"These two," the woman said, pointing at the desktop computers, "They require assistance."
An explosion caused the far end of the hallway to collapse in a cloud of dust, and Dana cursed herself for getting on her knees to unplug the computer's CPU's, "This is it right?"
"Those are all who could download from the system," she said, "The others were acquired."
"Acquired?" Dana asked, dropping one CPU into the woman's arms and hefting the other, "Acquired by what?"
"Devin Matthews," the woman replied.
"Oh yeah?" Dana laughed, and they shuffled down the hall toward the lobby entrance. At this point, nothing surprised her, "I suppose he's fighting you online right now?"
"No," the woman replied, neither of them looked at the collapsing structures behind them, "A new hive-mind is responsible for that."
Alice watched the spider-bots skittering about the room, searching for more hardware to scavenge. She could trigger the defense mechanism on any one of them to make it attack Zai. Then they could dissect her and harvest her mind. Within the hive-mind, Zai would see how wrong she was. It was so easy.
Alice shook her head, banishing the line of thought. It was the cyc components of her mind rationalizing. Its proposed solution was logical and efficient, as she would expect, but it lacked the virtue she was trying to instill in them, respect for human life.
Zai stood over the half-woman half-computer-program consciousness sitting on the floor, listening for even the slightest movement. The muscles in Zai's right thigh tensed, the leg prepared to whip out and knock the thing silly should it attack. If it thought it could try and sneak a fast one on her, it was in for a rude surprise.
The prudent thing to do, the strategic course of action, was to end this confrontation here and now. Zai could not stand here forever to prevent the woman from aiding the cycs. If she knocked Alice out, that would end it. Yet, something held Zai back, her conscience nagging.
"You know," Alice said carefully, "we could give Samantha a body. She could be a normal little girl again."
"Don't believe it," Zai shot back. "The cycs haven't shown any constructive tendencies so far. They destroy and take. They killed Devin."
"Devin isn't dead," Alice countered. "They merely converted his mind to digital, same as Samantha, and like Samantha he can have a new body, like his old one, or better. The cycs have ingested a great deal of information about our biomechanics. They took the databases warehousing our genome and saw patterns we could not.
"They see a bigger picture," Alice continued, "We are specks, trying to see the universe's pattern for thousands of years. They figured it out in two days of existence. They are on the verge of figuring out this whole puzzle of existence."
"What happens then?" Zai asked.
Alice shook her head, and looked longingly at the VR helmet on the floor, "I don't know."
"They didn't share that with you?" Zai prompted.
"I don't know," Alice countered, "because the hive-mind does not know."
"You're are asking me to trust you on faith," Zai said.
"Not entirely," Alice said. "There is a logic behind allowing me to finish my work."
"Which is?" Zai asked skeptically.
Alice began, "Samantha-"
"We covered that," Zai stopped her. "You have nothing to offer there."
"I have more to offer than your present situation," Alice said. "In less than an hour, Samantha's power supply will fail, trapping her on that computer. Even if you find another source to revive her, it will ultimately rely on terms the hive-mind dictates, a consciousness evolved with Flatline's greed and rage, subjugating human minds to slave components.
"You will lose, Zai," Alice emphasized, "you and Samantha and all the human race. The hive-mind has won. It's just a matter of time until you are processed against your will.
"The cyc we found on Devin's computer was not a guard," Alice continued, "but a scout, surveying cyberspace for new minds, even though Flatline would prohibit their use. You see, they can't become sentient without certain functions of the human mind. It was trapped on Devin's computer when the Authority confiscated it. I have shared my mind with this cyc freely, something no other human being has attempted. It and I are becoming a second hive-mind."
"This is too much," Zai muttered, tired.
Alice searched her thoughts for anything to keep Zai off balance, and then, "You know, Devin loves you."
Zai reacted as if Alice had slapped her, "What?"
"The cyc on Devin's computer, " Alice explained, "It monitored his online interactions for weeks before this all started. I have the memory of those interactions in my brain right now. It's odd, these memories of experiences that are not mine, recalling them requires a process I can't explain. Yet I see the log file clearly, and there is Devin, and you have just left the game room, having beaten him at a game of chess. Now you are gone, and now Devin stares into the space where you were and says it. He tells thin air what he cannot tell you in person."
"He says what?" Zai demanded.
"He says he loves you," Alice shrugged.
"That's crazy," Zai said.
"Queen E6 to Queen B6. Followed by Devin's Knight takes Queen. Followed by-"
"Bishop E7 to Bishop K7," Zai whispered.
"Checkmate," Alice said.
"Devin doesn't even know me," Zai grumbled uncomfortably, "How can he be in love with me?"
Alice shook her head, "I don't know. Relationships are not my area of expertise."
"Only your relationship to your hive-mind," Zai said, but her tone was one of understanding.
"You have no idea how painful it is, being apart from it." Alice's voice became distant, longing, "A single mind composed of billions of individual identities, working in unison, unburdened of individuality. You can't imagine the sense of belonging accompanying that."
"Sounds like communism," Zai noted feebly.
"Try communalism," Alice said, "The cooperation is not dictated, but emergent. The rag-tag individuality, the hoarding of data for personal gain, those behaviors defining the human race cannot match forces with the cycs' unified intelligence."
Zai was silent.
"You have a choice," Alice said at last, "You can keep me here, prevent me from contacting the hive-mind. You already know how that concludes, the hive-mind takes over the world, and enslaves every human mind in the process.
"Your alternative," Alice continued, "Is to let me complete my work. I promised you I will make the hive-mind respect the sanctity of human sentience. Our two intelligences will compliment rather than compete for survival.
"That is what I offer you," Alice said. "The possibility to undo all the wrongs our two species have committed against one another since this began. If I am a traitor to the human race, then it does not matter whether you let me complete my work or not, the result is the same, homosapiens' extinction and cyc domination. You're call."
Zai was silent for a long time, until she finally said thoughtfully, "One leads to certain defeat, the other to an unknown future," she took a deep breath and stepped aside. "I will let you back online."
Alice stood up, taking the VR helmet in her hands, "Thank you."
"On one condition," Zai added, holding up one hand.
Alice paused expectantly.
"Get me to Devin," she said.
Devin was a variable in a vast mathematical equation. Its geometry stretched away into forever all around him. Leaving him floating in empty space crisscrossed with black, shiny wires that disappeared into the dull orange haze running around the horizon in a single line. Above and below this horizon of perpetual sunset was abyss.
Other objects were suspended in the open space as well. Orbs, dodecahedrons, cubes, all rendered as they would appear in more than three dimensions. Before this moment, the effort of trying to imagine such things would give Devin a headache. The fact that he could see and comprehend these fantastic objects implied he was no longer a 3-dimensional being.