David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

Craig watched her, crumpled and in pain, and suddenly sighed. An hour earlier, the woman had been his life. “Samantha, how about some understanding for me, huh? From my perspective, I was doing a suborbital jump over China ninety minutes ago. Now I’m watching my wife make out with a dirty old man and being told to stab her in the neck with a syringe and then to go hangout with her in another universe? This is like a bad acid trip! What do you expect from me?”

“Nothing,” she said as she stood slowly, her legs unstable. “I expect nothing.”

“Sam, this whole thing is crazy. Just give up the A.I.”

“No!” she suddenly shouted, her neck snapping around, her eyes wild. “No! Craig, they aren’t here to negotiate. They show no mercy!”

“How do you know that?” he responded.

“We tried to make contact once,” she replied. “We tried to show them what we’d done—our powers. At first they welcomed us. But it was a trap. We were invited back once they’d analyzed our powers. As soon as they’d figured out how to neutralize them, they led us to a slaughter. They killed hundreds. Aldous barely escaped with his life.”

“How can they kill you people if you’re superhuman?”

“They have super soldiers of their own, Craig. No doubt, they’ll be the ones leading the charge.” Her eyes were wide and stricken with horror. “Aldous won’t survive this.”

There was something in her expression that sent a stab of cold through Craig’s body. He could see she wasn’t exaggerating, and he knew he had to heed her warning. “All right,” he said, making up his mind. “All right, then we’d better go. How much time do we have?”

“Haven’t you set your mind’s eye yet?” she asked, concerned.

“The A.I. helped me with it, but I’m still a little foggy on how to control the damn thing. It gives me a headache just looking at it.”

“We’ve less than three minutes now,” Samantha announced.

“Okay. Well, we better get started. How does this work?”

“First, we step up on that platform,” she began, pointing to the small, silver platform. “The machine will harness the fusion energy from the generator and, for a microsecond, boil space, for lack of a better description.”

“Boil space?”

She nodded. “You’ll be protected by a magnetic field, but you’ll slip through the hole into the next universe.”

“You haven’t been through before?”

“No one has.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“We’ve sent probes, and so far they’ve all come back fine.”

“And what about the nanobots?” he asked, holding up the syringe. “Aren’t I suppose to inject you with these?”

“We can do that on the other side,” she said. She was no longer looking at him, but speaking as though she were in a trance.

“I think we better go then,” Craig stated. “Time’s short.”

“Yes. Time’s short.”

“Sam. Are you okay?”

“Craig,” she said, the look in her eyes warning Craig too late that something was very wrong, “I’m afraid I won’t be coming with you.”

Before Craig could verbally respond, she held up her hand and sent green sparks of energy flashing toward him, stunning him unconscious and collapsing him to the ground.

There were only ninety seconds left now before the Purist attack force arrived. She rushed to Craig and quickly turned him over so the back of his head faced her. She grabbed the syringe and quickly stuck it into the soft flesh just below the occipital bone and pumped the nanobots, complete with the A.I.’s mother program, into his body. Then she clutched his shirt and, with a grunt, began to drag his six-five frame up onto the Planck platform. Craig groaned, but his eyes remained shut.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she began as she folded his arms and placed his body into the fetal position so there was no danger of any of his limbs dangling over the ledge and being left behind in Universe 1, “but no matter what you think, I do love you.” She opened the controls for the Planck platform in her mind’s eye and readied herself to activate the machine. “I always dreamt that I could bring you back, Craig, but you were gone a long time. Maybe someday, you’ll understand. I hope you will anyway.” She leaned over him and kissed his lips. He moved slightly, but she couldn’t be sure if he felt the kiss or had heard what she said. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. They had run out of time.

She stepped away from the platform and activated the machine. Craig instantly vanished, the ripple in space and time moving through her, causing the walls to bend and twist. In a few moments, everything was stable once again.

“Goodbye, Craig.”

In Universe 66, Craig and the silver Planck platform suddenly appeared on a small outcrop on an icy ledge. The freezing air cut through him, and he quickly began to stir, reaching up with his hand to touch his aching forehead. He opened his eyes slightly but found only a pitch-black night. He leaned forward, trying to pull himself up to a sitting position, but he was still too weak to accomplish the maneuver. He reached backward in an attempt to get the leverage to rock himself up, but his hand slipped over the edge of the platform, and he was sent backward, tumbling over the ledge into the darkness, splashing into the freezing water of the vast, black ocean.

“No!” Aldous shouted when he saw Samantha flying toward him as he stood with over 200 other post-humans at the main entrance of the complex. The entrance was a large, square concrete loading bay built into the side of a rocky outcrop on the eastern side of Mount Andromeda. It was hidden by a convincing holographic image of a snow-covered slope, but the image was only visible one way, and the post-humans had a clear view of the Purist invasion force gathering outside.

“I won’t leave you, Aldous!” Samantha shouted back as her body thudded against her husband’s; their embrace was tighter than any they’d ever shared.

“What about the A.I.?” Aldous shouted. “What about Craig?”

“I sent them through!” she replied.

He took her face in his hands and held it just inches from his own. “You uploaded the A.I. into Craig? Do you know how reckless that was?”

“I don’t care, Aldous! I love you! I won’t live if it’s not with you!”

A precious second passed as he considered the ramifications of her actions. She loved him as much as he loved her. Their bond was beyond reason. He knew the right thing—the logical thing—was for her to protect the A.I. He knew the logical thing was for him to sacrifice himself to save her. But he’d been wrong. He should have known she wouldn’t leave him. A huge part of him had wanted her to do just what she’d done—to choose between him and her former husband. He’d tested her without even consciously realizing it, and he’d won. To Hell with Craig Emilson. The right thing to do would have been for them to go through to Universe 66 together. Now, everything they’d worked for was in jeopardy. Craig, who could barely protect himself, was now charged with protecting the most important entity in the history of humanity.

He turned and faced the spectacle that loomed in the air, mere meters from the facility entrance. An ever-darkening wall was forming of dozens upon dozens of stealth harrier transports, the preferred delivery system for super soldiers. Every second, more planes joined the wall and hovered, forming a nearly impenetrable impediment.

“I’m sorry I led you to this, my love,” Aldous said, his voice nearly failing him as he struggled to keep his gaze fixed on the death-bringers.

“It’s not over yet,” Samantha replied. “We’ll take more than a few of them with us.”