Ghost of the Gods - 02 (24 page)

Sarah Mayfair – Portland, Maine – February 14, 0002 A.P.

Mark was still behind the wheel. Sarah felt alive with random emotional energy coming from all around her. They were twenty miles outside Portland, and the singularity was ominously growing in strength. This was going to be a very big one—bigger than Chicago or Montreal—and that had to mean they were going to find a large commune. They’d been listening to Air Truth for hours. Most speakers thought the story about Freedman and Mayfair smelled like a fabrication, but the facts of the Canadian attack had been confirmed.

Sarah had changed her makeup and cut her hair shorter in an effort to alter her appearance. The results were passable. She no longer looked like the woman in the surveillance videos that had been looping all day. For the first time she was grateful her police ID had been a bad photo of her. Mark had on a baseball cap and sunglasses. She thought he still looked too much like the pictures being shown, but there was little they could do about it. He had decided to let his beard grow, but it would be days before his appearance was different enough to pass a close encounter with USAG law enforcement or even the general public.

Sarah experienced a surprising tug at her mind from the singularity. It felt like some of her memories had been pulled away like sand in a riptide.

“That was a strong one,” said Mark.

“It’s incredible if you think about it,” said Sarah. “These communes are nurseries for artificial life. They’re growing their own personal god-machines.”

“Guides, god-machines, who knows,” said Mark. “The important thing is these communes have something they’re not sharing. We need to peel as many layers as we can from this onion.”

The temperature had been rising. A hard, cold rain had started fifteen minutes ago. The sky was overcast with an Atlantic storm. Inside the city limits, they were driving past block after block of nineteenth century red brick buildings. People in winter coats were hunched under umbrellas. Sarah watched the wind pull an umbrella from the grip of a woman who was crossing the street.

They were within a few miles of the singularity. Sarah was surprised at how easy this one had been to find compared to the other two. She wondered if they were just more skilled at locating communes or if the communes themselves had changed in some way.

They turned onto an older street. The commune was within a few blocks. A flash of lightning burst in the same instant as the thunder. The Humvee shuddered. A spray of small debris hit the bullet-resistant windshield. Mark stopped in the middle of the street. All feeling of the singularity had evaporated. Sarah’s chest went empty. Another commune was gone as if snatched from their closing fingers. She looked at Mark. His face was grim.

The wind and the rain made it harder to spot the location until they were closer. Mark pulled over to the curb. Sarah was stunned and grieving. Some afterglow of indecipherable sadness was pouring into her from the mass murder. She felt tears sliding down her face. Her vision was blurred. She wiped her eyes.

People were arriving to see what had happened. Some were standing in the shelter of doorways and overhangs. Sarah’s eyes were drawn to a tall figure. An assist came up on its own projecting the orange medical diagram of a fully evolved hybrid over the man. It looked like the same betrayer who had crossed their path in Montreal. From a distance of 50 feet their eyes locked and neither moved. The hybrid was like an apparition. His shape sometimes appeared to blend into the shadows of the buildings and the streaks of rain. Without an assist she would never have spotted him. Sarah was picking up tiny emotional flashes—curiosity, interest. Her breath hitched and then she was in full command of herself again.

“It’s the betrayer!” she shouted.

Sarah shouldered the door open, and Ralph piled out behind her. Without thinking, she was running full speed past bystanders who were looking the other way. Ralph was leading her by a growing distance. The hybrid was standing at the end of the block. She did not exactly remember opening the door or even starting to run. All she knew was that she had to put this killer down before more innocents died. The hybrid turned and walked from sight around the corner. Moments later Ralph vanished around the same corner.

Sarah ran out into the intersection of the street to get a clear line of fire, aimed, and saw nothing. Ralph had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, whining in confusion. The street was empty. Their prey was gone without a trace. Sarah reached out with every part of her being. She opened herself to the full onslaught of human emotions in this part of the city in an effort to locate any clue of the hybrid’s emotional fingerprints. She’d felt a few of his emotions only moments ago, yet now found nothing.

Rain was pelting her face as she wiped the water away. She looked in every possible direction again and found no place to hide. This was impossible. Rain had soaked through her clothing. She started to slowly walk down the block looking for evidence but knew it was pointless. The betrayer had gotten away with mass murder again. Mark pulled up in the Humvee and began to roll down his window. She realized the entire sequence of events had occurred in less than a minute.

