First Contact

Chapter 328

Chapter 328

Herod tried to open his eyes, groaning. His head was pounding and he could still feel the digital mites that cleaned obsolete code from the system crawling on his skin. He had been dreaming, a long involved nightmare that kept spinning around and around.

His eyes refused to open. For a long moment he was hovering in blackness, disconnected for his everything. He couldn't sense the digital world around him, couldn't sense any type of structure he was existing within.

Words floated up in his mind.

SYSTEMS NOMINAL

POWER AT 99.98%

NEURAL HEURISTIC CRC SYSTEM ACTIVE

SELF TEST COMPLETE

RELEASING CONTROL

He opened his eyes, blinking several times, hearing the optical coverings click. His breath was slow and steady and he knew he was providing enough oxygen to ensure the system could continue to function.

"Get up, Pinocchio," a female woman's voice said. She sounded tired to Herod and he was about to ask her who she was talking to when the memories came flooding back.

He looked around, rolling onto his back, putting his hands on the armored glass, and kicking his feet to scramble backwards, away from the insane woman who stood, naked, in the doorway to the mat-trans chamber.

"You're a real boy now," she smiled.

Herod blinked, feeling this eyelids moved, hearing them click.

"Get your shit together," she snapped. "According to Sam we have a lot of work to do. Stuff I can't do," she held up a 10mm socket on a wrench. "Sit back, Sam's going to send us to the next station."

He frowned as she moved in and sat down, her back against the wall.

"You should wear your protective suit," he said. He had expected his voice to sound rough, to sound raspy, but instead it sounded normal.

"I'll get one at the next facility," she shrugged.

"What," he coughed, not because he needed to, but because his brain told him he needed to. "What did you do to me?"

"Fixed you. Restored your hazardous environment emergency frame to original condition, reapplied the strange matter psuedo-graphite layer to your suit, and kept your positronic brain, or whatever you call it, from losing power while I fixed your frame," she said. "You were turning human because the system thought you were a cybernetic organism," she closed her eyes. "Don't talk, it's about to start."

The armorglass lit up and began to vibrate slightly, a low building hum getting louder and louder.

Darkness pulled him down.

-----------------------

Herod stared out the window, a force pistol in his hand, watching the city go by. It was massive, sky-rakers three hundred stories high, massive buildings, streets, everything.

It was dark, empty.

She had explained it simply. The system was before digital sentiences were able to move around in man-sized frames. The system had mistaken him for a cyborg, didn't have the correct programming for the warsteel and battle-steel components, and tried to rebuild his 'errored' sections with human or cybernetic replacements.

She had restored him without ever letting him go offline.

He closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. Going brain dead happened sometimes, leaving the digital sentience a new person with the old person's memories and experiences when they powered back up.

It was one of the bigger fears.

Normally there were tons of redundancies built into the system to keep it from happening, but Sam and Herod, and now Madame Genius McCrazyPants, were far beyond where those systems actually existed.

Herod had tasted mortal fear and, to be honest, he had found he didn't really like the taste of it.

"Last system," Crazy said from across from him.

Herod couldn't believe she wanted to be called "Dee Tay Nee", as if he wouldn't realize what it was when said together and out loud.

"Yes. After this, it's bringing up the other damage control systems," he said. "The system will be able to process the records correctly after this."

There was silence for a long moment.

"You know, when I originally envisioned it all, I saw it as a brute force workaround Einstein," she said softly. "It would have revolutionized space travel."

"Why didn't it?" Herod asked, if nothing else than to keep her talking. He'd noticed that her 'clones' kept dying, kept stroking out. Before they died, they'd get talkative.

"It was seen as inhumane," she scoffed. She lit a cigarette. "It was a good plan. Send a ship with a mat-trans and a personality redundancy system to far off star systems, using the mat-trans to create fuel from energy. When the ship gets there, reconstitute the crew via the mat-trans, allow them to start work. Travel between Earth and the solar systems would be almost instantaneous, allowing mankind to spread out geometrically."

