“A sound conclusion.” Besser’s face was a smiling nod. “Very well, Wade. You shall meet the Supremate.”
They extromitted through several subinlets. Again, Wade sensed they were rising. More signs floated by: SYSTEMSJUNCTURE#730, SYSTEMSJUNCTURE#525, SYSTEMSJUNCTURE#419. With each extromission they covered a great distance in no time.
“The extromitters are programmed by thought,” Besser mentioned. “Without that function, it would take weeks or even months to cross merely from one level to the next.”
“How long would it take to walk the entire labyrinth?”
“Years,” Besser said.
This impressive statistic deepened Wade’s despair. The further up they went, the more bizarre he felt, the more abandoned.
Was this how slaves felt before they met their lords?
Next sign: SYSTEMSJUNCTURE#1.
Wade felt light headed. Besser inserted his key and extromitted them into the Supremate’s shrine.
They stood tiny in vast, black space. Wade thought of an auditorium the size of a football field, with black walls, a black floor, and a black ceiling. Wade was about to meet the brains behind this entire business. What could something like that look like?
Set into the corner was a kind of inverted sconce. Wade could easily picture something grotesque sitting in it, an abominable, fleshy overlord with giant eyes and fish lips. Yet all that seemed to be resting in the sconce was a black box about the size of a VCR. The Supremate must be farther back in the nave, having not yet emerged.
The two sisters fell immediately to their knees.
“Okay,” Wade said. “I’m ready. Where is he?”
“Right there,” Besser said.
Wade squinted. All he saw was the black box in the empty sconce. “You mean the box?”
Besser nodded, his face uplit in a triumphant, twisted smile. “Say hello to your new master.”
Wade looked at the box and frowned deeply. “You’ve got to be shitting me. That box is the Supremate?”
“Yes.”
Wade was mortified. “That thing looks like my fucking CD player.” He glared disgusted at the meager black box. “I was expecting some big toad faced thing sitting on a throne.”
“It’s a logic circuit, Wade, an integrated processing terminal. It’s as conscious as you or I—only that consciousness is too complex for a physical body.”
The Supremate’s a machine, Wade thought. A bunch of transistors and solder. No, it was impossible. It must be a joke. “I cannot believe that the brains behind this entire operation is a ridiculous black box!”
—GREETINGS, WADE, the black box said.
Besser chuckled.
—HOW DOES IT FEEL TO MEET GOD?
««—»»
Her extromission seemed to turn her inside out and back again. Lydia stood in the mouth of a subinlet. The production warrens were in total darkness. The psilight was much dimmer now. And where were the sisters?
She spent a half hour extromitting from one random place to another. The mindsigns numbered in the hundreds, but each extromission progressed her only one number at a time. POINTACCESSMAIN#16, the next sign read. She examined the keyplate. It was just a black plate with a hole in it, nothing more. There weren’t even any buttons on it, just a keyhole. There had to be some trick to this, some way to program extromission to a specific location.
When she inserted the key, she was inadvertently remembering her brief stay in the temphold, and the absolutely disgusting thing that awaited her in the next cell. When she came out the next access, she expected to find herself at pointaccessmain#17. Instead, the mindsign glowed TEMPHOLDS.
Thought, she thought. Maybe that’s the trick. The idea had some definite possibilities, but before she could contemplate them, footsteps stopped behind her.
Lydia whirled.
—Lydia! You’re back!
One of the bigger sisters faced her, naked and grinning. Lydia gaped at the sight. The sister’s eyes were huge spheres. Her stretching grin showed a mouth crammed with teeth. And worse was what stood directly behind her: the same holotype that had been reserved for Lydia earlier. When it recognized her, it flexed up on its stout legs and howled.
Lydia was shaking, stepping back. The sister and her escort stepped forward. The holotype’s meaty face pinched up in lust.
—I can’t wait to watch, the sister said.
Lydia didn’t need to be told what she meant. The holotype’s preposterous genitals were already swelling in arousal.
They backed her into a dead end. The holotype fondled itself to full erection, chuckling deep from its slatted throat.
Now or never, Lydia thought. She raised the ultraviolet spotter, aimed its purple bulb at the sister’s face, and flicked the switch.
The sister giggled.
Nothing happened.
—
CHAPTER 36
The sisters hustled Wade out of the Supremate’s nave. Besser seemed amused by Wade’s colossal disappointment.
“In a sense, Wade, the Supremate is God. He’s omnipotent, omnipresent, and forethoughtful to a higher goal.”
“God, my ass,” Wade complained. “If that fucker’s God, my favorite beer is Bud. God is not a black box.”
Besser stopped a moment. His voice hung in the air like an incantation. “My god is here, Wade. Where’s yours?”
Good question, Wade concluded. He could not contemplate an answer. In a fraction of a second, Wade thought about his whole life, and how he’d blown every chance at being a decent person. God, whoever or whatever He was, had abandoned him. Even Wade could admit that it was fitting.
“Here we are,” Besser said. “Your last stop as a human being.”
Wade nearly wailed. The sign read IMPLANTATIONSURGERY.
The sisters dragged him into a small hold and slammed him down on a levslat, beside which hung a tray of instruments: pincers, retractors, and a good old Planet Earth type scalpel.
“Before you can join the Supremate’s family, you must first undergo a few changes.” Besser picked up a tiny black needle with wires coming out of it. “This is a ganglionicstaticreflexpulsemodificationdischargenode. It will integrate you with the labyrinth’s sensor systems, and it will teach you obedience very quickly. Any thought contrary to the Supremate will trigger an instantaneous release of static electrical current into your central nervous system and, of course, your gonads.”
“How charming,” Wade remarked.
“Additional acclimations will embellish your immune system so that, barring any physical accident, you’ll be impervious to all disease, and you won’t age.”
Wade indicated the black needle. “What exactly are you going to do with that?”
“Exactly? We’re going to implant it into your brain.”
Wade struggled against the two sisters, who giggled at his horror. “My health plan doesn’t cover this kind of procedure. You better find yourself another guy.”
One sister approached the instrument tray. The other held Wade down on the table. He jerked, and punched her in the eye with all his might, then howled. It felt like he’d just punched a steel ball.
“Be brave, Wade,” Besser consoled. “The sisters know exactly what to do. They’re trained brain surgeons.”
“Oh, that makes me feel a whole lot better!” Wade yelled.
The first sister vised his neck down with her hand like an iron brace. The second sister picked up the scalpel.