Chapter 519: Eternity (2/2)
”What about Dee?” Herod asked, mentally crossing his fingers that the psychopath had turned to dust and blown away on an ill wind.
”Still processing souls. She's getting better at it, but she still has a backlog of a couple hundred trillion,” Sam said. ”Why? Did you want to talk to her?”
”Oh, Digital Omnimessiah, no,” Herod said. ”Just keep that psycho away from me.”
”She serves her purpose, Herod, as do you,” Sam said, his voice suddenly firming and deepening. ”Each unto his task with all his skill in grim purpose to a future they may never enjoy but find satisfaction in the knowledge that they did their part in ensuring that future.”
”Catharzee Kryntalik. Yeah, I know the quote,” Herod said. ”Everyone knows that quote. Do you remember what happened when his work was accomplished?”
Sam was silent for a moment. ”No. I don't.”
”He hyper-sparked the stellar mass. Killed six hundred thirty five billion sentient beings across a fifty light year bubble,” Herod said. ”His final quote was a misquote from before the Glassing.”
There was silence a moment. ”What was it.”
”The future's so bright you're gonna need shades,” Herod said. He chuckled, then laughed. ”You know, what I just realized?”
”What?” Sam said, his voice soft.
”He's in here somewhere. A charismatic madman who convinced billions of sentient beings to work toward a grand project that killed them all, is somewhere in this system,” Herod said.
”I thought they'd erase his SUDS record so nobody could bring him back,” Sam said.
Herod shook his head. ”You think they had that kind of database penetration on our side? They might be able to lock him out of the system from being reloaded, but there's no way they were that deep into the databases here to erase him.”
”Huh. That means there's a lot of really evil people in the system somewhere,” Sam said. ”Do you think the HYP3.14 Ripper is in here somewhere?”
Herod chuckled. ”If DS's somehow get loaded into this system, then, yeah, he's somewhere in here.”
”Brr.”
There was silence for a moment. ”All right. You're right, it's on Atlantis. Believe it or not, it's only about two hundred meters from you.”
Herod sighed. ”Of course it is,” he patted Wally. ”Give me a waypoint line.”
The blue line appeared in his vision and he started following it.
-------------------
”You know, we could really use some help,” Herod said, kneeling down and cutting away a section of superconductor data cabling. A white spectral face of phasic energy started pushing out of the cable and Herod smacked it absently. It sunk back down with a snarl.
”Who's going to help us?” Sam asked.
Herod pulled the damaged connection collar away, tossing it over his shoulder. Wally grabbed it and shoved it into his chest, his grinders whirring as he reclaimed the mass.
”Who even knows what all this is. You've been doing this for centuries and don't even understand what it all is,” Sam said.
”Because it's all eight thousand years old, built by crazy people!” Herod yelled, throwing the damaged cable to the side. Wally handed him a new cable. ”An insane idea made manifest by insanity, hubris, and a distinct lack of...”
Herod went still.
”Three hundred years,” he said softly, bending down and attaching the cable. ”Three hundred years I've been doing this myself. Three hundred years of just me, running from system to system.”
”I know,” Sam said.
Herod locked the collar down, saw the cable light up with a warm amber light instead of the cold white light of the previous section. He slowly replaced the floor plating.
”Do the cloning systems work?” Herod asked softly.
”Lemme check,” Sam said. There was silence for a moment and Herod insanely wished Dee was there so he could bum a smoke off of her. ”Um, no. Looks like some kind of system lockout. I can't remotely unlock it, the systems that handle remote unlocking require error checks first and I can't trigger them.”
”We're working on that next. We're getting the damn cloning banks working,” Herod said.
”Why?” Sam asked.
Herod reached out with one foot and tapped a bone. ”So we can bring these people back. They know this system. They built this system. Why didn't we bring them back?”
”Um... Harry...” Sam said gently.
”What?” Herod asked, stomping back toward the original system.
”You remember why we're here,” Sam said.