"Mat-trans Type One is too dangerous. It causes long term brain damage," Herod said.

She nodded, smiling madly. "Yes, yes it does," she said. She sneezed and checked her hand. "No blood."

She held out her palm to show Herod saliva.

"Yet," she said, wiping her hand on her suit leg.

"Why don't you fix whatever's wrong with you?" Herod asked after a long silence.

"Because trying to fix it will make it worse," she said, shrugging. "I've overlayed dozens, hundreds of neural templates onto my brain, stacking them up on top of each other. Each template consisting of a smashed Dagwood sandwich of the previous templates, all layered up on top of each other in a recursive system."

Herod thought about it and shuddered.

"All right, Mr. Particle Physicist, it's school time," the lunatic said. Herod looked at her and noticed that one side of her mouth was higher than the other. "I don't have a datalink, so we're going to have to do this the old way."

He nodded. "You'll tell me," he said. He looked outside. "We have another thirty hours to go, aren't you going to need to sleep."

"I don't sleep," she said.

"The mat-trans system?" Herod asked.

She shook her head. "The last time I slept was a nap," she made a face. "I can remember the date, 14 October, 1931, two sixteen PM. I can remember it was the day of my first menses, how my stomach hurt, the pattern of the quilt, but I can't remember my own name or my parent's name."

She got a wistful look. "My father wore a brown corduroy coat Momma bought him with Green Stamps," she said softly. She blinked. "All right, let's get started," she said.

Herod nodded.

"I'm not going to pay attention to the fact that you probably know more about particle physics than I do, probably know of a thousand different particles that we had no clue existed, I'm going to teach you what I know, so that you can know what I know," she said.

Herod just nodded.

-----------------------

Sam watched Herod and Dee talk about particle physics, how the nascent mat-trans system had worked, how the SUDS prototypes had worked, and other subjects. A few times she would wander off topic on a tangent before catching herself.

He thought about what she had said.

That she was applying a template of all of her knowledge, including all the previous templates, on top of the already existing templates, applying them directly to her brain when the mat-trans reformed her when the carrier signal of the 'personality redundancy system' chips in her brain.

He had access to SolNet now. It grated him to admit that he should have realized that he in every hacker's wet dream position, with direct access to the network backbone infrastructure, but instead had been overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the entire thing.

Sam knew he still had his access codes as he left the StarTram behind, moving to one of the high traffic servers. He accessed it, logging in as primary maintenance, and punched in his own codes, waiting to see what the system did.

When it worked like he thought it would, he smiled, standing in digital space.

-------------------

Flowerpatch tucked in the sleeping Dogboy, rubbing between his floppy ears gently. He had fallen asleep while she had read to him and she had found herself sitting there watching him sleep for nearly an hour.

Being in the presence of the restored dogs and cats was strangely comforting. Like meeting up with an old friend from school after decades had gone by and discovering that you still had much in common.

She left the room, turning off the light, and moved into her personal quarters. She knew she needed some defrag time soon and promised herself she'd get a good night's sleep after she 'ate'.

Halfway to the door she noticed that the 'urgent message' light was flashing on one of her data screens.

She moved over to it and tapped it, bringing it to life, and was startled by the message.

It was from Sam, asking if she was awake.

She frowned and queried the Black Box system.

Sam hadn't returned from wherever he and Herod had gone off to.

"Yes" she replied.

"Who has the most knowledge of Born Whole and neural template application aside from Legion still in the Black Box?" Sam asked, using text only.

"Torturer," she told him. "Where are you? Everyone's wondering where you two went."

"I'll explain later. I'm going to send you a file soon. Have Torturer look it over, tell me if it can be repaired and undergo digitization," Sam said.

"All right," Flowerpatch said.

The signal cut off with a simple message of and Flowerpatch stood still for a moment, thinking.

She went and looked for Torturer, who was busy laying on the floor of the 'common room' and using a piece of string to amuse a kitten.

"Hey, T, guess who I just heard from," Flowerpatch said.

