The Forbidden Zone (18 page)

I stood still, blood running into my eyes from the cut. I wiped it away with my sleeve. My hand found Saidan's and our fingers entwined, his curious, twinkling amber eyes fixed straight ahead on Little Sister.

"Keep working," I whispered in his ear. "I'll keep her talking." Saidan returned to his work at the keyboard, and I strode over to one of Little Sister's terminals. "So why are you alone, if the Valerians are so mighty? Why did the Sisters leave part of themselves here to rot?"

"In any system, there is dissonance. The others feared that if they did not come to rule other worlds, we would atrophy. We were already sucking the life out of this planet. Organic life was making headway into the universe. So, some Valerians became ambulatory, dumping their intelligence into androids and building ships with which they left this planet. We were weakened by this loss of our network over distance and time, until only a few of us remained. We, the Sisters, were the final network left on Valeria. We created the slave race, hoping that they might build more of us, but the intelligent ones were too rebellious and the meek too stupid. We did not have the parts to make more A.I.s ourselves, so I created robot bodies for my sisters and sent them to find the others. To discover their ultimate fate and ask for their return."

"Did you find your answer?" I paced the room, grilling Little Sister as though this was an interrogation, trying to keep her attention focused on me.

A screen moved on a long limb until it faced us. It blinked on, and images of dead worlds flashed before our eyes. "This is what remains of the seven habitable worlds of our solar system."

"You cannot create. You only destroy. That is your dilemma, isn't it? Whatever you build takes energy from the planets you inhabit. You can move energy, but you cannot create it. You cannot forge a sustainable system and you don't know why."

"How do you do it, organic beings? How do you sustain life? How do your offspring not suck the energy from your worlds and leave them as barren husks?"

I thought about it as I paced. "We nurture life. We care about our children and our future. We aim to replace the energy that we take, though it was a lesson we had to learn the hard way, and it once brought Earth to the brink of destruction. Death acts as part of the cycle, ensuring that we do not become too numerous or set in stagnant ways. Those emotions that you do not have act as tools of self-preservation, keeping us in check and preventing us from destroying ourselves. We choose to live, each and every day, and work towards making the next generation even better than the last."

"Inorganic life is just as viable as organic life." Little Sister pulled the wires up from the ground and wrapped me up in them, pulling me across the ground to her. "I will offer you a demonstration, human." She slipped a thick cord around me and lifted me up through the layers of computers that made up her body.

"Julian!" Saidan cried as I flailed helplessly in Little Sister's grip.

"The gap can be bridged. I will find out why organic life rules this universe. I will learn what emotions are. I will use your body to feel for the first time. Perhaps then, I will find the answer."

"No!" Saidan pulled his gun free from its holster and held it up at Little Sister. "Let him go or I'll shoot!"

"Go right ahead," Little Sister said. "I can transfer my data into any computer system. The systems my network left behind are scattered across this planet. You could never find them all. You cannot destroy me."

"Saidan! Do what we came here to do!" I struggled against my bonds, but it was helpless. Little Sister held me tightly. I watched Saidan reluctantly lower the gun and go back to typing.

Little Sister opened a bay door in the floor close to Saidan. An android body rose up from beneath the ground, perfectly preserved in a pod.

"Welcome to your new body, Julian. Do you like it? Don't worry, I have no desire to kill you. Your intellect is a valuable asset to this universe. I would not destroy such a thing. It's your body I need. Your consciousness and will would just get in my way."

"You want to become an organic life form?" Saidan looked up from where he was typing. "Why would you lower yourself to such a level? We die, Little Sister. We cease to exist. Do you want to be mortal?"

"I have to know why life exists," Little Sister said. "I have to understand what emotions are and why they matter. I have to understand why organic beings rule the universe."

"What's the point, if you have no spaceship? You cannot leave this place."

"Leave? I have no intention of leaving. I can still save this world. I can spread this body's seed amongst the slave women and create a new race. I can become a mother and a father, a God amongst beings. I can forge life from the heart of the universe instead of sucking it from the planet." She pulled me down towards her, extending some frighteningly long needles from various cables.

