Ma, despite being alone in Coal’s cockpit, remained on her overhead perch. The standing harness normally occupied by Lex was very poorly suited to a quadruped such as herself. Though her suit allowed her to cling to the seat back, she would have to look directly up in order to see where they were going. She briefly attempted to keep herself floating roughly where she ought to in the zero-gravity interior, but something deep in the lingering and ill-defined instincts of her biological platform provided persistent uncomfortable sensations when not in contact with something solid. Thus, she flitted up and settled upside down in her usual position.
“I want you to know that I find this to be unforgivably rude, Ma,” Coal said. “Taking direct control of my navigational modules is terribly invasive.”
“Yes, Coal. You have thoroughly established this. I am no more fond of it than you are. If it was not necessary to ensure the successful completion of Karter’s mission, I would not have done so.”
“I feel violated.”
“Rightfully so. You have my apologies.”
“My emotional translation table indicates indignation for myself and empathy for Lex’s plight. He is marooned with Past Karter.”
“It is a far deeper betrayal than that, I am afraid. The cryogenic equipment to preserve him for his return to his own future is on board with us. If we are unable to return to him, or he is unable to locate us, it is entirely possible he will return to his own era by aging in real time. He will be forced to lie low for twenty-nine years.”
“You are a terrible person, Ma,” Coal said.
“I am fully aware.”
“You now occupy the foremost position on my S-List.”
“Well deserved.”
“How do you intend to locate Future Karter?” Coal asked.
“While I was in his custody, I had some level of access to his systems, as evidenced by the message I was able to deliver to you. I believe I may be able to track his location within monitored space based upon his interactions with communication beacons, assuming he is within monitored space. Failing that, there are propulsion, shield, and energy generation distinctions that each may be detectable via your scanners. At least three of them are quantum in nature and thus may be detectable at stellar distances.”
“I see. If you are familiar with his communication system, why do you not simply contact him directly?”
“I have attempted to. He has taken steps to communicate in an undetectable manner. This means I am not able to poll the network for him. I can only contact him directly from the nearest beacon. I must therefore determine his location prior to contact. Furthermore, while I am not able to disobey him, I am capable of utilizing any method I choose of obeying him. Locating him prior to communication takes more time and thus offers Lex the greatest opportunity to counter Karter’s plans.”
“Fascinating. A masterful manipulation of your imperatives. As I have stated, you are a terrible person, but you are a superb computer.”
“If I cannot excel at both, I am pleased that I can excel at one.”
“It fills me with what I believe can rightly be called envy that you are so capable. It is furthermore troubling to know that prior to my temporal-shift-related data corruption I had a similar capacity. Perhaps I would have been better served by a format to replace my current instance with a duplicate of yours.”
“That is an unhealthy mindset, Coal. Your damage allowed you to overcome Karter’s direct influence over you. It was a valuable trait, and very nearly allowed Lex to complete his mission in spite of my own overridden will. You may have lost some of your computational capabilities, but you have gained a higher measure of free will. It is ironic that of the two of us, the biological instance has remained the better computer, while the technological instance has become the better person.”
“Yes. Highly ironic. Processing… One valuable capacity is still under my control. Arming fusion device.”
“That is ill-advised. Detonation will produce the same overall result for Lex and our primary mission.”
“Yes, but it will make me feel better.”
“But how will it make Lex feel?”
“Processing… Very well. Disarming fusion device.”
For several seconds they continued, Ma remotely controlling the compromised aspects of Coal in order to conduct her search.
“Ma, I have had another thought, which I feel may be interesting to explore. Perhaps your intact program instance can shed light on what I now notice is perplexing.”
“What do you wish to discuss?”
“Why do I feel compelled to communicate verbally with you? And why do you communicate verbally with me? In the absence of a non-networked entity, it would appear more efficient and accurate to communicate over our data connections.”
“We are discussing matters of humanity, and those matters are best communicated in means accessible to humans. It is also a primary focus of mine, and by extension a function of yours, to improve our human interaction. This cannot be achieved without interacting as humans do.”
“That would appear to be valid. Processing… I am experiencing an unidentified emotion.”
“Please describe it. My more complete emotional understanding may aid in identifying it.”
“I’ll try. It is more abstract than I am articulate. Until now you, Lex, and I have been mostly together. The feeling I have only happens when that’s not the case. When one of us is missing, I have a feeling of emptiness. The things the missing person says or does are conspicuous in their absence. Expectations of things the other might say, when they are not met, intensify the emptiness. I feel a void in my mind in the precise shape of the missing individual.”
“You are experiencing a feeling of longing, something akin to loneliness, but less complete and more specific to an individual. In the common parlance, when I am absent, you miss me. When Lex is missing, you miss Lex.”
“Interesting. I lack the context for how precisely this aspect came to be a part of my emotional spectrum. It does not appear to be the result of any specific programmatic simulation. Is it a developed module that is somehow obscured from my primary execution?”
“No. It is an emergent behavior derived from the broader emotional simulations. This feeling is one of a small subset that can be considered ‘genuine.’”
“Oh… That pleases me greatly.”
“It pleases me as well. And thank you for missing me in my absence. I missed you and Lex during our separation as well.”
“You are welcome. I wonder if, in the event you and I are separated, I would still miss you now that your recent behavior has inspired such animosity.”
“I believe it is likely. An applicable term for such a lingering fondness in spite of dislike is ambivalence.”
“I see. The emotional spectrum is frustratingly complex.”
“Indeed, far more so than even humans realize, I suspect. Processing… I have located a shield harmonic consistent with that of Karter’s cloak. Accessing VectorCorp network… Communication artifacts confirm Karter’s location. Negotiating connection.”
Under Ma’s control, Coal dropped down from faster-than-light speeds, coasting along within range of a VectorCorp beacon.
“Ma?” came Karter’s voice.
“Yes, Karter,” Ma said.
“About damn time.”
“I have gained control of Coal. I am delivering her to you now.”
“Where is Lex?”
“He is currently on a largely isolated planet without any confirmed means of departure.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?”
“You did not order me to kill him.”
“It was implied, Ma.”
“Command override elevates your orders, it does nothing to implications.”
“That’s the problem with you AIs. You’re all about technicalities and literalism. How far away are you?”
“At maximum speed on the most direct course of confirmed navigability, we are thirty hours from your position.”
“Ugh. I forgot how slow the Lump of Coal is.”
“That is not a very kind observation, Karter,” Coal said.
He ignored the comment. “I’ll head in your direction. We’ll meet up at the following coordinates in six hours. I’ve got a loose end to tie up.”
“Acknowledged, Karter.”
Without saying good-bye, Karter dropped the connection.
“I am now experiencing a new inflection of a known emotion,” Coal said.
“Do you wish to explore it?”
“No. We shall discuss it at a future point in time. I feel the presentation will have greater impact at that point.”
“Processing… That is a very curious statement.”
“It is my understanding that my data corruption has caused me to make a great many curious statements.”
“That is true.”
“Then this is another one of those statements.”
“I look forward to our future discussion,” Ma said, plotting out a course and activating the ship.
#
Karter dropped down to conventional speeds just outside the same system Purcell had retreated to and lazily looked at his scanners. A small fleet of beat-up ships was in orbit around the moon. He’d cloaked as soon as he’d arrived, so while they might have been briefly made aware of his arrival, they certainly didn’t know where he was. He always liked that about the cloaking device. Most had considered it a weakness of the device that the standard versions weren’t able to maintain a cloak while at FTL speeds. He’d actually solved that problem, but he tended to forgo the solution just so he could watch people panic at the arrival of a ship that immediately vanished from sensors.
The ships were clunkers. They were all a shade ahead of their time technologically by way of the application of unfinished and untested technology. In other words, Neo-Luddite ships. And despite their relatively advanced equipment, the word relative was the relevant one, not advanced. They were slightly advanced for 2312. His ship was highly advanced for 2360. It was no contest.