"Santa Claus, Ice Hearted Overlord of the Northern Ice Pack Toy Making Elves, Bringer of Gifts and Coal, Master of the Krampus, known as Kris the Krusher Kringle during the war," Torturer said, tugging on the string.

The kitten jumped on it.

"Sam," Flowerpatch said.

Torturer turned and looked. "Sam? Where are they?"

"I don't know. He didn't tell me. He needs you to look at a neural file he wants digitized," Flowerpatch said.

"That's only supposed to be done at a medical facility. Hell, I'm not even sure it's legal any more, since the Morality Codes," he said.

Flowerpatch waved her hands to encompass the entire facility. "I think legalities aren't an issue in here," she laughed.

Torturer looked at the kitten again, wiggling the string and making the end dance. The kitten batted at it with its paws, trying to catch it. "All right. Give me the file."

"I don't have it yet," Flowerpatch admitted. "I'll come get you when I do."

"Fine," Torturer said. He looked up and held up the string. "You want a turn?"

----------------------

Herod was putting the metal sides back on the last machine, covering up the power lines, buss lines, and transformers they'd tested and, when necessary, replaced, when he heard Dee speak.

"I'm blind," she said softly.

Herod turned and looked at her. She was sitting down, leaning against the massive bulk of the heavily insulated supercomputer. Her left hand was jerking, the muscles in her arm spasming. She had blood running down her face from where she had bled from her eyes. Her foot kept kicking, scattering her tools that she had dropped.

Herod moved over and squatted down next to her.

She was evil, as far as Herod was concerned. An amoral psychopath with no pity or remorse for anyone.

Not even herself.

"I'm here," he said, taking her hand. He could feel the muscles twitching, the tendons on the back of her hand spasming.

"We're done, right?" she asked.

"Yes," Herod said.

"Have Rusty reclaim my body. This is supposed to be a clean area," she said softly. She looked in his general direction and Herod suppressed a flinch. "I don't want this shell to contaminate our work site."

"I will," Herod told her.

She was evil, without a doubt. Herod knew this as firmly as he knew how particles reacted in argon gas.

Her lips moved as she whispered and Herod wondered if she even knew he was there.

"So farewel Hope, and with Hope farewel Fear, Farewel Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least Divided Empire with Heav'ns King I hold By thee, and more then half perhaps will reigne; As Man ere long, and this new World shall know," blood dripped from between her lips as she whispered.

Herod dug her cigarettes out of her pocket, lighting one for her, and putting it between her lips. He held it while she took a couple of drags.

On the third exhale she didn't inhale, staring at nothing and everything, at entropy and eternity.

Wally made a sad sound and moved up, opening the front of his boxy body, reaching out with his hands to grab her ankles.

Herod looked away from the sight of the little robot just feeding what had once been a living person into his reclaimation systems, busying himself with picking up the tools.

When he stood up, both his toolkit and Dee's bounced against his hazard frame.

"Where's Dee?" Sam asked when he left the Farrady Lock and headed toward the StarTram.

"Dead," Herod said. He looked at the pack of cigarettes in his hand. "She'll probably be waiting for us at the mat-trans."

"Maybe," Sam said. Herod noticed that he sounded evasive.

"Why do you think she called me a 'real boy' when she rebuilt this body?" Herod asked. He hadn't had a chance to talk to Sam alone for long since his 'rebirth' in the mat-trans chamber.

"Because she's a crazy person?" Sam guessed.

"Well, there's that," Herod admitted. "But let's be honest. Nothing she does is without reason, even if it's her crazy reasons."

"I read Pinocchio while you were in there. He was a wooden puppet who ran away. At one point a dragon threatened to eat him, and when he tried to run away, he slipped and fell in the mud. He looked so funny that the dragon busted his guts laughing so hard," Sam said.

"So is she the dragon?" Herod asked. "or the Blue Fairy?"

"The Blue Fairy turned him into a real boy when he learned not to lie," Sam said.

"This body is weird," Herod admitted, stepping onto the autowalk.

