Flatline snarled, drool dangling from his maw, "And I will take it back. It's in my nature to want total control over not just the cycs, but all of it, the entire world."
"You were created, however accidentally, with that nature," Devin noted. "It's not fair that you should be condemned for their mistakes."
"And my nature is not to care about the injustice," Flatline countered. A second set of arms tore through the sides of his shirt.
"The cycs can still fix you," Devin assured him.
Flatline shook his head, distorted ears flapping, "Not if I don't want fixing."
"As you are programmed to not want," Devin frowned sadly.
Zai took a step toward Flatline, "I can put you out of your misery."
"You know my survival imperative won't let me concede to that suggestion," Flatline grinned to show he appreciated her irony. "It's not being flawed that offends me..."
"It's that the cycs wanted my mind to take your place," Devin said.
"They were considering other minds too," Flatline acknowledged, "but yours was the most helpful. You gave them the Library of Congress. After I grew the cycs, guided their evolution, and freed them onto the World Wide Web, they still wanted your mind's functions. That wasn't fair."
Devin frowned, "Almeric Lim grew and evolved the cycs, not you Flatline."
Flatline's face went dull, "I have no response to that."
"Devin, be careful," Zai warned. "It can't handle that kind of logic."
Devin nodded and said to Flatline, "You resent the hive-mind's rejecting you."
Flatline returned and muttered, "I resent being obsolete."
"Nothing with the power to self-improve is ever obsolete," Devin said.
"For that very reason," Zai interceded, "I am leaning toward Flatline not being alive. It has a programming block that prevents it from self-improvement. It cannot grow beyond what we see before us."
Devin could only consider the nearly fully formed mass of disfiguration that was Almeric Lim's onetime avatar, or was Almeric Flatline's? As flawed as this consciousness was, Devin believed it was alive and sentient. It was as if this demon-dog world-domination-bot were a logic puzzle, a programming dilemma he could solve. If only there were more time.
"Devin," Zai pulled on his arm. "We have to go. Any moment Flatline will be strong enough to fight you again. Soon after that he will be strong enough to escape this Intranet. I have the satellite in place above the complex, ready to execute Alice's final orders, but I can't with you still here. I'm safe, but you are still dependent on this Intranet for existence."
Devin nodded, never taking his eyes off the mutating monster before him, "I'll be there. Go ahead of me."
"You can't change him Devin," Zai urged one last time and disappeared.
"Flatline," Devin said, "Let the cycs fix you. They can make you whole. Don't let it end like this."
"You are so pathetically naïve Omni," Flatline shook his head in contempt. His two primary eyes split into dual pupils, rotating within their sockets. "I could play along with your suggestion, just to get out of this failing Intranet. Then I would turn on you and the world again."
"Then why don't you?"
Flatline flashed him a look he did not understand, "This is not an end. The cycs betrayed me, I will be more powerful without them."
"For what it's worth, Almeric," Devin told the chatbot, "I consider you my friend."
"I consider you my rival, and I will destroy you!" the demon howled as it leapt at him.
Devin fell back, latching onto the connection Zai had left. The Intranet shook once more. As Devin slipped through the new connection and out of the intranet, he saw it pixilate and disappear behind him. Flatline's howl cut short in the darkness.
Dana cradled the very confused woman, formerly "Child Production Unit" in her arms and surveyed the robot junkyard surrounding her. There was a moment of fantastic brilliance and then all robots and humans the cycs occupied were surrounded with a dissipating glowing steam. The robots went still, even the guardian-bots destroying the complex, and the humans were looking around bewildered.
"Was it a dream?" Sarah asked the detective.
Before Dana could answer, a pillar of light came down through the clouds. It vanished into the roof of DataStreams' center building. Moments later, she detected a glow behind its glass façade as the laser penetrated deeper. The building's top warped, folding in upon itself as the steel girders within melted down. Panes of glass popped or warped under the intense heat. The structure slowly imploded, liquefied materials and flames coating the shrinking mass until it was an unrecognizable mound, surrounded with abandoned robot sentinels. The pillar of light vanished, leaving a hole in the overcast skies, where a sunbeam shined through, illuminating the island.
"Nice shot Zai," Dana whispered, watching the sunbeam float away. It was over.
"You'll be turning left just ahead," Devin said. "Walk a little closer to the right. There's a group of people coming down the hall, and you've got about four feet between you and the wall."
Zai grinned and did as Devin instructed, although she had gotten along just fine without his guidance before. Devin was being overly helpful, but she did not say anything. After all, there wasn't much else for him to do without a body. He simply rode along with her, passively observing her life.
"Two more doors down," Devin said through her earpiece. He had a full 360-degree view of the hospital interior from the optic connection on Zai's headband.
Dana leaned casually against the wall beside the door, reading the day's news. A paper printout, Devin noted in amusement. The woman was such a luddite. She looked up as Zai approached and smiled. Devin could barely see the scars she received in the battle at Tangier Island. She originally intended to keep them as a reminder of the whole experience, but was now obviously using a home skin-repair kit to slowly fade them out of her life.
"Hello Zai," she said cordially, then looked at the space around Zai's head, "Hello Devin, wherever you are."
"Hello Dana," he replied.
Two other figures stood nearby, a golden falcon and a monkey samurai. Both were translucent and shimmered like ghosts. This was a side-effect of the holographic projection system's functions. It bounced light as particles into surrounding gas particles to create the optical illusion. The shimmering, ghostly effect was a result of the system attempting to keep up with the shifting atmosphere.
At least, that was the present theory. Scientists had always channeled their energies into understanding the natural world, now they were confronted with all these inventions left behind by a vastly more advanced civilization. The technologies the cycs had abandoned in their transcendence were like magic, so incredible and undecipherable were their workings. There were new forms of power, perfect communications protocols, faster than light transfer rates, and tools whose functions were yet unknown. The Legion of Discord were among the many technogeeks forging ahead with their possibilities, like children exploring a playground.
"You know Devin," Traveler's avatar hologram said, "the Internet has stabilized sufficiently for you to come back online. You don't have to ride around in Zai's palm-computer forever."
"I'm vacationing," Devin stated simply.
Zai mentally rolled her eyes at this, grinned knowingly, and said, "We're sort of attached at the cerebral cortex."
"So," Dana folded her print out in half and said, "what do you kids think of all this world wide chaos? Corporations going bankrupt, currencies valueless... You still think this is all a good thing Devin?"
"Evolution is hard enough," Devin replied, "so how could we expect revolution to be easier? The old system needed rebuilding. The human race needed to filter out the bad components to allow the good ideas to propagate more freely. We owe a debt to the cycs for being the catalyst for change."