Chapter 419: From Hells Heart (2/2)
”Stay calm for the next part. Let the Arch-Angels help you. Move on, James,” the woman said. For a moment her eyes glowed red. ”Or, stay here, with me, in Hell, reliving the moment over and over.”
She gave a cruel laugh. ”You've been calm long enough for me to pry your wife and children away from you, so it will only be you here. They will take the hands of the Arch-Angels and ascent to Heaven.”
She blew smoke again.
”You, of course, are free to stay here, with me, in Hell.”
James shook his head.
”Step back into yourself, see if you're ready to let go,” the woman said.
James half stumbled to his own body, seeing that he was slightly transparent. He pushed his way in.
”Today is the day of...” he started.
His wife's eyes opened wide, her mouth opening in shock.
James turned and looked in time to see a wave of white heading toward the arcology, fed by a thick pulsing beam of light from the sky.
He had time to pull her close before the shockwave hit, turning the smartglass into millions of pieces of razor sharp shrapnel that shredded him.
And her.
The woman watched, as James died, again, as he had for eight thousand years, dying over and over.
RECORD CLEARED appeared in mid-air. DELETE WORKSPACE?
”No,” the woman said. She waved her hand, the apartment suddenly fixing itself.
She stood alone in the middle of the room for a moment before she walked over to the window and stared out the window.
”Earth. What a shit hole,” she said.
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Legion felt himself try to rebirth at the parking garage, try to merge with the version of himself on the bridge of the Fleet of One, try to respawn in a dozen different areas.
Instead, he stuck his hand out, reaching blindly for the being who had visited him at the cafe on the shores of the ancient river.
A small hand grabbed his with amazing strength, squeezing, and pulled.
Legion felt himself surface the black water, gasp for air, then the world whirled and he stumbled out of the blackness, hitting the arm of a couch and folding over it. He gasped for air, feeling his body burn.
”When you're done with the melodrama,” a woman's voice said.
Legion slowly stood up, wiping his mouth. He turned and saw a short woman standing by smartglass. Outside was an arcology complex, blasted and ruined, still smoking and burning. The apartment was immaculate but the building it was part of was destroyed.
”Welcome to Hell,” the woman said. She took out a pack of cigarettes and slowly pulled one out. ”Good to see you.”
”You look quite different,” Legion said. He looked down, seeing that he was the well muscled bearded version of himself that he preferred at times.
”As do you,” the woman said. She used a mechanical lighter to light her cigarette, snapping the lid shut and putting in the pocket of her trousers.
”You said that you needed my expertise. Why?” Legion asked. He moved over and looked out the window.
”You are the foremost expert in the human genome now and any other time,” the woman said. She moved over and sat down on the couch, picking up an ashtray before leaning back, primly crossing her legs, and balancing the ashtray on one knee.
”You mentioned that,” Legion said. He felt irritation rise up and squashed it. ”Where exactly is this?”
”Traumatic Life Cessation Processing System, Node six alpha four echo niner niner three bravo seven, to be exact,” the woman said. ”I processed the guy, who seemed to think he was God and could change the past, his family, who he had stuck in the system with him, and held the workspace till you got here.”
Legion nodded. ”Why?”
”Because if I expose you to Hell, then you'll either rebirth or start getting processed,” the woman said. She sighed. ”Enough about me,” she said. She gave a grin. ”What did you think of my other body?”
Legion opened his mouth, recognized the reference, and laughed. ”OK. Point. So why do you need my assistance? You're inside the system, surely you can change things from in here.”
The woman shook her head. ”Do you even know what the system is?”
Legion thought for a long moment. ”If I say it's a rebirth system you're going to rip my guts out, or at least try, aren't you?”
The woman sighed. ”Finally,” she said, looking up.
Legion frowned. ”Finally?”
”Finally someone who's neurons are firing,” the woman said. ”Sit down,” she waved her hand and a bottle of whiskey appeared on the coffee table. When Legion sat down she waved her hand again and a trashcan appeared between his feet, tall enough to reach his knees. ”You'll need that.”