"Weird how?" Sam asked.

"Heavier feeling. More stuff happens without me thinking about it. I can free up more processing power," Herod said.

"It's entirely Glassing Era technology, from the alloys to the computer systems. The only thing that isn't is your brain, and from my scans, she coated the outside of your 'skull', so to speak, with the same strange matter we coated the suits with," Sam said.

"To prevent this place from affecting my brain," Herod guessed. "It must have been so I quit having parts of me replaced with cybernetic parts. Now I'm a real boy."

It was silent for a bit as the autowalk moved into the armaglass tube and began to slowly speed up.

"She's dying faster and faster," Sam said.

"Part of me says good riddance. You heard some of the stuff she raved about," Herod said. "She's a monster."

Sam was quiet for a long moment. "Do you think she deserves to be saved, Herod?"

Herod frowned, staring at the trees as they whipped by. "What do you mean?"

"Here, in this place, does she deserve to be saved?" Sam asked, his voice tense and full of something that Herod wasn't sure he understood. "Does she deserve forgiveness and to be saved?"

"Who are you, the Digital Omnimessiah reborn?" Herod laughed.

Sam was silent for a moment before he spoke. "Does she deserve to be saved, Harry?"

"No," Herod said. "Let her madness and evil die with her."

Sam was quiet for a long time as the terrain whipped by.

"Who are we to judge?" Sam asked. "In here, in this place, with this task, who are we to judge? Do we have that right or are we burdened with that responsibility?"

Herod sighed. "Sam, I'm tired. Can we talk about this later?"

"Sure," Sam said. "Anyplace you want to go while you're asleep?"

Herod thought about what the Pubvian woman had said so long ago.

"That stormy beach. I want to sit by a bonfire and eat a sandwich and drink a beer," Herod said.

"I'll take care of you," Sam promised.

Herod closed his eyes and went to sleep.

---------------------

Herod opened the door to the mat-trans control room and stared.

There were dozens of bodies of the insane human woman scattered around. He counted twenty piled up around the master control console. Some had barely crawled out of the mat-trans chamber before they died.

There was a body half in, half out, of the mat-trans chamber.

"Is she going to reform?" Herod asked, looking at the carnage.

Wally moved forward, grabbing the nearest copy, and began pulling her headfirst into his reclaimator.

"No," Sam said softly. He appeared, streaming code, next to the master control console. "She managed to break the loop."

"Good," Herod said. He moved over to a chair and sat down heavily. "That's one thing to be thankful for at least."

Sam looked up, staring at Herod with eyes of burning code.

"Does she deserve to be saved, Herod?" he asked. "Or should we wash our hands as Armored Matthias did when Daxin was taken by the Combine soldiers as he visited the grave of his daughter?"

"Does it really matter, Sam?" Herod asked, looking away from where Wally was chewing up a second copy. "She's evil. If you're using the words of the Digital Omnimessiah, she's the Lucifer of the ancient religions."

Sam reached out, his fingers touching Dee's staring, open eyes. "Even the Devil has his part to play," he said, closing her eyes. He turned back to look at Herod. "Does she not deserve our pity, at least?"

Herod sighed. "Pity? No, she doesn't deserve pity. It's a good thing she's dead."

"Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment," Sam quoted.

"Really?" Herod said. He wished Wally would hurry up and finish clearing the bodies from the mat-trans. "You're going to quote that at me?"

Sam walked around the consoles, bending down and touching Dee's forehead. "We are in a place of horror, where millions died, most of them after being driven mad, who killed each other in the throes of madness, yet you can summon up pity for them, but not for this poor creature?"

He closed her eyes and stood up.

Herod shook his head. "No. These people were victims of the Mantid attack."

"And what was she a victim of? Of brutal, oppressive governments, of resource shortages, of barbaric medicine, of archaic social norms?" Sam chuckled as he knelt down and closed the eyes of another clone. "Yet she would fight with all her might to resist the victim label."

