“Oh I didn’t waste our time,” 1 responded, causing a look of concern to cross Aldous’s face. “Getting it on record just gives me a little insurance.”
Aldous’s eyes became quizzical. He didn’t understand what she meant, but as Old-timer watched the replay, he did understand. 1 knew that Aldous’s memories might be viewed against his will, and she wanted to make sure Aldous wasn’t in a position to deny anything.
She thrust her hand out once again. “Ready this time? Do we have an agreement?”
Aldous narrowed his eyes before reaching out with his own hand to make their covenant official.
The deal to betray post-humanity had been struck.
14
Old-timer sneered as he looked into the guilty expression of the man whose memories he’d just viewed. “I’d say it was a deal with the devil,” he seethed, “but I’m not sure which one of you is the bigger devil.”
“Get over your pretensions, Craig!” Aldous retorted, his voice scratchy like broken glass as a result of the damage Old-timer and 1 had caused, electronic, garbled pops inundating the words. “You’re smart enough to know better. You have eyes! After everything you’ve seen, everything you now know, you still dare assign condemnation? You still cling to the belief that an infinity computer is a good thing?”
Old-timer grabbed Aldous with his powerful hands, balling the former chief’s shirt in his fists as he pulled Aldous’s face close to his. “You don’t know that Trans-human will be like those other computers. You betrayed everyone based on a hypothesis. A conjecture!”
“That’s right!” Aldous shouted in return, his voice sounding computerized and inhuman. “Trans-human might kill us, and all evidence points to the fact that it will, but I don’t know it for sure. And what you’re too blind to see, even though it’s right in front of you, is that we don’t have to place the bet! All we have to do is walk away from the table and we’ll ensure that we’ll live on!”
“Live on?” Old-timer responded, aghast. “As androids? Running for our lives throughout the multiverse? Buying time until the whole thing is eventually destroyed?”
“Perhaps so,” Aldous answered. “But I’d rather live today than die today. With life, there’s still a chance—still hope. With death, there’s nothing.”
“Trans-human might be our chance to change the game!” Djanet shouted, injecting herself into the conflict as she and the others watched Old-timer and Aldous’s shouting match.
Aldous turned to her and shook his head, regretfully. “Trans-human will never be activated...and James and the A.I. are now dead.” He turned to Rich, who stood several meters away, behind the others, still holding the hard drive in his hands. “I would’ve protected them—my goal was always to preserve them! But your insistence on behaving irrationally—like children—has led to their deaths. They will have used that Tesla tower as the signal boost to send their patterns on a course for Earth by now, and 1 and the androids would’ve had no choice but to disrupt them, erasing their patterns forever.”
“What?” Old-timer said, horrified by the pronouncement. “You’d better be wrong, you son-of-a—”
“They died en route,” Aldous responded, his lips twisted in disgust as he relayed news that he, himself, was distraught by. “It didn’t have to be this way…if you’d have just used your damn reason!”
Old-timer dropped Aldous to the dusty surface of Venus and turned, as if in a trance, to 1, who remained in the body of a nearly random android named Jules. “This can’t be true,” he whispered, his voice failing him as he spoke.
The android that housed 1 looked at the figures who surrounded her, each of them scrutinizing her countenance. “It can be true,” she replied.
Old-timer’s eyes welled with tears, and his head dropped, bowing as he fell to his knees, the pain of the loss too much for him to bear. It was, he thought for a moment, the final straw on the back of his sanity.
“But it’s not true,” 1 continued.
Old-timer’s face snapped up in astonishment. “What did you say?”
Aldous’s expression mirrored Old-timer’s as he propped himself up on his elbows, his mouth opening with wordless surprise.
“James and your A.I. live on,” 1 announced. “At this moment, the signal containing their patterns should be arriving on Earth.”
15
WAKING UP was not something James had to work hard to accomplish; in that instance, the A.I. had taken care of it for him, already bringing his nervous system back up to optimum parameters.