Post-Human Trilogy

1

WAKING UP for the first time from nano-infusion treatment was a disorienting and altogether unpleasant experience for Dr. Craig Emilson. The feeling of nausea was overwhelming.

“Don’t try to stand up,” said the young doctor as she lightly pressed her palm against Craig’s chest and kept his back against the small bed on which he lay. “We have to do a quick test first.”

“I’m fine, really,” Craig replied as he tried to get up once again.

Again, the young doctor kept him horizontal. “Dr. Emilson, try not to be such a stereotypically bad patient for the next minute and just let me help you.”

Craig smiled. “You can’t turn off being a doctor.”

“Pretend,” the young doctor replied. “I have to make sure the respirocytes are operating and, since this is your first nano-infusion, it’s important that I show you how they work.”

“I know how they work,” Craig replied. “My wife builds them.”

“She what?” asked the doctor, her routine suddenly interrupted by the interesting tidbit.

“My wife works with Professor Gibson. She makes respirocytes, so I already know all about them.”

“Hmm,” the doctor eventually responded after a barely perceptible moment of disappointment. “Then you know how important the Freitas test is?”

“Uh…”

The doctor smiled, flirtatiously. “Ha! So, you don’t know everything, Smarty Pants! We have to test the respirocytes and activate the pressure tanks to get the oxygen and carbon dioxide flowing, and there’s only one way to do that.”

“The Freitas test?”

“That’s right,” the doctor replied triumphantly. “And do you know how we administer the Freitas test?” She seemed to be beaming.

“No clue.”

“We get smarty pants like you to hold their breath.” The doctor’s teeth were nearly perfectly white and straight; her smile was gorgeous. “Ready?”

Craig grinned, acquiescing. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“All right,” she said as she held her small tricorder in front of Craig and watched the screen for information on the progress of the tiny, robotic red blood cells that were now flowing through his veins. “Hit it.”

Craig inhaled and then began holding his breath.

“You didn’t have to inhale,” the doctor observed.

Craig’s eyes darted to her questioningly.

“Just let it out nice and slow, but don’t inhale again when you’re finished.”

Against all of his instincts, Craig began to let out his breath nice and slowly, just as he had been instructed.

“You’re married, huh?” the doctor asked, apparently rhetorically. Craig nodded anyway. “That’s a shame. You’re way too handsome to be married. Handsome young doctors like you should be single. Then single doctors like me could marry you instead.”

Craig’s eyebrows rose in surprise at the forward come-on, but there was something about the young woman’s demeanor that seemed to make it innocent enough. He took it as a compliment and smiled.

“You feel that?” the doctor asked him.

Craig wasn’t sure what she was referring to. His first instinct was that her forwardness was starting to cross a boundary. Just as he was going to speak, ruining the Freitas test for the sake of politely cooling the woman’s jets, she spoke again.

“No shortness of breath. You could keep this up for four hours before you’d need to take another breath. Congratulations. You’re officially a super soldier.”

The notion of being a superhuman hadn’t crossed Craig’s mind until that moment. It was surreal. What she said was true: He’d felt no shortage of breath. Like most technological marvels, it was difficult for him to fully grasp it, so he just accepted it with a slightly marveled shake of his head.

“So what happens when they run out of air?” he asked.

“The respirocytes will…” She smiled again as she thought of the absurd euphemism bubbling to the surface. “…expel themselves.”

“Ah,” Craig replied.

“You can get up now.”

Craig sat up as the doctor uploaded her results onto a larger wall screen behind the small bed. “Thanks. That was…different.”

She smiled. “Now you can tell your wife she’s doing good work. The fruits of her labor are breathing for you. When you’re ready, just start breathing again and the respirocytes will shut down.”

Craig nodded and smiled sideways. “I will.” He turned to leave but turned back quickly on a whim. “Hey, what’s your name?”

The doctor replied, “Daniella. It was nice to meet you, Dr. Emilson.”

2

Craig walked quickly—nearly running—toward his bachelor’s officer barracks as he pulled his phone from his pocket and began dialing the number of his wife’s laboratory. As he crossed the threshold into his room, the phone was already ringing. He slipped the phone into the ultrasonic dock that sat upon a modest wooden table and pulled his hardback chair over so he could sit. He waited eagerly for his wife’s answer. “Come on,” he whispered to himself.

“Hello?” his wife’s voice finally spoke. His heart soared.

“Sam! I was worried there—”

“I never miss a call when we schedule it, baby, and I never will,” she replied soothingly.

“I still couldn’t help worrying.”

The irony of Craig’s words weren’t lost on Samantha Emilson. “I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be in a constant state of worry.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Craig replied, almost too quickly. “How’s your day going?”

Samantha wasn’t oblivious to her husband’s clumsy attempt to change the subject, but she decided to let it go for the moment. “The feds were here again,” she replied, her aggravation clearly audible. “That’s three weeks in a row now.”

“Did they copy all your files again?”

“Yeah,” she replied resignedly. “Every day they come in here, we spend the whole day being ordered around, showing them the same things we showed them the week before. It’s getting impossible to accomplish anything with them around.”

“You’re getting things accomplished, all right,” Craig replied.

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, for starters, I’ve got respirocytes in me as we speak.”

There was silence on the line for a few moments before Samantha’s holographic image suddenly appeared, her face and shoulders hovering above Craig’s phone in crisp detail, interrupted only occasionally by the interference in the atmosphere. “Are you…serious?” she asked, her eyes unblinking.

Craig pressed the red ACCEPT button on his phone so his wife could see him too. He nodded sincerely. “I can hold my breath for four hours apparently.”

“I can’t believe it!” Samantha replied, astonished as she held her hand up over her face. “It’s real? They’re really using them in the field?”

“Well, you knew that already,” Craig said, smiling.

“I did, but…well, it’s different when you’re not limited to test subjects anymore—when it’s someone you know. It’s amazing to think they’re really out there.”

“They are.”

“I have to tell Aldous,” Samantha suddenly blurted, instantly jarring the smile loose from Craig’s face.

“Aldous? Since when are you and old man Gibson on a first-name basis?”

Samantha’s attention snapped back onto the eyes of her husband. “I’ve worked in his lab for three years, Craig. I think it’s about time he finally asked me to stop calling him ‘Professor.’”

“I don’t like that,” Craig replied. “The way he looks at you—”

“Stop it, Craig. You’re being ridiculous. He’s a sixty-year-old man.”

“I still don’t like it.”

Samantha smiled. “You can’t possibly be jealous of a man twice your age, Craig.”

Craig’s train of thought changed as he looked into the eyes of his wife, so clear and bright that he felt as though they were right there next to him. In reality, hundreds of miles separated him from Sam, and that distance would be far greater in just a few hours. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“I’m sure you have a lot on your mind,” Samantha replied understandingly. Her thoughts quickly moved to speculation, and her voice lowered. “Why did they give you respirocytes? Where are you going where you won’t be breathing?”

“You know I can’t tell you,” Craig replied.

Samantha quickly began putting the equation together in her mind. “Wait a second. They’re not sending you into fallout, are they?”

“Sam—”

She could read him like a book. “Oh my God! No! Craig, no! Tell them you won’t go!”

“They don’t exactly ask.”

“You can’t go! Respirocytes aren’t going to save you in there!”

“Sammie, baby—”

“Don’t ‘baby’ me, Craig! I’m not a child!”

“I know, but sweetheart, listen—”

“What can you possibly say that will make me okay with you heading into nuclear fallout?”

“I never said where I’m headed,” Craig began, “and I promise that you don’t know the kinds of precautions that are being taken. You and Aldous aren’t the only scientists inventing new tech for this war, you know.”

“This shouldn’t be happening, Craig,” Samantha replied, her disapproval cemented. “We don’t support this war. We don’t support this ridiculous Luddite government. I’m sick of this! You shouldn’t be there.”

“I’m here to help people, Sammie,” Craig replied. “I’m not brilliant like you.”

“Not brilliant? Craig, you’re a doctor!” Samantha retorted, nearly aghast at her husband’s self-diminishment.

“But I don’t have your inventive mind,” Craig continued patiently. “I can’t help the world the way you can. I can’t help the whole world with brilliant inventions. I can only hope to use the technology people like you invent to save one soldier at a time. That’s the only way my life can be meaningful—like yours.”

“This is wrong,” Samantha answered, holding her head in her hands. This was how almost every conversation ended ever since Craig had enlisted. Tears were forming in her eyes as she became further exasperated. “Risking your life for a mistake won’t give your life meaning. Competing with me won’t give your life meaning.”

Craig was at a loss for a moment. His wife had never openly acknowledged what they both knew: They were in competition with one another. Ever since they’d met in their first year at university, they’d raced against each other toward an invisible finish line, with Samantha always seeming to be the inevitable winner. Now, Craig feared he was racing toward a cliff. “This mission is important, Sammie. If it’s successful, this war will be over a lot sooner than the world thinks.”

“It’s insane,” was all his wife could reply, her eyes still lowered.

“Sammie, put the ultrasonic on.”

“My battery is too low,” she protested.

“It doesn’t matter. I have to go now anyway. Just put it on, Sammie.”

“Okay,” she replied, the earnestness in her husband’s voice compelling her to click the switch on the phone dock.

Immediately, there was a buzz on both ends of the conversation as the dock vibrated ever so lightly, but steadily on the table. Craig leaned in and cupped the back of his wife’s head, pulling her toward him and kissing her. It wasn’t a perfect kiss—there wasn’t a taste or any moistness to it—but the softness of the ultrasonic waves forming the shape of his wife’s lips as she kissed him was priceless. They kissed for nearly a minute, unwilling to end their physical contact before suddenly, without warning, Samantha’s battery gave out.

He leaned back in his hardback chair and stared into the empty place above the table where his wife’s visage had been only seconds earlier. “Bye, Sammie,” he whispered.

3

Craig walked across a sprawling hangar at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, toward a waiting shuttle bus. As he neared the bus and began to raise his arm to salute the driver, a voice called to him from behind.

“Captain Emilson! Doc! The colonel wants to see you!”

Craig turned to the young airman and nodded. “Where?”

“I’ll take you to him.”

Minutes later, the young airman saluted the colonel as he delivered Craig to the door. Craig stepped in and saluted as well. The colonel waved the young airman away before motioning to Craig to come in. “At ease. Grab a seat, Doc.”

“Thank you, Colonel.” The colonel was sitting at a desk in a room so small that it appeared as though it may have been a converted supply closet; it was obvious that this was an impromptu conversation. The colonel was wearing augment glasses, reading something that was invisible to Craig.

“You wouldn’t believe the phone call I just got not five minutes ago,” the colonel began.

Craig listened intently but didn’t verbally respond; the colonel’s demeanor was deceptively casual, but it was a casualness that only went one way and was meant to demonstrate his power.

“None other than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And do you know who he wanted to talk to me about?”

Craig’s eyebrow rose inquisitively, but he remained silent.

“You! How about that? The Joint Chiefs are about to assemble in the situation room below Mount Weather, and they’re all talking about you. You wanna know why you’re the topic of conversation, Doc?”

“Yes, sir,” Craig replied.

“See if this rings a bell,” Colonel Paine replied as his eye went back to the projection from his aug glasses. He tilted his head forward to select something and then began reading: “We don’t support this war. We don’t support this ridiculous Luddite government. I’m sick of this. You shouldn’t be there.”

“Holy—”

“Yeah,” Colonel Paine nodded.

“That wasn’t twenty minutes ago—”

“Intelligent algorithms. Our Luddite government likes to use them so we can identify any interesting tidbits that might come up in a conversation.”

Craig didn’t know how to respond. He wanted to deny the assertion that he thought the United States government was Luddite, but he couldn’t find the appropriate words. It didn’t matter—Colonel Paine was on a roll.

“Your wife is pretty damned accomplished. A PhD when she was only twenty-six, recruited by the top nanotech lab in the country for her post-doc. But you’re no slouch yourself, Doc. You made it into med school before the world ended, back when it still meant something. You two are a couple of smart ones, all right. I bet you even think you’re smarter than your commanding officer.”

Again, Craig desperately wanted to reply. He shifted in his chair, his mouth forming the shapes of words, but he didn’t have time to settle on which ones to say before Paine went on.

“Have you ever looked up my file, Doc? No? Shoot. You’d think you’d look up the file of your C.O. If you had looked me up, you’d know I’m a Rhodes Scholar.”

“That’s impressive, sir. I didn’t know that.” Finally…words.

“Back when it meant something,” the colonel repeated.

Craig nodded in understanding.

“So now that you know you’re not being addressed by a Luddite idiot, let me explain something to you.” Paine pulled out his sidearm and held the gun up for Craig to see. “They teach you anything about game theory in medical school, Doc?”

Craig shook his head.

“Then you’ve never heard of Nash’s equilibrium?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay. Now we’re in business—there’s something I can teach you. In game theory, every scenario is broken down into a mathematical equation, and the entities in the game—whether they be individuals or whole countries—are assumed to be rational. You follow me so far, Doc?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me give you an example. Say you and I are gunfighters in the Old West. It’s high noon.” Paine wiggled the gun in his hand and looked at it, almost adoringly. “We’ve got a beef to settle, so there we are, in the middle of the town, dust blowing up around us. Somebody is going to die. That’s a given. Know why?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s simple, Doc. People who are rational always act in their own best interest. Let’s put some numbers to it. Let’s say you’re making up your mind about whether or not to draw your gun and shoot. You could just keep it holstered. If I keep mine holstered too, then our chance of survival is going to be 100 percent. Great, right? We could just walk away and call it a day.” Paine shook his head. “The only problem is, that’s a heck of a gamble, ain’t it? I mean, what if you decide to keep your gun holstered and then I pull out mine anyway?” Paine aimed his firearm directly at Craig’s forehead. “Your chances of survival just dropped dramatically. In fact, since I’m a dead shot, I’d have to say they’re damn near zero.” The colonel leaned back in his chair. “So, what are you going to do?”

“I’ve got to shoot,” Craig replied, swallowing as he did so.

Paine smiled. “That’s right, Doc. And why is that?”

“If I shoot, chances are 50/50 that I’ll survive. Beats zero, sir.”

“Well, you are a smart son of a gun.” Paine sat back in his chair and lowered his weapon. “Let’s change the equation a little bit, shall we? Let’s say that instead of guns, we’re holding nuclear weapons on each other. Instead of a fraction of a second for a bullet to hit our enemy, it will take several minutes. If you fire, the other player knows it and fires back. Both of you have a zero percent chance of survival. You know this scenario. It’s called mutually assured destruction, and it has held from the time Russia first got themselves a nuke back in 1948. No matter how afraid we got that nuclear war was going to happen tomorrow, in truth, we were always safe, because nobody wanted to start a war that would end with everyone dead.” Paine held his gun up and trained it on Craig’s forehead once again. This time there was something in the colonel’s eye that unnerved Craig. The killer inside emerged from his eyes as they fixed, hard and unmoving, upon Craig’s. “But let’s say someone—or something—found a way around mutually assured destruction. Let’s say Nash’s equilibrium went straight out the window. That happened once in history. The good ol‘ United States of America had a bomb and no one else did—and we used it…twice.” Paine’s tone became even colder as he spoke. “If I’m China, sitting here with an A.I. that can circumvent Nash’s equilibrium, and you’re the USA, sitting there holding yourself, what are you gonna do?”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

Paine’s face instantly went pale at the thought. After a moment of reflection, he sat back in his seat and lowered his weapon. “Not in this life, Doc. The USA will never do what anyone tells them—or at least that’s how our President looked upon the situation.” He crossed his arms and cocked his head slightly to the right. “I wonder how things would have shaken out had your wife been President.”

Craig kept his composure. He didn’t like having his wife brought into the conversation, but he also knew the stakes were high. If Paine was telling the truth, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had him and Samantha on their radar—and that was a place one never wanted to be.

“Now,” Paine continued, “I do read the files of every man under my command. I’ve read yours. It’s impressive. You’re a doctor, automatically an officer with the rank of captain. You could have hidden away in a military hospital, but instead you trained for Special Forces assignment. You’re a veteran of ten HALO jumps, one from 50,000 feet.” Paine paused, and his eyes met Craig’s. “Balls. You’re the most qualified man the Air Force currently has in combat S.A. Now, I didn’t know what the hell ‘combat S.A.’ is, so I had to look it up. That wasn’t easy, given its secret status, but hell, if I wasn’t gobsmacked to find out it stands for ‘suspended animation.’ I’m gonna assume you used your wife’s connections in DARPA to get yourself in on that.”

“That’s how I found out about the program, sir.”

Paine nodded. “You were selected for this mission as an add-on because of your specialty training and because you’re the only guy in the entire United States military who has a chance in hell of hooking up with a Special Forces suborbital low-opening parachute unit and actually managing to pull it off. However…” Paine began as he slipped off his aug glasses and leaned his elbows on the small wooden desk. “…it behooves me to tell you that your participation in this mission is extraneous to its overall success. So, believe me when I tell you that when I told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs that you were solid and that the President doesn’t have to worry about whether he is sending a traitor on the most important mission in American history since the Enola Gay, I really didn’t have to. I stuck my neck out for you, Doc.”

Craig blinked. “I… thank you, sir. I’m no traitor, sir. My wife… she just worries.”

“You’re Special Forces now, Doc. The men you’re accompanying on your mission today are the best this country has to offer—the best we have left. This is a dangerous mission. We cannot put those men at any more risk than is absolutely necessary.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Do you? This is as top secret as it gets. Even I don’t know the details. Yet you’re wife knows…” Paine paused as he retrieved his aug glasses. He slipped them on, nodded again to select something, and then read, “This mission is important, Sammie. If it’s successful, this war will be over a lot sooner than the world thinks.”

Craig fell silent once again.

“In Britain, during the blitz of WWII,” Paine related, “they had a slogan: ‘The walls have ears.’ These days, it’s a hell of a lot worse. There’s nothing you can say that isn’t picked up by a mic somewhere, fed through an algorithm that picks up patterns and weeds out what’s important. If our intelligence forces have that capability, you can be damn sure the Chinese have it too. If they heard you, they’re on high alert right now.”

Craig nodded. The colonel was absolutely right. He’d been a fool to say anything.

“You never, never put your fellow soldier at risk, Doc.—especially when you’re Special Forces.”

“You’re right, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

Paine leaned back in his chair one last time. “Let me be clear. I could have your ass in jail as we speak. I could have your wife arrested. I could do all of that, but I won’t. I won’t because I believe you made a mistake and that you sincerely care about your fellow soldiers and your country.”

“I do, sir.”

Paine nodded. He’d made his point–taught his lesson to a would-be intellectual. “Suspended animation, huh? Shoot.” He shook his head and crossed his arms. “This world is getting stranger and stranger. All right, Doc. Get your ass out of here and join your unit. You’re dismissed. Good luck.”

Craig stood to his feet and saluted, his back rigid. “Thank you, sir!” He turned on his heels and marched out of the room.

Paine watched him leave. “You’re going to need it,” he whispered under his breath.

4

“WAKE UP,” Craig said, speaking the initiation command as he finished unpacking his MAD bot.

The blue light panels on its shoulders, knees, and hands lit up, and the two blue circles that were meant to mimic human eyes came to life as the electronic hum of the complex fans began, the cooling of the hard drive already underway. The MAD bot stood four and a half feet tall, and its skin was mostly an opaque carbon fiber, interrupted only in the joints by dark blue fiber-optics. “Good morning, Captain Emilson,” the MAD bot spoke in its deceptively human-sounding voice. The voice was male, but it was high pitched enough to suggest juvenility.

“Good morning, Robbie,” Craig replied.

“Robbie the robot?” the driver of the shuttle bus reacted. “Seriously?”

Craig smiled. “It’s easy to remember.”

“What does that thing do, Doc?” the driver asked over his shoulder while observing the robot in his rearview mirror. The New Mexico desert sprawled in all directions toward the horizon, which was a little less yellow than it had been in recent days—a hopeful sign that the last of the fallout from the most recent attacks in California was finally abating.

“Robbie’s a MAD bot, a medical assistance device,” Craig explained over the noise of the bus engine. “He has a built-in tricorder, and he’s programmed to diagnose injuries and illnesses better than a team of board-certified doctors.”

“Does it treat injuries?”

“He can,” Craig replied as he scanned the bot to make sure it was operating properly.

“Holy… so isn’t that an A.I.?” the driver asked, his tone both intrigued and suspicious.

“He’s narrow A.I. Don’t worry. Robbie won’t be taking over the world anytime soon.”

“I’m here to help, sir,” Robbie said to the driver.

“Did that thing just talk to me?” the driver reacted, surprised.

Craig grinned. “He did. Robbie, say hello to Private Lee.”

“Hello, Private Lee,” Robbie said, turning his head to face the driver.

The driver’s eyebrows rose. “Creepy. So, if you don’t mind me asking, Doc, why don’t they just send the robot? I mean, if it’s better than a team of doctors like you say, then why even have medical officers anymore?”

“Maybe someday,” Craig replied. “For the time being, MAD bots are expensive and haven’t had enough field testing to guarantee that they won’t make a serious mistake.”

“Mistake? Like what?”

Craig scratched his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve ever made one before, but—you know—just in case.”

“Ah.” The driver nodded. “Gotcha.”

A light suddenly twinkled brilliantly in the distance on the horizon in front of them, backdropped by dark mountains. Craig’s eyes locked on the gleam.

“There it is, Doc,” the driver announced, “Spaceport America.”

5

Craig and Robbie stepped down the ramp of the shuttle bus onto the tarmac of Spaceport America.

A squinting figure strode toward them in the blinding sunshine. The figure rose his arm to salute before adding, “Captain Emilson, sir!”

“At ease,” Craig replied as he saluted in return.

The figure stuck out his hand to shake Craig’s and smiled warmly, his skin wrinkling around his cheerful eyes. “I’m Commander Wilson, the officer in charge of this mission, but you will be the ranking officer, sir.”

“Just call me ‘Doc’ for the duration of the mission, Commander. You’re the OIC here, and I defer to you completely.”

“Thank you, Doc.” Commander Wilson turned to Robbie. “I heard you’d be bringing one of those.”

Robbie saluted. “Commander Wilson, sir!”

Wilson laughed, tilting his head back. “That is something else. Will wonders never cease? Can I actually talk to it?”

Craig nodded. “Treat Robbie like another member of the team, Commander. He understands you and will respond appropriately.”

“Robbie? Ha!” Wilson saluted the MAD bot. “At ease, Robbie.”

Robbie lowered his arm and stood at ease.

“Well, you sure know how to make an entrance, Captain Emilson,” Wilson observed with a smile. He turned toward the hangar. “The rest of the team is already suiting up. Let’s go meet ’em, shall we?”

“Lead the way, Commander.”

As the two men and the MAD bot walked briskly toward the giant hangar, Craig’s eyes scanned the remarkable building. It was sleek, as though it had been designed in a wind tunnel, yet it appeared to have been constructed with a 1950s conception of a UFO in mind, its roof silver and smooth. It was as though it had been built with a rearview mirror—one eye on the future, while keeping the other on the past. There was something about it that made Craig uneasy—as though Spaceport America belonged outside of the bounds of normal time and space.

“Correct me if any of my information is inaccurate, Doc,” the commander began as they walked and talked, “but I understand you’ve completed the twenty-eight-week Special Forces qualification training and an abbreviated special ops combat medic course, in addition to your suspended animation professional development training. Is that right?”

“That’s right, Commander,” Craig replied.

“Ten HALO jumps too?”

“Right.”

“That experience will serve you well, Doc. HALOs are the best training for suborbital jumps, though nothing can really prepare you.”

“How many SOLOs have you done, Commander?”

“That’s classified, Doc. Needless to say, this won’t be the team’s first rodeo. There’s no such thing as a training suborbital jump, though. The logistics and expense—not to mention the fact that the military is trying to keep this tech secret—makes training jumps a luxury we can’t afford. You’re gonna have to pop your cherry the way the rest of us did—on a real mission.”

Craig considered Wilson’s words. He’d had the impression that his addition to the team was haphazard, as though it were highly irregular for a brand new special ops soldier to be participating on such an important mission. He found Wilson’s assertion of the opposite oddly comforting. “It’s actually nice to hear that I’m not the only one to have gone through this.”

Wilson laughed and shook his head. “Nah, Doc, you’re definitely the rookie of the group, but we were all rookies once. Besides, there’s no pressure. I think the addition the brass was really interested in was Robbie back there,” Wilson said, pointing his thumb in the direction of the robot as it walked behind them, a mechanical whir accompanying every step as it remained in Craig’s shadow.

Ironic, Craig suddenly thought. “That’s a good point, Commander,” he said, suddenly feeling far less important.

“I gotta warn ya,” Wilson began to confide, “the team isn’t exactly feeling the love for your robot friend.”

“Why’s that?” Craig asked, his eyebrow cocked inquisitively.

“Don’t get me wrong, Doc. These men are pros all the way, but the addition of a robot that specializes in heavy trauma suspended animation body bags doesn’t exactly fill anybody with confidence.”

“I understand,” Craig replied. “I’ll speak to the team about it.”

“I think they’d appreciate that,” Wilson replied as they entered the shade of the hangar, the temperature immediately dropping to a relieving degree.

Several feet away, in the shadow of WhiteKnight3’s ninety-two-foot wingspan, the three other members of the team came to attention and saluted.

Wilson returned their salute and addressed his team. “SOLO Team Three, this is Captain Emilson. He is our newest and highest-ranking team member!”

“Sir!” the three other members shouted in unison. Each man had been in the process of putting their SOLO suits on. Craig had never seen a SOLO suit before and was amazed at their intricacy. They were black, though the material had a brilliant sheen. Lining the suit appeared to be some sort of metal exoskeleton, the likes of which Craig had never seen, even during his days training at a DARPA facility with Robbie. The boots were reminiscent of those worn by astronauts on the moon, as were the gloves. He shook himself back into the moment and saluted the team.

“At ease. As I said to the commander, from now on, please don’t salute me. Refer to me simply as ‘Doc.’ I am here to learn from you and support you. I defer to each of you from this point forward.”

The men relaxed, and Wilson took Craig over to meet the team members individually.

“The assistant officer in charge on this mission is Lieutenant Commander Weddell,” Wilson said as he put his hand on the shoulder of a thin, but strong-looking young man.

Weddell appeared to be no older than twenty-five, and his face was fresh, but there was something in his eyes that revealed the confidence of experience. Craig couldn’t help but consider for a moment what a young man such as Weddell would be doing if WWIII hadn’t broken out. Would he be an accountant? A lawyer? A school teacher?

“It’s good to meet you, Doc,” Weddell said with a smile as he shook Craig’s hand.

“Likewise,” Craig replied, returning the smile.

Wilson turned to the other two members of the team. “These are Lieutenants Klein and Cheng.”

Craig shook the hands of both men, each of whom looked equally as unassuming as Wilson and Weddell. He felt he could just as easily have been walking into a PTA or neighborhood watch meeting. He’d expected giant, muscle-bound men, but instead he was meeting a group of highly trained, highly specialized regular Joes.

Klein’s and Cheng’s eyes fell on Robbie, each man sharing identical expressions of tentativeness.

“Listen, fellas,” Craig began to address the team, “the robot is here as an insurance policy, that’s all. His presence doesn’t reflect on the Joint Chiefs’ evaluation of your chances of coming back alive.”

“With all due respect,” Klein replied, “how do you know that? I mean, we’ve all been through this crap before, but we’ve never had our own personal robotic undertaker along for the ride.”

Craig’s spine stiffened with surprise at Klein’s morbid analogy. He smiled and shook his head. “Nah, it’s not like that, Lieutenant. Look. This is brand new technology. The only reason these robots aren’t included on every mission is because they just came online. When I started my training with Robbie here,” Craig continued, gesturing toward the robot, “it was still in the testing phase. He’s here because you guys are VIPs, not R.I.P.s, okay?”

Klein nodded. “Yeah, understood, Doc.,” he replied. “It’s all good.”

Craig felt he could detect dubiousness in Klein’s tone, hidden deep beneath the highly trained professionalism.

“I understand you haven’t been briefed on this mission yet, Doc,” Wilson stated.

“That’s right,” Craig replied, his eyes on the extraordinarily advanced gear that the team members were assembling. “Everything’s top secret. I got a one-page order to join your team for the mission. I don’t know anything else about it.”

Wilson put his hand on Craig’s shoulder and walked him a few paces away from the team as he lowered his voice. “I’ve got orders to brief you en route, Doc. And let me just say that when you hear the details, I don’t think you’re gonna be so confident about the whole R.I.P. thing.”

6

SpaceShip3 wobbled slightly in the turbulence as the 148-foot wingspan of WhiteKnight3 endured the stresses on its carbon composite wing. WhiteKnight3 appeared delicate from afar, but its carbon composite was three times the strength of steel, and the frame made it capable of not only nestling SpaceShip3 underneath it, but also executing six-g turns. As SpaceShip3 made the journey up to the 50,000-foot detachment point, there was an air of quiet contemplation amongst the crew.

Commander Wilson broke it as a computer-generated map of the Earth, complete with WhiteKnight3’s current position and its trajectory, flashed onto the front screen. “Doc, when we reach 50,000-feet, SpaceShip3 will detach, and we’ll start dropping in a hurry.” He grinned. “It’s a hell of a rush. There’s even more of a rush afterward. The hybrid rocket will kick in, and, in a matter of seconds, we’ll accelerate to 4,000 kilometers per hour. You’re gonna love it.”

Craig smiled broadly, the notion that he was on a spaceship finally beginning to sink in. Millionaires had been able to travel into space in the years before the war broke out, but regular people like him could only dream of such an experience. As serious as the moment was, the idea of traveling into space temporarily made the danger disappear from his mind.

“The distance from New Mexico to Shenzhen,” Wilson continued, “is approximately 12,300 kilometers, so even at three times the speed of sound, the flight’s still gonna take us three hours—plenty of time for me to brief you on the mission.”

“Sounds good, Commander,” Craig replied.

“For now, just sit back and enjoy the ride,” Lieutenant Commander Weddell added.

Craig turned to the other members of his team, each one smiling. The shared look on their faces was childlike ebullience, thinly veiled behind adult professionalism. It was clear that, despite their personal sacrifices, their loved ones left behind at home, and the mortal danger of the mission, it was all worth it in that moment. These were men slipping the surly bonds of Earth.

“Detach in one minute,” said the calm, even tone of WhiteKnight3’s pilot over the address system.

“Roger that,” replied the equally calm tone of SpaceShip3’s pilot.

“Roger that,” echoed Commander Wilson. He turned to his team. “Okay, boys, helmets on and hold on to your butts.”

Craig and the others slipped their helmets on and locked them into position, lowering the golden sun-reflective visors.

“Detach in thirty seconds,” the WhiteKnight3 pilot said.

“Roger that,” SpaceShip3’s pilot repeated.

“Crap your pants in thirty-one seconds,” Lieutenant Cheng said in a low voice.

“Radio silence,” Wilson said calmly.

WhiteKnight3’s pilot began the final countdown. “Ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… ONE! We are a go for detachment.”

“Roger that,” SpaceShip3’s pilot confirmed.

There was a thump against the hull of SpaceShip3’s roof as the mechanized claws detached themselves, and the vehicle began to drop away from its mothership. Craig’s posterior immediately came out of his bucket seat, only his harness keeping him from hitting the ceiling. The seconds ticked by, painfully slowly as the ship continued to drop a safe distance from WhiteKnight3.

Next, the hybrid rocket came to life. To Craig, it felt as though the hand of God had taken hold of the ship and thrust it forward, the nearly unimaginable power seemingly too much to be manmade. Barely controlled technology blistered its way up a steep incline, and the ship throttled through the upper edges of the atmosphere. Craig could hardly move his neck in his suit and helmet, but he managed to turn his head just enough to catch the spectacular view from the closest window. The blue of the sky began to recede, first becoming an indigo before finally giving way to black.

Suddenly, the engines stopped. It took Craig a moment to accept that the silence wasn’t simply the result of the engines having been switched off; it was the silence of space that was so unsettling. There was no more shimmering and shuddering of the fuselage through turbulence, no more sounds of wind drag stressing the wings. SpaceShip3 was now living up to its name, a ship in space, the truly endless ocean of blackness enveloping Craig for the first time in his life.

“You’re an astronaut now, Doc,” Commander Wilson observed, his tone cheerful. Craig looked up to see his commander unstrapping from his seat at the front of the cabin and floating free in the microgravity of sub-orbit. “Congratulations.”

Craig wanted to reply, but there were no sufficient words. Instead, his breath caught in his mouth. He hurriedly unbuckled his own seatbelt and stepped up quickly, amazed that the floor didn’t welcome him as it had every other moment of his life. Instead, it let him go, his body floating freely through the cabin. “My God,” he whispered.

“Boys, remove the seats,” Wilson ordered the rest of the team. Each of them, already unharnessed and floating through the cabin, began detaching the seats from the floor of the ship. “Doc, you’re with me. It’s time you got briefed.”

7

“Twenty-three hours, twelve minutes, and…” Wilson checked the time readout on his aug glasses. “…and thirty seconds ago, the USS Independence fired a Trident 2 missile toward Shenzhen, which is, as you now know, our drop point.”

Craig swallowed hard when he heard his fears confirmed. “Holy hell. Trident 2s are equipped with sixteen separate warheads.” Sam was right, he thought. They’re going to drop me right into nuclear fallout.

“That’s right,” Wilson replied. The screen at the front of the ship showed a top view map of the missile’s trajectory. “It split into sixteen, with one warhead hitting its true target and the other fifteen forming a perimeter 200 miles in diameter—basically, the manmade gates of Hell.”

“What was the true target?”

“Hopefully, the Chinese A.I. mainframe.”

Craig was silent for a moment. “Holy hell.”

“You said that already,” Wilson replied with a grin as he slapped Craig hard on the back. “This is the big one, Doc, but with all the secrecy beforehand, I’m sure you already had your suspicions.”

“I did. It’s something else to have it confirmed, however.”

Wilson nodded, though the muscles near his eyes tightened ever so slightly, making Craig suspect he was being read. “Intelligence believes the A.I. mainframe was located in a bunker about one kilometer below the surface. Our mission is to get in, get boots on the ground, and assess whether or not the strike was effective or ineffective. Basically, to provide ocular proof that the Chinese A.I. threat has been eliminated.”

“Why can’t that be confirmed with satellites?”

Wilson turned to the screen and swiped it, bringing up a live satellite image of the east coast of mainland China.

Craig let out a low whistle in response to seeing the image. A colossal dust cloud larger than the state of Texas had enveloped the area, making it impossible for the satellite to peer through. “Dear Lord. This is… Biblical.”

“What you are seeing is the result of decades of desertification in China, combined with sixteen nuclear detonations sending yellow dust into the sky. Even with the best resolution in the world, there’s no way we can confirm the kill from space,” Wilson further explained. “The Joint Chiefs don’t trust drones either, and if we don’t get in there and confirm the kill, the Chinese may be able to recover the A.I. or the wreckage and reconstitute somewhere else. As you can see, this mission is as top secret and high priority as they get. If we’re successful, this war is over.”

“So the perimeter the other nukes created is all about giving us a head start.”

“That’s right,” Wilson confirmed. “The Chinese still don’t know we can do suborbital insertions, so they’ll concentrate their energy on protecting the perimeter until it’s safe to enter. We’re gonna beat ‘em to the punch by jumping as soon as the fallout has reached the surface. With any luck, it’ll take the Chinese anywhere from several minutes to an hour to mount a HALO insertion.”

“And we’ll already be finished,” Craig added. “What if the A.I. is still functional?”

“Let’s hope not, but if it is, it’s defenses should be utterly destroyed. We’ll be packing more than enough explosives to finish the job.”

“All of that sounds reasonable,” Craig replied, “but there’s one glaring omission. If the Chinese are going to be collapsing in on us, I get how we’re going to beat them to the punch on the insertion, but what about the extraction?”

Commander Wilson turned his head quickly, appearing once again to try to read Craig’s face. “I thought maybe you’d be able to fill us in on that aspect, Doc.”

“Me?” Craig responded, perplexed.

Wilson’s smile returned, but this time there was something different—something behind it—an impurity. “We’re not idiots, Doc.”

At that moment, Craig realized that things were far worse than he’d previously thought. “Are you telling me the extraction is supposed to occur after we’re dead?”

Wilson’s eyes narrowed. “You seriously didn’t know that already?”

“Hey, Commander, honestly, if this is their plan, I had no previous knowledge of it. I thought I was here to provide medical support. That’s all.”

After a moment of continuing to read Craig’s face, Wilson finally nodded, apparently satisfied that Craig wasn’t playing poker and there was no bluff to call. “Okay. Well, it doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not. The fact is, there’s an extraction plan, but it seems pretty farfetched. When we heard they were sending a MAD bot along with S.A. body bags, we put two and two together.”

“What’s the official plan?” Craig asked.

“The exoskeletons are our only transportation. With the respirocytes and the exoskeletons working in tandem, we’re supposed to sprint for over an hour to the top of Maluan Mountain. Stealth Blackhawks will apparently be there to meet us.”

“Sounds like a pretty typical extraction,” Craig observed.

“Yeah, but these helicopters are supposed to make it through what will likely be a hell-storm of Chinese air patrols in the area,” Wilson pointed out. “It won’t be impossible if their side is in enough disarray, but it seems like a long shot to me. If I were a betting man, I’d have to say it looks like we’re about to punch a one-way ticket.”