“Are you insane going after that creature like that?” he shouted. “He could have killed you.”

Sarah felt something draw her attention emotionally. She spotted an iPhone lying under a mailbox and walked over and picked it up. It was not an iPhone. The object was about the size of a touch screen phone but only about a quarter of an inch thick and weighed nothing. She turned it over. There were no markings. It felt too rigid for its size and feather weight. All her senses were screaming this was not something from her world. She could not articulate how she knew this, she just did. It felt like she was in a different reality.

Sarah opened the rear door for Ralph and then climbed up into the cab next to Mark. He could not take his eyes off what she had in her hands. She was experiencing his emotions and knew he had a similar feeling that this object was unnatural. A memory capsule exploded in her mind like a camera flash. She dropped the object. As the flash faded a single thought remained. It was a man’s name.

“Noah?” said Mark.

Sarah could only nod. She knew the betrayer had just told them his name or rather, this object he’d left behind had just sent them a recorded introduction. She retrieved the object from the floor. It was a little colder than it should be.

“It feels all wrong,” said Sarah.

“Advanced technology always seems like magic to the primitives,” said Mark. “And we are the primitives.”

“I have a terrible suspicion we were just captured on video at another bombing,” said Sarah.

Mark Freedman – Maine – February 14, 0002 A.P.

Mark was squinting through the windshield, trying not to drive off the road. They were only thirty miles south of Portland. The weather had turned fiercer as if conjured by the betrayer
.
The hybrid had slain another commune and likely used them as scapegoats. The wind-driven storm was now more sleet than rain. At times visibility was reduced to a few yards. They needed a safe place to park and wait out the storm. Mark was trying to find a spot that would keep them out of sight and out of mind of any law enforcement operating in the area, as well as gangs.

Twenty minutes and only a few miles later they were out of options. It was growing dark. Mark pulled into a public lot for beach parking. He was not pleased. He killed the engine and hoped they would be overlooked. If the weather let up, he’d risk driving at night instead of remaining so exposed. With the engine off, the sound of sleet and rain hitting their metal shelter seemed to grow louder. It sent a chill down his back. The weather-blurred glow from lights at the other end of the lot was the only illumination inside the Humvee. Sarah was staring oddly at the relic she’d found. She looked exhausted, which was not a normal state for any hybrid. The device was all they’d talked about during the drive. The small black tablet could have easily been a duplicate of the relic that had been stolen from the Chicago commune. Sarah looked up at him. Her pupils were wide from the darkness and maybe something more.

“This may sound crazy, but I keep thinking it’s whispering to me,” she said. “The words are too soft to understand.”

“Maybe it’s not English?”

An assist kept projecting a series of runic symbols over the device. The god-machine was again applying a label to the black box. It recognized this thing. Following a hunch, Mark opened an assist that projected a virtual three-dimensional schematic of the n-web’s pathways in the immediate area. The data flows looked normal everywhere except near the device, which was causing a mild warping of the pathways. Mark could see the device was using the n-web to do things: probing, searching, and consuming data. The disruption was nothing like a singularity, but it was also unlike the normal flows that surrounded a hybrid who was accessing the god-machine. Mark slowly took the device from her fingers. She let it go grudgingly. He could not discern a front or back. There were no markings of any kind.

“Its surface is cold,” said Mark. “This thing really is all wrong.”

“You get used to it.”

“Remember when the Chicago priest said they can come back?”

“Sure, but this can’t be the same one we saw in Chicago. Can it?”

Mark retrieved his folding knife from the door pocket. He opened the blade and poked a small impression in a corner of the device. In less than a minute the tiny wound was gone. The device had healed itself.

“I think this thing is made of the same nanotech as seeds,” said Mark.

“So you’re saying this device is part of the god-machine?”

“No… maybe… I don’t know, but you have to admit this thing could have been made by the same civilization that created the seeds.”

Mark knew there had to be some way to switch the device on. He turned it over in his hand, examining every corner and side. The device felt even colder. Sarah reached over to take the device back. As her fingers touched the sides of the case, a thin red line appeared directly down the middle of the surface. Sarah snatched back her fingers as if she’d been stung.

“What now?” she asked.

