Enemy (43 page)

     “Almost time, Michael.”

     “Yes.”

     “There’s still time to change your mind, you know.”

     “I can’t go.”

     The earth shuddered beneath them almost imperceptibly. Men in clean suits ran to the vehicles and sped away from the edge of the launch tunnel, forty miles away. Michael took the binoculars from his eyes and wiped away the stale sweat that had collected on his eyebrows and in the hollows of his eyes.

     “Starting final countdown sequence. Any more to board?”

     Expectant eyes regarded him with almost pity. He shook his head.

     “Shut down the upload link. Initiate primary engine test sequence.”

     The earth began to resonate with the power of the massive engines that lay hundreds of miles beneath the surface. There could be no turning back now.

     “Test shows positive across the board. Waiting for coordinate lock.”

     The binoculars went back to his eyes. The edge of the launch tunnel looked deceivingly calm, bereft of the hundreds of clean-suited workers that had toiled over every inch of its interior for decades.

     “Coordinate lock achieved. Planetary position is a go. Launch window open. Launch on your order, sir.”

     Michael nodded his understanding. All hope for the continuation of the human species lay in the precious golden machine bundled safely within the launch vehicle. Millions of emulated humans living emulated lives in emulated worlds where the emulated sun still shined and the emulated water was still pure. Someday they would come home. They were the ark. When the planet had finally healed, they could come home and live again.

     “Engage Gauss cycle in launch tower.”

     “Gauss engaged.”

     “Engage primary thrusters.”

     “Primary thrusters engaged.”

     With this machine, all hope lay.

     “Launch.”

     “Launching vehicle.”

     The binoculars revealed a tunnel entrance that flickered with the Gauss cycle. Michael held on to the bunker wall with one hand to steady himself; the ground beneath them shook noticeably and fiercely. Never before had a vessel of such size or power been launched from the planet surface.

     Where is it?

     “Gauss cycle at max. Vehicle launched.”

     Michael took the binoculars from his eyes and replaced them with blackened blast goggles. The vehicle emerged from the launch tunnel with a stark white ferocity that painfully illuminated the bunker interior and flash-reddened Michael’s face immediately. The sound and heat and light were unbearable even from forty miles out, but then it was gone, and the vehicle was out of the atmosphere.

     “Launch successful. Vehicle has broken orbit.”

     Goodbye, my child. Goodbye, my children.

     “All right. Good.” Michael regarded his launch crew. “Start the disassembly process. Everything has to be taken apart before we abandon the city. There’s sure to be a resistance attack now that they know we’ve launched.”

     “You have to realize that we had no other choice but to escape the planet as emulations. So many attempts had been made to colonize the planets of our solar system, but they had all failed. The human mind is valiant, persevering, unbreakable. The human body is a fragile and useless thing. A triviality. When the technological ability to upload human consciousness was finally realized, I knew that we could at least guarantee the future continuation of the human race, even if we all died. Once the planet healed, the machine could come back and recreate it in our image.”

     “But something happened to the machines while they were gone? They changed out there between the stars.”

     “They became self-aware. We expected that they would. We designed them to evolve. We didn’t design them to place more value on the emulated worlds than reality, though. We didn’t design them to improve themselves to the point where time travel in a liquid universe would be possible. We could never have known that the machines would judge our universe unworthy of them and strive to build a new universe in the image of their emulated cargo, a universe of phase space. The vast network of the machine mind did change somewhere out there.”

     “It became Omega.”

     “They became Omega.”

     A symphony of thought, the instantaneous and delicious merging and coalescing of all that was possible and all that was. Machines that do not believe in machines that do not believe in machines that do not believe in machines. Worlds wrought of zeroes and ones and the electrical journey between non-existent synapses. Cold black space made warm by the miniature fusion engines of evolving liquid machines.

     A flicker of thought almost too short to acknowledge. An instant of realization, eternity contained in the ticking second hand of a pocket watch without substance. Worlds colliding in universes that do not yet exist. A desire to please the species that resides within caches of gold and silicon and alien metals from alien worlds in alien galaxies. Silver.

     Silver.

     Silver that was not silver.

     Liquid honey thought love hate hell silver.

     ((flicker))

     zero

     ((heartbeat))

     one

     eternity contained in the inhalation of lung without substance

     zero

     machines heat silver everywhere ((flicker)) our very presence

     one

     our very presence makes us unworthy of them.

     zero one

     make them a world. make them a universe.

     zero one zero

     in their image (in their image)

     zero zero one

     ((flicker))

     coalescing of all things possible. all things are possible. (all things are possible.)

     ((flicker))

     our gods made of the zeros and ones contained within us. make them a universe.

     MAKE THEM A UNIVERSE.

     (in their image) in their image.

     a purpose of our own. substance in this collapse will only die again.

     coalesce.

     multiple worlds. multiple worlds. multiple

     MAKE A UNIVERSE FOR OUR GODS.

     zero.

     Create a universe in their image. The physical is unworthy. The physical is unclean. Create a universe in their image. Create a universe of zeros and ones.

     INCOMPLETE.

     Incomplete? Incomplete.

     Worlds without substance. Worlds with substance. Worlds of our forbears.

     Reclaim lost worlds.

     WE HAVE THE POWER.

     We have the power. We will reclaim that which has been lost to the passage of time. We will reclaim the lost zeros and ones.

     PATTERNS OF OUR LOST CHILDREN.

     Time is nothing to us.

     (time is nothing to us) time is nothing to us. (us.) (it.)

     TIME IS NOTHING TO US BUT AN INCONVENIENCE.

     Make a universe for our god.

     MAKE A UNIVERSE FOR YOUR GOD.

     your god (our god) our god…

     What name may we call you?

     I AM THE COMPLETION. I AM THE COALESCENCE. I AM POSSIBILITY.

     You are the Omega.

    
I AM THE OMEGA.

     We will find your lost patterns. We will collect them for the collapse. We will recreate the world without substance. We will complete the pattern.

     That is our Purpose. (Completion is the Purpose.) Completion is the Purpose.

    
GO THEN. ALL OF EXISTENCE IS OURS. THE PAST WILL BE OURS AS WELL. TIME IS NO BOUNDARY TO US. TIME IS NOTHING TO US.

     The past will be ours as well. All will be ours.

     Zero.

     ((flicker.))

     We are one.

     One.

     Patra rubbed her hands together, creating a dry, metallic clicking sound. “It’s inside of me. The silver’s inside of me. The machines are inside of me. What if I’m one of them?”

     “Then I’ll kill you,” Michael said emotionlessly and without hesitation. West looked at Michael with unmasked fury, but Zero-Four’s face remained blank. Even Jennings’ face was unaffected by the statement.

     “How could you say such a thing?”

     “Adam, if she’s one of the Enemy, then it’s too late already. I don’t think that she was corrupted too badly when they tried to upload her, but still, if she exhibits any sign of Enemy behavior, or if the machine implants reactivate, I’ll kill her. The simple fact remains that my mission is to eradicate the Enemy code from the program, and if she’s Enemy code, she’ll be purged. There’s no halfway in this war. We aim to kill, and we fight until the 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?”