Immortality (71 page)

An hour ago, using the thought-interface, he’d requested information on another randomly selected program from the first page; and, in response, he was slammed with the largest flood of information he’d yet experienced. He’d paid for this knowledge with terrible pain which was still lingering, but the price was very cheap for something of this life altering importance. Out of what remained in his memory, he’d identified the program as something that stabilizes health and then performs continuous repairs to keep the body flawlessly tuned. His heart had started beating faster from what the implanted memories had revealed, and it had not slowed since. He’d learned that the program was meant to augment or even replace the body’s natural healing abilities with direct repairs carried out by nanotech seeds. This kind of capability was the primary function of the god-machine’s original design. He was certain it was the reason for the machine’s very existence.

He could almost feel the small free swimming colony of nanotech devices swarming at the base of his skull near the opening to the spinal canal; those microscopic specks had the potential to cure anything. He’d been staring at the healing program’s name on the tablet for what seemed like hours. Each time he brought his finger close enough to receive sensory impressions, he felt a vague sense of hunger. He couldn’t be certain about everything this program might do to him. All he knew was that it would release the free swimming nanotech to fan out and rebuild all that was less than perfect in his body. He thought about his pancreas and how diabetes had damaged so much of him. He reached out his finger and pushed it into the program’s name. He felt nothing beyond an impression of hunger caused by the program’s preview but he knew changes would soon be occurring deep inside him.

~

The sun was directly overhead. Mark had remained on the roof all morning exploring more of the tablet’s mysteries. He couldn’t force the smile from his face. He felt guilty. He had no right to be smiling while a freefalling world was careening downward toward an onrushing cliff floor. He knew from the medical schematics of his body that he was cured of diabetes. Maybe it was his imagination, but he felt so vital, so alive. A blurry shadow was cast over him. He looked up with squinted eyes and saw Sarah. Her pupils were fully dilated. Strands of her blonde hair were being blown about in the wind. She looked so young and sensual. For a brief moment, he wanted her then he consciously pushed the feelings aside. A medical schematic appeared over her body. Mark could see the colony of seed massed at the base of her brainstem. The mass was beautiful. It was her dormant key to a long and healthy life, her personal fountain of youth.

“Looks like you’re enjoying yourself,” said Sarah.

“You’ve no idea how close to the truth you were when you named it the god-machine.”

“What have you discovered? Tell me!”

~

Kathy’s office felt warm to Mark. He was full of nervous energy. His lips were dry from talking nonstop for so long. He was surprised to discover how well organized his ideas really were. At times, he thought the entire framework must have been planted whole into his brain but it didn’t feel that way and he could distinctly remember coming up with the ideas himself as he fit the puzzle pieces together. He was at a turning point in his well rehearsed talk where he might lose his small audience to skepticism. He hesitated before plowing on. He was saying it all for the very first time yet felt a powerful sense of déjà vu.

“It’s like the great religions have always said. The capacity to live forever has been within all of us from the beginning of time,” said Mark. “The difficulty always lay in understanding how to recognize this capacity and use it. The nanotech seed is this hidden capacity. I know I sound crazy, but the seeds are a tool that can cure virtually anything – a tool that can give us near immortality. The death inflicted on us by the god-machine is just a reflection and reaction to the mindless slaughter we’ve inflicted on each other since we learned to use clubs and rocks. The god-machine is like a coin flipping through the air; on one side is a long healthy life, while the opposite side is instant death.”

The room grew silent. Mark felt like the air itself had been sucked out. Kathy and Carl said nothing. Kathy had a confused look in her eyes, while Carl couldn’t make eye contact at all. Mark wet his lips. He knew he sounded like a madman, but he was convinced every word he spoke was an immutable fact. His case wasn’t helped by the pseudo-religious overtones of some of it or, as Kathy had put it, atheistic overtones. He couldn’t help any of that. He was more convinced than ever that the god-machine was at the root of most religious myth and dogma: there was eternal life, something to pray to, healing the sick; even their best hope for stopping this plague had analogs in religious writings. He had to evoke faith to stop the plague. He had to convince others that they could stop the escalating kill zones and save lives, if governments could be convinced to act quickly and give up plundering the earth and lay down their weapons of mass destruction. Knowing what he knew, he had to try. He had proof that some of what he said was true and that the god-machine was created to heal, not kill. The time had come to use what meager proof he had.

