Post-Human Series Books 1-4 (69 page)

9

“
This
was what all that helicopter traffic was about!” I immediately realized.

“Yes,” John replied as we walked toward one of the Chinooks, its rotors steadily roaring. “The airplane crash Kali orchestrated, along with her continuing preference for thick cloud cover and rain, provided a convenient cover to begin the evacuation earlier than we normally would. We knew she would assume the increased helicopter traffic was due to news coverage of the crash site, so we made the decision to start evacuating the sim before she was unconscious.”

“How do you know who’s conscious and who’s not?” I asked.

“We’ve been monitoring the sim for a long time!” Haywire shouted over the growing roar of the helicopter that we were rapidly approaching as she and John cut through the line, apparently giving me VIP treatment. “It’s easy to detect consciousness if we study crowds over a long enough period. Conscious entities have more complex daily routines, while NPCs are just drones that do the exact same things every day. It’s not a foolproof system though, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. It’s possible for people to be left behind.”

I nodded. “So now what?” I yelled.

John motioned to the helicopter as we reached it and tapped on the outside of its hull. “Now you hop onboard and go to the evacuation point.”

“Where is that?”

“120 kilometers north of the city, just past the ski resort.” John shouted. “They’re taking you to the world’s edge.”

“It’s an exit point,” Haywire finished the explanation.

“What about you two? Aren’t you coming with me?”

“We have a separate mode of transportation, but we’ll meet you there,” Haywire answered. “Don’t worry about us. Just hop in and relax. You’re nearly home free!” She gently nudged me with her hand toward the helicopter’s door. She smiled, her heavily eye-lined eyes urging trust.

Trepidatiously, I turned to the door that was located on the side of the helicopter, near the cockpit. I stepped up the stairs and entered. The Chinook was longer than a bus, and a left turn led to me facing dozens of occupants. One of them immediately caught my eye. “Mark!” I shouted.

Despite the roar of the engines, Mark heard me. He was seated with his family, his wife and two daughters, but he unstrapped his seatbelt as soon as he saw me and ran to me. “Thank God you’re here!” he shouted.

The doors to the helicopter closed. “Be seated for take off,” spoke a curt voice over the intercom. Mark and I exchanged looks and, wordlessly, instantly agreed that following the voice’s command was in our best interest. We jogged back to where he was seated. While he strapped in, I found the last open spot, opposite to him in the cabin. Moments later, we felt the Chinook lift off vertically, turn nearly 180 degrees, and then begin charging north.

“Have they told you what’s going on?” I shouted to Mark.

“No!” he shouted back, shaking his head. “I don’t think they’re telling anyone. My guess is its a terrorist threat—a serious one! Nuclear or biological.”

I didn’t respond, but it was clear that Mark and his wife could read the expression of dubiousness on my face.

“What?” he asked. “Did they tell you?”

I nodded.

Suddenly, I had the attention of everyone within earshot, though that was only a dozen people or so, given the noise of the helicopter, albeit somewhat dampened by the insulated walls of the machine.

“Well? What is it?” Mark shouted.

I didn’t know what to say. How could I possibly explain to the assembled, terrified people with me that they were bodiless computer-generated algorithms? They wouldn’t believe me if I told them. “It’s serious,” I shouted in return. “There is a person who wants to hurt us all—a terrorist. We’re being taken someplace safe.”

“Where?” Mark asked.

“North of here. Not far. You’ll see.”

That seemed to satisfy them somewhat, although they continued to look at each other quizzically, in obvious shock. Clearly, they knew I wasn’t telling them the whole truth. In essence, by definition, Kali
was
a terrorist—“one who uses terror to threaten or coerce others”—so it was only a half-lie. Regardless, they thought I knew more than they did and was keeping it from them, but the truth was that I was more perplexed than any of the others; the more I knew, the more I realized I didn’t know. What we were about to see beyond the mountains north of the city, I couldn’t even fathom.

10

We flew for several minutes through the darkness, the dampened sound of the helicopter engine and the steady metallic shimmers of the turbulence filling my ears. Mark spoke inaudibly to his wife from time to time, but he didn’t address me again, nor did anyone else there, stunned as they shook to and fro in the belly of the machine. I found myself gazing at the window over Mark’s left shoulder, focusing on the droplets of rain that slammed against the glass, each one forming for the briefest of moments before being violently whipped away by the high-velocity, unforgiving winds. I thought of the conscious entities sitting with me in that helicopter—beings that had formed only two years earlier. Two years! None of them knew it; none of them had the slightest idea of how temporary and unimportant Kali thought they were.

Then I remembered John, Haywire, and Mr. Big. Three people from the future, augmented like Kali, but mindful of from whence they’d come. So mindful, in fact, that they were willing to risk their lives to rescue mere computer programs in a sim because of their feelings of empathy for them. They were extraordinary people, post-human or not, and it was a glimmer of hope to think that somehow, compassion and empathy would still be alive in the future—at least for some.

