Interphase (33 page)

David clenched his fists and stared hopelessly at VERA's lifeless body. His muscles tensed, and his mind cried out with impotent frustration. They had beaten Totarakh and stopped the war. It wasn't supposed to end like this. In his mind's eye, he watched Totarakh's expression of triumph as his hand ripped into VERA. A tremble shook the room and dragged David back to the present. The virus was tearing its way through the rest of the network. How long would it be until Phoenix's heart stopped beating?

"No," David growled, shattering the silence that had gripped the chamber. "No! I will not sit here and wait for our world to die. Clyde, VERA isn't flesh and blood like we are. She's a computer, and computers have backups, failsafes, something. What can we do?"

Clyde didn't answer. He was gazing blankly into VERA's face, still holding her hand. His expression was a mix of longing and loss. David grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him.

"Is there a way to save her?" David demanded.

"You are wasting your breath," Thomas muttered. "This is what he wanted all along. To finish the work his parents began. He isn't going to help us. He's going to sit there and watch humanity's end."

David saw Clyde grit his teeth, but remain silent. Frustration spilled over, and he slapped Clyde hard in the face. "Clyde, answer me! Tell me how to undo the damage Totarakh caused."

Clyde turned his gaze away from VERA, and David stepped back, stunned by the haunted look in the hacker's eyes. It was as if all of the demons of his past had caught up with him and dragged him into his own personal hell. "Totarakh didn't do this. I did."

"What do you mean?"

"The tunnel from the command core was my creation. I was using the interference from the gateway to burrow past VERA's defenses. I wanted to break in and face her down myself. I wanted to…" Clyde looked back at VERA's body and swallowed.

"You were going to destroy her yourself." David felt a cold despair wash over the faint embers of his hope. Thomas had been right about Clyde's motives. Totarakh had simply beaten him to it.

"No," Clyde shouted. "I wanted to defeat her. Conquer her. Subjugate her maybe, but not kill her. I just wanted to prove I was the best, that the system was mine. I never wanted to hurt anyone el—"

"Like hell! Damn it, Clyde, the system is shutting down around us while you sit here and reminisce. Millions of lives hang in the balance, all because of your misguided crusade. Will you let the death of a planet be on your hands?"

A faint light awoke in Clyde's eyes, and he set his jaw in determination. "No, this is not how it ends. This is
my
world, and I will not let some alien freak destroy it on a whim. If anyone is going to defeat VERA, it will be me."

David shook his head. He didn't know where things would ultimately end up, but he knew what had to happen now. "Tell me what to do then. Help me fix this." He walked toward the mainframe and tapped the commands to bring up his programming interface.

"David." Clyde reached up and grabbed his wrist, halting him. David felt the hacker tremble. "You don't understand what has to happen. Any backups are within the mainframe itself, along with the virus. The mainframe was not designed to support human consciousness. It is a completely separate system outside the rules and boundaries of V-Net."

David pulled away from Clyde's clammy grip. "Something
has
to be done!"

Closing his eyes, Clyde let out a deep breath. "I know."

Realization struck David like a hammer. His anger dried up, replaced with an ill, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "You're going in there yourself, aren't you?"

"It's the only way to bring her back," Clyde said. His voice was low and hoarse. "If I can find a backup within the mainframe, and destroy the virus, I can reboot her and bring her back online." He opened his eyes and reached out to touch VERA's pale cheek. "I did this. This wasn't how I wanted to win our battle."

"What can we do to help?"

"Get back to the command core and shut the network down. Everyone needs to be out of V-Net. When the mainframe reboots, anyone inside may be lost, including all of you."

"What about you, Clyde?"

"Assuming that my mental patterns aren't absorbed into VERA's code base, or I'm not corrupted and destroyed by the virus… well, we'll see." Clyde flashed him a false grin, but his eyes revealed his worry.

