse me for a moment, will you?" the super soldier said as he turned to the post-human kneeling to Sanha's right and unceremoniously shot him in the temple. Blood sprayed hot on Sanha's right cheek, before quickly cooling and becoming a cold shock, running down his neck as the super soldier's execution spree continued.

Suddenly, a harrier transport emerged from above the tree line, headed in Aldous's direction. It yanked him out of his stunned immobilization and sent his legs springing into action. He turned and ran for the nearest tree, reaching down with his hand to grab a few branches as he thrust himself down into the snow, pulling the branches up over himself like a blanket of camouflage as he did so.

He knew the transport would certainly be equipped with sensors that could detect and recognize a human pattern amongst the trees, but Aldous hoped the snow and branches would be enough to keep the intelligent algorithms from recognizing his pattern.

The transport whizzed overhead, its red laser sensors visible underneath its belly as it pa.s.sed by, but it didn't stop.

When a minute had pa.s.sed, Aldous got up, brus.h.i.+ng the snow off of his clothes and exposed skin, and tuned back into Sanha's mind's eye.

The last post-human had been executed, and the super soldier was now standing in front of Sanha once again, gazing down at his prey. "Those implants of yours are mighty powerful," he began as he returned his rifle to his backpack and retrieved the smaller, sleeker disruptor device. "We can't just keep shooting the d.a.m.ned thing over and over," he said as he shot Sanha in the lower abdomen, the energy dissipating in his body.

Sanha grunted slightly, but the disruptor wasn't painful as much as it was uncomfortable, causing the MTF implant to s.h.i.+mmer slightly, resulting in a numbing of the legs, not unlike the experience of people with sciatica. "I mean, I could just a.s.sign a guy to follow you around and shoot you every two minutes, but that hardly seems practical. Lucky for you," he said, grinning as he replaced his disruptor, "there's an alternative."

The super soldier held up his clawed, mechanical hand, and the contraption suddenly made an electric whir as it began to spin like a drill, the fingers merging together to form a fine tip. With his free hand, the super soldier grasped Sanha by the back of the neck and forced him down onto his stomach. He clamped down on him with his right leg, placing it on the back of Sanha's thigh, locking Sanha into position as the drill hovered above Sanha's lower back.

Aldous had never heard such screaming in his life. It was a shrill pitch that could only be called forth by the worst agony-unimaginable agony.

"No! No," Aldous whispered.

After a torturously long minute, the screaming stopped, followed only by the sound of Sanha's wheezing. He shut his eyes several times, preventing Aldous from seeing what was happening. It wasn't hard to guess, however.

"It's really quite a beautiful thing," the super soldier commented in the blackness.

Sanha's eyes suddenly flashed open, the super soldier having grabbed him by the scruff of the neck once again and pulled him up with one arm, holding the blood-covered MTF generator in the other, displaying it for him.

"Who would've thought something so small would cause so much trouble?" He released Sanha and let him fall back to the concrete.

Sanha closed his eyes again, opening them intermittently for brief flashes before they rolled back into his head.

"Stop your whining," the super soldier demanded. "Those little nan.o.bots of yours will fix any incidental spinal damage I might have caused. You'll be right as rain in an hour-and a lot closer to being human again." His lip curled into a sneer. "You're welcome."

With his lips quivering from the horror, Aldous held his head in his hands as he considered his options. The logical thing to do was to keep running, but he hadn't antic.i.p.ated how difficult it would be to leave his companions. He hadn't accounted for the emotional element once again-he hadn't accounted for the horror.

After a few moments, he managed to force his cement legs to resume moving-a slow trot at first, but as he considered the consequences of failure, he began to run hard, nearly sprinting away through the snow.

Suddenly, the super soldier c.o.c.ked his head to the side, apparently listening to a communique. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Holy...they are tough b.u.g.g.e.rs, aren't they? What's the name of the VIP?"

Aldous suddenly froze once again. No. It can't be.

"Professor Samantha Gibson," Colonel Paine reacted, repeating the name that had been related to him, his smile suddenly br.i.m.m.i.n.g widely. "Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned. Small world, ain't it?"

16.

"Heaven bless you, Father, I can't protect you!" the master-at-arms shouted. "Bullets have no effect."

The priest nodded, understanding the gravity of the evil he faced. He had pocketed a small bottle of holy water when he'd clumsily exited his room, pulled along by the steward that the master-at-arms had sent to fetch him. As he gazed up at the limp body that floated only inches above the ground in the center of the smoking room, he wished he'd brought more-a lot more.

"Glorious Prince of Heaven's armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle against the princ.i.p.alities and powers, against the rulers of darkness, against the wicked spirits in the high places." He tossed the first salvo of holy water at the floating apparition.

It seemed to have no effect.

"Keep going," the master-at-arms encouraged.

"Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May G.o.d rebuke him, we humbly pray." The priest tossed the second salvo of holy water toward the floating demon.

Again, there appeared to be no effect.

The holy man gritted his teeth, determined, and began to speak more forcefully.

"And do Thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of G.o.d, thrust into h.e.l.l Satan and all evil spirits who wander throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls!" He tossed the third salvo of holy water.

To the master-at-arms's and the priest's surprise, this time there appeared to be some small effect. The demon twitched slightly-an audible snap of energy sparking behind it.

"Holy Mother-I think it's working!"

At that moment, the intrepid journalist William Stead arrived upon the scene, dressed only in his house coat and pajamas, as he'd retired to bed nearly two hours earlier. The sleep in his eyes vanished instantly when he saw the spectacle in the smoking room. This would be the defining scoop of his life. Without taking his eyes off of the floating figure and the aura of green energy that surrounded it, he reached with his right arm and grasped the collar of the photographer he'd brought with him to doc.u.ment the t.i.tanic's maiden voyage. "Get this. For the love of G.o.d, you better get this!"

The young photographer, his hands shaking violently from the fright, began to set up the tripod for his Kodak camera.

"It'll be over before you get that set up, man! Just take the shot!" Stead shouted.

The priest continued his prayer. "In the name of the Father," he thundered, splas.h.i.+ng more of the holy water onto the floating figure. "...and the Son!" He threw more holy water. "And the Holy Spirit!"

A loud and audible pop of electricity suddenly jolted Craig back to consciousness just as the young photographer snapped his Kodak, capturing the moment of Craig's reawakening.

What the h.e.l.l was that?" Craig asked.

"Am I speaking to the demon?" asked the priest.

"That was me, Craig," the A.I. replied. "I'm sorry, but I had to give you a shock. I can't let you sleep or you will die."

"Who the h.e.l.l are these people?"

"I still haven't established a connection to your optics," the A.I. replied.

"We're Christ's followers, demon!" the priest shouted. "We command you to leave! The power of Christ compels you!"

"Oh boy," Craig sighed. "I've attracted a crowd."

"That is not good, Craig. We are not supposed to interfere with this timeline."

"Not interfere? What are you talking about? We're supposed to just let this s.h.i.+p sink?"

"Sink?" the master-at-arms repeated. He turned to the priest. "Is this-thing-threatening the s.h.i.+p, Father?"