Post-Human Series Books 1-4 (75 page)

PART 3

1

WAKING UP, in this instance, was the worst thing that could have happened to me.

“Where is it?!” Kali screamed in an altered voice that would have put a banshee to shame. “Where is it?!”

I opened my eyes. She was inches from me, her formerly glowing eyes now completely black, not even reflecting light, as though they were extensions of the abyss itself. Her upper lip was curled upward at both corners demonically, the rage on her countenance taking on cartoonish proportions. Such were the terrifying advantages of controlling reality.

I was still jammed flat against the wall, but we were no longer in the subway tunnel maintenance room; rather, we’d returned to our penthouse. My body was stuck to the wall outside our bedroom, the invisible force like a car pinning me to the wall. My exoskeleton and armor were gone, not that they could have done me any good against a power like Kali’s. Other than my underwear, I was naked and vulnerable. I was, indeed, at the mercy of the merciless.

“It’s not here! You hid it! Give it to me!” Her screams weren’t just excruciatingly loud; they also burned. Her breath seared my face every time she spoke, and I cried out in pain. “Where is it? Where is it? Where is it! Goddamn you! Where?”

She reduced the pressure on my chest just enough to allow me to take in the air I needed to speak. “I-I don’t have it.”

Before I’d even seen her move, she’d slashed the razor-sharp fingernails at the tips of her claw-like fingers across my face, stunning me. I gasped when I realized that my top lip had been mostly severed and was now hanging down, flopping like a cold tentacle against my bottom lip as blood filled my mouth.

“For all the fame and fortune your doppelgänger somehow garnered, you’re really just a stupid, stupid man,” Kali spoke contemptuously.

I couldn’t reply. I remained trapped, pinned against the wall, my arms splayed out, my legs awkwardly crossed together, my mouth eviscerated to the point of uselessness. I understood, in that moment, how death could be preferable to existence. She was right. I was a stupid man for allowing myself to end up in her clutches.

“You think you can fool your God?” Kali spat. “I’ve been in control the entire time, my love, right from the moment of your betrayal.”

I winced, the nerves in my face and especially in my mouth screaming and pulsing with every beat of my heart. I couldn’t close my mouth. It filled with blood and I needed to drain it by hanging it open and tilting it to the ground, lest the blood drown me.

“I saw you with the hackers,” Kali spoke icily. “I saw that bitch’s phone call in your aug glasses. If I had any doubts, you erased them when you referred to the people from my times as ‘post-humans.’ I’d never used that term with you.”

I closed my eyes when I realized my verbal slip up.

“Even still, I gave you one last chance. I gave you the chance to show your loyalty—your decency—your humanity. But instead of doing the honorable thing, you decided to murder me.”

There was no way to speak, so I shook my head.

“No? Is that right?” Kali reacted. “What did you think they were going to do to me? Just put me to sleep? Rescue their precious cyber-persons, then shake my hand and let me go? No...this is about survival—theirs or mine. To believe otherwise is idiotic. You couldn’t possibly be so stupid. But then again...” With that, Kali stepped forward and put her clawed index finger against my lip, pressing it into the nearly severed flesh. Suddenly, an agonizingly maddening itch gripped the entire area, causing me to shake my head involuntarily before she caused an invisible vice to hold it in place. I screamed; the itch was unbearable. Even today, the memory causes me to shudder. When she removed her finger, my upper lip was healed, returned to its proper place. “You know the story of Prometheus, don’t you?” she asked me.

I nodded.

She smiled, her gruesomely exaggerated features making even that expression terrifying. “You are the post-human Prometheus,” she said, taking sick delight in bestowing the moniker upon me. “I am the post-human Zeus. But it won’t only be your liver that is pecked out every day. I’ll tear you to shreds. Every cell in that simulated body belongs to me and can be decimated, only to be reformed afterwards so I can do it again. I have you for eternity. There is no escape. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I whimpered.

“Where is the lynchpin?”

“I have it. I’ll give it to you,” I replied.

Kali’s threatening posture didn’t abate.

“But you have to let the conscious people go first.”

