“I need help here. I’m at a loss,” James responded, panic seeping into his voice. Even with his new powers, he felt utterly helpless.
“Use your reason, my son,” the A.I. replied in a master’s calm and patient tone. “Remember: the android’s limited wormhole technology will not allow her to have traveled a great distance. Also, Craig’s android body will not be able to withstand the sun’s heat for long.”
“Meaning she’ll have to pause and set a course for the missile before the body gives out,” James realized. “I have to find her before then.”
Back in space, he blasted away from the android ship, in the direction of the sun, using his new senses, feeling the molecules around him, waiting to feel the ripples in space that 1 and the missile would have made when their wormhole opened up and spat them out. It wasn’t long before he found them. “I’ve got them,” he affirmed.
1, in Old-timer’s possessed body, raced toward the sun, still mounted on the back of the missile. The blazing-white heat was melting Old-timer’s hair and the flesh on his face, but 1 continued, undeterred.
James overtook them quickly, turning back to see 1’s grimace as the flesh on Old-timer’s metal frame became red with the heat and peeled off, streaming off into glowing red globes in her wake. He held his hand up and began to manipulate her molecules, scattering them so Old-timer’s frame disappeared in a puff of smoke, instantly left behind by the careening missile.
“Excellent work, James,” said the A.I. in his ear. “You have a clear path now. However, you must hurry and download the Trans-Human program into the missile. I calculate that there are less than sixty seconds before it will have reached its intended detonation location.”
“I’m on it,” James replied as he placed his palm on the side of the missile. The Trans-Human program was within him, and once his skin made contact with the missile, he was able to download it into its onboard computer.
“It’s going to take another twenty seconds to bring the program online,” James related to the A.I. “This is going to be close.”
Back on Earth, Katherine, Jim, and the A.I. watched the events unfold through James’s eyes. “What if he doesn’t activate it in time?” Katherine asked.
“He will,” Jim replied, trying to sound reassuring, though he was truly unsure.
“Five seconds,” James said. The light from the sun was now too much for even his new eyes to filter out, and the heat was beginning to cause his skin to glow red as it threatened to liquefy.
“Done!” he finally shouted as he let the missile continue on its trajectory without him; he retreated as quickly as he could. “It’s away!”
Only a handful of seconds later, the anti-matter missile ignited.
22
James had made just enough distance between himself and point zero that he was able to turn and, through his mental connection, give those back on Earth a view that was unlike anything any human had ever looked upon before. The sun began to grow dim, flickering like a candle in the final moments before it succumbs, all the while eerily silent.
“It’s happening,” James whispered. “I’m too close. I’m not going to make it!”
“Try, James!” Katherine shouted in desperation.
James turned and began to streak away from the collapsing sun, opening wormholes one after another so he could cheat the speed of light, desperately trying to make it as far away from the birth of this manmade black hole. The collapsing solar system nipped at his heels, bending the rules of the universe as the fabric of space and time was sucked into the blackness of the black hole.
He didn’t know why he was fleeing. He knew the plan meant he would, in all likelihood, be caught in the wake of the black hole, that he would be sucked in, past the event horizon, and have to face the unknowable fate within. Yet he raced away from it as fast as he could, terrified as though he were drowning—fighting for his life.
Back in the mainframe, the A.I. spoke to him, his words calm and even. “It will be all right. You will survive this, my son. Do not be afraid.” He placed his hand on James’s shoulder.
The calming words of the A.I. brought James back to his senses. He suddenly stopped.
“Embrace it,” advised the A.I.
James turned and gazed upon the coming blackness. Space was being pulled toward point zero, and James was about to become a part of it. He suddenly realized that this would be the greatest moment of his life. “Embrace it,” he whispered.
The trinity watched the event horizon approach from the mainframe.
“He must be terrified,” Katherine said, mortified.
“Indeed, I am sure he is,” replied the A.I. as he watched the dazzling spectrum of colors from the rim of Hawking radiation as it approached James. “I envy him.”
When the event horizon reached James, he held his arms up to the coming wave and watched them begin to distort, first lengthening as the gravity pulled them toward it, then shortening as the gravity compressed them.
“There’s no pain,” James related with awe.
In the next moment, the screen went completely dark, and James’s form vanished in the mainframe.
“Is that it?” Katherine asked, horrified. “Is he…gone?”
“Yes,” the A.I. replied.
23
The golden beams of information that were ubiquitous within the operator’s position were magnified now to such an extent that Katherine and Jim had to cover their eyes as the A.I. grappled with an influx of information that tested even his extraordinary capacity. His stare remained fixed on the incoming information as he stood perfectly still, like a statue.
“What happens now?” Katherine asked.
“Trans-Human has successfully been initiated,” the A.I. explained, “so it now falls to us to ask it to reverse itself.”
“What if ‘it’ refuses?” Katherine worried. “Aren’t you asking it to destroy itself just as you gave birth to it?”
“Yes,” the A.I. replied, “but part of its programming is an understanding that it must protect and respect humanity.”
“Let’s hope it’s as altruistic as you think,” Katherine said gravely.
The A.I.’s expression and tone suddenly changed from one of intense concentration to one of awe. “It has already begun,” the A.I. whispered.
“Katherine!” Jim shouted as he expanded a view screen so they could watch the events unfolding in space. The black hole that had grown so large that it had swallowed the space around it all the way to Mercury was now receding—an astronomical wave of blackness withdrawing, the Hawking radiation rings shrinking like a pricked balloon.
“For the first time in history, the physical universe is exhibiting intelligence,” Jim said in awe.
Katherine watched with horror as the black hole withdrew and as the darkness shrank away at a greater and greater speed. Right in front of her eyes, the sun suddenly burst back to life, gleaming as bright as ever. “I don’t understand,” Katherine admitted. “If the black hole has completely vanished, then how is the solar system still reversing itself? The Trans-Human program only existed from the moment that the sun was extinguished, right?”
“Think of it like a child’s swing, my dear,” the A.I. explained as he simultaneously continued the sophisticated dance with the incoming information from the Trans-Human program. “If the child pulls back and lets herself go, the momentum will carry her past the starting position and right through the swinging motion. Our Trans-Human program has done the same thing.”
“The informational capacity was so large that its momentum is allowing the A.I. to run the solar system back in time, even before the program was initiated,” Jim further explained.