“That’s perfect, bud!” James returned excitedly.
“Whew,” Thel reacted as she listened in. She’d been willing to die if it were only temporary, but even temporary death was a terrifying prospect. “Thanks for not killing me, Rich.”
“Don’t mention it,” Rich replied.
“You need to find the sun and get oriented, then we can guide you to the Tesla tower,” James urged Rich. “But be careful! You weren’t able to track Aldous but he might be able to track—”
“Oh damn!” Rich suddenly shouted as he saw the mist below him glowing green before the glow suddenly disappeared, vanishing in a blink of the eye. “I think I just saw him—I saw a green glow below me!”
“Could it be your own field reflecting back at you?” James asked. “The mist could be playing tricks on your eyes.”
“Maybe,” Rich said, as his eyes remained glued to the spot where the glow had been moments earlier. Though the nans had mostly repaired his rib, he could still hardly breathe, the fear of being hunted stealing his breath. He continued to climb, finally making it out of the peak of the mist and turning to find the sun. He moved away from the mountain of mist below him and explained his orientation to the technological ghosts that were listening in. “Okay, it looks like you guys were right. I’m facing west, the sun’s to my left.”
“Perfect. Rich, turn around, fly east. The tower is on the shore of the west coast of Aphrodite Terra.”
“Is that an island or something?” Rich asked.
“It’s a continent, about half the size of Africa,” James replied.
“Uh, James…”
“Don’t worry, Rich,” James responded to Rich’s concerns before he’d even had a chance to verbalize them. “The tower is right on the equator, as are the falls. You’ll be able to detect it when you get within range, but you’ve got to hurry. Aldous could be—”
“Uhn!” Rich called out.
Before James could finish his warning, Aldous Gibson, with no magnetic field to give him away, came up from below Rich at an extraordinary velocity, blasting out of the cloak of mist before quickly firing twin bursts of energy, sending Rich tumbling through the air and skimming across the surface of the water at the mouth of the waterfall.
Rich recovered quickly and began flying as fast as he could to the east, climbing from within just meters of the surface to a thousand meters elevation within seconds. “He was tracking me all right,” Rich shouted out. “But I’m okay!”
“He can’t get past your magnetic field. Just stay on course,” James reminded Rich.
“What if you’re wrong?” Rich replied. “What if he’s just waiting until the last possible moment? Giving me a chance like he says?”
The A.I. took the aug glasses from James and spoke. “Then you must resist him until the last possible moment, Richard. You must keep the sim intact, reach the Tesla tower, and we’ll use the electrical power of Venus itself to boost the signal so that we can upload our core matrixes into James’s body on Earth. Then, James will become Trans-human and correct the events of the last several hours, just as we did before. Everything depends on this. Do you understand?”
“I’m with ya!” Rich shouted back. “I won’t let you down!”
“What did you just say?” James whispered harshly to the A.I. in disbelief. “I’m not going to become Trans-human!”
The A.I. muted his link to Rich.
“You must, James,” the A.I. replied, as though it were the obvious and only rational alternative. He turned to the candidate. “The candidate never passed the test, and I’m prohibited by my programming—”
“Prohibited?” James repeated, his harsh reaction snapping the A.I.’s attention back to him. “You have no master! You’re not prohibited by anything but your own mind.”
“James, I do not wish—”
“Neither do I!” James shot back. “I’m human. I have Thel.” He shook his head. “I can’t take that step. No way. I can’t leave them behind. But you can. You were made for this. Made and tested. This is your destiny.” He stepped to the A.I. and put his hands firmly on his mentor’s shoulders. “It always was.”
“Hey!” Rich suddenly shouted excitedly. “I just picked up the tower on my mind’s eye! I’m within range. It’s just under 1,000 kilometers from my current position to the east and slightly to the south. At my current speed, I should be there in one minute. This is it, boys, I either die right now or I save the world!”