Immortality (72 page)

“You feel, therefore you are?” said Kathy. “I’m not sure it’s that simple.”

There was a soft insistent rapping at their door. The sound unnerved Mark. Someone was in the hallway. He got up as Kathy pulled the blankets up to her chin. He opened the door partway. Sarah was standing in the hallway. Her hair was dripping wet but her clothing was dry. She looked like a cat that had been caught in a rainstorm. Something troubling was in her eyes.

“I need to talk with you,” said Sarah. “I’m scared.”

Mark glanced back at Kathy. She was upset but shrugged as if resigned to the interruption. He didn’t want to open the door the rest of the way but did.

“You’re dripping,” he said.

Sarah cast a doubtful eye at Kathy.

“I should go,” said Sarah.

Mark felt the cold of a grave. He couldn’t imagine what kind of fear must have driven her to come to their room in the middle of the night. He could sense she was deeply scared. Sarah backed away from the doorway. Mark took her by the wrist so she couldn’t leave. She tugged at his grip. An image filled his vision replacing the real world. He and Sarah were mating; a new species would be conceived. The image flashed for a split second. In its wake, he was deeply disturbed. Sarah gave up trying to pull away just as he let go of her wrist. She stood in the doorway looking down at the floor.

“A kill zone is coming,” said Sarah.

“How do you know this?” asked Kathy.

Mark glanced back at Kathy. She was sitting straight up in bed. She didn’t look upset any more; she looked spooked. Her eyes were wide.

“I just do,” said Sarah. “It’s hard to explain. It’s kind of a memory of the future, but it’s not like a Ouija board premonition or something. It’s more like partially knowing what someone is planning to do. I’m not seeing a real future. I’m seeing images of what could happen to me if I let the plans actually occur.”

“What do you want to do?” asked Mark.

“Run,” said Sarah. “I can’t bear to live through another one. I’d kill myself before I stand in the middle of that again. I think it’s weeks away, but I won’t take that chance.”

The BVMC lab’s cafeteria was filled with the random energy of dozens of conversations. The fluorescent lights hummed. There were sounds of dishes clattering and food being prepared. Mark was in the middle of this symphony of human sounds and found it comforting. A follow-up set of medical tests had shown his diabetes was still cured and the infestation in his brain was spreading. Neither result surprised him. An hour ago, he’d snuck out of a meeting in the Kill Zone Monitoring Center before the meeting was finished. These meetings had become nothing more than a death count. The number of kill zones per day was still increasing, as it had been for days. All the zones were very small, in fact the average size was decreasing; but the rate had now surpassed more than forty a day. The previous pattern of targeting was also continuing: all the areas being hit now had already been struck at least once before. In his mind, he could see the strategy. He could see the very soil being sterilized of humans, through repeated application of the god-machine’s antibiotic.

Earlier today in his office with the door locked, Sarah had told him she believed what was coming was more than just a kill zone. She was deeply disturbed, almost despondent. Mark had felt uncomfortable being alone with her. She’d shoved him in the chest more than once when she thought he wasn’t listening. She’d been experiencing some kind of telepathic connection or bond with a soldier named Alexander who she believed was leading an army of mercenaries. Her description of the telepathic bond sounded eerily similar to his experience with the timeline program. Sarah had said she knew the soldier was coming on the heels of the kill zone to murder both of them and anyone else who survives the zone. She’d been inside his head enough to know that if he caught up with them, nothing could stop him from taking his revenge. He was drunk with rage and believed both she and Mark were no longer part of the human race and that they were responsible for the plague. For Sarah, the most disturbing part of her last experience inside the warrior’s skin was Alexander speaking to her in a mirror and knowing she was somehow inside him. She was convinced he was subconsciously tapping into the god-machine and that through it, in his dreams, he would be led directly to them.