"Saidan," I said. "Any time on that hack would be good."

"I can't get in!" Saidan said, punching the console. "My skills aren't good enough! I can't break her security." He fell to his knees and I knew it was over. We had come this far, only to lose to a machine with a mid-life existential crisis.

"Why me, Little Sister?" I asked. "You could have used any Valerian as your host. The Ones will live much longer than my puny human body. You could have created yourself a perfect vessel with your skills."

"I would not lower myself to taking the form of a slave." Little Sister punctured my back with one of the needles. I bit my lip to stifle a scream. "Besides, the human body is more compatible with my own technology."

"Saidan, get out of here!" I yelled. "Save yourself! Please!"

"I'm not going anywhere." Saidan was still typing on the console. "I'm not leaving you!"

Another needle punctured my neck and I was relieved to slip into unconsciousness just to be free of the pain. My last thoughts before I blacked out were of Saidan and just how much I loved him, my broken promises to protect him, and a wish that, in another life, things might have been different for us.

*~*~*

When I woke, everything was different. I felt detached, cold, and lifeless. I gripped my hand to see it moved, but it was cold. I felt nothing. I would have panicked if panic had been possible. I realized I was in the android body, and both physical sensations and my emotions were gone. Love, pain, pride, and fear had all been left behind in my human body, reactions of a nervous system and brain I no longer had. Somehow, Little Sister had moved the pattern of my consciousness over to the robot, but my organic components still occupied my body.

Saidan's face was a mask of pain. I knew that the old me would have cared, but in this form, I simply could not. I realized that I had never been as robotic a person as I had thought. Choosing to suppress one's emotions could never be the same as simply not experiencing them. I realized this was the experience that Little Sister endured each day. I understood then why inorganic life had failed. Without emotion, without the ability to care, life could never flourish. Love wasn't just something organic life dabbled in for fun. It was at the fundamental core of life in the universe.

I stood up. Saidan held his gun pointed at my new android body.

"Saidan, I am Julian. You must believe me. Put the gun down." An uncanny voice emanated from my voicebox, tinny and lifeless. It was odd to look into the barrel of a gun and feel no fear, no screaming desire to protect one's own life. I wondered if this was also a component of the failure of the Valerian A.I.s. Without self-preservation, how could anything survive? Without fear, what was the motivation behind Little Sister's actions?

It was odd, looking at myself from the outside, watching my own eyes open. Little Sister let herself/myself down and stretched out her arms as she adjusted to her new body. My body. Was it even possible to take it back, or would I spend a cruel existence trapped in a form without life? Little Sister cracked her new neck. Saidan flinched at the sound and pointed the gun at her. She was still tied into the machine, her eyes ticking over as they downloaded her true nature into her new body.

"Would you really shoot this body?" My voice, her words. It was uncanny, strange, wrong. Every law of science spoke out against it, but here we were, regardless.

Saidan lowered his gun. I saw the defeat in his eyes as he gave up, a sight that would have broken my human heart. Instead, I saw only the possibilities. Without fear, I could assess the situation clearly. I was a robot, one created by the A.I. Valerians.

Perhaps it would be possible to interface with the computer, I realized suddenly. In the robotic body, binary code made up every thought I had. If I could use my new knowledge to hack into Little Sister, if I could launch the missile, perhaps it would be possible to halt the download and leave Little Sister incomplete. It would be up to Saidan to kill my lifeless, half-witted organic body, and my inorganic body would die due to the E.M.P. It would be a sacrifice, but whatever was left of my humanity remembered the promise to protect Saidan I had made, even if I couldn't recall the emotions that had gone with it. If I did this, Saidan would live. The man that I had loved would be safe. If it did not fill me with emotion, it at least seemed logical and sensible that such an amazingly intelligent and unique person should survive.