“You both probably think I’m suffering from nanotech brain damage, but I can prove at least some of what I’m saying. I can prove the seeds and the god-machine together have the ability to not just repair traumas, but to automatically heal and even defend the body from diseases. Kathy, I need your help.”

Kathy didn’t respond right away… “I’ll help you,” she finally said. “But in return, I want you to let me run more medical tests.”

“Fine; anything you want; but you may change your mind in the next few minutes. I’ve already had my own medical tests run. I had myself checked for diabetes, including a micro-MRI of my pancreas. I cured myself of diabetes this morning and these tests prove it.”

Mark watched in silence as Kathy pulled up the test results on her computer. Her expression was intense as she worked the keyboard and examined the screens. Her expression began to change. She looked bewildered and a little pale. Mark waited.

“It shows completely normal blood chemistry. Your pancreas appears to be loaded with healthy islet cells which I know were not there before today. This isn’t conclusive. I’ll need to test you a few more times over the next few days.”

“Okay, so test me. I want you to test me. But I promise you the results will be the same or better.”

“I believe you,” said Kathy. “I believe this thing has cured you; and I hate sounding like a broken record, but none of this proves your theories about why the machine is killing us.”

“What have we got to lose?” said Mark. “Tell me? The world is falling apart anyway. Are we worried about reputations? We have nothing else to try and we’re almost out of time.”

“Alright!” said Carl. “Let’s say your theories are right. Where do we go from here?”

“We go to an impossible task,” said Mark. “We have to convince this government to surrender to the god-machine to prove we’re no longer a threat.”

“Break it down for me, Mark. What will we say? I don’t see enough proof,” said Carl. “We’ll be laughed out of every high level meeting I can schedule until they begin to refuse my calls.”

“You could be right,” said Mark, “Hell! You probably are right. But in my heart, I know I have to try; and I need all the help I can get. I know it’s overwhelming and looks like a fool’s errand. Please, will you both say you’ll try?”

Sarah awoke out of a psilocybin blackout, but she was not herself. She was inside the skin of the soldier that was hunting her. She had been inside him so many times before; mostly involuntarily, but as of late, she’d sometimes managed to leave her body and enter his at will. She was trying to understand how dangerous this man was to her. At times he was hazily aware of her presence inside him; and at those times, she sensed he would rip open his own flesh to get at her if he could. There was so much focused rage. When inside the soldier, she experienced whatever his five senses brought into her; but there were also occasional thoughts or emotions that strayed into her mind from his. She’d learned Alexander was not only hunting her, but he was now hunting Mark who he thought of as her mirror image. She knew the soldier had subconscious access to the god-machine but was unaware of what he was using. He was not empathetic or introspective. He was a singularity of violence, a professional killer seeking revenge; and in his fist was an army of fighters who were infected with his zeal.

Sarah shivered. The out of body vision weakened and then came back. She sensed there was some tie between herself and this man. They had met somewhere. Their paths had crossed, but where? She could see he was in the midst of celebrating a victory. They were in a building lit by generators. Tables were covered with food and drink. His men and women were satiating themselves, while he stood aloof and planned. He’d used premonitions of kill zones to win several of his battles; and using that strategy, another city had fallen to the plague while he and his fighters waited like vultures at the outskirts of doom. When the kill zone was over, they had walked through the spectacle of death picking through the bones and survivors that remained, killing those who fought back, leaving others alive, and always growing richer in the tools of war. He was emboldened by something that had happened today. He’d grown in strength because of what he’d captured. Sarah could tell from snatches of excited whispers that it had awesome explosive power, but she couldn’t find any details in his mind or through his eyes and ears. She knew he was paranoid and believed he was sometimes mentally spied on by the enemy; and so was very guarded when dealing with strategic things. This weapon could be part of some plan he had for what he called the Traitors. She was terrified it could be nuclear.

