“Well, it’s official. I’m lost,” Rich admitted.
“We’ve been working on the nans. We’re going to reactivate them. We’ve figured out how to neutralize the virus.”
“Speaking of which, Commander,” Djanet interjected, “we’re ready to do that now.”
“Then do it,” James replied.
Djanet turned to a computer console and hit a single button. “Done,” she informed the group.
“That’s it? I don’t feel anything,” Rich observed.
James groaned from the other side of the room. When he suddenly doubled over, Thel reached for him immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong—they’re just busy. I need to lie down.”
Thel and Rich helped to guide James over to a makeshift bed near Old-timer and Djanet.
“Rich, help me get my shirt off. You guys are going to want to see this. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Rich helped James remove his shirt. James lay as still as he could while the group, including General Wong, stood and observed; his massive incision seemingly vanished before their eyes. His stitches were pushed out of the skin and the bruising appeared to evaporate.
“My God,” General Wong uttered.
James watched with hungry fascination as his body was repaired. “Amazing,” he whispered. His color returned. He closed his eyes for a moment once the process seemed to be finished before saying, in his returned, strong voice, “That’s better.” He sat up and got off the bed. “Okay, guys, let’s finish the final preparations.”
“Final preparations for what?” Thel demanded.
“I’m going to enter the mainframe,” James replied.
“What? How is that possible? It’s guarded by millions of those machines. You’d never get close—”
“I’m not physically going to enter it,” James replied.
“Then how?” Thel asked. Again, James took a deep breath before beginning his explanation. “Thel, this is going to sound a little…strange, but you know that in my position, I was privy to top-secret information.”
“Yes,” she answered, beginning to sense that she was not going to like what she was about to hear.
“I was also part of many different projects. One of them was codenamed Death’s Counterfeit. The goal of the project was to send a person’s consciousness, literally, into cyberspace.”
“That’s impossible,” Thel replied, only half-believing her own words.
“It’s possible, Thel. I know, because I was their test subject. I’ve been there before.”
Another moment of silence filled the room, but Rich broke it. “You mean you’re actually going to kill that bastard? I love it,” he said, smiling.
“But he might kill you,” Thel protested.
James put his hands on Thel’s shoulder and looked directly into her eyes. “No he won’t, Thel. I’m going to enter his mainframe on a signal the A.I. doesn’t know about. That smug bastard thinks he knows everything, but the Council was smart enough to keep some information away from him. I’ll enter as a signal he won’t be able to detect, and I’ll isolate his mother program. Once I’ve done that, he won’t be able to access any of his defenses, so I’ll be able to delete him.”
“When you do it, tell him I said, hello,” Rich said, contempt dripping from his lips.
“Don’t do this, James,” Thel pleaded. “I just got you back. I can’t lose you again.”
“You won’t lose me, Thel…and I have to do this.”
“Why? Why can’t we just stay here? Why can’t we start over here?”
“We can’t escape him, Thel. Believe me, right now, the A.I. is breeding. He’s using a process I invented to reproduce exponentially. He can reproduce far faster than any organism in the universe. Robots don’t need to terraform. He can populate the solar system in a matter of days. He won’t need Earth, and then there won’t be anything stopping him from destroying it. He’ll move on from there. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the terror we’ve unleashed? There is life out there, Thel. We may not have contacted it yet, but it’s a mathematical certainty that it’s out there. It won’t just be us he destroys.”
Thel stepped away from James and sat down on a nearby chair. “I can’t believe it. It’s actually worse than I thought.”
“Do you see why I have to go?”
“But why alone, James? We could come with you!”
“It will take too long to configure a signal that can carry more than one person’s neural pattern. Besides, I need you guys here to watch over my body. I’ll appear to be in a deep sleep, but there won’t be anything you can do to wake me. Only I can bring myself back.”
“Will this nightmare never end?” Thel said.
James bent to one knee in front of Thel and lifted her chin. Her eyes were glossy with tears. “Thel, I promise you, I will destroy him…and I will be back.”
Thel shook her head and shut her eyes tight. “Then go! Go right now! Because I can’t stand this anymore! Kill it, James!”
James kissed her for a long moment on the cheek, then turned to the others. “Are we ready?”
“We’re ready,” Old-timer replied.
“Then let’s do it.” James took his place on the bed once again.
“Are you sure about this, buddy?” Old-timer asked his friend in a whisper quiet enough that Thel couldn’t overhear.
“As sure as I can be.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Old-timer responded grimly. “Take care of yourself. You still owe me that beer.”
James smiled. “I never break a promise,” he replied. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“Wait!” Thel shouted before Djanet could initiate the transfer of consciousness. She sprung out of her chair and grasped James’s hand tightly with her own as she kissed him hard. “You come back to me, you hear me?”
“I’ll be back.”
Thel kept her eyes locked on James, even as tears fell and landed on his neck.
“Do it, Djanet,” James said.
Djanet hit a button, and the life seemed to drain from James’s body as though someone had unplugged the drain. His pupils shrank as his eyes shut, and his head turned slightly to one side. His grasp on Thel slackened to nothing.
“Is he okay?” Thel asked Djanet.
“He’s perfect, Thel,” Djanet replied as she looked at the read-outs on her computer screen.
“He’s in,” said Old-timer.
12
Thel’s love-drenched eyes gave way to a perfect blackness—a blackness so complete that, had James not experienced it before, he would have panicked, believing he were dead. “Death’s counterfeit indeed,” he said out loud.
He opened his mind’s eye and began to navigate. He was in cyberspace now—an endless eternity of infinite space. He could reach any mainframe he wanted in the world, although most, if not all, had been taken over or destroyed by the A.I. It didn’t matter. There was only one place he wanted to go anyway. He located the A.I. and clicked.
In an instant, he saw a blue orb in the distance. An instant later, the blueness had given way to a massive, planet-sized circuitry. He had just enough time to make sure his feet were under him as he came into contact with the surface of the A.I. He stood to his feet and looked around himself at the colossal structure. The A.I. appeared like a planet of rectangular buildings. To James, it resembled the downtown cores of ancient cities in which boxy skyscrapers towered above paved streets. Each structure represented a file filled with information. James stood in one of the streets now, except there were no people or automobiles driving by; there was nothing but blackness at his feet. And as he peered upwards, there was perfect blackness in the sky. The buildings glowed an azure blue, but their light had nothing—no atmosphere of any sort—off of which it could reflect. The sky was empty and pure.