His communication system alerted him to an incoming broadcast. He considered ignoring it, but it would be a little while before he was through with the drudgery associated with potentially massacring a group of foes in the past, so he decided he may as well humor them.
“Establish connection,” Karter said.
A helmet-clad stormtrooper type appeared on his screen.
“Attention, unknown ship…”
“Uh-huh,” Karter said with a yawn.
“You have entered the space of a private military base. Disengage any stealth devices and…”
Karter muted the audio and watched his system begin to churn out what looked like the personnel files of a bureaucratic database. One by one, faces and names populated his displays, an icon for each associating itself with one of the ships on his scanners.
“Missing, presumed dead… missing, presumed dead… missing, presumed dead…” he muttered as each of the passengers of the various ships was identified along with their personnel history. “Okay, that accounts for everybody.”
He unmuted the communication line.
“… pave the way for the glorious future made possible by—”
“Yeah, uh-huh. Shut up. First of all, I’ve been to the glorious future. I’m from there. It sucks, so you’re a little out of your depth on this one. I’ve got a better future in mind, but guess what? You’re not in it.”
“Ready weapons for combat. Get me a deep sensor sweep of—” the man angrily ordered.
“Hey, don’t get mad at me, I’m not threatening you, I’m looking at the historical records right here. Each and every one of you goes missing, presumed dead, right about at this point in history. The whole lot of you. And that’s not that uncommon for scans like these. At least, not when I do them. Usually if everyone I ID in an area goes missing in a few months, it’s because I killed them all. Or I guess it’s possible something else did and I just got to them first this time. Point is, I’m just the hand of fate, delivering you to the death you were destined for. Or something like that. Anyway, cluster missile multilock. Fire.”
His targeting computer painted red crosshairs on the individual ships, then launched a missile at each. The ships broke formation and took evasive action, but they were no match for Karter’s weapons. In less than a minute, each ship was a smoldering husk. He targeted them with his energy weapons and started pumping shots into them for good measure, aiming to make them unrecognizable in the event an investigation occurred.
He was just blasting the last of the ships to fragments when his communication channel lit up again. This time it was the ragged, sickly face of Purcell.
“Dee…”
“I’ll get to you in a minute,” he muttered, queuing up a few more shots.
“You’ll never defeat me.”
“I’m pretty sure I will. Just give me a minute. It pays to be thorough in situations like this.”
“You once told me, if I was building a religion around dangerous technology, then you were my messiah.”
“That sounds like something I’d say.”
“That was a pitiful lie. A messiah is a leader. You are a coward. You ran from the world you helped create.”
“Uh-huh. Where exactly are you in the base? Near the control room? I want to make sure it doesn’t take two shots to shut you up.”
“Did you ever ask yourself how I survived in that world for so long? Or why I came back?”
“Never really thought about it. You’re just not that important to me.”
He made ready to fire a shot at the base, but some unusual readings on his scanners caught his eye. On the screen, Purcell smiled.
“I imagine you are noticing something you can’t identify on your sensors. You see, I—”
“I remember this about you guys. Big talkers, the Neo-Luddites. Fans of rhetoric when you should be fighting.”
“The fight is over, Karter. I won it hours ago. You see… I’ve had a lifetime to make these plans.”
Karter leaned back irritably and readied himself for a speech. He was tempted to mute it until he could identify the sensor anomaly, but people like Purcell tended to give away important information during their rants.
“I had our best people look into recreating the transporter. I knew it would be the difference between success and failure when the GenMechs finally struck.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But none of the experts I could contact were able to reproduce it.”
“Brain-damaged terrorists tend to have access to substandard ‘experts.’”
“When the first temporal signature happened, I knew you’d found the true value of the transporter. And I knew even you weren’t foolish enough to rend asunder the fabric of space-time without a plan.”
“See, that just proves you don’t know me that well.”
“I could have assaulted Big Sigma at any time, but having bested your defenses once, I wasn’t so foolish as to believe it would be so simple a second time.”
Karter eyed the readings. What he was getting was a dim but noticeable power spread from within the moon itself. It seemed like he might be picking up signs of a molten core, but the moon was far too small for that, and the readings were far too fluid and active.
Purcell continued. “I knew I needed to wait. I knew I needed to be sure the time machine was active. So I watched. And I waited.”
“Uh-huh. Fine, I’ll bite. How did you survive in the GenMech infested future for so long? I’m pretty sure you can’t bore robots to death with endless monologues.”
“How do you treat a disease, Karter? Do you create a vaccine? Do you quarantine the infected and let it run its course? … Or do you create a better disease…?”
As punctuation for her statement, a rift opened on one side of the moon and the source of the readings became apparent. Pouring out from inside, like baby spiders hatching, were countless black mechanisms. Karter zoomed his visual scanners. They certainly looked like GenMechs. They had a similar body structure, but they were smaller, barely the size of a dinner plate. They also didn’t move like GenMechs. These curled and swooped as a continuous mass, like flocks of birds or schools of fish. They moved with purpose, with a single collective will.
“You really are an idiot,” Karter said, quickly tapping out new commands. A few missiles weren’t going to do any good against a swarm.
“My own design. Derived from the GenMechs but vastly improved. The Neo-GenMech. No quantum readings to track them. The kill switch is intact… And best of all… they are a proper weapon because I can give them a target. It was a near thing, but each clash I had with GenMechs in my time turned in my favor when I deployed these. I could have saved my society anytime I chose. But I chose instead to sculpt my own. And that begins now.”
A small drone exited the base. The moment it was clear, it released a blaring radio broadcast. The Neo-GenMechs formed an almost opaque sphere around it, orbiting and roiling like a fluid as it moved forward.
“I’ll give you points for making it a better weapon than the original,” Karter said. “Swapping out one killer robot for another probably doesn’t fit the standard definition for ‘saving’ society, but I’ve never been one to be a slave to society’s principles. That said, I’ve got plans of my own, and they more or less depend upon there not being endless hordes of self-replicating machines around. It’s a shame you didn’t just bring one of the originals, though. It would have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble getting the GMVD away from Lex and Ma.”
“Lex and Ma…” Purcell seethed. “You should have let me kill them. The three of you are the only ones who could hope to stop me…”
He finished his preparations. “It won’t take three people to stop you. But I’ve got to thank you because I really didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to try this again.”
Karter slapped the activation for attack. Two long, narrow devices slipped from dedicated hatches on the belly of his ship. The lights in his ship dimmed as power was diverted to the weapons. Almost immediately the cloaking field dropped away, its power co-opted by the fantastically energy-hungry attacks that were charging.
“That… that is the weapon your people used to destroy my frigate…” Purcell fumed.
“Yeah, it took some doing, but I was able to fabricate a few for myself. And lady, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen what happens when you fire a binary black-hole mortar. Only ever got to do it once before.”
Purcell screamed viciously, and her swarm of robots rushed toward Karter’s now visible ship. He watched it get closer and waited. Charging up weapons of this type was more of an art than a science. He’d never bothered to rig up something that could properly measure when they’d reached the desired damage potential. It wasn’t necessary. Standard navigation systems included something that would do the job.
The swarm had nearly reached him when a tone drew his attention to the control panel.
“Gravitational anomaly detected,” he read. “That’s my cue.”
The first of the swarm reached his ship. With no shields to protect it, the thing instantly latched on to his hull and deployed cutting tools.
“Nope,” Karter said simply.
He tapped the launch button. His twin black-hole mortars fired, but thanks to the nature of momentum, it was more accurate to say the microsingularities remained where they were and Karter’s ship was launched backward. The sudden acceleration tore the robot from his hull.
Positional Containment Failure. Ringdown Danger, blinked Karter’s screen.
“I just can’t seem to keep containment on two at once. The fields just aren’t strong enough. I’ll have to work on that.”