”Why?” Legion asked. He uncapped the whiskey and took a long drink.
”Because I'm about to tell you what all this is and I you're the first non-digital sentience aside from me to learn about it,” she said. Her grin suddenly turned cruel and her eyes glittered with madness. ”Are you a virgin, Dhruv?”
Legion frowned and opened his mouth to ask why it even mattered.
The room's walls and ceiling fell away, the floor crumbled, and Legion could see the entirety of the reality of the SUDS system. His mind shuddered from the complexity and simplicity, from the solid evidence of what humanity had been capable of and the creations it had left lying around. His mind gibbered and raved as he stared, unprotected, at a pulsing Big Bang that would erupt in only hours but ultimately fail to do anything more than add another layer to the onion that was the SUDS.
His wide staring eyes, full of fear and horror, locked onto the small woman, who was laughing, a cigarette in her hand, pointing at him with the other.
”BECAUSE YOU'RE FUCKED NOW!” the woman howled with laughter.
Legion heard her voice as he stared at eternity.
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The whiskey was harsh, little better than raw alcohol, and burned his mouth as he swished it and spit into the trash can that had his last two meals and more than a couple cups of tea in the bottom.
Legion looked up at the small woman, who was lighting another cigarette.
”So were you crazy before or after you saw all that?” Legion asked.
”Before,” the woman admitted, shrugging. ”So they say.”
”When did you become such a bitch?” Legion asked, glaring at her as he took another swig.
”July seventh, nineteen thirty-two, pretty much solidified me as a bitch,” the woman said. She looked at Legion's frowned. ”We don't know each other well enough for me to explain any further.”
Legion lowered the bottle, wiping his mouth, as he nodded. ”Fair enough.”
”So now you understand the where and have touched on the what,” the woman said, setting the lighter on the top of the pack of cigarettes on the table. She took a long drag and looked out the window, which had returned. ”The when doesn't matter. Not here.”
”No, it wouldn't,” Legion agreed. ”I would have argued that before you showed it to me.”
”How irrelevant to our discussion,” the woman said. ”As is who.”
Legion nodded. The memories of those terrible sights was fading.
”The when matters outside, and that was prior to the Mantid Attack,” the woman said.
Again, Legion just nodded.
”Feel free to make more of yourselves if it will help you keep up,” the woman, The Detainee, said magnanimously, waving her hand.
”You're very kind,” Legion said dryly. ”You stated that none of the people walking around on Terra were humans. Care to elaborate?”
Dee nodded. ”You have eight thousand years of natural, forced, guided, and manipulated evolution walking around. The bodies have been cleansed of birth defects, junk DNA, disease, and aging massively slowed. They've been tweaked to be more robust, smarter, faster, tougher,” she said. She shook her head. ”Someone, sometime, even went so far as to ensure that flatulence no longer had a foul odor,” she laughed at that, as if it was some kind of private joke. ”When you get down to engineering petty shit like that, maybe it's time to take a step back.”
Legion thought about it. ”True.”
”You, Dhruv, Legion, Victor, whatever, have watched it. In some ways, you assisted with it,” Dee said through an exhalation of smoke. ”Well, you fucked up and now the entire system is jammed with data mismatch errors.”
”Fucked up?” Legion asked.
”You have your modern version of humans, the bodies at least, but neural wiring and synaptic chains more in tune with my era, which is causing mismatch errors because the system is having trouble recognizing who goes where and when,” Dee said. She stood up slowly, reminding Dhruv of a spider slowly awakening to patrol its web. ”To top it off, all of humanity has been using this system when, in fact, it was severely damaged and operating in a flawed mode.”
Legion watched her walk around the couch so she could put one fist against the back and lean forward.
”The whole system was damaged in the attack, most of it crashed, but the parts with the highest redundancy and highest protection, kept operating,” she said. She straightened up. ”Which meant that the system was trying to process billions of damaged records that had undergone severe trauma, with only automated systems. This caused a cascade where the system was in emergency mode.”
