“Oh my God,” Thel realized. “And because the chief shut down Venus’s magnetic force-field, all of the life on the planet is about to get a lethal dose of radiation too!”
Alejandra and Lieutenant Commander Patrick had just finished ambling up the hill in time to hear the dire pronouncement.
“Whoa, what?” the lieutenant commander reacted suddenly. “We’re going to lose Venus?”
“But we’ll survive, right?” Rich pointed out. “Aldous is shielding us from the radiation, so—”
“I’m only delaying the inevitable, Richard,” Aldous uttered. “With no planet to sustain us and without the tools we need to escape this universe, we’ll be set adrift in space, waiting for the inevitable moment, hours, days, or years from now, when another nanobot infinity computer returns to finish the job.”
“Aldous,” Old-timer said, contempt dripping from his lips as he turned on the chief, “all of our deaths are on your hands.”
“I know,” Aldous conceded. “Dear Lord, I know.”
“We’re not just gonna sit here and wait to die, are we?” Rich exclaimed, the most vocal opponent to the notion of waiting forlornly for death to arrive. “We’ve got options!” He turned to the tower behind him and pointed. “The tower generates the planetary force-field, right? And James and the A.I. were able to access it and boost the signal carrying their patterns to Earth, so we know it’s still functional. All we need to do is take control and—”
“We can’t, Richard,” Aldous asserted.
“Why not?” Rich exclaimed.
“Because James designed the system so that only Purists could access it,” Lieutenant Commander Patrick announced, his tone filled with resignation, “so that no post-human would have the ability to access it mentally and interfere, and your chief destroyed the only place where that control could be accessed.”
Aldous’s expression displayed an even deeper level of guilt.
Rich blinked, disbelieving. “Okay, but wait. James and the A.I. just accessed the controls. I mean, they just freak’n did it! Wirelessly even!”
“The hard drive you have in your possession,” Aldous responded, “is extraordinarily nimble. It had to be able to download an entire virtual world in 90 seconds—a feat that required it to be able to access essentially every signal the mainframe was capable of sending. Apparently, James and the A.I. were able to exploit the hard drive’s agility to gain access to the tower, not surprising considering James designed the system. But, go ahead,” Aldous insisted, “try to find a way to access the tower through your mind’s eye. You’ll see, as I already have, that there isn’t a way in that can be detected in the short time we have left before Venus has taken its lethal dose of gamma rays.”
“Kali,” Thel suddenly whispered before repeating the name again in an excited shout. “Kali! She’s the secret!”
“What?” Old-timer asked, perplexed.
“Kali—she’s an avatar in the sim!” Thel explained before she turned to Aldous. “The Kali avatar was our doorway out of the sim. It allowed us to access all of the hard drive’s systems.”
Aldous’s brow knitted momentarily before he turned to 1, his expression accusatory. “Were you responsible for this?”
1 shook her head, her countenance appearing sincere, though Aldous and everyone present knew she was an impeccable liar.
Thel exhaled, frustrated. “Damn it! The candidate could access the tower if it took control of Kali, but we can’t communicate with it from outside.”
“Whoa, what do you mean?” Rich asked. “I’ve been talking to James and the A.I. like all damn day!”
“Because they’d hacked a pair of aug glasses in the sim,” Thel responded. “The communication was initiated from inside. They figured out how to call out, but we don’t have the ability to call in.”
Aldous’s eyes suddenly widened, hope shining from within for the first time in what felt like ages. “Wait!” he shouted. “Maybe we do!” He turned quickly to Old-timer. “Craig, James and the A.I. said that—”
Before Aldous had even finished speaking, Old-timer’s face lit up with understanding. “I can access it!”
He rushed over to Rich, who was already holding the hard drive out for Old-timer to grasp. “I’m not exactly sure how this is going to work,” Old-timer admitted as he sized up the task.
“There’s an access point that I built in secretly,” Aldous offered. “A new character that could appear anywhere I chose.”