With a terse nod, David gathered the rest of the group together. Lucas stared at Clyde in awe. Thomas's gaze was dead, an expression of resignation plain to see. Analara paused and gave Clyde a quick hug.

"Come back safe, all right?" she asked. "I don't have so many friends here that I'd be willing to lose any of them."

David patted Clyde on the shoulder. "You always said there was nothing inside the system that you couldn't take apart or put back together. Don't be a liar now." The thought of losing another friend made his throat tight. "Save her."

Clyde nodded and looked down at VERA. He drew several deep breaths and turned to look at them. "Everyone stand back."

They did as Clyde asked. David took Analara's hand as the group walked to the edge of the portal.

Clyde paused, brushing his fingertips over VERA's face, then he stood and faced the mainframe. It seemed to David that the towering core shimmered a faint blue as the hacker approached it. Clyde reached up and placed his hand against a darkened conduit. For several seconds, nothing happened, then David felt a faint throb echo through the chamber, so soft that he thought he'd imagined it. A flicker of light appeared beneath Clyde's palm.

Slowly, Clyde dissolved into a cloud of blue particles. They floated up to the conduit, and the flicker became a soft glow that pulsed for a few beats.

The glow faded, and the room went dark.

David led the group through the portal. They had a job to do, and an escape to make.

Clyde was on his own.

***

Clyde floated in a starless universe, free from the constraints of his material form. Beneath him, an image of the world shimmered into view.

He regarded the representation of his home planet with interest. It was depicted in flowing lines of blue light, like the plans of a master engineer, land masses and landmarks, cities and settlements, all meticulously mapped. It bespoke an ordering that transcended a human's touch, the demonstration of a greater plan than the basic survival of humanity. He had not expected to find Phoenix within VERA's heart, but it seemed right somehow.

One of the borderlines wavered as he watched it, the blue dimming into a green hue. The taint spread slowly to another line, then branched out. A single thread became three, creeping further through the system.

A strange breeze buffeted Clyde, pushing him toward the faint grey curtain that encircled the entire area. His attention wavered, the vision of the world blurring, and he fought to gather himself. Though his emotions were muted in such a place, he knew what would happen if he allowed himself to lose focus. To touch the border of the system or to lose his self-awareness would mean absorption into the mainframe. For the first time that he could recall, he was fully subject to the rules of the computer realm. Tightly he clung to the memory of himself, and the world refocused.

A significant portion of the planet glowed a sickly green. The lines and borders no longer ran straight. They kinked and jerked as if drawn by an unsteady hand.

Clyde had long ago created an anti-virus to his father's code, though only to demonstrate his mastery over the work of his parents. Now, it had become his only hope. His thoughts shaped a command, and a ball of blue light grew at his side. Code characters, written in gold, winked over the sphere's surface. He directed his mind to the section of the image that was most afflicted. The orb flashed and raced forward to strike the model of Phoenix.

A wave of green particles flowed up, sweeping the sphere into its grasp. A blue light blazed, burning away large clouds of the infection, but it was not enough. The light faded as the virus consumed it, then it rolled toward him.

Clyde's mind shuddered in agony as the viral streams passed through him. He felt himself blown away like smoke caught in a strong breeze, and for untold moments all around was chaos. He sensed the system border behind him, and he pushed back against the viral haze, casting it down to the world below.

Coalescing was difficult. His mind protested the pain, but he resisted the temptation to let himself go. The knowledge of what would happen to his body and his world should he fail was strong enough to cauterize his focus. Once again Phoenix came back into view, but it seemed less stable, the green and broken threads spreading across its face.

The virus had infected Totarakh while he was inside V-Net, an alien being in a virtual universe. Somehow it had been altered, and the virus had been consumed instead of destroying him. Clyde pondered that line of thought. A real body had biological systems to fight off infections and diseases. If Totarakh had corrupted the virus further, what would it take to combat the combined threat?

