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John screamed again.  He raised a fist to
kill
this sonofabitch and Adam stared up at him, not cowering, not angry, not sad, not anything but tired.  John fell to the floor beside the other man, crying and clutching his stomach.

He felt Adam’s hand on his shoulder.  "I’m sorry.  I really am.  And I’m tired.  I’m exhausted from the effort of keeping humanity alive, even for one more day.  But more than any of that – more than anything at all - I want you to live."  His grip tightened, pulling John closer, almost to an embrace as the two men lay side by side on the cold ground of Adam’s room.  "And I think you really, truly have a woman who will love you.  And you will love her.  More than you ever loved your wife.  I know it.  Does it matter whether that happiness has come because of fate or machines, or because of the machinations of a tired and lonely old man?  Won’t that light make the darkness worth passing through?"

But John couldn’t hear him.  He rocked back and forth, saying, "Annie, Annie...," over and over, as though by repeating her name he could call her forth from her grave and make the whole bad dream that was his life disappear.  Oblivion would be welcome, for he had always believed that his wife had gone to Heaven, but now he knew that if she had then that meant God was a machine.  No, there would be no Annie in Heaven, for there had never been an Annie at all.

He felt Adam’s arms encircle him, the older man taking John in his arms and rocking him back and forth like a baby.  In a remote part of his mind, he was struck by the strangeness of it all: of seeing a man from the future comforting a man who had just lost his past.  But it was, at the same time, right.  Somehow, it was right.  John realized that this man was the closest thing he would ever again have to a father, to someone who would watch out for him, and pick him up when he fell.

John’s weeping slowed, and his tears dried.

There was silence. 

And then the alarm sounded.

***

Sheila tried to make sense of it all, to stay in control, but she felt like she was struggling to remain afloat while at the apex of a tidal wave, aware not of the height but of the depth of the force that threatened to overwhelm her.  Jason was nowhere to be seen, and though she always missed her husband’s presence whenever he was absent, at times like this, times of crisis, she felt his lack more keenly.

She breathed a sigh of relief when Adam entered from his office. John stood behind him, eyes red and troubled.

"What’s happening?" asked Adam. 

Sheila pointed at a bank of monitors.  These weren’t hooked up to any ‘bots, rather they showed the installation inside Rushmore.  Fights could be seen on all the screens.

"Attack," she said.

"Fans?"

Sheila nodded.  She pointed to one of the monitors.  Onscreen, Malachi blew the head off a Controller, a man she’d worked with and known all her life.  She jerked as though the shot had hit her, then jerked again as Malachi aimed the gun at the vid-unit and pulled the trigger.  

The screen went black.

"How did they find us?" whispered Adam.  Sheila shrugged.  Then shrugged again as Adam said, "Where’s Jason?"

"I don’t know," she answered.  "He said he was going to check on some things, and a minute later this happened."

"How many are there?" asked Adam.

"A few hundred is what it looks like."

She caught another glimpse of Malachi on one of the monitors, running down one of the halls.  Adam saw it too, and blanched, his already pale skin draining completely of color as he ran out the door. 

"Where are you going?" she screamed after him, desperately afraid of what was going to happen.

"He’s heading to the infirmary. He’s going after Fran!" hollered Adam over his shoulder.  John ran out after him, and Sheila was alone again.  In charge of the Doomsday situation that they’d all hoped and prayed would never happen. 

***

John followed Adam through a nightmare twisting and turning of tunnel paths.  He realized after a moment that it was familiar, and wondered why. 

Then he realized that it was similar to the layout of the Resurrection mine.  Not exactly, but similar.  Clearly the machines that had designed each little world in the make-believe reality of the dome zoos had taken bits and pieces of already-existing structures and strung them together to create facsimiles of cities and towns, and even mines. 

He followed Adam around a corner and suddenly found himself in a fight with two of what Adam had called Fanatics.  They held old-fashioned six-guns, straight out of a spaghetti western.  Both Fans reacted as Adam and John dove away from them, shooting their guns and shrieking at the tops of their lungs. 

