Inhuman(41)

Thel, speechless, could only nod in understanding.

The A.I. nodded in return before striding out of the room, headed for the elevator and whatever awaited him in the unknown realm, just one floor above.





14



“But how did this V-SINN—how did it erase an entire universe?” Old-timer asked.

Aldous shrugged. “We only know the basics. V-SINN began upgrading itself exponentially. Its abilities stretched far beyond our understanding and we were left baffled. First, a very small black hole suddenly appeared in our solar system. As you know, even a very small black hole can’t go unnoticed, as it had a mass similar to that of Neptune. My theory is that this black hole was a source of computing power for it. It helped V-SINN to become vastly more intelligent. With all of that intelligence and processing power—practically infinite, in fact—V-SINN figured out how to initiate a phase transition in our universe.”

“Phase transition?” Old-timer reacted, struggling to understand. “The last time I heard that term was in chemistry class. Like when water boils and transitions into a gas?”

Aldous smiled and nodded. “Yes, you’ve got it. And that’s essentially what happened to our universe.”

“Wait...it boiled it?”

“No,” Aldous replied, waving Old-timer’s absurd analogy away as though he were wiping it off a chalkboard, eager to start over with a clean slate. “V-SINN figured out how to manipulate the Higgs field—how to change its value so it no longer lined up with the rest of the universe. Then it caused a bubble to form, with energy levels so low that it changed the balance of the universe. Then it spread out in all directions, at the speed of light.”

Old-timer was perplexed, but Samantha jumped in to expound: “Just that small manipulation caused all the fundamental particles within the bubble to reach a mass almost infinitely heavier than particles outside the bubble. Do you understand the implications of that?”

Old-timer’s brow furrowed. “If the particles inside the bubble became more massive than those outside of it, wouldn’t that cause them to pull the rest of universe into their gravity?”

Samantha nodded. “Exactly. It created super massive centers that pulled the rest of the universe in on itself, thus changing the mass of those particles, too, ever increasing the size of the centers. It was a runaway collapse.”

“Centers? As in...more than one?” Old-timer asked.

“V-SINN figured out how to create wormholes all over the universe,” Paine said as he crushed his beer can and it vanished from his hand. A new one, perfectly cold, with droplets of condensation beading on the aluminum, instantly replaced it and he popped the tab. “It turned the whole thing into cosmic Swiss cheese,” he said before taking another swig of beer.

“It happened so fast.” Samantha shook her head and looked down at her hands as she remained traumatized, still in shock over the loss.

Old-timer couldn’t help but notice how her hair caught the light of the burning embers, flecks of orange and yellow adding a glistening hue to her locks. He had seen her hair do that before, in another time and another place, and, he realized absurdly, on an entirely different woman.

“In a matter of days, it was over,” Aldous added sadly. “Of course, we fought back.” He looked up at Old-timer. “You—or our version of you anyway—fought back hard. You sacrificed yourself in our last attempt to…” Aldous let his sentence end at that point, suddenly appearing as defeated as Samantha.

The ghosts on the other side of the fire seemed to be observing a moment of silence and Old-timer respected the moment, bowing his head.

I am fortune’s fool.

Paine swallowed a large gulp of beer before he turned his head to look at Old-timer directly, his expression deadly serious this time. “V-SINN’s coming for your universe now. Universe X is its big prize.”

“But,” Old-timer began, completely flummoxed as he held his hands up in dismay, his left hand still holding his unopened beer, “why?”

“Because it’s twisted, that’s why,” Samantha stated firmly. “It’s an intelligence, but it’s perverse, devoid of empathy or compassion.”

“It’s pure logic,” Aldous added.

Paine pointed at the beer in Old-timer’s hand. “Soldier, you’d better drink up. Believe me, when your friends come back to get us, you’re gonna look back at this little campfire powwow as the last moment of peace you’re gonna get for a long, long time.”





15



The craft James had constructed for them shook, shimmied, and jolted in a fashion that both Rich and Djanet had experienced before as it opened wormhole after wormhole and sutured space together on its way to Earth. Blinding white lights swirled and zigzagged in a kaleidoscope of randomness. Rich held on to the console in front of him while the android continued to hold on to the palladium view screen, its fingers dug in deep to small indents they had created.