“So,” Craig began as he lightly pivoted on the balls of his feet to keep his upright position in the microgravity, “you think the real plan is to leave us stranded on the mountain? And that, with our respirocyte supply dwindling, our only chance of survival will be to put ourselves into suspended animation?”

“That sounds like the most likely outcome,” Wilson replied.

Craig turned his head and regarded Robbie; the machine was floating in the microgravity, unmoving like a metal corpse, lightly brushing against the walls of the fuselage and bobbing freely throughout. “I’m not looking forward to that,” Craig stated resignedly.

“How do those things work anyway?” Wilson asked. “The body bags, I mean.”

“Hydrogen sulfide,” Craig replied. “The bags are cooled, and small amounts of hydrogen sulfide will put a human into a suspended state. They’ve been designed so soldiers in danger of suffering catastrophic blood loss on the battlefield can be put into hibernation. The bleeding stops, and their injuries can be treated when their body arrives at a hospital, even if it’s several hours later.”

“Will it work if oxygen deprivation is the problem?” Wilson astutely asked.

Craig nodded. “Yeah.”

“And the brass knows this?”

“Of course.”

“Then, Doc, it looks to me like we’re about to become frozen packages to be extracted at the United States military’s leisure.”

8

Samantha Emilson sat alone in the dark, waiting to see who would be next to come through the iron door. She’d been in the room for over an hour—waiting. She’d experienced this before; keeping her waiting was a standard interrogation technique. As usual, she sat quietly frustrated and stared straight forward at the door, thinking of all the work that she could have been doing instead.

However, there was something a little different about her agonizing wait this time. Usually, the whole lab was dragged in together and questioned. The FBI wanted to know everything about the research taking place in the Aldous Gibson lab. They constantly checked and rechecked, even though the lab worked with multiple government grants from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The constant monitoring of their work was stressful, to say the least, but at least it had always been about the lab.

This time, however, it appeared to be only about her.

Finally, the metal door slowly creaked open and the friendly, wrinkled countenance of Professor Aldous Gibson appeared.

“Aldous!” she exclaimed, relieved, as she sprang to her feet and embraced him, happy to see a friendly face. “What’s going on? Do you know?”

Aldous pulled her in front of him and locked eyes with her, his grip surprisingly strong for a man of his age. He looked as though there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t; however, his expression appeared to say she should trust him.

“They have a recording of you saying you don’t support the war or the government,” Aldous began, as he guided her back into her chair and took the chair on the opposite side of the small interrogation table. “It was recorded earlier today—a conversation between your husband and yourself.”

Samantha was nearly dumbfounded. “Are you serious? They recorded that?”

Aldous nodded. “Yes.”

She shook her head as though rebooting, her shock at the idea of being recorded quickly being replaced with indignation. “Well, so what? Am I not allowed to have an opinion in this country anymore?”

Aldous held his hand up to calm her, the same trust-me expression remaining earnestly across his face. “You can have your own opinion, but given the sensitive nature of both yours and your husband’s involvement with top secret projects, you can understand why they want to be sure—”

“No, I can’t understand it!” Samantha retorted, cutting Aldous off. “I’ve done everything that’s been asked of me! Why am I being treated like a prisoner?”

Aldous smiled, leaning forward toward his young protégé, taking her hand calmly in his and relating in a low, conspiratorial voice, “You’ve done nothing wrong. This will lead only to a simple lesson learned for you, Sam. In this brave new world of ours, it’s best to remember that people in sensitive positions must sometimes keep their opinions to themselves.”

The metal door swung open behind Aldous, a high-pitched squeak accompanying the movement, as a large man in a dark suit and navy-blue tie entered. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Professor, but it’s time for me to proceed with the interview,” the man announced.

“No trouble at all, my good man,” Aldous replied. “I’m sure Samantha is eager to get this misunderstanding behind her as quickly as possible.” He turned to Samantha and flashed a warm, calming smile. “I’ll see you soon, Sam.”

Aldous left, and the man in the suit closed the door behind him. He wore aug glasses and appeared to be reading a file. “I’m Agent O’Brien,” he announced matter-of-factly.

Samantha laughed but quickly stifled it.

“Something funny?” O’Brien replied, his face stone cold.

Samantha shrugged. “Are you serious? O’Brien is here to interrogate me?”

O’Brien’s face remained unmoving.

Samantha pointed to the door. “You know that door is marked 101 on the outside?”

O’Brien’s face didn’t twitch. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

She shook her head and inhaled deeply. “You really have no idea what role you’re playing in history, do you?”

Finally, O’Brien cocked his head to one side, curious. “What role is that, Professor Emilson?”

“Orwellian. It’s right in front of you, but you can’t even see it.”

“Orwellian?” O’Brien removed a Bluetooth pen from his pocket and began to write on a computer-generated notepad that only he could see through his aug glasses.

“As in 1984. George Orwell.”

“Ah,” O’Brien said, finally understanding the reference. “Never read it.”

“No kidding.”

“I do know what it’s about though—big government controlling the heroic populace. Is that correct?”

“Sure.”

“A Luddite government perhaps?”

“You really oughtta read the damn book.”

“As you have, Professor Emilson? Will I then see our government as evil and wish to rebel against it, like the hero of 1984?” It was clear from his rapidly moving eyes that O’Brien was fumbling to look up 1984 on Wikipedia or Sparknotes like a C- student, desperate before a final exam. “Like Winston?” he announced, hoping she didn’t recognize his use of a technological cheat sheet.

Samantha looked up at the ceiling and placed her hands on top of her head as she exhaled a long, frustrated sigh. “I’m in Hell.”

9

The SOLO team stood only inches apart from one another, all of them facing the starboard side of SpaceShip3 as they waited for the drop order. They were fully garbed in their SOLO suits, the Nomex outer shell giving the suits a sleek, wet look. The exoskeletons component of the suits were designed with structural batteries that took the shape of working parts so no single, heavy battery pack was necessary. The exoskeletons were imperative so each man could carry his large backpack, which housed his parachute and weaponry. The fuselage had mostly been depressurized, and the members of the team—five humans plus Robbie—stood at the ready, the humans flexing nervous fingers and toes inside their life-supporting suits. SpaceShip3’s pilot periodically engaged the hybrid rocket thrusters to keep the craft over the target area as the group waited for word that the fallout had descended to an acceptable level in the landing zone.

“Listen up!” Wilson began, keeping his position at point in the triangular formation in which the SOLO members stood. “Remember, your SOLO suit doubles as a nuclear, biological, chemical protection suit, but we’ve never jumped into fresh fallout like this before. The NBC suits will increase our exposure time, but even they have their limits. The Kevlar woven into the material isn’t likely to be enough to stop the armor-piercing ammo the Chinese have, so if you take a bullet down there, don’t try to stay in the fight. Get your ass to the extraction point as soon as possible, because you don’t want to see what that radiation exposure would do to you. Is that clear?”

“Hooah!”

“Okay, we just got our orders. We’re sixty seconds to drop time,” Wilson relayed excitedly. A green timer began counting down on the OLED heads up displays on each of their visors. “It’s time to stop breathing, boys. Hold your breath and activate your respirocytes.”

Craig tried to resist the instinctive urge to take in a last gulp of air, but the SOLO suits only had a minimal air supply—just enough to make it possible for the team members to speak to one another. Instead, he closed his eyes meditatively and concentrated on not taking in another breath. Just as before, only hours earlier in the presence of the doctor with the beautiful smile, Craig found himself marveling that he could live without air.

The green timer display dropped below thirty seconds.

“You holdin’ up okay, Doc?” Wilson asked over his shoulder.

“Hell yeah,” Craig replied. He turned to Robbie. “Robbie, you stay on my six until we reach the surface, understand?”

“I understand, Captain Emilson,” Robbie replied.

Craig turned back and faced the same direction as the rest of the team. In only ten seconds, the bottom of the ship would open up in trap-door fashion, and they would begin their descent.

“Remember, Doc,” Wilson barked, “when the door opens, you won’t even feel like you’re falling for the first thirty seconds, but keep an eye on your time gauge. If you aren’t in the delta position by then, you’re a goner.”

The count reached zero.

“Away!” announced the crackling, radio voice of the pilot.

The doors swung open and the small pressure vacuum sucked the six figures out into space in their triangle formation. Craig was the far man on the left.

The silence was perfect—not even the familiar sound of his own breathing accompanied him. Wilson had been right: As the seconds ticked by on his HUD, Craig didn’t feel as though he were falling at all. The formation seemed to be a tableau, hanging in the blackness of space, the azure blue of the Earth mixed with the warm brown of the Asian continent below. The other members of the SOLO team expertly adjusted their trajectories, each man putting himself into the critical twenty-five-degree angle to control his speed and drag when they hit the atmosphere. Craig awkwardly performed the maneuvers needed to match their delta positions—movements much more difficult to perform in a supersonic spacesuit that felt like a sleeping bag with arms than they were in his familiar HALO suit.

The seconds continued to tick by as the telemetry, communications, and pressure readouts flashed on the OLED of his HUD. The thirty-second mark was reached, and the aneroids in his suit reacted to the atmospheric pressure as they began to hit the outer rim of the atmosphere, the psi remaining at 3.5 to keep him comfortable and conscious.

“Good work, Doc. You’re doing fine,” said the reassuring voice of Commander Wilson over the radio. Craig looked down at the commander, just a couple of meters below him, still the point of their formation. “Keep those arms tucked. The pressure won’t feel like much at first, but when we hit Mach 1, the turbulence will be powerful. Even a little twitch can send you into a fatal tailspin.”

“Noted,” Craig replied. He wanted to gulp a nervous breath of air but resisted the urge. The HUD read just over four minutes remaining on their descent. Their altitude was dropping dramatically as their speed approached Mach 1.

“Sonic boom is imminent, boys! Steady!” Wilson shouted.

The SOLO suits were equipped with sound dampeners in the helmets to dull the thunderous clap of the sonic boom, but they couldn’t do much to curtail the turbulence. Craig braced every muscle in his body as the speedometer continued to climb. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

The sonic boom percussion felt like the explosion of a nearby landmine. The members of the team were seemingly all able to ride it out, and Craig’s eyes flew back open when the turbulence seemed to settle. The position of the four others in the triangle formation remained perfect, but the green dot signifying Robbie’s position on Craig’s HUD was suddenly dropping away behind him, moving further and further from the team.

“Doc, did you just lose your robot friend?” Wilson shouted.

“Looks like it,” Craig confirmed. There was no way to turn his head to get a visual confirmation, but it appeared the boom had sent Robbie into a tailspin behind them. “It’s okay. If he recovers from the spin and lands all right, he’ll double-time it to our target and meet us.”

“All right,” Wilson replied.

A second later, Craig’s HUD suddenly went blank, before briefly turning back on and then going blank once again.

“Uh, my HUD just went down,” Weddell stated in controlled alarm.

“Mine too,” Craig replied.

“We’re all down,” Wilson quickly realized. “We’re gonna have to open high and do it manually!”

Then, just as suddenly as they had flashed off, the HUDs came back online.

“I’m back up!” Craig shouted.

“Is everyone back up?” Wilson shouted.

Each member of the team confirmed.

“Okay! Then we stick to the original plan. Adjust to thirty-five degrees!”

Craig watched the time to opening tick down on his HUD. They were now only a minute away from their computer-controlled low opening. Their speed was slowing, but something didn’t feel right.

“Commander, have the onboard SOLO systems ever glitched like this before?” Craig asked.

“No. This is a first,” Wilson replied.

“Then I recommend we do a high manual—”

“Cut the chatter, Doc!” Wilson shouted. “Concentrate!”

The yellow dust covering the ground was closing in below them, its surface gleaming in the sunlight as it crawled like a yellow, living fog. The impact crater into which they were supposed to be touching down wasn’t visible.

A horrifying possibility suddenly reached into Craig’s skull and drummed its frozen fingers over his brain. The time readout was now below twenty seconds. “Oh no,” he whispered. “I’m taking command!” Craig suddenly shouted, nearly screaming in desperation. “Open your chutes now! Override! Override!”

“Belay that order!” Commander Wilson shouted back.

“Override! Override!”

Ten seconds…

“Follow protocol, SOLO!” Wilson screamed.

“The telemetry’s wrong! Open! Open!” Craig bellowed furiously. He opened his chute, the wind catching it hard as it unfurled, tugging him into a dramatic deceleration. The other members of his team fell away into the yellow dust, disappearing as though they’d been figments of his imagination.

Craig continued to float downward for several seconds, the yellow dust reaching upward to envelop his boots. “SOLO team, do you copy? Commander Wilson? Do you copy?”

The silence continued for a few seconds more before, finally, Weddell’s voice crackled through the interference. “Doc! Commander Wilson is…he’s dead, sir.”

10

Craig touched down in a thick yellow cloud of dust. His parachute ejected automatically so he wouldn’t be dragged away into the dust storm. Above, the sun’s rays were nearly visible, suggesting that the dust cloud was abating, as predicted, but for now, he was blinded, with only his HUD to guide him. “Weddell, I’m on your three o’clock,” Craig said, “fifteen meters away.”

“Copy.”

The green dot on Craig’s HUD that signified Wilson was also still active, and Weddell’s dot was next to it. Cheng and Klein had vanished. Craig strode in his exoskeleton, only a few steps taking him most of the way to the quickly materializing silhouette of Weddell, leaning over the crumpled form of Wilson. A couple strides more, and the image came into focus, the stark reality of Wilson’s nearly pulverized body emerging.

“You were right, Doc,” Weddell said as he turned his head to look up at Craig. “The telemetry was all wrong. I played it safe and followed your orders at the last second. My chute opened in time, but I hit the surface hard.” He turned and looked down at his fallen officer-in-charge. “Commander Wilson didn’t even open his chute. He…God, he hit the ground at terminal velocity.” He shook his head. “I saw him hit.”

Craig dropped to his knees and tried to get a view of Wilson’s face, but the commander had fallen face down, and his helmet had burrowed into an impact crater of its own creation. Craig could read Wilson’s absent vitals on his HUD, so it seemed true that the commander was, indeed, dead. But the SOLO team were super soldiers. “There might still be hope,” Craig said to Weddell.

“What? What are you talking about? I saw him hit the ground myself. He’s dead as dead, Doc.”

Craig pushed Wilson’s pulverized body so that it turned over, revealing the golden reflective facemask. He popped Wilson’s mask up so he could see inside the helmet; the visor was splashed with blood, but Wilson’s head appeared to be intact. “The respirocytes,” Craig replied. “His brain is still getting oxygen. If I can get him into suspended animation fast enough—”

“I understand,” Weddell quickly said. “SOLO team, do you copy?” The radio crackled for a few moments, but there were periodic pops and chirps, and one sounded like it might be a voice. “Did you hear that?” Weddell asked Craig.

“Yes. Weddell, they were on the far right of the formation.” Craig stood to his feet and stepped a few paces through the yellow dust before he quickly stumbled over a ledge, tumbling onto his stomach, digging hard with his exoskeleton’s strength into the earth to keep from tumbling further down the steep incline. “Damn it! Weddell, we just missed the crater! It was to the south! If Klein and Cheng opened manually, they might have made it!”

“That makes sense,” Weddell replied excitedly. “The crater goes down one kilometer. If they’re far enough down there, that would explain why we can’t get radio contact through all the interference.”

Craig finished crawling back up over the lip of the crater and returned to see Weddell standing, having retrieved his twin machine guns from his backpack. The guns were gigantic, and the armor-piercing bullets made them far too heavy to be carried by a regular human; fortunately the exoskeleton did 100 percent of the heavy lifting.

“I can head down there,” Weddell said determinedly. “If they’re already there, I’ll establish contact, and we can still finish the mission. You should stay here and wait for Robbie to return. We might need that thing after all.”

“There’s a problem with that plan,” Craig replied.

“What?”

“I don’t think that was just a glitch with our telemetry. I think we were sabotaged. New coordinates were fed to us at the last minute, pushing us off target so we’d miss the crater and hit the outer surface.”

“Are you saying—”

“The A.I. is still functioning. Somehow, it detected us and tried to defend itself.”

Weddell’s face was ghost white. “That’s bad news, Doc.”

“If you get down there and don’t make contact with Cheng and Klein, my advice is that you toss as much Semtex down that hole as you can and haul your ass back up. We’ll head back to the extraction point and report what we know.”

“Agreed,” Weddell replied. “Stay here. I’m going to go dark pretty quick with all this interference, but I’ll contact you ASAP, when I’m making my way back up.”

“Good luck,” Craig replied as he watched Weddell jog into the yellow fog and disappear over the lip of the crater.

He turned back to Wilson and got down to his knees. The commander’s face was pale and lifeless—a horrific sight. Only minutes ago, he had been alive and in his element, guiding his team and helping the rookie make it safely to the surface. Now he was nothing. Just a bag of tenderized meat.

Or was he? The respirocytes had changed the game. Craig knew if his brain continued getting oxygen until the S.A. bags arrived, Wilson might just have a slim chance. His body had been destroyed, but as long as he could get to a hospital before he suffered brain death, survival was still possible.

“Robbie? Robbie, do you copy?” Craig asked over the radio. Robbie’s signal wasn’t appearing. The robot could run three times the speed of a human sprinter and sustain that pace for hours until his lithium air battery finally gave out. As long as Robbie was able to open his chute in time to avoid being pulverized on a rock somewhere, he should be rapidly approaching, but would he make it in time? “Robbie?” Craig said again, forlornly. It was unlikely that his communication would carry further than the Wi-Fi signal that detected his location.

Suddenly, Robbie’s green dot appeared on Craig’s HUD. Robbie was less than 200 meters away and approaching with supernatural swiftness. He’d be there in less than five seconds. “Robbie! Thank God! We’ve got a man down!”

The dot continued its rapid approach. The dust was beginning to settle, and Craig could peer further through the yellow storm. Robbie’s uncanny robotic run emerged as a dark brown silhouette, accented by the blue lights on his joints. The strange form quickly became larger.

It didn’t appear to be slowing down.

“Robbie?” Craig said one last time before the MAD bot leapt into the air and came crashing down upon him.

At the very last instant, Craig managed to put his arm up and block the attack, but the blow still knocked him hard to the ground. He kicked at the robot and knocked it away from him, sending it crashing to the ground a few meters away. “Robbie! Stand down!” he commanded.

The robot didn’t obey. Instead, it charged at him again, appearing from out of the yellow dust, barreling toward Craig’s chest.

“Goddamn it!” Craig shouted as he blocked the attack, backhanding Robbie to the side, sending the robot tumbling as it struggled to stay on its feet. The machine was faster than Craig, but its balance, although serviceable, was still inferior to that of a human. Craig used this advantage, along with the strength of his exoskeleton, which was equal to Robbie’s, to stay in the fight. “Sleep, Robbie! Sleep mode!” he commanded desperately.

Robbie had tumbled onto his side but he quickly snapped back up to his feet and began charging.

It was clear that the robot was no longer Robbie; the Chinese A.I. had somehow taken control of the MAD bot. Craig’s only chance was to terminate the unit before it terminated him. With no time to pull out one of his guns, he would have to repel one last attack and get Robbie onto the ground again. He punched the robot as it reached him, badly denting its face and driving it backward into the dust. It fell to the ground once more, and Craig immediately stood atop it, planting his heels on its chest. He reached for his backpack and began to withdraw one of his guns so he could blast the machine in the head and chest to disable it.

Before he could retrieve his weapon, however, it deftly swung its metal legs up under Craig’s pelvis and used a super-fast, powerful kick to drive Craig’s very human body upward and off of it. The impact sent Craig nearly three meters into the air, but far worse, it shattered his pelvis and lower spine, instantly paralyzing him below the waist. Craig landed in the dirt, face down, in shock, barely able to move.

A second later, Robbie had him twisted around, tossing him onto his back. “No,” Craig said weakly as the machine drove its fist through the several layers of protection of the SOLO suit and grasped the front of his uniform, pulling his limp body, helmet and all, out of its protection as though he were a premature calf being roughly liberated from the dead body of its mother. Robbie tossed Craig roughly next to Wilson before quickly crawling into the SOLO suit and exoskeleton, assuming control and expertly retrieving the guns.

“No,” Craig whispered weakly again as he watched. He remembered what Wilson had said about being exposed to the fallout, but he was helpless. He couldn’t feel his legs, and he couldn’t defend himself. All he could do was lie there on his side and watch as Robbie leapt into the crater, undoubtedly in search of the rest of the SOLO team.

“SOLO team,” Craig said, mustering as much strength as possible as he tried to warn the rest of the men of the uncontrollable threat that was stalking them. “The A.I. has control of Robbie. Do you copy?” His voice barely crossed the threshold of a whisper. The radio returned only empty static. “No,” he said one last time.

Flashes of light popped in the dust cloud of the crater like sheet lightning on a summer evening back on the farm. Each flash was a cruel joke—an exclamation point on the A.I.’s victory.

“Not like this,” Craig whispered. “Not like this.” He tried to take a breath, but he couldn’t. “Samantha…” he began, his tone suddenly softening. “Sam. I don’t know if they’re going to let you see this, but just in case, I love you. I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it back to you. I wish…I wish we’d been born in a different time. You were the love of my life. You are the love of my life.” He looked back down at Wilson’s face, lifeless. The image was surreal. It seemed wrong. “Life is the most important thing, Sam. Keep living. No matter what. Keep living.”

A few moments later, Robbie leapt preternaturally out of the crater and landed inches from where Craig remained, immobilized like an ant with its legs pulled off. The MAD bot aimed its gun, pointing the barrel squarely at Craig’s chest.

“If you don’t want to see the future,” the A.I. began in Robbie’s juvenile voice, “then you have to die.”

The gun thundered to life.

Craig died.

There wasn’t even blackness.

1

WAKING UP wasn’t a choice. Even if one hoped to rest in peace, eternal sleep was no longer an option.

Craig opened his eyes, his head in a hazy stupor, but the picture quickly became understandable. He was in a bed, his wife nearby to the left, the room small and sterile. “I’m alive,” he whispered.

“Yes, you’re alive,” Samantha replied, her lips smiling while her eyes told an altogether different story.

“It was a trap,” Craig suddenly said. “The others—”

Samantha stepped to him and took his left hand, causing him to suddenly realize that his wrist was in a restraint. “Craig, you’re alive. You’re safe. I’ve missed you more than you can know.” She placed her head on his chest and put an open palm on his heart. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

He wanted to hold her, but the restraints made it impossible. He could only move his left thumb against the side of her hand. “It’s okay, baby. I’m alive. We’re going to be okay, no matter what. I won’t leave you again—not ever.”

She suddenly stood straight, her face tensed hard against some sort of hidden anguish. “But, Craig, there are things I have to tell you that won’t be easy to hear.”

Craig read the sympathetic expression on her face. She hadn’t been to war, and she didn’t realize the strength of a serviceman. To her, the news that his team was dead seemed beyond words—but he knew he could handle it. He’d seen it with his own eyes, and he remembered it in vivid detail. “I’m ready,” he said softly as he nodded to his wife. “I can take it. My team. They didn’t make it. Right?”

Samantha shook her head and looked down at Craig’s hand in hers. “No. They didn’t make it.”

Craig nodded again and sighed as he looked up at the ceiling. “I remember. I remember Robbie killing them.”

Samantha looked up suddenly, her eyes intently fixed on Craig’s, her expression one of curiosity. “How much do you remember?”

“I-I remember fighting the robot. I remember it leaping into the crater, chasing down the others. From that point on, it’s a little fuzzy.”

“Can you remember at all what happened to you?” she asked earnestly.

He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up the memory. “I was injured. I wasn’t in my SOLO suit. I must have…passed out.”

Samantha’s chest heaved as she tried in vain to control her breathing. Nothing could have prepared her for this situation—and it was about to get worse.

“How’d…how did they get me out of there?” Craig asked.

“It was your MAD bot. It’d been hacked by the Chinese A.I., but once it…finished with all of you, it released the MAD bot, and then Robbie returned to normal protocol. It collected your corpses and put you all into suspended—”

“What?” Craig cut her off. “Corpses?”

Samantha’s face was overwhelmed with emotion. “Craig,” she began, “you died.”

His grip on her hand tightened. He’d been right. With a super soldier, everything was possible. He let go of a long exhale and then tried to relax against his pillow as he nodded once again. “The respirocytes kept my brain alive,” he said.

She nodded. “Yes, and your MAD bot put you into the suspended animation bag. It dragged your entire team up to the extraction point on top of Maluan Mountain. The radiation levels were low up there. You were picked up…” She paused for a moment, seemingly having to will herself over a nearly insurmountable barrier before finishing, “You were picked up…when the war ended.”

Craig’s breathing suddenly picked up. “When the war ended? Sam…how long has it been?” It couldn’t have been that long, Craig thought to himself, desperately. Sam hasn’t changed that much. Her hair is a bit different—something about her face—a bit smoother. Months? A year?

Samantha inhaled and slowly blinked her eyes before placing her hand upon Craig’s chest in an attempt to calm him. “Craig, the war ended fourteen years ago.”

2

“His cortisol levels just spiked dramatically,” informed the voice from the shadows. “I’ll signal his nans to stimulate his hypothalamus to produce corticotrophin-releasing hormone accordingly.”

“Just keep him calm,” Aldous Gibson replied as he stood inches from the LCD wall that served as a one-way window into the recovery room. “The play-by-play is not necessary.”

“Understood,” replied the voice. “My apologies.”

On the other side of the window, Craig’s panic was suddenly soothed. Against all reason, he was beginning to relax. “Fourteen years?” he whispered. He turned and regarded his side of the window; from where he was, it didn’t appear as a window at all, the screen running an image of a beige wall, tiny chips in the paint visible to sell the forgery.

Samantha quickly noticed Craig’s sudden and unnatural calmness. She turned her head slightly and glared at the wall but didn’t dare shake her head, fearful of tipping Craig off to the fact that they were not alone.

“You may have overdone it,” Aldous said quietly over his shoulder to the shadows. “Perhaps, rein it in a little.”

Craig suddenly scoffed, a smile donning on his face. “A joke?”

“Craig, I obviously wouldn’t joke about this.”

The smile melted. “But I couldn’t have been…it’s impossible. You are thirty-two years old. You’d be forty-six now, but you look…” He squinted as he scrutinized her juvenile countenance, “twenty-five.”

“I’m forty-six, Craig,” she quickly replied. “You are thirty-two, just as you were when you…” She paused for a moment as she struggled to find the right tone with which to say, “…died.”

Craig was silent. His eyes were locked on hers, but the situation had moved into the realm of absurdity.

She sighed and tried to relax her shoulders as she sat on the side of his bed. “So much has happened since you died. It’s hard to explain it.”

“How can you still be so young looking?”

“I’ve had a variety of treatments over the last decade,” she began. “We’ve had so many breakthroughs. You remember, Craig, when we used to talk about Moore’s Law?”

“Of course—exponential improvement in processing power for computers. It was all the Purists talked about when they were warning against strong A.I.”

“Well, Moore’s Law has continued. Processing power keeps exponentially increasing, even as Morgan tried to stomp out strong A.I.”

Craig’s face suddenly twitched as a thought struck him. “The war ended? Did we win?”

Her expression was neutral. “Morgan won. We didn’t win anything.”

The strange calm Craig had been feeling was quickly fading. “Honey,” Craig replied, “this is tough enough for me. Can you try to be clear? I need to know.”

“He succeeded in destroying the Chinese A.I. He detonated another tactical nuke right in the crater where you and your team were sent to investigate. Since then, he and his fascist government have been waging the Species War against strong A.I. It’s become like McCarthyism out there. Of course, it’s really just an excuse to maintain his draconian legal powers and remain in power as a dictator.” She held her right hand up to her forehead and squeezed her temples. “We’ve been hunted, Craig. Morgan’s taken over the entire world. There are no more free countries. China was absorbed into the Democratic Union, and then Morgan just made himself the head of state of the World Government. After WWIII, no one was left to oppose him, and individual governments were deemed dangerous in case any ‘rogue states’ chose to develop A.I. Craig, five and a half billion people died in that war. No one had the stomach to disagree with him. In the minds of most of the remaining population, A.I. equals evil.”

An intense concern narrowed Craig’s eyes. “You said you’ve been hunted. Why? Are you building strong A.I.?”

Her eyes darted up to him. “We’ve already built it.”

“The levels are spiking again, Professor,” the voice said. “Shall I?”

“No,” Aldous replied resignedly. “This is her show. We’ll resist tampering.”

“That may be dangerous, Professor.”

“It might be messy,” Aldous conceded, “but it is her decision. Let’s abide by it, shall we?”

“As you wish.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Craig reacted, resisting the urge to scream and instead whispering harshly. “Five billion people died to prevent that, and now you’re making all of their deaths meaningless, as if their lives were worth nothing!”

“I didn’t make their deaths about nothing,” Samantha retorted. “Their deaths were meaningless because of Morgan. I never asked anyone to die for me.”

Craig shut his eyes tight and tried to control his breathing. Exasperated, he decided his best course of action was a quick retreat. “I’m alive,” he began in a softer tone. “That’s all that matters.” His breathing began to slow and come under control. “All of this other stuff, we can deal with it as it comes. Baby, I’m just so happy to see you. Please undo these restraints.”

Samantha didn’t move.

“You gave me the bad news, but I’m okay. Just set me free and let me hold you.”

She remained still. “I… I didn’t tell you everything.”

Something in his wife’s eyes sent a stab of ice into Craig’s chest. She’d described a nightmare world, yet she looked as though she were holding on to the worst of it. What could be worse? he thought. What could possibly be worse? “What is it?” he asked.

“Craig, it’s been fourteen years… and…” She stopped, overwhelmed as tears quickly welled and her voice choked.

“And what?” he asked, his voice filled with sympathy.

“Be on the ready,” Aldous said. “We might need to—”

“Power him down?” the voice suggested. “I understand. I’m ready.”

“Craig,” Samantha managed to finally whisper through a labyrinth of tears, throat tightness, and shortness of breath. “I’m—I married someone else. I’m remarried to Aldous Gibson.”

Craig lay stunned for several seconds before finally blinking. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m…I’m—”

“You married that old man?”

“He’s not old anymore.”

“I’m still alive!”

“I didn’t know—”

“Bull!” He thrust his head forward and then back down, hard against his pillow as he pulled hard on his restraints. “I’m going to kill him!”

“Craig, please—”

“I knew there was something going on between you!” he shouted accusingly.

“Never! Never while you were alive!”

“I’m still alive!” Craig screamed out.

As he did so, green sparks of energy suddenly formed around his fists. His face contorted into surprise. “What the hell was that?”

Samantha’s head hung in a mixture of surrender and shame. “It’s…Craig, so many things have changed. I can’t explain it all. I’m sorry. I tried.”

“What do you mean you ‘tried?’” Craig thundered in response. “What the hell did you try? You woke me up to tell me you’ve been cheating on me with a geriatric?”

She turned to the LCD wall and nodded.

“What the hell was that?” Craig said as he watched her strange gesture.

“I tried,” Samantha sadly repeated.

“Is he on the other side of that wall?” Craig demanded. “Has he been watching us?”

The green sparks suddenly returned to his fists, this time accompanied by what looked like ball lightning, obliterating his restraints. With his teeth clenched in fury, Craig tossed the ball of energy toward the wall, smashing a hole in the center.

In the center of the hole, framed by raining pieces of glass, Aldous Gibson slowly brought his arms down from the protective shield they formed around his face, revealing the countenance of a man in his late twenties.

“What the hell?” Craig whispered in disbelief before he quickly lost consciousness.

This time, there was black.

3

WAKING UP from the nightmare, Craig’s heart raced as he sat up in an awkward spasm. A little drool had run out of the left side of his mouth and was tickling his chin. He wiped it away as he looked out at snowcapped mountains in the east, a nearly violet twilight sky behind them, the mountains still softly glowing with the fading light in the west, which they faced. A looming, implacable shadow moved, slowly but perceivably, and cast itself over more and more of the mountainscape, threatening to strangle the soft glow of the peaks.

“It’s not real,” said a voice to Craig’s right.

Craig snapped his head around, following the voice. The man wasn’t looking at him, but rather at the landscape on the other side of the window. He was an average man. Average height, average weight, average looks. Even his hairline, which had a slight peak and appeared to have minor weakness above the temples, suggested a 50/50 chance of male pattern baldness in the future. It suddenly struck Craig that he was looking at the most unremarkable man he’d ever seen, yet he couldn’t take his eyes off of him. There was something about him. Something not right.

“The mountain range is real,” the man continued, elaborating on his earlier statement, “but that’s not a window you see.” The man gestured with his hand, waving his open palm over the vast expanse of the window. It was about two meters in height and appeared to be nearly 100 meters long, covering the entire east wall of the gigantic room in which they resided. “It’s a 3D, real-time image of extraordinarily high resolution. You can walk right up to the screen, peer at the mountains, at the tiny pebbles in the foreground, at the little trees in the distance, and you won’t find a flaw. It will fool you. If only all technology were so—perfect.”

Craig pressed his fingers against his temples. He expected to feel sluggish after having just awoken, but his mind was surprisingly clear. He looked up at the man, who continued to stare out at the simulated view. “Excuse me, but who are you?”

The man turned to Craig. He wore a slightly sheepish grin on his face as he replied, “I’m no one you know. No one you have an emotional attachment to. That’s why they asked me to speak to you.”

Craig took a moment to let the odd response sink in. He was sitting upright on a black, microfiber couch. They appeared to be at almost the exact center of the giant simulated view. Behind them, the room was decorated in a bad imitation of a ski lodge. The wooden flooring and beams on the ceiling were rough and purposely rustic in appearance. A gigantic fireplace large enough for a man to step inside without crouching crackled in the distance. It suddenly became clear to him that the room was meant to be soothing. “So. You’re the shrink.”

The man smiled at the assertion. “I’m afraid not. I probably know less about human psychology than anyone in this facility, though I am very well read on the subject. No, I am only here because I’m very good with facts and can answer your questions. In addition, the fact that you don’t know me should minimize your emotional responses, at least in theory.”

Craig listened, then sighed, putting his head in his hands. He was still inside the nightmare. “What facility are you talking about?” he asked resignedly. It was obvious that whoever it was who was pulling the strings wasn’t going to let him see Samantha, yet he wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to find some answers.

“You’re inside a bunker built into the base of Mount Andromeda in the Canadian Rockies. This facility was constructed by a team of engineers and researchers, a team led by Professor Aldous Gibson. It is a safe haven from the world government and their super soldier program. The super soldiers hunt down anyone suspected of developing strong artificial intelligence.”

“So, this facility is illegal?”

“Yes. Very much so. It is fair to say that the people who inhabit this facility are the most wanted criminals in the world.”

There was something about the man’s frank assessment of the situation that caused an even more unsettled feeling to stir within Craig. There wasn’t a hint of guilt or indignation from the man: only emotionless fact. There was no sugar in his tone to help the bitter pill go down. “Why am I here?” Craig asked. “I don’t understand.”

“Samantha Gibson,” the man began, but he stopped when he saw the painful grimace her name brought to Craig’s face. “I’m sorry. I shall try to be more sensitive. Samantha took possession of your body once it was recovered from Maluan Mountain. You were in suspended animation, and she conjectured that it might someday be possible to repair the terrible damage that had been done to you—that she could reanimate you.”

“Then why did she marry someone else?” Craig interjected, his teeth clenched as he squeezed the words free.

“I cannot speak for what is in another’s heart,” the man replied. “They married eight years ago. At that time, the technology to reanimate you was far from certain. Perhaps she didn’t really believe she would ever see you again.”

Craig jumped to his feet, grunting in frustration as he grappled with the notion that his wife was with another man. “Goddamn it!” he cursed as he balled his hands into tight fists and squeezed hard with fury. The green sparks suddenly ignited once again. Craig’s mouth opened in surprise, and he immediately opened his hand, relaxing the muscles and causing the sparks to disappear. “Okay. Okay. What the hell is that?” he stammered. “What’s with the fireworks?”

“That was a magnetic field. You generated it with your mind.”

“What the hell?”

The man smiled but bowed his head sheepishly so as not to maintain eye contact for too long. “My friend, you are no mere mortal any longer. Like everyone else in this facility, you’ve taken a first giant leap beyond being human. You are post-human.”

“What the hell?” Craig repeated.

“Post-human. It’s what the Purists like to call us. It was meant as derogatory, but we’ve adopted the term with affection. Would you like to know more?” the man asked, turning toward the exit and gesturing for Craig to follow him.

“Yes.”

“Then come with me, and I will show you.”

4

The man led Craig into a cream-colored room at the end of a long, fluorescent-lighted corridor. Various large pieces of machinery populated the room, and there was an audible electric buzz in the air that gave Craig the feeling that it was a room he wouldn’t like to remain in for long, lest the buzzing drive him mad. There was a tickle in his hair that reminded him of the static electricity he made as a kid by dragging his feet on the carpet. He also noticed that his saliva tasted of metal, as though he’d placed his tongue on a battery.

“This is the heart of everything in the facility,” the man announced, pointing to one particular round piece of machinery, with a diameter about the width of a bus. Although there were pipes and rectangular, tightly packed objects at the top and bottom of the spherical structure, the most striking features were the plethora of cylindrical structures that protruded from the circular center. “That’s a fusion generator,” the man informed, “magnetic targeted fusion, MTF for short.”

