Enemy has been completely and utterly destroyed.”
“Even if it means killing someone you love?”
“Even if it means killing someone you love. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.”
Patra regarded Zero-Four calmly. “I understand. But I don’t think you’ll have to kill me.”
Zero-Four nodded.
There was a marked moment of awkward silence, and then West spoke. “If you designed the machines in the first place, how did you get involved in this whole war against them? Wasn’t your world about to die?”
“It was, but time is a fluid, much like the machines. They swept back through time almost as easily as they’d conquered the universe in the countless aeons before the heat death. Machines persevere, and they have no fear of time. Machines are eternal. We, however, are not.”
“What is it?”
“Sorry to wake you, Michael. You should come take a look at this.”
He went over to the display at the center of the room. “This equipment was supposed to be dismantled yesterday. We have a schedule to keep.”
“That’s just it… We were about to take it apart when we noticed that something was wrong with the readings. Just look at it.”
Michael relented and activated the holodisplay. The building shook with the force of an explosion from the outside, and the display flickered for an instant. “Damn the resistance. They’ll never give up until the city falls.” His eyebrows furrowed as the display returned to normal. “What the hell’s in the buffer?”
“We have no idea.” The technician came closer. “We were about to take it apart, and this is what we saw.”
“But there’s a pattern in the buffer! How could we have missed a full pattern in the transfer?”
“It was clean. We all made sure it was clean before they cut the upload link to the machine. But when we came back to disassemble it, this is what we saw.”
Michael studied the display closely. It clearly showed the green outline of a trapped pattern in the buffer. Another explosion, and the readout faded to black. Emergency generators kicked in almost immediately, and the readout returned to normal.
“When are they gonna give up?”
“They won’t. Not until we’re all dead.” Michael’s gaze was riveted to the display. “Well, there’s only one thing we can do. Download whoever our trapped passenger is and give him his money back. Prepare the synthesis chamber for pattern download and printing.”
“Yes, sir.”
The technician left the chamber to prepare the necessary biologics. Michael crossed his arms, shook his head. Just what they needed right now… With the abandonment of the city only days away, this unexpected development could cause some serious trouble for the machine engineers.
“Impossible. We couldn’t have missed this.”
“How’s he cooking?”
“Download at ninety percent. Adult male. Sequencing shows cellular degradation consistent with forty-plus years of age.” The technician scrutinized the display. “Hmm…”
“What is it?”
“Filters say that this pattern isn’t pure. Hasn’t been screened. Twenty-percent cancer risk, thirty percent —“
“Cancer? How is that possible?”
“Let’s ask him. We should have an identity lock right… now.”
“Who is he?”
The technician was dumbfounded. “Identity not found in current registry.”
“Identity not found? Everyone’s in the registry. Could the pattern have been disrupted in the transfer?”
“Doubtful. Usually they aren’t as well formed when there’s a transfer disruption, just a bloody mess when they come out. As you can see,” the technician adjusted the display, “he looks fine to me.”
On the screen before him, Michael saw a healthy-looking older man, skin chocolate brown, hair just beginning to gray at the temples. Muscular build. He appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
“Well, we’ll find out who he is soon enough. Activate him.”
“Are you sure that it’s safe?”
“Activate him.”
“Yes, sir. Breath of life in three… two… one. Engaged.”
The body seized as electrical current was forced back into the brain, activating the body once again after the lifetimes it had spent in the void of the pattern. The man’s body arched up, and he fell back to the bottom of the chamber, screaming. He spun around in the confined space.
The man in the chamber stood as best he could. He saw Michael and the technician in the room beyond. His arms shimmered with a silver fire as he shifted and cut through the chamber cover.
“What the… Secure the room!”
“Chamber sealed off! What the fuck was that?”
The man’s arms solidified, and he stood before them, eyes blazing with an impossible silver fire. Michael was speechless.
Where am I? What time is this?
Words without substance. The man was speaking without using his mouth.
Where am I? His eyes burned at Michael, who could say nothing. He felt a sudden gentle tugging behind his eyes, and the man’s silver gaze brightened for an instant.
Good. Then I’m not too late.
“He was reading your mind.”
“Yes.”
“It was Richter.”
“Yes.”
West’s face could not contain its amazement. “He made it. I thought for sure that he’d be killed if he jumped into that light, but he made it.”
“He said he knew what he had to do, where he had to go.” Patra’s eyes were distant. “He touched the mind- essence in the desert. He saw the thoughts of the Enemy. He knew where he had to go because his own voice told him.” Patra turned to Michael. “They captured him, didn’t they? His pattern was uploaded into Omega. It’s the voice of the Enemy.”
Zero-Four sadly looked at the floor. “He was captured, but not before he gave us the hope to retake the future from the Enemy. Not before he reclaimed billions of patterns from the damned. It’s because of Richter that the Judas exist at all. If not for him, there’d be no hope of saving the physical universe from upload by Omega.”
“Time’s a cycle. It’s because of the launch of the machine that Richter appeared, right? If the machine hadn’t been launched, Richter never would have appeared in the pattern buffer.”
“That’s right. The launch of the machine led to the eventual evolution of the machine species into the Enemy and their race to consume the physical universe. If the machine hadn’t been launched, the Enemy would never have attacked your time, and Richter never would have jumped into the future.”
West’s arm flickered with the shift. “How do you explain this? Where’d the vessel in the earth come from?”
Zero-Four shook his head. “We might never know. I don’t know how many covert operations Kilbourne sent into the past. I’m certainly not aware of any that were sent back far enough into the planet’s history that the planet surface was still forming. I don’t know how that ship got into the earth.”
“Time’s a cycle.” West thoughtfully scratched his chin. “Richter convinced you to join him against the Enemy?”
“There was no convincing needed. He touched my mind, and I saw everything that he’d seen. The fog of age has obscured some of it to me by now, but I still can feel the horror and fascination that his touch brought to me. He knew that I’d created the machine, and he knew that I had to help him to prevent the Enemy from uploading everything into Omega.”
A starless sky, a city on fire. A rooftop.