DNA. Clyde's own DNA and immunities, if he could merge them with the anti-virus, might be enough to turn the tide.

He knew where his real body was connected to the system; if he concentrated hard enough, he could almost hear the beating of his own heart in the darkness. He tapped into the controls monitoring his biological functions in the real world. He could sense the presence of the medical drone that had been dispatched when his mind merged with the mainframe. He commanded it to draw a sample of his blood and pulled the scan results directly to him.

A feeling of power swept through Clyde. The system was his to order as he saw fit. He had all the control he could desire. The world around him began to waver, and he could feel himself slipping into the system.

Focus
.

Clyde's attention snapped back to the problem at hand. He studied the formation of the cells, how they moved and interacted, how the immune system responded to the introduction of a threat. Then he compared it to the virus data.

There was a telltale modification to the code. Totarakh's body had indeed rewritten the virus, making it almost sentient. Clyde merged his DNA code with the anti-virus program.

He looked down at the image of Phoenix. The landscape roiled with a sickly green hue. Nearly the entire core had been infected. Soon, the system would collapse.

Clyde summoned the anti-virus, and the blue sphere reappeared. This time the characters blazed red on its surface. He sent it hurtling toward the globe.

It struck with a palpable force and sent blue light tinged with red racing through the green threads. A large portion of the infection burned away, but inexorably, the corruption overwhelmed the cure and began to spread back through the cleansed areas. Another viral wave arose. It rushed toward him, and Clyde braced himself. He knew he wouldn't be strong enough to survive another attack.

The virus tore into him, and his entire being burned with pain. This attack didn't push him away; it drew him in, trying to rip him apart and destroy him utterly. He felt himself slipping away, and a presence brushed his mind. Suddenly a blue shell surrounded him, and the pain vanished. His presence reformed itself, and his thoughts sharpened.

A shimmering blue figure materialized before him.

Mierva?

You have done well, Clyde. You opened enough of a window that I could release this part of myself. My defenses can protect you from counterattack, but we have much still to do. Your attack was a beginning, but by itself, it is not enough.

The voice in Clyde's mind was familiar, but it was deeper, fuller than Mierva's. This was VERA herself, and he could feel a timeless wisdom and patience pervading her thoughts.

Time is short, Clyde. These ponderances must wait until later.

His thoughts snapped back to what she had said.

What more can we do to stop this?

Join with me. Become a part of the system, and add your strength to mine.

Become… no. I won't. It can't be done.

It is the only way. Separately, neither of us is strong enough to halt the destruction of our world.

No human can merge with the mind of a machine. I'll be absorbed into your system. I will
die
.

VERA reached toward him with her hand, and Clyde could feel a faint caress against his cheek.

I am far more than a machine. I will not allow you to be destroyed now, any more than I have allowed it in the past.

It was the only way; Clyde knew it in his heart. But his whole being rebelled against the thought of subjecting himself entirely to VERA. Even if he survived their merger, he knew that he would never be the same again. He would have to be willing to surrender his freedom.

VERA caressed him again.
Please, Clyde. Trust me.

If he didn't, Mierva would die anyway, and the world would follow. What would freedom be worth then?

The world faded into darkness around Clyde as he released the mental control of his thoughts.

He could sense VERA's approach, and though he did not have a body, he felt a surge as her lips touched his own. His consciousness pulled in a thousand different directions.

Relax and let your mind look through my senses.

The memory of Clyde could feel himself within her, sense her presence all around him. He let himself merge with her and reached out through their senses.

Suddenly they could feel the entirety of Phoenix. Every building, every drone, everything connected to the network. There was a vast emptiness inside where the bustling populace of the system should have been. The network had been emptied.

Good. They will not be harmed when the system is reborn.

Everywhere they looked, they saw green energy spilling through the world, dulling senses, interfering with the life of the planet. The virus, having completed its corruption of the globe, rose up against them, hurling itself against the faint blue shield.

They smiled and spoke a single word.