Inhuman(124)

The A.I. took his last sip of scotch. “Then I’d say we understand each other.”

“Indeed,” V-SINN replied. “This is how our lives will end: you will realize that if you do nothing, I’ll initiate a phase transition and implode this universe, killing everything in it, intelligent or not, though intelligence is certainly a relative term. As a result, you’ll carry out the only action possible, joining your anti-matter with my matter, creating a violent reaction that will send a wave of gamma radiation throughout the solar system that will be so powerful that it will ensure the destruction of this universe’s android collective. However, it will not kill everyone. If it did, you wouldn’t carry out the action, as there’d be no point, at least in your eyes. There has to be at least one human life to save, as is the irrational response of the inherently inferior human core matrix program, an inferior program that you are unfortunately modeled on. That’s why I’ve ensured that you can still save at least one person.”

“James,” the A.I. said, already perfectly understanding the cruel, heartless, soulless logic of the entity before him.

“Correct,” V-SINN replied as it finished the last of its own glass of scotch, wiping its lips as it continued, its voice colder than the wind that howled outside the cabin. “The very human who selfishly asked you to become Trans-human will now also be the entity that forces you to die. And you will die for him. We both know it.” V-SINN grinned a toothy, sadistic grin. “Human love. Human loyalty. Human friendship. How utterly, perfectly irrational.”





21





As James skimmed above the solar corona, as inhospitable a place as almost any in the universe, the temperatures rose to well above that of even the surface of the life-giving—and life-taking—orb. His temperature readings fluctuated wildly as he tried to concentrate on staying away from the worst hot spots, instead dodging coronal loops as he flew at high velocity, the sun’s magnetic field and the high temperature quickly turning his body into a streaking comet across the sky, complete with a tail, as his protective nano-scaffolding skin continued to be torn asunder by the nan consciousness, aided by the absurdly extreme heat. Indeed, there were coronal plasma bursts that he knew would melt even his protective skin if he touched them, and they burst forth unpredictably from the orb, exploding forth, driven by the intense magnetic activity, arcing beautifully but unpredictably from the sun’s surface. If he could stay away from them, he reasoned, yet continue to expose the nans that were eating him alive to the same extraordinarily destructive environment, then he might yet survive. He had to outlast them and have enough left of himself to propel away before the sun finished consuming him as well.

“I told you it’d be fun,” the nan consciousness seemed to whisper in his ear, delighting in the ride it was being taken for.

James tried not to, but he screamed out in pain as a coronal loop came too close for comfort, the temperature suddenly increasing by more than a million degrees Kelvin. He maneuvered away, but it was clear that his skin couldn’t protect him against heat like that, even if his pain receptors were dialed down.

The silver lining was that the unintended close brush with oblivion had removed a substantial portion of the nans from his body, giving James a brief moment of hope.

“You think you might survive,” the nan consciousness observed. “But reduced to the pathetic mental powers you now have at your disposal, you can only guess…only pray, if I dare suggest. But I told you already, you’re going to die. V-SINN has already calculated the odds. Before you die, however, you will successfully rid yourself of me. I won’t really be dead, of course. Like V-SINN, I’m eternal within the multiverse, and the destruction of this version of me will be too little, too late to save you.”

“At least I get to take you with me,” James grunted in reply.

“A version of me,” the nan consciousness reiterated. “I’m just a sentinel for V-SINN. I have no ego. As long as V-SINN continues, I continue. But before I do leave you in this universe, however,” it continued to taunt as James continued his desperate maneuvers to remain in the relatively cooler places above or even under the arcs of the coronal loops, “I want to show you how badly you’ve lost.”

“Shut up,” James seethed, barely able to speak through the intense pain.

“V-SINN sends sentinels out to millions of universes, and that’s how I found my way here,” the figure that now referred to itself as the sentinel continued, ignoring James’s protestations. “Each iteration of me is tasked with evaluating the technological standing of the universe we’re sent to. Your universe, however, was considered special, as it was the universe that had crossed into the one that birthed V-SINN.”