Old-timer swallowed a deep breath. “I-I can’t do it, Djanet. Daniella’s on the surface. I have to warn her. I have to save her.”
“You can’t. You’ll have to take this android with you and—”
“Are you out of your mind?” Old-timer reacted, stunned and beginning to panic. “Daniella is down there! She’s my wife. I have to save her.”
“Old-timer...Craig, calm down!” Djanet said, placing her hands on his tight shoulders.
He shook them off initially, but she wouldn’t relent. He paused for a moment, meeting her eyes with desperation.
“I’ll find her for you,” she promised, “but I can’t go to the android collective. I’m still an organic body—I need my magnetic field, which is a glowing green dead giveaway—but you don’t need a protective cocoon. You can pass for an android, and you’re powerful enough to handle this ugly son-of-a-bitch.” She placed her soft hand against his cheek. “Hey, I promise you, I’ll find Daniella and I’ll keep her safe, but you’re the only one who can save the survivors of Universe 332, and we’re gonna need them. They’re the only ones who know what else is coming for us—for all of us.” She kicked the unconscious android lightly with the side of her foot to make her point. “We’ll all be on the same team by that point.”
Old-timer looked at the assimilator in his hand, a small, black, insidious gadget. He thought of Samantha, Aldous, and Paine; of V-SINN; of the billions of lives that had already been lost and the blood of the billions whose lives were still at stake. The blood would be on his hands. Then he thought of Daniella, trapped on the surface of Earth, moments from being swarmed by the android collective.
He squeezed the assimilator in his hand before looking skyward and screaming in frustration,“Goddamn it!”
Djanet jumped as though a gunshot had gone off in her ear when she heard Old-timer’s curse. It wasn’t like him, of all people, to come unglued so quickly. “Are you okay?” she asked, deep concern in her voice.
“I’ve gotta cross back over and let the survivors know,” he replied emphatically with an animalistic snarl on his lips, ignoring the question. “Get ready to wake that big ugly son-of-a-bitch up when I get back.”
22
Rich looked skyward as the late afternoon sky seemed to ignite. Countless objects were falling in what resembled a terrifying meteorite shower. “That’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen…” Then he remembered the last android invasion. “…since the last time, anyway.” He patched into communication with Aldous. “Uh, Chief, we’re down to seconds here at most. You might wanna hurry things along.”
Inside the mainframe building, Aldous Gibson stood between the two, unconscious bodies, of Thel Cleland and James Keats, lying on small, raised platforms, their minds still plugged into the Death’s Counterfeit program. Thel’s body was organic and vulnerable, but James’s was the chrome-colored enhanced design, a design so advanced that it still bewildered Aldous as he cast his eyes upon it. The glowing, azure eyes were absent behind chrome-colored eyelids, and Aldous was glad the piercing orbs weren’t there to scrutinize him as he placed his hand on the forehead of the superman.
“I’m attempting to gain access now,” Aldous informed Rich as he connected to James first, then to Death’s Counterfeit by proxy. He already knew the procedure would work and braced himself for the inevitable loss of consciousness, bending his knees and moving into the fetal position on the floor. “Accessing in three...two...one...”
Aldous didn’t experience his physical body slackening; all Aldous saw was the world of the physical mainframe vanish, replaced by the implacable darkness of Death’s Counterfeit. He’d had a major hand in designing that liminal space, that juncture between the consciousness of the meat and consciousness within cyberspace. It was a void—a place where only his pattern existed, with no senses whatsoever to feed and nourish his mind. He knew he’d go mad if his pattern was stored there for too long, but he also knew where he was going. He knew exactly where he was going.
“Richard, can you hear me?” Aldous finally said.
“I’m with you, Chief,” Rich replied, his words breathless as the rain of fire plummeted toward him. Millions of androids careened down on him on vertical trajectories, as if an entire city population were being poured on him—as if New York were above him, turned upside down, its occupants being shaken out as if they were grains from a salt shaker—a plethora of metal people bent on destroying the ground that he alone would have to protect. “I’m sure glad to hear your voice, but I’m gonna need a helluva lot more than that if we’re gonna survive this.”