Aldous squirmed in the snow, taking his eyes off the fallen and crumpled form of his wife and rolling onto his back, determined to meet his death in the face. If he had to die, he wanted the men making that decision to have to live with the memory of his eyes.
“Captain,” one of the airmen pointed out as he approached Aldous, the airman’s rifle already pointing dangerously in the post-human’s direction, “my aug glasses are giving me a weird message. Are you getting this?”
“No. What is it?” asked the captain.
“I’m getting a do-not-kill order. It says this guy’s a VIP target.”
“Who is he?” the captain asked.
“That’s the thing. It says he’s Professor Aldous Gibson.”
A short moment passed as the trio of airmen tried to compute the information. The captain, cognizant of their time constraints, tried to remain calm, but he knew a decision had to be made quickly. He marched up to Aldous and got a visual on his aug glasses as welclass="underline" the same do-not-kill order appearing on his aug glasses. “I’m getting the same message. It says this is Gibson. We don’t have time to call this in, and the disruptors on our bird are shot. If we let him power back up, he’ll escape, but if we kill him, we could be killing a VIP.”
“There’s gotta be something wrong with the facial recognition though, Captain.” The airman who stood closest and had his gun trained on Aldous enthusiastically turned back to the captain and the other airmen as he spoke. “Aldous Gibson is seventy-four years old. This guy’s thirty at most. There’s no way this is our VIP.”
“Maybe it’s his clone or something,” the captain replied. “Who knows with these freaks?”
“Well,” the closest airman replied, as he moved one hand up to scratch under his helmet, “we either let him power back up and escape or we take him out. What’s your call, Cap?”
The captain nodded as he mulled over their dilemma.
Aldous clenched his fist and gritted his teeth.
“Cap, with all due respect, sir, we need a call on this now.”
“If we shoot this guy and he turns out to be a VIP, we’re gonna catch hell, but we also have one hell of an excuse. He doesn’t look like Gibson to me. The computer’s got to be glitchy. Let’s take him out.”
“Affirmative,” the nearest airman said, turning back to his target and raising his rifle to aim a kill shot squarely at Aldous’s temple.
Aldous’s mind’s eye suddenly flashed salvation into his field of vision. The screen read, “Full Power Reestablished.”
As the airman’s knuckle twitched on the trigger, Aldous’s cocoon suddenly reignited, blocking the bullet as it left the barrel of the rifle. Half a second later, he sent out a powerful wave of energy that overwhelmed the airmen, overloading their synapses and sending them crumpling to the snow, unconscious.
Aldous blinked twice before drawing himself up to his feet, not sure whether he was even really still alive. He’d been saved by less than a second of indecision by the captain. Had the airman made up his mind just a moment earlier, Aldous would have been dead. He suddenly thought of all of the universes in which this was, indeed the case. He thought of the A.I. and Craig, who had crossed into one of those infinite parallel possibilities.
Suddenly, he realized that the universe was about to split again as he reached yet another fork in the road. Just as he had split the universe when he’d decided to save the crippled harrier, separating himself from his wife and leaving her unprotected in the process, leading to her death, now he had to make another fateful decision. He turned back to his wife and watched her unmoving body in the snow, circled with that ghastly crimson ring of blood, her spilled life. The firefight continued all around him, though the green energy blasts of the post-humans were now few and far between. The Purists were overwhelming them, and their victory was inevitable. He had choices: reenter the fight and fall with his friends and colleagues; or fly to his wife, gather up her body, and hope that her nans—no doubt still functioning—could somehow repair her and bring her back to life. He stepped forward when he thought of that option, but he froze when he calculated the chances. While the nans would be repairing her body, he’d seen how hard she’d been driven into the rock face, vulnerable since she hadn’t yet ignited her protective cocoon. No human could have survived such an impact, but could a post-human? Aldous wanted to believe it was possible, but they’d never tested the nans under such harsh conditions. Not even Craig Emilson, whose body had been riddled with bullets and whose spine had been broken, had endured as much damage as Sam. Could they repair that much damage before her brain is completely lost, if it isn’t already? Impossible.
And even if he tried to salvage what was left of her, he knew he’d almost certainly be caught by the Purists in the attempt.
No, I can’t. There was only one reasonable course of action. No one had eyes on him. He could escape on foot, and the Purists wouldn’t be able to track him. Then he could reestablish contact with the A.I. and Craig when they returned to Universe 1.
Even though it felt wrong—even though he felt like a coward leaving her behind—he knew it was the only logical course of action.
He turned his back on the facility and began to run through the snow, away from the battle, away from the Purists, and away from Samantha. His eyes locked on a dark patch of sky between two mountain peaks in the distance and he ran toward them, not daring to break his forward stare.
14
Craig huddled close to the fireplace in the Titanic’s first-class smoking section. He removed his jacket and left it crumpled in a wet pile at the foot of the flames while he held his numb hands up to the fire, rubbing them in an attempt to bring back feeling; he’d never been so numb in his life.
Behind him, the room was empty, other than the two unconscious stewards who had tried to prevent his entrance. The tuxedo-clad gaggle of men who’d gathered in the room previously had made a hasty retreat, dumping their brandy snifters in the process. The scent of the hard liquor still hung in the air, intermingled with the cigar smoke.
“Craig? Can you hear me?” the A.I.’s voice suddenly spoke.
“I can hear you. What are you doing in my head?”
“Apparently, Samantha has administered my mother program to you rather than herself. I’m trying to establish a better connection to your synapses so I can access some of your systems.”
“My systems?”
“Craig, I’m getting an internal temperature reading now. Do you realize that your body temperature is only 32.9 degrees Celsius? You’re hypothermic. This is very dangerous. You need to seek warmth immediately.”
“Way ahead of you,” Craig replied, his eyes beginning to droop from fatigue. “I’m by a fireplace.”
“Excellent. I’m still trying to establish a connection to your optics so you can see me and I can see through your eyes. I’m currently blind to your surroundings. Craig, are you still shivering?”