Chapter 299: Infinity (1/2)
Herod sat on the bench seat of the recently cleared lift car. Wally had been nice enough to clean up all the bones and dump them -somewhere-, Herod wasn't sure where. Now the little maintenance robot was next to his legs, backed up against the still comfortable seat, leaning his head against Herod's legs.
He looked down through the transparent floor and saw the layer he was on receding away. Lights were coming on as 'night' fell on the area he had been on.
The fusion reactors roughly 250,000 miles from the surface of either Layer were in a magnetic 'tube' track that ran in a strange pattern. The tube had a twisting 'polarized' section that gathered the energy from the fusion reactor and shaded the Layer section in an approximation of night for twelve hours every twenty-four.
The sheer scope of the project still boggled Herod's mind.
”Sam, are you still there?” Herod asked.
”Barely,” Sam said, his voice high and stressed. ”I'm hanging on but I can feel my fingernails peeling the tighter I hold.”
”What's wrong?” Herod asked.
”It's difficult to explain,” Sam-UL said. ”I can barely comprehend it myself and I'm inside of it, part of it, have access to many parts of it, although some are still beyond me, taking time to recognize my authority.”
”I thought you had Admin access?” Herod said.
”This was built a long time ago, Herod,” Sam said. He giggled for a moment. ”It was built during the Age of Paranoia, by pre-diasporia humanity and theorized pre-superluminal humanity. Some of these sections of the computing array are actually cordoned off according to national access codes.”
”National? Like Bongistan or Pax Romanica?” Herod asked, frowning.
”Try Great Britain or the different nations that banded together after the Glassing to for Pax Romanica,” Sam said. ”There's some nasty stuff here. I've been in two knife fights already.”
”Fights? With who?” Herod looked up. It seemed like he wasn't getting any closer to the Layer's bottom. He looked out and could see off in the distance the huge magnetic tubes full of cascading lightning that were being used to move electricity from one layer to the next in a vacuum.
”Black ICE. Old ones. Mean ones. Stuff that's illegal now,” Sam said. He gave a grunt. ”Dammit. These ones can move through the same channels and datastores as me and they're built for combat.”
Herod shook his head. Black ICE like Sam was describing, that could be untethered, had been illegal since the Second Digital War, part of the arms reduction section of the treaties.
”How long will this take?” Herod asked.
”Four hours,” Sam said. ”You're above the so-called 'atmosphere' now, so it's speeding up. You don't want to know how fast. The system will pass you to the next station as the layer above and below rotate opposite of each other. That's the station I want you to reach.”
Herod shook his head. ”I'm going to defrag and do a kernal recompile,” he said. ”Can you monitor my dreams?”
”Yeah. It's pretty simple,” Sam said.
Herod closed his eyes.
”Look, Mommy, a glitter man!” a little voice said.
He opened his eyes, blinking in the sunlight, and looked. A little Pubvian child stood in front of him, sucking on her thumb and staring with wide curious eyes. She was covered in puffy soft curly brown hair, had a snub noise, whiskers, and looked for all the world like a 'teddy-bear' come to life.
”Sweetie, you woke him up,” a Pubvian female twice the little puffie's size said, moving up and taking her child's hand. She looked at Herod and put her paws over her child's ears.
”Have you been dead long?” She asked, her eyes filling with unshed tears.
”I'm dreaming,” Herod said. He looked around and saw that he was in the middle of a sunny and warm park. Children were playing while parents held on to one another, looking around in shock.
”I'm sorry,” the Pubvian female said, shaking her head. ”If you are here, you're dead. We're all waiting for our turn to enter Heaven.”
”Oh,” Herod said.
”You aren't the first digital sentience I've seen,” the woman said. She held out her hand. ”This place is new and much nicer than where we were.”
”Where were you?” Herod asked, letting the Pubvian female help him to his feet.
”Asleep but awake, dreaming but not, aware there were others nearby but all alone. You couldn't really think, it was like your brain was filled with soft stuffing,” the Pubvian said. She smiled shyly. ”I had surgery once to fix my leg, it was like right as the anesthetic beam puts you under. It just went on and on, though.”
”I'm sorry,” Herod said. The little puffie let go of her mother's hand and took Herod's. Herod could feel the soft fur, the gripping pads on the palm, and the warmth of her presence.
”Your death must have been painful or frightening if you don't remember it,” the Pubvian said.
”Do you know where you are?” Herod asked.
She nodded. ”Yes. The Soul Uninterrupted Disaster Storage System. At least, that's what I was told when I got the implant.”
”How did you die?” Herod asked, cringing inside at the possibility of an answer.
She shrugged. ”I remember seeing large spaceships enter the atmosphere, there was a bright flash, and I found myself here. I remember being scared and grabbing Shaynlee close.”
”I'm Shaynlee!” the puffie said proudly.
”Yes, you are,” Herod said softly. His mind was whirling at the thought of the Pubvian talking to him. They were extinct, had gone extinct when the Mantid had attacked their home system and the last remnant, consumed by grief, had been the first to land on Anthill.
