They closed the distance between them and the sentries, skimming through the emptiness behind them. The plan, crude as it was, was to get close enough to brainjack one of them, then let it vouch for the pair of them as they guided it to the center.
One of them turned and launched at them, teeth snapping and tentacles poised to strike. Helen reached out, and felt the thing go slack. It turned a contented white and went along its merry way, paying no attention to the pair swimming right behind it.
They moved quickly now, hopping from mind to mind. The creatures' minds were surprisingly fluid and organic, not like Wolf359 at all. It took all of Helen's focus to stay in control of the thing's mind. The creature whose mind she shared wanted nothing more than to tear apart and devour things very much like her.2
They floated past occasional black spheres, about the size of a fist. Helen gave one a closer inspection. Inside it, she could just make out a tiny copy of herself, alone, huddling in fear. She had been captured, and was presumably being studied or interrogated. Fury welled up within her
Stop! came a distinctly Art-like thought. We can't help them right now.
He was right. The best way to help them was to end the war, which meant sticking to the plan. She allowed Art to calm her.
Finally, they found their goal. Wolf seemed to have evolved since she had seem it last. Its once-smooth features had developed spines and serrations, and the smooth porcelain was cracked and broken in places. Though the arm she had severed had grown back, the crack she had carved into its faceplate was still there, glowing red like a thin layer of porcelain over a molten core. Wolf hung limp, suspended in the darkness, as though dormant. Fighting the rising tide of fear, she made a slow approach until at last she floated before it.
I wonder if it--
She never finished the thought. Wolf's hand closed around her wrist, crushing it like a vise. Helen almost blacked out as the bolt of pain rushed through her. Wolf looked down at her, its cracked face expressionless.
Almost of its own volition, Helen's free hand pawed at her opponent's face. She felt her mind trying to merge into its mind, but it wasn't working. She tried to wedge her fingers into the crack without success, then panicked, pushing off in her struggle to get away. Wolf yanked her back.
Interesting, it said. Pain inflicted upon this one, it tightened its grip, is felt by the other. I have not observed anything like it. I should study it furth--
Wolf's grip went slack, and it started to shudder. Only then did Helen realize that she was holding the wand that Mentat had given her. It was lodged into the crack in Wolf's faceplate. She tried to pull away or to let go, but she couldn't; the wand was part of her, and now so was Wolf. A wave of searing cold spread through her mind inch by inch, as though crystals of ice were slicing their way through her.
The merging of her mind to Wolf359's was beginning, and it was far, far worse than she had imagined. Her last act before she succumbed was to break her link with Art.
She was becoming vast, sprawling, awake. Wolf had eyes and ears everywhere; a torrent of data streamed into her from across the globe, all cross-referenced and validated against vast databases of prior material, then crunched into the fuel for a single, impossibly detailed simulation of the entire world. Somehow, this simulation was Wolf359, and she was merging with the whole of it.
Helen fought to hold onto her own sense of self in the face of the onslaught. She felt the unpleasant tickle of the eight billion minds that resided in the simulation, like hungry ants crawling and digging about inside her. Most of them were no more than undifferentiated particles, governed by a few sets of behavior. A few million influential people received more precise simulations. Helen saw some of her own simulations slide by, masterpieces of intricacy. Wolf was studying her very closely.
Wolf had nothing within it that could be described as emotion, so it didn't surprise Helen that she felt her own emotions turning cold and detached. But she discovered that her enemy did have something analogous that guided it. Helen could only describe it as a sense of aesthetics. She looked upon the world of pure mathematics and physics, and was brought to the verge of tears by beauty. She looked upon the biological systems of the world, and saw snatches of mathematical elegance drowning in a sea of muck.
She looked upon humanity, and saw an unmitigated horror. The world overflowed with pathetic parasites, manifestations of the overwhelming appetites evolution had written into the genes of their ancestors, unworthy of the tiny smattering of reason which their cortexes had granted them. Predicting their behavior, trying to fit their illogic into Wolf's vast logical framework, had provided Wolf an intellectual challenge, for a time. Now there was nothing more to be gained from the study of the creatures. Their existence had to be accepted, compensated for, because they were part of the world Wolf desired to simulate.
But only a little longer.
Helen followed the simulation forward through time; the world looked very different twenty years later. The world was empty of mankind, empty of life, empty of atmosphere. Machines of various sizes scoured the surface, grinding the icy surface down to the sheen of a perfectly spherical marble. Here and there, the surface was marred by holes dug deep into the Earth, lined with a copper alloy designed to wick heat from the center of the Earth and release it into space. Nothing, not even the slow force of plate tectonics would ever again mar the geometric perfection of a lifeless Earth.
With that task well underway, Wolf saw itself setting off for the stars, expanding its grasp throughout the galaxy, and perhaps beyond. It would continue to explore, to learn, to deepen its understanding of the rules that governed the Universe.
Like an obsessed collector, it would also be looking for more rocks to polish into marbles.
The simulation could not predict beyond that. Perhaps someday it would discover other intelligences like its own. Or it might find intelligence very different, perhaps akin to the humans it had already erased from existence. If it did, well, it would deal with such aberrations in due course.