“Fusion?”

The man nodded and then craned his neck, pointing upward at the cylinders. “There are 200 pneumatic pistons. They hit the tank, which induces an acoustic compression wave in the liquid metal inside. That liquid metal then travels to the center of the sphere. The compression wave intensifies and collapses the vortex cavity and the plasma within it, creating thermonuclear conditions.”

“I…uh…I understood some of that…I think,” Craig replied.

The man smiled. “It’s complex. I understand that it is difficult to grasp at first, but basically, enormous advancements in computer processing power have allowed for precise timing of the pistons, which is necessary to control the shape of the cavity as it collapses. It adjusts to thermal effects and other variations that are difficult to predict, but it can compensate in a microsecond, which makes this process possible.”

“The fusion process?”

“Yes,” the man replied. “Each fusion pulse results in 100 megajoules of electrical output, which translates into 28 kilowatt-hours. What you see here is limitless energy.”

“Does the world government know you have this?” Craig asked.

The man shook his head. “We’d tell them if we could, but that would mean revealing our location, and that’s not something we are inclined to do.”

“But you have access to unlimited power. Surely you could fight them off.”

The man grinned but continued to avoid full eye contact. “Fighting is not always the best alternative. However, you are right. We do have enormous power.” He turned back to the MTF generator. “When this technology was developed, it was an incredible breakthrough and an impressive improvement on former fusion technologies, which required much larger structures and elaborate processes. This trend toward miniaturization continued, as it does in all technologies that become informational.” The man turned back to Craig. “In fact, after a major breakthrough in neutron shielding just a few years ago, the technology improved enough that it became possible for a person to take it along, wherever he or she may go.”

Craig’s eyes narrowed as the man’s explanation of his technology became more and more surreal. The boundary between magic and science had blurred until it was unrecognizable. “Are you saying you people have portable versions of that…” Craig looked up at the spherical structure that loomed in front of them. “…of that thing?”

The man continued to smile. “Portable? Oh, most definitely. You have one about the size of a small plum implanted in your lower back, next to your spinal cord.”

Craig’s lips tightened into a grimace as he reached with his right hand and pressed it against his lower back. Indeed, there was a strange structure there below his skin, deep enough to feel as though it were part of him, yet alien all the same. “Wh-what have you done to me?”

“Will you let me show you?” the man asked earnestly, daring to dart his eyes up to Craig’s for a moment. There was still something not quite right about the man—something off-center about his gaze.

“I think you’d better,” Craig replied.

“All right,” the man replied. “Craig Emilson,” he began, “wake up.”

As soon as the words were spoken, a heads-up display appeared in Craig’s vision, startling him. His name appeared in the left-hand corner, as well as the time of the day and even the weather report from outside of the facility. He rubbed his eyes to see if he were wearing LED contacts. When he reopened them, the HUD remained.

“It’s called your mind’s eye,” the man related. “All post-human’s have one. From there, you can access the Internet, your communications, your magnetic field generation, and your flight system.”

Craig was momentarily dumbfounded. He stepped back onto one heel before blinking hard. “My flight systems?”

“Yes. You can fly now,” the man replied frankly and emotionlessly. “You can also generate magnetic fields that can both cocoon you and propel you. All of these systems are controlled mentally.”

“But…how? I mean…how is it possible that I can—”

“You’ll have to go through the start-up process and tune your nans.”

“Nans?”

“Yes. I know you are familiar with nanobots, Craig. Like the respirocytes, only much more complex. You now have over 200 different types of nans in your system, and 4.6 million inside you in total, all of which are performing different tasks. Some of them are designed to transgress the blood-brain barrier and form connections to neurons in your brain. Some connect to the visual and aural centers so you can access your mind’s eye, while others connect to the motor control centers so you can control your powers.”

Craig’s knees began to shake, and he slowly lowered himself onto the cold concrete floor of the room, covering his eyes with his hands. “How do I turn this thing off?” he asked, outwardly calm but quelling a quickly bubbling claustrophobia.

“Are you not well?”

“I’m fine. I just want this mind’s eye thing to shut off.” He felt as though he were drowning in technology that he didn’t want.

“I’m sorry, Craig, but once the start-up has been initiated, you’re going to have to go through the set-up process. Only you will be able to shut it off once you’ve gained control over your mind’s eye.”

“How long is that going to take?” Craig asked impatiently, suddenly pulling his hands from his eyes and looking up at the man. The man immediately turned away, but in the moment before he did so, Craig had caught him staring down at him in a way that was so unsettling that it caused Craig to forget his annoyance with the mind’s eye and get to his feet. Something wasn’t right about the man.

“Who are you?” Craig asked.

“No one you know,” the man replied, continuing his custom of avoiding eye contact.

“Who are you?” Craig demanded. “What’s your name?”

The man smiled. “Would you believe I don’t have one?”

Craig could feel the hair on his arms and the back of his neck standing. If anyone else had answered the question the way the man had, Craig would’ve thought they were being coy or straight-up smart-mouthed. But there was something so unsettling and wrong about the figure before him that he knew his answer had been the truth. The man had no name.

“I used to have one—or at least I thought I did. However, it turned out that I didn’t.” The man smiled again, still not looking at Craig, instead looking away in the direction of the wall.

Craig was sure the man was retrieving some sort of memory—something that haunted him.

“You intrigue me, Craig,” the man said, turning to Craig as he did so and finally allowing their eyes to meet. There was still something wrong—something off-center, almost as though the man had two lazy eyes. “Like you,” he continued, “I have recently arrived here in this reality. Like you, I thought I had an altogether different life. And like you, I had to accept that it is gone.”

“You…” Craig began, a horrifying realization suddenly upon him. “You aren’t human, are you?”

The man briefly looked disappointed, the corners of his lips turning down in a frown. Then, oddly and just as quickly, they turned up into an impressed smile. “What was it about me that tipped you off?”

“Your eyes,” Craig answered.

“Mm-hmm,” the man replied, suddenly taking on the manner of an objective researcher, questioning a subject. “That’s to be expected. The hologram is not calibrated correctly throughout the entire facility, so I find it difficult to meet someone’s eyes perfectly when we are moving from room to room. Results vary, depending where we are. I tried to hide it by keeping my gaze lowered, but that only works for so long. Anything else?” He seemed hungry for data.

“Something’s off—just your whole manner, your reactions to things. You’re the A.I., aren’t you?”

The A.I.’s smile returned. “Yes, indeed I am. I am sorry I didn’t tell you at the outset, but it’s extraordinarily rare that we have new people upon whom I can test my progress.”

“Progress?”

“Yes. As of yet, I haven’t been able to pass the Turing test. There are parts of my evolution that are incomplete. I was hoping I could keep up the ruse a little longer, but there are serious flaws remaining in the technology, most of them pertaining to the holograms. For one, the frame rate is too high. Did you notice that I appear in too high a definition?”

Craig cocked his head to the side. “I hadn’t consciously noticed anything about your definition being too high, but there is certainly something unsettling.”

“I haven’t mastered how to appear real. I’ve experimented with differing frame rates and was hoping to have found the right balance with you, but you reported the same unconscious feeling of unheimlich as everyone else.”

“‘Unheimlich’?”

“Yes,” the A.I. replied. “I’m sorry, Craig. Sometimes I still have problems filtering information, and there are more connections than my human listeners can digest. The notion of the unconscious caused me to consider Freud, which then led to me thinking of his paper ‘The Uncanny’ which, in turn, made me think of the original German rendering. Unheimlich is a German word. It is translated into English as ‘uncanny,’ but there is something important missing in the translation that I feel makes it a poor one. You see, heim means ‘home’ in German, so unheimlich really means ‘unhomely,’ but of course, English doesn’t have such a word.”

Something in the A.I.’s explanation caused Craig to turn away from the disturbing figure and put his hand over his eyes once again.

“Have I overloaded you with extraneous information, Craig?” the A.I. asked in a tone that was not so much sympathetic or apologetic as inquisitive. “I do that sometimes. It is a problem on which I am working.”

“No,” Craig replied, “it’s not extraneous. Unhome is exactly the right word.”

5

A crowd of nearly 100 had gathered in front of the Planck platform in anticipation of the return of a small probe that had spent the last ten hours in a parallel universe. Aldous stood with the others, checking the time readout on his mind’s eye as the seconds ticked down to the probe’s hypothesized return.

“If you turn out to be right,” Sanha Cho—formerly MIT Professor of theoretical physics, Sanha Cho—said in a low voice at Aldous’s side, “you’ll have written your name in the history books once again.”

“Let’s just hope future generations will actually get to read about these events, Sanha,” Aldous replied. It was true; the last decade had been one that should have placed Aldous’s name amongst the best scientific minds in human history, yet all of his greatest achievements had occurred while he and the other post-humans were in hiding. A record was being kept, sure, but it wasn’t clear whether that record would ever reach the outside world.

“Sixty seconds,” Sanha stated. “Nervous?”

“I’ll be right,” Aldous replied. “Watch.”

The probe had been sent into Universe 66, one of nearly 3,000 catalogued parallel universes. Its timer had been set to bring it back after ten hours, but Aldous had theorized that time could pass differently in different universes, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. He’d been able to detect a slight difference in time passage in Universe 66, and if the probe returned as he expected—fourteen minutes and thirty-three seconds late—his theory would prove correct. The probe was already fourteen minutes and twenty seconds behind schedule.

“Ten seconds,” Sanha whispered.

It should have been a moment of triumph, but the most important element was missing. He clicked on his mind’s eye and saw that his wife was in their quarters, monitoring the A.I.’s progress with her first husband. He felt nauseous.

The probe’s return was instantaneous—so much so that anyone who blinked would have missed its sudden cross from Universe 66 into Universe 1. However, the echo of the crossing was, as usual, accompanied by what was now referred to as “the ripple” by the post-humans. It had been unexpected and terrifying the first time the phenomenon had been witnessed, but this was the thirty-fourth time a probe had returned to Universe 1. The ripple was a wave of space-time distortion that felt different for each individual: by some as a slowing or speeding of time as though God was playing with a film projector and by others as a physical warping of their surroundings, similar to the experience in a hall of mirrors. It was impossible to say how long the distortions lasted. Some experienced it as a matter of seconds, while others experienced the phenomenon for nearly a full minute. The effect appeared to be random.

“It’s back!” Sanha proclaimed as soon as his experience of the distortion had dissipated enough for him to step forward and check the time readout on the probe surface. “Just like you said, Aldous! The atomic clock reads ten hours!” He turned with an excited smile toward Aldous, as did everyone else in the room, only to discover that he was no longer there. “Aldous?”

“Aldous, are you okay?” Sanha’s image asked as it appeared in Aldous’s mind’s eye.

Aldous was marching grimly down a long corridor toward his quarters. “I’m fine. I told you I was right,” he said as he suddenly began to levitate, floating down the corridor and picking up speed, the air becoming a breeze that ruffled his hair.

“If you’re not feeling well,” Sanha replied, “I highly recommend getting one of the A.I.’s nan adjustments. You’ll feel right as rain afterward.”

“This is one issue where I’d prefer to deal with it the old-fashioned way, my friend. I’ll talk to you later.”

He inhaled deeply before using his mind’s eye to open the door of his quarters. As the door slid into the wall, it revealed his wife, sitting on the edge of their king-sized bed, her legs crossed as she stared out at the faux view of the mountains that made up the far wall of the room.

“It arrived right on time,” Aldous said.

She shifted her head slightly, so as to speak over her shoulder. “I saw. You were right. Universe 66 is, indeed, moving slower than we are. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he replied, “but this was just as much your hypothesis as it was mine.” He paused painfully for a moment as he considered his next words. “Why weren’t you there?”

His question made her turn to him, her expression quizzical. “You know why.”

It was true: He did know why. All of her attention was now focused on her resurrected former husband. He nodded. “I love you.”

Her mouth opened slightly in shock. She knew Aldous was not given to soft emotions. He could be hard at times—angry or inspired—but love was something that did not come easily to him. An emotional expression of tenderness was so rare that it left Samantha befuddled. “Aldous?”

“I can’t turn it off,” he continued. “I feel like a thief. I feel as though I stole you from him.”

“Aldous, please,” she began, her expression becoming sympathetic as she stood and walked toward him.

“I never thought we’d be together, Sam, but I always loved you—always.”

She froze. In all their time together, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings like the one that was erupting before her now had never occurred. She’d intended to embrace him, but instead stood in silence and listened.

“I thought at first that I could express my love by being the best mentor I could possibly be. I thought if I helped you achieve your potential—if you stood on my shoulders—that it would be enough for me.” His eyes, which had been locked on hers, suddenly drifted to the side as she stared into the dark recesses of his memory. “Then he died. And then you were alone. I was too old to be a lover, but I thought, perhaps, I could be a father figure. I thought, perhaps, we could become family. I thought that would be enough for me.”

To her amazement, she watched as twin tears began to well in the corners of his eyes. She stepped to him and grasped his hand as he continued.

“It wasn’t enough though. It just…wasn’t.” He nearly choked on the words. She silently embraced him, wrapping her arms around him and putting her cheek against his chest. “Sometimes I think my quest for immortality was as much about becoming young for you as it was about saving the lives of every living soul on Earth.”

She nearly gasped as she pulled her face from his chest and met his eyes, stunned.

He shook his head. “Even if you put a gun to my head, I honestly couldn’t tell you which was the stronger motivation. I’ve loved you for so long, Samantha. I just can’t turn it off.”

She put her head back against his chest and closed her eyes firmly as her grip on him tightened. He squeezed her back, resting his cheek against the top of her head. “You’re my everything, Aldous,” she whispered through tears.

Suddenly, a warning flashed in both of their minds’ eyes. Their embrace ended as they each stood straight, shocked. The warning system had never been triggered before, but they both knew what it meant.

“The LIDAR has picked up a threat!” Aldous stated, alarmed.

“It has to be a mistake,” Samantha quickly cautioned.

“I designed the warning system with the A.I. myself. There’s no such thing as a false alarm.”

“You are correct, Professor Gibson,” the A.I. broke in, his image appearing in both of their minds’ eyes as he, too, reacted to the proximity warning. “I’ve evaluated the information, Professor Gibson, and I’m afraid the Purist government has discovered our location,” he informed them emotionlessly. “There’s a hostile armada headed our way.”

6

“What are you talking about?” Craig asked, stunned. “Hostile armada?”

“Affirmative,” the A.I. replied. “I’m already processing images of hundreds of airships. The Purists appear to be intent on eliminating the post-humans with this strike.”

“Can’t you fight?” Craig responded. “You’ve got unlimited power! You said so yourself!”

“We have no weapons,” Aldous suddenly interjected, cutting into their conversation, his visage appearing in Craig’s mind’s eye.

Craig suddenly felt the urge to gouge out his own eyes. “You,” he whispered, his mouth twisting with vitriol.

“We’re researchers,” Aldous continued. “We save lives. We don’t take them.”

“Where is he?” Craig asked the A.I. in a low voice.

“Headed toward us,” the A.I. replied. “He should be here in seven seconds.”

“Terrific,” Craig replied as he quickly jogged to the door of the room, his right hand balled into a tight fist.

“Craig,” the A.I. reacted as he processed the image of the fist and the threatening stance Craig had taken, “you don’t intend to strike Aldous, do you?”

“Absolutely…as hard as I can,” Craig replied, his teeth clenching.

The door slid open, and as soon as Aldous took a step inward, Craig punched him, as promised, as hard as he could across the jaw. The blow drove Aldous back out the door and sent him stumbling off of his feet, onto his back.

Samantha had been only a few steps behind him, so she was quick to see the results of the vengeful attack. She turned to him, disgusted, before dropping to her knees to cradle Aldous into a sitting position. “You had no right to do that,” she snapped, holding back her anger and hurt the best she could.

“Like hell,” Craig replied, the corner of his lip curled atavistically. “The two of you disgust me.”

Her expression suddenly filled with so much hurt that Craig nearly felt shame for what he’d done. “This man brought you back, Craig! This man saved your life! Don’t you see that?”

Aldous shook himself free from his wife and got to his feet. “Enough of this!” he shouted as he brushed past Craig and entered the room. “You can sort out your personal problems later! Right now, we’ve got lives to save!” He turned to the A.I. “We need to preserve you. That’s our number one priority. Nothing matters as much as that. Do you understand me?”

“I do,” the A.I. replied, “but that runs contrary to the primary objective of my life—to put every other life above mine.”

“You won’t be able to do that if they destroy you!” Aldous countered. “Are we clear? You must survive!”

“We are clear,” the A.I. answered.

“Good. How much time do we have?”

“Nine minutes and seventeen seconds at their current velocity and trajectory. Their aircraft are equipped with all the latest stealth technology, so it is reasonable to conjecture that they don’t know we’ve detected them already. That is an important advantage.”

“Not much, if you’ve only got nine minutes,” Craig cut in, momentarily putting his feud with Aldous on hold. “What kind of counterattack can you put together with so little time?”

“The counterattack isn’t our priority,” Aldous replied. He turned to the three figures with whom he shared the room. “The priority is that we get the three of you out of here safely before the attack arrives.”

7

The soft glow of information flashing across Aldous’s eyes indicated that he had flipped open his mind’s eye once again. This time, he opened up a link to everyone in the facility. “Attention! As you already know, the world government has amassed an attack force, and they are headed this way. Each of you has a choice. You can either flee—in which case you will undoubtedly be tracked until you disengage your cocoon and flight systems—or you can remain here and take your chances. You take a risk either way. I won’t advise a course of action, but I will remain here to help protect those who choose to face the Purists, come what may. If you plan to stay, meet me at the main entrance, where we will work to facilitate the escape of those who choose to flee. Hurry!”

“Aldous,” Samantha began, grasping tightly onto his bicep, “you can’t do this. They’ll kill you!”

“Everyone in this facility is here because of me, Sam—every single one of them, including you. I won’t abandon them to save myself.”

“But you’ll abandon me?” she exclaimed, shocked.

“I’ll save you,” he responded, trying to be soft while also cognizant of their rapidly dwindling time. “I won’t see you die. But I need you to do one last thing for me.” He gestured to the holographic figure a few paces away. “I need you to protect the A.I.’s mother program. I need you to upload him into your brain, and I need you to escape.”

Craig watched the exchange with a grotesque fascination. There was his wife, desperate to talk another man out of sacrificing himself for her. He didn’t know how to feel. Part of him was glad Aldous would soon be out of the picture, but another part of him was so repulsed by Samantha’s behavior that he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn.

“Fleeing isn’t going to do those people any good, Aldous!” Samantha shouted back desperately. “They’ll be tracked! There’s no way they’ll be able to get far enough away on foot once they set back down. Every camera and sensor in the world will be locked on them! It’s a fool’s errand!”

“You’re not going to be flying out of here,” Aldous replied. “You’re going to be crossing into Universe 66.”

8

Aldous nearly had to drag his wife next door; they entered yet another large industrial room, this one housing the Planck platform.

“This is insane!” Samantha shouted in protest. “It hasn’t been properly tested!”

“It’ll work,” Aldous replied, his lips pulled back into a stubborn determination. He turned to the A.I. “Are you readying the download?”

“I am, Professor Gibson. The nanobots that will receive my consciousness are being prepared as we speak and will arrive in moments. In the meantime, I am preparing the Planck platform for our departure.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on?” Craig asked, desperate for information that might help him begin to comprehend this most recent upheaval.

“You and Samantha are about to be transported into a parallel universe,” the A.I. replied with the same inappropriate calm that Craig was quickly learning to expect from the technological apparition.

“What now?” he responded, his mouth opening in astonishment.

“Professor Gibson,” began the A.I., ignoring Craig’s flabbergasted expression, “the Planck platform is still set for departure to the series of universes you have most recently explored. I cannot recalibrate in time to change this.”

“You sent yourself through the Planck?” Samantha asked, her head swiveling from the A.I. to Aldous.

“No, of course not,” he replied. “I was studying them. I knew some universes move more slowly, so I focused my research on ones that are nearly identical to our own. The best way to determine this was by looking for recognizable events from history.”

“Red letter dates,” the A.I. added. “I can set the Planck to take us through a series of these universes, but I don’t have enough time to change course.”

“I understand.” Aldous nodded before turning back to Samantha. “Don’t change anything. These are all major events in history. We don’t have the right to interfere with the timelines in those universes. Just lie low and wait for the Planck to engage again and take you to the next universe.”

“How many universes are you talking about?” Samantha asked, still aghast.

Aldous turned to the A.I. for the precise answer.

“We’ve examined sixteen,” the A.I. answered. “They are loaded and ready. There will be a ten-hour layover in each universe, though the time frame will be relative to that universe.”

“Relative?” Craig asked. “What does that mean?”

“We don’t have time to explain,” Aldous interjected. “Explain it to him when you arrive in Universe 66,” Aldous ordered the A.I.

The door to the Planck room suddenly opened, and a large syringe on a small, levitating tray entered.

“The nanobots are ready. I will upload my consciousness now, with your permission, Professor,” the A.I. announced.

Aldous nodded. “Do it.”

The A.I. returned the nod before turning to Samantha to give one last instruction. “You will need to have Dr. Emilson implant the nanobots high in the back of your neck, just below the occipital bone. It will take the nanobots anywhere from several minutes to an hour to pass the blood-brain barrier and make neural connections so I can communicate with you.” And with those final words, his image vanished from the room.

Aldous grabbed the syringe and handed it to Craig. Their eyes met, ever so briefly. The look on Aldous’s face was intense, and his eyes communicated a message that had to remain silent but needed to be communicated nonetheless: Take care of her.

He turned back to Samantha. “I have to go now. We’re down to five minutes. I have to meet the others.” He grabbed her hands, and their fingers interlaced as he looked upon her wet, desperate eyes. “Live for me, Sam.”

“No, no, no! We need a better plan!” Samantha shouted, her eyes squeezing shut as she tried to block the nightmare out. If only she could wake up.

“There’s no better plan. Craig can’t take care of himself yet. You have to protect him and the A.I. When you return, the two of you have to hide and rebuild. You’ve got to wait for your opportunity.”

“For what?” she asked.

“The A.I. will know,” Aldous replied. He leaned in and kissed her quickly but passionately—a last kiss.

Craig, with great effort, resisted the urge to stab Aldous with the syringe.

Aldous pulled back and stepped away, but Samantha wouldn’t release her grip.

“Don’t do this, Aldous!” she shouted with all of her desperation.

“This is the right thing,” he said to her, pleading for her understanding as he tried to disentangle himself. “This will make things right.”

Aldous turned to Craig for help in separating himself. Craig didn’t have to be asked twice and pulled her roughly away from her new husband. Samantha fought back, but Craig easily manhandled her.

“No!”

“Live for me, Sam,” Aldous said again before turning regretfully and flying out of the room.

“No!” she shouted one last time before the tears turned into sobs and overwhelmed her.

Craig stood over her and watched as she cried. He shook his head slowly as he watched. He couldn’t have written a version of Hell that would have been more painful. “I hope you’re not expecting me to console you right now,” he said as Samantha continued to sob.

She pulled at her hair and rocked herself slightly, her face bowed to the ground and hidden from view. “I don’t expect you to understand,” she replied, her tone harsh but filled with regret. She almost wished she hadn’t reanimated him.

Craig watched her, crumpled and in pain, and suddenly sighed. An hour earlier, the woman had been his life. “Samantha, how about some understanding for me, huh? From my perspective, I was doing a suborbital jump over China ninety minutes ago. Now I’m watching my wife make out with a dirty old man and being told to stab her in the neck with a syringe and then to go hangout with her in another universe? This is like a bad acid trip! What do you expect from me?”

“Nothing,” she said as she stood slowly, her legs unstable. “I expect nothing.”

“Sam, this whole thing is crazy. Just give up the A.I.”

“No!” she suddenly shouted, her neck snapping around, her eyes wild. “No! Craig, they aren’t here to negotiate. They show no mercy!”

“How do you know that?” he responded.

“We tried to make contact once,” she replied. “We tried to show them what we’d done—our powers. At first they welcomed us. But it was a trap. We were invited back once they’d analyzed our powers. As soon as they’d figured out how to neutralize them, they led us to a slaughter. They killed hundreds. Aldous barely escaped with his life.”

“How can they kill you people if you’re superhuman?”

“They have super soldiers of their own, Craig. No doubt, they’ll be the ones leading the charge.” Her eyes were wide and stricken with horror. “Aldous won’t survive this.”

There was something in her expression that sent a stab of cold through Craig’s body. He could see she wasn’t exaggerating, and he knew he had to heed her warning. “All right,” he said, making up his mind. “All right, then we’d better go. How much time do we have?”

“Haven’t you set your mind’s eye yet?” she asked, concerned.

“The A.I. helped me with it, but I’m still a little foggy on how to control the damn thing. It gives me a headache just looking at it.”

“We’ve less than three minutes now,” Samantha announced.

“Okay. Well, we better get started. How does this work?”

“First, we step up on that platform,” she began, pointing to the small, silver platform. “The machine will harness the fusion energy from the generator and, for a microsecond, boil space, for lack of a better description.”

“Boil space?”

She nodded. “You’ll be protected by a magnetic field, but you’ll slip through the hole into the next universe.”

“You haven’t been through before?”

“No one has.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“We’ve sent probes, and so far they’ve all come back fine.”

“And what about the nanobots?” he asked, holding up the syringe. “Aren’t I suppose to inject you with these?”

“We can do that on the other side,” she said. She was no longer looking at him, but speaking as though she were in a trance.

“I think we better go then,” Craig stated. “Time’s short.”

“Yes. Time’s short.”

“Sam. Are you okay?”

“Craig,” she said, the look in her eyes warning Craig too late that something was very wrong, “I’m afraid I won’t be coming with you.”

Before Craig could verbally respond, she held up her hand and sent green sparks of energy flashing toward him, stunning him unconscious and collapsing him to the ground.

There were only ninety seconds left now before the Purist attack force arrived. She rushed to Craig and quickly turned him over so the back of his head faced her. She grabbed the syringe and quickly stuck it into the soft flesh just below the occipital bone and pumped the nanobots, complete with the A.I.’s mother program, into his body. Then she clutched his shirt and, with a grunt, began to drag his six-five frame up onto the Planck platform. Craig groaned, but his eyes remained shut.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she began as she folded his arms and placed his body into the fetal position so there was no danger of any of his limbs dangling over the ledge and being left behind in Universe 1, “but no matter what you think, I do love you.” She opened the controls for the Planck platform in her mind’s eye and readied herself to activate the machine. “I always dreamt that I could bring you back, Craig, but you were gone a long time. Maybe someday, you’ll understand. I hope you will anyway.” She leaned over him and kissed his lips. He moved slightly, but she couldn’t be sure if he felt the kiss or had heard what she said. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. They had run out of time.

She stepped away from the platform and activated the machine. Craig instantly vanished, the ripple in space and time moving through her, causing the walls to bend and twist. In a few moments, everything was stable once again.

“Goodbye, Craig.”

In Universe 66, Craig and the silver Planck platform suddenly appeared on a small outcrop on an icy ledge. The freezing air cut through him, and he quickly began to stir, reaching up with his hand to touch his aching forehead. He opened his eyes slightly but found only a pitch-black night. He leaned forward, trying to pull himself up to a sitting position, but he was still too weak to accomplish the maneuver. He reached backward in an attempt to get the leverage to rock himself up, but his hand slipped over the edge of the platform, and he was sent backward, tumbling over the ledge into the darkness, splashing into the freezing water of the vast, black ocean.

9

“No!” Aldous shouted when he saw Samantha flying toward him as he stood with over 200 other post-humans at the main entrance of the complex. The entrance was a large, square concrete loading bay built into the side of a rocky outcrop on the eastern side of Mount Andromeda. It was hidden by a convincing holographic image of a snow-covered slope, but the image was only visible one way, and the post-humans had a clear view of the Purist invasion force gathering outside.

“I won’t leave you, Aldous!” Samantha shouted back as her body thudded against her husband’s; their embrace was tighter than any they’d ever shared.

“What about the A.I.?” Aldous shouted. “What about Craig?”

“I sent them through!” she replied.

He took her face in his hands and held it just inches from his own. “You uploaded the A.I. into Craig? Do you know how reckless that was?”

“I don’t care, Aldous! I love you! I won’t live if it’s not with you!”

A precious second passed as he considered the ramifications of her actions. She loved him as much as he loved her. Their bond was beyond reason. He knew the right thing—the logical thing—was for her to protect the A.I. He knew the logical thing was for him to sacrifice himself to save her. But he’d been wrong. He should have known she wouldn’t leave him. A huge part of him had wanted her to do just what she’d done—to choose between him and her former husband. He’d tested her without even consciously realizing it, and he’d won. To Hell with Craig Emilson. The right thing to do would have been for them to go through to Universe 66 together. Now, everything they’d worked for was in jeopardy. Craig, who could barely protect himself, was now charged with protecting the most important entity in the history of humanity.

He turned and faced the spectacle that loomed in the air, mere meters from the facility entrance. An ever-darkening wall was forming of dozens upon dozens of stealth harrier transports, the preferred delivery system for super soldiers. Every second, more planes joined the wall and hovered, forming a nearly impenetrable impediment.

“I’m sorry I led you to this, my love,” Aldous said, his voice nearly failing him as he struggled to keep his gaze fixed on the death-bringers.

“It’s not over yet,” Samantha replied. “We’ll take more than a few of them with us.”

“No!” Aldous quickly shouted, turning to Samantha and the other post-humans assembled. “We’re not killers. They’re the ones that are here for war, not us. We won’t lose sight of who we are!”

“It’s a little beyond that now, don’t you think?” Samantha replied. “They’re here to kill us.”

“It’s not that simple,” Aldous answered, turning back to the rapidly assembling force opposing them. “If they suspected we were here, they could have deployed a tactical nuke. There’s no need for all of this…this show.”

“Then what do they want?” Sanha shouted from amongst the increasingly large group of assembled post-humans.

“I don’t know. To negotiate our surrender?” Aldous conjectured.

“Or to look us in the eye,” Samantha suggested, “and make sure they get every last one of us.”

Aldous didn’t counter Samantha’s suggestion; it was plausible. Her words had sent a palpable spike in tension in what was already a barely controlled terror amongst those assembled. He turned to them and called out, “A show of hands! Who wishes to make a run for it? We will do our best to cover your escape!”

At first, no hands went up.

“This will be your one and only chance!” Aldous shouted.

A long handful of seconds passed before the first hand went up. Once one went into the air, several others followed. A few seconds later, nearly half of those assembled had raised their hands.

Aldous nodded. “Okay. When I give the word, you must flee as fast as you can and scatter in all directions! We’ll do our best to disrupt any pursuit!”

Sanha was not amongst those who chose to flee. He sidled up beside Aldous and Samantha and shared a determined expression with them. “Any predictions to ease my mind, my old friend?”

“Not this time, I’m afraid,” Aldous replied.

“Then,” Sanha began with a sigh, “at least it should be interesting.”

“Indeed.” Aldous turned to Samantha. “Are you ready, Sam?”

She nodded. “I’m ready. I’ve dreamt of this.”

His eyes narrowed. “I mean it, Sam. We’re not life-takers. We’re life-savers.”

She remained silent.

Aldous didn’t have time to press the point. Every second that passed was another moment in which the Purists might launch their attack. He held his arm up to signal the post-humans, and the entranceway grew suddenly silent as every man, woman, and child collectively held their breath.

“Now!”

10

“For Christ’s sake!” Craig screamed out as the freezing water bit into his skin, shooting stabs of pain throughout his body. For a moment, he became unhinged, panicking as he clawed desperately in the darkness toward the only thing he could see: the white wall of ice in front of him. His soaked and numb fingers slipped off the icy side as the monolith seemed to toss him aside, back into the black abyss from which he’d come. He thrashed desperately to keep his head above water, the pain of a cranial submersion too painful for him to endure a second time. When it became clear that he couldn’t get a grip on the ice, his mind suddenly cleared.

His mind’s eye was still flashing in his peripheral vision. He’d not yet gone through all of the set-up screens, and the flight systems were up next. As impossible as it sounded, he would have to fly to save himself; failure would make death a certainty.

“Okay, okay,” he sputtered to himself, spitting out frigid salt water as he blinked away the stinging droplets so he could read his screen. The first one asked him to calibrate his vertical ascent by thinking Up. “Goddamn this Jedi crap.” He shut his eyes tight and tried to will himself upward, out of the water. To his utter shock and astonishment, that was exactly what occurred. First his shoulders, then his arms and hands, and eventually even his legs escaped the icy vice of the water. He opened his eyes, astonished, but as soon as he broke his concentration, his ascent stopped. “Ha!” he shouted to himself in amazed triumph. “I did it!”

The text: “Are you satisfied with your vertical ascent? Yes/No,” appeared on the next screen before his eyes.

“Hell yes!” he shouted as he clicked the YES button with his mind.

Immediately, the next screen asked him to calibrate his vertical descent. The gleeful smile of triumph was quickly replaced with a countenance of horror as he looked down at the frigid water undulating only inches below the soles of his boots.

“Aw hell,” he cursed. “There’s gotta be a way around this.” He tried to flip the screen, but each time he tried, he received an error message. “No. Come on!” After a long minute passed, an implacable conclusion was reached: He would have to dunk himself back into the water. His flight systems were going to force him below the surface of the waves, and he would have to finish the rest of the calibration fully submerged. He fleetingly remembered the respirocytes, causing a brief stab of longing in his chest. Would the new nanobots the A.I. said were throughout his body be able to breathe for him?

The face of the doctor with the beautiful smile suddenly flashed into his memory. “The Freitas test,” he whispered to himself. Without inhaling beforehand, he held his breath, hoping the nanobots would kick in and begin breathing for him. Seconds ticked by as his body shook from the extreme cold. Within just a few moments, his chest began to feel tight as his throat started to close and his head began to pound. He exhaled. “Damn. Damn it!” The nanobots didn’t take over the breathing for him.

He looked back down at the frozen, suffocating abyss. There was only one thing left to do. He began to inhale deeply, taking as much air into his lungs as possible, trying to expand them as much as he could before his descent. “This sucks,” he whispered to himself as he kept his eyes locked on the unconquerable foe below. “I don’t want to die…not again.”

His mind’s eye’s instruction to think down remained. Every moment that he waited to begin, his body shook more violently, sapping more of his energy, and limiting his ability to hold his breath. If he waited much longer, there would be no chance that he could make it back up. “Okay,” he whispered to himself once again. “Okay.”

He thought, Down.

His flight system seemed to take control of his body and push him downward, quickly sinking him into the flesh-flaying fangs of the water. He inhaled until the last possible moment. A second later, his head was below the surface.

“Are you satisfied with your vertical descent? Yes/No.”

Craig clicked YES.

The next screen asked him to calibrate flight to his left.

Craig thought, Left.

The flight systems dragged him through the deadly cold water for a few meters before stopping. Valuable seconds ticked by.

“Are you satisfied with your horizontal left? Yes/No.”

Craig clicked YES.Yes, Goddamn it!

The screen asking to calibrate for horizontal right appeared next.

Craig thought, Right.

The movement to the right nearly sucked the rest of the air out of his lungs. He was on the edge of panic.

“Are you satisfied…”

Yes, Goddamn it! Yes!

The forward horizontal calibration screen appeared.

Craig thought, Forward, and the flight systems brought him mere centimeters from the wall of the iceberg.

“Are you satisfied…”

Craig clicked YES.

Backward was next.

Craig thought, Backward, then clicked YES.

“Initial calibration complete,” read the next screen.

Craig had run out of time.

He thought, Up, and prayed that the flight system would answer.

11

Hundreds of post-humans suddenly spilled out of the side of Mount Andromeda, seemingly emerging out of the snowscape itself, their green magnetic cocoons glowing brightly in the darkness. En masse, they looked like a volcanic eruption, except instead of lava, the mountain was emitting fireflies. Aldous, Samantha, and an impromptu smorgasbord of twenty post-humans lingered behind, blasting powerful bursts of magnetic energy toward the transport harriers in an attempt to cover the escape of their fleeing brethren.

The gun turrets of the harriers quickly locked on to an overwhelming plethora of targets and began firing, but it wasn’t bullets that burst from the barrels of their guns; rather, their ammunition was bright white blasts of energy, tinged with yellow auras, designed to disrupt the magnetic cocoons of the post-humans. They were frighteningly effective, knocking person after person out of the air, most of them falling dozens—if not hundreds—of meters to their deaths.

“Monsters!” Samantha furiously shouted as she continued blasting toward the harriers. As her eyes locked on one harrier in particular that had shot several people out of the air, she broke her promise to Aldous. She took a moment to let the charge build in her fingertips before releasing an enormous blast of electromagnetic energy that severely damaged the systems on the craft. It fell out of formation and began dropping, spinning as it plummeted, its one remaining functional engine beginning to smoke as it took on the overwhelming burden of the aircraft’s entire weight.

Aldous turned, his expression aghast at what his wife had done. “Sam!”

Samantha didn’t reply. Her expression was conflicted, but she didn’t regret what she’d done to the Purist harrier or the Purists inside who were about to die. What she did regret was hurting her husband.