Mark didn’t know what to believe or do, but what she’d said had deeply unnerved him. What lent credence to her story was that it explained the nagging sense he’d had of her holding something important back: her secret was this belief she was being hunted. It was clear from her actions and words, Sarah felt she’d put them all in greater danger by coming here.

Sarah had then told him something almost as troubling, as if a militia coming after them or that she was a delusional paranoid was not enough to have on his mind. She’d said Alexander might not end up being the only one after them. She had a feeling that soon almost everyone would turn against the two of them. She wanted him to cancel a critical meeting scheduled for tomorrow. With Kathy and Carl’s help, he was going to try to convince some government officials to take up the cause of partially surrendering to the god-machine. Sarah was convinced the meeting would be a disaster and accomplish the opposite; those officials would turn against them. She wanted to run now. She wanted him to save as many people at the lab as he could, by persuading them to leave, and then go before it was too late.

Mark had tried to calm her but his clumsy attempts had failed miserably. In the end, Sarah had left his office in a half-run. He’d heard her beginning to cry when she was in the hall. People had turned to look at her and then they’d looked at him at if he was the cause.

Mark glanced down at his tray of food. He’d eaten none of it. Runic symbols briefly appeared over each piece of food as his eyes touched them one at a time. This had been happening since he sat down. He had no idea what the symbols meant. All day small
assists
like this had been occurring. Most of them were now displaying in English, except for the food display and two others, which were newer. The speed at which the nanotech system could collect data and compute results was incredible. The interface appeared to be trying to learn his behaviors and anticipate his commands and needs. The program was offering what its calculations predicted he would find useful
assists
. He’d known the temperature outside before opening the door. He’d seen the health status of someone before shaking their hand. He was learning to work the interface as fast as it was learning to adapt to him.

Mark looked at his food. The symbol over the fruit salad and can of soda was the same. The symbol over the turkey club was different. He had a hunch these symbols were some kind of assessment of what was better for his newly healed body. Since the turkey sandwich had a different symbol than the soda or canned fruit, he assumed the
assist
was telling him the sandwich was better. He picked it up and took a bite. The sandwich tasted great – all covered in mayonnaise, with huge hunks of bacon, thick slices of tomato, and cheese. He decided the
assist
was right, the club was much better. Who would have known the god-machine was also a food critic? He smiled. The small bit of irony helped him feel better almost as much as the food did.

As the first mouthful of club sandwich reached his stomach, he felt ill. There was a sudden dizziness along with a queasy feeling. He looked at the sandwich. There was nothing wrong with it. After a few minutes the feelings subsided.

Mark nibbled at some of the lettuce from the club. The leafy green went down fine. He broke off a piece of the bread – also fine. The mayonnaise left him feeling a little odd, but the turkey made him feel seasick again. He bought a burger. The results were similar: everything except the animal products went down without complaint; and everything that gave him a problem had the same symbol displayed over it. Next, he tried a pepperoni pizza and got the same results. He was almost certain the ancients were vegetarians, not predators; he kept finding hints which pointed to that conclusion. He wondered if the transformation of his brain could be causing a psychological intolerance to some foods, or were the nanotech seeds doing more than healing and tuning up his biology? Was he being radically changed inside? Were the nanotech seeds building a better human or a better ancient?

Mark focused on his body’s status in an attempt to call up a medical schematic. The display stubbornly refused to appear. As he stood up to leave, the schematic glowed to life. The orange color code for seeds hadn’t changed. He focused on the display of his stomach until the projection zoomed in. The area looked the same as before. There were no new symbols or color codes or anything that his intuition picked up on.

~

“There’s nothing different about your intestinal tract,” said Kathy.

She was studying a computer display of his upper and lower GI track x-rays and an accompanying evaluation by a gastroenterologist.

“It was such a strong reaction to eating meat,” said Mark. “It has to be more than a mental aversion leaking into me through the thought-interface. I wanted to eat the sandwich; it’s my body that rejected it.”

