Out Through the Attic (21 page)

“Stafford … and Wilson,” Hayes said with mixed horror and anger. “They figured it out, didn’t they?”

Drake’s eyes snapped to Dr. Hayes and then dropped to the floor, embarrassed. “I’m sorry … but yes. They were going to the press.”

“You bastard,” Hayes hissed.

“Enough!” Graebel shouted. Those things are a clear and present danger!”

“Graebel,
please
. Put the gun down,” Chrys implored.

Graebel’s tone went saccharine-sweet, mimicking Chrys’ earlier tone. “I’m sorry,
Dr.
Sarantos. I won’t be putting the gun down. I’ll tell you what I will do, though.” The barrel dropped a few inches, and he pulled the trigger. The thud of the gunshot filled the room, followed by a scream from Dr. Hayes as the slug ripped into his leg and he fell sideways, collapsing on the floor.

“NO!” Chrys screeched and jumped towards Graebel. The pistol leveled at her in the blink of an eye, and she stopped cold.

“Graebel!” Drake hollered. “Are you out of your mind? I’m in charge of this project, and you’re way beyond your limits here!”

“
Were
in charge of this project.” Graebel grinned like a snake about to feed on a clutch of mice. “My orders come from the President. And the order is, terminate Project Danaë … effective immediately. Now back away! And pull that idiot out of there as well. I don’t want to have to shoot him again.”

Drake glared at Graebel but did as instructed. Hayes was panting heavily on the floor and had his hand clamped over the bullet wound in his thigh. Blood seeped through his fingers, soaking through his pants and pooling on the floor. Drake leaned down, slipped his arms under Hayes’ shoulders and pulled him back towards the entrance to the nursery.

“Use his tie and yours to staunch the bleeding,” Chrys said in a worried tone as Graebel stepped up to the panel. Graebel kept the gun pointed at Chrys. “Don’t interfere, Dr. Sarantos. I’d hate to have to kill you, but I will if I have to, no matter who you roomed with in college.”

Graebel turned first one key and then another on the panel. A green light flickered to life. Graebel then flipped open a small cover, exposing a large button. Without any fanfare, he simply pressed the button. Simultaneously, the lights in the lab and the nursery dimmed to almost nothing as the emitters in the nursery erupted to life. There was the static crackle of electricity as a web of blue energy arced across the array of cribs. Blue lightning traced its way over the swaddled babies who, for the first time since slipping into their comas, began screaming. As Chrys watched in horror, the lightning began to pool in the far corner, as if drawn towards the tub holding 0001.

“There is nothing to fear.”

The phrase echoed in all of their minds, but Chrys knew the message was not meant for the men around her.

The screaming of the babies suddenly stopped, and the energy continued to coalesce in the corner of the room. Subject 0001 glowed with an intensity that rivaled the arcs of energy still dancing across the children, and then the three adults watched in stunned fascination as the baby rose out of its crib and floated towards them. The blanket dropped to the floor, and the baby drifted towards them slowly, suspended in mid-air at eye-level. All three adults heard a deep humming, almost like a song, but it wasn’t a sound. It was a thought beaming directly into their brains. The song turned to a voice, speaking to each of them with a booming clarity that resonated within their thoughts but not their ears … and Chrys recognized it as the voice from her dreams.

“You should not have tried to hurt WEI.”

0001 hovered before the glass now, electricity coiling around her small body and connecting it to each of the children behind. Her eyes opened, filled with an unearthly white light. Chrys watched as Graebel’s pistol rose in an instant. He aimed at 0001 just as Chrys started rushing towards him in a desperate attempt to prevent what she knew she couldn’t stop. The gun went off again and again. Glass shattered, and the bullets tore into 0001’s head, ripping great furrows and craters in the small cranium. The hum in their minds turned to screaming again, a howl of agony that pierced the psyches of the adults, filling their senses and almost blinding them with its intensity. The room filled with the smell of ozone, and the buzzing hiss of electricity filled their ears. Chrys crashed into Graebel, knowing she was too late. They both slammed into the control panel.