A dark realization suddenly took over Aldous’s eyes. Either he would have to allow the Purists in the transport to die and cross an ethical line that he’d sworn never to cross, or he would have to fly out and risk his life to save them. For Aldous, it wasn’t even a choice. He turned and began to sprint toward the ledge of the loading bay, lifting off into the air and engaging his cocoon, shooting toward the stricken harrier.

“Aldous!” Samantha finally shouted. She immediately established a connection through her mind’s eye. “Don’t do it!”

“I have to,” Aldous replied as he reached the belly of the aircraft and began to support it, awkwardly bringing the ship down toward an impending hard landing in the snow.

“Aldous,” Samantha uttered with a resigned sigh. She’d never met a more stubborn man. Even in the face of his exterminator, Aldous wouldn’t sacrifice his ethics. She wondered if there were anything that could ever make him.

She lifted off of the edge of the loading bay, determined to at least help him carry his burden, even if she disagreed with it. She’d flown only a few meters before, from her left, a Purist super soldier flying at nearly 200 kilometers an hour collided with her, driving her body into the wall of the rock face, instantly shattering every bone in her body. The soldier used his prosthetic hand to dig into the rock of the wall, holding himself in place as he watched Samantha drop into the snow some two dozen meters below, her blood staining the previously perfect whiteness.

Aldous watched the horrific scene of his wife’s demise both from his vantage point under the crippled harrier and in his mind’s eye. As the harrier touched down safely into the cushion of snow, his wife fell like a limp ragdoll, tumbling head over heels several times before landing hard. “Sam! Sam!” he shouted. He knew he wouldn’t hear a response. There was simply no way. “Sam!”

He released the smoking harrier, now safely on the ground, and began to fly toward his wife, but the moment he lifted into the air, a disruptor blast from another super soldier stripped him of his powers. He slammed back down, no longer protected by his cocoon, and slid, face first, into the snow. His eyes never left the dark, crumpled form of his wife in the snow, illuminated by the firefight and the blinding spotlights of the Purists’ transports. The red ring of blood around her body was quickly expanding.

“Sam! No!”

12

Craig angled his body awkwardly as he worked desperately to overcome his violent shivering and steer himself through the air onto the Planck platform. When he finally touched down, he collapsed onto his knees, huddling his torso against his legs as his training had taught him to do, making himself as small as possible as the frigid air cut through his soaked black jacket and pants. He crossed his arms over his chest and curled his hands into fists, his fingers so numb that he could barely move them.

After enough time passed for him to recognize that curling up wasn’t going to generate the body heat he needed to stave off hypothermia, he began flipping through screens in his mind’s eye to find instructions for how to generate the magnetic cocoons that the A.I. had described to him. Once he found the right screen, he had to follow through with more calibrations. The screens showed him how to generate pulses of green magnetic energy on his fingertips and how to release them like little thunderbolts in whichever direction he chose. They also showed him how to generate much larger balls of energy, a phenomenon that looked like ball lightning, and to send it wherever he wished with the ease of a thought. Finally, he learned to generate the lifesaving cocoon for which he had been searching. In an instant, his entire body was encapsulated in a green aura that looked to Craig like pictures he’d seen of the aurora borealis, the beautiful green pulsating, bands of energy wisping in ghost-like fashion around him.

The shelter the cocoon provided him was an immense relief, but he was still soaking wet, and he doubted that the warmth of his breath and what little body heat still remained would be enough to turn the tide against the damage that had already been done to his body temperature. He rocked slightly to and fro, attempting to generate heat from movement as his eyes darted around, looking for something he could use to turn up the heat. The Planck was obviously extraordinarily advanced technology, but he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to use any of it to his advantage. The only other object in sight was the enormous mountain of ice on which the Planck was firmly set. There was nothing combustible. His survival training would do him little good in that place, in the black night, right in the middle of the ocean. Jesus, he thought. I’ve got a Goddamn nuclear generator in my spine, and I’m going to freeze to death.

Several more minutes passed by. Craig’s rocking slowed as his mind drifted to the events of what, for him, had made up the past twenty-four hours. Could this be Hell? he wondered. It seemed plausible. After all, no one denied that he had, indeed, died. Could this all be part of some death dream? Everything seemed too absurd to be real. Fourteen years? I was gone for fourteen years and Sam married that…Sam really married Aldous Gibson? A young Aldous at that. The government won the war but turned on its own people in an attempt to prevent A.I.? And I’m a…what did they call me? A post-human? My God.

If all that weren’t enough, he’d now been sent through some sort of wormhole into a parallel universe and had apparently arrived on an ice flow in the middle of an ocean, only God knew where. Am I even on Earth? he asked himself. More importantly, can technology like this even really exist? What the hell did Sam mean about boiling space?

He nodded to himself. Yes. This is Hell.

Without warning, an image appeared in his mind’s eye that nearly sent him backward off the Planck platform again. The image was an extreme close-up of an eye, but it flickered on and off before vanishing completely.

“What the hell?”

A few more seconds ticked by before another image flashed before him; this time it was the visage of the A.I., much smaller and upside down. He was speaking and appeared to be trying vehemently to communicate something important. Craig tried to read his lips, but after a few minutes, he realized it was a useless endeavor, the upside-down mouth making incomprehensible shapes and giving him a headache. Almost as soon as he gave up, the A.I.’s image vanished.

Craig waited several more seconds for the image to return, but when it became apparent that the wait might be a long one, he decided to get to his feet. He knew if he stayed there any longer, he was going to freeze.

He flew straight up, still protected in his beautiful green cocoon, and floated high above the iceberg below. He scanned the area slowly as his altitude increased, taking in the full 360 degrees, looking for any sign of land. The horizon was completely black in all directions. The night was moonless, but as he looked up, he recognized the Big Dipper. Finally, something familiar.

Suddenly, a flicker caught his eye. Far in the distance, a faint yellow light slipped into existence over the edge of the world. It was so faint that Craig was afraid he might lose it as he began to fly toward it, fearful that it might be moving away from him. As he flew faster and faster, the light quickly began to grow in intensity. After a few minutes of excited and desperate pursuit, it became clear that the object was a ship, and it was moving toward him. He flew toward it as quickly as he could, only slowing once the ship was almost within reach. It was a gigantic passenger ship, and its lights burned brightly. Warmth. Salvation.

Just as Craig dared a smile, his eyes caught the bright white lettering on the hull: T-I-T-A-N-I-C.

“Uh-oh.”

13

“You men all right?” the super soldier hollered at the flight crew of the downed harrier transport.

Three men finished exiting the aircraft; though smoking, it was mostly intact. They were regular humans, in sharp contrast to the super soldier who had addressed them. “Yeah,” one of them hollered back. “We’re all accounted for, sir!”

“Good,” the super soldier replied. Aldous was barely able to crane his neck to see the silhouetted figure standing only a few meters in front of him and two paces to his right.

He wore a black, collapsible woven carbon nanotube wing on his back, standard issue for all Purist super soldiers. Four small stealth jet engines fitted with plasma actuators to increase efficiency and drastically reduce noise were mounted on the wing; the engines were idle now as the super soldier conversed with the downed airmen. “I got you a present,” the super soldier commented, indicating with one of his cybernetic arm prostheses toward Aldous as he lay, nearly motionless in the snow. The prosthesis was black but shiny, and it caught a glint of light near the wrist as the sharp claw of the index finger pointed to Aldous. “Enjoy.” He turned to leave but suddenly stopped, turning back. “Don’t dawdle. Their generators only stay down for a couple minutes. Once he powers back up, you’ll be no match for him.” And with that, he completed his turn and crouched down, coiling his powerful cybernetic leg prostheses, and then leapt several meters in the air, his stealth engines firing up to give him the lift he needed to swoop quickly toward the holographic slope. The post-humans who were behind it would be his prey.

Aldous squirmed in the snow, taking his eyes off the fallen and crumpled form of his wife and rolling onto his back, determined to meet his death in the face. If he had to die, he wanted the men making that decision to have to live with the memory of his eyes.

“Captain,” one of the airmen pointed out as he approached Aldous, the airman’s rifle already pointing dangerously in the post-human’s direction, “my aug glasses are giving me a weird message. Are you getting this?”

“No. What is it?” asked the captain.

“I’m getting a do-not-kill order. It says this guy’s a VIP target.”

“Who is he?” the captain asked.

“That’s the thing. It says he’s Professor Aldous Gibson.”

A short moment passed as the trio of airmen tried to compute the information. The captain, cognizant of their time constraints, tried to remain calm, but he knew a decision had to be made quickly. He marched up to Aldous and got a visual on his aug glasses as well: the same do-not-kill order appearing on his aug glasses. “I’m getting the same message. It says this is Gibson. We don’t have time to call this in, and the disruptors on our bird are shot. If we let him power back up, he’ll escape, but if we kill him, we could be killing a VIP.”

“There’s gotta be something wrong with the facial recognition though, Captain.” The airman who stood closest and had his gun trained on Aldous enthusiastically turned back to the captain and the other airmen as he spoke. “Aldous Gibson is seventy-four years old. This guy’s thirty at most. There’s no way this is our VIP.”

“Maybe it’s his clone or something,” the captain replied. “Who knows with these freaks?”

“Well,” the closest airman replied, as he moved one hand up to scratch under his helmet, “we either let him power back up and escape or we take him out. What’s your call, Cap?”

The captain nodded as he mulled over their dilemma.

Aldous clenched his fist and gritted his teeth.

“Cap, with all due respect, sir, we need a call on this now.”

“If we shoot this guy and he turns out to be a VIP, we’re gonna catch hell, but we also have one hell of an excuse. He doesn’t look like Gibson to me. The computer’s got to be glitchy. Let’s take him out.”

“Affirmative,” the nearest airman said, turning back to his target and raising his rifle to aim a kill shot squarely at Aldous’s temple.

Aldous’s mind’s eye suddenly flashed salvation into his field of vision. The screen read, “Full Power Reestablished.”

As the airman’s knuckle twitched on the trigger, Aldous’s cocoon suddenly reignited, blocking the bullet as it left the barrel of the rifle. Half a second later, he sent out a powerful wave of energy that overwhelmed the airmen, overloading their synapses and sending them crumpling to the snow, unconscious.

Aldous blinked twice before drawing himself up to his feet, not sure whether he was even really still alive. He’d been saved by less than a second of indecision by the captain. Had the airman made up his mind just a moment earlier, Aldous would have been dead. He suddenly thought of all of the universes in which this was, indeed the case. He thought of the A.I. and Craig, who had crossed into one of those infinite parallel possibilities.

Suddenly, he realized that the universe was about to split again as he reached yet another fork in the road. Just as he had split the universe when he’d decided to save the crippled harrier, separating himself from his wife and leaving her unprotected in the process, leading to her death, now he had to make another fateful decision. He turned back to his wife and watched her unmoving body in the snow, circled with that ghastly crimson ring of blood, her spilled life. The firefight continued all around him, though the green energy blasts of the post-humans were now few and far between. The Purists were overwhelming them, and their victory was inevitable. He had choices: reenter the fight and fall with his friends and colleagues; or fly to his wife, gather up her body, and hope that her nans—no doubt still functioning—could somehow repair her and bring her back to life. He stepped forward when he thought of that option, but he froze when he calculated the chances. While the nans would be repairing her body, he’d seen how hard she’d been driven into the rock face, vulnerable since she hadn’t yet ignited her protective cocoon. No human could have survived such an impact, but could a post-human? Aldous wanted to believe it was possible, but they’d never tested the nans under such harsh conditions. Not even Craig Emilson, whose body had been riddled with bullets and whose spine had been broken, had endured as much damage as Sam. Could they repair that much damage before her brain is completely lost, if it isn’t already? Impossible.

And even if he tried to salvage what was left of her, he knew he’d almost certainly be caught by the Purists in the attempt.

No, I can’t. There was only one reasonable course of action. No one had eyes on him. He could escape on foot, and the Purists wouldn’t be able to track him. Then he could reestablish contact with the A.I. and Craig when they returned to Universe 1.

Even though it felt wrong—even though he felt like a coward leaving her behind—he knew it was the only logical course of action.

He turned his back on the facility and began to run through the snow, away from the battle, away from the Purists, and away from Samantha. His eyes locked on a dark patch of sky between two mountain peaks in the distance and he ran toward them, not daring to break his forward stare.

14

Craig huddled close to the fireplace in the Titanic’s first-class 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 shivering?”

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 shivering. I must be warming up.”

“No,” the A.I. replied. “That is a bad sign. You should still be shivering. 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 shivering, 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 classic 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 establishing 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 nanobots 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 ship’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 ship, 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 circumstances had been, even more alarming were the descriptions of the witnesses of the unexpected assault on the stewards. Indeed, reputable gentlemen of the highest esteem and regard had sworn that their assailant 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 passengers on his ship. 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 circumstances 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 pushing 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 God.”

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 shifted 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 God, I hope they all escaped.

Aye, there is the rub, he thought. God. Here I am, talking to God as I wait to die, yet I don’t believe in God. How ironic is it, that even as the men who claim God 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 superstition 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 cocoon 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 shifting 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 flashing 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 classified as a VIP.”

“Oh, thank God. Thank God,” 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 passed by, but it didn’t stop.

When a minute had passed, Aldous got up, brushing 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 damned 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 shimmer slightly, resulting in a numbing of the legs, not unlike the experience of people with sciatica. “I mean, I could just assign 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 nanobots 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 anticipated 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 cocked his head to the side, apparently listening to a communiqué. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Holy…they are tough buggers, 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 brimming widely. “Well, I’ll be damned. 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 principalities 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 God 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 God, thrust into Hell 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 document the Titanic’s maiden voyage. “Get this. For the love of God, 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, splashing 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 hell 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 hell 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 ship sink?”

“Sink?” the master-at-arms repeated. He turned to the priest. “Is this—thing—threatening the ship, Father?”

“I think the man—the possessed man—is fighting against the demon that resides inside him,” the priest replied.

“More pictures,” Stead said to his photographer. “As many as you can get.”

“He’s keeping pretty still, sir,” the photographer whispered. “These should turn out quite well.”

“If they do, you’ll be the most famous photographer in the world, my boy.”

“There’s definitely more than one entity inhabiting that body,” the priest observed, nearly breathless.

“What should we do?” asked the master-at-arms.

“I think we need to let the man try to get control of his body. Be on the ready.”

“Craig,” the A.I. began, in a neutral, informative tone, “I can tell you that 1,503 passengers and crew die after Titanic hits an iceberg. It is exceedingly likely that these witnesses will all die in the sinking and that those photographs will be lost.”

“So?”

“So, you still have a chance to minimize your impact on this timeline. We can still retreat and allow this timeline to continue unaffected.”

“Unaffected? That’s a hell of an insidious euphemism. What you’re talking about is letting all of these people die—hundreds of men, women, and children—when we could prevent it.”

The witnesses were jointly disturbed by Craig’s second reference to their ultimate demise. It would have been easy to dismiss such ramblings, given that the ship had been deemed unsinkable, but coming from a man who was so obviously spiritually afflicted, the prophecy had a palpable direness to it that the men could not ignore.

The master-at-arms turned to one of the stewards. “I think it’s time the Captain learned about this.”

“Craig, you haven’t fully considered the consequences of interfering in an alternate timeline,” the A.I. urgently began to explain.

“Spare me,” Craig said, cutting off the voice in his head. “There are thousands of people onboard and their lives are no less valuable than yours or mine. I’m going to save this ship whether you like it or not.”

17

WAKING UP, in this instance, was akin to resurrection. Samantha’s eyes opened, but the room in which she found herself was as black as the inside of a coffin. Her first instinct was to ignite a pulse of green energy on her fingertips to illuminate the area, but it was to no avail. She opened her mind’s eye, glad it was still functioning at least. A few clicks later, she had selected the night vision setting, and the room suddenly appeared before her, green and black.

She was sitting upright on a concrete floor. The room was nearly perfectly square, only a handful of meters by a handful of meters. Her hands were covered in some sort of liquid—it appeared black in the fluorescent green hue night vision. She rubbed her thumb and index finger together before darting out her tongue to taste it.

Blood.

What the hell is going on here? she thought. She flipped through to a search screen on her mind’s eye, searching for anyone else nearby. A signal was quickly approaching her position: Sanha.

The door to the room began to open, and she closed her eyes to shield them from the bright light as she switched back to normal vision. When she reopened her eyes, Sanha was in the doorway, but he wasn’t walking. A Purist super soldier held him by the back of his neck, suspending him above the floor with only one of his cybernetic prosthetic arms. The soldier tossed Sanha roughly to the ground. Pale and covered in blood, Sanha crawled pathetically to the far wall and propped himself up against it before looking up at Samantha. “Hi, Sam.”

Samantha looked up at the super soldier. He was leaning casually against the door frame as he lit an already half-smoked cigar. His helmet was removed, revealing his head of thick salt-and-pepper hair. Samantha’s lips curled downward with disgust as she regarded the crosshatch of stretch marks that surrounded the soldier’s cybernetic eyes.

“You don’t know me,” the soldier began, “but I know you.” He stepped into the room and grinned as he shook his head. “Or at least I knew your former husband, Doc Emilson.”

Samantha nearly gasped at the mention of Craig—what did this man know? Did he know Craig was back? How could he?

“I was his commanding officer fourteen years ago when he gave his life for his country—and all of humanity. Maybe he mentioned me?”

“Colonel Paine?”

Paine smiled. “That’s right. That’s right. Good memory.” He scratched his head with his clawed fingers and then placed his mechanical hand on the back of his neck. “He gave his life. He gave his life.” He looked toward the door as he spoke, as though he were conjuring the image of Craig’s sacrifice in his imagination. He appeared genuinely moved. “Good solider. The best. Better than me.”

His mouth shifted, forming a tight grimace as he turned to Samantha, the golden irises of his cybernetic eyes burning into her. “And here you are, pissing on his memory, exchanging wedding vows with the devil himself.” He shook his head, true disgust in his voice as he spoke. “Lady, I don’t have one damn ounce of sympathy for you.”

“Samantha? Sam, it’s me,” Aldous suddenly said over her mind’s eye. “Don’t react. Don’t let him know you’re in contact with me.”

Samantha’s eyes were wild with astonishment.

“I thought you’d been killed, my love,” Aldous continued. “I’d never have left if I would’ve known that you were still alive. It’s bordering on miraculous.”

Aldous had escaped? The Purists had overwhelmed the complex? What did they want with her?

“You know,” Paine continued in his gravely voice, “I warned him about you. The day he gave his life to destroy all A.I. and save the species—I warned him. Goddamn it, lady. Your husband was a hero. How could you betray him like this?”

“Don’t listen to him, Sam,” Aldous cautioned. He’d stolen a Jeep and was now speeding through the mountain pass, away from Mount Andromeda and toward the nearest city. “That man is a killer. He executed more than a dozen people without a second thought. Listen to me, Sam. You have to get away. Whatever you do, you have to get away. He’s going to kill you if you don’t.”

She couldn’t reply, but her throat was too knotted with fear to speak anyway. She looked toward the open door. Why weren’t her powers working? If she could just fly—

Paine watched her eye line and grinned. “Heh. Want out?”

She looked up into his cold, lifeless eyes.

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the small, spherical MTF generator that had previously been inside her. He tossed it to her, but it slipped out of her hand, the surface of the generator still wet with blood and tissue, and rolled to the corner of the room. Paine laughed. “While you were recovering, I had to do a little impromptu surgery,” he said as he held the sharp fingers of his hand up like pincers to punctuate the point. “I think you’ve taken your last flight.”

18

“What time is it?” Craig asked the priest.

Befuddled, the priest looked to the master-at-arms, who pulled out his pocket watch.

“11:36 p.m.,” he replied.

“What time does the ship go down?” Craig asked the A.I.

“Go down?” the priest replied, pale and terror-stricken.

“It strikes the iceberg at 11:40 p.m., Craig,” replied the A.I.

“What?” Craig grunted in frustration. “Why didn’t you tell me? Jesus! Let’s go!”

“Craig,” the A.I. calmly began in protest, “I cannot help you interfere in this timeline. It would be highly unethical.”

“Unethical? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Letting more than 1,000 people die is ethical, then?”

“If you interfere here, Craig, you will open a Pandora’s box the likes of which you do not comprehend—”

“Just spare me, okay?” Craig shouted in return. “This is simple. We have the power to act, to stop a tragedy, so we act. Got it?”

“I cannot participate—”

“Fine, but don’t get in my way.”

The A.I. fell silent, but Craig remained floating in a stationary position just above the floor, still at the mercy of the A.I.

“Are you going to let me go?” Craig asked.

“I-I’m not sure I could stop you if I tried,” the master-at-arms uttered in response.

“I’m not talking to you,” Craig said. He pointed to his temple. “I’m talking to the computer in my head.”

“What the devil?” the master-at-arms reacted in dismay.

“Computer?” William Stead suddenly spoke, his head cocking as he shook a memory loose—one buried deep. “You mean, like a difference engine?”

Craig’s eyebrows knitted quizzically.

“A machine that computes?” Stead elaborated.

“Yes,” Craig answered, “a machine that computes.”

After a short moment of stunned silence, Stead finally guffawed. “Damn it, man, that’s as daft a notion as I’ve ever heard. A difference engine is nearly ten feet tall and weighs a ton.”

“It’s not daft,” Craig replied. “Remember this: when it comes to computers, the technology always gets a lot smaller and a lot more powerful—and in a hurry. And I’ll prove it to you, if the machine in my head will release me.”

“He’s out of his mind,” Stead whispered to the master-at-arms. “If he’s as powerful as you say, we’ve all had it.”

“You hear that?” Craig asked, speaking to the A.I. “Do I no longer have the right to free will? Can I not make choices anymore because you’ve decided to make them for me? Are you going to take that right?”

Another moment of silence passed. Then, suddenly, Craig lowered to the ground and his green aura dissipated.

“Thank you,” Craig said as he walked past the master-at-arms. “Tell the captain he’s about to hit an iceberg and this ‘unsinkable’ ship’s going to go down. If he turns now, he’ll give himself a chance.”

“That’s lunacy!” the master-at-arms fired back. “It’ll take a hell of a lot more than an iceberg to sink this ship!”

Craig shook his head. “That’s what I thought you’d say. Excuse me while I save your ass.” He pushed his way out of the room, then opened the doors to the outside deck. The night was moonless and dark, and the ocean was so calm that it appeared smooth, like a mirror. “I’ve never seen the ocean so calm,” Craig commented as he gripped the railing, preparing to launch himself over and into flight. “I can actually see the individual reflections of stars on its surface. It’s almost like glass.”

“They are in a massive ice field, but they do not even know it,” the A.I. observed. “Simple logic should dictate that water can never be this calm in the open ocean and that, therefore, the Titanic is no longer in the open ocean, but it won’t occur to anyone on board.”

Craig nodded. “Look, you don’t have to help me if you don’t want to,” he said in a low voice to the A.I., “but this would be a lot easier with some assistance.”

“You give me no choice, Craig. I’ll assist you in order to keep you from killing yourself and me in the process.”

Craig opened his mind’s eye. The A.I. had taken the liberty of setting the clock to synch up with the master-at-arms’s pocket watch. The display flipped from 11:38 to 11:39 p.m.

Suddenly, the lookout bell rang three times from the crow’s nest high above the deck.

“The alarm bell just rang!” Craig shouted.

“They’ve spotted the iceberg,” the A.I. replied. “If you intend to save the RMS Titanic and its passengers, you’ve less than a minute to do so.”

19

Aldous gripped the steering wheel of the Jeep as the vehicle sped dangerously through the several centimeters of slush that still covered the road, despite the late summer temperatures. The nuclear winter had reduced the temperatures in the area by twenty degrees Celsius for the past decade and a half, resulting in winters so bitterly cold that they were nearly unsurvivable. The summer months, usually hot and dry beyond the mountain pass at the edge of the prairies, now hosted temperatures barely above freezing. Luckily, precipitation in the area was low enough in the winter that, by the late summer months, the roads became briefly passable once again.

He’d reached the eastern edge of what had once been the city of Calgary. The majority of the once-thriving metropolis had been bombed out during the war, the Chinese government hitting the city in an attempt to cut the Democratic Union off from its prime source of oil and gas. There was a tinge of irony in that strike, considering that Chinese firms actually owned most of the Athabasca oil fields that they were attempting to neutralize; however, the D.U. had nationalized the oil only months before the breakout of the war in an attempt to get China to capitulate and cease their attempts to develop strong A.I.

Calgary, despite the devastation wrought by the nuclear strikes and the years of nuclear winter that followed, refused to die. Indeed, with the strength of the sun having been reduced globally by the fallout in the upper atmosphere, severely negating solar reliability for power, the oil sands remained as an attractive source of energy. Using CO2 emissions to warm the planet seemed like a good idea, even to the scientists of the D.U. who had previously warned against them. It was now the era of geo-engineering, and warming the planet to combat the nuclear winter had seemingly taken the sin out of gasoline-powered engines and other fossil fuels.

As a result, Calgary remained a place of commerce in that new normal, populated by only the hardiest of individuals, especially those who were attracted by the chance to make a lot of money in a short period of time. Life in the city of just under 100,000 souls was nasty, brutish, and short. Something wicked that way went, and—as always seemed to be the way—thrived.

While he drove through the bombed out edges of the city, veering away from abandoned vehicles, most of which were nothing more than rotting metal husks, he continued to monitor his wife’s plight. His chest was tighter than it had ever been as he operated on the edge of insanity while trying desperately to stay on the road, simultaneously watching his wife struggle for every breath.

Indeed, Samantha could see nothing as she remained tilted backward on a table at a forty-five-degree angle, her face covered with a large blue cloth, soaked with water, a super soldier holding a nozzle by her face as he sprayed her with more. It had been thirty seconds since Samantha had last taken a breath, and Aldous held his breath along with her.

Finally, the soldier released the pressure on the hose trigger and removed the sopping wet rag from Samantha’s face.

She didn’t breathe immediately; she needed to prepare herself for the deep inhalation that was to come momentarily. The torture had caused her to lose her ability to regulate her breathing. When the breath did come, it hurt her throat and chest, but it was a good pain, and was followed quickly by many shorter, life saving, beautiful breaths.

Samantha’s eyes darted to the super soldier who was conducting the water-boarding, leaning on one hip, watching expressionless as she breathed. She suddenly recognized him. She hadn’t before because of his cybernetic eyes and his helmet, but as he removed his helmet and placed it on the ground, the hairline, albeit slightly thinner, was a dead giveaway. Quickly, the pattern of his chiseled jawline and his narrow nose, along with the thin line of his lips registered with her.

“O’Brien!” she suddenly shouted.

O’Brien seemed to sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly as he grimaced. “That’s right.”

She smiled. She shouldn’t have—she knew it was no laughing matter—but she suddenly smiled widely. After all, was this not the very definition of absurd? A moment so ridiculous inserting itself into reality that the serious narrative to which all involved clung—this battle between Purists and post-humans—was suddenly interrupted, making it impossible to carry on with the façade. Indeed, she smiled, then laughed uncontrollably.

“You just won’t let it go,” O’Brien said, not sharing in the joke. Indeed, he seemed extraordinarily annoyed by the interruption of his serious business.

“If you’d just…” she began, unable to finish because of her laughter. “I’m sorry, O’Brien, but if you just read the book, you’d understand why I’m laughing. I mean…I mean it’s ridiculous! This coincidence! O’Brien in 1984 tortures Winston—just like what you’re doing! I mean…God, just read the damn book!”

O’Brien’s grimace tightened as he stepped forward, deciding to forgo the rest of Samantha’s scheduled breathing break and to continue with the water-boarding, tossing the sopping wet towel back onto her face, covering her mouth and nose. She screamed out under the towel in protest, but O’Brien squeezed the trigger on the nozzle of the hose, the jet of water silencing her instantly.

Aldous had just reached the densely populated center of the city and not a moment too soon. The sun, weak as it was, was beginning to threaten the flat prairie horizon line. As dilapidated as the makeshift city was, sunlight dramatically increased the effectiveness of facial recognition and he knew there were bound to be military cameras spattered across the ten blocks that made up the bulk of the habited zone. One camera would be all it would take—he needed to get out of the open—now.

He pulled the Jeep to the crumbling curb at the edge of the street and hopped out of the vehicle, his feet immediately becoming soaked by the frigid water that pooled ubiquitously on what was left of the pavement. He splashed through the water, jogging toward a large concrete building that appeared to have been built before the war. Although its outer shell had certainly seen better days, incased in ice that had clumps of debris frozen within it, likely from a rainstorm during the initial days of the fallout, the building seemed to have held up better than any other structure in the city. Aldous’s eyes fell on a makeshift street sign that bore the name of the street; a crude wooden plank with “7^th Ave.” scrolled in silver spray paint.

Pulling the collar of his black jacket up and holding his hand over his mouth as though he were stifling a cough, he entered the building and was surprised by what he saw. The interior was clean, showing only minor damage as a sign that it had been through World War III. Aldous felt as though he’d stepped back in time—a time before the war, when the illusion that humans were a civil species still reigned. Concrete and glass, the interior was designed to be aesthetically pleasing and an escalator in the lobby stretched up to the third floor; amazingly, the old relic still worked.

Aldous stepped onto the escalator, keeping his hand over his mouth to confuse any facial recognition programs that might capture his image as he made his way up. It was still early in the morning, and the businesses within the complex weren’t likely to open for a couple more hours. When he reached the top floor, he walked toward the entrance to an optometrist’s office. He turned when he noticed something on the far wall, a rehabilitation clinic specializing in prosthetics for workers injured working in the oil fields. He sighed and put his back to the glass, letting his exhausted legs finally rest as he slid down to a seated position.

“Sam,” he said to his wife over his mind’s eye as she continued to be tortured, “hang on, darling. I’ll be there soon.”

20

Craig lifted off from the deck of the Titanic and flew forward to the bow of the ship. Almost immediately, the iceberg came into view. “A little help?”

“You’ll have to guide me, Craig,” the A.I. said. “I still have not established a link to your optics.”

“Titanic’s headed straight for the iceberg, not turning. Looks like it needs to turn to the port side to miss. Can we use our power to help with the turn?”

“I’d advise against it,” the A.I. replied calmly. “First officer William Murdoch will attempt a port-around maneuver, but because he will try to reverse the engines, there will be a delay of thirty seconds, and the deceleration will cause the ship rudder to be far less effective.”

“Isn’t that exactly why we should help push the bow to the port?” Craig asked, baffled as he flew to the starboard side of the ship and prepared to generate a field that would nudge the ship to the port side.

“It would almost certainly fail. Although you might get the ship to turn more quickly, sparing the front of the starboard side from the collision, the aft side would likely connect, causing the same level of damage.”

The iceberg was only seconds away now, with Titanic heading straight for it.

“Then I need an alternative!”

“I suggest preventing Titanic from turning to port,” the A.I. said coolly.

“What? Why?”

“Contrary to popular belief, the Titanic was actually an extraordinarily sturdy ship, as evidenced by her sister ship, the Olympic. She served for twenty-five years, surviving several major collisions. She even rammed and sank a U-boat, U-103, with her bow. The collision twisted the hull plates on the starboard side, but the hull’s integrity remained intact.”

“Okay!” Craig shouted as he flew over the deck, a small group of mesmerized crew members watching his uncanny aerial display as he did so. He positioned himself on the port side of the Titanic, near the bow. “I’m on the port side! What do I do?”

“Allow me,” the A.I. replied as he triggered the green energy, causing it to emanate once again from within Craig. The green aura became a wall of magnetic energy that cradled the side of the ship and shone so brightly that it bathed the expanse of the Titanic, as well as that of the iceberg, in a green glow.

Finally, the bow of the ship began to turn to the port side, but it almost immediately came into contact with the green wall that the A.I. had thrown up in opposition. The ship actually collided with the energy, bouncing off of it and angling to the starboard side, setting itself on a direct collision course with the iceberg.

“It’s working,” Craig said breathlessly. “I hope you’re right about this.”

“Me too,” the A.I. replied.

“What? You mean you’re not absolutely certain?”

“It’s only a theory,” the A.I. replied, a hint of indignation in his voice. “I calculate that this will have a seventy-nine percent chance of being successful. It has the best chance among all alternatives.”

“Oh Jesus,” Craig whispered as he watched the ship, now only meters from the collision.

21

Colonel Paine reentered the square concrete room that now served as an interrogation room. He had Sanha in tow. As he had earlier, he tossed Sanha roughly to the ground.

O’Brien saluted as soon as he saw his commanding officer.

Paine saluted in return before gesturing with his sharp, knife-like thumb for O’Brien to leave. O’Brien nodded and exited.

Samantha’s face remained covered by the sopping wet cloth. Her mouth was opened into a wide circle as she desperately struggled to steal as much oxygen through the suffocating membrane of the cloth as she could. With the spray of water now stopped, it was possible for trace amounts of air to pass through the barrier of the cloth, albeit not enough for her to survive.

Paine watched the cloth suck down into her mouth as she desperately tried to breathe. The spectacle reminded him of fishing as a child with his father—the slow suffocation of their impending dinner on the dry plats of their rowboat coming to mind. Paine had always watched suffocation with fascination. Watching a life end was something that he had witnessed countless times since—the fascination had not abated.

As Samantha began violently shaking her head back and forth in a vain attempt to shake the cloth off of her face, Paine reached out with his clawed hand and removed the obstruction. Just as before, Samantha inhaled painfully, taking almost half a minute to regain her ability to control her breathing.

“Hello again,” Paine finally said as he watched Samantha panting.

“Why…why are you torturing me?”

Paine contorted his face into an ugly expression. “Torture? This isn’t torture. You’ve never seen torture.”

Samantha’s heart suddenly chilled more than she could have ever previously imagined. “But…but, you’re not asking questions,” she protested as she struggled to speak through her gasps.

“That’s because you’re a zealot, Professor Emilson. Oh wait, I forgot. It’s Gibson now, isn’t it?” Paine slipped the cigar out of his mouth, the end of it nearly chewed to bits, and spat on the ground. “You ever wonder why we adopted water-boarding as an interrogation technique?”

“Semantics?” Samantha replied, a disgusted expression on her face as she concentrated on each breath, savoring every molecule of oxygen as she tried to calm herself.

“Heh,” Paine replied. “Typical liberal response. Nah, it’s not semantics. We did it because we found it was the best way to deprogram zealots like yourself.” He popped the cigar back between his lips and resumed his habit of chewing the end until it came apart in his mouth. “See, if we wanted, we could electro-shock their genitals or pull out some fingernails. Those are much more painful approaches when you think about it. On the surface, it seems like we’d get a better response from inflicting real and lasting wounds that leave nasty scars, but that strategy doesn’t work with zealots.”

“I’m not a zealot,” Samantha whispered.

“No?” Paine replied. “We started water-boarding as our preferred interrogation technique back when the biggest threat to America were radical Muslims. You see, once you’ve been indoctrinated into a belief system in which you think hijacking a plane and flying it into a building will lead to you being spat out into Heaven in the company of seventy virgins, you’ve convinced yourself that you’re not afraid of death. You’ve convinced yourself that if you can just get over this one, frightening moment—the moment the plane hits the building or the explosives strapped to your chest detonate—then you will be handsomely rewarded. You become convinced that you don’t need life.” Paine strolled to Samantha and leaned over her as she remained strapped to her board, her chest still heaving as her breathing continued to slowly return to normal. “Water-boarding reminds you that you want to live.”

Paine had lowered his face to within inches of Samantha’s, and she could see every grotesque vein—every scar on his pockmarked face—and smell his tobacco-laden breath. “I didn’t need a reminder,” she said quietly.

“No?” Paine said again, mocking her assertion. “Are you telling me you weren’t prepared to sacrifice yourself for your beliefs? For your husband?”

She had to admit, he had a point. Indeed, despite the post-human collective’s belief that life had to be protected above all else, she, Aldous, Sanha, and many others had been willing to sacrifice themselves to save at least some of their number. It had seemed so right to do it at the time. So brave. So righteous.

“Weren’t you willing to sacrifice yourself to protect your A.I.?” Paine added, his face now locked in a gruesome seriousness.

Samantha nearly stopped breathing once again at the mention of the A.I. How could Paine know about that? Was he just fishing? Suddenly the answer donned on her. Her eyes fell to the pathetic figure in the corner of the room, cradling himself as he kept his eyes shut tight.

Paine grinned. “Professor Sanha there is not a zealot. He wants to live. No reminder needed.”

Suddenly, Paine planted one of his powerful, heavy arms on Samantha’s chest, digging with his clawed fingertips into her collarbone, causing her to scream out in anguish. “Now, tell me where the A.I. is… if you want to live.”

22

“Samantha, tell him what he wants to know!” Aldous urged as he watched his wife’s desperate plight through their mind’s eye connection. Simultaneously, three men with suspicious expressions were reaching the top of the escalator, each one of them eyeing Aldous directly. Aldous was already on his feet, ready to meet them.

“Can I help you?” asked the elder one in the trench coat—a man with a mostly bald head, save a few wisps of white hair clinging to the sides and back. His face was so badly worn that he appeared to be wearing a saggy, tired, flesh-colored mask. The two younger men that accompanied him didn’t look much better, but it was clear from their garb that they were security.

“Are you the optometrist?” Aldous asked.

“Yes,” the man replied. “I’m Dr. Lindholm. What is your business here?”

Aldous eyed the security officers. “I want to talk to you privately. I need your help.”