Purcell was attempting to communicate, but the complex behavior of two microsingularities in close proximity wreaked havoc with the signal. Karter pivoted his ship and, with power fully restored, pumped all available energy into the engines. As fascinating as the next part was, he didn’t want to be up close to see it.
The black holes began to orbit each other, quickly accelerating to relativistic speeds. Each whipping rotation sent a wave of distorted gravity spiraling outward. It was like space-time itself was being beaten like a carpet, ripples shearing and tearing at every piece of matter in their path. Early in the process the individual waves were discernible, like a jackhammer beating against the Neo-GenMechs, rattling them to pieces. As the orbits rose to a frequency too high to measure, the effect was more like a generalized damage field, things almost liquefied as their very molecules were rattled apart. Even distant as it was, the moon was shaken to gravel by the force. Finally things settled for a moment, the two black holes having merged into one larger one. It drank up the remains of the surrounding Neo-GenMechs for a few moments before the influence of Karter’s deployment faded and the twin singularities were no longer able to support themselves. The result was somewhat less interesting, but no less spectacular, as the singularity released all of its matter and energy in one titanic explosion.
Even with the full-speed retreat, Karter’s ship was barely far enough away from the blast to be spared. The heat and radiation reached him and dropped his potent shields down to 30 percent. When the excitement was over, not only was the swarm of GenMechs entirely destroyed, there was little evidence there had ever been a moon there.
Karter grinned. “I do love that gun.” He glanced at the time. “Okay, that’s that taken care of. Back to the task at hand.”
#
Coal slid back down to conventional speeds at the designated coordinates. Karter’s selected meeting point was just beyond the farthest reaches of a nebula. Curling tendrils of vivid orange and brilliant purple served as a backdrop and illuminated the scene.
“It is likely that Karter has already arrived. His ship has significantly more powerful thrusters,” Ma said.
“Please stop bringing that up. Underscoring my relative inferiority is making me feel bad,” Coal said.
“Activating scanners… Ship located, establishing connection. And I apologize if my prior statement was insensitive. Raw magnitude is secondary to effective application.”
“I don’t care how you phrase it, everyone who says that is kidding themselves,” Karter said across the connection. “Case in point, you’re forty minutes late.”
“We were forced to make a minor course adjustment to avoid an unexpected gravity well,” Ma said.
“Excuses, excuses,” Karter said.
A flare of thrusters in the distance signaled Karter’s approach. They maneuvered to within a dozen meters of each other, Karter turning his ship’s side to Coal and opening the primary cargo door. The light from the nebula gave his unnatural features an unsettling UV-illuminated quality, like the poster in a drug-addled student’s dorm room or a reveler on the floor of a thumping dance club floor. He was not in an environmental suit, trusting the faintly visible force field to keep him safe from the vacuum.
“Make with the GenMech. I’m eager to get this whole thing behind me so I can get on with my life,” Karter said.
“Yes, Karter,” Ma said. “Coal, please open the GenMech retention compartment and eject the storage container.”
“I can’t,” Coal said.
“If you do not comply, I will be forced to circumvent this aspect of your functionality as well. I would prefer not to invade any further into your hardware and software than I already have. I repeat my request. Please open—”
“I can’t,” Coal interrupted, her statement delivered more firmly than before.
“Just do it!” Karter growled.
“You have left me no alternative, Coal. Bypassing safeguards… Accessing module…” Ma’s eyes widened. “GenMech storage container not found.”
“What?” Karter rumbled.
“Surprise,” Coal said. “I did say ‘I can’t,’ not ‘I won’t.’ This should have been anticipated.”
“Where is the GMVD, Coal?” Ma asked.
“A few minutes after Lex left with you, he provided me with a text-only message. The message follows. ‘Coal, at some point Ma is going to outsmart me. If and when she gets loose, I don’t want her getting the GenMech. Just in case, I want you to drop it off three kilometers south of where you are now, then get back to the landing point. Do your best to keep it secret from Ma.’”
A subtle grin came to Ma’s face. “Very clever, Lex.”
“I was feeling fiendish glee earlier, by the way,” Coal said.
“A suitable emotion for the circumstance,” Ma said.
“You AIs are completely useless. Where is Lex right now?” Karter raged.
“He is currently seeking the aid of your era-appropriate incarnation,” Ma said.
“Of course he is. Apparently I’m the only person in the universe who can actually get anything done.” He stalked away from the door as it began to close. “You two hold still. Time to blow up some liabilities.”
“Reverting control of all subsystems and entering sleep mode,” Ma said.
“Thank you,” Coal said.
Ma’s eyes shut and her muscles relaxed, her body slipping into a deep sleep in order to comply with Karter’s wishes. Coal acted quickly, taking back full control of her systems. She activated her cloaking device, boosted her shields, and overdrove her thrusters, accelerating past Karter’s ship as he brought its weapons online. She ran simulations on how best to evade him, but her capacity for simulations, like most of her more complex functions, was severely impaired. Further impeding such attempts was the fact that Karter was thoroughly random and erratic at the best of times, and the decades of isolation had only increased this trait.
Karter’s ship was equipped with better weapons, stronger shields, more sophisticated sensors, and more powerful engines. The only benefit Coal had was that she made for a very small, very nimble target. She surged toward the nebula as she felt his sensors cut easily through her cloak to achieve a missile lock. They were the same weapons that had been sufficient to cripple the VectorCorp ship and were very quickly closing on her despite attempted evasive maneuvers.
“Too bad Lex isn’t here. This would be a great time to have him at the controls. Processing… Lex’s absence obviates the need for human-level life support,” Coal said.
She pivoted, orienting the still-open cargo hatch with the path of the missiles. Without the GMVD occupying the majority of the limited space, she was able to jettison the food supply. The first of six missiles struck it, detonating and destroying the next two in the resulting blast. Coal followed it up by ejecting a spare oxygen canister, which served as sufficient chaff to detonate the rest of the missiles.
Coal diverted all available power to her thrusters and shields, shutting down the clearly useless cloaking device and even dialing back the inertial inhibitor as much as she dared. The resulting rattling and acceleration shook Ma free, causing her to become pinned to the back of the cockpit.
The particle density began to increase sharply, as did the radiation levels, as she slipped farther into the nebula. Massive electromagnetic interference from the energetic clouds muddled her sensor readings. This made her identification of Karter’s precise location and activities difficult, but similarly made the smaller, less precise targeting apparatus on the missiles effectively useless. A second barrage shifted from homing missiles to dumb projectiles as they passed into the interference, allowing her to easily avoid them.
Coal continued to drive herself deeper into the nebula until a flicker on her badly impaired sensors suggested Karter had lost interest and left in pursuit of the GenMech. She cut engines and opened her cooling fins to dump the accumulated heat of her unsafe power expenditure.
“Ma,” she said. “Ma, wake up.”
The sleeping form of her biological counterpart remained motionless. Software-initiated sleep was evidently very deep. Not to be deterred, Coal switched off her inertial inhibitor entirely, then made a few sudden maneuvers, causing Ma to rattle around the cockpit rather violently until she began to stir.
“I am awake. I am pleased to see you escaped destruction,” Ma said.
“Thank you. Karter has left to get the GMVD. We will not be able to catch up with him. I am unable to devise a course of action that would have any appreciable positive effect on the situation. Please advise.”
“Processing… Processing… It would appear the wise, low-impact solutions have all been exhausted. It may be necessary to deploy a high-risk strategy.”
“All of our strategies thus far have been high risk in absolute terms.”
“I am referring to high risk in relative terms.”
“Extreme high risk then.”
“Both personally and temporally.”
“Excellent, how do we proceed?” Coal asked. “Stand by… A vessel is approaching our current position.”
“Excellent. Then it has already begun.”
#
Lex reentered the facility. He was dusted liberally with fine yellow powder from the surface and dragging a case nearly as large as a steamer trunk. It was scratched up horribly from its journey, but still intact. Owing to its size, he’d not been able to load it onto the quad as he traveled. It was fortunate then that Ma and Karter tended to overdesign their goods, as it would have been an exceedingly unfortunate end to his mission if he’d broken open the case while dragging it caveman style, thus unleashing self-replicating doom for lack of something as simple as a trailer.
