“How long do you need?” Djanet asked through gasps as, like Rich before her, she neared exhaustion.
“Three minutes,” James shouted back——the number was random. In actuality, he had no idea.
“Better speed it up! We’ll be dead in thirty seconds!” Rich shouted back.
29
“We’ve got our first hull breach!” Old-timer shouted as he scrolled through the ship map to see where the breach was located. “The engines!”
“Of course,” James growled. “Djanet, Rich! One of those things has breached the hull next to the engines! We need you to knock it off there, or this is going to be a short ride!”
“Copy that!” Djanet answered as she and Rich worked their way to the back of the ship. They were immediately caught in the wake of the massive magnetic engines, tossed around like cotton balls on a windy Chicago day.
“Well…isn’t this just a walk in the park!” Rich grunted as he struggled to stay on course.
“The good news is that it’s tough for the androids too!” Djanet replied. “They can’t get to us while we’re in here! It might just buy James the time he needs to ready the electromagnetic pulse.”
“Not if we can’t get those alien freaks off the engines!” Rich shouted back. “Do you see them?”
Djanet peered through the brilliant azure distortions created by the engines until she could make out a large group of androids who’d peeled back a small portion of the titanium casing surrounding the engines. The small portion was threatening to become a large portion, as nearly a dozen of the androids had grabbed a hold of it and were tugging at it violently, thrashing it. “Yes, I see them!”
“Can you get a shot?”
“It’s hard to hold steady, but I think so!” she responded. It was like holding on to the rope after falling while waterskiing, waves throwing you around violently until you didn’t know if you were facing up or down. She tried to stay steady and, when she thought she was in as good a position as she was going to get, she fired. Unfortunately, the blast got caught in the distortion of the engines and boomeranged back in an arc, glancing off of Rich’s magnetic cocoon and temporarily driving him out of the engine’s wake and back into danger—there were still millions of androids in the vicinity. “Sorry!”
“I’m okay!” Rich shouted back as he zipped up into the protection of the distortion once again. “I don’t want to be, you know, that guy, but that was not a very good shot! I’m sorry to be so critical!”
“I can’t possibly hit them from here!”
“We’re going to have to get out of the wake to get a clear shot!” Rich concluded.
Meanwhile, the ship finally left the stratosphere and entered space. “Okay, the autopilot’s engaged now,” James announced. “Thel, how is it coming?”
Thel shook her head in frustration. “It’s not. Nothing I try leads anywhere. I’ve tried rerouting power from the engines to the hull insulation, but it’s simply not enough voltage to do any damage.”
James examined the data quickly. “You’re right, damn it. I should’ve built an EMP into the design of the ship. I was so fixated on the minutia of the design that I couldn’t see the big picture.”
“Then you need to start looking at the big picture, boss,” Old-timer said. “Rich and Djanet aren’t going to make it much longer.”
“Might I make an ‘outside-the-box’ suggestion?” the A.I. said to James.
“Yes,” James replied.
“Perhaps your friend Nikola Tesla could be of help?”
James’s eyes opened wide, and a faint smile crossed his lips. “That’s actually a hell of an idea!”
“What?” Thel asked.
“I’ve got it! I know how to save Rich and Djanet!”
30
“Of course, you’ll need to build a tower,” the A.I. said as he calmly strolled by James back at the mainframe.
James was still in the operator’s position. “I’m on to you,” he replied.
“What?” The A.I. smiled, placing a hand on his chest as he mockingly feigned sincerity. “I’m only trying to help.”
“You’re trying to give away our position, which you will accomplish, and you know it.”
“My heavens. That was never part of my thinking,” the A.I. replied, amused.
“The androids have already reached the mainframe in Seattle and know it was abandoned. They’ll be looking for you—us—and tracing signals. The nans are working based on preprogramming now, but building the Tesla-designed tower will require me to send millions of instructions—traceable instructions.”
A continent away, in a place called Shoreham, Long Island, about sixty miles from Manhattan, the nans began to swirl in tiny wisps along the muddy ground. They multiplied at an exponential rate, and what had been wisps soon became a hurricane of activity. In just a few minutes, a Tesla tower, a magnificent metal structure stretching 180 feet into the air, stood triumphantly in the field. It exactly matched the designs and dimensions that the world’s greatest inventor had implemented but had never had the chance to complete.
“The aliens, no doubt, will have already traced the command signals back to us,” the A.I. began, “and you can’t run—they would be able to trace that too. You disappoint me, James. Just when I thought you were becoming an admirable computer, you had to go and ruin it with your pathetic human feelings of compassion.”
“I have a few more tricks up my sleeve yet,” James replied. The tower began to whir as James brought it to life. “You’re witnessing history here—something that should have happened hundreds of years ago—the human species is about to go truly wireless.”
“A little late, don’t you think?”
“Better late than never,” James replied.
31
High above the Earth’s atmosphere, Rich and Djanet were about to put a hastily formulated plan into action. “Okay. Let’s do this!” Rich shouted as the two post-humans exited the wake of the magnetic engines on opposite sides and then shot simultaneously at the androids who were tearing apart the engine casing. Both blasts hit their mark, knocking several of the androids unconscious and off the hull. However, the blasts also caught the attention of dozens more machines, and they reacted with fury, lifting off the hull and pursuing Rich and Djanet. The post-humans quickly darted back inside the relative safety of the engine’s wake. Rich watched as android after android tried to enter the wake, only to be blasted away by its force, like a person trying to walk unprotected into a raging waterfall. “I think we made them angry!’ Rich observed.
Meanwhile, in the cockpit, James excitedly monitored the progress of the Tesla tower. “Old-timer, remember what I told you about the ionosphere of Venus?”
“Yes,” Old-timer replied, his brows knitted at first, until he realized the significance of James’s words. Suddenly, his eyes opened wide, and a slight smile emerged on his face. “You’re going to create the electromagnetic surge we need with the ionosphere!”
When Thel realized what that meant, her mouth formed a wide and relieved smile; at least temporarily, her fears that James’s thinking was becoming too machine-like abated. “That’s brilliant, James! I knew you wouldn’t let them die!”
“We’re not out of the woods yet, but in another thirty seconds, once our coordinates are linked to the tower, we’ll—”