Cronix (31 page)

“Okay, if you’re gonna be a crybaby…” With a jolt he realized that Kevin was still in the room with him, that he had locked the door with both of them inside. Glenn braced himself, without quite knowing for what. He half expected a kick or a slap, but what he felt was far more terrifying: a pinprick in the back of his neck, a moment of panic and revulsion, then blackness and oblivion.

***

Oriente had begged off the Delpy. He'd told the professors he was sick and he wasn't sure it was a lie. He had spent the day in a brooding stupor, wondering if he was cracking up. And if not, what the hell did the Joan of Arc voices in his head mean?

Evening was coming on when he realized he hadn't eaten all day. In fact, he hadn't even seen a member of the nursing staff since Lola had left his bed that morning.

He stepped out his room. A different DPP agent than to the one who'd witnessed his meltdown was there.

“Seen any nurses?” Oriente asked him. The man shook his head.

“Fat one's around somewhere,” the man said. “City's pretty chaotic right now. Curfew.”

Oriente wandered the quiet corridors. The agent did not try to stop him, just shadowed him from a respectful distance. There was no sign of any staff in the burns unit or the men's general. Oriente stepped into the nurses’ station.

There, eyes glazed and a vodka bottle in hand, was Nurse Shareen, her bulk sprawled in an easy chair.

“Shareen,” he said. He kneeling beside her. “What's going on?”

Tears welled in her eyes and she slumped forwards, vomiting on the floor. Oriente flinched back to avoid the hot spray.

“You’ve got to stop drinking, Shareen. It’s not going to help.”

“Nothing’s gonna help,” the nurse mumbled. “I’m gonna die. You realize that? I’m going to fucking die. All this crazy shit happening, that Cronix apparition thing threatening everybody and saying the Eternals have to leave and the rest of us stay here …What’s gonna happen to me, man? What’ll I do? You’re all going to leave me here to die all alone…” She started bawling.

“No one’s going anywhere,” said Oriente. He stepped to the sink to pour a glass of water. “Here, drink this. Don’t pay any attention all this gossip. You think the Eternals are rushing off just because some hologram threatened them? Come on, Shareen, you were up there long enough to know they don’t scare that easily.”

She started at him. “
They?
That's just it. I’m not one of
them,
not anymore. I do scare easy now, and…” Her words dissolved in tears. Oriente bent down and put his hand on her shoulder. Eventually, her crying trailed off.

The DPP agent had caught up them. “Maybe you should get her a sedative or something,” he said. “Get her into one of the beds.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” said Oriente. He lowered his voice. “Though once she’s out, we’re not going to be able to move her. Let’s give her a shot and leave her here.” The agent went off to the pharmacy to look for a suitable drug, leaving Oriente alone with Shareen. She looked at him with beseeching eyes.

“Something bad’s going to happen, isn’t it?” she said, her eyes like swollen lychees. “I can feel it. Tell me, how did you survive out there in the woods for so long? What’s the secret?”

Not knowing whether she would even remember the conversation tomorrow, Oriente started to tell her about Dorking, of the quiet, friendly community there and how it took in the occasional straggler. He gave her instructions on how to get there, but warned her to get a gun before venturing into the woods. Shareen nodded, as though coming to some decision. She seemed resigned, and Oriente hesitated only briefly before telling her more.

“Listen Shareen, I know you are afraid of the woods, of getting old and dying. But there is another way. You don’t have to die down here, even if you can never go back up there.” And he told her about Ma Gurfinkel and her traveling clinic, although the old woman had sworn him to secrecy. Her clientele was select and trusted, and she rarely took on a new customer.