She watched as Alexander walked up to a bathroom mirror and stared into his own eyes. He moved closer as if looking for something inside himself. This was the first time she’d clearly seen him and was surprised that he was a blue-eyed Asian-European. He was of mixed ancestry as she was – the same kind of eclectic genetic cocktail.

“You’re in there, aren’t you?” he whispered. “Listen to me, Traitor. I know you’re part of this disease. I intend to hunt you down and cure the world of your infection. I will stop your plague!”

Sarah was stunned. She felt as if Alexander’s rage had been infused into her flesh until it seeped from every pore. She emptied her mind until she was dizzy from the effort, and the out of body vision finally ended. She found herself sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room. She was covered in sweat. It was night. The only lights came from outside her window and from under her door. She’d taken another overdose of psilocybin in an attempt to become more like Mark, but without going beyond the point of no return as he had. She got to her feet and staggered toward the shower. She stripped off her clothing and stepped in. The cold water hit her like a sheet of ice. False memories from the blackout seeped into her conscious mind as the water soaked into her skin. The fog of psilocybin was clearing as fast as the outside memories resurfaced. She saw graphic images of her and Mark having sex. She saw images of mass death all around them and then she sensed the artificial mind calculating fresh murder. Cold water was splashing into her face and running down her body. She was shivering. She reached up and gripped the showerhead just in time to keep herself from collapsing to the tiles. There was something even worse than Alexander, and it too was coming for them at this lab with the soldier and his army following like jackals at its heels.

It was past midnight according to the digital clock on the shelf. Mark and Kathy were in bed with the lights on and entangled in conversation. An empty bag of cookies was in the bed and two cans of soda were on a nearby table. Mark didn’t think he would ever be able to fall asleep again. Too many things were on his mind and in his mind. Implanted memories kept resurfacing. Some were buried treasure, others were little more than confusion, and some were completely indecipherable. Sometimes they would float up in the middle of conversations. Suddenly, he would just realize he knew something more about what was being discussed. Kathy had grown morbid as the night wore on. The more they tried to hash out the theoretical healing limits of the seeds, the more somber she became.

“I’m not like you and Sarah. I won’t survive another kill zone if it comes here.”

“We’ll leave before that happens,” said Mark.

“You really don’t understand, do you?” said Kathy.

“What are you saying?”

“You just healed yourself of diabetes. If this infestation doesn’t kill you, tomorrow you may heal yourself of cancer. In twenty years you may have prevented your skin from wrinkling and blocked Alzheimer’s. If I’m lucky, I’ll live to the age of eighty. I’ll have gray hair, old lady skin, and then I’ll die. You may never grow a day older. You may even look twenty years younger. Where does that leave me? Will a middle-aged man be happy with an old lady? I’ll lose you long before I’ll lose my life.”

“That won’t happen,” said Mark. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. There’s no reason you can’t have the same fountain of youth.”

“What if you’re wrong? You said some people are more sensitive to the interface. Maybe that sensitivity is genetic. Maybe I’ll never have what you have.”

“I know that’s not true. I’ll teach you how to restructure the interface and use it.”

“Mark, please stop,” said Kathy. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Maybe I don’t want a brain full of these things. I want my own normal brain, and my own normal body, and my own normal flaws. You’re becoming some kind of hybrid organic-machine. We don’t know where this will stop. If every neuron in your brain becomes infected with a seed, are you still human? Are you still you? Are you even still alive if your brain has been fully transformed into nanotech circuitry?”

“We implant artificial hearts in people and still consider them human. All I can say is – I still feel like myself. I feel alive; and as long as I have feelings, then I know I’m alive.”