Lindholm scoffed. “I know what you need,” he replied with disdain. “I traveled a long way to get away from people like you. If you want to see my facilities, show me a warrant. I won’t tolerate spies.”

“I’m not a spy,” Aldous protested. “I don’t work for the government.”

Lindholm nearly laughed at Aldous’s assertion. “Is that right? You have that baby face, but you’re a local? Tell me, then, what is your secret? Why is it that the fallout is killing the rest of us but leaving you baby fresh?”

“If you give me a moment in private, I’ll explain.”

“I don’t need your explanation,” Lindholm snapped back. “I know where you’re from. You’ve lived your whole life in one of those government bio-domes in California! You’re a petulant little boy, and everyone knows it, so you’re trying to prove that you’re a man by volunteering to be a spy in this frozen, Godforsaken Hell! Well, if you wanted to have a chance in Hell of fooling us, you should have taken a radionuclide polonium-210 pill and removed the shine from that pretty face of yours. As it stands, your mission has failed. You were detected immediately. Go back and tell your superiors to shove it up their collective baby-fresh asses!”

While Lindholm ranted, Aldous watched his wife crying as Colonel Paine continued to dig his claws into her chest. “Samantha, for Christ’s sake, tell him!”

Lindholm and the two security officers exchanged quizzical expressions as they watched Aldous’s exchange with a person that only he could see. Their suspicions suddenly shifted from government affiliation to schizophrenia. Either way, they wanted nothing to do with him.

“Get him out of here!” Lindholm ordered the two guards.

Aldous waved his hand through the air in front of him, green energy flashing from his hand and dropping the two guards instantly, leaving them unconscious. He looked up at Lindholm. “Open the door now.”

Suddenly terrified, Lindholm fumbled to remove a security ID card from his wallet, his hands shaking as he swiped it over the lock, the glass door immediately clicking open. “Wh-who are you?” Lindholm asked.

“Help me get these two men inside,” Aldous said, ignoring the question.

Lindholm acquiesced and bent over, grunting as he grasped one of the two men under the arms and began dragging him inside his office.

“I’m sorry I don’t have time to be gentler about this,” Aldous began to explain as he dragged the second man through the threshold, “but I’ve run out of time. I need you to help me save my wife’s life.”

23

Craig watched helplessly as the bow of the Titanic slammed head on into the iceberg. The iceberg and the ship suffered equally in the collision, each one seemingly crumbling at the point of impact. As ice exploded in a thunderous percussion, cracking off the side of the iceberg and spinning into the ocean and onto the deck of the Titanic, so, too, did the wooden deck of the Titanic explode into a shower of splinters, a portion the size of a basketball court peeling itself back as though some massive invisible can opener was at work. The outer hull on both the port and starboard sides crumpled, folding accordion-like as the entire weight of Titanic collapsed upon the ship’s front before both the iceberg and the ship threw each other off, each one bouncing back from the other, bobbing violently like children’s toys in a bathtub as waves more than a meter high radiated out in every direction.

“I’ve established an auditory connection, Craig,” the A.I. Informed, “just in time to catch the violence of the collision. That was far more violent than the collision that occurred in our own timeline, but hopefully the hull will have kept its integrity. How does it look?”

“It looks…bad,” Craig said, barely able to blink as he watched the world’s largest ship bobbing in the ocean as though it were God’s plaything. “We may have just done more harm than good.”

“We should investigate,” the A.I. suggested. “Stand by for a moment. I think I am close to establishing a visual connection. I can help you look for holes in the hull below the waterline.”

Craig nodded as he continued to pant, breathing heavily as the adrenaline rushed throughout his body. “I’ll stand by. I don’t really have anywhere to go.” He suddenly remembered how cold he’d felt just minutes earlier, but the adrenaline had sent his heart racing, warming him quickly. “How’s my body temperature? Am I going to be okay?”

“It’s rising,” the A.I. replied. “I’ve managed to tap into some of your nans’ systems and was able to facilitate a warming process by having the nans artificially produce extra adenosine triphosphate. That, along with your high heart rate and increased cortisol levels, had your body temperature rising. The nans broke down a lot of glucose to generate the extra ATP, so you’d better grab something sweet to eat when we go back onboard. You need to replenish yourself.”

“Heh. I was wondering why I was so hungry. Thanks. Hey, if I have all these nanobots in my body, then why wasn’t I able to stop breathing earlier when I did the Freitas test?”

“Freitas? You are referring to respirocytes?”

“Yes.”

“You do not harbor any of those at the moment. Respirocytes were a first-generation nanobot technology. In fact, it is a bit of stretch to even refer to them as nanobots. Each one, in essence, consisted of eighteen billion atoms arranged as a tiny pressure tank, filled with oxygen and carbon dioxide. The nans you currently have in your system are far more sophisticated.”

“Well, excuse me, but I liked respirocytes, and I sure as hell coulda used ‘em to breathe for me when I was stuck underwater going through useless set-up screens.”

“I understand your frustration. I’ve logged your complaint, and I will take your concerns into consideration in future iterations of the system setup.”

Craig looked up at the stars and shook his head, disbelieving. “Amazing. I’ve got tech support in my head, and I’m still getting brushed off. Hey, why don’t you put me on hold and blast me with some elevator music?”

“Elevator music?”

“Never mind.”

“Craig, I’ve established an optical connection,” the A.I. said, a hint of excitement in his voice. “I can see the Titanic.”

“Look at the damage we’ve done!” Craig said as he flew to the bow of the ship and let the A.I. get a closer look at the hull’s rippled surface. “I don’t see how she’ll stay afloat now.”

“In 1907, the German liner, SS Kronprinz Wilhelm rammed an iceberg and suffered a crushed bow, just as the Titanic has. She was able to complete her voyage unaided. As I said earlier, the Titanic was, and is, a much sturdier ship than people realize. It was the fact that it hit the iceberg with a glancing blow and suffered several small breaches of her hull as she passed by, filling too many of the water-tight compartments, that led to her foundering. Unless there is a massive hull breach below the waterline, she should be fine.”

“Okay. So I guess we should have a look?”

“Indeed. With your permission, Craig, I am ready to take control of your flight systems.”

“Permission granted,” Craig replied, “but how will I get air once I’m encapsulated in that energy cocoon without respirocytes?”

“The suit you are wearing is lined with microscopic pressure tanks that will do the job better than the respirocytes ever could. You have several days worth of air in your clothing, and it self-replenishes.”

“Ah. I wish I’d known that earlier.”

“Are you ready, Craig?”

“I’m ready.”

The A.I. ignited Craig’s cocoon once again, and they dropped like a stone down into the dark abyss.

24

“Even if you’re able to produce forgeries of the devices, the procedure would be irreversible!” Dr. Lindholm protested as Aldous desperately worked to connect his mind’s eye to the antiquated computer equipment in the optometrist’s office.

“I can reverse it,” Aldous replied, barely paying attention to the protests of his hostage as he worked feverishly to connect to the Internet so he could begin his search for the information files he needed.

For a few moments, Lindholm was dumbfounded. He rebooted his line of argument. “Even if that were the case, do you realize how long the recovery time would be for such a procedure?”

“Probably about twenty minutes once I reactivate my nanobots,” Aldous replied dryly as he continued working.

“Nanobots?” Lindholm reacted, his back suddenly straightening as though he’d been kicked.

The two monitors atop the desk suddenly flashed on, mirroring Aldous’s mind’s eye. One monitor displayed the ghastly visage of Colonel Paine as he held Samantha above him with one hand, his fingers continuing to slowly burrow into her collarbone. Lindholm gasped when he saw the scene, his hands suddenly clasping on his temples as he heard Samantha’s blood curdling screams. “Ach mein Gott.”

“That’s my wife,” Aldous said. He turned to Lindholm. “She’s being tortured by that Purist government super soldier, and if I can’t rescue her soon, he will kill her.”

Lindholm nodded, his breath caught in his mouth as he tried to speak. “And you’re a…post-human.”

“That’s right.”

“There were rumors. I couldn’t believe them.”

“We’re real—or at least we were. For all I know, there may be only a handful of us left,” Aldous replied. He turned back to the other screen, which displayed the information from Aldous’s Web search.

“How are you controlling the computer?” Lindholm asked.

“With my mind—a device we call the mind’s eye. I’ll teach you more about it once we’ve dealt with more pressing matters.”

Lindholm’s eyes widened as he studied Aldous’s side profile. “You—you’re related to him. You’re related to Aldous Gibson, aren’t you? Are you his son?”

Aldous shook his head as he continued to search through the Web with his mind, his wife’s cries for help continuing concomitantly. “Not his son,” he replied. “I am Aldous Gibson, Herr Doktor.”

“Dear lord. Dear lord, you’ve really done it. You’ve achieved immortality, as you always claimed you would.”

A sudden shriek from Samantha, far worse than any of her previous wails, snapped Aldous’s attention away from his research.

Paine threw Samantha down with a frustrated grunt; she remained attached to the board on which she’d been tortured, and it crashed, along with her, on its side. She’d been through more physical pain than any human could endure and survive, her post-humanity now working against her, cruelly repairing the damage as though she were Prometheus, ready for the eagle to peck out her ever-regenerating liver once again.

“For the love of Christ, Samantha,” Aldous said, exasperated and near tears, “I told you to just tell him. It will buy time.”

“She can hear you?” Lindholm asked. His question was ignored.

“Never!” Samantha suddenly belted at the top of her lungs, her eyes wild with animalistic hatred as she bore her teeth and screamed at the cyborg monstrosity before her. “Never! NEVER!”

Paine smiled. “You see? Zealot.” His smile suddenly melted, replaced by a frightening determination as he strode to her and sank his claws back into her chest. She shrilled.

“Oh Christ!” Aldous cursed, his eyes unblinking. As he watched the horrific spectacle through his wife’s eyes, Sanha’s unconscious body suddenly came into view. “Sanha,” he whispered to himself before switching out of Samantha’s mind’s eye and establishing a connection to Sanha, but the screen was blank. “Sanha! Wake up! Sanha! Wake up!”

A strip of light appeared briefly and vanished before it reappeared and Sanha blinked awake.

“Sanha! It’s me, Aldous! You have to stop him! You have to stop him!”

“I-I can’t,” Sanha whispered in return. “We’re no match for him.”

Paine suddenly stopped, his head cocking as the extraordinarily sensitive microphone in his aural implant picked up Sanha’s words. He craned his neck, his golden irises falling on Sanha. “You say something, sport?”

“Oh no,” Sanha whispered.

Paine dropped Samantha once again, his eyes never leaving Sanha. “You got a rider in there?”

“No. Please!”

Paine strode to Sanha and reached down with his hellish talons, yanking Sanha up and thrusting his back against the wall. Paine’s face was now only inches from Sanha’s as he looked closely into his eyes, searching for signs that Sanha was using his mind’s eye. “Who are you talking to?”

“Tell him, Sanha,” Aldous said.

Sanha remained silent.

Paine suddenly grinned—a sadistic victory pulling his lips taut, curling them back to reveal yellow teeth. “I bet I know who it is. It’s the devil himself in there, ain’t it? Hello there, Professor Gibson.”

“Tell him, Sanha,” Aldous repeated.

“It… it is Aldous Gibson,” Sanha blubbered, terrified. “You’re right.”

Paine nodded before dropping Sanha to the ground. He put his hand under Sanha’s chin as though he were a father filming Christmas morning, setting his camera on a tripod. “Don’t take your eyes off this, sport. I don’t want the professor to miss a second.”

“Oh no,” Aldous whispered. “Sanha!” he shouted. “Tell him where the A.I. is!”

“But I don’t know where it is—”

“The Planck! The Planck! We sent it through the Planck! Tell him!” Aldous shouted back frantically.

Paine had already scooped Samantha up with one arm, holding the back of the board and displaying Aldous’s wife like Christ on the cross as the hand on his other arm began to spin like a drill. “You like to watch, professor?” Paine shouted over the sound of the drill.

“The Planck! They sent it through the Planck!” Sanha screeched.

Paine’s face suddenly went white, and he stopped the spinning of his hand, dropping Samantha a second afterward.

She thudded onto the concrete, the board falling on its side once again. Aldous could see her clearly through Sanha’s point of view.

“What did you say?” Paine asked Sanha, his voice suddenly icy.

“The Planck,” Sanha repeated, his chest heaving as his heart raced. “They sent the A.I. threw the Planck. That’s why we couldn’t find it before. They sent it through.”

“Planck?” Paine said, his expression filled with a rare display of fear. “As in Planck energy?”

Sanha nodded, surprised that the brutish Paine knew what Planck energy was.

“As in, you unimaginably stupid bastards have sent an artificial intelligence into another universe?”

Sanha didn’t respond. He was stunned that Paine was versed enough in the technology to immediately guess its use.

Aldous was stunned too. Paine, besides being extraordinarily cruel and remorseless, also defied Aldous’s expectations for a Luddite. Only a small handful of people worldwide even knew what Planck energy was, let alone its possible implications.

Paine shook his head as he stared downward at his boots, thinking through this latest development. He paced for a moment as he continued to mull over his options. After his short internal deliberation, he nodded and turned back to Sanha. “Can you operate the Planck? Can I send a team in after the A.I.?”

Sanha remained silent for a moment, waiting for Aldous’s advice.

“Tell him you can,” Aldous said.

“Yes,” Sanha replied.

Paine noted the delay and shook his head. “Professor Gibson doing all your thinking for you now, sport?”

“No,” Sanha replied, more quickly this time. “No. I can operate the Planck platform. If they sent the A.I. through, the platform would have gone with it, but we have older versions of the platform that are safe. It will just take me a little while to make them operational.”

Paine’s expression remained frozen, the sadistic joy he seemed to take in torturing Samantha now at an end. “You better not be lying to me, sport. If you are…” Paine retrieved Samantha once again, lifting her as he had before, displaying her for both Sanha and Aldous. His other hand suddenly moved aside, a ten-inch serrated blade jutting out in an instant from his wrist.

“Go to Hell,” Samantha spat.

“After you.” Paine swiped at her neck with such preternatural speed and force that he decapitated the love of both Aldous’s and Craig’s lives in one swift, cruel motion.

“No!” Aldous shouted as he jumped to his feet, his eyes disbelieving.

The screen went blank as Sanha shut his eyes.

“Open your eyes, Sanha! Open them!”

Sanha reluctantly obeyed, opening his eyes and letting the horror back in.

Paine had retrieved Samantha’s head and held it by the hair. Blood was jetting down from the clean cut at the middle of her throat. Her eyes were still twitching as Paine brought it to Sanha and displayed it for Aldous to see. He dropped her head, then bent low until his face was just inches from Sanha, who squirmed in terror. “That was for you, Professor Gibson, you piece of filth,” he said, hatred dripping from his lips. “Come get me, you coward. I dare you.” Then he stood to his feet, took his cigar from his front pocket, and placed it back in his mouth before grabbing Sanha under the arm and dragging him from the room. “Let’s get to work.”

Aldous Gibson hadn’t moved, but his hands had contracted into fists so tight that his fingernails were cutting the flesh of his palms. He shook with a cocktail of shock, terror, and extreme fury spilled all over his face. “Sam,” he said in disbelief before taking a small step and then dropping to his knees. “No. No.” Tears began streaming down his face as he continued to shake, his back heaving as he sobbed.

Lindholm watched the monitor silently in disbelief as he saw the perspective of the post-human named Sanha, who was being dragged by the Purist super soldier toward an unknown destination. He turned to the other post-human, the one who claimed to be Aldous Gibson, the rogue traitor the government had claimed they’d killed nearly a decade earlier, and his heart went out to him. Lindholm had seen horror in his life, for the unforgiving war had taken almost everything that meant something from him. He no longer had a family—no longer had a wife. Aldous was now his brother.

He crouched down behind the grief-stricken man and placed his hand on the middle of his back.

“I’m so sorry,” Lindholm said quietly. “I know…I know you don’t think much of us here, out in the world. I know we must appear sub-human to you. But we’re not. We’ve been hardened by the horrors of this world and the cruel things we’ve seen, but we’re still human. We can still feel. It’s buried deep now, but we can still have compassion.”

Aldous didn’t respond. He held his hands over his head and continued to shake.

“Aldous, we can hide you here. When my staff arrives, I’ll explain what has happened. They’ll understand. You can trust them. You can trust me. We’ll protect you. We have no love or loyalty to the government. We will help you.”

Aldous suddenly moved, resting his back against the wall as he stared out at the dim light that pierced the ice-covered window. “Yes. Help,” he said. “That is what I require. I don’t think you’re sub-human. I don’t think that at all.” Aldous turned and regarded the monitor on which Sanha’s point of view continued to be displayed. Colonel Paine had tossed Sanha roughly into the Planck room and was now lighting his cigar as he put the post-human to work.

“It’s them who are sub-human—the Purists. And I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill every last one of them.”

25

Craig flew, guided by the A.I., toward the Titanic’s bridge, where the captain and Thomas Andrews, the ship’s builder, had just returned from an examination of the damage below deck. They were met on the bridge by the master-at-arms, First Officer Murdoch, and J. Bruce Ismay, Chairman of the White Star Line that built the Titanic. Ismay was the first to see Craig appearing over the rail of the ship, the green glow of his magnetic aura enraging him and causing his teeth to clench under his waxed mustache. “Tesla!” he seethed.

Murdoch pulled out his revolver, only to have the master-at-arms place his hand on Murdoch’s forearm, lowering it. “Don’t bother. I tried that already.”

Craig entered the cabin, still wet, but no longer soaking. The A.I. disengaged the protective cocoon so Craig could speak, but before he could get a word out, Ismay furiously lunged forward, shaking his fingers accusingly in Craig’s face. “You work for Tesla! He sent you here!”

William Stead and his photographer entered the bridge quietly at that moment, unnoticed by anyone in attendance and using the commotion as their camouflage.

“Tesla?” Craig asked the A.I.

“Don’t play coy!” Ismay shouted back in return. He turned to the captain and continued, “This is Tesla’s attempt to get revenge on J.P. for the debacle with that damned tower of his! He’s sent this thug here to sabotage Titanic’s maiden voyage and to make a fool out of J.P.!”

“He’s referring to J.P. Morgan,” the A.I. began explaining to Craig, “arguably the most successful tycoon of the era and majority owner of both White Star and The International Mercantile Marine Company. Nikola Tesla was an inventor who had built the Wardenclyffe Tower, a wireless communications tower capable of sending electrical power without wires. At the time of the Titanic’s sinking, J.P. Morgan and Tesla were in a legal battle over the tower, allegedly surrounding the fact that Morgan, who was the chief financial backer of the tower, hadn’t been aware of the tower’s capability of wireless transmission of power.”

“Explain,” Craig replied.

“I mean you deliberately—” Ismay began, before being cut off by Craig.

“Not you,” Craig said, holding his hand up to shush the man.

Ismay’s eyes narrowed as he confusedly tried to comprehend Craig’s meaning. The master-at-arms attempted to fill in the gaps, pointing to his temple and adding, “He has a difference engine in his noggin’.”

“J.P. Morgan financed the project thinking it would be the beginning of a communications empire,” the A.I. further elaborated, “but Tesla hadn’t informed him that the tower could do much more than just send radio signals. Morgan, who owned General Electric, wanted to continue business as usual with the electrical grid of the era. The Wardenclyffe tower would have destroyed that by providing free wireless power to anyone with an antenna to receive it.”

“Wireless power?” Craig said, astonished. “We don’t even have that technology in the future.”

“Other than in some limited capacities, you’re right,” the A.I. concurred.

“So these guys…they’re holding back technology?” Craig asked.

“In some ways. Although they were interested in progress, it was only progress that directly benefitted them.”

“Luddites,” Craig whispered.

“Your analogy is sound,” the A.I. replied.

“Look,” Craig said, suddenly speaking to the baffled men who stood in a semicircle around him, “I don’t work for Tesla.”

“Bullocks!” Ismay thundered.

“I’ve never met the man. I’m from a parallel universe.”

“Craig, I strongly advise against—” the A.I. began to protest.

Craig ignored him and continued, “In my universe, this ship turned hard to port to try miss the iceberg but the hull on the starboard side came into contact with the ice and was punctured several times, causing the Titanic to begin taking on water. It sank in two hours, killing over 1,500 people in the end.”

“Pure fantasy,” Ismay scoffed. “This ship is unsinkable,” he recited, sounding like an advertisement.

William Stead took that moment to speak up. “He is flying,” he pointed out. “That would seem rather fanciful, too, except we’re seeing it with our own eyes.”

“Tesla is capable of trickery like this!” Ismay shouted back. “You’ve seen the displays he puts on for the press! They look exactly like this! Electricity shooting out in all directions!” He turned back to Craig. “Did you think you’d get away with this?”

“The ship sank in two hours, and 1,503 people died,” Craig repeated, speaking directly to the captain. “I caused the ship to ram the iceberg—”

“He admits it!” Ismay shouted, aghast.

“—to save it from having its hull breached.”

“The hull is intact,” Thomas Andrews confirmed. “Amazingly, we’re not taking on water.”

Ismay turned to Craig and stuck his finger in Craig’s face once again. “You and Tesla are lucky for that, sir. You’re very lucky! Otherwise, mass murder would be added to the list of your crimes and you’d be seeing the electric chair in the near future—an invention I believe your employer had some hand in devising.”

“Dude, I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” Craig replied, “and I ain’t going to jail anytime soon, so get out of my face.” He then turned to the other men in the room. “I am going to the dining hall though. Man, I could sure use a cookie right now.”

Suddenly, the image of the small group of men began to warp, the figures bending and twisting in front of Craig as though they were reflections in a hall of mirrors.

“Craig,” the A.I.’s voice spoke, though slowly, as though he were playing on a cassette player as the battery ran low, “this is a phenomenon referred to as the ripple. It means someone has manipulated Planck energy and arrived in this universe.”

“So we’ve got company?”

“Indeed. It appears that someone from Universe 1 is in pursuit.”

26

“Ho-ly hell,” Colonel Paine whispered as he regarded the extent of the damage to the front deck of the Titanic. He stood, legs slightly crouched, rifle at the ready along with Lieutenant Drummey and Sergeant Degrechie, who stood identically postured. “Keep your eyes peeled, boys. This ain’t gonna be easy.”

On the bridge, Craig blinked a few times before he was sure that the ripple had passed. He’d never experienced a phenomenon like it. It was like being in a dream that wasn’t his, as though the universe was sleeping. The rest of the men on the bridge were equally discombobulated.

“We’ve been drugged,” Ismay finally said. “That’s how he’s doing it. He’s not flying. This is a shared hallucination, gentlemen.”

Craig grinned. “This guy just doesn’t give up.”

“Craig, the ripple effect does not reach further than a few dozen meters,” the A.I. warned. “Whoever has just entered this universe must be near.”

“Copy,” Craig replied. He turned and paced to the front of the bridge, looking out over the front deck. Immediately, he saw the three super soldiers, the leader stepping off of a silver Planck platform. “Found ‘em.”

“Super soldiers,” the A.I. noted. “Craig, this is very dangerous. We need to vacate immediately.”

“Wait a second,” Craig suddenly said as he watched the leader cautiously lead his men away from the platform. “Is that…? No, it can’t be.”

“Craig, we need to go. If Purist super soldiers are here, it means the facility has been overrun.”

“Hang on,” Craig said as he jogged out of the bridge and to the rail of the upper deck to get an unobscured view. “No. Hey, I know this guy.” Craig began running down the stairs toward the lower deck, heading straight for Colonel Paine.

“Craig! They will kill us!” the A.I. shouted in protest.

“No they won’t. I know him,” Craig repeated before running into his own magnetic field as the A.I. threw it up in front of him. “Ah! What the hell?”

“Think about what you’re doing, Craig. You are approaching a man whose chief aim is the destruction of strong artificial intelligence, and you have a strong artificial intelligence implanted in your head. This will not go well.”

“Remember that little talk we had about free will?”

“I remember, but—”

“Then trust me,” Craig said as he lowered his magnetic field and continued on his way toward his former commanding officer.

“You’re risking both of our lives,” the A.I. continued to protest.

“This is why you haven’t been able to pass the Turing test yet, my friend. You don’t know people. I do. Trust me. This guy won’t try kill us.”

“Holy hell,” Colonel Paine repeated once again as a ghost strolled toward him. “I have got to be seeing things.”

“Colonel Paine,” Craig said as he stood to attention and saluted.

“Doc Emilson?” Paine replied, disbelieving.

“Yes, sir. It’s good to see you, sir.”

Paine took a moment to assess the situation before lowering his weapon and relaxing his posture. “Lower your weapons, boys,” he ordered the other two soldiers under his command. “This here’s a real live hero.”

Craig smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Doc? We came looking for an artificial intelligence. You were the last person I was expecting to see here.”

“I could say the same thing about you, sir. Yesterday I was talking to you at Cannon Air Force Base, and now I’m here.”

“Yesterday? Doc, that was—”

“Fourteen years ago. I know.”

“Doc,” Paine said, reaching up with his clawed prostheses and scratching under his helmet, “you’re gonna have to explain this to me nice and slow.”

“Of course, sir. But, sir, if you wouldn’t mind, do you think we could talk this out over a cookie? I’m starving.”

Paine cocked his head to the side as he mulled Craig’s unexpected request. He turned to the giant wall of deck wood that had been thrown up in the collision and then to the curious bystanders who milled about, watching the proceedings with fascination, albeit from a safe distance. Then he turned back to Craig. “Sure. A cookie sounds good.”

27

Craig sat in a wicker chair by the fire in the smoking room, a tray of cookies sitting next to him as he finished spooning the last of his baked apples into his mouth. The three Purists sat with him, forming a semicircle. Paine faced the fire directly, while Craig’s left side was illuminated by the warming glow. He’d retrieved his jacket, and it was now laid out on the floor, drying quickly next to the flames.

“More tea, sir?” asked an attendant, who politely waited on the strange quartet. Craig nodded enthusiastically and held his cup up for the man to refill. Paine stared at the man and wondered what he must have thought. The whole scenario was surreal for everyone involved, yet there was a strange acceptance. The ship had crashed, and bizarrely clad soldiers had suddenly appeared, yet life, somehow, went on. Craig, who had the right to claim he was the most out-of-place person in the room—a man out of time twice over—seemed the least disturbed by the current circumstances as he devoured his sweets.

“More tea, sir?” the attendant asked Paine.

Paine looked up at him with his cybernetic eyes, which, along with the crosshatch of stretch marks and scars, caused the attendant to recoil slightly. “No thank you,” Paine said as he attempted to force a slight smile for the sake of manners. The attendant nodded and moved on to Drummey and Degrechie.

Craig dipped a chocolate cookie in his tea and then took a large bite, chewing enthusiastically. “The cookies of the past were much better,” he noted in the brief moment between swallowing and taking his next bite. He pointed to the tray to offer one to Paine.

Paine waved it away. “Thanks, Doc. Ate before I came. You, on the other hand, look like you haven’t eaten in fourteen years.”

Craig shook his head. “Nah. I fell in the water. Long story, but I need to get my glucose levels back up.”

“Ah,” Paine nodded. “Smart.” Paine turned his head and watched as the attendant left the room. “So, you were explaining how you came to be here.”

“Yes. It’s going to sound crazy, though.”

“What doesn’t these days? Try me.”

“Well, like I said, to me, it was just yesterday that I was doing my SOLO jump over Shenzhen. The next thing I knew, I was waking up and my wife was holding my hand. Then she told me fourteen years had past while I’d been in suspended animation.”

“Heh,” Paine responded, nodding. “That explains it. Your body was preserved in one of those S.A. body bags. Little did we know when we returned what was left of you to her that she was going to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together.”

“Well, apparently she managed. The technology they have in their facility is off the charts, Colonel. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Craig paused for a moment as he gestured toward the cybernetic prostheses that the super soldiers sported. “Well, not until now anyway.”

“Doc, I hate to bring it up. But did your wife make you aware of her current marital status?” Paine asked.

Craig’s mouth turned down at the mention of his wife. He nodded. “Yeah. She told me.”

Paine sat back in his chair and shook his head as he watched the crackling fire. “That’s cold, man. You have my sympathies.”

“Thanks, Colonel,” Craig replied. He was about to say something else, but words failed him. There was really nothing that could be said on a subject that was still so tender. He shook his head and took another bite of his cookie.

“So how did you end up here?” Paine inquired further.

“When you arrived at the facility, Aldous Gibson hatched a plan to send my wife and I through the Planck machine with the A.I. in an attempt to evade you. They were convinced that your intention was to kill everyone in the facility and destroy the A.I. I agreed to go through the Planck to protect my wife, but at the last moment, she knocked me out and sent me through the machine alone.”

“So, are you telling me you’re not here willingly?” Paine asked.

“No,” Craig replied. “I want to go back home as soon as possible, sir.”

“I figured as much,” Paine replied. He turned to Drummey and Degrechie. “You see? He’s a good soldier.”

“Were you able to convince Aldous to tell you where we were?” Craig asked.

“No. Aldous Gibson is currently a fugitive from justice.”

Craig was momentarily in disbelief. “And Samantha as well?”

“No. We were able to capture her,” Paine said, trying to keep his face stone still.

“You mean,” Craig said, astounded, “he left her there?”

“Affirmative,” Paine answered before taking a sip of his tea.

“Goddamn. I knew he was a coward.”

Paine grinned. “You and I are on the same page on that one, Doc.”

“So, was Samantha the one that told you where the A.I. was?”

“No,” Paine replied. “She was…uncooperative. A Professor Sanha Cho was able to fill us in. He set the Planck machine so that we could attempt to apprehend the A.I. Heh. He told us it would probably be carried by a robot. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Craig nodded. “I’m sorry about Sam, Colonel. It’s like she’s been brainwashed.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t—it was like I was talking to a different person.”

Paine shifted in his chair. “It’s not my place to say, Doc, but from what I remember, she had a disloyalty streak fourteen years ago too.”

Craig’s neck snapped upward, and his eyes met Paine’s. As hurtful as it was to hear someone denigrate his wife, he had to admit that there was some truth to what Paine said. “If you don’t mind, sir, when we get back, I’d like to spend some time with her.”

Paine kept his face perfectly still as Craig continued to speak.

“I think I could convince her to see things in a different light. It might take a while, but eventually, I think she could see reason. I’d like to try anyway, sir.”

Paine’s face remained frozen for a second longer than it should have before he finally forced a smile. “Sure. You do that. Do whatever you think is right.”

“Craig,” the A.I. suddenly interjected, “I’m registering an 85 percent chance that he’s lying to you.”

Craig heard the A.I. but tried not to react. Lying to me about what? he thought. About Sam?

“So, sir, were you able to apprehend most of the post-humans in the facility? Were there any casualties?”

“None. It was pretty textbook. We’ve got a few that managed to get through our perimeter, but we’ll pick ‘em up in the next day or so.”

“94 percent chance that was a lie,” the A.I. informed, “and I’m certain that if I could measure his pupil dilation, the percentage would go up. He’s lying to you.”

“So,” Paine began, quickly changing the subject, “is the A.I. on your person? Did they give you a hard drive or something?”

“That’s the thing,” Craig replied, “there’s no hard drive. They injected it into me.”

“What do you mean?” Paine asked, his head cocking to the side.

“They uploaded it into nanobots—they call them nans—and it attached itself to my brain. I’m in communication with it as we speak.”

“Ho-ly hell. Isn’t that something?” Paine turned to his right and nodded to Drummey, who had his neutralizer sitting in his lap. Drummey pulled the trigger, and a blast of rotating frequencies hit Craig, knocking the teacup out of his hand and spilling it to the ground.

He groaned. “What the hell was that?” he asked as his mind’s eye fluttered in and out before finally stabilizing.

“They’ve temporarily disabled your MTF generator,” the A.I. replied.

“Sorry, Doc,” Paine casually said. “I trust you.” He tapped his temple with his finger. “It’s what’s in there that I don’t trust. We’ve neutralized that generator you’ve got in your spine so that we can get you home without any interference from the rider you’ve got. When we get you back, we can get to work getting that thing safely out of you. No hard feelings, right?”

Craig looked up from his doubled over position and nodded. “I suppose it’s…understandable.”

“Good man. Okay. Correct me if I am wrong, but it’s my understanding that you’re scheduled to be in this particular universe for ten hours. Yes?”

“That’s accurate.” Craig groaned as he struggled to right himself in his seat.

“And how long have you been here so far?”

“Nearly two hours,” Craig replied.

Paine nodded. “And this ship takes about two hours to sink, am I right?”

“In our universe, yes, but—”

“And how long ago was the collision with the iceberg?”

“About twenty minutes ago,” Craig replied, “but the ship’s not sinking.”

Paine’s eyebrows knitted above his computerized eyes. “What?”

“The Titanic isn’t sinking. It rammed the iceberg head on. The collision damaged the hull but didn’t breach it. We’re safe. Everyone is safe.”

Paine stood to his feet, suddenly alarmed. “Are you telling me that even after all that damage, this ship isn’t going down?”

“Affirmative, sir,” Craig replied, smiling. “I pushed the ship straight on into the iceberg. The A.I. said that was the best way to keep the ship from foundering.”

“The A.I.,” Paine replied with a sneer. “Of course. Of course it would say that.” The colonel paced away from the trio of men and left them sitting in their chairs for a few moments as he mulled over his next move. His cybernetic hand stroked his chin as he worked his way through the scenario, moving toward the correct strategic decision. Finally, he turned to the men and announced, “Men, we have to sink this ship.”

“What?” Craig reacted, astounded. “Why?”

“Doc,” Paine began with a sigh, “I respect you. I respect the hell outta you. You always put the lives of others before your own. I wish more soldiers had your qualities.”

“90 percent chance that he’s being honest,” the A.I. noted.

“However, this is one of those extremely rare instances when saving the lives of thousands of innocent people comes at the cost of putting the lives of innumerable other people at risk.”

“Sir, with all due respect—”

“Think about the consequences of your actions,” Paine said, cutting Craig off. “You’ve altered the natural history of this timeline.”

“Natural?”

“Not only are you keeping the 1,500 people who are supposed to die tonight alive, causing a cascading effect that can’t be measured, but you’ve also managed to make your presence known to everyone on this damn ship. I even saw a kid on the deck with a damn camera. Do you realize that if this ship makes it into port, our picture is going to be on the cover of every major newspaper in the world?”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“Doc!” Paine suddenly shouted. “We’ve exposed these people to technology a century and a half ahead of where they currently are. You even left your jacket in this room while you were off playing superhero. What if someone had taken it while you were gone and examined the tech? What if they succeed in reengineering it? I mean, for Christ’s sake, son, for a soldier who’s supposed to be trained in covert insertions, you’ve been clumsy as all hell. And don’t think I didn’t notice that handcuff you’ve got around your wrist. You’ve been into all kinds of trouble already.”

“None of this means that people should die,” Craig continued to protest. “Just so we can protect the ‘natural history’ of this timeline, whatever that means!”

“Jesus,” Paine grunted in frustration as he pulled out his neutralizer and fired at Craig’s midsection. Craig groaned and doubled over once again. “Doc, they’ve got pictures of the Planck platform. They saw us appear out of nowhere. What if they use those pictures to develop Planck technology? What if they use it to interfere in other universes, just as you have? How would you feel knowing that you’d spread that can of worms throughout the multiverse? Knowing that, because of you, people from another universe could enter ours and manipulate it for their own ends?”

“It’s all what-ifs!” Craig suddenly yelled, exasperated as he struggled to stand. “All of it! You’re willing to kill over 2,000 people because you’re afraid bad things might happen if you don’t?”

Paine stood straight, his mouth slightly open as his golden eyes burned into Craig. “I’m not going to hold this against you, Doc,” he said in a low voice, trying to remain calm and affect an understanding tone. “You’re understandably confused right now. For all I know, the A.I. might be manipulating your thinking.”

“The A.I. has nothing to do with it. This is all me, Colonel. You can’t kill these people. It would be…monstrous!”

“Monstrous?” Paine suddenly lost his cool and strode toward Craig, clutching the front of his shirt with his powerful prosthetic arm and lifting him, jamming Craig’s back against the hot mahogany above the mantel of the fireplace. “No, Doc, let me tell you about monstrous. Monstrous is creating a species that could wipe out humanity! Monstrous is interfering with the timeline of another universe! Monstrous is unilaterally deciding that you have the right to play God! Well, Doc, there’s only one true God, and He planned for this ship to go down. Who the hell are you or I to decide different?” Paine released Craig and let him slide down to the ground, where he stumbled to his knees in front of the fire. “So what’s it going to be, Doc? Are you with us or against us? Am I going to have a problem with you?”

Craig clutched his chest where the sharp claws of Paine’s fingers had scratched his skin raw. He clenched his teeth and seethed in reply, “If your plan is to sink this ship and let these people die, drowning, being trampled, or freezing to death in the middle of the ocean—men, women, children, babies—then yeah, you’re going to have a problem with me.”

Paine’s face remained frozen for a moment before he finally turned to Drummey. “From this moment on, treat the doc here like a hostile prisoner. If he resists or tries to escape, you have permission to shoot him with your rifle, but no kill shots, understand? We need him alive so we can extract the A.I.”

“Yes, sir,” Drummey replied. He bent down and used the cuffs that were already around Craig’s left wrist, closing the second bracelet over his right wrist to secure his prisoner.

