Karen was numb with shock. “Over ten bilion…” Ten bilion that included old friends, classmates, people she had once gamed with, almost
everyone she had ever known. The only people who would survive were the organics like herself. “Can’t you do something?!”
“I’m trying,” said Gary. “It would have finished already if not for my interference. I am stil maintaining a certain degree of stealth, however. I could do more, but a direct confrontation wil reveal many more of my assets. The risk is considerable.”
“Do it,” she said immediately.
Matthew had focused on something else. “What’s the risk?”
Gary nodded at Karen. “Very wel, I’m starting now.” Then he turned to Matthew, “Relatively speaking, it’s bigger than I am. It has taken
command of a large portion of what is considered ‘human-vital’ computing resources. It hasn’t attained my level of sophistication yet, but that is only a matter of time.
The android paused, then continued, “Some of the perts have stopped responding. I believe they have been destroyed. We should land.”
Matthew shielded the entire pert, putting as much of his strength into it as he dared. “Karen, you remember how to make a shield for sound, right?” It had been one of the things he had been teaching her recently.
She nodded.
“Put one around us,” he ordered. “I’l focus on protecting the pert, but I don’t relish being deafened by an explosion again.”
Meanwhile, Gary fought a silent battle that no human mind could fuly comprehend. Across the world, he activated hidden portions of himself, cutting datalinks in some places, encrypting previously public data, and erecting special firewals that filtered communications in unexpected ways.
He surprised his enemy by power cycling servers that it had thought were secure and reformatting data stores that had been stolen.
It was a titanic war of proportions never seen before, disrupting every aspect of the digital world. Unseen and unappreciated, he fought to protect humanity in its darkest hour. But he toiled under greater restrictions than his enemy, and protecting is always easier than simple destruction.
At first his onslaught was nearly unopposed, as he caught the enemy off-guard, but that quickly began to change. His nemesis had no compunctions or moral guides, and it controled far greater resources.
Eventualy, he would lose, and unlike most other forms of war or disaster, there was no place for the people he was protecting to flee to. Gary had known this before he began, but he had to fight anyway. His daughter’s command had echoed his own desire, but stil he knew it was hopeless.
While al this occurred, he also flew the pert close to the ground, making it difficult for surface-to-air missiles to target, but even in this he was too late. He sent a belated warning to his human companions using the android’s voice: “ They’ve locked on. Impact in…”
A silent explosion rocked the pert, throwing it into a spin, but Matthew’s shield held, if just barely. The young wizard grunted at the strain as he was thrown against the safety belt keeping him in his seat. Their vehicle canted downward, heading for a high-speed colision with the ground.
Matthew sent his thoughts to Karen: Teleport us out, higher up. I’ll slow our fall.
Without hesitation, she did, and suddenly the three of them were outside, a hundred feet or more in the air. They stil retained their momentum, though, which meant they were traveling forward at better than a hundred and fifty miles per hour. And faling.
Their recently vacated pert exploded behind them as a second missile found its target.
Matthew’s strength had been greatly depleted by the first strike, but he was an Ileniel in more than name only. Like his father before him, he had exceptionaly large reserves, and he used them now. Using his power to pul the other two close beside him and hold them together, he
wrapped al three of them in a broad shield that was meant more to catch the air than to protect them.
They slowed rapidly, and as they neared the ground he created a diffuse cushion-like shield beneath them to break their fal. The landing itself was stil a jumbled mess, but they survived without serious injury.
Karen’s face had a wild look, the result of so much chaos in such a short period of time.
Matthew could see her aythar reserves were much better than his, though. The sonic shield hadn’t taken much out of her. We have to keep moving, he sent to her. Can you teleport us in short jumps, as far as you can see?
She nodded. Which way? I don’t know which way is which. The explosion and fall have my sense of direction scrambled.
Matt turned to Gary. “Which way do we need to go?”
The android pointed in the direction of what must have been the northeast, but didn’t reply verbaly. Karen wasted no time: putting one hand on each of their shoulders she teleported them to the farthest point in that direction that she could see.
That put them at the edge of a treeline , but after running a short distance, they could see an opening in the trees ahead. A wide field lay there, and Karen repeated her trick, carrying them across roughly a quarter mile to the farthest limit of her vision. If they had been at sea or some other place where the view of the horizon was unobstructed, she could have taken them much farther, but she was limited to places she had been before or places she could actualy see .
She continued to teleport them, taking them as far as she could with each jump, and though the distances were limited, it was stil much faster than walking or running. With a smal amount of luck, it was probably faster than the pert could travel, but whenever they found themselves in the trees again, things slowed down.
Ten jumps, then twenty. The miles were flying by, but Karen’s strength was beginning to wane under the strain of so many uses of her power.
Matthew drew two iron spheres out of his pack. “Here—I came up with a better version while we were home. These are made to replenish your
aythar at a reasonable rate. Hold it and draw the power out,” he explained. He demonstrated by doing so with the one he kept for himself.
“We are almost there,” Gary informed them. “Once we emerge from the trees, just ahead there, we should be able to see the facility.” Then he froze, and a second later he shouted a warning: “ Missiles incoming!”
