seeing. The A.I.’s smile widened as an impossible vision appeared before them.
“No,” James whispered.
It wasn’t an army of metallic, insect-shaped machines hurtling toward them through space.
It was an eternity of people.
“Yes,” the A.I. replied.
16
“You monster,” James whispered. The sight was more astonishing than anything he had ever witnessed— and far more frightening. “You knew they were people!”
The A.I. laughed.
“Who are they?” James demanded. In less than ten seconds, the nans would be cutting a swathe through hundreds of billions—trillions—of people who were hurtling through space—people completely unprotected by spacesuits. “Who are they!?”
“The invasion force, one would assume. Not so easy to ‘destroy’ now, are they?”
James had to make his choice in an instant. The sight before him didn’t make sense. He’d been sure it would be a machine invasion, yet now he was looking at a vast sea, several times larger than the largest planet in the solar system, of what appeared to be people. They were flying through space at an incredible rate, seemingly unprotected by any magnetic fields or special flight gear. They were wearing dark clothing, but there didn’t appear to be a discernible uniform.
“To abort or not to abort, James. That is the question,” the A.I. said, drinking in the energy of the moment.
James watched, wild-eyed, as the people recoiled in terror at the nans he had built.
The nans began to tear them apart. There were no sounds of screaming in space, yet James was sure he could hear them anyway.
17
“You’re a mass murderer, James! How does it feel?” the A.I. screeched as he watched the massacre unfolding.
James remained silent as the people were shredded into virtually nothing within seconds of coming in contact with the nans. The horror was almost too much for him to take, and he nearly aborted the attack. A closer look at the carnage convinced him that he’d been right to go ahead with the slaughter. The people were being torn apart, but it wasn’t blood and flesh that were left floating through space—it was metal and circuitry. “They are machines,” James said.
“We’re all machines, James,” the A.I. replied. “Meat or metal—it doesn’t really matter.”
“Was this a ruse?” James asked. “The alien put androids in front as a decoy to make us second-guess ourselves?”
“If it was, it clearly didn’t work,” the A.I. responded with a grin. “You’re too cold and calculating for that.”
“If that wasn’t it, then what is its game?” James asked.
“I think you are about to find out,” the A.I. replied, gesturing with his eyes toward the view screen.
The alien armada was beginning to take a comprehensible shape. There was a sea of hundreds of trillions of androids, flanked by hundreds of continent-sized metallic ships. The androids were beginning to respond to the attack of the nans by accelerating.
“They’re speeding up!” James shouted. He sent a communication to the humans on Mars warning them that they had run out of time, but it was becoming quickly apparent that the warning would do no good.
“How can they move that fast?” James asked.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to poke a beehive with a stick?” the A.I. asked. “You’ve made them angry.”
James watched helplessly as the androids began to swarm the planet at a rate he couldn’t have imagined just seconds earlier. The swarm of androids began to cover the planet like a demonic, grasping black hand.
“Are you sure you want to watch this, James?” the A.I. asked mockingly. “It will not be pretty.”
“What are they doing?” James asked.
The A.I. remained silently smiling as he stood next to James and watched the gruesome spectacle unfold. The androids were falling like a hurricane rain of metal onto the formerly peaceful and beautiful surface of the planet. James had spent years working on the terraforming of Mars, and in mere moments, it was about to be wiped out. Most of the humans hadn’t made it off of the planet yet, thinking that they still had time. Green cocoons of light were emerging from the surface in vain attempts to escape the hellish carnage that was collapsing down upon their heads—but there would be no escape.
The androids were swarming the ships, dragging them back down to the surface. Individual post-humans were being attacked as well. The androids were able to knock out their magnetic fields if they made physical contact.
“What are they doing to them?” James asked, aghast.
James watched as post-humans were rendered unconscious with a simple touch and then flown up to the stratosphere and launched into the black abyss of space.
“It looks as if they’re taking out the garbage,” the A.I. replied.
18
James saw the proceedings transpiring before him on his mind’s eye while the hangar for the Purist ship reached completion. He cursed, realizing yet another nightmarish truth on an endless sea of nightmarish truths. With the aliens speeding their approach, there was no way the Purist ship could possibly be made ready in time.
James bolted from his position and streaked toward the Purist village. “Thel! The situation just took a serious turn for the worse! We need to get those people underground immediately!”
“What’s happening?” Thel asked as she stood next to Alejandra and Old-timer, both of whom were speaking to Purists and answering questions.
“The aliens just sped up their approach. They’ve overwhelmed Mars. We have less than thirty minutes!”
The words hit Thel like a cannonball to the chest. “James…James, no. We can’t get them out that fast!”
Alejandra and Old-timer turned around when they heard Thel’s exclamation of dread.
“What’s going on?” Old-timer asked as he patched into the call.
“We have to get the people underground!” James shouted. “We’re going to have to build the ship around them if we have to! It’s not going to be safe on the surface. In under thirty minutes, anything left on this planet is going to be dead!”
19