”Yeah. So?” Herod said, stopping at the master control panel. ”So what?”
”We're here to fix the SUDS. Without it being repaired, I can't bring back the techs who worked here. Not to mention that most of them are maddened, sleeping ones, or suffered extreme phasic injuries,” Sam said. ”Even if we get the system working, there's no guarantee that we can SUDS up the original crew that died here.”
Herod closed his eyes and leaned his head against the side of the computer.
It was still vibrating smugly.
”Shit,” was all Herod said.
”And right before those kids showed up, external access was taken over by the Arch-Angel Ellie, and I can't even get her to talk to me,” Sam admitted. ”She's part of a different system and won't recognize my authority.”
”Elllie?” Herod asked. He stepped back, closed his eyes, and shook himself.
”Ee ell ee. Extinction Life Event. She's some kind of emergency system,” Sam said.
”So things are going bad outside,” Herod said. He opened his eyes, reached out, and thumbed the startup button. ”Here goes nothing.”
The computer whirred to life.
It beeped through each check, then began clicking and mumbling to itself.
Herod watched it as the CPU load jumped to 95% and stayed there as it began to process three different classes of files.
All of them SUDS files.
Herod sighed.
”That's one. What's next?” Herod asked, starting to gather up his tools. ”Let's stick to Atlantis for right now. This is where they started building, let's see what's critical and fix it here.”
”Um... Catastrophic Biological Failure Overflow Sorting Array System,” Sam said. ”Wow, the software in here is absolutely thrashed. The VR representation looks like a warzone.”
”Can you fix that on your end?” Herod asked.
”I think so. I'll have to bring up the data from the Antarctic Data Storage,” Sam said. ”Looks like the hardware failed completely. No signal from any of it.”
”Probably just unplugged again,” Herod said. ”How far?”
”Uh, fifteen hundred meters,” Sam said. ”Want me to get you a cart or something?”
”I'll walk,” Herod said.
”OK. I have to do in-person VR requests for replacement code at the Antarctic Facility. I'll be back in a bit,” Sam said.
”Yeah,” Herod said. He looked down at Wally. ”Three hundred years. Can you believe that shit?”
Wally just blinked, then beeped.
”Yeah, me either,” Herod said.
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Ge'ermo'o watched as General Trucker leaned forward and pointed at one of the data windows in the holotank. The window showed one of the new tanks, in the parking lot of a shopping center, merrily burning away. A flag was fluttering in the breeze, two spears on either side of a mantid skull, all in white on a black cloth, the tips of the spears red.
Painted on the ground was ”It was like that when we got here!”
”Another tank. Dead,” Trucker was saying.
Ge'ermo'o nodded along with the others.
”What went wrong this time?” Smokey 'No asked.
”They did a tight starboard opposing track turn while mounting a curb, one of the tracks snapped, got pulled up into the running gear, bunched up next to the engine and forced the firewall against the steam turbine, rupturing the injection system, which then caught everything on fire,” Trucker said.
Ge'ermo'o nodded along.
Smokey 'No nodded and looked at General A'armo'o. ”That seems like a serious defect.”
”Indeed,” A'armo'o said. ”One that would prove fatal on the battlefield.”
”And something that should have been caught in field testing,” Trucker snapped. ”We're goddamn lucky that whoever keeps stealing these tanks keeps exposing some pretty serious manufacturing defects.”
”Now, now, the defect had already occurred when they got there. Didn't you read their note?” Smokey 'No drawled.
”Hardy har har,” Trucker said. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand while he spit into the plas bottle he was holding.
Ge'ermo'o noticed something that nobody else had noted.
After all, he was quite attentive and observant.
”General Trucker,” Ge'ermo'o said, moving forward.
”Yes?” Trucker asked, leaning forward to stare at the video where locals were spraying the burning tank with fire extinquishers.
”You're blinking,” Ge'ermo'o said. ”One's green.”
On the back of Trucker's neck, at the base of the skull, the top two bars were flashing red, the bottom one was a steady green.