A sudden blink of light from the window brought me out of my engrossing musings and sent a sharp jolt of surprise through my chest. I narrowed my eyes, not sure if the light had been a figment of my imagination. Then another whizzed by the window like a golden laser beam. I twisted my body around in my seat so I could see through the window over my left shoulder. The helicopter had flown out of the claustrophobic cloud cover that had been ubiquitous in my life and the lives of all the other dwellers of our sim city; it was now flying through the clear night, skirting the edge of the mountains and the sea as it raced north. I turned back to Mark’s window and realized that the golden lights were the headlights of cars driving by on the highway that clung to the mountainside. We were following the shoreline.

The ride became smoother as we continued through the clear night for a few more minutes. Not long after, the helicopter turned inland, following the highway a short distance toward a small, touristy ski town I had never visited. I saw the village lights glowing softly and warmly, the town appearing like a miniaturized model from the air; it briefly occurred to me that it looked fake—then I remembered it was.

“Oh my God!” Mark suddenly shouted, his face as baffled as it was horror-stricken as he seemed to look right at me. In fact, everyone on his side of the helicopter seemed to be looking at me.

I reached up to my face to see what was the matter, checking for any sort of abnormality. Was I dematerializing into nothingness in front of them? Then I realized that it wasn’t me they were looking at. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed that the people on my side of the helicopter were all turned around, looking out of the windows on our side of the copter closest to them, mouths gaping, awe struck by what they saw.

I turned.

Our helicopter had landed on the cliff’s edge of the sim—the very precipice of the end of the world.

11

As you well know, one cannot really fathom the abyss unless one has seen it for his or herself. It was like nothing I could have imagined. My head spun as I looked at it, trying desperately to comprehend such darkness. Such emptiness. Such nothingness.

The helicopter had flown from the city, out of the shroud of clouds, up north to the trendy ski village that had hosted a Winter Olympics, and then...
poof!
We’d flown through a small mountain pass, turned a corner, and found ourselves face to face with the end of the world.

“Uh...the world’s flat?” Mark said in disbelief. “That’s not supposed to be right. Is it?”

The larger door at the back of the helicopter began to open, lowering itself to form a ramp. I nearly swallowed my tongue from surprise when I saw Haywire at the bottom of the ramp, beckoning for me to join her.

“I don’t know what question to ask first...” I muttered to her as I exited the helicopter in the crowd of dozens of other ghosts in the machine.

“Virtual gods, remember?” she said as she hooked her arm in mine and began to escort me to the edge of the world.

“Virtual gods have something against riding in helicopters?”

She laughed. “Well, if you had the choice between riding in your self-driving, electric car or taking, say, a horse and buggy, which would you choose?”

“You realize I have no idea what you’re talking about, don’t you?” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I know. Don’t worry. Everything will make sense soon enough.”

We walked to the edge. It was at once the most amazing and most terrifying thing I’d ever seen. It looked the way I’d always imagined death would look: lonely, empty, quiet, and eternal. Instinctively, I turned away from it, shuddering as I did so, and looked back at the world. I saw the warm glow of the ski village not far away, just around the bend, and saw more helicopters hovering as they came in for their landings. But mostly, I saw the faces of the people, frightened and corralled like sheep. There were hundreds of them there, but soon there would be thousands. I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of love for them—they were the opposite of the darkness—of the emptiness—of the loneliness. They were the opposite of the chasm of black before me.

“I know it seems a bit frightening,” Haywire said, a hint of sympathy in her voice, “but this is the exit. All we have to do is get these people to cross the plane, to go into the liminal space.”

I turned back to her, my face painted with disbelief. “What? Are you telling me you expect them to jump off a cliff?” I reacted. “They’re not lemmings, Haywire. They’re
conscious
. You may have some difficulty convincing them to do that,” I said, understating for effect.

“They don’t have to
jump
,” Haywire replied. “There’s nothing that dramatic—unfortunately.” She seemed slightly disappointed. “That’d be cool,” she whispered under her breath, barely loud enough for me to catch it. She motioned with her hand and, out of the nothing, came forth a series of horseshoe-shaped metallic doors, each one glowing brightly, a white, ethereal light emanating from the other side. “We’ve learned from experience that people prefer to walk into mysterious white lights rather than hurl themselves off cliffs into darkness.” She gestured to the doors, her disappointment clearly growing. “So...there are the lights.” She sighed. “Damn. Jumping would be so much cooler to watch.”

“We don’t have time for ‘cool,’” John said as he approached us. “There are many lives to save and we must be as efficient as possible.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. No Fun!” Haywire announced in a half-hearted mocking, as though she were introducing John Doe for a set at Carnegie Hall.

“Are you saying the doorways are just for show?” I asked.

“Yes,” John replied, expressionless.

“But...why?”

“Like I said,” Haywire answered, “people like walking into white lights.”

“
I’m
not particularly enthusiastic about the idea,” I countered.

“That’s unfortunate,” John replied. “We were hoping you’d volunteer to go first.”