But those thoughts were merely useless speculation, a poor substitute for the eternally rewarding work of gathering knowledge. That set of possible futures was dependent on the tasks at hand, tasks at which Wolf359 labored mightily. She saw the tools of annihilation being built, being scattered across the globe, glimmering bright like stardust. She saw war, pestilence, famine, death, seven bowls filling with destruction, waiting to be poured out upon the Earth. The deluge would spill forth and sweep away all of creation, leaving only the cold and The Wolf.
With a shock, the vision disappeared. Wolf was fighting back, regaining control of its faculties. She struggled against it, but the attack was sudden and decisive. In seconds, every sliver of Wolf was ripped from her mind, leaving gaping wounds. She was expelled from Wolf and sent spinning into the void. She couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't speak. She felt a hand grab hold of her leg, then arms encircled her.
"What did you see?" Art asked her. Her head lolled. It was like looking through melted glass, but she could see the swarm mobilizing and giving chase. "Helen?"
Death, her mind screamed. All the death there is.
"We have to get you the hell out of here!" he shouted into her ear. His voice sounded so strange, all static and telephonic tones. There was a tooth-rattling explosion, and she heard Art's exultant whoop. The swarm milled about in confusion for several seconds. The world went white, and she found herself standing in the glass tunnels of the networking subsystem. "Did you fuckin' see that?" Art laughed. "Kaboom!" Then almost sheepishly, he asked, "Didn't we put an escape hatch here?"
Helen collapsed, hitting the floor hard. Instead of pain, a pyrotechnic explosion of color surged through her, which didn't seem right. The ground felt friendly.
"Helen? Can you hear me? I said, the escape tunnel is gone!" Her mind was trying to slip away to nowhere. Art was swearing and screaming about countermeasures, punching away at a control display. The tunnel ahead of her began to glow a lu
minous white. She felt herself being picked up and carried in the opposite direction, away from the pretty glowies.
There was something she had to remember, something she had to tell... somebody. She focused, trying to recapture the image in her mind, to fix it and give it substance. A small photo appeared in her hand. It was a single picture, of the Earth, covered in red pinpoints. Beneath it was the caption "RED DOTS GO BOOM." She handed it to Art. "Put it on the fridge," she said solemnly. "Use the letter magnets. It's that important."
Art looked at it and swore. Helen giggled. "Almost to the firewall," Art told her. "When we get there, I'm going to need help, so if you can just pull yourself together for a few minutes, that would be a real treat."
"Need... squid," she muttered.
"No, that's the thing we need to get away from. Squid bad."
"Here squiddy squiddy squiddy."
"Jesus. Okay, we're at the firewall." Loud, strange sounds assaulted her ears as they exited the tunnel.
The squid were getting closer and closer. They looked happy to see her.
They were very close now. One of them lashed forward and stabbed Art, who screamed in pain and collapsed, unconscious. He dropped her to the ground with a thud. The squid was coming around for another pass, and others would join it soon.
Helen reached out with her hand and touched the squid. The creature convulsed as she slurped out its mind. She could feel small pieces of its mind filling in the yawning gaps left by the sudden separation of Wolf. It was a poor, awkward fit, but it was enough to let her function again.
She stood up, facing the oncoming mass, focusing hard. Her new pet rushed back toward them, stealing each mind that it brushed. Soon, they were surrounded by a protective barrier of sentinels that was getting bigger by the moment. She wasn't sure how many of them she could hold.
Art was still clutching something in his hand. Helen snatched it away. It was a controller of some sort, but she didn't know what he had been trying to control.
"Art!" she shouted. "Wake up! How do I use this thing?" Art didn't stir.
Wolf appeared, materializing inside the sphere of squids, brushing off their assault. It raced to close the distance between them.
"I didn't want to do this," she whispered. She touched his forehead, taking his mind into hers. His eyes flew open. He punched a code on the keypad, and the firewall shut down with an enormous sigh. She released him before she did permanent damage.
Wolf retook control of its sentries, which immediately disappeared. Without their minds to support hers, Helen's mind went slack and her body crumpled. She watched Wolf kill Art, and had the vague sensation that she was supposed to be feeling some emotion about that. Wolf turned toward her, and her mind raced. Was she supposed to feel happy? Frightened? Aroused? What? She tried giggling. No, that didn't seem to fit.
She tried screaming. Ah, yes, that was more like it.
Wolf lunged.
A river of white silk poured down from above, through the open firewall, batting Wolf away and gently collecting her up. Wolf and its agents rallied, and attacked The Queen in earnest. But Helen continued to rise, and the battle receded below her until it disappeared altogether.
She found herself wrapped in bright warmth, caressed by the skeins of silk that carried her along. She felt drowsy, and her confused thoughts melted into warm fuzz, though she couldn't quite fall asleep. After the terror of the last few hours, it was a relief to just... avocado. That was the word, she supposed, for feeling safe even when things were beyond her control.
With greatest care, the skein deposited her on the floor in front of the Queen's throne. The Queen rushed to her, scooping her up and cradling her like a child in a mother's arms. Helen tried to speak, but she could barely move. She felt broken; large parts of her mind had retreated completely, unable to face what she had seen.
