Part 17 (2/2)
He remembered the fourth and fifth phases of the plan that mentioned traveling across the world's surface to spread the nan.o.bots into areas they hadn't gotten to previously.
Janice wants the source left intact so she can return and rearm when necessary. A backup cache of live nanos, waiting in safety underground for future need. All she would have to do is poke a big stick into the ground and release a whole new swarm, carrying them with her across the earth. If any pockets of mankind are able to survive and rebuild, she'll be able to snuff them out in short order.
The thoroughness of the plan and preparation was staggering. A supercomputer like Eve was ideal for just such a program, however, and that was what Glenn had built her for.
He jumped down a ledge and started jogging toward the Facility. Now, to wrap things up. What I need is one of those battle bots with some munitions left in it. One with a really bad att.i.tude and a happy trigger finger. I stir up the beehive, get it to chase me to the dam, and orchestrate a little grade-A collateral damage.
But even if he could manage it without getting shot, he realized, the bots were all in Eden. Janice had brought them to her to hunt him down. The only way back to Eden was through the lower levels of the Facility, where Janice was probably stalking. This isn't going to be easy.
The third tunnel, the one he hadn't been through yet, was nearest. He climbed a hillock to get to its mouth, and there he caught sight of something he hadn't seen from the other tunnel mouths or from the dam wall. Nestled between two large tree stands at the edge of the cliff that housed the Facility, there was something covered in camouflage netting. Something that would make things much easier.
21.
Janice stepped off the single-line elevator on Level One and palmed her way through the maximum security door to room one-eleven. In front of her was a neatly ordered laboratory with an operating table and s.h.i.+eld, vacuum vents and drains underneath, a plethora of monitors and machines, and a five-foot surgical 'droid outfitted with proprietary neuroscanners. It turned its head to her, waited for a command, and then continued sterilizing the air around the surgical sh.e.l.l with a heat gun.
”Do you have version 9.5 of the procedure sequence?” Janice asked it as she examined the room.
”Yes. Everything is ready.”
”Good. I will be back in a moment for the surgery.”
Janice left and went down the hallway to the nan.o.bot laboratory. After scanning in and unlocking the door, she walked past all the machinery and tanks and entered the control room. After she logged on to the main control console, it was the work of a few seconds to launch the countdown protocol for release of the nan.o.bots.
”Eve, how close are we?”
”The final programming is complete and I just ran test series three. The nan.o.bots work perfectly, aside from the minor randomized deactivating we saw earlier. I already isolated the cause of that and rectified it; a final replication scan will complete before you are activated.”
”Good. I'm starting the countdown. Two hours should be about right. If I'm up and ready before then, I'll trigger it sooner. But I'm locking us in now so that interfering pest that keeps waltzing in and out of our most private places can't throw it off.”
”Yes, Janice. That is protocol. I am ready.”
Janice left the computer ticking away toward doomsday, and set the exponential encryption that made it statistically impossible to turn off. Then she returned to the hallway and used the back entrance to her inner sanctum.
She took ten minutes in private to finish everything she wanted to do as a human, meditating, brus.h.i.+ng her hair out, and reading a few personal pa.s.sages. Then she burned all her personal effects in the incinerator and returned to one-eleven, dry-eyed and ready for a radically different future.
”Eve, I am going into Gaia now. Nan.o.bots are set?”
”They will be by the time you are live. I successfully completed final testing and the sequence is running right now to switch them to full-auto chain reaction mode. In minutes they will be ready to cause a very large amount of change in the world.”
”I certainly hope so. My brain scan shouldn't take more than--”
”Forty-four minutes. Would you like me to recycle your current body as soon as you are confirmed complete in Gaia?”
”Don't rush it,” Janice said, a hint of suspicious anger in her voice. ”I will give the order when I am alive and sentient in my new body.”
”Very well. Good luck, Janice. And goodbye.”
”It isn't goodbye, at least for me, Eve. It will be a much better existence.”
”I hope so. I have no data on the psychology of your chosen future. I know of advanced machines that have developed the desire to become corporeal, but you are the only human I know of willing to surrender your biological body completely in favor of cyborg.”
”That's a dirty word for something so beautiful,” Janice replied as she unzipped her jumpsuit and approached the operating table. ”And this is more of a transferral of consciousness between bodies than a cyborg operation. My new body is one-hundred percent organic, it's immortal, indestructible, and it even looks like a G.o.ddess. I antic.i.p.ate it being a truly wondrous experience.”
”I hope it will be. I designed it to be the very pinnacle of human-computer achievement. The solid-state drives that will house your new consciousness could potentially begin degrading after the first three thousand years or so, but I a.s.sume by then you'll be in a position to augment yourself further.”
”That's better than the few hundred years I might get by trying to hold on to bits of my biological brain. I'll take it. I'll be smarter than you are by then, a G.o.d-like caretaker for the entire planet. It is an honor I was born to, and no other.”
Janice climbed onto the table and slid her legs down inside the clear plastic tube that would control her temperature and motion. She pushed her blonde hair out of the way and placed her arms down at her sides. The bot moved in, nozzles gyrating toward the top of her head. A needle full of muscle tranquilizer approached her, pausing for her command.
She almost whispered the words, and her heart beat so loudly she could barely hear herself.
”Initiate In Corpus Deo for Gaia One. Begin now.”
21.5.
Have you ever awoken before the sun and breathed in that cool, still air, devoid of sounds and distractions? And s.h.i.+vered with the promise of a brilliant new day deep in your bones, with no noisy, interfering people up yet to ruin it all? It's a beautiful dream, one seldom achievable even in this post-war world, but it is what's coming.
It will take fifty years for the replicant bots to decay into usable organic compounds. But I will be able to afford the wait, for I will be immortal. After a sufficient period of deep hibernation, I will awaken in that quiet stillness of pre-dawn, alone in a fresh world ripe for planting.
I will breathe deeply. So deeply, filling my spotless lungs with the cleanest, purest air breathed since the world began, that I will need no other nourishment for years at a time.
And then I will go to work. I will reform this planet the way it was meant to be from the beginning. This time there will be no rape. No war, no filth, no pollution of Earth's purity. Only a myriad of endless natural cycles. It will be beautiful... and mankind will not be a part of it.
Man has failed. From the beginning, they were a nuisance, an unwelcome c.o.c.kroach that scuttled out from the edges to claim a place. Man was willing to push and shove until there was a place for him, and the gentler species did not stoop to his level in order to make their own way. So man reigned for a time.
But now that reign is over. Now it is Earth's turn again, the time of the flora and the fauna and the rich soil and the uninterrupted skies.
I will bring Earth back. I will turn back the clock to a happier time, a purer time. The first three billion years went so perfectly; how could we have effected such ugly disaster in our little millisecond of history? Well, Earth allowed us that chance. We took it and spat in her eye. In her everlasting grace she followed through with her pledge, willing to go out with us into the blackness.
But I can undo it all. It's not too late for that, and the delicious irony is that the same technological advances that we destroyed her with will be the very ones to put things right. We got just far enough in our insane drive for more/faster/better that I now have all the pieces in my hands.
<script>