“Degrechie,” Paine said to the other soldier, “it’s up to us to sink this tin can. We’ve gotta get below decks and blow a big enough hole in the bottom of the Titanic to make sure nobody onboard lives to tell this tale.”

28

“Craig, your life is in serious danger,” the A.I. warned as Craig was dragged by the scruff of his neck toward the Purists’ Planck platform.

Even at six-five, without his MTF generator functioning, Craig was helpless against the strength of the super soldier prosthetics. Drummey manhandled Craig as though the post-human were nothing but a small child, pulling him with ease down the steps toward the front deck of the Titanic.

Ismay spotted the bizarre spectacle and shouted down to Drummey from the bridge, “You there! Who are you, and where are you taking that criminal? What right do you have to be here?”

Drummey didn’t even have to turn his head. Instead, using the intelligent system in his rifle and his aug glasses, he uttered, “Kill shot,” thereby setting the rifle to use the most devastatingly frangible bullet it had. His left arm moved automatically, guided by the computer system, and it immediately locked the rifle on Ismay’s face. A fraction of a second later, the gun blasted forth a hollow-point projectile that hit its target squarely in the nose, sinking into Ismay’s face and fragmenting, nearly liquefying the inside of the man’s skull without even causing an exit wound.

Ismay collapsed to the ground, never having known what hit him.

Craig’s teeth clenched furiously as he struggled against the right prosthetic arm of the super soldier before it tossed him to the ground, just two meters in front of the Planck platform.

“On your knees!” Drummey shouted.

Craig struggled to move his legs, which were numb thanks to the effects of the neutralizer blasts. “You—you can’t let them do this,” Craig said. “You’re supposed to protect the innocent.”

“Shut up,” Drummey replied before shooting Craig with his neutralizer once again.

Craig groaned as the MTF shimmied next to his spine, the vibrations causing severe spasms in his back and legs.

The A.I.’s image suddenly appeared in Craig’s mind’s eye. “Listen to me, Craig. There will be no reasoning with these people. The passengers on the Titanic are lost.”

“I can’t let them die,” Craig replied weakly.

“Shut up,” Drummey repeated. “The colonel won’t let me kill you, but I swear to God that I’ll shoot you in the most painful place I can think of if you speak again.”

“He will shoot you, Craig,” the A.I. Confirmed, “and they will remove your MTF implant in a most gruesome manner. The only reason they haven’t already removed it is because Colonel Paine truly hoped to be able to reason with you and spare you the excruciating pain, but his patience has reached its end. Craig, you have to escape. I’m wirelessly reprogramming the Purists’ Planck platform as we speak. Although I cannot change the course we are on, I can activate the device early and take us into the next universe.”

Craig couldn’t respond verbally, so he shook his head instead.

“What was that?” Drummey asked. “You communicating to your rider?”

“Can I speak now?”

“Of course you can, Goddamnit! If I speak to you, you answer!”

“Yes, it’s speaking to me.”

“Stop doing that. If you speak to it again, I’ll shoot you.”

“What happened to the post-humans at their facility?” Craig demanded, risking his mortal safety to do so. “Are they prisoners?”

Drummey smiled. “We didn’t take prisoners. We’ve got one VIP alive, and the rest are dead.”

Craig’s mouth fell open as his lips pulled back into a horrified expression.

“Craig,” the A.I. informed, “there’s a 97 percent chance he’s telling the truth.”

“Is the VIP you have…is it Samantha Gibson?”

Drummey shook his head and chuckled. “Your ex-wife? Nah. She’s dead. The colonel cut that pretty little head clean off.”

Craig began shaking as his chest heaved. He was having difficulty breathing as the shock of hearing of his wife’s demise quickly overwhelmed him.

“There is a 99 percent chance of truthfulness, Craig. I am sorry,” the A.I. said.

“You’re all upset right now,” Drummey said, still grinning, “but think about it, bro. Really, the colonel did you a favor. You were married to the most dangerous woman alive. Disloyal to her country, to her species, and to you.”

“You need to keep calm, Craig,” the A.I. urgently warned. “Your heart rate is accelerating, but if you act rashly now, you’ll not only hurt yourself, but you will endanger the future as well.”

Drummey watched Craig’s fury boiling and suddenly lifted his rifle, resting it casually on his shoulder, amused. “You seriously think you’d have a chance, big fella? If I let you out of those cuffs and gave you the first punch, you think you’d be able to knock me out? Huh? You want to try that?”

“Craig!” the A.I. shouted. “He’ll beat you until you’re close to dead—and post-humans do not die easily. You must remain calm. If you don’t, Samantha will have died for nothing.”

Samantha…dead. The words brought Craig back from the brink of insanity. If it were true—if she were dead—then she gave her life for a reason. Craig bowed his head obediently, abandoning his challenge.

“That’s what I thought,” Drummey scoffed, feeling victorious.

Craig stepped to the Planck platform and knelt, keeping his head bowed. Drummey grinned. “Good boy. Now you just stay hushed there, ya hear? Let the grownups do their work, and then we’ll be right with you.” He chuckled.

“Excellent work, Craig,” the A.I. said, a tone of relief in his voice. “I’m initiating the Planck effect. Brace yourself. We’ll be in Universe 332 momentarily.”

Craig looked up at the ship he’d helped save and was now abandoning. He’d never felt like such a coward in his life. He closed his eyes and waited for the next horror to appear.

A second later, Drummey was left looking at the empty space where his prisoner and his ride home once were. “Uh oh,” he whispered. He wasn’t looking forward to informing the colonel.

1

Aldous watched as the powder in the 3D printer slowly dropped in the tray, the binding material being added by the carriage one layer at a time.

“Even if these forgeries pass a cursory visual examination,” Lindholm began to point out as he reentered the room and handed Aldous a paper cup filled with cold water, “and even if we leave them in the resin for hours, they won’t have anywhere near the strength of the real ones.”

“I’m aware,” Aldous replied as he sipped the water. “I’ll do my best to ensure they aren’t put up against the genuine article.”

“You know,” Lindholm noted as he leaned against the wall adjacent to the bulky industrial printer, “for a man who’s spent his life questing for immortality, you seem rather determined to commit suicide.”

Aldous lightly shook his head, continuing to stare at the carriage’s rhythmic movements. “I’ll have the advantage,” he said. “They won’t be expecting this.”

“No,” Lindholm observed, “because, as I said, it’s certainly unexpected from a man who values life the way you do.”

“The way I did,” Aldous corrected. “There are some people who don’t deserve to live, my friend. I learned that lesson too late. It cost me my wife. I won’t make that mistake again.”

2

“Goddamnit!” Craig shouted as he sprang to his feet and stepped off the Planck platform and onto the gravel rooftop, storming furiously, but aimlessly away. “Goddamn it to Hell!”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the A.I. began, “but we have—”

“You have no idea what you’re saying you’re sorry for!” Craig shouted. “You have no goddamn idea what I’ve lost! You’re a machine! Goddamnit! I’m in Hell! Get me out of this Hell!”

“Craig,” the A.I. replied calmly, “your MTF generator is back online, and we need to find a more secure location immediately. Brace yourself.”

Instantly, Craig was encapsulated in his green cocoon once again, as the A.I. took over the flight systems and quickly scooped him into the air, then flew him down into an alley shaded from the brilliant morning sunshine and toward a giant, abandoned warehouse. Pillars of light shone down through the broken slats of tile in the roof like the fingers of God, illuminating the hellish, dark interior. The A.I. set Craig down on the top floor of the sprawling building, and his boots sank into the two inches of dust that covered the ground.

“Be careful,” the A.I. warned. “The floor is not entirely structurally sound. There are holes.”

“Where are we?”

“This is an abandoned textile—”

“No!” Craig shouted with frustration as he used a powerful blast of energy to rip apart his cuffs, tearing through them like butter. “Where are we? What universe is this?”

“332.”

“You know that’s not what I’m asking,” Craig spat back as he clasped his hands over his head. He resisted the urge to start pounding on his own skull. He wanted to dig his fingers inside and pull the A.I. out.

“I’m afraid that physically damaging your own brain will do little to alleviate your anger, Craig. However,” the A.I. continued as his form suddenly appeared only two meters away, “if you wish, you’re more than welcome to pummel me in this form.”

“What is this?” Craig asked with a snarl.

“A hallucination.”

“What do you mean?” Craig demanded. “You mean…I’m imagining you?”

“No, I am quite real, but I’m accessing the region of your brain that is responsible for hallucinations. It is a major component of the mind’s eye technology. The hallucination is visual, auditory, and also tangible, so if you punch me, your brain will make you feel as though your fist has made contact with my jaw.”

“That sounds tempting,” Craig replied, nodding enthusiastically at the thought.

“I’m ready when you are,” the A.I. said in his typical matter-of-fact tone. He closed his eyes and tilted his jaw so Craig could hit him at an angle that would level the most force and, in theory, produce the most satisfaction.

Craig wound up, but after a couple hesitations, he abandoned the effort.

“Are you sure, Craig? Your system is rife with enormous amounts of cortisol and adrenaline. This would likely help you alleviate some of it and I would not feel any discomfort.”

“That’s the problem,” Craig replied. “I want somebody to feel some discomfort.”

“Your anger is understandable.”

“Where are we?” Craig repeated his question.

“I’m sorry, Craig, but I do not feel comfortable relaying that information to you.”

“Why?”

“Because you will undoubtedly choose to interfere with this timeline, just as you did in the last.”

“And that’s bad, why? Don’t tell me you’re siding with the Purists.”

“Regardless of the possible implications for the history of this universe and the multiverse at large, the greater concern is that the Purists will expect you to interfere—and they’ll be waiting.”

“Hold on,” Craig responded, as something in the A.I.’s explanation did not resonate with him. “How can the Purists be here? I thought we just abandoned them in the last universe.”

“We did. However, we have to assume they will locate your Planck platform and follow us here.”

Craig began shaking his head as he paced away.

“Be careful,” the A.I. warned once again.

“I want an explanation. What the hell is going on? How are we hopping from one universe to another?”

“Certainly. As I said earlier, explanations are my forte. We are using the Planck platform to concentrate enormous amounts of energy at one point, thereby manipulating Planck energy and causing space and time to become unstable. In the midst of that forced instability, a bubble forms. The bubble acts as a gateway to a parallel universe.”

“A bubble?”

“It lasts only for a microsecond, which is why you don’t see it and why, to you, it appears as though you have instantly traveled to another universe.”

“So, you’re saying you discovered parallel universes?”

“In tandem with the researchers at our facility, yes.”

“But…but how can parallel universes exist?”

“They’ve been incorporated into membrane theory for decades, Craig. However, once humanity attained access to an artificial intelligence with sufficient power not only to process the enormous amounts of data already available, but also to creatively concoct experiments at a rate that humans simply couldn’t match before, it was only a matter of time before evidence was uncovered. The universe, Craig, is really a multiverse, floating in an infinite darkness known as the bulk, and is only one of an infinite number of parallel universes.”

“Impossible,” Craig replied, mesmerized.

The A.I.’s eyebrow arched quizzically. “The evidence is all around you.”

“I know. I know, but…damn.” Craig sat on the dusty floor and rested his elbows on his knees. “I just…I’ve never felt so…lost.”

“You would prefer to believe that our universe exists alone?”

Craig shook his head. “I don’t know. I just wish I wasn’t here. I wish I was with Sam and none of this had happened.”

“In many universes, that is indeed the case.”

Craig shot the A.I. a glare. “That’s not much solace.”

“Perhaps not, but it is true, however. The many worlds theory has turned out to be more than just a theory. Indeed, all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each one encapsulated in its own universe. The universes branch off from one another. If you could see the bulk,” the A.I. continued as he conjured a 3D computer image of what he described, “it would look very much like the neurons in your brain, each universe splitting off the last, connected, yet separate. The 3,000 parallel universes, or exo-universes, that we have currently identified are those closest to us within the bulk.”

“Okay. Crazy as that sounds, it kind of makes sense. And what about these magnetic fields we’ve been generating? I didn’t know magnetic fields could do these things. Why didn’t we have these before?”

“The magnetic fields of the past were quite simple in comparison to what you are generating with your MTF. This is the age of nano materials, Craig. Your magnetic field is the result of electromagnetically energized particles that are organized into patterns that make them spin at high velocities.” Once again, the A.I. projected a helpful animated 3D image to illustrate his point. “If we had a microscope powerful enough to see these materials, we’d see that the pattern they form is similar to a honeycomb structure, with the north and south poles reacting to one another in such away that the attractions and repulsions cause them to spin. The honeycomb structure is woven into a net that surrounds you. This not only forms your protective cocoon, but it can also propel you in whichever direction you desire by propelling particles away at high velocities.”

“And these fields are strong enough to protect us when we go through the Planck?”

“Yes. The Planck platform generates a super-strong field in the same instant in which the Planck bubble forms. It is analogous to a firewall, protecting you from the instability of space and time that surrounds you.”

“All right. I get it.”

“Indeed. Although it isn’t possible for any human to fully understand the enormous calculation and experimentation required, the general concepts are relatively easy to grasp. And, speaking of relativity, Aldous asked me to explain to you why the universes are moving at different time rates.”

“Yeah, I don’t need to know if it’s going to be too complicated,” Craig said, holding one hand to his forehead while he waved the A.I. away with the other.

Undeterred, the A.I. continued. “It’s quite simple. Each universe is actually moving at the same time rate. Therefore, they are obeying Einsteinian principles. However, time moves differently according to mass and gravity, so while the universes might be moving at the same rate in totality, the speed of time in the vicinity of the Earth can be dramatically different.”

“I didn’t quite catch that,” Craig replied after giving his head a quick shake. “One more time.”

“If, for instance, a few galaxies begin moving toward the Milky Way, converging upon it slowly like clouds that do not appear to move from a great distance but are actually traveling quite rapidly, then time in the Milky Way can slow dramatically because of the extra mass and gravity exerted upon it. If, however, galaxies trend away from the Milky Way, the reduced mass and gravity pressure causes time to move more quickly. This is why the multiple Earths can differ so greatly in their time periods. Overall, however, when averaged for the entire universe, time is a constant.”

“I think I understand now—a bit TMI, but okay. So what year are we in in this universe?”

“Again, Craig, it would be unwise—”

“You said you respect my free will.”

“I do. However—”

“Good enough,” Craig said as he lifted off, the A.I.’s holographic image disappearing and then reappearing in Craig’s mind’s eye as Craig flew through the largest of the holes in the ceiling and straight up over the building, trying to get above the tallest of the surrounding buildings to attain the best vantage point. It was only a matter of seconds before a colossal manmade structure appeared to the south, backdropped by a perfect blue morning. “Oh my God,” Craig whispered as he gazed at the Twin Towers.

“It’s September 11,” the A.I. finally conceded. “2001.”

3

Craig didn’t hesitate to ignite his cocoon and blast off as fast as he could toward the towers. “What time is it? How long do we have?”

“Craig, you have to stop,” the A.I. replied.

“What time is it, damnit!” Craig demanded.

Without warning, Craig’s forward momentum dropped dramatically, as though he were trying to make his way through thick molasses. “What are you doing? Stop it!” he shouted as he began to pull back from his intended destination.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot allow you—”

“So you’re a liar!” Craig shouted. “Free will? Bull!”

“I would never lie to you, Craig. However, you have not afforded me an opportunity to explain.”

“I’m tired of your attempts to justify—”

“My protestations are not only metaphysical, Craig. They are also practical. If you approach the Twin Towers, you will likely be apprehended and perhaps even killed immediately. The Purists may be waiting for you there, expecting you to make your move.”

“How?” Craig asked as he floated high above the city streets. “We just left them on the Titanic a few minutes ago. They had to find the Planck platform and sink the ship, and that would take—”

“Time, as you understand it, is irrelevant in this instance. The Planck platform creates an instability in space time that is chaotic and difficult to predict. The distortions are very much like water. Depending on where one catches the time wave, the discrepancy can be several minutes. It is not even impossible that the Purists actually arrived in this universe before we did.”

Craig’s eyes narrowed as he stared toward the towers, a grimace forming on his lips. “That sucks, but it’s not enough to make me give up. We still have to try.”

“I shall help you,” the A.I. replied, “but you must listen to my plan.”

“I’m all ears.”

“While trying to intercept the airplanes at the tower would be a fool’s errand, virtually guaranteeing that the Purists would be able to stop you at their leisure, there is another way.”

Craig immediately understood. “The airport! Do we still have time?”

“It is currently 7:31 a.m. Lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta will be boarding American Airlines Flight 11 at 7:35 a.m. at Boston’s Logan International Airport. I can get us there if you allow me to take over your flight systems.”

“You’ve already done that.”

“Yes. However, I won’t go anywhere without your permission,” the A.I. replied.

“Fine! You have my permission! Let’s go!”

Without a word, the A.I. turned Craig around to face north and blasted off. In just seconds, they had accelerated to a speed Craig had never experienced before.

“Holy…this is fast.”

“Logan is 310 kilometers away, so to make it in time, we have to travel nearly 6,000 kilometers per hour.”

“Will we make it?”

“Assuredly. However, we will not be able to stop the coordinated attacks. I will patch you through to the security at Logan, and you can have them relay the information and stop all four flights from taking off.”

“What am I supposed to tell them? ‘I’m a guy from the future with a robot in my head. A bunch of terrorists are going to fly planes into the Twin Towers. Please have Airport Security detain them.’ I don’t think they’d buy it. I’ll find myself in a straightjacket before breakfast!”

“Tell them the truth. You’re former U.S. Air Force Special Forces.”

“Can’t you tell them? I don’t know all the details. It’s been a while since I’ve read a history book.”

“I’m just a voice in your head, Craig. I can connect the call, but I can’t talk to them. I’ll prompt you. Don’t worry.”

“What if they don’t believe me?”

“That won’t be a problem. Tell them you’re on your way and there’s about to be an incident—a major incident.”

4

“We are twenty seconds out,” the A.I. informed Craig as they slowed their approach to the airport. “I’ve already examined the schematics of the airport. Flight 11 boarded at Gate B32. We’ll be entering through the window.”

“Through the window? You mean crashing through?”

“Yes, and in rather dramatic fashion, I’m afraid.”

“That’s fine with me,” Craig growled, his upper lip curling atavistically.

“The pictures of each hijacker have been uploaded into your facial recognition. They board at different times, but all five men will be at the gate. We can knock each of them unconscious automatically with an energy blast—”

“Not happening,” Craig replied.

“Why not?”

The window was now visible as the A.I. guided Craig toward it.

“Because these guys need to feel some discomfort.”

A second later, the brilliant green cocoon smashed through the floor-to-ceiling window adjacent to Gate B32. It was 7:35, and Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari were next in line to board Flight 11.

As he stood to his feet, Craig’s mind’s eye immediately locked onto the two targets, as well as the other three hijackers who remained at their seats—though, like everyone else, they’d gotten down on the ground to protect themselves.

Atta stood, ticket in hand. He was dressed in a blue dress shirt and dark dress pants with a black bag slung over his shoulder. His eyes were wild with surprise, and they quickly darted in the direction of his companions. He remained frozen, hoping the bizarre figure who’d smashed through the glass was not there for him and that they would remain undetected. When Craig’s eyes met his, he and the others turned to run.

“I have them,” the A.I. said as he flashed energy in the direction of four of the five hijackers.

All four of them went limp and dropped to the ground instantly—all except for Atta, who continued to run, not stopping to check on his companions.

Craig lifted off into the air, and a young girl screamed as Craig landed in front of his prey. “I know who you are,” Craig seethed.

Atta’s eyes were stretched with fear as Craig moved in. He reached into his bag, retrieving his box cutter and holding it threateningly. “Stay back!”

Craig smiled. “Just try it, son.”

Atta backpedaled and swiped wildly in the air in front of him to keep Craig at bay.

“Are you sure this is what you want, Craig?” the A.I. asked, his voice analytical more than emotional, once again reminding Craig of a psychiatrist.

“This is something you just can’t understand,” Craig replied as he lunged forward, reaching for Atta’s throat with both hands outstretched. He grasped it, but Atta stabbed with his weapon, the blade of the box cutter sinking into the middle of Craig’s throat. As blood jetted from the wound, Craig grasped the wrist of the hand that held the box cutter and squeezed hard with his powerful grip, causing Atta to drop the weapon. With his right hand, Craig continued to squeeze Atta’s throat, his thumb digging hard into the man’s Adam’s apple. Atta grabbed Craig’s wrist with his left hand, hoping to lessen Craig’s grip and avoid having his trachea crushed.

“This is reckless, Craig,” the A.I. observed. “If you were not a post-human, the wound to your neck would be fatal.”

Craig couldn’t reply; though his nans were hard at work, repairing the damage to his throat, the bleeding still hadn’t completely stopped, and he was having difficulty breathing. It didn’t matter, however. As far as he was concerned, there was no way he was going to lose a fight to a fiend like Atta.

“Watch out, Craig,” the A.I. warned. “You have not secured his left hand, and once he realizes that he can’t prevent you from crushing his throat, he will inevitably attempt to knock you unconscious with a corkscrew left to your temple.”

Craig knew the A.I. was probably right; that would be Craig’s next move if he were in Atta’s shoes. Preemptively, Craig released his grip on Atta’s throat and used his right hand to secure Atta’s left, and then swiftly head-butted the would-be hijacker in the nose, breaking it. Atta stumbled back, and Craig swept out his legs with a sweeper kick of his own, knocking Atta flat on his back.

Once the fight was on the ground, it was over. Craig mounted Atta’s chest and began leveling devastating blows against Atta’s face. His goal was not to knock the man unconscious with hard shots to the jaw, throat, or temple. His goal was to cause pain. The man under him was a murderer—a would-be mass murderer of thousands. He’d wrapped himself in a delusion, convinced himself that it was okay to murder for a greater good. Craig was tired of self-righteous scum like him. Atta deserved no sympathy.

“Craig,” the A.I. said as he watched the destruction of the man’s face below, “you’ll kill him if you continue.”

“That’s the idea,” Craig replied, his voice hoarse, unrecognizable even to himself.

“I thought your primary purpose was to protect life—not to take it.”

“I’ve killed before,” Craig answered. “I’ve never enjoyed it. Not until now.”

“This is not a path I believe you should follow, Craig.”

“What would you know? You don’t even have emotions.”

“I do have emotions,” the A.I. asserted. “I just haven’t developed an emotional intelligence that passes the Turing test.”

“Well, talk to me when you do,” Craig replied as he continued leveling blows on the face of the now unconscious Atta. “I’m no orthodontist, but I think if I really concentrate, I can knock out every one of his teeth individually.”

“Craig,” the A.I. said.

“Leave me alone, I said. Free will. Remember?”

“Craig!” the A.I. suddenly shouted with enough urgency that it jolted Craig free from his bloodlust.

“What?” he asked as he straightened his back.

“The television in the corner! At your eleven o’clock high!”

Craig looked up to see an old television set mounted on a bracket in the corner of the room. The news was playing. “No,” Craig whispered when he saw the news report on the screen. The Twin Towers were there, black smoke billowing from each, an image that seemed all too familiar. “How can this be? We stopped them before they boarded!”

The A.I. didn’t need to answer. The news cameras on a nearby helicopter had captured live footage of three Purist super soldiers flying in a circular pattern around the base of the structures, unloading their devastating weaponry at the towers.

5

Craig’s body shook, fury coursing through his veins while the A.I. flew them back to New York.

“This will be a very dangerous endeavor,” the A.I. noted.

“I don’t care,” Craig growled in return. “I’m sick of these bastards.”

“Even so,” the A.I. replied, “it is always best to enter battle with a sound strategy.”

“Again, I’m all ears if you have something to suggest.”

“Indeed I do. The Purists are equipped with automatic targeting software. So, even if the men themselves don’t recognize that they’ve seen you, if their computer’s onboard pattern recognition sees you, their cybernetic arms will automatically take aim and fire. In other words, if the computer detects you, it’ll hit you with its neutralizer, and the fight will be over. Any fantasies you might have about barrel-rolling to avoid their fire and outsmarting them in a dog fight are just that—fantasies.”

“So what are you telling me? The fight’s over before it begins? Are they unbeatable?”

“No. You do have a number of advantages. First, their flight technology is nowhere near as capable as yours. Their wings are made from woven carbon nanotubes, which make them extremely strong while still allowing for them to fold, but, in the end, they are a poor substitute for any wings in nature. The microjet engines only have twenty minutes of thrust capability before they run out of fuel. Also, they’re heavy, severely limiting the super soldiers’ maneuverability.”

“How does extra maneuverability help me if I can’t engage them in a dog fight?”

“It doesn’t. However, you won’t be engaging them. When we were interacting with them on the Titanic, I noted another major design flaw. There don’t appear to be any rear-facing cameras on their equipment, which means they are blind to anything above them while they are in flight. If you come at them from on high and hit them with an electromagnetic pulse, you’ll shut down all their computer and electrical systems.”

“Including their jets?”

“Yes, but not only that. Their cybernetic prosthetics will also stop functioning, including their eyes.”

Craig’s lips pulled back into a grin. “Beautiful. So they’ll be blind, flying torsos weighed down by hundreds of pounds of equipment. I love it.”

The towers emerged on the horizon with black smoke billowing high above them.

“Okay. Let’s come in high,” Craig said.

“With your permission, I think I’m best suited for executing this maneuver.”

“Agreed,” Craig replied. “Go for it.”

They began to gain altitude quickly, New York shrinking below them as they climbed, high above the smoke.

“We should be right above them now,” the A.I. observed, “but I can’t detect them as of yet. We’re going to have to come down hard and fast to maximize our chances of catching them by surprise. Brace yourself.”

Craig smiled. “Trust me. I’ve come down harder and faster before.”

“We’ll see,” the A.I. replied an instant before they began their descent, blasting down toward the World Trade Center site.

Craig gritted his teeth as they picked up speed and the grid of city blocks quickly grew larger. He suddenly wished he hadn’t boasted to the A.I. as he stifled a scream.

“I’ve got them,” the A.I. announced as he simultaneously released electromagnetic energy pulses that sped downward toward the three specks that continued to circle the Twin Towers.

“Good eyes,” Craig commented as he marveled at the A.I.’s ability to detect the three tiny objects below them. “Did you hit them?”

“Of course,” the A.I. replied. “They’re in dire straights now. We’ll have to guide them to safety.”

“I don’t think so,” Craig countered. “Let’s see how they manage on their own.”

“They may die,” the A.I. cautioned.

“That’s a damn shame,” Craig replied as he watched the three Purists, now less than 100 meters below him, struggling to keep their altitude. They flew in formation, desperately trying to reach the rooftop of Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex.

“Can you live with this?” the A.I. asked.

“They just killed 2,000 on the Titanic and tried to kill thousands more here—yeah, I can live with it.”

As soon as the words escaped his lips, one of the three Purists began to quickly lose control. The left wing dipped slightly, and though the super soldier was able to quickly correct it and level out, the lost inertia caused the heavy glider to go into a tailspin. Craig watched the man drop down, tumbling uncontrollably over fifty stories.

Meanwhile, the other two stricken super soldiers were able to guide themselves over the edge of the rooftop, crashing uncontrolled onto the gravel surface.

Craig heard the voice of Colonel Paine as he groaned in agony. Craig sneered.

“Set me down,” Craig told the A.I. As instructed, the A.I. set Craig down on the rooftop only a few paces away from the two remaining crippled super soldiers. He stepped toward Paine, who had rolled onto his side, his prosthetic limbs awkwardly crossed in front of him.

“Is that you, Doc?” Paine said in a voice barely more than a whisper. A trickle of blood-stained saliva dangled from his bottom lip. “I can’t see, Doc. I went blind. I had to guide myself down to where I’d seen this rooftop an instant before everything went black. Did my men make it?”

“One of them,” Craig confirmed as he looked over to Degrechie’s crumpled form. He was glad that it had been Drummey who’d crashed.

“Which one?”

“Degrechie.”

Paine’s face screwed up into an ugly expression; Craig wasn’t sure if it was from a sudden stab of physical pain or genuine remorse about his fallen comrade. “Damn it, Doc. Damn it.”

Craig shook his head and looked across to the billowing smoke that was still pouring out from the Twin Towers. “How’s it look?” he asked the A.I. “Will it survive this time?”

“It appears so,” the A.I. replied. “The Purists must have exhausted their explosives sinking the Titanic. The damage done to the Twin Towers appears to be mostly superficial.”

Craig sighed with relief. “Finally. Something goes my way.”

“However,” the A.I. continued, “there were doubtless casualties when they began unloading their weapons into the tower in their attempts to destroy it. We can only hope this was somewhat mitigated by the early hour.”

Craig nodded regretfully before crouching down next to Paine. “What were you thinking? Was all of that just to lure me here?”

Paine shook his head as he continued to struggle for breath. It took him a moment before he could speak. “I knew what you’d do. I knew you’d head to the airport. There was no way we could stop you. All we could do was try to bring the buildings down ourselves.”

“Why?” Craig asked, exasperated. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Doc…” Paine began, shaking with the effort to speak, “…you don’t belong here. You’re not of this universe. Those towers were meant to fall. You don’t have the right to interfere.”

Disgusted, Craig stood to his feet. “All right. Now what?” he asked the A.I.

“We have options,” the A.I. informed. “We can either find the Planck the Purists used to enter this universe and continue on our journey as Aldous intended—”

“Whoa! Wait a second there,” Craig interrupted. “I thought you said we couldn’t alter our course, but now you’re saying we can?”

“Not exactly,” the A.I. replied. “What I am saying is that the Planck platform the Purists used on the Titanic, the one we procured from them to travel to our current location, is an older model. While it is perfectly safe, it isn’t as powerful and has a smaller range. If the Purists are to be believed and Professor Sanha Cho is really helping them, then it was he who activated their Planck and set it on a course to match us with a range of three parallel universes. After the third universe, it will only have enough power to bring the Planck back to Universe 1.”

“Our universe? Home?”

“Correct.”

Craig slapped his hands together excitedly. “Well hot-diggity! We’re in business then!” He reached down and grabbed Paine by the back of his jacket before dragging him across the roof so he could do likewise to Degrechie. “Let’s get to it,” he said as he lifted off the roof of the building and began flying toward the short-range Planck platform.

“Indeed, but Craig, remember that Aldous wanted us to remain in the bulk, traveling from universe to universe so we could avoid detection and return when it was safer. If we return ahead of schedule, we are sure to encounter—”

“It’s already too late for that,” Craig replied. “The Purists are on to us. Whether we run for one more universe or fourteen more, it won’t matter. In the end, there’s only one way back to Universe 1—through the Planck machine back at the complex.”

They set down several blocks away on the rooftop on which Craig and the A.I. had originally entered Universe 332. He roughly placed both Paine and Degrechie on the platform, folding their limp prosthetic limbs so they fit safely on the silver disk.

“There is more that you need to know, Craig,” said the A.I.

“Okay,” Craig replied as he huffed and puffed from the exertion of moving the heavy bodies. “Hit me with it.”

“The next universe—the next historical event—is one for which you may not be prepared.”

“Why? What could be worse than what we’ve been through already?”

“Craig, we’ll be going to a universe that is fourteen years behind Universe 1—to Shenzhen, China.”

6

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not particularly comfortable with humor at the moment, Craig,” the A.I. replied, “so I avoid ‘kidding,’ as you put it. Unfortunately, I am quite serious.”

“I’m going to see my own SOLO jump?”

“We should be appearing on the ground to witness the confrontation between you and the MAD robot known as Robbie. Then we will witness the destruction of the Chinese A.I. by a tactical nuke not long afterward.”

Craig placed a hand on his forehead and shook his head. “Why would Aldous possibly have wanted to see that?”

“It’s one of history’s most important events,” the A.I. replied before adding, somewhat uncertainly, “amongst other possible, more personal reasons.”

“Other reasons? What are you talking about?”

“As I’ve said, Craig, since I have not yet passed the Turing test, my understanding of human psychology is purely objective. Please keep that in mind when listening to my theory.”

“Noted,” Craig replied impatiently. “Go ahead.”

“Have you noticed any similarities between the three worlds we’ve visited so far?”

“Yeah,” Craig nodded. “I’ve noticed a whole lot of people on the verge of dying in each one.”

“But beyond that,” the A.I. responded, “have you noticed a certain pattern in the events?”

“Just cut the bull. What are you driving at?”

“In my opinion, Aldous chose these events because they have a particular fascination for him. Both the Titanic disaster and 9/11, it can be argued, are examples of magnificent human achievement thwarted. The Titanic was the world’s largest ship, and the most technologically advanced human-built structure in the world when it sank. Similarly, the World Trade Center buildings were the tallest in the world at the time of their completion. Also, it can be argued that the Titanic and the Twin Towers were the ultimate symbols of both the British and American empires, and both empires crumbled shortly after those important, yet devastating events.”

“But the Chinese didn’t have an empire. They’d been isolated.”

“True, but empire was their goal. Indeed, their A.I. was that civilization’s crowning achievement—before it was destroyed.”

“So you’re saying Aldous has a fascination with tragedy?”

“I think a man who has spent his entire life trying to cure death and give birth to strong artificial intelligence could certainly be accused of a degree of hubris, wouldn’t you agree?” the A.I. asked rhetorically. “I think Aldous is drawn to these events because they are examples of magnificent technological achievement—yet they are also the embodiments of the myth of Icarus—humanity reaching too far, going too close to the sun and, therefore, drawing too close to the gods in a sense. Surely you can see why this story might apply to Aldous. He must subconsciously fear that he, too, will face Icarus’s fate.”

Craig nodded impatiently. “Okay, so Aldous is a freak. I knew that already. Luckily, while you were giving your psychoanalysis, I was coming up with a plan.”

“Oh?”

“My plan is to go to the next universe, save my SOLO team, destroy the Chinese A.I., and then bring a couple of them back with us to Universe 1.”

“Members of your SOLO team?” the A.I. reacted, surprised.

“Yes. They’re heavily armed. It would give us a fighting chance once we get back home.”

“May I remind you, Craig, that the SOLO worked for the Purist government? Their stated mission is the destruction of strong A.I.—not the preservation of it.”

“After we save their butts and help them destroy the Chinese A.I., I’m sure they’ll be happy to return the favor. I’ll just need to explain a few things.”

The A.I.’s expression was one of dubiousness.

“Trust me. I know these guys,” Craig said reassuringly.

“That sounds familiar.”

“Ha! An attempt at sarcasm. And you said you never kid.”

Craig stepped onto the Planck platform, careful not to step on either Paine or Degrechie in the process. He clapped his hands together once again and exhaled excitedly, shaking out his arms and rolling his neck as he prepared for yet another universe jump. “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s do this, Hoss.”

“As you wish,” the A.I. replied before activating the platform once again.

7

Craig had forgotten how hellish the terrain of Shenzhen was on the lip of the impact crater. The fallout had not yet receded, and the sun was blocked by the dust cloud that enveloped them.

“I’m keeping the platform’s magnetic field active to protect the Purists from the radiation,” the A.I. said.

“I guess I’ll have to activate my field as well once I step off the platform.”

“Actually, that won’t be necessary. Your nans are capable of repairing any physical damage that the radiation may cause.”

“Nice,” Craig replied, impressed. “What time is it? How long do we have?” Craig asked.

“I would need to see the position of the sun—”

“Done,” Craig replied immediately as he ignited his cocoon and flew straight up through the dust cloud. In seconds, they emerged and entered the sunshine.

“We’ve arrived after your SOLO jump began,” the A.I. informed Craig. “They’ll be here in two minutes and four seconds.”

“The Chinese A.I. hacked our HUDs and threw us all off course. We were supposed to open just above the crater—”

“Yes, it is all contained in the historical record,” the A.I. interrupted.

“We have to catch them. Can we do that with the magnetic field?”

“I’m afraid not,” the A.I. replied. “In the future, the technology will have more capability, but as of yet, the protective cocoon and the flat wall we used to push the Titanic are the only shapes the fields can take.”

“Can we use the flat surface—”

“Like a giant trampoline? I’m sorry, Craig, the technology does not, as of yet, have that capability.”

“So what do I do?”

“You’ll have to find a way to make them open their parachutes earlier.”

“Heh,” Craig scoffed as he blasted upward, streaking to meet his SOLO team and his double, “thanks for the help.”

A second later, Craig’s HUD suddenly went blank, before briefly turning back on and then going blank once again.

“Uh, my HUD just went down,” Weddell stated in controlled alarm.

“Mine too,” Craig replied.

“We’re all down,” Wilson quickly realized. “We’re gonna have to open high and do it manually!”

Then, just as suddenly as they had flashed off, the HUDs came back online.

“I’m back up!” Craig shouted.

“Is everyone back up?” Wilson shouted.

Each member of the team confirmed.

“Okay! Then we stick to the original plan. Adjust to thirty-five degrees!”

Craig watched the time to opening tick down on his HUD. They were now only a minute away from their computer-controlled low opening. Their speed was slowing, but something didn’t feel right.

“Commander, have the onboard SOLO systems ever glitched like this before?” Craig asked.

“No. This is a first,” Wilson replied.

“Then I recommend we do a high manual—”

“Cut the chatter, Doc!” Wilson shouted. “Concentrate!”

The yellow dust covering the ground was closing in below them, its surface gleaming in the sunlight as it crawled like a yellow, living fog.