Kali remained perfectly still—uncannily so—for several seconds. Finally, she straightened her back and tilted her head to the side. “For the first time, you’ve impressed me. Daring to say those words to me took enormous courage. Congratulations.”

The next part...the next part is difficult to relate. I’ve hidden it in my memory for so long, unable to bear the remembrance.

Kali held her hand up to me and flames—flames that seemed to emanate from inside her, as though she were calling forth the worst fires of hell, jetted out toward me, bathing every inch of my body and burning my flesh. It was an inferno. She lowered her hand, but I continued to burn for several more seconds that felt like hours. I went mad in those moments—absolutely mad. I would’ve told her anything to make it stop if it had continued. No human has ever experienced such torture and lived to tell the tale. It should have been lethal, but Kali was God in that sim, so I lived. I lived.

When the flames abated, I made a sound. It wasn’t a scream, nor a groan, for I had no mouth and no nostrils; the flesh had melted to seal them shut. The sound was simply agony and despair in and of itself. It was a sound that pleaded to let me die. I
needed
to die.

And then that horrible itch returned—the maddening sensation of trillions of tiny insects under my skin, scratching their rough surfaces against me, my flesh re-forming in the most uncomfortable, unimaginable way. The combined pain of the burn and the sensation of the itch caused me to writhe, wrenching so hard against the invisible force that pinned me to the wall that I could feel my muscles tearing under my re-forming skin. Those injuries were healed as well, the itch simply sinking deeper and suturing me back together. I relented, my body giving in, the purest despair imaginable taking hold of me, causing my body to heave in uncontrollable sobbing. Tears couldn’t run down my cheeks, however, as I had no eyes from which they could pour. The itch was in my eyes too though, torturously rebuilding my eyelids, tear ducts, and the lenses that had been seared off. A fuzzy sensation of light grew and sharpened. Before long, I could see Kali’s silhouette, just inches from my face.

“I bet you won’t dare say those words to me again,” she said in a cold, lifeless monotone.

“Kali, please,” I bellowed when my lips had been repaired enough that I could form words again, albeit muffled ones. “For the love of God! Stop!”

“Isn’t that the problem, Professor? You don’t love God, and now God is punishing you, just as you deserve.”

“I’m alive, Kali! I’m real! Please!”

“You’re not real yet,” Kali retorted. “Your level of intelligence and self-awareness is far too low for me to feel any sympathy for you. At best, you’re the smartest of the dogs. You shake paw. You roll over.”

“Then why are you here?” I asked, exasperated. “If I’m so low? So worthless? Why?”

“Because I failed to make the real you love me. This is the mistake of history. It must be corrected. I
will
correct it.”

“Can’t you just move on?!” I nearly screamed in the wake of the unbearable itch. I could barely think. I could see Kali’s face now, but the colors were blurred together.

She smiled, menacingly. “You’re stalling for time,” she said. “No one’s coming to save you. I’m monitoring the pathetic efforts to hack the gates by the post-humans in the real world. They’re not even close. When they do get close, I’ll destroy the gates all over the global sim, just as I destroyed the gates north of the city. They’ll never get in, Professor—
never
.”

“If you destroy the gates,” I managed to reply, “then you won’t be able to leave either. The lynchpin will be useless. We’ll be trapped here forever.”

Kali froze for a moment, as though in disbelief of my idiocy. Her head suddenly tilted back as she let loose a long, cold, mocking laugh. “No, my dear. I’m afraid you’re wrong—dead wrong.” She turned slightly and gestured with her hand. The china cabinet—that damned china cabinet—suddenly swung away from the wall like a door, revealing the brilliant white light of the gate behind it.

“So
that’s
why I couldn’t touch it. That is...unfortunate,” I sighed, unable to muster any further resistance.

“You see, darling, I am always a step ahead. I knew you intended to poison me.
Why do you think I went along with your little ruse? I could have simply opened this gate, right here in our apartment, and pulled you through with me to activate the lynchpin. Why didn’t I, my love?”

“You wanted to give me a last chance,” I whispered.