“The seeds are taking over more of your brain every day,” said Kathy. “And you’re emotionally okay with what’s happening. It should be earth-shattering. You should be freaking out. It worries me that you’re concerned about nothing except eating meat. It’s like some kind of selective psychological anesthesia’s affecting you. You know that’s how a parasite operates. It numbs its host while it digs deeper into the victim’s flesh.”

Mark was sitting in a room full of people, but he was alone. He was prepared for the teleconference; yet with each passing minute and each new worry, his chances of success seemed to evaporate a little more. He was on a fool’s errand and they all knew it. So much depended on this single day; it was insane that the future of the world might be determined by how much he was believed in the next few hours. Kathy would present her evidence of the physical changes he was undergoing. Carl would put his reputation on the line. But in the end, it was his words, and his words alone, that could make the difference; and what he had to say required a giant leap of faith.

History had always turned on plans and accidents that were long-shots like this moment. It was an accident that penicillin was discovered. The x-ray was just as much luck as it was inspiration; so was the unmasking of genetics and the discovery of a set of continents called the Americas. The whole of human civilization was built on a very long series of interdependent moments of hubris and discovery; it was fitting that this moment would be no different.

All last night, Mark had searched through his past. He was looking for answers to the question of
why him
? He always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. His life was an amazing collection of good fortune: research grants and Nobel Prizes and scientific breakthroughs. Looking back on it all, he now wondered how much of what he’d attributed to luck was really something very different. Had some outside intelligence been at work? Had something been meddling around the edges, unobtrusively shepherding events toward the culmination of a plan in which he was only a pawn? Sarah believed the god-machine had affected her life since she was born, and possibly her parents’ lives, and her parents’ parents’ lives. Mark was beginning to believe the same was true for him. The idea was no more implausible than worshipping an invisible god intimately guiding and assisting each individual, a belief held by billions of people on the planet. Mark didn’t believe that God was that closely involved. The idea that a vast computer entity was assisting him for his entire life was far more plausible and had far more supporting evidence.

It was no longer very hard for him to believe that the god-machine may have cultivated his interests in biology and then paleontology. It was even easy for him to believe that COBIC bacterium had been herded into his path for him to discover its Nobel Prize winning secrets and, then much later, its hidden truths. The god-machine controlled seed bearing COBIC the way a person controlled the mouse pointer on a computer screen. The bacterium would not have been positioned where it was not intended.

Mark had stepped out of the room. He was in the hallway heading toward a bathroom. A blinding pain shot through his head. He managed to get into the bathroom before doubling over, squeezing his temples. He sensed a new change was occurring inside his skull. Thankfully, no one had seen him in pain. He leaned on a sink. He didn’t need anyone questioning his health right now. He looked at the tiles on the floor and then up into a mirror on the wall. He saw a man staring back at him. Was this image still the same man?

The secure video conference was about to begin. All the participants were present. Images of remote locations and people were tiled on the computer screens. General McKafferty looked older than the last time Mark had seen him. Only a short time had passed, but the General looked troubled and worn. The ugly visage was the same, but some of the fire was gone. The head of the NIH was online. Senator Trenton, the head of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, was online. The President’s National Security Advisor was online as well as his Science Advisor. The only friendly faces were Dr. Marjari and Professor Karla Hunt who were attending remotely as guest speakers. Carl’s reputation and Mark’s Nobel Prize were the sole reasons this group of advisors and decision makers had assembled on such short notice.

“If everyone is ready, we’ll get underway,” began Carl.

The meeting ran with the orchestrated precision of a legal proceeding. Kathy gave her opinions and evidence. Dr. Marjari spoke about the potential computing power and scalability of the nanotech computers. Professor Hunt spoke about the current state of man-machine interfaces. It was Mark who then carried the remainder of the presentation. It was Mark who was the primary specimen. He spoke about everything he knew and suspected. He argued we had to try to make peace with the machine. What was there to lose in partial surrender when compared to the alternative?