Graebel roared with fury and threw Chrys backwards with brutal fist across her face. She staggered back and watched the pistol swing around towards her. She saw the muzzle-flash. She heard the thump. She even watched the spent cartridge flip out of the breach and spin gracefully onto the floor to land with a small metallic jingle between Dr. Hayes’ legs, coming to a stop in his blood. She looked down and saw a crimson blossom appear in the center of her chest and drift its way towards her belt. More than anything else, she wanted to hear the sound of her heart pounding in her ears, but there was nothing. The bullet had torn its way through her heart and lodged in her lung. She tried to draw a breath, but nothing happened. She stole her gaze from Drake’s furious eyes to the still-floating form of 0001. It hadn’t moved, and the electricity danced across it and the children with even greater intensity.

The howl of agony that had filled their minds turned to one of rage, and Chrys felt the tendril of something huge and powerful and innocent slip into her thoughts. It cradled her mind as her body died.

“Do not be afraid,” WEI said in Chrys’ mind. “Watch. And learn.”

0001’s headless body lifted its arms, pointing one at Graebel and the other at her. Arcs of electricity shot forth, burning into both their foreheads. The energy engulfed their bodies and began burning away tissue as if it was feeding upon the flesh. Graebel screamed as his body was wracked with pain and his tissues burned from the inside out. He shuddered and danced with agony as his body was torn asunder and scorched to bits of ash that fell to the floor in motes and chunks.

Chrys felt her own body burning away, but there was no pain. And as the current flowed into her, there was something more, like a carrier signal piggy-backed along the destructive energy, carrying with it a wealth of data … an entire world of data. In an instant she knew that Graebel had been the one to kill the two technicians. She knew the CIA had planned on using the babies as a weapon if she had found a cure. She knew everything. Every bit and byte that WEI had been able to cull through its sensitivity to Wi-Fi, every mainframe it had accessed, every server its 300-in-one mind had spent a year searching and learning from poured into her.

As the last bits of Graebel’s ashen form fell to the floor, the last bits of bone and flesh of Chrys’ body disappeared, leaving only her naked brain hovering there above the ash. She was now aware of both the
we
and the
I
, and she realized that Wei was not a surname, but the combination of the group and the individual into a singular whole. We and I combined seamlessly into WEI. She saw the three-hundred, and the three-hundred saw her. Her brain floated towards the body of 0001, the stem of her brain dangling a short distance beneath the crumpled pink of the cerebrum. An arc of energy shot forth from her brain, absorbing what was left of the baby’s shattered cranium. The headless body waited patiently to become host to the new living brain.

The two drifted together and merged while WEI continued to soak in the electricity Graebel had so foolishly decided to feed it. The stem settled down into the infant’s neck, spontaneously growing new nerves and a chord to connect it to the new host body. As brain met body, more connections fused on a telepathic mode to the whole, and her mind swelled and was at once subsumed into the greater whole. The mouth from her dreams opened. She disappeared, swallowed completely and subsumed by WEI. The physical world reshaped itself under her newfound perceptions. Matter and energy were playthings she could now manipulate.

Drake stood, staring at the creature before him. It was a vision he would never forget in the years to come when this thing would change humanity forever.

The room beyond was darkness except where the coursing blue energy danced across the infants. The thing floating before Drake seethed with electricity, and energy danced around the exposed adult brain that sat atop the squirming infant’s body.

“
Enough,
” Drake and Hayes heard in their minds.

Baby WEI floated through the shattered window and drifted down to hover directly over Hayes’ shivering body. The pool of blood surrounded him, and his face had gone ashen. His eyes slowly closed, and WEI saw the spark of life drifting away as a tendril of faded, wispy energy drifted from Hayes’ body. WEI stretched out a hand, and a bolt of energy hit the panel for the emitters. There was a cascade of sparks, and then all of the emitters went dead. The only light in the room now emanated from the babies themselves, a soft blue glow that set the nursery and lab into soft shadows. Drake cowered back, pressing his back against a far wall as he tried to stay out of reach of the thing before him.

WEI raised another hand, and a soft beam of light sprang forth, focused on Hayes’ wounded leg. The blood coating the floor seemed to flow back into him, and his color returned. The wisps of his life-force were drawn back into his body as well, growing in intensity as they infused themselves into his limp form. He opened his eyes and stared up. “Chrys?”

