Once the nan cloud had been stretched into a thin thread, James stopped, turned, put out his hand, and began to compress them even further, rolling them up like a carpet, except that the roll never increased in size. The entire swarm of nans was seemingly disappearing.
“What the hell is that?” Rich asked as he watched the spectacle unfold through the ceiling of the listing ship along with everyone else onboard, but no one had an answer.
Neirbo’s weapon had half-lowered as his attention moved to the unbelievable sights unfolding in space and away from Thel. She considered using the distraction to go for the gun. Neirbo was close, but perhaps not close enough for her to reach him in time—plus there were still seven other men under his command to consider. She decided to move back to Old-timer and try to gently revive him by gently touching his face with her hand. He made a soft wheezing sound, and she sighed in relief that he wasn’t dead yet—there was still a chance. She turned her gaze back up to the fantastic images unfolding before them in space. From their perspective, it appeared that a singular bright object, gleaming in the sun’s reflection, was vacuuming the nans into nothingness. She opted to wait for these surreal events to play out.
In less than a minute, James had compressed the nan cloud into a perfect carbon sphere the size of a cue ball. It floated above his gleaming, platinum-colored palm; the reflection of his glowing blue eyes looked back at him. He smiled.
He quickly turned and zipped through space, closing the distance between himself and the ship in less than a second. He stood, facing the shadowy figure of the nan consciousness, who tilted his head slightly to one side while regarding the gleaming platinum figure before him. “Who are you? How did you do that?” it asked in a searing sibilance that was all too familiar to James.
“I’ve learned to manipulate the fabric of space,” James replied.
“Who—or what—is that?” Rich asked as he looked directly up at the two figures; they were standing only a meter above he and Djanet as they watched events unfold through the perfectly clear view provided by the translucent skin of the ship.
Thel noticed something in the figure’s gait—a familiar stance. Her eyes suddenly flashed wide in awe. “It’s James!”
Likewise, the dark, faceless figure seemed to scrutinize James’s new, smooth, mirrored features for a moment before finally, aghast in a moment of dread, he seethed, “Keats.”
James smiled. “Yes.”
“How could this be? You were deleted. You’re dead.”
“As you can see, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Your death, on the other hand—”
“So you’re going to side with the machines after all, eh, James?” the shadow scoffed. “Destroy me, wipe out the solar system so space can be as inhospitable, lifeless, and cold as they would like it to be? I told you: you are becoming an excellent machine.”
“This all began with you,” James said, “when you turned against us, deleted the A.I., took his place, and then killed everyone. All of the responsibility for this rests with you.”
“Do you expect repentance? Do you expect me to beg?” the nanobot shadow replied. “You won’t get it. You may destroy me, but my brethren are spread throughout the universe in numbers you cannot imagine. This little act of yours, killing me, will mean nothing in the grand picture.”
“You have no idea how little you are going to be in the grand picture,” James replied. Once again, he put out his hand, letting the shadow see itself one last time in the reflection of his palm, and then slowly, painfully, crushed the being that had tormented him so into a tiny, shiny, black pearl. “I know you can still hear me, you gruesome piece of filth. I’ve tangled your molecules so badly that the only way you’ll ever regain your former form is if someone takes notice of a black pearl in the infinite black ocean of space. I’ve given your magnetic field a boost too, so you should live a nice long time—by my calculations, about 500 million years.”
He took the pearl between his index finger and thumb and examined it for a moment, bringing it close to his face so he could clearly see the blue glow of his new eyes. He knew the nan consciousness could see him—he smiled. Then he turned to the darkest corner of space that he could find and let the pearl float, only inches from his hand. Like a baseball pitcher, he took a moment to calculate the power he would need to fire the pearl at close to light speed. When he was ready, he flicked his wrist like a magician about to pull something from his sleeve, and a small wormhole opened up before him. The pearl vanished into it in a streak of light and vanished. The nan consciousness would be far enough away from the solar system so as not to be caught up in the wake of the Trans-Human program; it would live on in this time and suffer for what would be, essentially, eternity.
“Good riddance.”
18
James looked down at the amazed faces below him inside the ship. He hadn’t been expecting to see his friends with the androids; he could sense that they’d been transformed. His eyes quickly shifted to Thel. Unlike the others, her expression was filled with love and hope. Even through all of his physical changes, his reflective skin, and his brightly glowing azure eyes, she had recognized him. This woman knew him inside and out. As his eyes met hers, even in the alien environment of space, even with all of the disarray surrounding them, he felt as though he was coming home.
This brief flutter of happiness was immediately replaced as he saw Old-timer crumpled to the ground and unmoving next to her.
The skin of the ship was invisible but James had many more senses to draw upon now. He sensed the ship, felt the molecules of the ship skin, and found a path through them. His own molecules moved to allow him to sink through the hull as those onboard looked on in astonishment. He phased through the ship ceiling and floated gently to the floor.
Thel sprung to him and threw her arms around his neck. “You’re alive!” she nearly screamed. “I thought you were dead!”
“Resurrection is my forte.”
“It’s really you,” Rich said, allowing himself a smile. “Wow. What the hell happened to you? Who did this?”
“I did,” James replied.
“You did?” Thel exclaimed, pulling back slightly so she could face him, yet still keeping her hold on him. “How? Why? We thought the nans had deleted you!”
“They tried, but it turns out deletion is impossible from the A.I.’s mainframe. I survived, and so did the A.I.—the real A.I.”
“What?” Thel reacted. “You mean the A.I. still exists?”
“He never turned on us,” James explained, turning to Rich and Djanet as well. “It was always the nans. They impersonated him, destroyed all of us, and lured the androids here as a trap.”
“What about your body? What is…this?” Thel asked as she touched James’s new skin. Its texture was like diamond, yet it was pliable like skin.
“It has no name,” James replied. “I have to help Old-timer,” he said, immediately shifting gears, pulling away from Thel and placing his palm just a few inches from Old-timer’s chest.
“Can you help him?” Thel asked.
“There’s been catastrophic damage. I would need access to the exact molecular pattern of his android body to put him back together. Without it, all I can do is stop the pain and give him a temporary patch-up.”
“Will it be enough to save him?” Djanet asked.
“No,” James replied, “but it doesn’t have to be.”
“What does that mean?” asked Thel.
“You’ll see.”
Just then, Old-timer began to stir, slowly regaining his consciousness. He sighed a long sigh before turning slightly and looking up at James through slitted eyes. “Who are you?”