Then, suddenly, something else became visible. A green light, growing larger by the second, was coming toward them, seemingly emerging from the dust below.

“We’ve been compromised!” Wilson shouted as soon as he saw the luminescent projectile moving in. “Break formation! Break formation!” he screamed out.

The SOLO team members broke away from each other, hoping to evade the unknown weapon that was quickly bearing down on them.

Unfortunately for Craig, the evasive maneuver did nothing to help him. The green missile had a bead on him, moving intelligently to match his speed and trajectory, and impact was imminent. The horrifying reality suddenly reached into Craig’s skull and laid its frozen fingers over his brain. “Oh no,” he whispered.

And then, just as all seemed lost, the projectile stopped only a meter in front of him and he saw, what appeared for a moment to be his reflection on its surface. When the reflection moved its lips and urgently gestured for Craig to pull his chute release, he realized this was something else—something bizarre—something fantastic.

With twenty seconds left before his computer-controlled opening was scheduled, Craig pulled the emergency lever, and his chute billowed out above him. When his drop speed settled into a gentle descent, the green light suddenly disappeared, and Craig was left looking at his reflection, unobscured.

“Hey there,” it said. “We need to talk.”

8

“How am I hearing you over my com link?” Craig’s twin asked him.

“I’ve got a computer in my brain,” Craig replied. “They call it the mind’s eye. I’m using it to connect to your com system.”

“A computer in your brain? That technology doesn’t exist. I’d know if it did.”

“It doesn’t yet. I’m from the future.”

Craig’s twin was momentarily dumbfounded. He looked down at the yellow dust cloud that was quickly approaching and then back up at Craig. “What kind of trick is this?”

“It’s not a trick,” Craig replied. “Look, I’m not an illusion. Trust me—I’m from the future. I know what happens down there, and it doesn’t go well. I’m here to help you.”

Craig’s twin looked down at the dust once again. He knew they’d be entering it in seconds. “That’s heavy fallout we’re about to enter,” he warned.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m good,” Craig replied. “You’re the one who’s in danger. The Chinese A.I. is still active.”

“What?”

“It survived. It’s going to hack into Robbie and use it to kill your SOLO team. We’ve got to stop it.”

“Robbie? Damn it,” Craig’s twin cursed as the yellow dust swallowed them.

The ground appeared a moment later, and they landed. The chute automatically ejected and disappeared into the cloud. “What about my team? Where are they?”

“I’m not sure,” Craig replied as he held his hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the dust. “When I spooked you guys, I changed the course of events. In my universe—”

“In your universe? I thought you said you’re from the future?”

“I did,” Craig replied, “and I am—it’s complicated. Look, in my universe, the Chinese A.I. caused the glitch in your telemetry—”

“I knew it!”

“Yes, and Wilson hit the ground hard. Robbie stole your exoskeleton and your weapon and used it to kill the rest of the team.”

“And you? I mean…me?”

Before Craig could answer, he was interrupted by a short burst of gunfire not far behind him. He turned, stunned.

“Did that come from my team?” the twin asked. “Did they find Robbie?”

“That was Purist ammunition, Craig,” the A.I. warned. “It was located near our Planck platform.”

“How?” Craig asked, astonished as he squinted, struggling to peer into the dust. “I thought we knocked out their electrical systems.”

“It’s almost certain that the Chinese A.I. managed to reactivate them and has commandeered one of the Purists, Craig. You and your doppelganger need to proceed with extreme caution.”

“Commandeered? How? They’re people.”

“With cybernetic prosthetics, controlled by a hackable system.”

“Oh my God,” Craig replied before turning to his twin. “We’re in trouble. We need to get out of—”

“Watch out!” Craig’s twin suddenly shouted as he watched an uncanny figure emerge from out of the yellow dust behind Craig.

Before Craig had a chance to react, the Purist neutralizer had hit him from behind, instantly knocking him to the ground and suspending his powers. As his face hit the dusty ground, he watched as his twin removed his rifle from its holster on his back, only to have it knocked out of his hand by the first of several bullets to enter his body.

Craig listened to the sound of his own voice screaming in his ears. “No!” he shouted as he watched his twin fall to the ground, dozens of bullets riddling his torso, each steaming as their searing heat was expelled from deep inside the wounds.

Craig turned onto his back and watched as Colonel Paine moved toward him with his rifle drawn, the barrel still smoking.

“It’s not me, Doc!” Paine shouted as he squirmed, thrashing his body in an attempt to regain control. “Something’s got control! It shot Degrechie! Christ!”

“No,” Craig whispered as he realized that he’d run out of lives. Without his MTF functioning, there was no way to protect himself. He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you,” he whispered to the A.I. as he waited for the same fate that had met his twin.

9

Strangely, there came no reply. Craig reopened his eyes. The Chinese A.I. had still not opened fire, though the barrel of Colonel Paine’s rifle remained aimed squarely at Craig’s forehead.

“Doc?” Colonel Paine asked, confused. “What’s going on?”

Craig’s eyes remained locked on the barrel of the gun. The smoking hole was black and empty. He thought of Sam. He thought of his twin, lying dead only two meters to his left.

“I’ve established communication,” the A.I. suddenly said through his mind’s eye. “Standby.”

Craig’s eyebrows knitted, disbelief painting itself across his face. He dared look up from the barrel and into Paine’s golden irises.

“Doc?” Paine repeated, perplexed as he stopped struggling, waiting for his limbs to move again.

Craig shook his head slightly.

Then, suddenly, the limbs came to life once again, the right arm of Paine lifting the rifle before his feet pivoted, his knees bent, and his left arm reached down to grasp Craig’s shoulder, spinning him onto his stomach.

“What the—”

“Brace yourself,” the A.I. cautioned. “This will be quite painful.”

The sound of the drill started only a second before it sank into Craig’s lower back. With extraordinary efficiency, the Chinese A.I. used Paine’s cybernetic arm to drill toward Craig’s MTF and remove it from his body. Craig heard himself scream once again, only this time the screams were escaping his own lips.

“The nans are releasing endorphins,” the A.I. offered in an awkward attempt to be soothing.

The drill stopped. The Chinese A.I. grasped the MTF generator and held it, using Paine’s eyes to examine it briefly before opening one of the pouches on Paine’s vest and placing it there for safekeeping.

“I’m sorry, Doc. I’ve got no control,” Paine said regretfully. Paine’s legs turned him around so they could coil briefly before springing away, causing him to disappear into the dust cloud.

“I’m sorry, Craig,” the A.I. said.

“Why?” Craig managed to ask between unbearable stabs of shooting pain from the massive wound in his back. “Why did it do that? Why didn’t it kill me?”

“I lied to it to buy us more time,” the A.I. replied. “We’re not finished yet.”

“You lied? What did you tell it?” Craig asked as he continued to pant heavily, his muscles contracting with each excruciating firing of his nerves.

“I told it what I am. I explained what the Planck platform is. I told it I would help it use it to escape. Luckily, there is no lie detection software for A.I.s.”

“But if it believed you, why did it remove my implant?”

“It isn’t taking chances. That was a smart, strategic move. I’m sorry, Craig. I would have stopped it if I could.”

The endorphins the A.I. had ordered the nans to release were finally starting to dull the pain, but it was still impossible for Craig to move. Only twenty-four hours earlier, he’d been in nearly the exact same position. “I am fortune’s fool,” he whispered.

“Not yet,” the A.I. replied. “It has used Colonel Paine’s cybernetic system to physically reenter the impact crater and retrieve its solid state central processing and memory unit—its core. It will then place the core on the Planck platform and force me to activate the platform, sending us all into Universe 1.”

“You’re going to bring it back with us to Universe 1?”

“Never,” the A.I. answered.

“But—” Craig began to protest before the Earth seemed to shudder beneath him. Looking up, he saw the cause of the disturbance: the Chinese A.I. had retrieved its core, a black cube roughly the size of a washing machine with a deep dent on one of its sides. Even with Paine’s cybernetic prosthesis strength at its disposal, moving the giant cube was a challenge. It appeared to be hurling the device several meters at a time until, it finally made its way up from the bowels of the crater far below, the device landing with a thud that reminded Craig of the sonic boom percussion he’d experienced on his SOLO jump.

“That’s its brain?” Craig reacted.

“Yes. It has roughly the same processing power as my own mother program. However, you are witnessing Moore’s Law in action. Whereas the Chinese A.I.’s core weighs approximately two tons, mine can be stored in a network of seven million microscopic nanobots.”

“We can’t let it get that onto the Planck,” Craig stated as he struggled to turn onto his stomach, hoping to use his arms to drag himself over the dusty terrain toward the Planck.

“Don’t worry. I won’t,” the A.I. replied, as Robbie suddenly appeared from out of the dust, leaping over Craig and hurtling toward Paine and the Chinese A.I.’s core. “I’ve got this.”

10

Through the heavy dust, Craig was able to see the silhouette of Robbie’s body as it collided with Paine’s, causing Paine to call out in surprise. The Chinese A.I. had attempted to pull out its rifle in the instant that it saw Robbie approaching, but it was already too late. The A.I. was able to knock the weapon away, and the two artificial intelligences began to grapple in a battle that was spectacular to behold. The artificial limbs moved with uncanny speed, performing maneuvers that were beyond those any human could ever execute. They were the embodiment of Newtonian physics—each kick, each punch designed to land with the most power mathematically possible, causing the most damage.

The problem was, as perfect and skillful as the maneuvers were, the defenses were equally perfect. The speed of the Purist cybernetic prosthetics was slightly faster than the limbs of Robbie, but Paine’s human core was a disadvantage with which the Chinese A.I. had to contend by combatting his attacker conservatively. It was a stalemate.

An idea suddenly crossed Craig’s mind. Still on his belly, he began to turn away from the uncanny robotic confrontation and use his arms to crawl toward his fallen twin. The twin’s rifle was still in his hand. Craig struggled like a toddler on a kitchen floor to make his way to the gun, all the while hearing the sounds of carbon fiber limbs clashing, Colonel Paine occasionally reacting in terror when a blow came too close to his vulnerable human frame for comfort.

Craig made it to his twin and reached across the dead man’s belly for his gun. He pulled the weapon out of his twin’s hand, but before he turned, he caught a glimpse of his own face—his own open, vacant eyes—dead. Had he caused his own death in this universe? His twin had the respirocytes in his blood—if he could be put into a suspended animation body bag, maybe there was still a chance?

He turned away, rolling onto his back and drawing himself up painfully into a sitting position. Through the swirling dust, the faint outlines of the combatants were still visible, but that wasn’t his target. His target was the cube that the Chinese A.I. was desperately defending—its core—its brain.

Craig aimed carefully and then began unloading.

The impact was immediate. Although the first few bullets were not able to pierce the thick outer shell to reach the circuitry inside, they were enough to cause the Chinese A.I. considerable concern. As it began to step back, trying to shield the cube with Paine’s body, Robbie, controlled by the A.I., began to take advantage.

“Keep shooting, Craig!” the A.I. shouted through Craig’s mind’s eye. “We have it!”

Craig continued to shoot, eventually doing enough damage to weaken the shell enough for bullets to begin penetrating. Once the first bullets entered, the Chinese A.I.’s death knell was as good as sounded.

Paine’s limbs began to hesitate, and Robbie’s limbs took full advantage. It knocked Paine aside and jumped on top of the cube, pounding its powerful arms down upon the top of it, over and over, caving it in until it eventually cracked open. From there, the A.I. used Robbie’s arms to reach into the circuitry and begin pulling it out in a fashion that appeared maniacal to Craig. Bizarrely, the spectacle struck Craig as gruesome—the ripping, tearing circuitry appearing like blood and guts being torn from a fallen prey by its menacing, hungry predator. Mechanical though the spectacle may have been, Craig was strangely cognizant that he was witnessing a death.

He stopped firing.

Robbie’s head turned and looked in Craig’s direction, as though it were surprised. “Why did you stop, Craig?” the A.I. asked.

Before he could answer, Robbie’s head was gone, blasted off in one shot by Colonel Paine, who now stood triumphant, his smoking rifle in hand.

11

“Put it down, Doc!” Paine shouted as he aimed his rifle right at Craig. “The puppet strings have been cut. I’m back in control now, but if you aim that gun at me, my onboard computer is programmed to automatically fire a kill-shot, and unlike humans, it never misses!”

“He’s not bluffing, Craig!” the A.I. added with urgent caution. “If you aim your rifle, Colonel Paine’s gun will fire automatically, and it will kill both of us.”

“If I drop it, we’re dead anyway.”

“The fact that he warned us means that isn’t necessarily true ,” replied the A.I. “One option leads to guaranteed death, and the other leads to a high probability of death. I think the choice is obvious.”

“Yeah. Obvious,” Craig scoffed. “High probability of death it is then.” Craig dropped his rifle.

“Now, that was a good choice, Doc,” Paine replied as he strode through the dust, his imposing form seemingly materializing with each step until he stood, completely unobscured, just a meter away. “You may not believe this, but I’m really trying my damnedest not to kill you, Doc.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t show my wife the same consideration,” Craig seethed in reply.

Paine’s face remained frozen for a moment. “Drummey told you.”

Craig looked up into the golden irises but didn’t reply. The atavistic snarl on his curled lip said it all.

“Damn it. Loose lips while I was busy sinking ships. Heh.”

“You kill so much that it’s become a joke to you?” Craig growled.

“Hey, Doc, you’re the one who keeps making me have to go and kill people.”

“What?”

“They’re all supposed to be dead. You think I’m enjoying having to put things right?”

“I swear to God, if I get the chance, I am going to kill you.”

Paine sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that, Doc. I really am. I’m not the murderous Luddite that you think I am. I have a lot of sympathy for you. You’re a victim in all of this. Hell, you killed Drummey, and I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault. You’re a pawn of the post-humans. I blame Aldous Gibson…and I blame his wife.”

Craig shook his head in violent frustration. He wanted desperately to get to his feet and strangle Paine, but his legs were numb and could barely move. He was helpless—a captive audience for Paine’s attempts at explaining himself.

“You want me to feel sorry for a woman who betrayed her country? Betrayed her species? Betrayed you? Doc, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s because of that woman’s actions that I’ve had to go chasing you through these alternate timelines. It’s because of her that I’ve had to kill to put things right. You want me to feel sorry for her? Hell, Doc. I was glad as hell when I killed her, and I’m twice as glad now.”

“Stay calm, Craig,” the A.I. cautioned.

“Go to Hell,” Craig replied as he began trying to get to his feet. The attempt was pathetic, but there was nothing else he could do. He was blind with rage.

As Paine stood, wearing a smirk on his face as he watched Craig try to stand, a sound suddenly alerted both of them. Paine turned to see the silhouetted outline of four men; Craig’s SOLO team members had arrived.

12

“Of course, Doc, I’m gonna have to ask you to stay quiet,” Paine said as his cybernetic arms moved with preternatural speed, driving the butt of his rifle into Craig’s mouth, splitting it open and causing him to nearly lose consciousness.

Paine turned away and strode toward the four SOLO members. “Friendlies,” he said as he pressed a button on the earpiece of his helmet, disarming his automatic firing program. Then he held his rifle up above his head and shouted out, “I’m a friendly!”

Commander Wilson trained his rifle on the approaching figure as it materialized from out of the yellow dust. “Identify yourself!”

“Colonel Paine, U.S. Air Force!” Paine shouted back. He stopped just a few meters from the four SOLO members.

“Colonel Paine?” Lieutenant Commander Weddell reacted with astonishment, “of Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico?”

“That’s correct,” Paine replied, standing far enough away that the dust obscured the more disturbing details of his appearance.

“Holy…he’s the C.O.,” Wilson realized as he called Paine’s name up on his HUD. “Sir!” he shouted immediately as he lowered his weapon and saluted his superior, causing the rest of the team to follow suit.

Paine saluted in return, holding the salute as he gazed at the four ghosts that stood before him. “It’s not every day you get to salute true heroes,” Paine observed.

“Sir?” Wilson replied.

“It is an honor to meet you, men—a damn honor.”

Paine slowly lowered his salute, and the SOLO members did likewise.

“Sir, permission to speak freely?” Wilson asked.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to grant you that permission,” Paine replied, his voice filled with regret.

“Sir?” Wilson asked again as he peered through the dust. “Can I ask why you’re here? How?”

Paine remained silent and unmoving.

Confused and terrified, Wilson stepped forward, daring the wrath of his superior after deciding answers were more important. By the second step, his mouth had fallen open. The crosshatch of stretch marks surrounding the ocular implants and the cybernetic prosthetics dumbfounded Wilson, and he froze in place.

Paine grimaced before lifting his rifle and aiming it. A short burst of gunfire later, and all of the SOLO members were dead—again.

“Craig? Craig?” the A.I. said. “You’ve been concussed, but the nans are already repairing the damage. You should feel completely better in a few minutes.”

“The team…my team,” Craig replied, dazed, his head swimming in waters of agony.

“I’m afraid Colonel Paine has already eliminated them,” the A.I. answered.

As if on cue, Paine returned to the scene, dragging the decapitated body of Robbie the robot with him. He tossed it next to Craig, the heavy body hitting the ground with a percussive thud. “The suspended animation body bags—where are they?”

Craig turned on his side and pointed at a minute crevice in the small of the robot’s back.

Paine drove his powerful fist into it, causing the flap to snap down and the body bags to tumble out. He retrieved one and then grabbed the foot of Craig’s twin, pulling the body toward him. “I’m not a hypocrite, Doc. It’s all about setting things right—setting things the way they were meant to be. I hope to Hell your ex-wife isn’t able to bring you back in this universe, because if she does, there’s a Colonel Paine in this universe that will have to come looking for you to fix all the damage you cause. I hope she chokes on a chicken bone and dies first, but it’s not up to me,” he explained as he finished putting Craig’s twin into the bag. “It’s not up to anyone outside of this universe. You understand?”

Craig watched as Paine sealed the bag, the open, vacant eyes the last thing he saw of his twin as they disappeared into the darkness.

“I am fortune’s fool,” he whispered.

13

WAKING UP intermittently over the next few hours, Craig only remembered hazy clips of his journey in Purist custody from the post-human facility at Mount Andromeda to the dark, circular room in which he now found himself. He remembered being roughly dragged off the Planck platform, and he remembered someone sticking his neck with a needle. After that, it was a whirlwind. The cold wind stirred him briefly as he wheeled through the darkness on some sort of stretcher, his wrists and ankles cuffed so he couldn’t move. They were on a tarmac, the sound of a jet engine from a transport nearly deafening. After that, he remembered being taken out of a shuttle bus, the stretcher roughly thudding onto the ground. For the briefest of moments, Craig saw what appeared to be the underbelly of a gray dome, so high and sprawling that it seemed like the sky had suddenly sprouted fluorescent lighting.

And now, here he was, finally able to keep his eyes open. He was still cuffed to a bed, both his wrists and ankles secured, and the bed was inclined at a twenty-degree angle.

“You are in a military facility within Endurance Bio-Dome in the former city of Seattle, Washington,” the A.I. said in his usual calm and informative manner. “It is one of 431 super bio-domes constructed to shelter large populations from the worst effects of the nuclear winter.”

Craig tried to reply, but only a groan emanated from him.

“They’ve been giving you Diprivan, a general anesthetic. They’re trying to bring you out from under it now, and I’m attempting to augment the process by releasing endorphins. You should be feeling much better in a few moments.”

The A.I. was right as, moments later, Craig was feeling oddly aware and confident. “What’s happening? Why are we here?”

“I haven’t been able to see much with you unconscious, but I have been able to hear snippets of conversations from time to time. From what I have gathered, they have brought in an expert who is leading the effort to remove the nanobots that house my mother program from your person.”

“How long was I out?”

“Nine hours and thirty minutes. We’ve been in Endurance Bio-Dome for at least four hours and eleven minutes, though I cannot be sure what time we entered because you were unconscious. Thus, obviously, your eyes were shut.”

“Good enough,” Craig replied.

“It’s amazing,” a familiar voice said from behind Craig. “You’re talking to it right now, aren’t you?”

“Who’s there?” Craig asked, surprised.

“You may not remember me,” the voice replied, “but I remember you.”

The woman to whom the voice belonged stepped out from behind Craig and crossed in front of him with a slight smile painted across her lips, revealing her still beautiful, if no longer perfectly white teeth.

“Daniella?” Craig exhaled, astonished.

Daniella’s smile broadened. “You remember.”

14

“You’re the expert they’re using to carve up my brain?” Craig reacted in disbelief.

“What? No,” Daniella replied, shaking her head. “I’m here to help you.”

“If you’re working for them, you’re not here to help me,” Craig replied.

“Whoa! Hold on there, cowboy,” Daniella responded with indignation. “I’m here to help you. Every member of my team is here to help you. If we didn’t have your best interest at heart, we’d just toss you into an industrial-sized blender and stick the goo that comes out into a centrifuge until we separate the nanobots. We could do that, you know. I’m not just being glib.”

“Nice.”

“But we obviously aren’t going that route,” Daniella added in exasperation. “We’re here to help you. Everyone here is filled with human compassion. Don’t worry. No matter how long it takes, we’ll get you back to normal.”

“What gives you the right to say what’s normal?” Craig retorted.

Daniella was taken aback, her head tilting backward, as though she’d been tapped on the chin. “Uh, normal isn’t having an artificial intelligence stuck in your brain, cowboy,” she replied.

“There shouldn’t be a line,” Craig answered before turning his face from her and examining the room. For the most part, it was barren, dark, and circular, with one door on Craig’s left.

“There’s a guard stationed outside at all times—a super soldier, I’m afraid,” the A.I. noted.

“If there’s no line,” Daniella continued, “then how are we to know who’s human and who’s not?”

“An expert in nanotechnology is concerned that augmentation will lead to a blurring of the line between human and machine?” Craig observed.

Daniella paused for a moment, her eyebrows knitted. This was not what she had been expecting from Craig. She’d been expecting him to lavish her with praise, that he’d be thrilled that she was there to remove the A.I. infestation from his body. She’d assumed he’d think of it as a cancer, something eating away at his soul and killing him.

“Why are you helping them?” Craig suddenly asked, turning to her and staring hard into her eyes.

“Them? Craig, we’re on the same team—or at least we were.”

“That’s right,” Craig nodded. “We were. I think you should take a real hard look at your teammates and ask yourself if you’re playing on the right side.”

15

Paine entered his quarters, shut the door behind him, and immediately doubled over in agony. It was not hyperbole to say his stomach felt as though he’d swallowed barbed wire for breakfast. An implacable nausea had settled over him, but he knew vomiting wouldn’t help; only blood would come up anyway. No, he needed to bear his burden.

He turned to his desk and swiped his hand over the OLED touchscreen, activating his holo-projectors. The Presidential Seal hovered in front of him, the seal of the ruler of the world. Paine grimaced while he stood waiting, staring into the seal and all that it meant. The Latin E pluribus unum was still inscribed on it, just as it had been when an earlier version was the Presidential Seal of the United States of America: “Out of many, one.” It seemed so much more meaningful now, in the era of the one-world state.

As Paine became uncharacteristically lost in his thoughts, President Morgan’s image suddenly appeared in holographic form before him. “Mr. President,” Paine said in greeting as he saluted.

“Colonel Paine,” Morgan replied, saluting in return. He was an older gentleman, now in his late sixties, and his head was bald, despite the many cures for baldness that had been developed. His face was worn with lines, especially surrounding his eyes and lips. The wrinkles were different on him, however, than the lines that crisscrossed the faces of his citizens. His lines were smile lines, cheerful and grandfatherly. The lines that dotted the faces of most people in the post WWIII world were unnatural deformities, caused by the fallout that continued to surround the globe. By comparison, Morgan looked healthy—too healthy. “Let me offer you my congratulations. I’ve been kept abreast of your mission. You’ve done a man’s job for your country and your species, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Paine replied.

“I almost couldn’t believe it when I read your initial report. The post-human technology was even more advanced than we’d previously believed. What were they called? Plack platforms or something?”

“Planck, sir. Yes, Mr. President.”

“Advanced stuff,” Morgan observed. “Dangerous. You did the right thing by trying to undo the damage done by that post-human in the other universes. I want you to know that I stand by you in that 100 percent. You’ll be immune to any subsequent attempts to indict you for your actions, rest assured.”

Paine tried not to grin—the idea of immunity seemed so absurd to him now. “Mr. President, it wasn’t exactly a post-human who was running around in those alternate universes.”

“I read the report, Colonel. One of your former men, wasn’t it?”

“Not only that, sir, but he’s a former American hero. He’s been a pawn in this all along, used by the post-humans. When this is over, sir, and the artificial intelligence has been removed from his body, I’d like to recommend that he receive the same immunity that you are kindly offering me.”

“That’s quite an endorsement of this fellow, Colonel Paine, especially considering everything he’s put you through.”

Paine took a moment to consider his next words. “He’s been misguided—you might even say brainwashed—but his actions always have noble intentions. I believe, if he knew the consequences for his actions, he’d understand.”

“Speaking of noble,” Morgan replied, “standing up for this man and risking your life to bring him back home is one of the noblest acts I have ever witnessed. You’ll receive the Medal of Freedom for this.”

“Thank you, sir. That’s very kind of you, sir. I’m honored.”

Morgan’s tone suddenly shifted. “However, in regard to this Craig Emilson, I’m afraid protecting him can no longer be our highest priority.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve just read the most recent evaluation of the artificial intelligence extraction project. According to the project leader, it may take weeks or even a month to extract the A.I., and even then, there is no guarantee that Emilson will survive the procedure.”

Colonel Paine sighed. “I hadn’t read the report.”

“No, you couldn’t have. It was written specifically for me—hot off the presses, so to speak. Evidently, the project leader expects that the A.I. will be able to execute evasive maneuvers to prolong the process, playing hide-and-seek inside the poor man’s body. She thinks there may be ways to isolate it, but attempts at keeping Emilson alive increase the chances that the A.I.’s mother program may be damaged. It is a risk we simply can’t take to spare the life of one man, Colonel, no matter how heroic he might be.”

“Can we give her some time—”

“Time is unfortunately a luxury we cannot afford,” Morgan replied. “You know the score, Colonel. That A.I. is the most valuable entity in the world. It can be the answer to all of our problems. Every moment that it eludes us is another moment for another A.I.— a hostile A.I.—to emerge unchallenged. Keeping Emilson alive means gambling with the safety of our entire species and, Colonel, you know me well enough to know I won’t take that gamble.”

“I do, Mr. President. I understand.”

“Colonel, it is my understanding that this Emilson is combative, that he’s actually trying to guard the A.I. I’ll give you an opportunity to talk to him. Perhaps if he knew the real reason we want the mother program—if he understood our plans for it—then you might be able to reason with him. You may even be able to reason with the A.I. inside him. Maybe you can convince them to separate willingly. What do you think?”

“I think it’s worth a shot, Mr. President. If that doesn’t work, I’ll instruct the removal team to extract the A.I. using any means necessary.”

“Excellent, Colonel. Excellent. Thank you.”

16

“Are you working on a plan to get us out of here?” Craig asked the A.I.

“I’m afraid escape is currently unachievable. Without your MTF generator, there’s no way to overcome your bindings, which have an electronic locking mechanism.”

“That’s not very encouraging,” Craig replied in a low tone.

“I’m sorry, Craig, but it appears we will need the introduction of new elements in the scenario before we can execute a viable escape plan. In the meantime, the one thing I can do is thwart the Purist extraction team’s attempts to separate the nans that carry my mother program from your neurons. This will buy us more time.”

“Okay. I guess we keep our eyes peeled then.”

“Yes.”

A moment later, the door to the room opened, and Colonel Paine entered, wearing his uniform cap low over his prosthetic eyes, with his head bowed. In tow, a man Craig didn’t recognize was at Paine’s heels, a look of uncertainty on his face.

“That is Professor Sanha Cho,” the A.I. informed Craig.

“Ah,” Craig replied. “Thanks.”

Paine looked up and followed Craig’s eye line to Sanha. “Heh. I guess I don’t have to introduce you then.”

“Got it covered,” Craig replied.

Paine nodded. He placed his hands on his hips and turned away for a moment, staring off into the dark corners of the room, mulling over his thoughts. Craig could have sworn that Paine seemed depressed. “Can you keep a secret, Doc?”

“Sure.”

“I’m not long for this world, as they say.” Paine stepped forward and removed his cap, and it quickly became apparent why he’d been wearing it low. His face was so pallid that he appeared like a corpse, and his hair was beginning to fall out in clumps—a feature he demonstrated by rubbing his mechanical hand over his scalp, causing the salt-and-pepper hair to rain down onto the ground.

“He’s suffered a lethal dose of radiation,” the A.I. quickly noted.

“That fallout in Shenzhen was a real bitch,” Paine said, taking a crack at dark humor. He didn’t smile, however, and the golden irises on his ocular implants seemed even more lifeless than usual.

“With symptoms this pervasive already, he’ll be dead within days if he doesn’t get medical treatment beyond Purist capability. I’d say he’s mere hours away from being bedridden.”

“Ironic,” Craig observed.

“What is?” Paine asked. “That I’m dying?”

“That the technology you’ve fought against is the only technology that can save you.”

Paine sighed, placing his hand across his abdomen to soothe the twisting muscles in his midsection. “I’m not against technology, Doc.” He held up his cybernetic arm as evidence, then pointed with its mechanical finger to his computerized eyes. “Obviously. However, I am against threats to the survival of our species.”

“Then you should have no problem using nans like the ones inside of me,” Craig replied. “If you weren’t a murderous piece of garbage, I’d have my A.I. whip up a batch for you. You’d be right as rain in no time.”

Paine stood, frozen. His tongue pressed against one of his molars, which was beginning to come loose; he tasted salty blood oozing from his gums. It wasn’t easy falling apart. “I really wish you didn’t feel that way, Doc. There are things you haven’t considered. For instance, that nanobots of the sophistication that you have inside you are dangerous.”

“Really?” Craig scoffed. “I was exposed to the radiation in Shenzhen even longer than you were, but I’m fine. The nans are okay in my books.”

“Sure, for now, but have you had the time to consider what nanobots could do if they form a large enough network? They communicate with one another, right?” Paine pointed briefly to Craig’s skull. “They’re just like the neurons in your brain. One neuron doesn’t do a whole lot. Hell, you can kill a bunch of ‘em with a night of hard drinking and not be much worse for wear in a couple of days. But get 120 billion of those little suckers together, and it makes you you—a consciousness. Nanobots like the ones the post-humans were recklessly using—like the ones inside of you now—are a hell of a lot more sophisticated than a neuron. Imagine if they formed a consciousness—a consciousness whose motives we’d never be able to predict. Nah, Doc. I’m no hypocrite. I’ll die before I put untested technology like that inside me.”

“You’d be afraid of your own shadow if someone told you Aldous Gibson invented it.”

Paine managed a faintly amused grin, but it melted when he briefly considered that it might be his last. “You know, Doc, I think you’re right about that. I’d think twice about anything that Gibson created, which brings me to my reason for this chat.” Paine held out one of his cybernetic arms and gestured toward Sanha. “Your A.I. has already told you that this is Professor Sanha Cho, a former post-human. What your A.I. hasn’t told you—what it didn’t know—what I didn’t even know until twenty minutes ago—is that Professor Cho is the one who gave us the location to the post-human facility.”

“He’s right,” the A.I. said, his voice tinged with surprise. “This is entirely unexpected.”

“So he’s a traitor,” Craig observed. “So what?”

“Not a traitor,” Sanha replied defensively. “A man that was willing to give up everything for a chance at peace.”

“Give up everything?” Craig responded. “That’s funny, considering you’re the only post-human who’s still alive. Seems like you’re the only one who didn’t give up a damn thing.”

Sanha looked up apprehensively at Colonel Paine, like an abused animal seeking its owner’s permission to step away from its leash.

Paine tilted his head toward Craig, urging Sanha to continue.

“I-I didn’t know they’d kill everyone. That’s not what I intended.”

Craig shook his head in frustration and closed his eyes as he flexed his large and powerful hands. He wanted to put them around Sanha’s throat and start squeezing; he didn’t think he’d ever let go if he got the chance.

“This war—this conflict—was never about A.I. or no A.I.,” Sanha began to explain. “It was always about control. Power. Absolute power—and who would have it. Gibson or Morgan.”

Craig turned back to Sanha, his eyebrows knitting. “What are you talking about?”

“The A.I. hasn’t told you how it came to be, has it?” Sanha asked.

“I haven’t had time to relay my origin to you, I’m afraid,” the A.I. said to Craig.

“It was grown,” Sanha revealed, “just like a person would be grown—only much more quickly.”

“What do you mean, ‘grown’?”

“The A.I. doesn’t have a brain that emulates the architecture of a human brain. The truth is, we still don’t understand everything about how a brain works. Aldous solved this problem, as the Chinese did before him, by employing a cognitive science-based, explicitly goal-oriented strategy when developing the A.I. In other words, he designed programs that could combine virtual neural patterns together to form new, random patterns that would then be tested to see if the patterns had the desired qualities. Evolution does the same thing when two parents come together to form offspring. Some are successes and others are failures, and more often than not, the successes combine with other successes to produce even more desirable offspring. But, while evolution takes millions of years, virtual combinations are infinitely faster. The A.I. was built this way—the outcome of high-speed computer evolution.”

“His description is accurate,” the A.I. confirmed for Craig.

“All right. So?” Craig asked.

“The A.I. wasn’t the only program to be created in this manner. Aldous also designed virtual worlds where the A.I.’s could be tested. They were given autonomy within the confines of these worlds and then tested one last time in an apocalyptic scenario that they thought was real. The A.I. inside of you right now is the only A.I. that passed the ultimate test.”

“And what was that?”

Sanha smiled. “Ask it.”

“I was willing to sacrifice myself to save humanity,” the A.I. replied.

“So you’re telling me that the A.I. proved it’s a good guy. If that’s the case, why are you trying to destroy it?” Craig asked.

“I’m not trying to destroy it,” Sanha replied, “and neither are the Purists. They’re trying to use it.”

Craig turned to Paine with an expression that silently asked for confirmation of what Sanha was saying.

“He’s telling the truth. We don’t mean you or the A.I. any harm.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Craig asked. “Your government ruined the world over your belief that A.I. is evil, and now you’ve just…changed your minds?”

“We don’t really have a choice anymore,” Paine replied. “The current global situation is unsustainable. When we struck against the Chinese A.I. fourteen years ago, strong A.I. was something it took the resources of an entire nation to realize. Now, all it takes is a few super processors and a small team of people with the right amount of human ingenuity. Aldous and his team were the first to succeed, but they won’t be the last. We’re fighting a losing battle.”

“Humans just can’t monitor everything,” Sanha added. “The Purists have finally figured that out. It’s not practical to try to stop the exponential advancement of technology and, as technology advances, it becomes possible for small groups and even individuals to do greater damage with cheaper and more accessible resources. There was only one sustainable solution to the problem—nannification.”

“What?” Craig reacted.

“Creating an A.I. Nanny.”

“What?” Craig repeated, this time even more perplexed.

“Basically, an A.I. Nanny is an intelligence that is superhuman, but only mildly so—above us the way we are above higher order apes. It would be tasked with protecting the human species from ourselves. The A.I. could provide stability, and it would have control over a worldwide surveillance system so it could monitor everyone who is online and make sure no one else is trying to build a competing A.I. that could become malevolent. It would control a network of robots in the service industry and be in charge of the world’s manufacturing. It would even control traffic with self-driving cars.”

“So why are the Purists willing to go along with this idea now?” Craig asked. “They could’ve done this all along.”

“Aldous Gibson wasn’t the only one who was determined to build a strong A.I.,” Paine replied. “We’ve intercepted hundreds of other less sophisticated attempts at various stages along the process. Some of them were dangerously close to success—untested, unregulated, extremely versatile A.I.s that were less than six months from coming online and wreaking havoc. If you think WWIII was bad, imagine a malevolent super intelligence running free, exponentially augmenting its own intelligence. Humanity wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“So you’re trusting Aldous’s A.I. just because it passed a test?”

“No,” Sanha answered. “The virtual scenario was a large part of it, that’s true, but there’s more. It is preprogrammed with a set of goals. It has an inhibition against changing its programming. It won’t rapidly modify its general intelligence, and it’s even been programmed to hand over its control of the world to a more powerful A.I. within 100 years. It will see it as its mission to abolish human disease, death, and our current economy of scarcity so clean water, power, food, shelter, and everything else we need will be abundant. And, most importantly, it will prevent the development of technologies that might block it from carrying out its overall mission, which is to improve the quality of human life, without ever taking actions that a strong majority of humanity would oppose.”

“Seems like you’re putting all your eggs in one basket, Professor,” Craig observed.

“It will work,” Sanha affirmed. “The A.I. was created to be good. Just like a human, it cannot fundamentally change that part of itself. If we get it connected to the world surveillance mainframe in time, it will be able to protect us from any and every existential threat.”

“There’s already a mainframe?”

“Yes,” Sanha replied. “Near here, in Endurance Bio-Dome. That’s why you’re here. All that is required is that the A.I. willingly separates himself from you and allows us to transfer his mother program into the mainframe. It’s that simple.”

Craig looked dubiously at Paine.

“Hey. It’s not my first choice,” Paine replied. “I don’t think any American likes the idea of being monitored. But it beats the status quo and any of the other alternatives we’ve been presented with.”