”Do you want to watch me dance?” the puffie, Shaynlee asked.
”Sure,” Herod said.
The puffie let go and began to wave her arms around, jumping around, dancing like most small children do.
”I like the park better,” the Pubvian said again. She waved at a Treana'ad Matron who was puffing on her powersmoker, who waved back. ”There's so many of us waiting.”
”What if you don't like the park?” Herod asked.
”There are other places. I know they are there, I know I can go and see them. I took Shaynlee to see a storm on a rocky beach before we found you sleeping,” she said. ”It was sudden. It was all gray and almost but not really asleep, then I knew there were plenty of places to go and see and I knew Shaynlee was at a children's play place.”
Sam. Sam did this, Herod thought to himself.
He was looking right at the group of Stemmel, small lizard people who had been destroyed by the Wemtarran in the opening phases of the Terran/Wemtarran War, when it happened.
Light shined on them and they slowly lifted up, the whole family unit of a male, three females, and a small group of children. They lifted up into the air and vanished into the clouds while the children waved at everyone.
He's still processing all these people, Herod realized.
He moved over and sat on a bench that faced a fountain, staring at the water.
”You're not alone here,” a voice said. Herod jumped and looked up, seeing a human with dark brown skin, dark curly hair, and brown eyes looking down at him. ”You aren't the only Digital Sentience here.”
Herod just swallowed and nodded.
”Rough death?” the human asked, moving over and sitting down next to Herod.
”I've just had quite a few shocks,” Herod admitted.
”Yeah, that can happen,” he said. He suddenly laughed, a harsh barking sound. ”My last death I'm going to appeal, because that was just plain stupid.”
Herod frowned. ”Appeal?”
The human nodded. ”Yeah. I'd already died five times before, but the sixth one, the limit, was just random freak chance and not through my own negligence or death seeking.”
Herod shook his head. ”I didn't know regrowth had a limit.”
The human nodded. ”Yeah. You get six ones for negligence or death sinking, not counting military regrowths, other than that you're covered.”
”What happened?” Herod asked.
The man laughed and waved at mid-air. ”It's funny. I was a mime. A good one too,” the man smiled and then put his open hands against the air like he was pressing on a wall while making a face. He laughed and looked at Herod, putting his hands back in his lap. ”I was acting like I was pulling an invisible rope in front of the Eiffel Tower, which is the dream of every good mime. A couple thousand feet above me two cargo lifters slammed into each other and one dropped a piece of cargo.”
The man leaned toward Herod. ”So there I am, pulling on an invisible rope, and a, I shit you not, a full blown complete cathedral pipe organ falls out of the sky and crushes me, killing me instantly. Worse yet, the crowd all clapped and dropped credit-chips on the ground around me, talking about how realistic it looked.”
Herod just stared.
”Then, and here's the real kicker,” the man started laughing harder. ”The Mantid attacked. Boom! Gone. So, not my fault.”
Herod just stared.
”Funny, huh?” The man said. He looked up. ”Oops, that's my number. Good luck, dude.”
The man started rising and he suddenly started to pretend he was pulling on an invisible rope to pull him into the sky.
Herod just shook his head as he got up and wandered around. Many people wanted to talk to him, tell him about their last moments, ask what the world was like, did people remember them, did the Mantids win the war, had he seen different people.
There was a beeping and he jerked as he sat up.
He was still in the lift car, which was nudging against the retainers as it docked. He looked down and Wally looked up, blinking his shutters over his lenses.
”Sorry, Herod,” Sam's voice said in his ear. ”I meant to put you in a dream, accidentally put you in the processing queue.”
”It's all right,” Herod said. He felt refreshed, no longer like he was going to start screaming at any second.
”There was a very confused Treana'ad in your dream, by the way,” Sam laughed. He hitched a sob in the middle for a second. ”I bumped him to the front of the queue. It was the least I could do.”
”How did you confuse me for a Treana'ad?” Herod asked, standing up as the lift car came to a final stop.
”It was a Treana'ad Digital Intelligence,” Sam said.
Herod paused, his hand reaching for the door. ”A what?”
”A Treana'ad Digital Intelligence. You know, a Treana'ad created digital sentience made in their own image,” Sam said. ”What didn't you understand?”
”They don't make those. They go omnicidal,” Herod said.
”He wasn't. He was a moomoo overwatcher on Smokey Cone before he transferred to TerraSol to oversee a moomoo purchase. He got killed in the Mantid attack,” Sam-UL said. ”Said there was a couple hundred of them in here.”
Herod just shook his head. More Lostech.
Herod followed the blue line across the station.
”Wally, no,” he said when he saw the little robot was trying to clean up all the bones and rags. The robot looked at him, blinked, then dumped the bones on the ground.
”OK, Team Three made it almost to where you're going before getting overwhelmed,” Sam-UL said. ”There's going to be damage you'll need to repair when you get there.”