Legion nodded. ”All right, I follow.”
”The problem is, you are all so heavily modified the system keeps trying to classify modern humanity as a distinct subspecies, but it can't because of damage to the system,” she said. She pointed outside. ”Meanwhile Larry and Moe are out there trying to fix the whole thing and are about to cause the entire thing to start throwing major errors.”
Legion stood up, walking past her and into the kitchen. He knew he shouldn't have been surprised to find food in the fridge but he was all the same. He slowly made himself a drink as he thought about what she had just said.
”How bad is it?” Legion asked.
”From their point of view? Everything is working better and better,” Dee said. She moved over and sat at the table where a small girl had sat earlier. ”Realistically? I'm not sure the problem even should be fixed, or even if it can be fixed.”
”Do you mind?” Legion asked, reaching forward with one finger and holding it over the back of Dee's hand.
Dee smiled, seeing the glint of the needle just under the nail.
”Have at it. Following the rules of the simulation, good,” she said.
Legion poked her skin, bringing up a drop of blood that was pulled into the needle.
The system brought up all the genetic and DNA scans for ”The Detainee” and granted Legion access to them. Dee watched as dozens split off from him. With a wave she granted him access to the room and watched as they brought up smartglass chalkboards, dataslates, and more.
”You're modified. Interesting work, not quite the way I would have done it but effective. Anti-aging therapies. Hmm, I'm not sure why you would try to modify your sleep cycles,” Legion said.
”I stopped sleeping when I was thirteen years old,” Dee said. ”I was trying to fix it but I didn't know how.”
”Not seeing the normal methods of DNA modification for the time,” Legion said. He opened his eyes and looked at her. ”How did you do it?”
”The mat-trans. I developed the system and realized its full potential. Everything from time travel to cloning to genetic modification to matter and energy transportation,” Dee said, shrugging.
Legion shuddered theatrically. ”An all-or-nothing method.”
”It killed me eventually,” Dee admitted. She shrugged. ”No use crying about it.”
Legion slowly finished his drink, ignoring the predatory way that Dee stared at him. Ignored her sudden outbursts of laughter and giggles. The rest of him were hard at work, comparing Dee's baseline to current human DNA.
”You didn't modify your ovum,” Legion said.
”I wanted clean copies of my DNA, so there's some non-detachable ovum in each ovary that contains clean copies of my DNA,” Dee said.
”Clever,” Legion said. He made another drink, this time making one for Dee and handing it to her.
After a few eternal moments he looked at Dee.
”I see part of what you mean. There have been put safeguards on the human genome. Comparing them, I can see part of what you mean,” he said.
”Those genetic tweaks make the emotions muted, except positive emotions, and even they are somewhat muted,” Dee said. ”That started an internal feedback that peaked at the Mantid Attack. The patch overlaying that is bizarre.”
”The touch of the Digital Omnimessiah,” Legion mused. ”The Second Miracle, he cured an Enraged One.”
”It needs fixed, but I can't convince those two bleeding hearts to do what has to be done,” Dee snarled. She made her voice high pitched and mocking. ”But we'll be sentencing people to deal with emotions they haven't learned to deal with.”
Legion snorted. ”So you came to find me.”
”I figure an Immortal is capable of looking beyond the poor mewling useless masses and coddling them like royal infants and see what needs to be done,” Dee said.
Legion thought, for a second, about lying. He saw her eyes narrow, grow more intent, and the madness be replaced by something else.
”I am,” Legion said truthfully. ”It's monstrous even to suggest.”
”Then spank my muffin till it's green and call me Franky,” she sneered. ”Will you help, or not?”
Legion nodded. ”I'll help.”
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The river was blue, sunlight dancing upon it. It moved slowly in its banks, heading south to the sea, as it had for millions of years.
Dhruv/Legion/Victor accepted the cup of tea from the waiter with a smile.
A deal with the Devil indeed, he mused, blowing in the tea to cool it. Why not? First the Digital Omnimessiah, then the loss of Eden, now a deal with the Devil herself.