“Yes, there is,” James replied matter-of-factly, walking to within a step of the candidate. “We don’t have a body for you yet, and we don’t have a mainframe to house you either. The A.I. will be able to share the brain space in my body temporarily, but two people in one skull is already one person too many. For now, this sim will have to be your home. But I promise you, we’ll get you out of here and make things right.”
“But I-I don’t relish the idea of being alone.”
James smiled. “You won’t be. We’ll be in contact again very soon.”
James aimed the de-patternizer at his hand and looked up at the candidate, who had the expression of a child that was about to be left alone in the dark—he realized that wasn’t far from the truth.
“I promise,” James repeated with emphasis.
His words made the candidate bravely force a smile. “Okay.”
James shot his hand and screamed out in pain, suddenly finding himself filled with admiration for the subdued level of reaction both Thel and the A.I. had exhibited.
“James!” Rich suddenly shouted out. “We’ve got company!”
“Who is it?” James asked before he fused with the Kali avatar.
“I don’t know—it’s definitely an android…definitely a woman.”
“Oh no,” James responded, fearing the worst. However, regardless of whether the woman was 1 or not, there was no turning back now. “Rich, I’m sending my pattern to Earth now! Do whatever you have to do. Just hold them off!”
He joined patterns with the Kali avatar and a moment later, stood in the silence of Cloud 9, only the candidate there to bid him farewell. The candidate offered a halfhearted salute, which James returned before opening up his reestablished mind’s eye controls and selecting the exit option for the sim.
In the next second, the Kali avatar returned, the deadened look in her eye the candidate’s only company.
“Farewell,” he whispered.
11
“This will only be the beginning of the android onslaught against you, Richard,” Aldous warned through their mind’s eye connection as the female android landed with a thud that vibrated through the soil so that they both felt it through the soles of their feet. “Millions of them will come, and only I can protect the sim and James and the A.I. within it. This is your last chance.”
“Chief,” Richard began, his eyes on the form of the woman as she marched with determined purpose toward them at the foot of the 180-foot Tesla tower, “I’ll die before I trust the lives of anyone in your hands.” His eyes left the woman and went to Aldous. “That’s a promise.”
Aldous’s lips tightened as he watched what he saw as Rich’s inevitable destruction unfold before him. “Remember, I tried to warn you,” Aldous ominously said.
The woman, Jules, marched to them and, with a simple flick of her wrist, sent out a signal that completely disabled Rich’s magnetic field in an instant as though she were putting a match to tissue paper.
“Oh damn,” Rich whispered. “That’s not good.”
She quickly peeled her eyes from Rich and they went to Aldous, whose eyes narrowed as he began to suspect who he was dealing with. “1?” he asked.
She answered by reaching out with her hand, putting her thumb to his throat, and lifting him above the ground, his feet dangling inches above the sun-baked soil.
“You failed,” she proclaimed. “Our agreement is now void.”
Aldous couldn’t reply, his words strangled by the thumb dug deep into his throat, crushing his larynx.
“He’s not the only one who failed!” Paine shouted as he collided with Jules’s body as he traveled at over 300 kilometers per hour, smashing her away from Aldous, freeing him whilst the trio carved a scar into the soil as Paine’s momentum carried them for several meters. The collision had caused a plume of dust to launch into the air in front of Rich.
“James?” Rich spoke. “Please tell me you’re on your way to Earth. Things just got, uh...really, really weird here.”
There was no reply.
Instead, Rich watched as Old-timer’s wife, Daniella, landed a few seconds after the collision, her eyes peering through the dust before briefly darting to Rich. “Hi, Rich.”
“Hey,” Rich replied, not sure of what else he could do and accepting the absurdity unfolding around him, the way one does in a dream.
As the conflict continued, mostly obscured by the cloud of dry Venus soil thrown into the air, another figure appeared, descending quickly. In less than a second, Rich recognized the pattern of her incoming silhouette.