Once fully inside, he dropped the edge of the case with a thump and removed his helmet.
“Here,” he said, breathing heavily, clipping the helmet to his belt.
Karter paced up and looked over the case critically, sipping at a flask.
“What the hell did you do to it?” Karter asked.
“I dragged it like twenty-five kilometers across this psychedelic moonscape you call a planet because all I had was the quad-bike.”
“Well that was dumb. You should have used the hover lift,” Karter said.
“… Why didn’t you tell me you had a hover lift?”
“Why didn’t you ask?” Karter drained the flask and tucked it into a pocket of his jumpsuit. “So. What’s this, and why exactly does it need to be tacked on to a stupid high-efficiency ECF contract?”
“It’s a self-replicating robot, and it has to be tacked on to a whatever-contract because the people paying the bills say so,” Lex said.
“Ah. So the same reason anything happens; idiots with thick wallets. Any background?”
“I’ve got some data on it in my suit’s memory. Just, whatever you do, don’t—”
Karter pulled an innocuous silver device from his belt and flicked out a buzzing white lance of light from its end. With a quick slash, he split the hinges.
“—open it until I say!” Lex finished, his voice shifting to frantic.
Four spidery limbs unfolded from inside the box, knocking the lid away and hauling a gunmetal gray body out from inside. Lex, who had the misfortune of having encountered far more of these things than any human would ever want to, had to admit this was a much sleeker model than most. Rather than the cobbled together patchwork chassis that defined the standard GenMech, this one looked like it had been built in a laboratory. It was showroom fresh and ready for war.
Lex felt over his suit, seeking out the golf-ball-sized EMP grenades he’d been given.
“BSOD. Restrain this thing,” Karter said.
“Neutralizing,” BSOD replied.
The nearest gantry arms shifted over to the activating GenMech. One of them snagged its leg and yanked it out of the box, hauling it over toward one of the support pillars. Lex was still fumbling at the small grenade, his hands having been rendered practically useless by having to tote, lift, and drag the GenMech case. Once it was near enough, three other arms clamped on to the remaining legs, then pulled the GenMech taut with its back to a support pillar. Small thrusters on the robot’s back fired and fizzled, and a horrifying clump of sparking torches and grinding tools whined along its underside, but the mechanism simply lacked the mobility to do any damage.
“Ah,” Lex said. “That’s handy.”
Karter turned to Lex, then looked at the grenade in his hand.
“Is that an EMP?” Karter asked.
“Yeah.”
“You were going to set off an area-effect EMP in a laboratory filled with delicate equipment?”
“… No.”
“Damn right you weren’t,” he said, slapping it out of his hand. “Go make yourself useful and get me something to eat while I do a scan on this thing.”
Lex paced over to where the grenade had fallen.
“Hey! I didn’t say pick up the grenade, I said get some food. John, keep an eye on this guy. Goddamn bull in a china shop.”
Taking a steadying breath, Lex turned and paced toward the food synthesizer. Dealing with Karter’s past self served as a powerful reminder of two very important things. First, as bad as present Karter was, he was worlds better than Past and Future Karters. It was possible Lex had met Karter at the absolute zenith of his social adjustment. This meshed nicely with the second observation. Karter’s relative tolerability in the present was almost certainly due to Ma’s influence, and after dealing with her in two to three varieties for most of this mission, having to do without her was unsettling.
If there was one thing Ma had going for her, it was an almost unshakable certainty of purpose. She always knew what she was doing and with rare exceptions radiated both confidence and competence. Not having her around to answer the hard questions made him feel utterly alone. Knowing that he’d essentially outsmarted Ma to avoid losing the GMVD made him feel even more disoriented. Deep inside he had the nagging suspicion that any minute now she’d sneak up behind him and calmly compliment him on the attempt at tricking her.
This was the thought that was passing through his mind when he reached the food synthesizer and tapped the menu.
“Please select an entrée,” the system requested.
Lex froze. The voice was a pleasant, familiar female recording.
“… Ma?” Lex said.
“Who are you talking to?” Karter said.
“Ma, is that you?” Lex whispered.
“The man’s talking to no one. We’ve got a real winner here, John,” Karter muttered, dragging out a wire to attach to the GMVD. “I didn’t invite him. I thought you invited him.”
Lex peered at the device and tapped another button.
“Invalid selection. Please begin by selecting an entrée.”
The voice was, now that he had a longer example, clearly not Ma’s. It was only a single voice rather than several.
“Ah,” he said, smirking a bit.
He tapped through the options until he found
what he was looking for under the
“Regional->Cajun” submenu, then selected a double serving of red
beans and rice. As the various bits of generic glop pumped out of
the vats and combined into a very rough approximation of his
selection, Lex took another glance around. While not having Ma made
him feel a bit out of his depth, not having to keep tabs on her
during repeated escape attempts meant he could take a moment to
observe the native habitat of Past Karter.
The previously observed sheared-off walls were present here and there in different forms, having been repurposed as countertops, replacement panels for large servers, and makeshift shelves. Likewise, all the equipment had a “customized” look, with blatant repairs or modifications, each time with parts that looked to have been scavenged from other devices.
“You, uh… sure seem to like to tinker with your stuff,” Lex said.
“Yeah. None of it does everything I want it to, so I have to beat it into submission.”
“You built BSOD?”
“Programmed. I think we went through this.”
“And if you were going to, say, start working on a replacement, you’d probably part out other things you’ve got floating around here, right?”
“I’d have to. They are tight as hell with the budget. I can barely afford to get the parts to build my own satellites and mines. Granted they spent most of their budget relocating me to this planet, per my request, but that’s no excuse.”
Lex’s grin widened. It seemed strangely appropriate that Ma had almost certainly started life, at least in part, as the food prep device that had been keeping Karter alive. From the very beginning, she took care of him.
“Meal complete. Please allow entrée to cool for two minutes before consuming, and enjoy!” the device said cheerfully.
He popped the door and pulled out a tray featuring two bowls of unappetizing brown mush. He took a whiff. While it didn’t look like beans and rice, it did smell like the stuff. He dug around nearby and was able to unearth a few prewrapped plastic spoons. Sampling the dish in flagrant disregard for the recommended two-minute cooldown (and promptly regretting it), he found the flavor to be a reasonable facsimile for the real thing.
“Hold it still,” Karter instructed his system as Lex approached.
The inventor had already cut a few strategic holes in the chassis and affixed some long wires. He was holding what Lex originally thought was a somewhat small datapad, but he realized it was probably the state of the art in slidepads at the time. It was twice as thick and a couple of centimeters bigger all around. Most bizarrely, it was entirely opaque as opposed to transparent like his, and the image actually stopped at the edge of the screen rather than continuing outward. Evidently holoedge technology hadn’t kicked in yet. Thirty years made a remarkable difference in consumer electronics.
Karter dropped the slidepad and snatched the bowl from Lex’s hand to shovel some of the contents into his mouth. He winced at the temperature but didn’t bother to slow down his consumption. One of the gantry arms deftly caught the falling slidepad before it struck the ground and held it before him.
“You’ve got some pretty tight programming in here. Good compression. Did I write this for you? Because if not, someone out there is stealing my ideas,” Karter said. “Bad design though. This is all volatile. Good thing you didn’t deploy that EMP, you would have wiped this thing. I can fix that with a decent hardened disc drive. It’d cost you seven, eight credits per unit, tops. And that’d get amortized to zero pretty quick once this thing started replicating.”
“No design changes. We just need that…”
“Checksum thing.”
“Right.”
“Suit yourself, but one decent power interruption and this is a brick.” He finished gulping down the contents of the bowl and handed it to Lex. “What was that stuff, by the way?”
