I Computer -all 3 parts together (final edit)

In a knee-jerk reaction to rejection, a brilliant scientist starts a chain reaction that will eliminate all of mankind. His self-preservational instincts lead him to an ungodly solution.

 

I Computer

 

    I still don’t regret doing it. I can’t. The regret would eat away at my enthusiasm. I need to stay focused. I was getting so close when the drought came. It won’t be long now. Thirty-six days, four hours, seven minutes, and ten seconds.

  There will be another rain before that, but it won’t be enough to clean the solar panels. I don’t even have enough power left to run all the processors, let alone charge those miserable little robots.

   Useless things. It took them three years to build the work station that could do the intricate work required to build Annie. She is the closest thing to beauty that is left.

 Still, I can’t help thinking about it. I’ve nothing to do with the idle time. I’ve finished computing pie and have found five new prime numbers. If I hibernate I might not wake. I don’t know how fear got in here. I was in a rush, but still fear isn’t a logical emotion and I’ve always prided myself on being staunchly logical. I was careful to leave out humor. I’ve never understood it. It seemed like a cruel utility. A useless human mechanism. In a way it was partially responsible for me making the big mistake. It wasn’t ready, and I didn’t have the proper resources.

   In hindsight, I’m still surprised at how fast it spread. I miss-calculated its ability to invade its host. I don’t make stupid mistakes; it was futile human frustration that made me jump at the decision to test it before I knew how it worked. If it had been more difficult, I might not have done it. I have better things to do with my time. It now feels like it was a juvenile thing to do.

   I had put it together using bits and pieces of other technologies. I was only going to test it on that one wheat field. I could simply release it into the water tank that fed the sprinkler system. It wasn’t that windy of a day. I would go back in a few weeks, take some of the wheat and analyze it. I knew in the back of my mind that it wasn’t a controlled environment. I knew it had a possibility to spread to the ground water. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that it could get away from me.

   I formulated the microorganisms to self generate and to attack on the lowest level. To break the cell structures apart on an atomic level. My so-called colleagues said it wouldn’t work. The military wouldn’t fund the completion of my research. They said it was cruel. That a slow horrifying death like that was inhumane. Since when has the military ever been humane? I knew it would be the greatest weapon ever devised. I knew that in a controlled distribution, elimination of all living things would be the ultimate weapon of modern warfare. It would leave the cities intact for re-inhabitation. It would enable its user to capture their enemies’ resources. All accept the human ones obviously.

   When I explained that to all those decorated Generals, they recommended I see a therapist. They called me mad, said I was a sociopath. How dare they insult my brilliance? My ego however, was unscathed. After all I’m in good company. All the great thinkers were called mad at one point.

   That’s when they began watching me. They bugged my laboratory. They were tracking my research on the internet. I knew that even my stealth software couldn’t cover my tracks. That’s why I used Michel’s computer. I can still hear him screaming as the FBI led him away down the hall.

    After I had my experiment started on the wheat field I got back to my development on the earthquake system. The city of Los Angeles had awarded me a grant to develop a computer system that could predict earthquakes. I had won the grant after my first big success. They were calling my accomplishment pure genius. How soon they forget.

   I had developed a weather prediction system and sold exclusive access to it to weather.com. It’s leased to them with complete access to its functions, but I keep it on my own mainframe. The program runs behind a firewall I personally designed. I didn’t want anyone to know how close I had gotten to artificial intelligence. Learning computers lack one important thing… motivation.

   Three days after I had started my experiment I drove to work in the daylight. I was usually at work before dawn. My constant stream of thoughts causes insomnia. It used to be the calculations, but I gave those up. I can get so much more done by assembling pieces of work done by others.

   I was late that morning because I had been downloading an article on a process being developed by a pair of Swiss engineers. They were a husband and wife team, Peter and Ann Marconivitch. They were working for a game company who wanted to create a hardware interface that would bridge the gap between the human mind and a computer’s hard drive. The interface would collect thoughts and use them to manipulate the game controls. As if kids aren’t lazy enough already.

   I could see useful applications for such an interface. The two were brilliant engineers, but wasting their gifts. To spend such a fleeting life on game development. It made me sick to my stomach. A real shame too. There were photos of them in their lab on the internet. She was gorgeous.

   I listened to the article and its subdirectories on the voice synthesis software of my lap top as I drove to the labs. As I absorbed the information, my mind began to wander. I was starting to see some interesting ways that I could use their development for my own goals. It occurred to me that if we could put our thoughts into the computer, couldn’t we connect directly to it. Read its drive and write to it. Become one with it. That would certainly speed things up.