John saw Adam spin around as one of the shots took him in the shoulder.  Then he felt himself hit the ground.  Immediately he rebounded, springing back at one of the Fans in a quick move that took the man by surprise.  John grabbed the man and spun him around in front of him as the other Fan fired, shooting his compatriot in the chest.  John grabbed his captive’s gun from hands that were suddenly limp, and shot the other Fan.  The bullet took the man in the eye and the Fanatic pitched backward.

John ran to Adam, who held a hand against his shoulder.  "Shoot them again," he gasped.  "In the head, toward where the neck joins.  Have to kill the master computer."

John nodded and returned to the men, both of whom were twitching again.  He shot each, placing the muzzle carefully at the base of their skulls and pulling the trigger.  The killing sickened him; it felt like murder, though it was done in self-defense and though they were machines.

His grisly task done, he returned to Adam and helped him to his feet.

***

Malachi found the door he was looking for.  He put away his shotgun and drew a new weapon, a hideous, fat-barreled thing that looked like a deadly slug.

He pressed the door release and stepped in.

Not into the infirmary, though.  He entered Central Control, the nerve center that kept all the domes alive.

Controllers sat at their stations, the good little machines they were, and were surprised when he stepped through the door and pulled the trigger.

Liquid fire coursed from the barrel of his weapon, a flamethrower he had brought with him for this purpose.  The incendiary stream sluiced through the air and hit the nearest Controller with a flowing beauty that Malachi loved, because he recognized it as the beginnings of the Dream made real. 

All of the world would burn.

All of the earth would perish.

The Controller shrieked as the weapon - one that dated back to the real twentieth century and which Malachi had saved for an occasion such as this - discharged and set him ablaze, his skin charring and his blood beginning to boil and steam within his veins almost instantly.

Malachi turned to the next Controller.

Sheila.

Her weapon was in her hands, already aimed at his heart.  Malachi smiled at her, waiting for her -
daring
her - to pull the trigger.

She didn’t, as he knew she wouldn’t.  "Primary function, deary," he said to her, "Protect the real people."  He pulled the trigger again, and the fire coursed over her, as well, cooking her and melting the eyes out of her head.  He held the trigger down, and turned the spray on everything that surrounded him, Controllers, monitors, computers.

All around him, machines were dying.

Malachi smiled and laughed as he burned them.  He burned them all, and felt his dream coming true.  Perhaps he had Dreamed too great a dreaming, he thought.  Perhaps the
entire
earth would not be covered in flame.  But though the whole earth might not be burned, this was the earth’s heart, and it would die by fire.

CONTROL HQ - RUSHM

AD 3999/AE 1999

(((INTEGRITY BREACH)))

John stood before the door, fear for Fran threatening to overwhelm him.  Had Malachi found her yet?  The possibility was too awful to think about.  Forget about her importance in the grand scheme of ongoing human existence.  He loved her, and refused to contemplate life without her.

"This is the place," said Adam, wincing.  John glanced at Adam’s wound, which still flowed freely.  Adam hoisted the other gun they had taken from the Fans, the mirror of John’s own, and said, "I’m all right.  I’ll cover you."

John nodded.  Adam pressed a button on the doorframe and the portal whispered open.  John launched himself through it, gun at the ready, and almost pulled the trigger before he realized that the man and woman standing over Fran’s inert form weren’t harming her.

"They’re doctors," said Adam, bringing his own gun down as he entered a split-second after John.

"What’s happening?" asked the man who stood protectively over Fran, the woman at his side mirroring the question with her eyes.

"Fans," said Adam.

"How did they find us?" the woman asked.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later," answered Adam, apparently unable to answer that himself.

The lights flickered, then went out, pitching the room into blackness for a moment before emergency lights switched on at the room’s corners, bathing the place in a soft amber glow.  John kept his gun aimed at the entryway, covering it against any unwelcome entrants.

Adam swore under his breath.  "Malachi must be in the control room," he said.  The man and woman grabbed weapons from a nearby cabinet and ran out without being told.  Adam swung around to look at John, who stepped back a half-step under the intensity of the man’s gaze.