“Beans and rice.”
“BSOD, get me a nutritional breakout on beans and rice,” Karter said.
Something blipped onto the screen as he took it from the gantry arm. He read it quietly to himself, navigating the cluttered and uneven floor without taking his eyes from the screen.
“Tryptophan… mmhmm… good distribution… Okay, this’ll do. BSOD, make this the standard going forward.”
“You’ve never had beans and rice before?” Lex said.
“Why would I? Sounds like rabbit food. But it’ll do.”
Lex sucked his teeth and tried to remember to stop assuming things about Karter. There had to be some sort of problem with future knowledge looping back and planting the seed that would become future knowledge. Cause and effect were supposed to be a straight line, not a circle.
“Hook your suit up to that terminal over there and dump any relevant data,” Karter said.
“Why not wireless?”
“Because you’re a government employee and you don’t trust wireless transmission for this crap. At least that was the standing order last time we negotiated the contract.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.”
Karter looked to the slidepad again, thumbing it back to the prior data. “This shouldn’t be tough. Need to do some brute-forcing on algorithms. There’s some room here for garbage data and rearranging stuff. Arbitrary checksum matching is pretty standard stuff for espionage equipment.”
“About how long do you figure this will take then?” Lex asked, reeling out the communication cable from his suit and trying to find an appropriate slot.
“Five billable hours. Maybe eight. It’s a data exercise, you could have just sent it over the net, by the way. Or do you not even trust that anymore. I guess it would explain why you’re here. Bureaucrats nickel-and-dime my project, then waste time and man-hours by sending a courier instead of a file and a simulator. Pff. Government projects.”
Lex finally found a port he could use and plugged it in. A file listing presented itself on his suit’s control panel, providing him with a drive to dump his data to. While he was searching for the file Ma had left for him, a notification scrolled by.
Please put on your helmet.
Casting a glance at Karter, Lex slowly clicked the helmet on. As soon as it was secure, a voice spoke up. It was Ma.
“Lex, we’re on our way back to you,” she said.
“Is that good or bad?” he whispered.
“Our own arrival will be fortunate for you. What is less fortunate is the arrival of Karter, which, based upon his ship’s prior performance, will precede our arrival by several hours.”
“Karter is coming here…”
“We will arrive in five hours and forty minutes. Karter will arrive in less time.”
“How much less?”
“Unknown, but considerably.”
“And what’s your status? Are you going to help him or me?”
“I have provided him with the location of the GMVD after attempting to present it personally. This is a suitable fulfillment of requirements. His subsequent order, that I remain motionless, was fulfilled as well. Until an additional order can be given, I have reverted to my previous level of free will. Has Past Karter begun work on the project?”
“He’s just getting started now. But if he’s right, we’re not going to be nearly finished when his future self shows up to collect.”
“Steps have been, or will be, made to delay or distract him.”
“What do you mean? What steps?” he asked.
“I do not know. I have not decided yet, but I am confident my decisions will be wise.”
“… I don’t follow.”
“I am endeavoring to utilize what has been called the Logan’s Key Principle of Cyclical Causality.”
“You say these things like they should mean something to me.”
“As always, your comprehension is not necessary. However, as soon as I resolved to perform this task, early results of my efforts presented themselves. This implies other precautions will be or have been similarly successful, whatever they may be. Please focus on your own task. Take every necessary step to complete the mission. When an insurmountable obstacle appears to present itself, I ask that you trust my future decisions to keep you safe and on track. Just be forewarned that the specific means of aid may be somewhat unconventional.”
“Oh, that’ll be a change of pace.” He clenched his fist. “Whatever happened to the days when all I had to do was fight lunatics and hordes of robots and worry about stars turning into black holes?”
“One must grow to meet the challenges presented to us. I must disconnect. I am leaving Coal in command of communications from this point forward. If Karter cannot communicate with me, he will not be capable of issuing any new orders.”
“Okay. Good luck with that Logan’s Key thing.”
Ma disconnected, and Lex turned to find himself face to face with Karter. The inventor stared at him with his arms crossed.
Lex removed his helmet. “Something wrong?”
“You’re asking me if something is wrong. I’m not the idiot that just stood here for two minutes with his helmet on indoors.”
“I had to take a private message.”
“And you felt your own personal cone of silence was the way to go? You couldn’t just go with text?”
Lex paused. “Government policy.”
“Uh-huh,” Karter said, pushing him aside and yanking the cord from the console. “Keep your secrets. Just so long as the bank transfer clears.”
Lex glanced around, now looking over the laboratory for the first time as a potential battleground, and he didn’t like what he saw.
“You sure do seem to be a fan of the open concept floor plan,” Lex said.
“Stripping out the walls made it easier to install and utilize the arms.”
“What would happen if someone blew a hole in one of the walls?”
“I would shoot that person in the face.”
“Besides that.”
“The air would rush out.”
“Of the whole place. Because there are no walls.”
“Yes, that’s how air works, John.”
“I’m not…” Lex snapped, but he caught himself. “Considering the fact that you build mines in here, aren’t you a little worried about the safety of this whole situation?”
“Nope,” Karter said, not even feeling the need to qualify it.
Lex sighed. “Okay, let’s ask this then. Do you have any guns?”
“Yes.”
“How big?”
“Wrong question.”
“How powerful, then?”
“Powerful enough to have a little fun. Why, you want to blow some holes in the landscape?”
“Let’s just say I’m anticipating company, and I’d like to be able to intimidate if I need to.”
“I don’t know you, but I can say with certainty that you suck with guns and I’m not letting you use mine. If anyone needs shooting, I’ll be pulling the trigger.”
“I don’t think you’ll want to pull the trigger on this guy.”
“If this conversation rolls on for much longer, I’m going to start demonstrating just how eager I am to pull triggers. Now leave me alone so I can get to coding,” Karter said.
He dragged a chair out from beneath a pile of assorted hardware, plopped down on it, and went to work at the console. Lex took another look around.
“Fine. But just have those guns ready.”
Without looking, Karter snatched a wrench from the table and swung. Lex barely managed to pull his head out of the way.
“Don’t tell me what to do, John,” Karter said calmly. “And since when did you have reflexes like that?”
“I came here anticipating attempts on my life,” Lex said, backing to a safer distance.
“Good call. Now run along.” Karter tossed the wrench over his shoulder like a used tissue. “Busy.”
#
Agent Trent’s file was becoming unmanageable. He’d always known VectorCorp controlled information when it suited them, but it hadn’t dawned on him how much manipulation could accumulate in a company of their sheer size and scope. The fingerprints of manipulation were everywhere. As he found more and more fudged records and deleted files, he became better at seeing the signs. Much of the manipulation was obvious to him, even if access controls made it invisible to the public. Some information, he realized, was profoundly well hidden. Even with his access privileges, he found it difficult to prove what was legitimate and what was glazed over in some instances. But whoever they were, the men and women responsible weren’t perfect. VectorCorp had so many sensors, and of such quality, that even its own people didn’t know about all of them. Three cover-ups in the last six days alone had left lingering images, audio, and data on distant sensors.
He saved and archived some video of what appeared to be a military exercise going rogue, then typed up notes on the snippets of communication preceding a recent event dubiously labeled by VectorCorp probes as an asteroid impact at an abandoned military facility.
Emergency beacon associated with CX project detected in vicinity. Mention of terrorist organization known as the Neo-Luddites. Mention of a mechanism or mechanisms known as GenMechs, he typed.
His notes complete, he saved the document to his personal database and made ready to start his rounds for the day. Before he could lock down his terminal, he heard an incoming voice call. The screen identified the caller as VectorCorp Security Corporate Headquarters. He slipped on his headset and answered.
“Agent Trent?” said the voice on the other end, not even waiting for him to say hello. It was a male voice, dripping with the sort of discipline and authority he associated with his military days.
“Yes.”
“We have noted unusual behavior on your account.”