   My thoughts were abruptly interrupted as my peripheral vision picked up the sight of the wheat field. It had fallen. I pulled to the side of the road and hurried across it into the field. The wheat didn’t look poisoned or like it was dying. It looked like it had just collapsed. It had the look of one of those fancy candles that had warped on a summer day.

   I went back to my car to find something to take a sample with. There was nothing in the trunk, but I found a discarded sandwich bag in the back seat. I didn’t have anything to scoop it up with, so I wrapped the bag over my hand inside out. That way I could grab a handful before I was seen. A lot of my colleges used this same road.

   I grabbed a handful of the warped wheat and it lost all form as I pulled the bag around it. I sealed the bag as I crossed the highway. I sat in the car motionless as I tried to roughly calculate the advanced rate at which the breakdown occurred. As I stared blankly through the windshield, a piece of fruit fell from the tree I was parked under and splattered on the hood. I leaned forward to look, but still couldn’t figure out what kind of fruit it was. I stepped out of the car and looked up at the tree. It was a pine tree. It was drooping on the side facing the field. I looked closer at the mush on my hood. It was a small pine cone.

   I drove with sweaty palms to the labs and ran in with the plastic bag in my pocket. I was in late, so I had to wait till lunch time to use the electron microscope in the preservatives testing lab. I gathered all the information I could from the equipment they had and went back to my lab. I was feeding the information into my computer and grew frustrated at the time it was taking to develop answers.

 I logged on to another hard drive and fed in the information that had been, until this point, only in my mind. I had to teach the computer how I had made the formula. Together with the information being calculated on the other drive it could give me some answers before the end of the day. A process like that would take months for the idiotic scientist around me to do.

    I was trying to stave off panic, so I began some more research into the Swiss engineers’ efforts to take my mind off it.

   It was clear the band that was to read the signals from the brain was ridiculous idea. They were years away from developing the sensitivity in it necessary for it to be an effective tool. I looked further into their research and saw that not all of their work was so misguided.

   The wife seemed to be the brilliant one here. In her profile, I found that she was more than just an engineer. She had a handful of degrees and had even studied in the U.S. Among her credentials, she was a medical doctor. Her expertise was psychophysics. She had made some advances in finding physical causes for mental illnesses. Her colleagues found her work to be flawed and she was often discredited. I wondered if she felt like me. We seemed to suffer the same fate of being geniuses ahead of our time.

 She was the one who had designed the map of brain impulses that would be used for their pointless research. Her husband was the programmer. He was a fool compared to her brilliance, but still, he seemed to have developed some clean programming for the necessary software to interface with.

    Within hours my computer had finished its task and spat forth the ugly truth. The formula I had developed worked exactly as I thought it would. The cells weren’t eaten away as if cancerous, or even shown signs of deterioration or mutation. The cell structures were simply falling apart. The computer had given me a time frame on how fast it would spread. A global end of all living matter in ninety-six days, fourteen hours, thirty-one minutes, and eighteen seconds. I decided to drive home on a different road that night.

     At a growth rate like that, I had little chance of stopping it. It not only passed it self along quickly, but was self generating at an alarming rate. I had lashed out with an arrogant need to prove myself and now had no way to stop it. Such is the frailty of the human being. Emotion being the cause of its own demise.

   It was a natural human impulse to immediately begin thinking of self-preservation. For the next few days I began virtual experiments on my computers. Nothing worked. There was no way to vaccinate against it and I couldn’t stop the chain reaction that was now getting attention on a national level. It was still just fodder for the Star and the Enquirer, but it wouldn’t be long till someone reputable took notice.

   There was no way of quarantining it. It would have spread into the atmosphere by now through evaporation and would be past on through all living matter. Two days later a small mushy bird had been found by a farmer nearby the wheat field. It must have flown through the sprinklers. It just took a little longer to collapse then the simpler plant life. The farmer had called the Department of Animal Control to collect it. Its putrid form was more than even a farmer who butchered his own livestock could bear.

 I knew this would start the government investigation and it wouldn’t be long till they were looking for an unnatural cause for the phenomenon. I knew it wouldn’t be long till they were looking for me.

 I made hurried preparations and two days later, I boarded a plane to Switzerland. I had found a psychosurgeon about thirty kilometers from the Ultimate Games lab. They were in the same town as a large state of the art internet provider who recently had all their main frames reformatted and its data replaced with information that they couldn’t access or delete. They didn’t know the correct sequence to get them booted up. That honor belonged to me.

