Crewcut and two of her subordinates lay sprawled on the deck. Sanchez lay draped over my body, and Linda, impeccable as always, stood with a gun in her hand. It was gold-chromed and matched her earrings.
Trask was there, as was Bey, and a woman I had never seen before. She was dressed in Protech overalls, which suggested a spy of some sort. All three had their weapons aimed at a group of terrified technicians. You had to give the greenies credit. Subsequent to spotting me on the observation deck, Bey had wasted little time finding reinforcements and tracking me down. I realized Linda had spoken, and thought my reply. It boomed through the PA system. “Yes, I can hear you.”
Linda frowned and looked around the room. I panned a tiny bit. A motor whirred, and she looked into the proper camera. Judging from her expression, she either cared about me or was one hell of an actress. I suspected some of both. “You’ve seen what Dr. Casad is like. She wants to destroy you. Joy can bring you back. Order her to do so.”
I laughed. The electronic translation had a maniacal quality. “Get serious. You tried to kill me. Why would I place myself in your hands?”
“Because we represent the lesser of two evils,” Linda said calmly. “Because you have my word that we will protect you.”
I had just started to consider Linda’s offer when the door burst open. An assistant entered, followed by Dr. Casad and Sasha. The scientist took a quick look around, understood the situation, and shoved the technician towards Linda. He stumbled, collided with Linda, and jerked as she fired two darts into his abdomen. He fell, Linda tried to catch him, and Casad turned. She took two steps and stopped when she found herself staring down the business end of her daughter’s gun.
The older woman was furious. “Sasha! What are you doing?”
Sasha’s face was pale and drawn. “You can’t do this. It isn’t right.”
I switched to another camera and watched the scientist marshal her considerable will and focus it on her daughter. Lightning flashed in Marsha Casad’s eyes, and her hands were clenched at her sides. “How dare you interfere with my work! Don’t you understand? Life isn’t easy. Sacrifices have to be made. I worked for it. The knowledge belongs to me. Now put that gun away, or better yet, shoot the greenies.”
The people in question didn’t like that idea and aimed their weapons at Sasha. She didn’t even look in their direction. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “No! The decision belongs to Max. The knowledge is stored in his brain, and it belongs to him.”
Her mother’s eyes bulged with emotion. “Have you lost your mind? The man’s an idiot! You traveled with him…you know how limited his capabilities are. I worked ten long years to gather and analyze the information stored in his head. The data is mine. Think about it, Sasha…Project Freedom could put billions of unemployed people to work. It could launch a thousand ships to distant star systems and save the human race from slow suffocation!”
The words had a rehearsed sound, as if they had been said countless times before and long since reduced to a catechism. I watched Linda take the information in, process it, and come up with a greenie-style response. “She’s lying. A star drive won’t solve humanity’s problems. Androids will build the ships, Earth will be stripped of the few resources she has left, and the corpies will leave us to die.”
Marsha Casad walked towards her daughter with outstretched hand. Her voice was calm and soothing. “Give me the gun. Everything will be fine. Protech has wonderful doctors. They can replace your missing eye. How ‘bout one of Maxon’s? The tissues will match. You know why? Because Maxon is your biological father, that’s why. I needed a warrior, someone who could bring him back, so I used his sperm to make you. That’s why this is so symmetrical, so perfect, so right. I stored the knowledge in his head, I created you to get it back, I…”
I was still in the process of absorbing the part about my sperm when Sasha fired a tox dart into her mother’s throat. The older woman looked surprised, removed the projectile from her flesh, and held it up to the light. She was still in the process of examining it when she slumped to the floor.
A klaxon started to beep. Joy was worried. “Uh-oh. It looks like the doctor was wearing a biomonitor. Security was notified the moment her vital signs dropped below normal. They’re online now, trying to regain control of the computer.”
Though not directly involved, I could feel some sort of struggle as powerful forces tried to take control of my electronic universe and Joy fought to stop them. I wanted to help, but my new existence hadn’t made me any smarter than I was before. Sasha knew that and did her best to focus my thoughts.
“There isn’t a lot of time, Max. Security is on the way. Make your decision.”
I watched Trask move towards Sasha and saw Linda shake her head. He frowned but stayed where he was. I felt calm and strangely detached. Sasha was right. The decision was mine. And it was easier than I thought it would be. The human race wasn’t ready for the stars. Not by a long shot. No, the knowledge should be destroyed, even though someone would reassemble it. Time, even a little time, might make a big difference. Maybe man-and womankind would grow up, get a little smarter, and behave a whole lot better. Maybe they would deserve the stars. Hey, a guy can hope, can’t he?
And that meant a brain-wipe. Not a partial brain-wipe, as in erase the data and leave everything else alone, because no one had figured out how to do that. No, this would be a complete brain-wipe, as in the whole enchilada.
Which is why I asked Joy to store this narrative in her hard drive and download it into whatever remained of my brain moments after she deleted the file named “Project Freedom.” I hoped it would give the future me some idea of what the past me had been through.
The hard part was accepting what amounted to death, having just acquired something worth living for. Suddenly I had a daughter, and more than that, a connection with the past and the future. But there was no helping it, no way to avoid what I had to do, so I ordered Joy to wipe my brain. Darkness fell, and I ceased to exist.
Epilog
More than five years have passed, but I never tire of hearing how Sasha and Joy joined forces with the greenies, how Linda ordered Trask and Bey to carry my mind-wiped body to a specially chartered freighter, and Joy forced the Protech computer to supply us with the necessary clearances.
The new me is something of a legend among the greenies, which is just as well, since Dr. Casad is very much alive, and willing to pay a cool one hundred thousand credits for my chrome-plated head. Not for what’s in it, mind you, since the data is gone, but for the satisfaction of seeing me dead.
So, I give the greenies what assistance I can, including interviews like this one, and work at learning all the things a five-year-old should know. I’m way ahead of my experiential age, thanks to special therapy and fast-learn techniques, but still something akin to an over-the-hill teenager.
But, thanks to a nicely crafted blond wig, and some well-executed biosculpting, I can pass for a regular Joe. It wouldn’t be healthy to tell you where Sasha, Joy, and I live, but suffice it to say that we run a little café, and look on the regulars as part of our family.
As for the future, well, who knows? We may have slowed ’em down a little, but one thing’s for sure, they’re working on it.
William C. Dietz
***