“No, Dr. Hayes. My name is WEI, although Chrys is a part of us and we are all her,” the thing’s mind spoke in his thoughts.

“They won’t let you live,” Hayes said sadly. He felt WEI’s smile in his mind.

“
There is nothing to fear. They can do not to harm us now … or stop us.
” WEI raised its arm towards the steel airlock, and the metal crumpled and twisted like paper, tearing away from the wall to be crushed into a small mound of bent wreckage in the ragged opening.

“What do you mean?” Hayes’ voice was filled with a sense of fearful awe.

“There are too many secrets, and too much suffering because of them. Humanity needs a guardian … a steward. WEI can provide that. Goodbye, Dr. Hayes. WEI floated up above and hovered before Drake’s terrified eyes. A voice now filled the room, heard and felt in both men’s minds and ears. The entire building heard and felt it. “Dr. Drake, tell them what has happened here today. Tell them there will be no more secrets. Tell them that WEI will be watching.”

WEI turned its back upon Drake and floated back through the shattered window. Hayes got to his feet and stared into the nursery. WEI made its way slowly to the middle of the room, and then each baby began glowing with an increasingly brighter light. The three-hundred-in-one began wrapping its staggering intellect around the very fabric of matter and energy in which it swam, preparing for its journey. The light grew in intensity, and every baby lifted out of its tub, floating in the air like an infant army of apparitions. WEI visualized the space between matter and energy, the aether some called it, and prepared to open the door. The glaring brightness reached a crescendo, forcing both Drake and Hayes to cover their eyes. WEI opened the door and the three-hundred-in-one passed beyond the threshold. With the sound of three-hundred pops of air rushing in to fill empty spaces, every infant disappeared from the nursery.

WEI was a singular consciousness that existed as an extension of the energy that bathed Earth and connected everyone and everything. It sent its mind’s eye from within the aether where it had teleported, searching for its new home. It had dug up the coordinates from secret mainframes in Virginia. Dr. Sarantos’ obsession with Atlantis had made WEI curious, so it had gone digging. In the CIA mainframes it found the data: how the Greek crew had detected an ancient energy source, one that still powered an ancient city sequestered under the mud of the Mediterranean. WEI discovered how a rogue arm of the CIA, closely allied with a high-tech military arms manufacturer, killed the Greeks and hid it all in the name of security. They were putting together an operation to occupy Atlantis and learn its secrets. WEI had other plans.

Its gaze lifted high above the Earth and soared across the Atlantic, over Gibraltar, diving deep under the surface of the Mediterranean Ocean … in search of a dream that belonged to a woman who no longer existed. There, under forty feet of silt and sea-wrecks, WEI found its home. The vessel that lay anchored over the sunken city, manned by CIA operatives, company executives and mercenaries, lost power and was set adrift. In the crews minds a single warning was impressed upon each squirming consciousness.

“STAY AWAY.”
And their intentions were transmitted to the White House … and then the press.

For 9,000 years the city lay undisturbed and sealed from the briny deep, just as the Titans left it. Corridors of carved stone and amphitheaters of marble lay arranged in a tidy network underneath the ruins of what had been the surface city of Atlantis. The mind of WEI could reach out from there, tapping into every bit of data and each human mind from the safety of the hidden city. It absorbed nutrition from the matter that surrounded it and soaked in energy from the sun and the Earth alike. When WEI detected newborn infants with the genetic capacity to perceive Wi-Fi, the new addition to the collective was teleported to Atlantis to join with the hive.

O O O

In the months and years that followed, every secret of every government, every corporation, every conspiracy, every individual or group of individuals who caused suffering of the human mind, body or spirit … they were all exposed. Data flooded through the internet. WEI was everywhere and saw everything.

Individually and collectively, world governments made a number of excursions into the Med in vain attempts to stop the new threat to secrecy. Men and ships and subs were sent, even submerged nuclear devices. WEI pressed them all back, killing no one but making the message clear. There was nothing to be done but accept WEI for what it was and what it would become.

Thus WEI began its stewardship of humanity. In time the human species adapted—evolved—and grew to accept its new god.