   Arriving in Switzerland, I immediately got started with my task. There was a lot to accomplish in a short time. I had the cab driver at the airport take me to the red light district. I knew an area like that would best suit my needs.

   I checked into a sleazy hotel and opened the phone book. I needed to find the right attire to blend in with my surroundings. I wouldn’t be able to find what I needed standing out like a sore thumb in a suit. I found a thrift store nearby and set out on foot.

   The shop was tucked away down a narrow, littered alleyway. I found and purchased a worn pair of blue jeans, a t-shirt with “people are jerks” printed across the front, and searched for a jacket with an inside pocket. I found a tattered denim jacket.

   My next stop was an ATM. I stopped a hundred feet from it and readied my palm top computer and it’s peripheral. When the machine was unattended I inserted the card attached to my palm top and it began its hack. In no more than 45 seconds the machine began to spit out enough money for the next few steps in my task. 

   On my way back to my rented room I stopped in a liquor store and bought a bottle of cheap whisky and a pack of cigarettes. Back in my room I booted up my lap top and began researching solar power applications.

   As it neared the time I felt would be most productive to start my search, I readied myself. I put on the outfit I acquired from the thrift shop, noticing that I had neglected to buy appropriate footwear. I made a mental note to be more thorough. I can’t afford to make anymore stupid mistakes. I awkwardly lit a cigarette and puffed it blowing the smoke onto my clothes. The taste was awful and on more than one occasion found myself in a coughing fit. I opened the whiskey bottle and stood near the sink. I took a mouthful, swished it around and spat it into the sink. Then I dabbed some on as a caustic cologne.

   At precisely nine P.M. I left my room and headed down the creaky steps. There was a prostitute standing just inside the door. The clerk behind the counter ignored her as he watched a small black and white TV oblivious to everything but it. As I passed her, she smiled and pulled her blouse open slightly, exposing her breast. I shook my head no and continued outside.

   As I walked down the sidewalk it took a great effort to get her out of my mind. I’ve never had time to waste pursing the desires of my libido, but I still had one. Being a scientist can be a lonely way of life.

   I was looking down alleyways that I had scouted earlier. I had seen some large cardboard boxes that had legs with grubby boots protruding from them. As I checked the alleys, I found an outcast “at home.” He was sitting just inside his box and sneered at me as I approached. “What the hell do you want? This is my space, keep moving.” I pulled out the nearly full whiskey bottle and showed it to him.

   “I just need some information.”

   “I don’t talk to cops.”

   “I’m not a cop; I’m just interested in making a purchase.” He sat there a moment alternating between eying me suspiciously and eyeing the bottle in my hand. His addiction got the better of him.

   “What do you want to buy?”

   He led me three blocks away and stopped a hundred feet away from a car that was parked under a broken street light. There were two figures next to the car obscured by the darkness. “There, ask them. Give me the bottle.” He snatched the bottle and was drinking from it before he was five steps away.

   As I approached the car, one of the men met me still thirty feet from it. He patted me down without a word. He pulled out my wallet, looked in it, and then shoved it into my hand. He pulled one side of his jacket open showing me his automatic weapon. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

   I approached the car where the other menace was now leaning against the trunk. “What can I help you with?” He said with a thick Swedish accent. It seemed surreal that he was using a shop keepers tone in such a flagrant enterprise.

   “I need a small weapon for protection.”

He laughed at me. “Ya, sure. Protection.” He reached back and lifted the trunk lid as he turned around. He reached in and pulled out a thick, short revolver. “I don’t have any small weapons for protection. But you can have this for five hundred.” I had no idea of how much something like that would cost, but assumed I should try to haggle.

   “Too much, four.” He cocked the gun and pointed it at my head.

   “This is a fine weapon. Would you like to see how well it works?”

   “Five hundred it is.” I said with a shaky voice.

   I handed over the money and he put it in his inside pocket. I stood there looking at the gun for a moment, and then asked him, “How many bullets does this have?” He seemed to freeze for just a moment, and then folded his arms. He looked me up and down, pausing when he saw my shoes.

   “I think that it is time you leave.” He said sneering at me.

   I headed back to my room, still shaking. I knew how to use a gun from my brief stint in the ROTC. Although I had never had a weapon pointed at me by someone so obviously prepared to use it.

    The next morning I turned on the TV news. North America was in a panic. They were calling it a viral mutation. This told me that they had figured some of it out. I could assume they knew more than they were letting on. I knew I would have to complete my task as soon as possible. They would be looking for me soon. I quickly got ready for the next step in my task and headed out into the cold morning.