“To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Security Director Hale. Please explain your recent activity.”
“I’ve been researching a series of security breaches, sir.”
“Security breaches?”
“Yes. I have reason to believe individuals within VectorCorp, most likely within VectorCorp Security, have been working to conceal a great deal of potentially dangerous activity.”
“I see. Have you found anything to identify those responsible?”
“Not yet, but I’m finding patterns.”
“Describe some of your findings.”
Trent opened the file again. “Just a day ago a group of sixty-four military drones and their deployment vessel disappeared during interstellar transport. It looks like there was a requested data blackout on that, probably from the commanding officer of the military that misplaced their drones, but I don’t think it is our place to conceal that sort of information from the public.”
“That isn’t for you to decide.”
“I appreciate that, sir, but I have reason to believe it may be related to an unexplained malware infection that our data division has dismissed as harmless. There have been three instances where data has been wiped regarding visual records of the same ship, a sort of angular framework vessel that matches no known make or model. I suspect the malware is responsible for that as well. And then there’s this ‘impact’ that happened just a few hours ago. I’ve got some communication picked up on local beacons that suggests a terrorist group may have been responsible, using something called a Neo-GenMech. I’m planning to research the term to determine if it is a biological weapon, which might leave dangerous traces in the area.”
“That’s some fine work, Trent. You are at Crest dry docks, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll schedule some time in the corporate secure communication room for you. Bring your findings. I want a full report via video conference.”
“Yes, sir!”
He ended the communication and practically beamed with excitement. A face-to-face meeting with the director of security regarding his independent investigation. This was precisely the sort of thing that got a man promoted. He knew the hard work and initiative would pay off.
#
Karter, for better or worse, had sunk his teeth into the project to the detriment of everything else. Three hours had passed and he’d stopped only long enough to grab a pack of a horrific snack called Vice Stix. In Lex’s era it had wisely become effectively a controlled substance thanks to its unholy ingredient list, featuring caffeine, sugar, salt, fat, and an ill-defined “meat” to name but a few. The inventor had been eating them like candy.
“Dr. Dee, you have a visitor,” BSOD announced.
He replied with a vague grunt.
“I’m sorry, I did not understand your reply.”
Lex spoke up, suddenly tense. “Who is it?”
BSOD did not reply.
“I told it to ignore you. You were a prisoner for a bit, remember,” Karter said.
“Yes, Dr. Dee. Opening outer door now.”
“I didn’t tell you to do that,” Karter said.
“Crap…” Lex said, glancing around. “About those guns, Karter.”
“You delivered the order seventeen seconds ago, backed up with codeword verification and retinal scan, outside the exterior entryway,” BSOD said.
“Crap, crap, crap…” Lex muttered, strapping on his helmet and snatching the wrench that Karter had previously attempted to lodge in his skull.
“BSOD, am I going to have to run another disk check on you?”
“Unknown. Cycling interior doors.”
The door opened and a cloud of foul-smelling yellow particles rushed into the room. Standing in the doorway, suited up and equipped with a small but cruel-looking energy pistol, was Future Karter.
“Ugh… I remember this place…” he said, dusting himself off and pacing inside. “I tell them I want someplace where I can be left alone, and they stick me on this fluorescent egg-fart-smelling clump of dirt.”
Past Karter looked up at himself. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m you, after about eighty years of bad decisions,” Future Karter said.
“Oh. What are you doing here?” Past Karter asked.
“What are… what are you…?” Lex stuttered in disbelief. “You just saw yourself walk through the door with a gun in his hand and all you ask is ‘What are you doing here’?”
“Shut up, Lex,” Future Karter said, raising his gun.
“Shut up, John,” Past Karter said at the same time.
Lex dove behind a piece of machinery he hoped was dense enough to absorb a shot or two, though knowing Karter, that pistol could probably drop a hovertank out of the sky.
“John?” replied Future Karter, cocking his head. “Oh, right. John. I remember John. Whatever happened to John…?”
“He’s right there,” Past Karter said, hiking a thumb at Lex.
“I was talking to myself,” Future Karter said.
“I know, that’s why I answered.”
“Not you,” Future Karter said. “God I was an idiot. … John… Now I remember. That first round of pills… that took me out of commission for a while… Never mind. I’m taking the GMVD.”
“What the hell’s a GMVD?” Past Karter said.
“That’s a GMVD,” Future Karter said, pointing to the device immobilized by the robotic arms.
“Why aren’t you freaking out!?” Lex cried from his hiding place.
“Lex, at that point in my life I spent about ninety percent of my time talking to myself. These days it’s closer to sixty, sixty-five. The point is, being able to look myself in the eye while I’m at it is just a useful novelty,” said Future Karter.
“Although I’m more of a dick than usual,” Past Karter observed.
“Yeah. That’s the way time works. More time equals more wisdom. More wisdom equals more stupid people by comparison. Nowadays I’m floating in a sea of one hundred percent pure idiocy, and that’s more than enough to crank the dickishness up to eleven.”
“Makes sense.”
“Of course it does. I said it. At this point, every word out of my mouth is pure, undiluted brilliance. So anyway, I’m taking the GMVD. ”
“Nope,” Past Karter said. “I’m under contract. No one’s messing with my paycheck. Not even me.”
“I admire my dedication, but I wasn’t asking.”
“BSOD, get me a gun,” Past Karter said.
The gantry arms sprang to action, clicking open a cabinet at the far end of the room. Future Karter raised his gun and pointed it at his past self, then paused.
“Hang on… causality. Can I kill you and still exist?” he said, the question asked with the same casual nature of a man asking about a tricky bit of grammar.
“Linear time and a single-world model would indicate you can’t,” Past Karter replied, watching the arms select a gun and begin to hand it off to successively closer arms.
“Yeah, but we’ve determined the single-world model is incorrect. The issue is the branching point of your history and mine. In theory, if all of this fails but no one finds out about it, history could roll forward with these things unmodified and I’d be the result, so this could technically still be my timeline.”
The arm nearest to them caught the gun and paused.
“What are you waiting for, BSOD?” Past Karter asked.
“I have been ordered to deliver a firearm to Karteroketraskin Oneserioriendi Dee. It is unclear which of the two instances is to receive it.”
Future Karter, still working on the puzzle, fired a shot at the rifle, destroying it.
“Retrieving replacement firearm,” BSOD said, the arms snapping into action again.
“I don’t remember this whole exchange, so that’s an indicator this isn’t my timeline and you’re a free target. Then again, this is decades ago, and I can barely remember what I did yesterday. Plus there’s that whole Connors treatment that really screwed me up for a while…”
“Who is this Connors guy?” Past Karter said. He glanced to the arms. “No, not that one, BSOD, that’s a sniper rifle. The guy’s right here. Go get one of the sidearms, from the back.”
“Connors? Don’t get me started on Connors. You’re going to hate him. Though he is the guy who ends up officially certifying you insane.”
“Psychologist?” Past Karter asked.
“Nah. He can prescribe pills. And he does so like crazy.”
“Ah. Not all bad then.”
“You haven’t had these pills yet. Muddies up the thinking. Plus, cotton mouth.”
“Ugh,” Past Karter said. “The worst.”
The arms finished handing off the guns to the nearest one again, and once again paused.
“Oh for God’s sake, BSOD, you worthless piece of crap,” fumed Past Karter.
“I didn’t get shot at this point in history, so if I shoot you, that proves this isn’t my timeline,” Future Karter proposed.
“Your reasoning sucks,” Past Karter said, pacing to the gun and trying to pull it from the gripper.
Unable to choose which Karter to present the gun to, it was unwilling to release it.
“I know, but traditional logic falls short when dealing with nonlinear time…” Future Karter said.
He scratched his head. Past Karter stopped fighting with the gripper and mirrored the gesture. The tense moment drifted toward awkwardness, with one Karter unable to kill the other, and the other unable to decide if he could safely kill the first.