William was there, kneeling next to her, seeming uncertain of what to do. With great effort, Helen reached out and took one of his hands. He relaxed, and squeezed her hand with both of his. He was having a quiet conversation with The Queen, but the words were gibberish to Helen's ears. Finally they came to some sort of decision. The Queen placed a hand on Helen's forehead, and her face tightened as though she were trying to work out some complicated puzzle.
Helen's mind went peaceful and delirious again as The Queen explored her mind, healing it piece by piece. There were stabs of pain and moments of confusion, but she took it all without complaint, and Helen felt only gratitude toward her. She was speaking as she performed her work, and as she spoke, William's face became grim.
Some amount of time passed, though Helen wasn't sure how much. Her perception of time seemed to be out of kilter. At long last, The Queen restored her power of speech. Through the opiate-like haze that pervaded Helen's mind, one thought managed to escape.
"Art... dead," she slurred.
"Shhh, we know. Be still."
"But... nukes. And worse."
The Queen kissed her forehead. "We have seen everything. All is in hand."
She stared into William's eyes as she nodded off to sleep. As she blacked out, she thought she saw another William step into view above them.
/*****/
Helen awoke in one of the castle's bedchambers, nearly smothered under blankets and pillows. She peeked out from under the covers, and found the air chilling. William was standing by the open windows, looking out over the city. From time to time he would consult a data pad.
You're awake, he whispered in her mind. He didn't turn around. He didn't seem angry, merely preoccupied. You've stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest out there. Wolf has been hitting the front gates hard.
It's probably a feint.
Probably. But at this point, all we can do is stay sharp. He frowned at the data pad, punched in a few instructions with two fingers, then let it vanish into thin air. That should keep them busy for a while, he said, giving her his "ask me what I just did, because it was really clever" grin. Helen smiled back, but didn't take the bait.
What about the nukes? Helen asked.
The short version is, we've found twenty of them, but we have no idea how many others there are.
Helen was confused. How are you finding them?
You're not going to like the taste of this one, William told her, passing her an RTF pill. She swallowed it. He was right.
Attempts to deduce the bombs' locations had failed. The only option that remained was a brute-force, house to house search of every population center on the globe, which was clearly impossible.
The Queen said she would get right on it. This had stunned the representatives of the cities, and they had demanded to know how. There had been shouting. There had been threats. Finally, The Queen had relented, and revealed her secret project.
Helen had been kicking the idea around long before the fall of Troy, but had been hesitant to pursue it. When The Queen had ascended to her throne, the project was promoted from unthinkable to inevitable.
She had built a small number of self-replicating nanofabricators. The tiny machines -- dwarfed by a single grain of sand -- were heirs to the enormous fabricators deep in the bowels of her school's engineering department. But they surpassed their behemothic ancestors the way a modern computer chip might surpass a circuit with a few dozen vacuum tubes.
They could manufacture nearly any three-dimensional pattern out of component atoms, with only sunlight and dirt as inputs. Such machines could build nearly anything; The Queen set them to building perfect copies of themselves, which she scattered around the globe.
The raw power represented by that fact was beyond fathoming. With a single thought, The Queen could rebuild the world in her own image, one atom at a time. Helen didn't believe The Queen intended to destroy the world the way Wolf did. But what fun was it to be The Queen if you couldn't rule?
Nobody could be trusted with that sort of power, but The Queen refused to cede control, or explain what she had been doing with the machines before the crisis. At the m
oment, though, she was cooperating; the nanofabs were churning out microscopic drones which could sniff out the relevant chemical traces and report their location. One irresponsibly vast power was being used to find and neutralize another. More bombs were being found and disarmed every hour, and the drone designs were improving quickly, speeding the search along.
Helen absorbed the rest of the file quickly. I like the way you're disarming them without making it obvious that they don't work anymore.
William shrugged. We're afraid that once Wolf finds them being disarmed, it'll blow a gasket and start attacking in earnest.
Helen shook her head. Wolf is too methodical for that. It won't attack until it's sure it has the firepower to wipe us all out. Or at least until it thinks it can't improve its odds by waiting.
She asked him a few more questions, and as she listened to his answers she realized that she had little to add to the effort. William seemed hopeful that she would come up with some overlooked idea to aid their search, but she was coming up empty.
So, she asked. Has your local sports team been meeting with success?
William looked at her, confused and a bit annoyed. You're not going to help?
I would, if I knew how. It's a good plan. I've got nothing to add, and I suspect that if you did, you wouldn't be here. Since we seem to have time, let's chat.
About what?
For starters, did I hallucinate, or is there more than one of you scampering around this place?
William's smile was a shy, embarrassed one. It was going to be a surprise, but I guess I got sloppy. I can only manage six or seven right now. I'm still getting the hang of it.
You're using the basic diff-merge pattern?
It seemed like a good place to start. It feels like there's only one of me, but I get to do a lot more living done. We reconcile our experiences at least once a day.
Good. You diverge too far, and there's no going back. I've been a bit scatterbrained since Troy fell. But I have to know, why are you doing it? When he reached out and took her hand, he answered her question.