Trans-Human (Post-Human Sequel) (24 page)

He didn’t know why he was fleeing. He knew the plan meant that he would, in all likelihood, be caught in the wake of the black hole, that he would be sucked in, past the event horizon, and have to face the unknowable fate within. Yet he raced away from it as fast as he could, terrified as though he were drowning—fighting for his life.

Back in the mainframe, the A.I. spoke to him, his words calm and even. “It will be alright. You will survive this, my son. Do not be afraid.” He placed his hand on James’s shoulder.

The calming words of the A.I. brought James back to his senses. He suddenly stopped.

“
Embrace it
,” advised the A.I..

James turned and gazed upon the coming blackness. Space was being pulled toward point zero and James was about to become a part of it. He suddenly realized that this would be the greatest moment of his life. “Embrace it,” he whispered.

The trinity watched the event horizon approach from the mainframe.

“He must be terrified,” Katherine said, mortified.

“Indeed, I am sure he is,” replied the A.I. as he watched the dazzling spectrum of colors from the rim of Hawking radiation as it approached James. “I envy him.”

When the event horizon reached James, he held his arms up to the coming wave and watched them begin to distort, first lengthening as the gravity pulled them towards it, but then shortening as the gravity compressed them.

“There’s no pain,” James related with awe.

In the next moment, the screen went completely dark and James’s form vanished in the mainframe.

“Is that it?” Katherine asked, horrified. “Is he gone?”

“Yes,” the A.I. replied.

23

The golden beams of information that were ubiquitous with the operator’s position were magnified now to such an extent that Katherine and Jim had to cover their eyes as the A.I. grappled with an influx of information that tested even his extraordinary capacity. His stare remained fixed onto the incoming information as he stood perfectly still like a statue.

“What happens now?” Katherine asked.

“Trans-Human has successfully been initiated,” the A.I. explained, “so it now falls to us to ask it to reverse itself.”

“What if ‘it’ refuses?” Katherine worried. “Aren’t you asking it to destroy itself just as you gave birth to it?”

“Yes,” the A.I. replied, “but part of its programming is an understanding that it must protect and respect humanity.”

“Let’s hope it’s as altruistic as you think,” Katherine said gravely.

The A.I.’s expression and tone suddenly changed from one of intense concentration to one of awe. “It has already begun,” the A.I. whispered.

“Katherine!” Jim shouted as he expanded a view screen so that they could watch the events unfolding in space. The black hole that had grown so large that it had swallowed the space around it all the way to Mercury, was now receding—an astronomical wave of blackness withdrawing, the Hawking radiation rings shrinking like a pricked ballon.

“For the first time in history, the physical universe is exhibiting intelligence.” Jim said in awe.

Katherine watched with horror as the black hole withdrew and as the darkness shrank away at a greater and greater speed. Right in front of her eyes, the sun suddenly burst back to life, gleaming as bright as ever.

“I don’t understand,” Katherine admitted. “If the black hole has completely vanished, then how is the solar system still reversing itself? The Trans-Human program only existed from the moment that the sun was extinguished, right?”

“Think of it like a child’s swing, my dear,” the A.I. explained as he simultaneously continued the sophisticated dance with the incoming information from the Trans-Human program. “If the child pulls back and lets herself go, the momentum will carry her past the starting position and right through the swinging motion. Our Trans-Human program has done the same thing.”

“The informational capacity was so large that its momentum is allowing the A.I. to run the solar system back in time, even before the program was initiated,” Jim further explained.

“That’s what the A.I. meant about it being a paradox?” she asked.

“Indeed it is, my dear,” the A.I. answered “However, even a computer this magnificent has limitations. The informational capacity required to reverse the solar system will only let us turn time back twenty two hours and thirty one minutes.”

Katherine and Jim marveled as they watched the past come back like a slingshot, their reality playing out in front of them as though someone were reversing a filmstrip. The sun crossed the sky in a matter of minutes, rising in the west and setting in the east, whilst the horrors of people being pulled up from the surface reversed themselves. The cloud of androids abandoned the planet while the dead post-humans returned to life, calmly moving about their business—albeit in reverse.

“It’s working,” Katherine said softly. Tears welled into her eyes.

“The firewall held,” Jim commented. “It looks like we’re going to be okay!”

“We are not, as the saying goes, out of the woods just yet,” the A.I. quickly cautioned. “We have given ourselves a second chance, but what we do with that chance is yet to be written.”

At that very moment, James Keats hovered above the water just above the waterfall that he had been considering naming after his dead wife. A voice whispered in his ear.

“
Welcome back, my son.
”

24

“Welcome back?” James responded with a confused grin painted across his lips. He turned to Old-timer. “What do you mean?”

Old-timer was at a loss. He hovered only two meters away from his young friend, the mist making him appear almost like a dream. “Say what?”

“You said, ‘welcome back,’” didn’t you?”

Old-timer knitted his brow. He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

James’s embarrassed grin melted into a look of concern. He was sure he had heard a voice.

“
It is me, James,
” the A.I. spoke.

James’s heart jumped at the sound of the kindly, elderly voice. He heard it, but he couldn’t believe it. “No.”

“
Stand by for upload,
” said the A.I.. “
You may need to brace yourself. This will feel strange.
”

A sudden jolt of energy flowed through James’s connection to the mainframe as the A.I. uploaded James’s memories from before he had been sucked into the black hole, back into his reestablished pattern. In a matter of seconds, with his eyes fluttering wildly, the events of the past twenty two hours flooded his synapses, forming new memories, and bringing him instantly up to speed.

