Post-Human Trilogy

“When you do it, tell him I said, hello,” Rich said, contempt dripping from his lips.

“Don’t do this, James,” Thel pleaded. “I just got you back. I can’t lose you again.”

“You won’t lose me, Thel…and I have to do this.”

“Why? Why can’t we just stay here? Why can’t we start over here?”

“We can’t escape him, Thel. Believe me, right now, the A.I. is breeding. He’s using a process I invented to reproduce exponentially. He can reproduce far faster than any organism in the universe. Robots don’t need to terraform. He can populate the solar system in a matter of days. He won’t need Earth, and then there won’t be anything stopping him from destroying it. He’ll move on from there. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the terror we’ve unleashed? There is life out there, Thel. We may not have contacted it yet, but it’s a mathematical certainty that it’s out there. It won’t just be us he destroys.”

Thel stepped away from James and sat down on a nearby chair. “I can’t believe it. It’s actually worse than I thought.”

“Do you see why I have to go?”

“But why alone, James? We could come with you!”

“It will take too long to configure a signal that can carry more than one person’s neural pattern. Besides, I need you guys here to watch over my body. I’ll appear to be in a deep sleep, but there won’t be anything you can do to wake me. Only I can bring myself back.”

“Will this nightmare never end?” Thel said.

James bent to one knee in front of Thel and lifted her chin. Her eyes were glossy with tears. “Thel, I promise you, I will destroy him…and I will be back.”

Thel shook her head and shut her eyes tight. “Then go! Go right now! Because I can’t stand this anymore! Kill it, James!”

James kissed her for a long moment on the cheek, then turned to the others. “Are we ready?”

“We’re ready,” Old-timer replied.

“Then let’s do it.” James took his place on the bed once again.

“Are you sure about this, buddy?” Old-timer asked his friend in a whisper quiet enough that Thel couldn’t overhear.

“As sure as I can be.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Old-timer responded grimly. “Take care of yourself. You still owe me that beer.”

James smiled. “I never break a promise,” he replied. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“Wait!” Thel shouted before Djanet could initiate the transfer of consciousness. She sprung out of her chair and grasped James’s hand tightly with her own as she kissed him hard. “You come back to me, you hear me?”

“I’ll be back.”

Thel kept her eyes locked on James, even as tears fell and landed on his neck.

“Do it, Djanet,” James said.

Djanet hit a button, and the life seemed to drain from James’s body as though someone had unplugged the drain. His pupils shrank as his eyes shut, and his head turned slightly to one side. His grasp on Thel slackened to nothing.

“Is he okay?” Thel asked Djanet.

“He’s perfect, Thel,” Djanet replied as she looked at the read-outs on her computer screen.

“He’s in,” said Old-timer.

12

Thel’s love-drenched eyes gave way to a perfect blackness—a blackness so complete that, had James not experienced it before, he would have panicked, believing he were dead. “Death’s counterfeit indeed,” he said out loud.

He opened his mind’s eye and began to navigate. He was in cyberspace now—an endless eternity of infinite space. He could reach any mainframe he wanted in the world, although most, if not all, had been taken over or destroyed by the A.I. It didn’t matter. There was only one place he wanted to go anyway. He located the A.I. and clicked.

In an instant, he saw a blue orb in the distance. An instant later, the blueness had given way to a massive, planet-sized circuitry. He had just enough time to make sure his feet were under him as he came into contact with the surface of the A.I. He stood to his feet and looked around himself at the colossal structure. The A.I. appeared like a planet of rectangular buildings. To James, it resembled the downtown cores of ancient cities in which boxy skyscrapers towered above paved streets. Each structure represented a file filled with information. James stood in one of the streets now, except there were no people or automobiles driving by; there was nothing but blackness at his feet. And as he peered upwards, there was perfect blackness in the sky. The buildings glowed an azure blue, but their light had nothing—no atmosphere of any sort—off of which it could reflect. The sky was empty and pure.

“Now where the hell are you?”

James flew upwards to obtain a better perspective. He picked the highest structure he could see and came to a perch on top of it. Gold laser beams were flashing above him, streaking across the sky. They flashed so quickly that he couldn’t tell where the starting point was versus the ending point. The lights comprised of information going to and fro from the mother program. He needed to find that program and to build a firewall around it to isolate it from the rest of itself so it could be deleted. The golden laser lights weren’t helping. He turned a full 360 degrees, trying to get a sense of where the mother program might be. Far away in the distance, he made out what appeared to be a faint glow, almost imperceptible from where he was.

He lifted off and began to fly again, just skimming the rooftops and moving toward the white shape of light. As it became stronger, James knew he had found the mother program. “There you are.” He moved quicker now. In cyberspace, space is almost irrelevant. With no wind or any objects to block progress, one’s body essentially became an electric signal that could move virtually, at the speed of light. In mere moments, he was hovering overtop the mother program.

Its white light was phenomenal, and even in cyberspace, James found himself having to squint. Thousands of golden beams of information were flashing in and being absorbed by the program every second. “Amazing,” James whispered to himself before lowering down to the surface next to the whiteness.

It was time to build the firewall. James opened his mind’s eye once again and began inputting the instructions and the location of the mother program. In seconds, it would be over.

“Are you looking for someone?” asked a familiar voice from behind.

James wheeled around in terror. The terrifying countenance and black eyes of the A.I. stared back at him.

13

“Oh come now, James. Are you really surprised that I anticipated your little plot? Surely you knew it couldn’t be that easy.”

James stepped away from the A.I. and pulled down the drop-down menu in his mind’s eye to find the location of the computer back at the Purist complex. “Yes, of course. I’ve discovered you, so run back home. Lick your wounds,” the A.I. said drolly. James clicked on the icon for the computer at the complex, but nothing happened; he couldn’t escape. His eyes darted to the A.I. “You already know the answer, James. You’ve turned yourself into a virus, so I have quarantined you. You aren’t going anywhere.”

“How did you—”

“Know you were coming? You really can’t guess? I know everything you know, James.”