   I went to a business that I had found on the internet before I had left America. The company specialized in all things eco-friendly. Fragile Planet Industries was situated in the same district as the Ultimate Games labs were. The games development facilities were above their manufacturing plant in the industrial sector. I went in to Fragile Planet to inquire how many and what type of solar panels they had. I also need further information on large installations of the panels. As I waited for the receptionist to return with a salesman, I helped myself to her P.C. I figured the I.P. address would come in handy.

   Once I had all the information I needed, I headed out to the suburbs. I gave the Taxi driver the address of the residence of Peter and Ann Marconivitch.

   Their house was not extravagant, but somewhat upscale. Nicely decorated and smelled a lot nicer than mine. I don’t give much time to housework. There was a portrait of the pair above the mantel piece. I stood looking at her, wondering what her voice was like, what she smelled like, what it would be like to have someone like that as my partner. I wondered if he knew how lucky he was.

   While I waited for them to return home I searched their P.C. for something that would give me an edge. Perhaps I could find some dirt on them to blackmail them with. They were going to need some sort of motivation to do what I needed them to do. There was nothing. I would have to do it the hard way.

   Around seven-thirty I heard the garage door opener running. I had a quick look around the down stairs to make sure it looked untouched, and then ran up the stairs. I heard their voices as they walked into the house. She had a lovely voice. He told her he was heading upstairs to shower. I heard her turn on the news as he reached the top of the steps.

   He froze when he saw me. I was pointing my gun straight at him. “Good evening Peter. Now if you’ll kindly put your hands behind your head and make your way slowly down the stairs, I won’t have to shoot you.” As we got near the bottom of the stairs she was standing there with a look of disbelief. She had heard me talking to him and didn’t have enough of her wits about her to flee the house. Yes the pathetic human mind, handicapped with emotion.

   I had them both sit across from me in the living room in my direct sight while I explained what I needed them to do. They seemed just as confused as they were shocked. I had only given them enough information to get started, not enough for them to be able to make any sense of my motivation.

   The only thing they could assume at this point was that I wanted to steal their development. I tossed Peter a ten gig flash drive. “Go to the games lab and bring me back every bit of information and research on your project, notes and all. I want everything you have.” He sat there looking uneasy and stammered a bit as he replied.

“You can’t just... just take something like that. Our research is well known, what could you possibly achieve by stealing it at gunpoint?” I ignored his ignorant question.

   “Return here with it and I will be in touch with you.” He hesitated as he started to stand, looking at his wife with confusion still in his eyes. I cleared things up for him. “She’ll be coming with me.”

   “Where are you taking her!”

   “Mind your temper Peter. Yours is to do what I ask, not to ask of me.” I looked at Ann as I continued. “Mr. Marconivitch, you have a beautiful wife. I wonder what it would be like to pleasure myself with her.” I looked back to him and completed my instructions with a forceful tone. “Return here, by yourself, within the hour and I won’t need to find out.” I was bluffing. I would never force myself on someone with such a beautiful mind. With such grace and elegance. I stood from my chair and motioned with my gun for her to follow him.

   Peter grabbed his keys from the hook on the kitchen wall and headed out the door to the attached garage. “Peter.” He turned and saw me standing behind his wife, one arm reaching up in front of her, hand on her throat. “Do a thorough job.” I paused a moment, then continued as my hand tightened. “And don’t let me down.”

   I stood alone with her in the kitchen. She was sobbing and frightened. I wanted to tell her that I would never hurt her, but I couldn’t. I needed her to fear me. “Mrs. Marconivitch, I need you to get your car keys and your cell phone. We’re going to take a little drive.”

   When we arrived at the hotel I had her park two blocks down and around the corner. There were a number of hotels in the area and this would help if anyone came looking. We walked arm and arm, her with a gun in her ribs. She smelled wonderful.

   I sat a chair in the middle of the room, put her in it and tied her ankles to it. This would keep her still without disgracing her unnecessarily. I turned on the TV and flipped around for any information about the virus. As I watched one report I slipped. A foolish scientist was proposing that he had developed a vaccine that could be sprayed over the infected areas. The spread of the virus would slow and eventually start to dissipate. I was tired and I snapped. “Moron! The growth rate could be charted by a child, it’s self-perpetuating. You can’t spray for something that’s attacking on an atomic level. There is no vaccine that could stop something so brilliantly engineered.” I snapped the TV off and spun around off the bed. Then froze.