12

It took me a moment to formulate a response. “Me? Why me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” John replied. “You’re the only one amongst this multitude who knows what’s really going on. We don’t have time to try to convince the rest of them that crossing the liminal space is safe.”

I turned back to the white lights. Panic gripped me. White light or not, it wasn’t heaven that I saw. All I saw in there was death, and I had no desire to make the journey. “Have you ever heard of a Sonderkommando?”

“Of course,” John replied, his eyes narrowing.

“Wait,” Haywire said, holding up her index finger to get my attention. “I haven’t.”

“Sonderkommandos were Jews who worked at Nazi death camps,” John informed her, all the while keeping his eyes locked on mine. “They worked for the Nazis and ran the crematoriums.”

“Oh,” Haywire repeated, this time understanding. “Rather dark.”

“Among their ghastly duties, they were tasked with lulling the Jews who’d been selected for immediate gas chamber execution into a false sense of security,” John continued. “The Sonderkommandos led them to the gas, reassuring them that they were merely going to take a shower. The gas chamber victims were the only Jews the Sonderkommandos were allowed to speak to in the camps, since the Sonderkommandos were considered
Geheimnisträger
by the guards.”

“
Geheim
-what now?”

“‘Bearers of secrets,’” I translated for Haywire, my eyes still locked intently on John’s.

“So, you think you might be guiding these people to their deaths?” Haywire reacted, smiling.

It was clear that she found my implication absurd, but I remained silently terrified.

“I’ve got to admit, he’s got an impressive wit,” Haywire observed to John as she pointed at me with her thumb. She then gestured to the scene unfolding behind him. “I mean, the military herding people out into the night, not telling them where they’re going. He made those connections quickly, and the analogy shows complex neural patterning.”

“But it’s deeply flawed,” John replied to her before addressing me. “
You
have to be better,” he said in earnest. “We can’t afford to have you make mistakes in logic like this. Too many people are depending on you.”

“I-I’m sorry,” I said, stepping away from him and covering my eyes. “It’s just...too much to take right now.”

“The stress must be almost unbearable,” Haywire said to John, her tone filled with obvious sympathy for me as she urged John to mirror her understanding.

“It doesn’t matter,” John replied tersely as he continued to stare at me, his eyes boring holes. “He has an enormous responsibility, and he must shoulder it. If he can’t do that, then he doesn’t belong in the real world.”

I took my hand from my eyes and stared, aghast. Was John really suggesting that he would abandon me if I didn’t cooperate? That he would leave me to die in a collapsing sim? If so, it called into question whether the compassion and empathy with which I’d credited them was merely another illusion in my unreal world.

“Careful, John,” Haywire said quietly but firmly. “He won’t understand what you mean.”

“I’m right here, damn it! Stop speaking
about
me and speak to
me
!” I shouted, exasperated.

“Use your reason and logic,” John insisted, ignoring my emotional outburst. “Other than the extremely superficial elements Haywire pointed out, in what ways are we like Nazis? Hm?”

I stood there, unable to reply.

“Idiots see superficial similarities between two things and conclude that they are alike.
Not you
! Our world has enough idiots!
Think
!”

I didn’t understand what he meant; I’d been under the impression that everyone was augmented in the real world. There was so much I still wasn’t able to grasp.

“We’re not corralling Jews with the intention of throwing them in the ovens—your analogy was offensive and stupid. Use your logic! You’ve watched events unfold, just as we predicted they would. We have not deceived you for a moment. And what if we were? To what end? How could it possibly benefit us to enter a sim and then elaborately trick you and several thousand other people into killing themselves? If we wanted to kill you, we’d have done it already. Believe me, no elaborate ruses would be necessary.”

“He’s right,” Haywire said to me, her tone soft but frank. “You’ve been through a lot, and been stressed to the brink, but if you think it through clearly, you’ll realize that your fear isn’t rational. You’re completely safe, and all we’re asking you to do is be the first person in this sim to cross the threshold into a new and better life.”

I took several moments to digest their words. I stared at the white light and calculated. When I controlled my fear and thought things through, I understood that my fears were absurd. I hadn’t wanted to enter the doorway because I was afraid of what was on the other side—afraid of the “undiscovered country,” as the Bard called it—afraid of death. But to remain in the sim, in the illusion, to remain a ghost in the machine would be true death. It occurred to me that I wasn’t really scared of death...I was scared of life. “To be or not to be,” I whispered to myself.

“Yes,” John responded immediately. “That
is
the question. But I don’t believe that Hamlet was only pondering whether he should live or die. Rather, he was weighing whether he should live a life of purpose—a life over which he’d taken control—or whether he should simply exist, giving up control of the events around him. My dear Professor, if you wish, we shall allow you to reenter the crowd and shuffle through the exit along with them.” He stepped to me and put his arm on my shoulder. “
Or
...you can take control of this situation and lead your brethren to safety. The choice is yours.”

I turned once again to the huddled masses, standing with blankets over their shoulders, at least 100 post-humans dressed in military fatigues guiding them to their places in the waiting area. Most of that teeming throng were looking my way.

“I’ll do it.”