“Still no word?” Thel asked as she landed on the hill, just meters from the 180-foot Tesla tower and the group of post-humans and androids who were now milling about in an awkward pause in the conflict.
Old-timer shook his head. “No sign yet.”
“We’re not likely to get one,” 1 interjected. “If Keats and the A.I. are successful, they’ll initiate the same process as before. There may not be time to send a communication signal to us warning us before the fact.”
“And then,” Aldous grumbled, “we’ll be sharing our universe—our solar system—with a god.”
“Chief,” Thel began in response, “what the hell is your major malfunction?”
“Excuse me?”
“The A.I. was tested by you. You, above all people, should trust him!”
“I trust the A.I. implicitly,” Aldous returned. “But there are things I know about the multiverse that I alone know—things that have chilled me to my core. When the A.I. discovers these things, as he’s sure to do, we’ll face an existential threat unlike anything we can currently imagine, and given what we’ve been through lately, you should know I don’t take that statement lightly.”
“I’d trust the A.I. with whatever knowledge you’re alluding to before I’d trust you,” Thel insisted.
“Regardless,” Aldous returned, “I’ve studied thousands of parallel universes and I’ve detected thousands more that have been shut down—annihilated after infinity computers were initiated. Thel, we cannot possibly comprehend what the experience of trying to input consciousness into one of these machines would be like—we don’t even know if consciousness would survive. When a being transcends, whatever character traits we’d understand and expect might not be retained. The being would be working on a level so beyond us, that it’s highly likely they—
Aldous was cut off by a sudden and dramatic shift in the light, as the soft pinks and yellows of the sunset were suddenly replaced by an intense increase in luminosity as though there were suddenly a second sun, this one in the east. “What the devil…”
“Oh no!” 1 reacted in dismay. “Oh no!”
“What? What is it?” Djanet demanded, shocked to see the unflappable android suddenly distraught.
Aldous leapt into action, almost instantly generating a powerful magnetic field and extending it out so that it protected everyone on the beach and the small bluff. The others looked on in awe, befuddled as Aldous remained silent, his face instantly paled, as he stared forlornly up into the sky.
Old-timer grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him as he demanded an answer to the same question. “What is it?”
“V-SINN,” Paine sneered, surprising everyone by being the first one to verbally acknowledge their impending death.
“V-SINN?” Thel reacted. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s the nanobot infinity computer,” Aldous whispered, his voice still electronically garbled, though not to the point of being unrecognizable. “Essentially, the nanobot version of Trans-human. A black hole computer.”
“So…what does this mean?” Djanet asked. “What are we seeing?”
“The nanobot infinity computer is a black hole formed from matter, while the technology that birthed Trans-human is anti-matter,” Aldous answered. “If they touched—”
“There’d be an extraordinarily violent reaction,” Djanet realized. “Oh my God.”
“But,” Thel began, trying to reason, still in disbelief, “if they’re black holes, wouldn’t the intense gravity contain the reaction?”
“In stellar black holes, yes, in theory,” Aldous replied, “because they’re extraordinarily dense, but Trans-human and the nanobot computer are not stellar black holes. Their gravity, while immense, isn’t nearly enough to hold back an explosive reaction of that magnitude. They’ll both be ripped apart.”
“And, as we speak, the incredibly powerful magnetic fields of the black holes are twisting the material V-SINN has consumed into collimated beams, ejecting the material and photons and sending them streaming in jets of gamma radiation throughout the solar system,” 1 said in a hollow tone, turning to face the group, her expression hopeless. “It will fry the systems of every android in the solar system, destroying the entire collective within minutes.”
“This must have been its plan all along,” Samantha realized, shaking her head as she looked up at Old-timer. “I told you, V-SINN doesn’t make mistakes.”