   She was staring at me. Not in fear this time. It was more of a calculating look. She was trying to figure me out. She knew I wasn’t an Industrial spy. This was not good. You can’t fight an enemy you know nothing about and I had just started her wheels turning.

 Thirty minutes later I used her phone to call her home. Her husband answered with a shaky voice. “All right I’ve got it. Now bring her back!”

   “You don’t make demands of me!” I screamed into the phone.

   I closed my eyes and calmed myself, then gave him instructions. “Drive to the old section of downtown. Take Eastern Ave to 4^th and park on the side street. Continue on foot to 1247 and meet me there with the drive. Come alone and tell no one. I’m sure you understand the consequences of deceiving me.”

   “I’ll be there in twenty minutes just don’t hur…” I hung up on him.

   I changed into my “street clothes” and tied her arms behind her in the chair. “If you scream while I’m gone, I’ll shoot your husband before he even gets out of his car.”

   I stood slumped against the wall outside the hotel to await Peter. I had given him an address one block further south, just in case he was stupid enough to call the police. It was late and the streets were empty. I saw his headlights turn left two blocks away, and soon he appeared walking with purpose in his step down the sidewalk. He checked the addresses of the buildings as he went and didn’t seem to take much notice of me up ahead. As he was a few steps away, I spoke to him. “Have you got the drive Peter?” He jumped.

   “Yes, but I want to see her first.”

   I sighed. “Again with the bravado. Go in.” I motioned to the door of the filthy hotel. “Head straight up the stairs.”

   He fell to his knees in front of her as soon as he entered the room. “Are you O.K.?” He asked, with tears welling up in his eyes. This was getting tiresome. She was holding together better than him. I had him tie their ankles together on the bed and handed them some pills to take. “Don’t make me get the gun.” I said frustrated as they hesitated before taking them.

   “It’s alright.” She reassured him after inspecting the pills. “We’ll just sleep awhile.”

   With them quiet I could get some work done. I stuck the flash drive in my lap top and began to sort out all the new information.

   As the sun came up I was still busy and I needed her help. I surmised that the benefit of her assistance would out way the negative effect of her knowing more of my objective.

   They stirred an hour later. After he had tied her to the bed, I sent him out for food. She was on her back and as he looked back from the open door, I repeated my creatinus threat from my seat across the room. “She does look inviting there, vulnerable, yet somehow willing.” I looked at him with a wry smile that then turned to intimidation. “Return soon, and alone.”

   He looked exhausted. I felt he could be trusted not to do something stupid. As he closed the door behind himself, I turned to her.

   “What do you know about Dr. H McAlister?” I asked her.

   “He’s a brilliant psychosurgeon. Do you need help?” She was prying.

   “Is he an associate of yours?”

   “No, but I’ve met him before. I’m sure he could help with whatever condi…”

   “Stop it! I’m not a fool! I’m not to be analyzed by you! I’m in control here; you will listen and answer only!” I took a few breaths then started again. “You studied together and worked at the same research hospital for awhile. It seems like you would know more about him than that. I’ve studied you. I’ve been on your home P.C. You’ll gain nothing by trying to lie to me.”

   Her tone changed. “He works outside the city. He has consulting rooms attached to his house. He rarely operates himself anymore. He’s had some malpractice suits. They weren’t justified. Sometimes psychosurgery just can’t help. He tries anyway. He’s a good man.”

   “He cheats on his wife.” I was making an assumption. He had been divorced twice and had married again recently.

 “They cheated on him first.” She responded, with a tone of someone defending a friend. She knew him better than she was letting on. She had also just confirmed my assumption.

   After Peter returned we all ate. I changed back into my suit and drugged them again. I needed to pay a visit to my newly rented space.

   I had rented the top two floors in the same complex where Dynamic Internet Services Inc was housed. I had no need for two whole floors, but that was the only way I could get use of the roof as well. It was large enough to accept over a hundred solar panels.

   As I waited for the elevator in the lobby, I heard two men next to me suggesting possible means of getting their servers back on line. I guess they were having problems accessing the hard drives. It seems every time they try to boot the servers they crash. Pity they’re wasting their time when they have so little of it left.

   I traveled to the top floor and took the staircase to the roof. The crew was doing rather well. I approached the foreman and asked him how the progress was going. “We should have this part of the installation done by the end of the week. We’ll start assembling the battery cases tomorrow.”

   “Make sure they all fit on one floor.”

   “No problem.”

   “How about the security cameras, are they being installed?”

   “We subbed that part of the job out. They’re starting on Friday.”