When the upload was complete, he doubled over, propping himself up by placing his hands on his knees as he gasped in the fresh, cool air over the falls.

“What the hell just happened, James?” Old-timer asked as he braced the young man, placing his hands on his shoulders. “Are you okay?”

James looked down at the water churning below, frothing against the rocks. Trans-Human had been completely successful. “What about the nan consciousness?”

“What?” Old-timer asked. James put his hand up, signaling for him to hold on.

“
You removed it from the equation when you sent it outside of the blast radius,
” the A.I. informed James. “
It is no longer part of this time period, and you are free.
”

He sighed with relief. “It worked.” He turned to Old-timer, who was now joined by Rich. “The Governing Council is about to summon us to headquarters. We have to grab Thel and head out right away.”

“What the heck’s going on, Jimbo?” Old-timer asked.

“I’ll explain it all on the way, but first, you might want to brace yourselves.” He tapped back into communication with the A.I.. “Are their uploads ready?”

“
Yes, James.
”

He turned back to his friends. “Okay. This is going to feel pretty weird.”

25

When they reached the front entrance of the Council’s headquarters, Djanet was there to greet them. Her face appeared stricken by worry and she began walking with them in step as James hurried into the building. “The situation appears very bad, Commander. No one has any idea what’s going on. The anomaly doesn’t appear to make any sense. And the chief is furious with you for taking so long to get here,” she informed James, her eyes on his flight suit. It would be very difficult for James to explain himself.

James placed his hand on her shoulder reassuringly. “Everything is going to be okay.”

They marched toward the door of the emergency strategy room. As soon as they entered, the eyes of all of the Council members who were present, as well as the dozens of assistants and advisors, fell on James.

“Keats, just where in the hell were you?” Gibson thundered as he saw James’s flight suit. His eyes narrowed. “You better have one hell of an explanation, son.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” James replied, regarding Chief Gibson with much more empathy and respect than in the past. Gibson had dealt with Luddites too, many years earlier—James realized now that he and Gibson were not so different—they were fighting on the same side. “A lot has happened and I need to get you all up to speed.”

Gibson was, momentarily, stunned by James’s respectful tone. He still wasn’t sure whether he should suspect that it was sarcasm or part of some sort of trick to make him look like a fool. He decided to play it safe. “Well, we’re listening. This had better be good.”

“Listening won’t be enough,” James replied. “I’m going to have to show you. You might want to hold on to something.”

Instantly, the experiences and memories of the twenty two hours previous to the reversal of the solar system were jacked into everyone present. Djanet, just as Thel, Old-timer, and Rich had earlier, had her saved pattern overlaid with her own. The Councillors that were present experienced a program put together by the A.I. that made up, essentially, a highlight reel of some of the most intense and poignant memories experienced by James and his companions. In only a few seconds, the experiences were relived as viscerally as they had been originally. When it was over, the room was electric with the terror that they had all just seen and felt and it was as if they all, collectively, had awoken from the same nightmare.

“It’s over,” Djanet finally said, breaking the silence that hung in the room.

“What about the nans?” Gibson asked. “They’re still in us!”

“We’re safe,” James assured the room. “The nan consciousness has been destroyed.”

“But what about the android armada? They’re still out there,” Gibson observed. “They’ve already proven themselves too powerful to be stopped!”

“That is where you are incorrect,” announced the A.I., suddenly appearing in holographic form in the room.

“Oh my God,” whispered Thel.

“Hello, Aldous,” said the A.I., greeting the Chief warmly. “I have missed you.”

“We’ve all missed you,” replied Gibson, smiling in return. “And we need you.”

The A.I. shook his head. “What you really need is yourselves.”

Gibson’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“He means that we already have the power, Chief Gibson,” came James’s voice just before a small foglet of nans appeared next to the A.I.. When the foglet dispersed, Katherine and Jim stood next to James, while, concurrently, James had been transformed back into his new, gleaming body right before their eyes.

Katherine didn’t waste any time. Before Jim could grab a hold of her arm, she stepped in front of Thel and slapped her hard across the face. Jim pulled her away as James helped Thel regain her footing. “Don’t tell me you didn’t deserve that,” Katherine said icily through tightened lips as Jim pulled her away, walking her as far away as possible.

Thel turned to James, completely baffled. She looked away from him and at Jim, who had his arm around Katherine, and then back at James. “Who... who was that?”

“It wasn’t me,” James replied, holding his hands up indignantly. He smiled and drew her to him. “I’m sorry, hon. It’s a long story that I’ll explain later. I promise.”

Gibson was awestruck by James’s appearance. He stepped in for a closer look, marveling at the way the skin’s material, which appeared hard like diamond, moved with the same flexibility as flesh. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gibson whispered.

“You have only needed to imagine it,” the A.I. replied.

“So what are you suggesting? Are you suggesting that we all change ourselves into these... things?” Gibson asked.

“No,” James replied. “If we did that, we’d be no better than the androids. They’ve all taken on the same form and stopped growing individually. We will have no individual limits.”

“That’s why they’re here, Aldous,” Old-timer added. “They’re trying to assimilate us so that they can hold us back.”

“
1
is the true cause of this though,” James pointed out. “She’s the one that has drawn the line and won’t let her people grow. She needs to be eliminated.”