David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

“Oh Christ!” Aldous cursed, his eyes unblinking. As he watched the horrific spectacle through his wife’s eyes, Sanha’s unconscious body suddenly came into view. “Sanha,” he whispered to himself before switching out of Samantha’s mind’s eye and establishing a connection to Sanha, but the screen was blank. “Sanha! Wake up! Sanha! Wake up!”

A strip of light appeared briefly and vanished before it reappeared and Sanha blinked awake.

“Sanha! It’s me, Aldous! You have to stop him! You have to stop him!”

“I-I can’t,” Sanha whispered in return. “We’re no match for him.”

Paine suddenly stopped, his head cocking as the extraordinarily sensitive microphone in his aural implant picked up Sanha’s words. He craned his neck, his golden irises falling on Sanha. “You say something, sport?”

“Oh no,” Sanha whispered.

Paine dropped Samantha once again, his eyes never leaving Sanha. “You got a rider in there?”

“No. Please!”

Paine strode to Sanha and reached down with his hellish talons, yanking Sanha up and thrusting his back against the wall. Paine’s face was now only inches from Sanha’s as he looked closely into his eyes, searching for signs that Sanha was using his mind’s eye. “Who are you talking to?”

“Tell him, Sanha,” Aldous said.

Sanha remained silent.

Paine suddenly grinned—a sadistic victory pulling his lips taut, curling them back to reveal yellow teeth. “I bet I know who it is. It’s the devil himself in there, ain’t it? Hello there, Professor Gibson.”

“Tell him, Sanha,” Aldous repeated.

“It… it is Aldous Gibson,” Sanha blubbered, terrified. “You’re right.”

Paine nodded before dropping Sanha to the ground. He put his hand under Sanha’s chin as though he were a father filming Christmas morning, setting his camera on a tripod. “Don’t take your eyes off this, sport. I don’t want the professor to miss a second.”

“Oh no,” Aldous whispered. “Sanha!” he shouted. “Tell him where the A.I. is!”

“But I don’t know where it is—”

“The Planck! The Planck! We sent it through the Planck! Tell him!” Aldous shouted back frantically.

Paine had already scooped Samantha up with one arm, holding the back of the board and displaying Aldous’s wife like Christ on the cross as the hand on his other arm began to spin like a drill. “You like to watch, professor?” Paine shouted over the sound of the drill.

“The Planck! They sent it through the Planck!” Sanha screeched.

Paine’s face suddenly went white, and he stopped the spinning of his hand, dropping Samantha a second afterward.

She thudded onto the concrete, the board falling on its side once again. Aldous could see her clearly through Sanha’s point of view.

“What did you say?” Paine asked Sanha, his voice suddenly icy.

“The Planck,” Sanha repeated, his chest heaving as his heart raced. “They sent the A.I. threw the Planck. That’s why we couldn’t find it before. They sent it through.”

“Planck?” Paine said, his expression filled with a rare display of fear. “As in Planck energy ?”

Sanha nodded, surprised that the brutish Paine knew what Planck energy was.

“As in, you unimaginably stupid bastards have sent an artificial intelligence into another universe?”

Sanha didn’t respond. He was stunned that Paine was versed enough in the technology to immediately guess its use.

Aldous was stunned too. Paine, besides being extraordinarily cruel and remorseless, also defied Aldous’s expectations for a Luddite. Only a small handful of people worldwide even knew what Planck energy was, let alone its possible implications.

Paine shook his head as he stared downward at his boots, thinking through this latest development. He paced for a moment as he continued to mull over his options. After his short internal deliberation, he nodded and turned back to Sanha. “Can you operate the Planck? Can I send a team in after the A.I.?”

Sanha remained silent for a moment, waiting for Aldous’s advice.

“Tell him you can,” Aldous said.

“Yes,” Sanha replied.

Paine noted the delay and shook his head. “Professor Gibson doing all your thinking for you now, sport?”

“No,” Sanha replied, more quickly this time. “No. I can operate the Planck platform. If they sent the A.I. through, the platform would have gone with it, but we have older versions of the platform that are safe. It will just take me a little while to make them operational.”

Paine’s expression remained frozen, the sadistic joy he seemed to take in torturing Samantha now at an end. “You better not be lying to me, sport. If you are…” Paine retrieved Samantha once again, lifting her as he had before, displaying her for both Sanha and Aldous. His other hand suddenly moved aside, a ten-inch serrated blade jutting out in an instant from his wrist.

“Go to Hell,” Samantha spat.

“After you.” Paine swiped at her neck with such preternatural speed and force that he decapitated the love of both Aldous’s and Craig’s lives in one swift, cruel motion.

“No!” Aldous shouted as he jumped to his feet, his eyes disbelieving.

The screen went blank as Sanha shut his eyes.

“Open your eyes, Sanha! Open them!”

Sanha reluctantly obeyed, opening his eyes and letting the horror back in.

Paine had retrieved Samantha’s head and held it by the hair. Blood was jetting down from the clean cut at the middle of her throat. Her eyes were still twitching as Paine brought it to Sanha and displayed it for Aldous to see. He dropped her head, then bent low until his face was just inches from Sanha, who squirmed in terror. “That was for you, Professor Gibson, you piece of filth,” he said, hatred dripping from his lips. “Come get me, you coward. I dare you.” Then he stood to his feet, took his cigar from his front pocket, and placed it back in his mouth before grabbing Sanha under the arm and dragging him from the room. “Let’s get to work.”

Aldous Gibson hadn’t moved, but his hands had contracted into fists so tight that his fingernails were cutting the flesh of his palms. He shook with a cocktail of shock, terror, and extreme fury spilled all over his face. “Sam,” he said in disbelief before taking a small step and then dropping to his knees. “No. No.” Tears began streaming down his face as he continued to shake, his back heaving as he sobbed.

Lindholm watched the monitor silently in disbelief as he saw the perspective of the post-human named Sanha, who was being dragged by the Purist super soldier toward an unknown destination. He turned to the other post-human, the one who claimed to be Aldous Gibson, the rogue traitor the government had claimed they’d killed nearly a decade earlier, and his heart went out to him. Lindholm had seen horror in his life, for the unforgiving war had taken almost everything that meant something from him. He no longer had a family—no longer had a wife. Aldous was now his brother .

He crouched down behind the grief-stricken man and placed his hand on the middle of his back.

“I’m so sorry,” Lindholm said quietly. “I know…I know you don’t think much of us here, out in the world. I know we must appear sub-human to you. But we’re not. We’ve been hardened by the horrors of this world and the cruel things we’ve seen, but we’re still human. We can still feel. It’s buried deep now, but we can still have compassion.”

Aldous didn’t respond. He held his hands over his head and continued to shake.

“Aldous, we can hide you here. When my staff arrives, I’ll explain what has happened. They’ll understand. You can trust them. You can trust me. We’ll protect you. We have no love or loyalty to the government. We will help you.”