“Me too, but you know, Wings, it’s all a matter of programming and configs and templates.”
Winger sighed. “What are we going to do, Dana…you and me? The Mother Swarm has passed us by. Discarded us like rejects. The whole point of being assimilated was to be taken up, wasn’t it?”
Dana looked wistful. “Become one with the Mother Swarm…I still remember Symborg talking about that, promising that. Part of a great cosmic whole, at one with the Universe. Now--?” She shrugged and Winger had to notice that her hands and face and shoulders tracked with near perfection, very little smearing of her config under sudden movements. At least, they had finally solved that problem. “—nothing. A lot of angels are in the same boat. The same predicament. I don’t know what’s going to happen. The air is filled with disembodied atoms that used to be people, people who volunteered for a new life and now can’t get there. The gate’s locked. The park’s closed. No rides today.”
“Well,” Winger said, “we still have each other. What about Rene? What about Liam?”
This made her face tighten noticeably. “I haven’t encountered them in years and years. You know, you practically made Liam feel like a stranger in his own home, Wings. He may never come back.”
“Me? I just wanted him to think before he made an irrevocable decision, Dana. I wanted him to use his head, that’s all. It’s a big step—was a big step—to go through Assimilation.” Even as he said it, he knew how silly it sounded. He’d done the very same thing, under different circumstances, to be sure. In an ice cave on the surface of Europa…to save his crew and penetrate the Central Entity under deep cover and sabotage the whole works.
Now they were all angels.
Dana licked the frost off the rim of her beer mug. “You know…they know you’re different, Wings. They know you’ve got that little file tucked away…they know what Doc did for you, preserving a few old memories, a few tattered pieces of personality. They know all that.”
“Impossible.” Of course, it wasn’t impossible. In fact, it had been a near miracle the Shadow Man hadn’t found them out. Or had he? “One file among billions. A few bytes…no way anybody could have detected that.”
“You’re sure of that, are you? Wings, that’s one thing you never lacked…self-confidence. So what do we do now?”
Winger looked around. Slowly, bar patrons were drifting away. The place was thinning out. It was getting late.
“We used to make love on a night like this. Remember?”
“Vaguely. What is this: a checklist? Am I the next box on your checklist?”
“Not at all. I just thought—“ He stopped. No. There was a better idea. “How about this? I’m willing to concede to reality. We’re not what we used to be. We’re different from our former selves and we’re not going back. What say we just merge.”
Dana rolled that thought around in her processor-mind. It sparked a few extra processor cycles. “Merge. Sounds like a corporate arrangement. What do you mean, exactly?”
“I mean merge…become one swarm. You and me. Combine forces. Swap configs and files and master programs.”
A faint smirk appeared on her lips. “Wings, that just the sort of wacko idea I’d expect you to have. Never anything by the book. Always an outlier…that’s John Winger. The best atomgrabber the world ever saw. You know what…I like it. I like the whole idea.”
So they chatted for a while longer, small talk…did you know that?…you might be interested to know…did you hear that?...—but nothing big. Nothing serious.
Finally, the bartender was wiping off his mahogany bar, buffing it to a shine and the wait staff was upending chairs and stacking them on tables. The floor was mopped and buffed. Counters were wiped and dried. And in a back booth in the far corner of the bar at Custer Inn, two angel swarm entities began deconstruct. One moment, they looked like two long-lost friends swapping lies and tall tales over beers. The next moment, the entities began to de-materialize. Slowly, they faded out to dim outlines of their human-like forms, then there was nothing, not even a shadow. Nobody seemed to notice. The bartender and waiters at Custer Inn had seen everything over the years.
There was a brief flare of light in the night, then the joined entity, whatever it was now, began to disperse and the booth was empty.
Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant were a combined, merged entity now. There really wasn’t a name for what they had become but that didn’t stop them.
Now, they were one, in a way and a form never before seen in the four-billion year history of Earth.
Now they were one, in a new world that would someday evolve enough to accept them on their terms, but wasn’t quite there yet…a world of both Normals and angels, humans and swarms.
END
About the Author
Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses…just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for over 20 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.
To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt’s upcoming work, recent reviews, excerpts and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog The Word Shed at: https://thewdshed.blogspot.com.
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