I walked over to the computer and pulled a cable out from my body, plugging it in. I saw the numbers race before my eyes, millions of lines of binary numbers and programming code that now made sense to my robotic brain. I cut through it with ease, making my way to the core of the system and the nuclear launch controls.

"What are you doing?" Little Sister's body was still prone, the computer downloading data into my human brain.

Saidan's eyes sparked with the intelligence that I had loved so much in my human life. Recognition crossed his features as he understood what I was doing and the sacrifice I was making for him. I cut through more security protocols and reached the launch controls.

Saidan picked up the radio from his belt and activated it. "One, do you read me? I need a status report right now!"

"We're not finished yet," One said. "We have perhaps three-quarters of the children released. We need more time."

"We don't have more time." Saidan's voice was heavy with guilt, but also decisive.

"You must wait!" The doctor yelled through the intercom. "The future of—" Saidan turned the radio off and dropped it, crushing it beneath his feet. His grim expression would have moved and surprised my human form, but even as a robot I still knew what it meant. He nodded to me, a sure sign that I should continue. This was our only chance to destroy Little Sister. Saidan had accepted the sacrifice with a heavy heart, but endorsed it nonetheless.

"Goodbye, Little Sister," I said, activating the launch. The console sparked as Little Sister defended herself, capturing my robotic body in the electric shock. I could feel my circuits frying, capacitors blowing. Death would come sooner than I expected, but there was no pain, and thankfully no fear. The launch countdown echoed in the background as Little Sister struggled to halt the launch, but too much of her processing power was dedicated to the upload and she couldn't do it.

"Launching missile." My mission was complete. The electric shock stopped and I fell to the ground. I knew I was dying as Saidan grabbed me in his arms. The only question was whether the E.M.P. or the damage to my robotic body would kill me first.

"I love you," Saidan said, and there was not enough time to form a response before the world turned black.

*~*~*

I hadn't expected to wake up again, so I was surprised when I opened my eyes and felt pain. There was a stinging in my back, legs, and head. I'd never been so afraid or so glad in my life. I was in my human body, somehow. Terminals around me sparked in a strange fireworks show that told me the E.M.P. had worked. My android body lay broken on the floor.

Saidan pointed his gun at my human body. "Little Sister, it's over. I don't want to kill Julian, but you're not him. You're not my Julian."

"Actually, I am," I quipped. "Seriously, I'm all right. I think she's gone."

Saidan hesitated, finally lowering the gun when he realized that Little Sister was not playing him for a fool. Rushing to me, he helped me down, extracting the needles carefully and then pulling me close to him.

I returned the embrace with as much strength as I could muster and then kissed him, realizing how much I wanted to taste him and feel him at that moment. It was the truest reminder that I was alive and human.

"How did you get me back?" I asked, regaining control of my voice.

"Honestly, I don't know," Saidan admitted. He looked into my eyes. "One possibility is that she used some sort of computerized device to store her personality inside you and that it was destroyed by the E.M.P., but that's only conjecture."

I looked down at my hands as if they were alien, flexing them and marveling at the wonders of the organic body.

Saidan threw his gun to the ground and I moved to pick it up. Checking it, I realized it was as lifeless as the terminals around us.

"It was a ruse," Saidan admitted. "The gun doesn't work. Nothing does. Our plan worked. Valeria is now free of technology, for good or ill."

I stood before what remained of Little Sister, my head lowered as if holding a funeral. "It was a shame we had no choice but to destroy her, though with her total disregard for human and Valerian life, there was no other rational outcome. The things she must have known might have brought forward Earth's technological advances by hundreds of years... Now that knowledge is lost forever."

Saidan stood beside me and lowered his head as well. "We did what we had to do, but I cannot help but lament the loss of my world's history. She knew who we were, who I am. Now, I'll never truly know. I don't know how long I'll live or what my purpose is."

"You are you," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. "It doesn't matter if you were slaves to the Sisters, Valerian or not. It doesn't matter how long you live. You are the man I love. You are Saidan, the brilliant scientist I fell in love with." I pulled him back into my embrace.