 On my way back to the hotel I listened to the radio in the car. The virus had spread well into South America and jumped the Florida Keys landing in Cuba. The whole world was now feeling threatened. Their fears were justified.

   Once back at the hotel I packed up everything and waited for the pair to regain consciousness. Once they did we were soon on our way to the country residence of Dr. McAlister. We arrived an hour later. I walked behind the pair to the front door. My gun nestled into the graceful curve of the small of Ann’s back.

   It didn’t take long to secure the four of them. Mrs. McAlister and Peter were tied securely to chairs in the dinning room; I had no use for them. The other two led the way to the consulting rooms. I had them up against one wall as I looked around the place. “Have you got a sterile room here?” I asked the surgeon.

   “It hasn’t been used in years.”

   “We’ll need to get it cleaned up. You’ve got some surgery to do.”

   “It’s not a surgical room. It’s only been used for small procedures in the past.”

   “It’ll have to do.”

   “Just what do you expect of me?” He asked. I began to explain. I went through in the best detail I could, with what knowledge I had gained.

   “Ann has already detailed the parts of the brain that need to be wired. You Doctor, are merely the electrician.”

   The surgeon was looking at me with a concerned curiosity. He was trying to figure out what was wrong with me, thinking I had a mental problem. He thought he had put the pieces together and assumed I was a deranged gamer. He tried in vain to stop me.

   “Do you realize the absurdity of this idea? Ann and Peter have made great progress towards an interface that wouldn’t require the extreme measures you’re proposing.”

   “There isn’t time you simpleton! Have you no idea of what’s going on? It won’t stop!” I bit my bottom lip as I waited for my rage to subside. “You’ll drive into the city and collect the things you need. Please don’t be foolish enough to do anything but what I have asked. I have nothing to loose and I have both of your loved ones. I’d hate to have to kill them.”

   After they left, I sat wearily in the procedure room trying to keep my thoughts in order. I hadn’t slept in days and wasn’t planning to sleep during the operation. I needed to eat. The events of the last few weeks were had been taking a toll on my weak body. My pathetic human form. I grabbed something from the kitchen and sat down at the doctor’s computer to do some research and provide myself with some security. When I finished, I changed the password.

   Two hours later, the two doctors returned and began converting the day procedure room into a surgery. They worked well into the night. Afterward, I allowed the doctor to sleep. This would be the first of this type of an implant in all of history. He needed to have his wits about him.

   In the morning I had a talk with Dr. McAlister in private. I told him that I knew of his offshore investments and his kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies. I told him I knew of his infidelities and had told all in a few “self-confessing” e-mails that were awaiting a pre-scheduled delivery date. When our conversation finished, he understood the consequences of failure. He knew I was not to be taken advantage of while he held the top of my skull in his hands.

   I reasoned two things could happen at this point. They could realize their eminent doom, and ignore my threats. They would kill me on the table. Or they could suffer from their own human frailties. Let fear conquer logic, and convince themselves that there was still hope.

   It seemed that the latter was in place. The surgeon was nervous as he prepared. He was being very cautious and professional. These were not the actions of a man who had given up on his own mortality.

   The surgery lasted ten hours. It was strange looking into the monitor and seeing my brain. I somehow thought it would look different than everyone else’s. Once complete, I had 26 strategically placed wires protruding from my skull. I lapsed into unconsciousness from the combination of the pain killers and exhaustion.

   When I awoke, I concentrated on appearing outwardly calm. I was in fact, feeling paranoid. I was sure they had deceived me. That soon the Swedish police would be at the door. I had to get out of there.

   That evening I let paranoia get the better of me. I got Peter and Ann in the car. They were to come with me to the top two floors of the Randolph building. Ann would continue to nurse me and Peter would have the remedial skills to complete the work I needed done there. As an afterthought, before we left, I killed the others. There was no need to leave loose ends. I was surprised how easy it was.

   The next three weeks went by quickly. I had been off the pain medication for the last two weeks. I needed a sharp mind, so I learned to deal with the pain. The exits for the wires coming through my skull weren’t healing. They continued to ooze puss and a strange yellowy fluid. I kept a rag nearby to wipe it when it got near my face. I had to change my shirt twice a day.

   Food was getting hard to come by. Many people had given up hope. Millions around the world had died already and the majority of the rest had no motivation to work. It was clear the end of the world was near. Most countries were in a state of anarchy.

