Inhuman(30)

Thel, like a blind woman, groped and grasped him, making sure it was James she was detecting with her fingertips. Satisfied, she clutched the material of his shirt collar and pulled his body free of the car, then began kicking toward the surface.

The A.I. followed, trying to remain calm as he pumped his legs, quickly depleting the tiny amount of oxygen that was keeping him from losing consciousness. He made it to Thel’s side and reached out to help her with her burden, grabbing the other side of James’s shirt and working hard to reach salvation.

It had taken nearly a minute after the submersion for the electrical systems to finally give out. In that long sixty seconds time, the car had been falling toward the surface of the harbor, but they hadn’t hit bottom. It occurred to the A.I. that it was entirely possible that there was no bottom, as there wasn’t any need for the sim to have a seabed. That meant the surface could be dozens of meters away, and in all that murky darkness, it was impossible to tell. There was nothing for them to do but keep pumping their legs and arms, to keep pulling James’s clinically dead body, and to hope against all odds that they’d make it to the surface before they, too, lost consciousness. If they didn’t make it to the surface in time, the A.I. knew full well that they would never wake up.





7



“There’s no need for threats, my friend.” Aldous stepped in, inserting himself between Paine and Old-timer, placing a calming hand on Paine’s shoulder. “Our visitor is understandably cautious. However, when we paint the picture for him, I’m sure he’ll willingly choose to bring us with him.”

“We can’t take that chance, professor,” Paine countered. “Too much is at stake.”

“It is the very fact that so much is at stake,” Aldous returned, “that will lead Craig to help us.” He turned to Old-timer. “And to help himself.”

“I never said I wouldn’t help you,” Old-timer stammered. He was having an extraordinarily difficult time speaking or looking at any of the three ghosts before him in the eye. He knew they were interpreting his behavior as the natural reaction anyone would have to finding themselves in such a ghastly, bizarre scenario. But that wasn’t the reason for his demeanor at all. It was the weight of what their words meant. If the three cyber ghosts were telling the truth, then Old-timer had inadvertently set a chain of events in motion that had, as Paine’s described it, “erased” an entire universe. And, as ghastly as that was, he’d also set a chain of events in motion that was threatening his own universe as well.

He felt his sanity besieged.

“All I want,” he explained, trying to remain lucid, “is the chance to run this by minds far wiser than my own. Believe me, I’m not the guy who should make decisions like this. Let me get word back to them.”

“We can’t trust that he’ll come back,” Paine cautioned Aldous and Samantha, “and we have no idea how much time Universe X still has.”

“Universe X? My universe?”

“Indeed,” Aldous confirmed. “Your universe crossed into ours, which began all of this tragedy. You may not have been aware of it, but you’ve been the focus of our attention for a long, long time.”

“And not in a good way,” Samantha added.

Old-timer turned to the Planck platform. Distraught, Rich and Djanet seemed to be discussing something. He could see them using their mind’s eyes to connect to the Planck’s systems, trying to override what they believed was a firewall. Then he looked down at his lifeless body, perfectly still. He wished he hadn’t seen such an image before, but his memory flashed back to the fallout in Shenzhen, another him, fallen and lifeless—another version of himself who’d died because of his actions.

“I’ll stay,” Old-timer said. “Just let me talk to them first. They can go back and report what’s happened and they’ll bring reinforcements.”

“What kind of reinforcements?” Paine asked, his eyes ablaze with scrutiny but intrigued nonetheless.

“The kind that we’re going to need if what you’ve told me is true.”

“If they go back without you,” Samantha warned, “they’ll have to take your body with them, and it’ll die if it’s separated from your consciousness for too long.”

Old-timer shook his head. “Not that body,” he answered. “It looks human, but it’s not. It’s enhanced—extremely durable. Please let me send them back.”

“We can trust him,” Aldous announced to his companions. “Besides, if we don’t let them go, we’ll be receiving visitors from their universe in short order anyway.”