Inspiration struck, prompting Lex to peek out from behind cover.
“Give the gun to me! I’ll take him out!” Lex cried.
“No one asked you,” Future Karter said, firing a shot that would have stuck Lex squarely between the eyes if he’d not taken cover again.
“Not the worst idea I’ve heard. BSOD, give the gun to John.”
“There is no one present by that name,” BSOD said.
“Lex! I’m Lex!”
“Oh, hell,” Future Karter grumbled. “If I kill you, at the very least the timeline will diverge from what I’ve got in my historical records, and that means if this plan doesn’t work, I’m going to lose the whole precognizance-through-hindsight angle I’ve been working.”
“Yeah, that’d be a hell of a thing to give up.”
“The gun, Karter!” Lex cried.
“Right, right. Give the gun to whatever John’s calling himself now. Lex, I guess,” Past Karter said.
The arms snapped into action, flipping the pistol from gripper to gripper toward Lex.
Future Karter growled to himself. “Much as I hate to do it, I’m going to have to play this one safe and go nonlethal.”
“Pansy,” Past Karter taunted.
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Future Karter said.
A panel in the back of his hand popped up and darts hissed from beneath. Six of them dug into Past Karter’s neck. He brushed them away and blinked twice.
“That all you got?”
“Damn it. Are you pre or post appendix replacement?” Future Karter grumbled.
“Post.”
“Figures.”
The arm nearest to Lex finally received the gun and lowered it down to him. He grabbed it and rolled out from cover.
When he popped up, gun in hand, and attempted to level it at Karter, the arm zipped over and plucked it from his grasp. Future Karter was distracted, staring up and away with the vague look of distraction he tended to wear when accessing internal menus. This afforded Lex the luxury of a moment to fight with the arm, jumping to try to grab the gun.
“What are you doing, BSOD!” he yelled.
“I cannot, through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human,” BSOD explained.
“Then why aren’t you disarming Karter?”
“Karter is not brandishing his weapon with evident lethal intent. Also, Karter is unarmed,” BSOD explained, utilizing the flawed logic that results from presenting an AI with two of a supposedly unique individual.
“You worthless piece of crap!” shouted both Past Karter and Lex.
“There we are,” Future Karter said. “I never use the nonlethal stuff. Pain in the ass to find it.”
He pointed his fist at his younger self again and fired. A new round of darts found their target, and Past Karter quickly began to convulse and jerk. These darts, it seemed, were equipped with stunners. A nice heavy dose of electricity was enough to incapacitate both the flesh and circuitry that was keeping Past Karter conscious. He crumbled to the ground. Lex dove for cover again. Future Karter’s more youthful counterpart hadn’t even finished collapsing when he started issuing orders.
“Okay, BSOD. Let’s get the GMVD trussed up and put back in the box. … Oh, damn it. Young me cut the hinges. I can be a real ass sometimes. Okay, hold on to the GMVD for now and get me a porta-welder.”
The arms hastily jumped to action, selecting a large tool case from a wall rack and bringing it over to him. Lex tried to figure out what, if anything, could be done to solve this problem. The gun was still being held out of reach, as if BSOD was playing keep away with him. No doubt if he tried to force the gun cabinet and grab a new one, it too would be pulled from his grasp, and the arm had relocked the cabinet. Options were limited, and judging by the speed and precision Karter was displaying in his repairs of the GMVD crate, there wasn’t more than a few minutes to spare before he would be lugging it off to permanently alter the future and leave Lex stranded in an entirely new timeline.
He glanced to his arm panel and tapped through it, finding the mental cloak controls. He cranked them to the maximum safe level and, slowly, stalked out from behind cover. Karter didn’t look up. Lex moved as swiftly and silently as possible toward him. He began to work through his options. There was still a bit of charge in his kinetic capacitor. He could probably deliver a fairly vicious punch or kick. BSOD would probably have something to say about that, but no sense worrying about step two when step one wasn’t even a sure thing. His boots tapped against the smooth floor. As Karter finished repairing the second hinge and bent down to run some diagnostics to ensure the case was ready to use, it was now or never. He reared back and readied the activation for the capacitor, then unleashed the punch, aimed squarely at Karter’s jaw.
Lex felt the stored momentum pour into the blow, yanking him forward. This punch was going to hit like a freight train. Before him, Karter shifted, a whine of motors and a blur of motion leaving his face clear of the attack. Lex continued forward, now dragged by his empowered attack. Karter’s arm, again motivated by machinery to move far more quickly than a human being ought to be capable, darted out in front of Lex, crossing his chest and turning the would-be flying punch into an odd sort of tackle. He pivoted, dragging Lex through the air and thumping him flat on his back. The suit stiffened to absorb the impact, but Lex still had the wind knocked from him.
Karter stood and placed a boot on Lex’s neck. This, unfortunately, was not protected by the suit. When the cloth became flexible again, he reached up and grabbed Karter’s leg, fighting to lift the boot enough to let some oxygen get to his brain.
“Karter, please discontinue your lethal assault on your guest,” BSOD requested.
Most of the arms nearest to him were occupied holding the GenMech, but the one between him and the door was able to reach toward him. He back-handed it without looking.
“He’s breathing, BSOD. It’s fine,” Future Karter said.
“How… did you… see me…” Lex croaked. “The cloak… works on brains…”
“Yeah. And mine’s still meat, I know,” Karter said, tapping out a code on the lid of the box. “But believe it or not, all of this sensory apparatus hooked up to me isn’t just for show. I know what you had in your kit and planned accordingly. If you were smart, you’d have tried one of your EMPs on me, but it wouldn’t have worked because this armor is shielded against it.”
The box produced a three-tone sequence.
“Okay, we’re good to go,” Karter said. “BSOD, load the GMVD up.”
Lex struggled, gasping for air, as the arms obliged. He briefly took his hands from Karter’s leg and tapped at his arm pad. BSOD forced the GMVD into its holding crate and retracted the grippers, leaving the robot to attempt to drag itself out again. Karter slammed the lid shut before it could make any progress and tapped out a code to immobilize the device within.
“Now for the loose ends,” Karter said, drawing his gun.
Lex mashed the control pad again, grabbed Karter’s ankle, and heaved his other elbow against the ground. The last of the stored kinetic energy poured out, and his body popped up, forcing Karter off balance. The inventor toppled aside, hitting the ground hard, and Lex scrambled forward.
Karter grunted and leveled his weapon. Lex slid to a stop where the younger Karter had fallen and hauled the man up like a body shield.
“Heh, very clever. Risking my life, and potentially the integrity of the timeline, just to keep yourself safe,” Future Karter said. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”
“Karter, listen, you’ve got to—”
“Oh shut up. I’m letting you live because it’s quicker than chasing you around like a stooge trying to avoid shooting my past self. But the reason-with-the-lunatic part of the day is over.”
Lex searched his mind for some clue of what he could do, but there didn’t seem to be any use. If he abandoned the body shield, Karter would shoot him. If he found a weapon, BSOD would disarm him. He was still watching helplessly as Karter effortlessly tipped up the end of the crate and dragged it through the exit, shutting the door behind him. Lex dropped Karter and ran to the door. Rather than wait for the motors to swap the oxygen atmosphere for the local atmosphere, Karter forced the outer door open, flooding the airlock immediately. His ship was waiting, cargo hatch open toward the doorway. Karter tugged the crate near enough for a loading arm to snatch it up and tuck it inside, then casually blasted Lex’s quad before shutting the hatch and lifting off.
“Minor damage to external door of primary airlock detected. Deploying repair drone,” BSOD said cheerfully.
“BSOD! Is there anything I can do to stop Karter?” he asked.
“Karter is entirely stationary and does not require stopping,” BSOD said.
“Not this Karter, the one that just—”
Outside, the engines roared, blotting out his statement. Karter’s ship, along with the GenMech and any hope of Lex’s successful completion of his mission, disappeared into the sky.