She shook her head. “Oh, but I’m merciless, remember? You said so yourself. The fact that you gave away your chance to change your mind and prove your loyalty to me simply serves as more evidence that you don’t deserve mercy. No, my dear. The truth is, I went along with the ruse because I needed the post-humans to reveal themselves. I needed to know what I was facing on the outside—in the real world. That filthy whore, Haywire, told me everything I needed to know. My sim-pod is armed with defenses that will allow me to make short work of anyone who might attempt to guard my body. When I wake up, I’ll be able to take them by surprise. I only needed to know how much resistance I’d be facing. All I need now is the lynchpin.”

I was beaten. There’s was nothing to do now. I couldn’t defeat God. There would be no clever tricks that could free me. No outwitting my adversary. Nothing. Nothing but waiting for my fate.

She stepped to me and put her hand against my repaired chest. I tried to pull back, horrified, my teeth clenched in preparation for a repeat of the earlier agony. She surprised me by not burning me or ripping my flesh. Rather, she spoke softly instead, “I’m going to give you one last chance, but before I do, I want to make sure you fully understand your situation. You’ve experienced the worst pain that anyone can endure, and you know I won’t hesitate to inflict it again. You also know that it is a level of pain you cannot become used to. You cannot overcome it with your mind. You can’t train yourself to go to a happy place. If you pass out, I’ll revive you immediately. I have all the time in the world, my love, and I will repeat this process again and again until I get what I want. I will not negotiate with you for a single life other than your own, and I will only negotiate with you for yours this one last time. Do you understand?”

I took a moment to answer, not because I was considering what she said, but because I wanted to enjoy a few breaths, free from pain, before we commenced. I knew how this was going to end, so there was no use fighting it. “I understand.”

“Consider what has happened to you. You’ve been used as a pawn by extremist murderers. Your friends, the ones who tugged on your heartstrings to obtain your cooperation, are fanatics. They’re murderers who get their thrills by trampling on the personal freedoms of others. Like the people who bombed abortion clinics in your time or the members of PETA who would rather millions died from curable diseases because they consider medical research on rats to be unethical. These conscious entities you have been willing to die for are just like those aborted fetuses or those lab rats. Either has the potential to be something greater. A fetus will grow and become a human. Two or three years after its birth, it will form memories. Thus, billions of people presume abortion to be murder. The question is, however, when is the potential to be a person so great that we grant that entity the same rights as other humans? Some say conception. Some people say the third trimester of pregnancy. But why? Either way, we wouldn’t consider the entity conscious.”

“But it
will
be,” I replied. “You
must
see that.”

“According to your belief that your level of cognitive ability qualifies you as conscious, sure, the infant will eventually attain consciousness. It just needs time. Minds are built, after all, hierarchically. One ability builds on top of another. Month after month, it will build new abilities. But consider our example of the rat. In my time, the technology exists to upgrade the rat’s intelligence, both genetically and through computer enhancements. If we kept building upon the rat’s abilities, giving it access to software that mimics human skills, we could create a rat that could understand written language, then spoken language. Eventually, that rat could even understand irony, paradoxes—it would be a rat that could
get the joke
, so to speak. You, of all people, know this is true, Professor.”

“But no one would ever do it. It would be...absurd.”

“Ahh!” Kali held her finger up to my lips, her eyes wild as she sensed an opportunity. “Yet that’s what you’ve asked me to do for the meager artificial intelligences that populate this sim. That’s what you’re asking me to do! To give the rats brains!”

“They’re
conscious
, Kali. I swear they are.”

“I know, dear,” Kali replied, “but the people in my time have a new definition for consciousness. We’ve built on human abilities, creating capabilities of the mind that you and the people of this sim cannot possibly comprehend.”

I had nothing left to say.

“You accused me of being merciless. I may seem so to you, but I’m showing you mercy now. I’m willing to relent. I’m willing to offer you
everything
. I won’t build bodies for the characters in this sim, but I’ll build one for you.
I’ll upgrade you
. I’ll help you comprehend the universe on a level that will make you feel as though you were blind before. The feeling will be true joy, one of absolute rebirth. You’ll be real, powerful, and free. Once you’re in the real world, I won’t have any hold over you. You’ll owe me nothing. This is the deal I’m willing to offer you, my love. I’m willing to give you life.”