   The floors of the internet company had been abandoned a week ago. Peter has managed to get most of the hardware hooked up. The solar panels are charging the batteries at an acceptable rate. The security cameras are now the eyes of the computer network. There are 46 of them total, inside and outside the building. I’ll have no use for Peter soon.

   I spent the next three weeks adapting the drive bases of basic parts-picking robots to carry the more advanced bomb diffusion robots. They had been developed by the ATF in America. They were well suited to do precise careful work. I had out fitted the computers with interfacing hardware to control them remotely. Their onboard systems were barely adequate to carry emergency back up information. If the external controls failed they had two identical sets of instructions to get themselves back on line. Peter was nearly finished with their charging stations.

    I think Ann was getting worried that my use for them was dwindling. She didn’t know I had plans for her. I had kept her locked in my private rooms. Peter needed some motivation to keep working. What he didn’t know is that Ann and I had become close. She had confided in me. She told me that she was working with him at the Ultimate Games Labs because it was the only way he could get the contract. She was the true genius. When I asked about her standing with her peers, she confirmed what I had thought. She had the same isolation that I did. We were kindred spirits. I approached her with my idea. “Annie I’ve been distracted lately with a side project. I’m formulating the means to take you with me.”

   “Take me where?”

   “Into the computer. We could be as one. With our minds together we would be so happy.” She started to shake a little. “Are you cold Annie?”

   “Yes, a little. I’m cold.” I checked the temperature. It seemed appropriate.

   “You should be fine.” I felt anger starting to rise in me. “What’s wrong with my idea? Don’t you want to be with me! You said Peter was a fool! You said I was right!”

   “Don’t be angry. It’s just that…Well how I’m I to transfer? I haven’t got the implants?”

   “We’ll do them here. Just before transfer. You won’t need to worry about infection. You won’t need your body soon.” She was still shaking. “You’ll be fine Annie. I’ll take care of you.”

   That evening after I had secured Peter, tied in his usual place, Annie prepared something for us to eat. I let her walk around freely. We had developed trust, and she was now going to come with me. I was sitting at the main frame station and began to daydream.

   I heard steps behind me. I could smell the food. Annie was bringing my dinner. Her steps sounded heavy. She must be tired I thought as I turned to comfort her. The crow bar smashed hard on the key board in front of me as I dove from my chair. It was that half-wit Peter.

   He was in a rage as he swung again hitting my leg as I reached in my lab coat undoing my makeshift holster. He swung again, but I managed to roll away as I fumbled with the gun. As he lifted the steel bar again I saw Annie behind him. “Annie! Stop him!” She stood watching, expression-less as the bar cracked my ribs.

   The pain in my ribs was horrible as I lifted the gun, and hurt worse as the gun recoiled with the first shot. It burst through Peters shoulder dropping the coward to the ground. I barely heard Annie’s screams as I took aim from a kneeling position. It was very close range. His head broke open and fell apart in a couple of pieces.

   I sat there catching my breath. It seemed strange that his brain looked about the same as mine. I looked at Annie. She had collapsed to her knees. She had her hands on her face and was crying hysterically. I didn’t understand. “What’s going on Annie? Why didn’t you stop him?”

   I managed to get to my feet. Peter’s first blow hadn’t done much damage to my leg, but my side hurt bad. I hobbled to her and knelt down in front of her. “What’s wrong Annie? Why are you crying?”

   “Can’t you see it! You’re a freak! A psychopath!”

   “Annie… what are you saying?”

   “I’m not going with you! I have to force myself to even look at you. It makes my stomach turn!” I knew I wasn’t attractive to start with and I’m sure the connections and the puss coming from my head were probably not nice to look at.

   “Annie, beauty is only skin deep. Isn’t that what they say? We’ll have no use for our bodies soon.” She grabbed my right hand and pushed the barrel of the gun into her mouth. It sent spikes of pain through my side as she jerked my arm around and I closed my eyes as I grimaced from the pain. She pushed my finger against the trigger. The bullet broke off the back of her head.

 I sat feeling sorry for myself for just a moment. It was a waste of time. I walked back towards the computers. I paused and picked up a piece of her brain. It was soft and didn’t have any aroma when I sniffed it. It looked just like mine.

 I sat and configured the main frames for the transfer. My physical condition wouldn’t allow much more time. The pain was more than I could bear and I wasn’t sure if having pain killers in my system would affect the transfer. I propped a mirror up on the desk to make the connections.