Before Mark could answer, the red line expanded into a thin-edged rectangle that framed the device. A silvery mercury colored display with three-dimensional runic icons appeared within the rectangle. The metallic screen was like nothing Mark had seen before. It looked like liquid mercury, but all the runic icons gave off a glow as if lit from within by something radioactive.

The icons were the same language that was used on the virtual interfaces to the god-machine. Mark knew the meaning of a few of the letters but could not make sense of what was displayed. An assist showed the n-web pathways around the device now had much more pronounced warpage.

“Okay, this is a little creepy,” said Mark.

He had so many ideas swirling around in his mind that he felt dizzy. He needed to call in a favor from Karla and get this device into a materials research lab. He tried touching some of the icons. The screen flashed light green when each icon was touched, but nothing more happened. He tried a data flow to collect information on the device. Nothing useful came back. The black box remained enigmatic.

Mark was feeling drained. He hadn’t felt this kind of tired since his brain had been hybridized over two years ago. He felt dull. Sarah was saying something to him, but he could not focus on her words. He looked at the device, turning it over in his hands. An assist labeling the device in runic letters came up again, this time flashing, and then it all made sense. He dropped the device onto the floorboard. The fatigue that had been dogging him began to fade almost immediately as he stared at the device at his feet.

“That thing was using us as a power source to recharge whatever it has for batteries,” said Mark. “The assist was a warning of some kind.”

Sarah climbed into the back and returned with a pair of pliers. She collected the device and carefully held it up for them to look at as if it might explode without warning. The display was operating without any noticeable change. The glow was the same and the icons were the same.

“Do you feel it draining you?” he asked.

“No, it may need direct contact, skin to skin or something?”

“That son of bitch was trying to kills us with that thing,” grumbled Mark.

“I don’t think so,” said Sarah. “You said it the other day. If he wanted us dead, he’s had plenty opportunities. I tried to shoot him today and he left us this.”

“Maybe it doesn’t pay to kill off your scapegoats,” said Mark.

A violent impact from behind sent the Humvee forward across the parking lot. Sarah lost her grip on the device, which went flying into the backseat. Before he could react, a side impact slammed the door and window into him. If the Humvee had not been heavily armored, they would have been crushed. Stunned, Mark felt dampness of his face. Through the glass he could see the grille and bumper of a big truck. His nanotech brain recovered far quicker than humanly possible. He had the ignition turning over the engine and the Humvee in drive before the human parts of his brain even registered what he was doing.

“What the fuck!” he yelled as his foot jammed into the accelerator. The dark shape of the truck was closing in on his window again. If Mark had been a second quicker they would have escaped. This time the rear of the Humvee was clipped, sending them into a half spin on the slick asphalt. Mark corrected as if on autopilot and accelerated out of the way of the next assault, then jammed on the brakes. Headlights came on, making it easier for him to see their attackers and for the attackers to see them. He hit his own lights. The sleet and rain had apparently let up unnoticed. It was still pouring but visibility was fine. Four large jacked-up pickups were facing them from all sides. Each had heavy tubular bumpers and roof-mounted lights bars that were blinding him.

Sarah started sliding the bullet-resistant window back enough to take aim with an M4 assault rifle. The cab was suddenly filled with the sound of rapid, ear-splitting cracks and muzzle flashes. Shell casings were flying everywhere. The pickup under fire began retreating with all four wheels spinning. Its headlights shattered and tires blew. Sparks licked across its hood, then the windshield collapsed as countless bullets tore through it. The vehicle was clearly ruined and whoever was in the front seat likely dead. Mark floored the Humvee. He did not look but knew Sarah was sliding the bullet-resistant window closed. He heard the all too familiar sound of bullets hitting their armored Humvee. Small pockmarks were blooming on every piece of glass, covering older pockmarks.

As he reached the street, his heart sank. An entire pack of similar pickups was bearing down on them from the northbound side of the street. His nanotech brain counted as he spun the steering wheel to flee. An impossible ten pickup trucks were on their tail. The sound of bullets hitting the passenger compartment armor turned into a hailstorm. He heard Sarah shouting something over the noise but could not hear enough of her words. A memory capsule came next. If he could get away from their fire long enough for her to pop the roof hatch and mount with the MK19, their problems would be erased. With the fire they were now taking, it would be suicide to try to use the MK19.