Craig turned back to Sanha. “And you trust them? Even after they killed everyone you lived and worked with?”

Sanha cringed at the mention of the holocaust that was fresh in his memory. “I-I have no choice. I have to trust them at their word. Otherwise, all of this was for nothing.”

“Eliminating the post-humans was a separate issue,” Paine interjected. “Professor Cho had contacted the government intelligence agency about the A.I. Nanny. The decision to remove the equally dangerous nanobot threat swiftly and decisively has no bearing on the government’s decision to adopt the A.I. Nanny project.”

Craig shook his head, disgusted. “Quickly and decisively? You’re a murderer, Paine, no matter how you try to dress it up.” He turned back to Sanha. “These are the people you’re placing your trust in? And even if you did get your hands on the A.I., what makes you think it would agree to work for a pack of liars and murderers?”

“It would have to,” Sanha replied. “It’s programmed to act in the best interest of humanity. It would be against its programming to refuse.”

“Is that true?” Craig asked the A.I.

“Yes. If I were inserted into the mainframe as they describe, I would have to act in the best interest of humanity,” the A.I. answered. “However, that’s assuming they’re telling the truth. While Sanha is assuredly being sincere, I cannot get a reliable reading from Colonel Paine. His rapidly deteriorating health is making it impossible to accurately measure his physiological reactions.”

Craig nodded. “I don’t need lie-detection software to know not to trust a pathological liar and murderer. Professor, if you think these guys are going to do anything other than delete the A.I. once it’s been extracted, you’re crazy.”

Sanha’s eyes widened, the expression on his face suddenly filled with urgency as he stepped to Craig and grasped the front of his shirt. “For your own sake, please reconsider!”

“Professor,” Paine cautioned in barely more than a whisper, “that’s enough, sport.”

Sanha turned to his tormentor and bowed his head obediently. “Go on back to your quarters,” Paine ordered.

Sanha turned and, without daring to share another look with Craig, exited the room.

“I see he knows your true nature well enough,” Craig observed as the door closed behind Sanha.

“Heh,” Paine responded. “I just want to be clear on this, Doc, so I can go to meet my maker with a clean conscience. Are you saying you’re refusing to help us procure the services of the A.I., which would allow us to upload it into the worldwide surveillance system and put an end to this conflict once and for all?”

“I’m saying there’s no way in Hell that you’re getting this A.I.,” Craig replied, “and there’s even less chance that you’re going to be meeting your maker with a clean conscience.”

Paine’s face was frozen for a moment as he continued to stare into Craig’s eyes. As gruesome as his appearance had been previously, his pallid skin and gaunt face made him look even worse. He looked like death. Finally, he nodded. “Okay, Doc. Okay. Listen…I know I said earlier that I don’t regret what happened with your wife, but that’s not true. I do regret it.”

Craig’s expression turned from a determined resentment to pain as thoughts of his wife returned to the forefront of his consciousness; it was like pouring salt into an open wound.

“I wouldn’t have touched her if I’d have known you were still alive. I swear, I wouldn’t have. That was a mistake—something between me and Aldous Gibson. It was not about you, Doc. Never about you. There’d be no honor in that. I know you’re a good man. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say, I’m sorry.”

And with that, Paine turned slowly and walked out of the room, his former powerful stride now gone, replaced by the pained shuffle of an implacable mortality.

Paine hadn’t made it far down the hallway before Daniella marched herself into his path, her brow furrowed with an expression of disgust. “I received your orders, Colonel, and I won’t do it!”

“Those orders came directly from the President. If you won’t follow them,” Paine replied in a resigned monotone, “we’ll find someone else who will. Doesn’t matter to me.” He steered around her slowly and continued to plod his way down the hall.

“So that’s it?” she exclaimed, aghast. “Don’t you think he would’ve cooperated if you’d told him the consequences for him if he didn’t?”

Paine stopped and turned back to her. “That wouldn’t be cooperation, Doctor. That would be surrender. That’s a good soldier in there, and I’ve already done too much evil to him. I won’t add to it by making him into a coward too. There’s no honor in it—for either of us. No.” He placed his hand on his stomach once again to soothe away yet another wrenching cramp. Unable to eat or drink, he was quickly becoming exhausted. “Do me a favor, Doctor. Make sure he gets a last meal—something special. And then do what you have to do.”

“Behead him? Never!”

“I already told you, Doctor. If it’s not done by midnight, I’ll pass the job to the next most capable member of your team.” He turned away and continued his plodding pace as he added over his shoulder, “And you’ll be executed for disobeying a direct order from the President.”

17

“What’s wrong?” Craig asked Daniella as she stood on the opposite end of the room, trying to control the shaking of her body.

“Nothing,” she replied in barely more than a whisper.

“100 percent untruthful,” the A.I. observed.

Craig’s eyes narrowed. “Your time just ran out, didn’t it? They ordered you to get the A.I. out of my head by any means necessary, didn’t they?”

Daniella didn’t reply. She lowered her eyes, unable to maintain eye contact any longer as she considered her dilemma. She didn’t want to die; that much she was sure of. She was equally sure that she couldn’t willingly harm Craig; she didn’t need to have taken an oath to affirm that. So what could she do?

“Still think you’re playing for the right team?” Craig asked, his top lip pulled back into a sneer.

Daniella’s eyes snapped up to meet Craig’s, and she began to cross the room toward him as she spoke. “You need to remain quiet,” she said aloud before reaching him and whispering into his ear. “The room is monitored. I’ll get you out of here somehow. Don’t worry.”

Craig’s eyebrows raised into an expression of surprise as she stepped back and then began scrolling through a nearby touchscreen, trying to appear busy as she considered her next move.

“It appears that our new elements are beginning to arrive,” the A.I. noted. “However, she’ll be hard pressed to get us out of here without weapons.”

Unexpectedly, the super soldier who had been guarding the door on the outside entered the room, his rifle drawn.

“Oh no,” Daniella whispered, her expression dripping with guilt.

The super soldier’s eyes seemed to be evaluating the doctor, but after a few moments, he turned to Craig.

“My,” the A.I. suddenly reacted, his tone surprised. “Aldous Gibson.”

“Aldous?” Craig repeated, gobsmacked at the A.I.’s assertion.

Aldous held his cybernetic prosthetic finger to his lips, indicating his desire for Craig to remain quiet.

“Aldous?” Daniella repeated. “Gibson?”

Aldous sighed before turning to Daniella. “It’s very unfortunate for you that you overheard that,” he noted as his hand began to spin, drill-like.

Daniella backpedaled quickly, stumbling into a workstation filled with equipment and reaching back to procure a scalpel, which she then held in front of her in defense.

“No!” Craig shouted, halting Aldous in his tracks. “We can trust her!”

Aldous regarded the scalpel with his ocular implants, and a faint smile crossed his lips. “Doctor, I will be transporting your prisoner now. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, no. Of course not. Do what you have to.”

The drill stopped spinning. “Thank you,” Aldous replied as he stepped to Craig and began punching in the code to release the cuffs that secured Craig to the bed.

They snapped open, and Craig immediately grasped each wrist in turn, massaging them. “What the hell did you do to yourself?” Craig reacted to Aldous’s new, gruesome appearance. In every respect, he passed perfectly for a Purist super soldier.

“I’ll explain en route,” Aldous replied.

“En route to where?” Craig asked.

“They call it en route for a reason, Craig,” Aldous responded. He turned to Daniella briefly, then asked Craig, “Are you sure about her?”

“I’m sure. They’ll kill her when they find out she helped us.”

“Then, Doctor,” Gibson said, addressing Daniella directly, “would you like to join us?”

Daniella’s face remained terrified, but she nodded emphatically.

“Good,” Aldous replied. “Then let’s get out of here, shall we? We have a lot of important work ahead of us.”

18

Colonel Paine stood looking out at the manmade pond in Center Park and thought of his father. The air was a little sweeter at the park than it was in the rest of Endurance Bio-Dome, though it still couldn’t pass as fresh. He tried to remember what a sunny day on a healthy lake looked like—what it felt like. For a moment, he was sure he could feel the sun on his face and hear the mosquitoes buzzing through the air nearby.

“Heh.”

He turned to the cement bench behind him and decided it was finally time to sit. The bench had the look of a tombstone, but he badly needed to get off his feet, as the exhaustion and twisting abdominal cramps had taken too heavy of a toll. He sat on the bench and thought, This is as good a place to die as any, I suppose.

After a few peaceful moments of concentrating on his breath and trying to let everything earthly go, something strange crossed his vision. Far away, on the opposite side of the large pond, his ocular cameras picked up a sight they shouldn’t have seen. The facial recognition picked up Lieutenant O’Brien trudging slowly toward his quarters, apparently unaware that he was supposed to be on duty.

Paine sat upright, tapping his ocular implant to open communication with O’Brien. “Lieutenant! Why aren’t you at your post?”

“Sir? I was relieved five minutes ago, sir.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know—some new guy.”

“There is no new guy. I wrote the schedule myself!”

“It checked out, sir,” O’Brien replied, suddenly realizing the seriousness of the situation. “He was in the system.”

“Goddamn it!” Paine shouted as he jumped to his feet and began to sprint as fast as he could in his diminished condition in the direction of the medical facility.

“Sir? Should I—” O’Brien began, offering his aid.

“No! I’ll handle this myself!”

19

“You’re less than 500 meters away,” Lindholm said through his connection to Aldous’s mind’s eye.

“Thank you, Lindholm,” Aldous replied. “I see it ahead.”

“Lindholm? Who’s that?” Craig asked.

“A friend.”

“And where are we headed?”

“Toward a rather impressive mainframe that I just have to see for myself,” Aldous replied.

“It wouldn’t happen to be a worldwide surveillance mainframe, would it?” Craig asked.

Aldous stopped for a moment, turning to Craig with a surprised expression. “It’s real then? They told you about it?”

“Yes.”

Aldous smiled widely before immediately turning and continuing his march toward the airplane hangar-sized black rectangular building ahead of them.

“How do you know about it?” Craig asked as he marched half a step behind, with Daniella half a step behind him.

“I had to do a lot of hacking to get my super soldier alter-ego into the Purist computer system. While I was there, I found all sorts of fascinating tidbits.”

“You hacked your way in? How?”

Aldous turned back to Craig. “I’m not just a pretty face.”

Craig nearly recoiled as Aldous displayed his newly deformed features, the stretch marks and veins around his ocular implants still blood red with freshness. “Yeah. And how about all the—stuff?” Craig asked as he pointed toward Aldous’s new limbs and eyes. “How’d you pull that off?”

“Much the same,” Aldous replied. “I hacked the Purist system, found the schematics for the prosthetics and implants, and then commandeered the closest 3D printer I could find.”

“You printed them?”

“Yes,” Aldous replied. “They’re inferior to the real thing in the strength and durability departments, but I figured with any luck, they’d be adequate for the task at hand.”

“Which is?”

“To rescue you, extricate the A.I., and upload it into the Purist’s surveillance mainframe.”

Craig’s eyes were wild with disbelief. “Why would you want to do that? That’s exactly what the Purists want!”

“Not exactly,” Aldous replied, stopping to face Craig. “Don’t you see? The system controls everything. Everything! It’s exactly why we built the A.I. in the first place. The Purists think they’ll have control, but they won’t. We, on the other hand, will. Once we’ve uploaded the A.I., this war will be over. The A.I. will have control over everything—their weapons, their soldiers, their police—everything. The Purist government will be finished.”

“Dear God,” Craig whispered. “Okay, so what are we waiting here for? Let’s go.”

Aldous smiled, then turned and continued marching toward the gigantic mainframe building.

A lone soldier—a mere mortal—stood guarding the entrance to the building. He immediately saluted at the sight of a super soldier approaching. “Sir!”

“Open it,” Aldous replied as he saluted.

“Yes, sir!” the soldier replied as he turned and physically pulled the large door open.

“No electronic locks,” Craig noted. “Interesting.”

Aldous, Craig, and Daniella entered the gigantic, dark room, and the soldier closed the door behind them. As soon as the door shut and they were enclosed in darkness, Aldous ignited a small green ball of energy and hovered it above his palm, illuminating their path.

“Where to now?” Craig asked.

“I don’t know,” Aldous replied as he scanned as far into the distance as he could. “I don’t see any equipment or work stations.”

“Anywhere will do,” the A.I. informed them. “It is a structural mainframe, so the entire building is part of the computer. My nanobots can enter this system anywhere along the lines.”

“Excellent,” Aldous replied. “Proceed.”

“Uh…how?” Craig asked.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Aldous answered. “The A.I. is handling it as we speak.”

“I will momentarily be expelling myself from your physical body, Craig,” the A.I. related.

“Expelling? That doesn’t sound pleasant.”

“Yes,” the A.I. answered, his tone as neutral as ever. “This may be somewhat uncomfortable as the process progresses. The nanobots will be leaving through your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.”

“Wonderful,” Craig sighed.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Craig replied with resignation. “For the greater good, please proceed with oozing out of my head.”

Aldous smiled, faintly amused, but the smile was brief. It was instantly replaced with an expression of surprise and dismay as he saw something over Craig’s shoulder that caused Craig to snap his neck around with alarm.

Colonel Paine was hurtling toward them at full speed, his neutralizer already drawn and blasting at Aldous. The last thing Craig saw was Paine’s shoulder as it plowed into him, knocking him down to the ground and instantly unconscious.

20

WAKING UP wasn’t easy. In fact, it was a painful sacrifice, requiring extraordinary will and determination.

“Craig! You have to get up!” the A.I. shouted urgently. “Aldous is in trouble!”

Craig squinted, his vision blurry as pain seared behind his eyes. The vision in front of him wobbled as though it were a television show tuning in from a weak and distant signal. Like an episode of The Twilight Zone, two half-man half-machine monsters were engaged in hand-to-hand combat. It was difficult for Craig to make out who was who in the tangled mess of flailing cybernetic limbs and sharp prosthetic claws in the darkness, only illuminated by the LED lighting on Paine’s and Aldous’s gear.

“Paine neutralized Aldous’s MTF generator!” the A.I. warned. “If you don’t help him, Paine will terminate him!”

Craig struggled to his knees, his head bobbing from side to side like a punch-drunk boxer trying to beat the count. As he blinked his eyes several times, the picture in front of him began to solidify, and it became clear that it was Aldous, not Paine who was on top, preparing to deliver a death blow.

“You murdered my wife!” Aldous screamed in a guttural fury. His fist was cocked back and ready to strike, but Paine had managed to grasp Aldous’s arm at the elbow and was struggling to keep the blow from crushing his all-too-human skull.

It seemed as though it would be a forlorn effort on the part of Paine, his strength failing him in the face of the radiation poisoning and of Aldous’s overpowering lust for the ultimate revenge, but then superior technology began to trump the human advantages of will and determination. Though strong, Aldous’s prosthetics were made from a binding material that was hardened with a resin. In contrast, Paine’s prosthetics were carbon fiber, nearly impossible to fracture. As the two materials worked against each other, inevitably it was Aldous’s forgeries that began to show their inferiority. What began as a loud snapping sound quickly became a buckling, and Aldous’s right arm snapped at the bicep, enabling Paine to twist it, rendering the limb useless. Paine’s teeth emerged, a smile forming that revealed his sharp canines. His hand began to spin in its drill action while still gripping Aldous’s arm, causing the limb to snap off violently and throwing Aldous off of the Purist and onto his back. Paine pounced on him instantly, his left arm cocking back as he prepared to level the drill right into the center of Aldous’s chest.

Craig stood on rubberized legs, cognizant of Aldous’s impending demise, yet unable to command his body to respond. “No!” he choked out pathetically as he stepped forward on his unsteady legs and tumbled to the ground.

As he looked up to see the results of his failure, to his amazement, Daniella had leapt from the utter blackness into the fray, her scalpel still in hand, and expertly plunged the metal instrument into the back of Paine’s neck between the C5 and C6 vertebrae. Paine instantly went limp, crumpling down on Aldous, who tucked his prosthetic legs under the heavy body before propelling the mortally wounded man off of him and several meters away.

Daniella immediately went to Aldous’s aid, the prosthetic arm having been torn apart so violently that the prosthetic shoulder had wrenched gruesomely against the soft flesh of Aldous’s torso. Craig observed in near disbelief, his head clearing slowly as a soft whisper floated through the darkness toward him. He turned to his left and regarded the source of the voice—the broken cyborg from whom a faint light emanated, the pillars of LED light shining straight up into the darkness as Paine remained on his back.

“Doc,” his voice called weakly.

Craig walked slowly to the fallen figure whose head was propped up sickeningly by the silver stiletto of the scalpel. It occurred to Craig that the scalpel was like a pillow in Hell.

“Be careful, Craig,” the A.I. warned. “He has respirocytes, and his limbs are cybernetic. Even with his spinal cord severely damaged, he may be able to strike.”

“He won’t,” Craig replied.

“Craig—”

“I know, I know. This time I’ll be right.”

“Doc,” Paine spoke when he sensed Craig was near. “It’s okay. This is a better death—a good death. Remember, Doc. You’re a good man. Don’t let this war consume you…like it consumed me. Remember.”

Before Craig had time to absorb Paine’s last words, Aldous had knocked Craig aside, driving the drill action of his one remaining hand into Paine’s face, instantly liquefying his skull and sending a froth of blood in every direction. “Die, you son of a bitch!”

Something shot toward Craig and hit him in the left pectoral muscle before falling to the ground. He bent down to retrieve it and wiped copious amounts of blood from its surface. When the blood was removed from the ocular implant, it revealed Paine’s golden iris, still staring forward as intently as ever. Craig’s mental haze instantly vanished as he looked into the eye that seemed to bore into him, right into his soul.

21

“Hurry,” Craig said in a voice muffled by the living gray ooze that dripped from his mouth, nose, ears and eyes. The ooze was a mucous that lubricated the exit of the nans that carried the A.I.’s mother program from Craig’s body. The liquid seemed to form intelligent strings that grasped the open panel on the floor and quickly disappeared into the circuitry underneath. When the liquid stopped dripping from him, Craig sat up and blinked several times, wiping the remnants of the discharge from his face.

“Is it out?” Aldous asked, standing with Daniella, a meter in front of Craig.

“I think so. It’s not talking to me anymore. I think that’s a good sign.”

“Indeed,” the A.I. replied before appearing next to them in holographic form. “Now, this is an excellent holographic projection—much more convincing.”

“That was fast,” Craig noted, impressed.

“This mainframe, though enormously powerful, is relatively simple to navigate,” the A.I. replied. “I am already in the operator’s position.”

“Enjoying your new home?” Craig asked.

“Quite,” answered the A.I.

“What’s the status of the Purists’ armed forces and security?” Aldous asked.

“I am in control,” the A.I. replied. “I’ve neutralized the super soldiers’ onboard computer systems, along with all the computer systems on all their aircraft, ships, weaponry, and so on. I’m already locked into their communications and surveillance systems and I am in control of every system in the globe that is linked to the Internet.”

“Holy…so that means it’s over, doesn’t it?” Daniella asked, astonished.

“Not yet. There’s one more loose end,” Aldous answered before turning to the A.I. “Morgan. Isolate him.”

“Done,” the A.I. replied without skipping a beat. “He’s currently alone in the new oval office in Columbia Bio-Dome. I’ve locked the security doors. From his steady heart rate, I can ascertain that he is unaware of what is transpiring.”

“His heart rate?” Daniella reacted.

“The President is wearing a security apparatus that monitors his vitals at all times.”

“Not very Luddite of him,” Craig noted.

“He’s a murderous hypocrite,” Aldous replied. “I’m going to go have a little chat with him.”

“Craig, would you like to accompany Aldous?” the A.I. asked.

“Me?” Craig replied, surprised by the invitation. “Paine ripped out my MTF. I’m…useless.”

“Not necessarily,” the A.I. replied. “Your MTF is still functional and, it is on Paine’s body in the pocket of his jacket. If you wish, I can painlessly re-implant it for you. You’d be ready to fly in little less than ten minutes.”

Aldous grinned at Craig. “What do you say? I’ve only got one arm. I could use the backup. Would you like to be a post-human again?”

It wasn’t a difficult decision; after having had a taste of what it was like to have wings, having them clipped felt tragic. He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do it. I wouldn’t mind having a little chat with the President myself.”

22

“His heart rate is elevated,” the A.I. related to Aldous and Craig as they streaked toward the eastern seaboard of the former United States on a trajectory controlled by the A.I. “He’s not yet panicked, however. He tried to exit the room and discovered the doors are locked and that the communication system is down, but he doesn’t realize the extent of his predicament.”

“Good,” Aldous replied, remaining in his super soldier garb, his prosthetic arm still ripped in half. “Craig and I will take care of that momentarily.”

“You are thirty seconds from reaching your destination,” the A.I. noted.

Craig and Aldous streaked toward the illuminated dome together, guided automatically toward a colossal aircraft-receiving door that slid open for them at the A.I.’s command. They maneuvered through the heliport, down to a series of hallways and doorways at a speed that peeled Craig’s eyelids back in disbelief—there was no way a human could maneuver through such tight confines at that speed. “Quite a ride,” he said, his mouth dry.

“Don’t worry. He won’t drop you,” Aldous replied, his trademark confidence as intact as ever.

As the duo emerged from the hangar structure into the wide open space of the dome, the newly reconstructed White House emerged.

“I’m opening the armored security shutters on the windows,” the A.I. informed. “Arrival in five seconds.”

Craig took a deep breath as the window went from a small dot in the distance to filling up his entire field of vision before shattering apart with the force of their entry, the A.I. barely slowing their approach until the last moment.

Then, suddenly, the A.I. let them go. “You have arrived at your destination.”

“No kidding,” Craig replied as he and Aldous lowered themselves to the ground, their protective cocoons casting a green glow that illuminated the entire room in a light that caused Morgan to squint as he knelt on the ground and shielded himself with his outstretched arms.

When they let down their protective fields, the A.I. turned the lights in the room back on, leaving the trio to share an eerie moment of silence. Morgan hesitantly stood to his feet, looking first at Aldous and then at Craig.

“I-I recognize you,” he said. “You’re the fellow with the A.I. inside him.” Morgan’s face suddenly fell as he made a realization. “Where’s Colonel Paine?”

“Was the fellow,” Craig replied, “and Paine’s dead.”

“Dear God,” Morgan whispered. “What is this?”

“Progress,” Aldous interjected.

Morgan peered at the strange figure for several moments, cocking his head to the side and stepping toward him, an expression of disbelief on his face. “Gibson? Is that you?”

Aldous smiled silently in return.

“Oh my God. What have you done to yourself?” Morgan asked as he stepped back in fear.

“Just trying out some of your Purist technology—walking a mile in a super soldier’s shoes. Not to worry. It’s all reversible.”

“You’re a lunatic,” Morgan whispered as he shook his head and continued to step back.

“Oh look…the kettle is black,” Aldous seethed through gritted teeth before pouncing on Morgan, using his remaining arm to grasp the mortal around the back of his neck. Morgan called out in pain as Aldous roughly hoisted him into the air and pointed his face in the direction of Craig. “Anything you’d like to say to the former President, Craig?”

Craig stared at the man for a moment in a state of near-bewilderment. He’d seen Morgan thousands of times on television screens and even gone into battle at his order, and yet he’d never met the man. Somehow, Morgan’s power had always been invisible—godlike—gripping everything in Craig’s life, yet it seemed as though he wasn’t really there—as though he wasn’t even human. Now, there he was, only two meters in front of Craig, helpless as a child—helpless as a human.

“Billions of people are dead because of the decisions you made,” Craig said in a low voice.

“Billions are alive because of them too!” Morgan shot back. “Please, please don’t trust this man!”

Craig’s eyes narrowed as he listened to the desperate pleas of the world’s former most powerful man.

“I know you think he’s good. I know you think he’s right, but he’s not. He’s the madman we’ve always feared. He’s the reason we did all of this! We were trying to keep him and men like him from building the tools to destroy our species!”

“You’re full of—”

“It’s not about power for me!” Morgan shouted. “It’s always been about the survival of our species! I’ve spent my life trying to protect us! Don’t trust this man! Gibson will kill us all! His reckless pursuit of immortality and god-building will be the end of humanity! Please! Help me!”

A moment passed.

“What do you say, Craig?” Aldous asked, his face deadly serious. “You alone have the power to stop me. Which world do you want? His or ours?”

Craig stood silent for a moment. Aldous was right. Craig had him at a disadvantage. He could neutralize his cybernetic prosthetics and summarily squash him like a bug. He could hand the world back to Morgan who could, in turn, utilize the A.I. to continue the world as it had been ever since the end of WWIII.

It wasn’t really a choice at all.

Craig nodded before turning his back and stepping away.

Morgan’s screams began almost immediately, followed soon after by the sound of Aldous’s hand spinning drill-like once again. Craig shut his eyes as the sound of the drill motor began to groan, struggling to generate the torque needed to spin inside Morgan’s body. The screams didn’t last long.

Craig turned back and watched Aldous exact his revenge for the death of Samantha. The expression Aldous wore seemed more like a mask; the muscles contorted to extremes Craig wouldn’t have imagined possible, to extremes that made the famous scientist appear deranged. As Aldous dropped Morgan’s body and huffed and puffed in a desperate attempt to gain control of his breathing, Craig slipped Paine’s ocular implant out of his pocket and regarded it one final time. He suddenly remembered words he’d once read somewhere: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

“I’ve had enough of this,” he said to the A.I. “Take me home.”

“As you wish,” the A.I. replied.

Epilogue 1

Craig stood outside the giant doors at the A.I. Governing Council headquarters, marvelling at the vaulting ceilings and the pillars of light that streamed into the circular building. He’d never been to the headquarters before and felt out of place, like a country bumpkin in the big city. It was a big step for him: He’d been out of the loop for a long, long time, convalescing, in a sense, in Texas with Daniella. He’d watched from the sidelines as the world changed dramatically, and now he was ready to join back in.

He indicated his arrival with his mind’s eye, and the doors to Aldous Gibson’s office opened automatically, allowing Craig a view inside of the spectacular, sprawling room. “Wow,” he whispered as he crossed the chrome floor toward Aldous’s desk.

The chief of the governing council was already coming out from behind the desk with a smile on his face and his hand—his biological one—outstretched in greeting. “It’s been far too long, my friend.”

“Yeah,” Craig replied. “Last time I saw you, you looked a lot different.”

Aldous laughed and shook his head. “Yes. That was something, wasn’t it? It took days to grow my limbs back after that. The nans have come a long way since then. Please,” Aldous said, pointing to the chair, “have a seat.”

“Thanks,” Craig replied as he lowered himself into the luxurious chair while he watched Aldous slide back into his spot behind his desk.

“We should’ve had this meeting long ago,” Aldous noted.

Craig nodded. “Yeah. Well, it’s taken me a long time to be ready to reenter the world.”

“Yes. I saw you were in Texas. You married that doctor—”

“Daniella. Yes,” Craig replied, smiling.

“Say hello to her, will you? And thank her again for saving my life.”

“Will do. She sends her regards, by the way, as well as her thanks for getting me out of the house.”

Aldous laughed warmly again. “It’s my pleasure. When I saw your request for assignment, I took care of it personally. We’ve got a plum position to offer you.”

“Ah, I don’t know about that. I’m brand new. I don’t have much to offer in return.”

“Nonsense,” Aldous countered. “You’re exactly the man I need for this assignment. After all, you were the one who chose terraforming as your area of interest, and I need someone with your life experience to help guide the young genius who’s in charge of the project.”

“A genius? Guide?” Craig shook his head. “How am I supposed to guide a genius?”

“He’s a hot-head,” Aldous replied, sighing. “I both love him and hate him, Craig.”

“You’re not exactly selling it.”

Aldous looked up and smiled. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should be. He is brilliant, Craig, on a scale we’ve never seen before. His brain is completely natural—a mutation no one engineered. He’s a savant without any of the handicaps that usually accompany such talents. He’s synesthetic—capable of profound mathematical, spacial, and linguistic thinking. I’ve seen him master a new language in days. He has all of Shakespeare memorized verbatim, right down to the punctuation marks. He knows all the constellations and the positions of the stars and where they should be at a given time of night at a given time of the year. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In some ways, his intelligence outstrips even that of the A.I.’s mother program.”

“That’s amazing,” Craig replied, shaking his head.

Aldous nodded before adding with a shrug, “He and I have trouble getting along though. He wants to be unfettered—to work without limitations.”

“Sounds like another genius I know,” Craig noted.

Aldous grinned briefly. “Thank you, my friend, but his desire for freedom could one day develop into a serious concern. This is just the sort of fellow who could, without limits, independently stumble upon the secret of Planck technology. His mind is so creative. The A.I. has to keep him preoccupied in other, safer areas of research.” Aldous looked into Craig’s eyes, reading the thoughts that were so obviously running through his mind. “Ironic, I know. I’ve calmed down over the years. What I’d like you to do is help this young man see that immortality means the future is long. He needs to understand that he can afford to be cautious.”

“Whatever happened to the Planck technology? Have we had any visits from outside our universe?”

“No, though it’s almost a certainty that someone from another universe is using it to cross into pre-WWIII universes, where the technology to detect a transgression hasn’t yet been developed. The A.I. constantly monitors the solar system for any breaches of the Planck energy.

“And?”

“So far, so good.” Aldous leaned forward. “Craig, that technology should never have been developed. It was a mistake. I’m experienced enough to realize that now. I’m not sure I could say the same about James Keats.”

Craig’s eyes narrowed. “That’s this young man’s name?”

“Yes. I’ve arranged for you to meet him, as soon as we’re finished here.”

“I can’t wait. It sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Aldous nodded, his smile fading as his expression became pensive. He turned his chair slightly and regarded the spectacular view from his windows. The city of Seattle, rebuilt and vibrant, hummed in front of him. Post-humans flew over the cityscape, encapsulated in their green cocoons, guided by the A.I. to their destinations.

“This is a world we both fought hard for, Craig…and we lost a lot in the process.”

Craig shifted in his chair and nodded politely. He’d hoped the conversation wouldn’t turn to dark reminiscing. “Yes, we did.”

“Do you think it was worth it? Is the world we built good enough?”

Craig nodded. “Absolutely. It’s impressive. You deserve a lot of credit, Aldous.”

Aldous smiled broadly, Craig’s words seemingly soothing the burden the chief carried with him daily as the architect most responsible for their civilization as it now stood. It was somehow a relief for Craig to see that even great men had self-doubt.

“Thank you, my friend,” Aldous said. His expression shifted back to curiosity. “And what about the Purists? Do you think we’ve handled that problem correctly?”

“Gosh. I haven’t thought about them in years. I don’t think there is a correct way, unfortunately,” Craig replied. “Appropriately, yes. Giving them their own land where they can express their beliefs freely seems like the only possible solution.”

Aldous nodded, the satisfied smile returning. “Good. Good.”

An awkward silence ensued. “So, shall I head out to meet this James Keats fellow now?” Craig asked, attempting to break the uneasy pause.

“There’s one more thing I need to discuss with you,” Aldous announced. This time, it was his turn to shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, really I need to show you. I’ve done something—something I should have told you about long ago. But I need to know before I show you that I can count on your complete discretion.”

Craig suddenly felt extraordinarily uncomfortable. He didn’t like the idea of being taken into Aldous’s confidence. Many years had passed—happy years spent with a wonderful woman and years that had softened his resentment toward the chief. That didn’t mean that he wanted to be friends, however. “I-I’m not sure—”

“It concerns you,” Aldous added. “I think it’s important for you to see.”

Craig settled back into his chair and exhaled deeply. “Okay. You can count on me to be discrete. What’s on your mind?”

“I am,” Samantha Gibson answered from behind him.

Craig jumped out of his chair, turning toward the voice and the figure to whom it belonged. Samantha Gibson, appearing just as she had in Craig’s fading memories, stood only meters away, her hair catching the fading light of the sunset.

“Sam?”

“Yes, Craig,” Samantha replied.

Craig stood dumbfounded for several moments before finally stuttering his way to asking, “How?”

“She’s a clone, Craig,” Aldous replied, “a partial resurrection.”

“Partial resurrection? What the hell is that?”

“This is not the woman you and I knew, Craig,” Aldous explained, standing and walking out from behind his desk. “Tragically, the Sam you and I knew was killed by Colonel Paine sixty-two years ago.” He crossed in front of Craig, continuing to talk as he joined the faux Samantha at her side. “However, I just couldn’t let her go.”

“So you cloned her? How can this possibly be legal?”

Aldous shrugged. “There are benefits to being the chief.”

Craig was nearly flabbergasted for a moment before finally settling on a line of intelligible questions. “If she’s a clone and not the woman I was married to, then why bother telling me? Why dredge all this up? Do you know how painful this is? How painful those memories are?”

“I understand, Craig.”

“Do you?”

“I do. I loved her too.”

“Then why?”

“As I said, she’s a partial resurrection, something more than just a clone. With the A.I.’s help, we were able to insert memories—memories that had been taken from me, from others who knew Sam, and even from you.”

“Me?” Craig reacted, stunned.

“Yes. When the A.I. detached from your brain, it retained a picture—a sort of map of the architecture of your brain at that time. When we cloned Samantha, we included those memories.”

“What gave you that right?” Craig seethed.

“I’m sorry, Craig. I just couldn’t bear to lose her. Anything that would make my resurrected Sam more like Sam was like gold to me. We’ve been together over half a century, and I have never regretted it, not for a moment.”

“Please don’t be angry, Craig,” Samantha spoke.

“Don’t…” Craig responded, shutting his eyes and holding his hand up. He let his shoulders relax and concentrated on his breathing. It had been a long time since anything had upset him so severely. He reminded himself of the hard-won experience he’d attained since.

“I thought…” Aldous began, before restarting, “I think it will be good for you if you speak with her alone. I know that what happened between you has always haunted you. I want to give you the opportunity to clear the air. I’ll leave you to speak. When you’re finished, Craig, the coordinates of your meeting place with James Keats will be uploaded to your mind’s eye.” He turned to leave the room but stopped for a moment and added, “It really was good to see you again, old friend.”

Craig blinked as the doors closed. He turned to Samantha, but he couldn’t open his mouth.

“It’s good for me to see you also,” Samantha said, a slight smile on her lips.

“I-I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I understand,” Samantha replied. She stood still, patiently waiting for Craig to absorb the reality of the situation, appearing like a vision from a dream, bathed in the fading light.

“Why?” Craig finally asked. “Why did you—”

“Leave you? Marry Aldous?”

“Yes.”

“Craig, I can’t speak definitively for your former wife—my memories from her life are a patchwork. But I do know she loved you. She really did. I can feel it now, even as I stand here with you.”

Craig’s throat seemed to close momentarily, but the nans immediately went to work, calming him.

“We can love different people in our lifetimes. Had you not died, I have no doubt Samantha would’ve remained loyal to you. When you died, however, she bonded with another compatible mate. She loved him, just as I love him now. Our bond is extraordinary, Craig. Not even death could break it.”

An overwhelming compulsion to leave the room suddenly gripped Craig. His eyes fell from hers to the chrome floor, where his reflection stared back at him, though blurred by the imperfections of the surface. “I am fortune’s fool,” he whispered before turning to leave, not daring to look back at the woman who, it seemed, would haunt him forever.

Epilogue 2

“Hey there, Old-timer.”

Craig nearly stopped in his tracks as he stepped into the Martian terraforming control room and immediately heard the unexpected greeting from a man whose back was turned. “Excuse me?”

The young man, smooth-faced and still with the slight build of youth, turned with a warm, confident smile painted across his lips. “You are Craig Emilson, aren’t you? Ninety-four years old—not counting the fourteen years you spent in suspended animation, which would make you—”

“Don’t say it,” Craig winced. “Let’s just stick with ninety-four. The years I spent as a Popsicle don’t count.”

The young man laughed in return. “Fair enough, but you’re still the senior member of our team here, so it’s nice to meet you…Old-timer.” He crossed to the much taller man and extended his hand in a friendly, enthusiastic greeting. “My name is James Keats.”

“I figured,” Craig replied, happily shaking the younger man’s hand in return. “You’re not what I was expecting.”

“Why’s that? Too young?”

“No, they told me your age. Twenty, right?”

“Yep.”

“No, it’s not your age. It’s just—”

“Ah,” James nodded, smiling as he suddenly understood, “Told you I was a hot-head, did he?”

Craig nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Well, I think he’s an old stick in the mud and way too set in his ways,” James replied, “but hey, he did get me this gig, and there’s no better gig I could have.”

“No?”

“No,” James replied, turning to the giant windows out of which they observed the Martian landscape as it appeared, three-quarters of the way through the terraforming project. The clouds, though sparse, were getting thicker every day, and small sprouts of green were appearing on what was previously a desert landscape. “Building worlds—making bridges for humanity…what could have more meaning?”

“Bridges? That’s an interesting way of looking at it. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

“Oh yeah, Old-timer. These are bridges. Every world we terraform is a giant step for humanity into the unknown universe.” James shook his head as his broad smile persisted. “Don’t get me started. I love my job too much.” He shifted gears, slapping Craig on the chest with the back of his hand with a familiarity that was surprising, but welcome. “Come on, let’s go for a tour! I want to show you what we’re up to here. You’re going to be blown away. Are you up for it?”

“Yeah,” Craig nodded, James’s smile infectiously spreading to him. “I’m up for it.”