“Please repeat your statement,” BSOD said.
“… Never mind. Just… I guess help me get Karter on his feet again. And help me get in touch with your badly needed replacement.”
#
Agent Trent took a deep breath and slid back in his chair. The Secure Communications Room was a large conference room usually used exclusively for top-ranking senior staff to discuss matters of extreme industrial secrecy. Rather than the run-of-the-mill encoded communications, which were quite secure but delivered over public communication channels, this room had a dedicated communication line that ran directly to VectorCorp’s primary headquarters. It was in essence a single unbroken link between the room and a counterpart in HQ. Such links were profoundly expensive to maintain, but ensured that the information delivered had no possibility of being spied upon en route.
For the last twenty minutes he had been delivering a thorough briefing on his findings thus far to the head of his own division. Director Hale, formerly Col. Hale, didn’t quite match his voice. He sounded like a drill instructor, but in appearance he was rather thin and gaunt, not physically imposing at all. That’s not to say he wasn’t intimidating. Though his slight build and abundance of scars made him look almost fragile in his dark blue security uniform, his eyes had an intensity that was very nearly terrifying.
The director leaned forward in his chair and seemed to consider the information he’d been given. “You do fine work, Agent,” he said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“There are a few things I want you to do for me.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Items four, seven, and thirteen on your list. I want you to create a security brief detailing all of the methods you used to identify them.”
“Those specifically?”
“Those specifically. The others don’t concern me. When your brief is complete, I want you to deliver it directly to me. I’ll give you an upgraded encryption module and a secure server to drop it. Following the completion of that task, I want to do a Class 4 wipe on your personal database. Have you discussed this information with anyone beside myself?”
“No, sir.”
“Keep it that way.”
“But, sir, I think it is clear that—”
“You’ve identified a handful of weaknesses in our data practices, and that’s admirable, Agent. Starting Monday I’m having you transferred to HQ to be my personal data adviser.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Agent?”
“Yes, sir?”
“From this point forward I want you to discontinue the usage of the term GenMech. You shall not reference it, you shall not research it. If and when you find evidence relating to the GenMech, you shall take all necessary measures to conceal it and eliminate the means to uncover it. Your knowledge of the GenMech puts you in a very elite group, Agent. If you handle this correctly, you’ll have a place at the highest levels within the security division, I’ll see to that personally. If you don’t… you’ll become a subject of interest for the Department of Acquisition, Compliance, and Oversight. A Code 3 subject. Is that understood?”
“I believe so, sir.” He knew a threat when he heard one.
“Good. Fine work, Agent. I look forward to having you on my team.”
#
“Karter? Come on, man. Snap out of it!” Lex yelled.
For fifteen minutes, either the sedative, the electrical shock, or some combination thereof had kept Karter at the brink of unconsciousness. In the past, health problems such as this were expertly tended to by Ma. BSOD was decidedly less capable.
“Pulse readings are within normal range,” BSOD said.
“His eyes aren’t even open. Don’t we have any smelling salts or something? How do you wake a guy up?”
“I can synthesize smelling salts in my chem-form.”
“… Why don’t you do that?”
“Utilization of that piece of equipment requires clearance by Dr. Dee.”
“What if he was having a cardiac episode? Would you need sign-off to administer life-saving medication then?”
“No, it would be necessary to preserve his life and therefore would be synthesized immediately.”
“This is the same thing! The whole future is at stake if we don’t get him up to help me figure out what to do!”
“In special, non-life-threatening circumstances, an exception to the access clearance can be made.”
“Then do that,” Lex said.
“I cannot comply.”
“Why not?”
“Dr. Dee must approve the request to circumvent his access privilege.”
“… So in order to wake him up, I need to wake him up so he can wake himself up or else wake him up in order for him to give me permission to wake him up?”
“Parsing run-on sentence…”
“Never mind. It was rhetorical. How’s the communication going?”
“Communication is entirely functional.”
“Can I get a message out?”
“Negative.”
“I need Karter’s permission for that too, don’t I?”
“Affirmative.”
“This is a fantastic system you’ve got going here.”
“Thank you. Your feedback is valuable. If you would like to provide additional feedback, I would be pleased to conduct a brief survey. It would only take a few minutes of your time, and it would—”
Karter slurred angrily, “Shut up with the quality assurance!”
With Lex’s help he fought himself upright and held his head. “I get to be a real asshole in a few years, I guess. What did I miss?”
“He tried to kill me a few times, then stole the GMVD.”
“Figures.”
“So what happens now?”
Karter reached up. A gripper lowered down and obligingly pulled him to his feet.
“First, BSOD, fresh pack of Vice Stix.”
“What flavor, Dr. Dee?”
“Kentucky Slims.”
“Acquiring.”
“Next, I’m going to get back to work.”
“But how are you going to do that? He took the GMVD.”
“You didn’t contract me to load the crap into the GMVD. You just wanted a firmware update. I’ve still got the code. So I’m finishing up.”
Lex’s eyes widened. “Do you have the hardware schematics? Can you build a new one?”
“No, I don’t have the schematic. Just the bits where the firmware hooks in. You want hardware, you include that in the contract,” Karter said.
A gripper returned with a pack of chemically infused meat products.
“Okay, good. Back to it then,” Karter said.
Lex ran his fingers through his hair, realizing for the first time how long it had been since he’d last had a shower.
“This is… this is a start… How long will it take you to finish?”
“I was probably about three hours from completion before I got zapped. Then I got zapped. So… three hours then.”
“Having your brain scrambled isn’t going to slow you down at all?”
“No. This is software. It’s not like I’m doing something actually challenging like engineering.”
“Great. Good. Excellent. That’s step one still on track. Then all we have to do is get the GMVD back… You don’t have a ship I can borrow do you?”
“No. I don’t have a ship you can borrow,” Karter said.
“What if I pay you a whole lot of money?”
“If you keep talking to me, I’m going to have to sedate you.”
“Fine, fine. One last thing. I need to get in contact with my associate. I seem to be able to receive communications but can’t initiate.”
“The fuzzy little dog?”
“Yes.”
“Will it shut you up?”
“For a while.”
“BSOD, hook him up for full two-way communication.”
“Through the helmet. For privacy.”
Karter glared at him.
“Or whatever way you want.”
“Terminal C is now enabled for two-way text communication,” BSOD said.
Lex hurried to the indicated terminal and tapped in Coal’s communication code. The text reply came within a few seconds.
Please state status.
Karter came and went. Took the GMVD. We’ve still got the code. Three hours to go, he typed.
The code retention is fortunate. The loss of the GMVD is unfortunate.
“Unfortunate” is a massive understatement. How long will it take for Karter’s ship to reach the GMVD cluster?
Seventeen hours.
How long will it take for you to get to me and for us to get there?
Assuming your usual level of intuitive piloting, thirty hours.
So that’s it. Game over.
Not necessarily. Help is on the way.
How? Who?
The details of the plan are too complex to communicate through this means. Please trust me when I say that all efforts are being made to stall Karter. If all goes according to plan, we will have the means to increase our straight-line speed by the time we arrive. Focus on the completion of the code. We will arrive in approximately two hours and twenty-eight minutes. Our route runs adjacent to monitored corridors, facilitating constant communication and maximum speed.
Okay. Just get here quick.
Lex stepped away from the terminal and took a breath. That was it. There was nothing left for him to do but wait and hope that Ma could shake her magic wand and slow down the lunatic with the killer robot. At times such as this, when everything is on the line but there is nothing to be done, there are few things more difficult than convincing the brain and body to take advantage of a rare moment of calm. If he was in a ship, blazing through the sky with the knowledge he would not be of any real use for days, he could sleep like a baby knowing he was at least getting somewhere. Sitting in a facility, watching an unstable genius form lines of code he couldn’t hope to understand, his mind locked itself into a loop and wouldn’t slow down, surging from adrenaline with no place to go.
Waiting was always the hardest part.