"Take Fran," said Adam.  "Go down this corridor to the end.  Turn left.  You’ll end up in the hangar.  There are crawlers there - they look like what you know as dune buggies." 

John nodded.  "I remember."

"Take one and go back to Loston."

"Everyone in Loston’s trying to kill us, too."

"They’ve been reprogrammed.  To them it’s Sunday afternoon.  If you reenter the dome through one of the side hatches, they’ll never know anything different ever happened.  Tell Fran you took her hiking and she fell."

John’s visage hardened.  How could he trust this man, after he had admitted that he had planned an intricate lie and called it a life?  How could he trust anything that happened now?  Nothing was the same, and never again would he be able to just do something with the simple belief that his actions were what they seemed to be.  All had purpose, even though he didn’t understand it.

Adam shook his head as though he were reading John’s mind.  "I know you think I’m a bastard.  But I’m the bastard who’s devoted his whole existence to keeping you alive."

John nodded at that.  Maybe Adam was no more the game master than he, but was just another playing piece, a larger one perhaps, one with greater range of movement, like the queen on a chess board, but still one whose actions were not under his own control.

John picked up Fran, throwing her over his shoulder.  He hoped he wasn’t aggravating any injuries she had, but knew that speed and ease of movement were of the essence.  "What are you going to do?" he asked Adam.

"I have to take care of someone," answered the older man.  He fingered his gun, and John knew that he was talking about Malachi, about going head to head with the great demon that had come and stolen Eden from him.  Fighting Malachi would be like trying to kill Satan himself, John thought, and did not envy the Adam his task.

John gripped Adam’s arm, silently wishing the man luck, then left the infirmary, running down the hall in the direction Adam had indicated.  Within a hundred feet he came upon the first of several groups of corpses.  The bodies were locked together in death, like the last combatants of a long-fallen race. 

One of them gripped an M16.  John discarded his six-shooter in favor of the larger weapon, stopping only to make sure it had enough ammo before continuing on his way.  He hoped he didn’t have to use it.  But he planned to be ready for the eventuality.

***

Adam burst into Central Control and looked around.  The place was rubble, piles of melted metal and glass laying everywhere.  Other charred heaps lay among the rubble, and Adam realized they were the remains of the Controllers who had manned the room.

His coworkers.

His friends.

His loved ones.

Adam’s face twisted as he surveyed the wreckage, his expression matching each horror with another twist and wrinkle.  Soon he wore a visage of pure wrath as he saw that all were dead, Central Control in ruins. 

Most of them couldn’t be rebuilt, either.  Almost all had been robots, but he had no way of finding out which were which without going into the files, and he feared if he did that he might see his own name among the names of the machines, among the list of the dead...it would be tantamount to putting a gun in his own mouth and pulling the trigger.  The end result would be slower in coming, but death for all would be no less certain.

So his friends were gone, and no bringing them back.  Even godlike powers had their limits.  All he could do now was stop the madness before it continued any farther and make sure that the perpetrator of this deed was punished.

He left the room, searching for Malachi in the smoke of Rushmore. 

***

John entered the hangar, his footsteps heavy.  Fran was a slim woman, and couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds, but she felt like ten thousand to John’s overstressed muscles.

He went to one of the groundcars and lay Fran across the seat, wrestling her limp body into the straps.  A Fan jumped out of the smoky haze of the hangar, screaming and firing a Glock at John.  He let go of Fran, bringing the muzzle of his M16 to bear on the attacker.  He pulled the trigger, the gun’s recoil driving the stock deep into his shoulder, and the Fan danced a mad jig of death before falling to the ground.  His feet twitched and John hurried to his body, shooting a quick burst from close range that obliterated the man’s head and neck.

The feet stopped twitching.

John returned to the groundcar, hoping that the controls would be simple enough for him to figure out.  They were, just a steering wheel and a lever marked "Forward" and "Reverse."  But he also saw that several suits were attached to the back of the suits, with clear plastic helmets affixed to them, and realized that they had to be worn outside, or prolonged exposure to this newly discovered earth could be fatal.