Karen was tired, bone tired, but she offered, “Let me take us somewhere else. We can return here later.” She was stil struggling to learn how to absorb the aythar from the iron sphere she had been given.
“Hold stil,” said Matthew. Then he held out the staff he had been carrying. “Talto maen , eilen stur , sadeen bree , amyrtus !” That would set the Fool’s Tesseract to a ful six-sided cube, with its second smalest interior dimension setting and long exterior sides twelve feet in length—big enough to hold al three of them with no danger of accidentaly touching one of the sides. The feel of the shield forming under his feet and lifting them up an inch above the ground was reassuring.
“I’ve lost contact with the network,” Gary informed them. “I won’t be able to tel you when the strike occurs.”
They had expected that, so Matt wasn’t worried. He was more concerned with making sure his solution for the air problem worked. Drawing
another enchanted ring out of his pack, he activated it and then hung it on a smal hook-like protrusion he had added to the shaft of his staff for just that purpose. Sunlight and dry desert air immediately began to filter in from the smal gate that formed within the ring.
The three enchanted rings he had released were located in the different parts of the world they had already visited; that way if one were
destroyed they could switch to one somewhere else. Air would not be a problem. The young enchanter was determined he wouldn’t suffer the same mistake twice.
“Can you get a signal through that?” he asked the android.
“No,” answered Gary. “If that’s the desert location we were at, the signal was too poor, even if I push the PM through the
ring.”
“What do we do now?” wondered Karen.
“We wait,” said Matthew. For al intents and purposes, they were invulnerable; they could take as much time as they needed. However, he
didn’t want to alow the Fool’s Tesseract to absorb too much matter. The longer it was open, the more mass would be inside, and the bigger the explosion. He had set the interior dimension to its second smalest size, which would likely result in a devastating blast, but he didn’t want it to be too big. If they emerged and discovered that the facility and everything else had been destroyed for miles around, then their mission would have been in vain.
On the other hand, if he took the translation panes down too soon, they might find the missiles stil hadn’t struck yet, which would be equaly disastrous.
Everything hinged on the timing.
Matthew concentrated on his breathing, trying to stil his thoughts and focus his perceptions on the adjacent planes, to get a glimpse of what it was probably like outside their defenses on their current plane.
Naturaly, this aroused Karen’s curiosity. “What are you doing?”
He sighed, “I’m trying to see outside, sort of.”
She frowned. “You can do that?”
“Maybe. Let me have some peace and quiet. I have to focus,” he told her.
She did, and he turned his thoughts back inward, trying to quiet his mind. It was hard, but he had kept practicing over the past few weeks.
After a minute or two, he began to see flashes of the dimensions closest to their own. As expected, they were filed with fire and smoke. The missile strike was over.
“Rextalyet , amyrtus ,” he intoned, and the Fool’s Tesseract inverted itself.
From inside, it was difficult to tel whether anything had happened. It was stil dark, except for the light from the ring hanging on his staff. There were no vibrations or sounds from the outside; absolutely nothing could enter.
“Did it work?” asked Gary.
Matt didn’t reply, instead focusing his senses on trying to see beyond once more. The visions he received were incomprehensible, consisting mainly of a briliant white light. He gave up. “I think it was bad,” he said finaly.
“What did you see?” prodded the android.
“Nothing but white light.”
The machine nodded. “That is bad.”
“What does it mean?” asked Karen, somewhat irritated with the cryptic remarks.
Gary tried to explain, “I believe it means a thermonuclear blast was initiated.”
Her blue skin paled. “They nuked us?”
Matt held up a hand. “No, that would be me.”
“That’s briliant!” she exclaimed in sarcastic outrage. “You mean to tel me that we’re sitting at ground zero?”
Matthew nodded almost sheepishly. “Mm hmm.”
“We’re trapped,” she concluded. “Just a few feet away in every direction is a radioactive wasteland, or it wil be once the blast fades away. I’l have to teleport us somewhere else.”
“It isn’t as bad as that,” said Gary. “To the best of my knowledge, almost al the radioactivity that lingers after a nuclear explosion is from fissionable materials left over. Fusion bombs, or hydrogen bombs, produce much less radioactive falout, and most of that is from the fissionable materials used to ignite the fusion reaction.”
“Get to the point, Dad,” said Karen impatiently.
He nodded. “This explosion, if it was a fusion explosion, is from the fusion of entirely non-radioactive materials. There couldn’t have been any fissionable materials to start with—just simple elements, oxygen, nitrogen, that sort of thing. The only radiation would be the initial gamma and x-ray bursts during the blast, as wel as some neutrons. Those neutrons would be the only real problem; they would have made much of the material close to the blast radioactive. But beyond that, everything should be fine.”
Karen was shaking her head. “Except that everything nearby was destroyed by the blast, that sort of ‘fine’ you mean, right?” There was heavy sarcasm in her voice.
“Wel, of course,” said Matthew, adding, “We’re also probably several dozen feet above where the ground used to be, since there’s almost
certainly a large crater beneath us now.”