“She travels the country in a horse-drawn caravan, and only passes through any given place once every twenty years. That’s enough for her clients. She should be in Dorking in seven years. She doesn’t advertise, so you may not know here when you see her. But she sells backwoods cures and herbal medicines, and has flowing red hair. Stay in Dorking and wait for her. Ask for a private reading – she tells fortunes too. When you have her alone, tell her Luis Oriente sent you. She’ll know. She can give you a different body, if you like, something more suited to your new environment. But don’t tell anyone who she really is, or what she does, or she’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

Shareen nodded. She grabbed his hand and he could feel her shaking. “Thank you. Sweet Jesus, thank you.” She was still holding on to him when the agent returned. Oriente stepped back to allow him to administer the sedative. As she was drifted off again, he leaned over her.

“Remember what I told you, Shareen. And get a gun.”

***

Glenn had no idea how long he was unconscious. When he came to, his mouth felt like sand. He struggled to stand up: his limbs were numb, and he still had a sack over his head.

He stood in the dark gym, trying not to go insane. His mind was no longer capable of understanding exactly what had happened. He had been betrayed, that much was clear, by the machine, or whatever the thing was. It clearly had a highly developed instinct for self-preservation, despite being only a day old. Better than Glenn’s, at any rate. Somehow it must have contacted the outside world, and sacrificed him to save itself.

That was as far as he got before he heard footsteps upstairs. The sound of boots tramping down the basement stairs, a key in the lock. A fractal of electric light penetrated the canvas over his eyes. Glenn swallowed and croaked out a nervous “Hello?”

No answer. The feet had stopped moving: the men were evidently standing there, surveying their trussed prey.

“Take him upstairs.” Glenn struggled to place the voice as strong hands grabbed him.

“Colonel! Colonel! It’s me, Glenn Rose,” he hollered. “Please, listen to me, I did something stupid, and I’m sorry, but you have to help me. Colonel, please!”

He was dragged into living room, dumped on the sofa. He sat there, heart pounding, lungs straining. A hand pulled the bag from his head and Glenn was confronted by a room full of heavy-set men in cargo pants and polar tops, faces camouflaged by beards and aviator shades. All from the exact same gene pool as Kevin and Rex.

The only face he recognized was the Colonel’s. He was sitting in an armchair across the room, staring at him.

“Well, son, you really caused a ruckus,” he said without discernible expression.

“What…what are you going to do with me? Sir?” Glenn’s voiced was unsteady. He felt a massive urge to piss.

“That’s entirely up to the Professor,” said the Colonel. “He’ll be along shortly. They’re over in the facility right now, trying to figure out just what you got up to in there.”

“Can I use the bathroom please sir?”

“You just sit tight and wait for the Professor.”

They sat in silence for ten minutes before the door opened and Fitch, Stiney and Laura came in. Fitch paused briefly when he saw Glenn, his face impassive: Stiney’s cheeks were flushed. Laura stormed straight past them.

“You lousy sonofabitch!” she screamed, and her hand raised. The Colonel caught her wrist.

“Let go of me!” she yelled, yanking her hand from him. “I’m going to kill that piece of shit.”

The Colonel came up behind her and took her hands again, firmly but gently. She was still hollering. “You killed my brother, you fucker! You killed Lyle! I’m gonna rip your fucking head off!
”



Glenn sat frozen on the sofa, for the first time relieved by the presence of the Colonel: he was quite sure Laura would have carried out her threat had she not been restrained.

“Calm down, Laura,” said Fitch. “Calm down now. Please. Lyle’s not dead. He’s no more dead now than he was when he put that bullet through his head. He’s just different. But we’ll get him back. You saw that. That’s what we’re here for.”

Fitch turned to the Colonel. “Take her upstairs, give her something to calm her down. She’s exhausted. Rest of you, go wait in the kitchen.”

Everyone left except Stiney. Glenn sat staring at Fitch, his last possible salvation. He was expecting a cold fury, but to his immense surprise, there was a faint smile on the old scientist’s face. Fitch pulled a cigarette pack from his pocket and sparked up.

“So,” he said. “You thought you’d do a little joyriding around Lyle’s head? I understand from the preliminary inquiry that Frank here rather carelessly left his keys where you could easily get at them.”

