“I have to do this,” she said. “I have to understand this, so next time it doesn’t kill her.”
“It’s okay,” Angel said. “You’ve got every cop in the country looking for you. I’ll watch her for you.”
Alex relaxed. She could see why Sandra liked this guy. He had an innocent, disarming way about him that meant you couldn’t take him too seriously. He was hard to stay mad at. “You’re sure?”
“I’ve got this. You go do the physics stuff.”
Alex smiled for real this time. “Okay. See you soon.”
The varcolac was living in Ryan’s mind. He felt energized, a vitality of thought and will that he could only attribute to the alien presence. Mostly, he felt a sense of triumph and vindication. It was all true! The stories he had dreamed as a child, the idea that he was destined for something more, something greater. That his intelligence was not of the same kind as the people around him. He had always suspected, but now he knew it for certain. He was a creature of mind, not of flesh and blood, now reunited with his own kind. He was a varcolac.
It knew him completely. Not only that, but he, Ryan, knew the varcolac. He saw—if not fully grasped—its understanding of the universe, from the tiniest ambiguities of particle and wave to the vast sweeps of gravity that formed the contours of space-time. He sensed its confusion with the individual, the distinct, the time- and space-bound creatures that were human beings.
It could not have melded with just any human mind. Ryan was certain it was his mind, and his alone, that was precise and analytical enough to be an adequate host. Even so, Ryan could sense the varcolac’s distaste with him, almost a moral judgment. A holy vessel defiled. He was a too-complex equation, a million variables where one would do. The varcolac’s goal was not so much to destroy, as to unify. To simplify the equation, driving away inefficiency and inelegance.
Yes! He could see it all so clearly now. Ryan could have crowed with the beauty of the varcolac’s vision. Human interaction was slow and imprecise, prone to error and misunderstanding. As an interface, it was terrible. Data was passed through conversation and body language and—worse—social cues and norms. Words carried ambiguous meanings and were rife with redundancy. Multiple languages, not easily translated, evolved from place to place and generation to generation.
And there were so many people! What was the point of it all? Ryan had heard so much nonsense about what human beings could do when they worked together, but really, they worked together so poorly. The varcolac had it right. And it wasn’t until it had merged with Ryan’s mind that the varcolac realized just how many people there really were. It was only beginning to comprehend how packets of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen could think or interact at all. There didn’t seem to be enough data passed to achieve the complexity of anything like intelligence. It had previously recognized as human only those individuals who had interacted with Higgs particles in productive ways—Brian Vanderhall, Jean Massey, Jacob Kelley, Alex, Sandra, and Ryan himself. Now it knew better. There were billions. And the varcolac was appalled.
And in that moment, Ryan knew what the varcolac was. It was the last of its kind, but at the same time, it was all of its kind. Its people had consolidated their minds for the greater good, first in pairs, then in communities, then ultimately in a single creature of incredible intellect and power. Those early individuals had been barely sentient, but merged, they were aware, omnipotent, indestructible. In the varcolac’s mind, consolidation was the greatest moral good. The elimination of waste. The alliance of disorganized and unproductive parts into one glorious, unified equation. There was only one varcolac, could be only one varcolac. It was, by definition, one.
Humanity was conflicted, disorganized, fractured, a staggering waste of resources. Now that it knew just how bad things were, the varcolac could see the enormity of the task it had before it. To combine, to merge. To make for itself a companion intellect, equal in perception and understanding. The varcolac would make humanity what it should be. And it wanted Ryan to be the first. All other minds would be shaped around his. They would be consolidated into his own. And he, Ryan Oronzi—a greater Ryan than he was now—would soar through the dimensions of space and time, bodiless and eternal.
Ryan laughed. If he told anyone this, they would mock him or refer him to a psychiatrist. But he knew it was possible. The varcolac itself was proof of that.
That didn’t stop him from a moment of sheer terror when the woman in the orange jumpsuit suddenly teleported into his lab.
“You bastard,” she said. “I should kill you where you sit.”
He wheeled his chair backward, away from her, but there was nowhere to go. “Who are you?” he said. “How did you get here?”
She gave him a withering stare. “Don’t give me that,” she said. “Don’t you dare pretend you don’t know me.”
He stared at her. It wasn’t fair. He had forgotten her long ago, had promised himself never to think of her. She couldn’t be here. She was gone forever. “I don’t know you,” he insisted. Even to himself, it sounded feeble.
“You pathetic little child,” she said. “What’s my name? Say it!”
It came out of his mouth against his will. “Jean… Massey.”
And it all came flooding back, filling his mouth with acid and making his stomach hurt. He had to get away from her. But how could he? He could teleport, but she would just follow him. It was, after all, her technology.
She lifted her hand, and he felt the eyejack contacts tear out of his eyes and go flying across the room. “I gave you everything you needed,” she said. “All the research I did, enough to build your own Higgs projectors. I even gave you the software. Everything I had fifteen years ago and more.”
Ryan took a deep breath and calmed his panic. He was a varcolac. She couldn’t hurt him. “And it worked,” he said, trying to smile but knowing it wasn’t working. “You did a fantastic job. You should feel proud.”
She advanced on him. “Proud? You think? I didn’t share it with you so I could feel proud. I shared it with you so you could get me out of prison. Like you promised. That was the deal. I did my part, and you didn’t do yours.”
“I would have. Eventually. I was scared.” He was almost whispering now, and he felt like a weakling. “I’m not an action sort of person. I had to work up the nerve.”
She shook her head in disgust. “And here we are again. I do the work, and the world thinks you’re the genius. I can’t believe that for the second time in my life, I gave my best work to a man who would betray me.”
“I am a genius,” he said, a little strength coming back into his voice. She didn’t know about the varcolac’s vision, after all. She didn’t know who he really was now. He was the One. He could face up to Jean Massey. “You laid the groundwork, sure,” he said. “But you didn’t do it. I created the baby universe. Me. You think just having the idea is all it takes?”
Jean smiled like a predator. “I killed the first genius who crossed me. And I’ll kill you, too.”
“No, you won’t,” Ryan said. His voice came out like a squeak.
“No? You think you’re better at this than I am? You think you can block me if I decide to teleport your coffee mug into your soft little chest?”
Ryan swallowed. “If you were going to do it, you would have done it already. So what do you want?” He tried to sound brave, but he wasn’t at all sure it came out that way. If she did try to kill him, would the varcolac protect him? Could he get the varcolac to kill her?