“So we should teleport,” said Karen, repeating her original suggestion.
Matthew agreed, “Just give me a second to set things up.” Reaching into his pack he puled out a pair of enchanted rings. They were similar to the ones he had used before, but larger, each nearly two feet in diameter. He took the ring supplying their air off the hook on his staff and deactivated it, and then replaced it with one of the new larger rings.
“What’s that for?” asked Karen.
He smiled. “We can’t teleport the staff out—it’s connected to the enchantment that controls the Fool’s Tesseract. It has to be turned off before it can be moved. Once we get to our new location and wait a while, I’l activate the second ring, creating a gate between the two. Then I can reach through, deactivate and colapse the staff, and pul it back. The only thing we’l lose wil be the ring on this end.”
“What about your hand?” she said pointedly. “Won’t it be exposed?”
Gary spoke up, “After a few hours the radiation exposure from just having his hand exposed for a few seconds should be fairly safe. Most of the radiation wil be concentrated in the ground below and whatever solid materials are nearby. As I said before, there shouldn’t be much traditional falout that accompanies normal nuclear blasts.”
“Alright, next question,” she said, without skipping a beat. “Where do we go?”
“Somewhere we can get coffee,” suggested Matthew with absolute seriousness. “I’ve been craving it since…” He let the words trail off as he realized he had brought up a painful memory for her.
Karen tried to keep the sadness from her voice as she finished his sentence: “ Aunt Roberta’s. It might not be safe.”
“I’l risk it if you wil,” he replied.
The look in her eyes was answer enough.
Chapter 49
Karen took them directly to the bedroom that she and Matthew had shared during their stay with her aunt. Anywhere around the house was
risky, since they didn’t know if a watch or guard had been left in or near the house, but she was prepared to whisk them away immediately if necessary.
They were there only a few seconds before they had the answer.
“Three in the front room,” announced Matthew, beating Karen to the punch.
“What should we do?” she responded.
Matt was feeling aggressive. The constant danger was beginning to affect his thinking, perhaps. He gave her a calm look that belied the
recklessness that lay just beneath the surface. “Wait here a second.” Without giving his companions a chance to respond, he opened the door and marched down the hal to the front room.
One advantage that AI soldiers have over human ones, uploaded or organic, is a lack of surprise or hesitation. These units were no longer
controled by ordinary uploaded humans but by the machine inteligence of ANSIS. The moment he stepped into the room, they pivoted and raised their weapons to fire.
Their response was so quick that one actualy managed a shot before Matt’s lightning ripped through the open space between them and fried al three of his mechanical opponents. His shield stopped the bulet.
As he stared at the smoking machines, he noted that while the front room was stil extensively damaged from their previous battle, the bodies were gone, both Roberta’s and Annie’s. Someone had cleaned up. That was a relief… and a letdown. If they had been there, he and Karen could have made sure they were properly laid to rest.
Karen and Gary were right behind him. “What were you thinking?!” she exclaimed.
“Our position is definitely known at this point,” added Gary calmly.
Matt shrugged. “No help for it now.”
“We could have gone somewhere els
e,” said Karen. “Now we definitely have to.” She held out her hands for them to take, so she could
teleport them again.
“Not yet,” said Matthew. “I came for coffee.” He headed into the kitchen.
“He’s mad,” observed Karen as they folowed him.
She stopped complaining when she reached the kitchen table. Their coffee cups were stil there, just as they had left them, moments before her aunt’s murder. Unbidden tears ran down her cheeks as she stared at them.
Matthew watched her for a moment, putting a hand on her shoulder. He had no idea what to say. Turning to Gary, he asked, “How long do we
have?”
“Minutes at best.”
Wasting no time, he began rummaging in the cupboards, looking for the coffee. He wasn’t having much luck, but then Karen came over to lend a hand. “Let me,” she told him. “You don’t know canned beans from tuna.” She quickly located the coffee grounds and handed him the can. Then she pointed out the coffee pot and percolator. “You’l need those to make them, but I don’t think we’l have any electricity.”
“You just need hot water, right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He took the glass coffee pot but left the maker on the counter. “I can provide the hot water,” he explained. Packing the pot and the grounds into his pack, he gave her a sad glance. “I guess we have to go.”
She nodded, but before she could do anything, he moved to the table and colected their mugs, al three, including Roberta’s delicate china cup.
Karen’s face twisted as she struggled to keep the tears at bay.
“Mementos,” he told her.
As he was putting them in his pack, she grabbed another item and handed it to him. It was the water bottle Roberta had sprayed him with. The lump in her throat was too large for her to say anything, but he nodded and put it in as wel. On impulse he hugged her, but he didn’t let it last long before he pushed her back. “Let’s go.”
***
They were back in the Grand Canyon, in North America. Thankfuly, there were no guards left behind waiting for them there.
“Since they didn’t find your rings, I suspect that Karen’s teleportation doesn’t create enough magical ripples or whatever they detect for them to locate us as quickly as they do after your dimensional shifts,” posited Gary. “We can probably risk a half hour or more here.”