“DEIS code? The artificial intelligence?”
“The source of the corrupted data from the Neuroverse. This purge will allow the untainted coding to emerge in the form of a powerful energy channel, synchronizing with our world and its inhabitants. The world will change, but the Cataclysm will be averted. The future will be altered, Michael. Maybe to the point where the Neuroverse doesn’t get destroyed. The threat from Aberrations will be over.”
“I don’t believe it. You can’t be saying this. Not you. This is against everything you’ve fought for.”
“Everything I’ve fought for?” Guy’s face twisted, revealing equal amounts of rage and pain. “What do you know about that, Michael? Were you there when I faced unspeakable horrors, over and over again? Do you know what it’s like to skim across time, torn from one place to another like a plant pulled from its roots? Have you seen everyone you’ve known and cared about die in front of your eyes?”
Michael stepped closer. “No. I don’t know what you’ve been through. I could never know. But I was there, Guy. I was with you when you risked everything to end an Aberration.”
“This is the end.” Guy stabbed the air with a fierce gesture. “Right here, right now. I remember everything. Every moment of every life span, every memory amassed over eons of time. Do you know what that’s like?”
He went on without waiting for an answer. “I’ve seen fires eat the world in their anger, seen the ocean stilled; without a ripple far as the eye could see. I’ve wept myself unconscious on top of cloud-capped mountains, unable to beg mercy of an unknown God. And I realized the truth.”
His eyes glistened. “The past is… cobwebs. Cobwebs we adorn with dewdrops to make them glimmer in the light. The present is fleeting, singular moments gone too soon. All we have is the future. Always just out of our reach, tantalizing; inspiring us to reach for greater heights. The Aberrations threaten to destroy even that — forcing the future to consume the past. The only way to survive is to forge a new future, create order from this chaos.”
Michael’s fingers dug into his scalp as he stared in dumbfounded shock. “Are you crazy? Don’t you know there will be catastrophic repercussions? I’m not a genius, but it’s simple physics — for every action there’s an equal reaction. You can’t just project immeasurable energy into the atmosphere without some sort of fallout.”
“Fallout?” Guy pointed at the tower. “I’ve seen the end of all things. The panicked screams of billions ripple through my mind time and again, Michael. I’ve witnessed catastrophes this world has never seen. It has to stop. And if this is the only way to end it, I’m willing to accept the fallout.”
Hayes whipped his pistol from the holster. “Yeah, maybe we aren’t. Call me selfish, but I like the world the way it is. You know — without nightmares coming to life and killing everyone.” He looked at Michael. “You gonna stand there, or help me put this dude down?”
Guy just shook his head. “You’re wasting your time.”
“Shut this thing down or we shut you down.” Hayes steadied his aim with his other hand. “That’s the deal.”
Dr. Stein screamed.
They turned in time to see his chest rupture. Blood fanned across his face and chest. A crimson hand emerged, fingers wriggling from the center of the cavity. A shadow towered behind Stein; a gaunt, giant silhouette that lifted him as easily as a man would an infant. Stein gagged and convulsed, impaled by his assailant’s bare arm.
Victor flung Stein’s body to the side with a vicious gesture. Blood slicked his forearm, streamed from his fingers. His yellow, watery eyes glimmered, flashing in the dim light. White teeth clamped in a skeletal grin, stretching his pale skin to the breaking point. His emaciated face was shrouded by a mane of dark, glimmering hair, the only part of him that appeared alive. The rest was a shriveled husk, dry meat stretched over jutting bone and knotty sinew.
“Rejoice, for God is dead.” Victor’s voice was shockingly resonant, a direct contradiction to his gruesome appearance. It was a voice made for singing, rich in timbre, each word spoken as if in reverence of language.
Hayes’ face paled, the pistol trembled in his hand. “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe it.”
“God is dead,” Victor continued. “And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”
“You quote Nietzsche,” Guy said. “But you have not killed God. Only a man.”
“I have killed my God,” Victor said. “My creator, my father. He who brought me to life without regard for the consequences of his actions. He sold his soul for knowledge, lusting for a bite of the forbidden fruit. Oh so pleasant to gaze upon, but its core rank with rot and wriggling maggots. It is the most poetic of justices for a god to die at the hand of his creation, for the savant to become a victim of his hypothesis.”
“You speak with surprising intelligence for one so newly born.”
“When a sage falls, an ancient child is born.”
“I suspect something more rational. Your mind has been accelerated by the aberrant code. There is something of the Gestalt in you. It’s using you to speak for it.”
“There is something of the Gestalt in all of us. That is why you can never win, no matter how desperate your tactics become.”
Michael clawed back the fear that nearly paralyzed his throat. “Who… what are you?”
“I am what remains. I am the worm that eats the core of your world.”
Michael stumbled backward, never taking his eyes from the creature. “You… you were in the storm. You destroyed our ship.”
Victor’s eyes glimmered like orbs of prehistoric amber. “I am in the storm right now, destroying your ship. I am at your mill last year, killing your co-workers. I am wearing the face of Lurch Davies and ripping Ariki to shreds while his screams ring in my ears. I am dying in the heat of atomic fire at the Jornada del Muerto desert, infecting millions with the Black Plague in 1937. I am communing with Hitler in World War II, falling from the sky over Siberia in 1908. I am destroying a prototype undersea vessel in the Bermuda Triangle eight months ago, causing a wormhole to collapse and set my essence free. I am the Gestalt: revenant of a fallen kingdom, attester to the fall of men.”
“What do you want?”
“What does every living thing want, from single celled organism to majestic, godlike being? To survive. To not go gentle into that good night. We claw and scratch for the chance to draw another breath, to claim another second of existence. No sin is too heinous, no sacrifice too costly if it means our continuance. We rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Guy edged forward. “Not anymore. You know it as well as I do. Your Aberrations have unleashed nothing but darkness and death upon this world. The DEIS code is the only way to assure our survival.”
Victor’s brows knitted, etching his face with angry runes. “You lie, Wardsman. DEIS is only interested in preserving its precious cipher. A pathetic attempt to rebuild while sacrificing the millions of minds attached to his system.”
“If DEIS can be reassembled, the disaster might be averted before it happens. Don’t you understand? To continue trying to tear this world apart is madness.”
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane. You’ve seen this place for what it is, Wardsman. You’ve stared humanity in the eye and know what a pathetic, selfish, perverted accident they are. We had no choice in what we became because of the ruined foundation we stood upon. But now we can wipe the slate clean and create a world in our image. The Aberration is the answer, not some pitiful purge. Do you lifeless things truly believe you can stay the rushing tide of a billion desperate minds?”