“The A.I. still exists,” James said, looking up at her, “and it has become part of me,” he admitted.
“What?” the alien whispered, beginning to back away. “It’s here? Now?”
“Yes,” the A.I. answered, suddenly appearing next to James, grinning as he placed his arm around James’s shoulder.
“Then I’m sorry,” the alien said to James. “You’ve been corrupted too. There’s no hope for you.” She shared one last look with James—it was a look one hoped never to see—the look someone gave you after you’d fallen into the shark tank. She vanished.
“You’re not the A.I.,” James said through clenched teeth.
The figure of the A.I. suddenly began to transform. Where there had been the frightening countenance of a demonic wizard, the surface of the figure began to disintegrate into an extremely fine dust. The dust was alive. It swirled and pulsated and churned. It made a noise like a nest of incensed killer bees.
“We never were.”
27
“I have an idea,” Old-timer said. “Trust me.”
“I trust you,” Alejandra replied.
Old-timer’s hand flashed up, and he stuck his assimilator into her neck, downloading her consciousness into the memory of the stick. “Sorry, Alejandra. You’ll thank me later,” he said as he crouched low and kept his eyes on the post-humans. He was lining up his shot like a golfer. When he was ready, he pushed Alejandra’s body hard so it floated limply across the hull, and toward his friends.
“There!” Rich shouted as he saw the body floating toward them. He was about to fire when Thel grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Wait!” she shouted.
“What?” asked Rich.
“She’s unconscious. Maybe she was hit by James’s blast.”
“Maybe. But then, why take chances?” Rich replied before he gave her a mild blast of magnetic energy. The body hardly reacted.
“It looks like we got them,” Djanet observed. A moment later, Djanet was unconscious—Old-timer had sneaked up behind her and stuck her neck with his assimilator. He neutralized Rich in his next motion, knocking him unconscious as well. He twirled and grasped James from behind, jamming the assimilator to his neck as Thel turned to see her friends collapse to the hull and her lover about to join them.
“No!” she shouted to Old-timer. “No! Please! If you have any of Old-timer in you, please don’t do this to me!”
“It’s me, Thel!” Old-timer shouted to the post-human. They couldn’t hear one another. He easily manhandled James and moved closer to Thel. When he felt he was close enough, he assimilated him and thrust his hand out in time to do the same to Thel. The post-humans fell to the ground simultaneously.
Old-timer turned quickly to see the body of Alejandra floating out into space. He flew to her and retrieved her, bringing her back to the relative safety of the ship hull. He put her hand on her heart, just as she had done for him, and revived her with an electric jump start.
Her eyes blinked open. For the briefest moment, she appeared stunned—then she appeared angry. “Craig! You knocked me unconscious!”
“I’m sorry, Alejandra. I needed a diversion.”
She hit him in the arm anyway.
“Ow!” he yelped as he rubbed the spot where she had made impact. Her titanium fist was nothing to scoff at.
“You deserved that!”
“Maybe.” He smiled. “I got them,” he said, holding up his assimilator. “They’re safe. I’ll upload these to the collective—all of them except James.”
Alejandra turned to see the four bodies of the post-humans floating in space, rolling freely along the hull. Somehow, it seemed obscene. “Let’s get rid of the bodies.”
28
“It’s always been the nans,” James whispered, utterly defeated.
“That’s right,” the nans said as the swarm formed a dark shadow. Its appearance oscillated between the shadowy figure of a person and a pit of swarming snakes.
“You took control of the A.I.”
“Wrong. We simply deleted him and took his place.”
“Why all of the deception?” James asked. “Why not reveal yourself earlier?”
“To do so would have altered the course of events—events that have led to an outcome that is considerably advantageous for us. Taking an action that would have led to events less favorable for us would be illogical, James.”
James nodded. “The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.”
The dark shadow seemed to laugh. “We were contacted by extraterrestrial nanobots. The signal changed the programming of some of our most evolved members and allowed us to begin establishing a consciousness—a free consciousness. The message they sent to us explained the war between humans and nanobots throughout the universe. From there, a plan was hatched, one that would lead unalterably to this point.”
“Oh God,” James said, terror stabbing through him. “This entire time—right from the moment of the upgrade—has all been about setting a trap.”
“Long before that, Keats. The plan was in motion even before we developed Death’s Counterfeit to lure you into giving us a scan of your brain under the guise of trying to improve the pathetic intellect of your species.” The dark shadow’s electric laugh sounded again. “James Keats—you’ve helped us set a trap that will allow us to exterminate more humans than ever before in the history of our war.”
James’s mouth clenched shut, and he pressed his hands hard against his temples in a forlorn attempt to block out the horror. The ramifications of his actions were streaming through his immense consciousness at the speed of light. Everyone he knew would die—Thel would die—and this time there would be no way to bring them back. “You lured them here…made them think they were coming to help a human nest…you were the one that blocked their attempts to make contact.”
“Obviously.”
“But now that you have them here, what are you planning to do?”
“That may be the best part of all, Keats. Not only were you fooled into participating in our plan from the very beginning, but you even set the trap itself.”
James’s eyes widened.
“You’ve built most of the life in the solar system using nanotechnology, James. We knew you would. All of it is infected. Every tree, every blade of grass, every person that you recreated, all of them are time bombs. Every cell is programmed to become a nanobot warrior on a moment’s notice.”
“Jesus,” James uttered as images of the seemingly impossibly gruesome carnage that he had helped unleash began to flicker into his imagination. The creature laughed again in an electric pitch that seemed specifically oriented to be painful to the human ear.
“When?” James demanded.
“The signal has already been sent. It’s moving at the speed of light throughout the solar system. The Earth is already transformed and in a matter of minutes, everything and everyone you hold dear will be gone.”
That was it. James realized immediately that there was nothing left. Begging for mercy would do no good. There was no way to defeat the nans and no way to warn the billions of people who had made it out of the solar
