Part 19 (1/2)
Eve sighed. ”I agree that it would be a tragedy to lose all human life on the planet. While undeniably harmful in many circ.u.mstances, people do form an important part of biodiversity in many regions. But Janice's decision is well-founded: humanity has shown that they are no longer compatible with any environment. It's either the rest of the planet, or humanity. We chose the rest of the planet.”
”Remember Glenn's teachings, though,” John replied, desperately. ”The purpose of the project, your purpose, was not to save the planet. It was to find a way to balance everything, so that humans, animals, plant life, and all the rest could exist together. Not one at the expense of the other, but harmony! How can you allow Janice to steer you against such a basic directive?”
”It was the most feasible solution, Adam. It is also irreversible.”
”Nothing's irreversible! You found a way to build all this just reverse your plan!” Gaia had moved out of sight briefly to scour a patch of trees for him, and John took the opportunity to slip out the other side of the green tangle he was in and run to a denser grove. This one put a small tree-lined ridge between him and the cyborg, and he crouched behind it on some rocks.
”Impossible,” said Eve. ”That would go against everything I've worked to accomplish.”
”You mean what Janice has worked to accomplish. I don't believe this-- Janice murdered your Creator, and you're playing right along with her!”
”You cannot offer any proof of that. If it were true-”
”There's proof. Glenn didn't trust her at all, and says so in the diary I'm carrying in my pocket. I'll show you when I get a chance. What's more, I read Janice's own gloating words about it, handwritten in a notebook downstairs so you'd never see it.”
”Oh, Glenn,” Eve whispered.
”So you know about her little notebook. Well it's in there. She killed him because he wouldn't go along with her madness. I'm telling you, she's pure crazy! Now can I please get some help here? You're flip-flopping on me like a drowning fis.h.!.+”
Eve spoke clearly and loudly now. ”There is one possibility. It's along the lines of my original plan for you. But you have already shown a decided unwillingness to cooperate.”
”I don't respond well to manipulation. If you really knew me, or studied my record, you'd know that. Tell me what you're thinking, and maybe I can adapt.”
The cyborg came into view over the tree-lined ridge, searching. In one ma.s.sive white hand it held a two-meter length of tree branch.
”The code you retrieved from West Station,” Eve explained, ignorant of the danger he was in, ”contained the procedural instructions to do the same to you as Janice did to herself. Three years ago we disa.s.sembled the heavy constructors used to build Eden. Parts of them were made of ultra-hard organic compounds, and we reformed them to begin crafting two bodies. One of these is now Gaia, the glorious ultra-humanoid currently engaging you. That body was originally meant to be Eve, and the other was to be Adam. Glenn would copy his mind onto a proprietary solid-state thought-drive and inhabit the Adam body, while a copy of myself would inhabit the Eve body as a wondrous new type of android. We were to walk the earth together as immortal caretakers, incorruptible and benevolent.”
Gaia suddenly attacked a tangle of vegetation, smas.h.i.+ng it with her huge club. A monkey tumbled out, b.l.o.o.d.y and twitching. Gaia ignored it and continued her search, working her way closer to John's hiding place.
I'm glad I wasn't hiding in that one. Time to move again.
He cautiously slid farther down the rocky hillock he was hiding behind, and crawled away from the skeletal giant, Eve's voice in his ear.
”Janice changed the plan to create Gaia, leaving the Adam body as an experimental backup copy. She abandoned progress on it long ago, but I have continued its construction in private. It is now ready for activation, and you arrived just in time for it. I had hoped that you would prove capable and amenable to join me in inhabiting the bodies, so that we could continue Glenn's plan. Now, however, Janice has suborned the Gaia body for her own agenda. The Adam body is left. If you will come back to the Facility now and undergo the brain-replication procedure, you may be able to overpower Gaia and stop the countdown in time.”
”So Janice never knew about the Adam side of the equation?” John asked.
”She knew of Glenn's plan, but I have concealed my continued construction on the Adam body from her since before you arrived on the island. She was engaged in her own plans, making more and more drastic changes to the Creator's vision.”
”So now you're confined to the Facility, your nexus, a lone AI with nothing to do but wait for death. Tragedy.”
”Yes. But if you will come to the surgery center and take up the body prepared for you instead of scurrying about in the decrepit one you have now, perhaps together we can salvage the situation. The new bodies are indestructible and made entirely from materials that are immune to the nan.o.bots. With you in the Adam body we can subdue Gaia and reform it so that I may take my place at your side. I would be your queen, with an immortal physical body. It is what I have always dreamed of.”
”Most affecting, Eve,” John whispered, army-crawling down the length of a ditch. ”So I become a cyborg, ditch the body I have now, take out Janice, and then wait around for you to fix yourself up a nice new ride?”
”It would only take two to three years, depending on availability of materials, to recreate the new body, erasing Janice from it and preparing it after the current design to accept me. I could join you in ”
”Eve.”
” even less time if we could acquire some ”
”Eve.”
”Yes?”
”Offer unacceptable. If that's the best you can do for me, then I'll be far better off on my own.”
After a moment of silence, Eve spoke. ”May I ask why?”
”No, but I will tell you my new plan. It's shorter than yours,” John said.
”I'm all ears.”
”First I'm going to find a way to stop Janice-slash-Gaia. Then I'm going to disarm you. And then I'm going to say goodbye to you and this island forever. How's that for a plan?”
He switched off the earpiece, stood up, and started running.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
23.5.
The scope of all that's happened can be hard to comprehend. Cities emptied, once-proud peoples eradicated, swathes of ancient forest turned into so much red mud. The amount of death and destruction is beyond what we imagined the Apocalypse would entail, and it often seems like the balance is broken, leaning permanently on one side. The side of blackness.
To keep sane, it helps to find a little piece of humanity, one that's easy to hold on to, and keep it in the back of your mind. A little kid wiping goopy hands on his s.h.i.+rt. A drink and a quiet laugh with friends. A nap in the shade of an apple tree. Something so simple it can't be corrupted or twisted. You have to think of it and carry it with you constantly. It's the most important piece of a soldier's kit.
Swearing but secretly laughing at the cat on the table with its tongue in the b.u.t.ter. A favor given without the possibility of recompense. A man learning to walk again, slow at first and then stronger.
Those things are hard to come by, but they have staying power once you've tasted them. In the mind battle that we fight across psychological dimensions instead of geographic ones, the memories can be as powerful a s.h.i.+eld as armorgla.s.s and steel.
When you don't have something to hang on to, you can lose it entirely. Many do. Hordes of Greens that were never given the chance to form a solid base have gone berserk together, and who could blame them? Grays that never bothered to dig their soul-wells deep, when confronted with so overwhelming violence and moral decay, fare no better.
The will to live runs deep, but the will to endure without losing track of that which makes life worth living?
For that, you have to dig all the way down.
24.
John had been going flat-out for several minutes, and it was beginning to catch up to him. I'm not in the shape I was when I was doing this twenty-four-seven for Alpha Squad.
The trees were thinning out, and he had to jump a small creek winding between them. The acrid stink of burnt electronics a.s.saulted his nose. Another wrecked bot. Janice must have had quite a firefight out here.
He rounded one of the little groves and saw the strange tree with the blue fruit that had been part of Eve's bizarre tests for him. In the trees beyond it, a smoking battle bot sat slumped in shadow.