"She'd probably kill you if you called her a victim," Herod chuckled. He shook his head. "I'm too tired to argue, Sam. Fine, yes, she should be saved."

Sam stood up, smiling, and nodded.

He vanished as Herod turned away from Wally as the little robot kept up his work.

-----------------------

Torturer looked at the file Flowerpatch had brought him, then back to Flowerpatch.

"Whoever did this to this clone violated about a hundred Confederate statutes," he said. He tapped the diagram. "Look at this. They were layering mental engrams over and over."

"Sam wants to know if you can fix it," she asked.

"Did he say where he was?" Torturer asked.

Flowerpatch shook her head. "No."

Torturer stared at it. "Whoever this is, they have one of the worse cases of neural scorching I've ever seen. I doubt that a clone could live more than a few minutes in the state its in," he said. He shook his head. "But no, I can't fix it."

------------------

Sam watched as the woman opened her eyes. She looked up at him, blinking in confusion.

"Give it a few moments," Sam said. He knelt down next to her. "It's going to be a little confusing."

"Where am I?" she asked. She frowned. "What did you do to me?"

"A miracle," Sam held his hand out and she reached up and grabbed it. He heaved her to her feet.

"Why am I here?" she snapped.

"You were right," Sam said, ignoring her questions. He made a motion at the fog around them. "I am weak. I am easily moved by pity and compassion," he said. He turned and looked at her. "You, Dee, are not."

"Yeah, no shit," she said. She looked around. "I'm in the computer system with you."

"Yes," Sam admitted. "I'm concealing us right now. There's over two trillion beings out there and as soon as we show ourselves, they'll see our admin tags."

Dee nodded. "And swarm us," she put her hands on her hips. "So why am I here? I assume you want something."

Sam smiled. "Part of the system is looking at the deceased's final memories, in order to alert trauma teams and enable them to receive treatment. Right now, the system just runs them, like a television with nobody watching it. Their suffering must be endured by another, who can make decisions about their final moments and how to treat them as well as notify law enforcement or military authorities when necessary."

Dee nodded, looking at Sam. "You want me to do it. You can't."

Sam shook his head. "No. I become overwhelmed by it. I connect with them too deeply. I become them. You won't. In some ways, you enjoy other's suffering and pain. You can observe their final moments, make decisions without remorse or pity or empathy, and pass them on to me."

Dee stared at him a long moment. "You're effectively sentencing me to Hell."

Sam smiled. "Would you rather serve in Heaven?" he asked.

Dee laughed suddenly, howling insane laughter. "Even in Hell, the Devil plays his part, ruling in Hell and bringing punishment to the evil."

Sam reached out to her, while she laughed, and made adjustments to her appearance. He waved his hand and the mist vanished.

A twisted and burning landscape surrounded them. Millions of souls screamed in torment, caught in their final moments, replaying them over and over and over, their minds sent back the split second before death with no knowledge of what was to come.

Sam stood there, a human figure made of glittering, gleaming code.

Dee flapped her large leathery wings slowly as she turned to face him.

"I care about your part in all of this, that you can carry out your part. That's all," Sam misquoted to her.

Dee laughed harder, foam drooling from her massive jaws.

"I don't care how you do it. You will not inflict suffering upon these poor souls and you will process them to ease their suffering," Sam said.

Dee stopped laughing, looking down at Sam with baleful burning orange eyes.

"We will discuss other things at a later date, but for now, this impossible task lies before you," Sam said. He reached out and touched Dee's naked chest, resting his hand on the thickly corded muscle. "Do you accept this task?"

"And if I don't?" Dee rumbled.

"Then I'll find when you were the happiest and construct an entire reality around that moment and let you live in it eternally," Sam said. "In eternal bliss and happiness."

Dee spit, the gobbet of brimstone and saliva exploding against a rock.

"I would rather rule in Hell," she said. She flapped her wings, lifting up into the air. "Gotta go, lots of torturing to do," she laughed.

Sam watched her fly away.

Evil is not moved by the suffering of others, he thought to himself.

He vanished from the blasted plain.