“Listen, Doug, I’m so, so sorry,” Glenn said. “I don’t know what it is I’ve done, but I never meant to mess up your machine, or do anything to Lyle…”

Fitch held up a hand. “You know something Glenn. Today is an extraordinary day. Historic, indeed. Because today, for the first time since the extinction of Cro-Magnon man and the Neanderthals some 25,000 years ago, there are two species of human beings abroad on Planet Earth.”

He paused, took a pensive drag of his cigarette and turned to look at Stiney, who Glenn now realized was grinning like a kid.

“What is more,” he went on, “we have just communicated with this new life-form and it seems it has an intelligence that far outstrips our own, despite being a composite of two not very advanced minds, namely Lyle and you. Perhaps not the most stable personality in history, but because it is essentially a machine, none of its brainpower is being used for the mundane activities that take up so much of our own cranial capacity: breathing, metabolizing, just simply staying alive. What we are talking about here is a creature of profound and pure intellect.”

Stiney could contain himself no more. “Which it has just shared with us, by the way, and pointed out some of the fundamental problems in our operating system, such as why our uploads don’t work properly.”

Glenn stared at them. He didn't understand a word they were saying, but their inexplicable enthusiasm in the midst of this disaster transmitted a faint new hope to his own spent mind.

“Does that mean…” He shook his head, hardly daring to voice the elusive thought. “That it’s going to be okay?”

Fitch squinted through his tobacco smoke, slowly examining all the ramifications of what ‘Okay” might mean in this complex scenario. “What it means, Glenn, is that through an accident of evolution, one of those chance encounters that ultimately proves to be an engine of development – or as Laura would might call it, the hand of an inscrutable god – we have a created a new generation of human mind, just when we were groping blindly in the dark.”

He took another deep drag and exhaled luxuriantly. “What is out there in the barn is far superior to anything that has lived before. What’s more, it is going to complete our work for us. Fill in the gaps. Finish the puzzle. Your blundering escapade has been the perhaps greatest breakthrough in the history of science.”

Glenn was grinning stupidly now, like a whipped dog allowed back into the house. “So… it’s alright?
”



“It’s beyond alright,” said Stiney. “It’s everything we ever dreamed of. I can’t believe we never thought of it ourselves. I mean, we’d considered induced consciousness. But we never imagined the fusing of two minds would actually double the computation power of the brain. So fucking simple, really.” He shrugged. “Obviously Laura’s not too pleased with outcome, but hey, Lyle’s still in there, somewhere.”

Glenn burst into relieved laughter, tears of joy trickling down his cheeks. “Oh my god. Thank you god, thank you. Guys, I really thought you were...well, sounds crazy but I thought you were going to kill me for a minute there.” He grinned at them. “Crazy, huh?”

Fitch was still smiling. “Far from it Glenn. What has happened here is the first major step by mankind into the promised land. This is it, my friend. The final frontier has been breached, and the flag of humanity has been planted on the other side.”

“You guys,” laughed Glenn. “You guys are amazing. Oh my god.” He tried to get up to give Fitch a hug, but fell back on the sofa. “Hey, Doug, can you get the Colonel? He's got the key to these cuffs, I think.”

Fitch motioned to Stiney to fetch the Colonel. Still laughing and teary-eyed, Glenn felt the questions welling up inside him.

“Does it have a name? I mean, your genius in the machine out there?” Fitch looked at him. His smiled faded and he once again appeared to be his distant, businesslike self. “Indeed it does have a name. It even has a passport.”

“Wow, that was quick. What’s its name?”

Fitch leaned forwards and stubbed out his cigarette.

“Glenn,” he said. He raised his eyes to Glenn, who peered back in confusion.

“What?” said Glenn.

“It’s name. It's Glenn.”

“Glenn?” Glenn repeated. “Won’t that… get a little confusing?
”



“Not at all,” said Fitch. “In fact, it’s a perfect fit.”

The Colonel and his men appeared at the door. One of them was holding the burlap sack.