David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

And even if he tried to salvage what was left of her, he knew he’d almost certainly be caught by the Purists in the attempt.

No, I can’t. There was only one reasonable course of action. No one had eyes on him. He could escape on foot, and the Purists wouldn’t be able to track him. Then he could reestablish contact with the A.I. and Craig when they returned to Universe 1.

Even though it felt wrong—even though he felt like a coward leaving her behind—he knew it was the only logical course of action.

He turned his back on the facility and began to run through the snow, away from the battle, away from the Purists, and away from Samantha. His eyes locked on a dark patch of sky between two mountain peaks in the distance and he ran toward them, not daring to break his forward stare.

Craig huddled close to the fireplace in the Titanic’s first-class smoking section. He removed his jacket and left it crumpled in a wet pile at the foot of the flames while he held his numb hands up to the fire, rubbing them in an attempt to bring back feeling; he’d never been so numb in his life.

Behind him, the room was empty, other than the two unconscious stewards who had tried to prevent his entrance. The tuxedo-clad gaggle of men who’d gathered in the room previously had made a hasty retreat, dumping their brandy snifters in the process. The scent of the hard liquor still hung in the air, intermingled with the cigar smoke.

“Craig? Can you hear me?” the A.I.’s voice suddenly spoke.

“I can hear you. What are you doing in my head?”

“Apparently, Samantha has administered my mother program to you rather than herself. I’m trying to establish a better connection to your synapses so I can access some of your systems.”

“My systems?”

“Craig, I’m getting an internal temperature reading now. Do you realize that your body temperature is only 32.9 degrees Celsius? You’re hypothermic. This is very dangerous. You need to seek warmth immediately.”

“Way ahead of you,” Craig replied, his eyes beginning to droop from fatigue. “I’m by a fireplace.”

“Excellent. I’m still trying to establish a connection to your optics so you can see me and I can see through your eyes. I’m currently blind to your surroundings. Craig, are you still shivering?”

His eyes continued to droop as he stared into the fire. He’d let himself out of his crouch and was now sitting down, legs open in front of the warm tangerine glow. “No. I stopped shivering. I must be warming up.”

“No,” the A.I. replied. “That is a bad sign. You should still be shivering. Your body is currently in the midst of moderate hypothermia, but you are on the edge of suffering from profound hypothermia. If you aren’t shivering, your body temperature is going to drop even further, and quite rapidly at that.”

“I’m in front of a fire. I’m fine,” Craig replied sleepily. “Don’t worry. I’m a doctor. I just need some rest.”

“If you sleep now, you will die,” the A.I. warned.

“Get out of my head, will ya? I know what I’m doing.”

“Craig, your judgment is severely impaired. You have to listen to me. Being uncooperative is a classic symptom of—”

“Shut up!” Craig suddenly shouted, annoyed as he curled up on his side in front of the fireplace, his clothes still dripping wet with water that remained at the freezing point.

“Craig, I’m afraid I can’t let you sleep. Craig?”

Craig gave no response; he’d lost consciousness.

“Craig? Craig!” The A.I. knew he only had moments before Craig’s body temperature loss would become catastrophic for both of them. Having lost consciousness, Craig’s body temperature would now drop rapidly, dipping toward cardiac arrhythmias at twenty-eight degrees Celsius, before plunging to twenty degrees Celsius, at which time his heart would stop completely, resulting in death. The nans would work to repair the damage caused by the various systems of Craig’s body collapsing, but there was no guarantee that they would be able to keep him alive, especially once his heart stopped. At that point, repairing tissue in the heart as well as the brain might turn out to be a forlorn enterprise, depending on how long the oxygen deprivation would have persisted by then. Post-humans were indeed very difficult to kill, but it was not impossible.

For the moment, the A.I. refocused his attention away from establishing a visual connection and toward Craig’s power system. He knew if he could gain control over Craig’s spinal implant quickly enough, he would be able to stir his host into waking. If not, the A.I. would be trapped inside a corpse. Once that happened, not even the A.I. could survive in those conditions indefinitely. Eventually, the nanobots that carried the A.I.’s core pattern would begin to shut down, overwhelmed by the toxic processes that would be present in Craig’s body as rigor mortis set in, followed quickly by decomposition. Indeed, the A.I. was also difficult to kill—but not impossible.

Meanwhile, the ship’s master-at-arms arrived at the threshold of the room with his pistol drawn. He crouched down on one knee and felt for a pulse from the two stewards who’d been shocked unconscious; each man had a strong pulse.

He stood to his feet, turning his attention to Craig’s unmoving form at the foot of the fireplace. It had been a long time since the master-at-arms had dealt with a situation that disturbed him as much as this. The man had appeared on the ship, soaked as though he’d been in the drink, yet somehow he was able to climb aboard a vessel that was traveling at over twenty knots. As bizarre as those circumstances had been, even more alarming were the descriptions of the witnesses of the unexpected assault on the stewards. Indeed, reputable gentlemen of the highest esteem and regard had sworn that their assailant had thrown electrical sparks from his body as though he’d conjured them from within himself. The master-at-arms had seen such demonism before—a presentation a few years earlier by none other than the madman Nikola Tesla—and he’d sworn then that he would never again put himself in the presence of such evil. Now, his duty forced him to break that oath, as the more important oath was to protect the passengers on his ship. That, above all, took precedence.

“You there!” he commanded, trying to muster authority while his voice quivered, strangled by uncertainty. The figure lay, still unmoving on the ground, but there was something about the circumstances that curdled the master-at-arms’s blood. There was evil in the room—he was certain of it.

He stopped, inches away from the fallen figure and nudged him with the tip of his shoe, making sure his gun remained aimed squarely at the figure’s back. The nudge didn’t stir the figure, man or demon. So far, so good, he thought, and he decided that was all the invitation he needed to pull out his handcuffs and get to work securing the perpetrator’s wrists. He snapped one of the bracelets around the figure’s left wrist before pushing the body over onto its stomach, intent on freeing the right arm and pulling the two wrists together behind the man’s back. Just as he did so, and just before the second cuff was secured, the body suddenly became animated.

Craig, still unconscious, his eyes still shut, suddenly lifted off of the ground and into the air, his hands hanging limp at his sides, his head slumped over and rolling with the movement as the green aura of energy swirled and sparked in a phantom-like manner around him.

Terrified, the master-at-arms fired his pistol twice at the otherworldly figure before him. The bullets did nothing to remedy the situation, bouncing off of the aura and whizzing dangerously past the master-at-arms’s head. He stumbled backward, falling to the ground on his hip painfully, just inches from where the two stewards continued their slumber. “Holy Mary, mother of God.”