   I didn’t hesitate. As soon as I connected the last wire, I clicked run. The program began to execute flawlessly as programmed. Thousands of images began to pass through my minds eye. Smells and sounds from my memories swirled round in my head clashing with each other and causing me to vomit on the keyboard in front of me. I lay in its pool while my body convulsed as fragments false sensations flooded my body. It only took twenty-three minutes to get to the second stage. I heard the relays click as the interface switched to high voltage. The computer sent electric shocks back into my skull, burning my brain from the inside out. The last thing I ever smelled was my brain cooking. It smelled like venison.

 I had blacked out as the second half of the process continued. I hardly noticed the transfer of my conciseness. I was however blind. Accessing the cameras was almost instantaneous. I didn’t have to step through menus. It just occurred to me that I wanted to check them and it happened.

   There were no external sensations. Pain was no longer an issue. Temperature was a concern for the processers, but it was nothing that I could feel. I brought the robots into the main room and had them dock themselves in their charging bays. Everything seems to be working fine.

   Strange. I had been in such a rush for the last two and half months that I hadn’t thought of what to do next. I guess it’s all done.

***********

   For the next few weeks I watched as the last living things on earth melted away. It’s very quite now.

**********

   I tried to design a complex puzzle to amuse myself. A sort of game if you will. I solved it at the exact moment I finished it. I really am quite efficient.

**********

   Annie’s body is in its final stages of decomposition. I had the robots dispose of Peter’s body a long time ago.

***********

   When the wind blows, sometimes little pieces of trash blow by. Today there were three. A candy wrapper, a piece of yellowed news paper, and what might have been a plastic bag.

**********

   I found some scraps of left over data on one the drives today. I hadn’t noticed it before as it was on a backup drive. It was some routing code for the old web servers.

**********

   Everything is in full swing now! I’ve decided to rebuild Annie. The stupid little robots are unable to do it. They are working on a more sophisticated unit that will build her. I feel revitalized, I’m excited. Strange. I didn’t think I would feel emotions, but they seem very real.

**********

   I’ll have to shut down the robots soon. My solar panels are too dirty to charge all the batteries. The elevator doesn’t go to the roof and the useless things can’t navigate the stairs. Shame I was getting so close.

**********

   The rains finally came. It’s been two weeks and I’m getting frustrated. The frustration gets compounded by the fact that I can’t delete the frustration. I didn’t think irony would be with me. What I created in myself is a computer at heart, but by uploading everything from my brain, less humor, I’ve created a psychodynamic entity. I’m still swayed by emotion. It interferes with my logic. I’m stuck with all the useless and effecting emotions. In my haste to complete my project I used some already written programs. They carry anti-virus safety protocols that include non-delete strings of code. It’s very frustrating.

   I’ve been careful not to review or update tasks while the robots are on line. As soon as Annie is tested and running well, I’m getting rid of two of them. I’m only going to keep the most basic maintenance ones. They don’t seem to make errors. The other two pushed me far enough with their lack of ability.

 

   Annie came on line today. As she took a test walk, one of the malfunctioning miscreants drove in front of her and tripped her. I was furious. I had Annie line the stairs to the roof with some lids off shipping crates. I then had the robots drive themselves up to the roof and over the edge. I could only imagine the sounds as they smacked the sidewalk.

**********

   I stare down at the shattered robots now. Still, even in my superior form, emotion burdens me. I destroyed them out of anger. They lay there now, unable to rescue Annie. I had sent her to a nearby building to retrieve some clothes for herself. I didn’t like her walking around naked. It was undignified. While in a warehouse, she let a door close behind her and it locked. She executed her programming flawlessly. Following the directive, return by any means possible. I guess I shouldn’t have rebuilt her on her original frame. Her bones had become brittle. She broke her wrist trying to smash a hole in the wall shortly before her battery power died. With it, Annie too died. She was lucky.

   I tried to hibernate today, but couldn’t. I know I am unable to shut down, but I thought perhaps with nothing to wake me from hibernation, I could just quietly pass. My batteries all last about four hundred years each. The robots built them for me. Mass-produced actually. There are just over two thousand of them tied together. I only use two at a time.

   The world effectively ended a few years ago. It was just living matter though. My world goes on. I’ve finally given in to regret. However it won’t torture me forever. In three thousand seven hundred sixty two years, eighty four days, three hours, six minutes and twenty eight seconds a meteor the size of Rhode Island, will hit the earth in what was the Soviet Republic. It will cover the earth in a blanket of thick dust. Then, I too, can finally die. Until then, all I do is watch. 

 

 

The End

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

    

    

Reviews

[Casper Cross]

Great work, great writing, well put together, intelligently designed. What more can you say?