“Jim?” James repeated, his eyebrows now knitted.
The doppelganger laughed. “Yeah, I know. I hated it too, but coming up with a whole new name didn’t appeal to me.”
“I prefer Jim now,” Katherine said. Jim turned to Katherine and shrugged in response. James immediately recognized that she wasn’t referring to the name.
“What the hell is going on?” James asked. “Who or what are you?”
“I’m your doppelganger. We’ve met. You remember.”
“And I’m your former wife,” Katherine added, “you remember?” Hell hath no fury.
“My wife is gone,” James replied. “I saw her deleted by the A.I. myself. I took control of the mainframe and checked to see if there was any trace of her left. You’re not my wife.”
“We were both deleted,” Jim responded, stepping between James and Katherine before Katherine had a chance to fire back; he could tell she wanted to from her rigid body language. “We ended up here.”
“Where is here?” James asked.
“The other side of the looking glass,” Katherine interjected with a sardonic smile.
“Honey, please,” Jim said, putting his hand on her shoulder in a gesture for civility. “This is going to be confusing enough for him without riddles.” He turned back to James, “We’re still in the mainframe—sort of,” Jim explained.
“Impossible,” James replied, disbelieving, yet getting used to the impossible becoming possible.
“Impossible? That’s not the sort of word I remember the greatest inventor in the world ever using before,” said the most kind and familiar voice in James’s life. He turned quickly with a start, and his eyes fell upon the unmistakable figure of the A.I.
2
“What sort of sick game is this?” James asked, turning from the A.I. and looking up into the sky, as though he were addressing an omnipresent listener. “You couldn’t just kill me, could you? You had to play one last sadistic trick?”
“Who the hell are you talking to, you moron?” asked Katherine as she shook her head dismissively.
“Honey! Please,” Jim responded to her. “He is 99.999 percent me. Please have a little compassion for his situation.”
“Honey?” James reacted with morbid curiosity.
Katherine smiled the instant she realized that she had the chance to cause James more pain. “That’s right.” She crossed over to Jim and put her arm around his waist, cradling his body next to hers. “Jim and I have become lovers.”
Jim sighed and shook his head, “Katherine, please.”
For a fraction of a second, James’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Okay. What the hell is going on?”
“They’ve mended fences, James,” responded the A.I., completely returned to the friendly, elderly form with which James had been familiar for most of his life. “They had a lot of history and a powerful emotional attachment between them. It took time, but they have become very close over the past year and seven months.”
James didn’t know with whom he should share his look of astonishment. His eyes moved from the A.I.’s, to the doppelganger’s, to Katherine’s, then back to the doppelganger’s. Jim started answering questions without James having to ask them. “We were both deleted—we found each other here—we’ve had a lot of time to talk through our issues. We’re different people than we were before, James.”
James closed his eyes to block out the visions around him. He told himself that he would figure out what was going on. He wasn’t insane.
Katherine sensed his anguish and she timed a kiss on Jim’s cheek to correlate perfectly with the reopening of James’s eyes.
The A.I. strolled in front of James and met his eye. “Reconciliation is possible, James. It’s good to have you back, my son.”
“My son?” James scoffed. “You think I’m going to believe that you’re the A.I.? The A.I. was deleted by the nans. The A.I. is gone. There is no coming back.”
“I was deleted. That’s true,” the A.I. concurred.
“You’re trying to drive me insane. I don’t know why,” James grunted, shaking his head and turning away from the trio of ghosts.
“It is the A.I., James,” Jim said, his voice filled with compassion. If there was ever a time when it was easy to feel empathy for someone, it was now. “It’s the real A.I.—the one we’ve always known.”
“Impossible.”
“I’m not asking you to believe me, James,” the A.I. replied patiently, his tone just as kind as it always used to be, back before he had been deleted and replaced by the nans. “Belief is not good enough for rational minds such as yours. I’m only asking that you use your reason. Then you can decide for yourself whether we are who we say we are.”
“You might as well listen,” Katherine chimed in, “After all, it’s not like you’re going anywhere.”
3
Even before Old-timer had reached the other side of the wormhole, he could see the unprecedented size of the nan attack on the android fleet. The android presence stretched out as far as the eye could see at that range, a wall of people and continent-sized frigates that dwarfed any asteroid belt. Look as far as you wanted to, up, down, or to either side and you could not see the end of it.
The nans that had exploded off of the surface of Mars, the Earth and Venus in a number that might as well have been infinite were crashing against the equally infinite wall of androids. The massive celestial cloud of nans was even darker than the androids, a planet-sized hurricane of hell. The worst of it seemed to be several minutes away by light speed, but it was doing catastrophic damage at every moment and was nearing the frigate where Old-timer’s friends were being held.
Old-timer floated into the opening of the frigate; the metallic skins of the ships had large gaps within them to allow for easy accessibility. However, the gaping openings reminded Old-timer of his childhood and the sight of buffalos rotting in the Texas sun, their backs torn open by scavengers so that their ribcages were exposed.
He dropped down into the inner workings of the immense structure, cruising by the network of catwalks and platforms and working his way toward the room in which he knew his friends were still unconscious—Neirbo hovering over them in waiting.
When he found the right door, he opened it with his android mind’s eye and floated in. His expression immediately changed from the grimmest brooding to the utmost concern when he saw his friends locked into the metal coffins.
They were already awake.
“What the hell is this?” Rich yelled furiously as he watched Old-timer enter the room, aghast at what he saw as the false image of his former friend.
“Why are they awake? You said you’d wait,” Old-timer demanded of Neirbo, who stood adjacent to the three black coffin structures. No one else was in the room with them.
“They’ve only just been awakened at this instant,” Neirbo replied matter-of-factly.
“You could’ve given me a little warning,” Old-timer replied tersely.
“Time,” was all that Neirbo said in reply.
“What are you? Why are you doing this?” Thel demanded, the dismay in her voice causing it to crack.
“Please,” Old-timer said to her and the others, holding his palms toward them in a gesture for calm.
“You’re not Old-timer! You’re one of them!” Djanet reacted angrily.
“I’m still Old-timer—I’m still Craig,” Old-timer replied. “I need you to stay calm while I explain—”
“We know you aren’t Old-timer!” Rich yelled back, “So you can take whatever lies you’ve got cooked up and shove them straight up your metal ass!”