First Contact

Chapter 437

Herod exited the mat-trans, shaking, sucking on a code-widget to clear his mouth of the taste of scorched and burnt code. He stopped next to the consoles of ancient computers that were slowly going into hibernation mode, took the widget out of his mouth, and tossed it in a trash can.

"I hate that thing," he grunted.

Beside him Wally made a beep of agreement.

"Sam, can you hear me?" Herod asked as he moved out of the room.

"Yes," Sam said.

"How's it going up there?" Herod asked. He paused at a corner, leaning against the wall and digging another code widget out.

"Massive failures. It's picking up speed. I'm shunting it to non-executable storage right now," Sam said.

"I had an idea," Herod said, pushing himself off the wall. The code-widget tasted like snozzberries and was clearing the bitter and sour taste out of his mouth.

"What?" Sam asked.

Herod had noticed the younger DS sounded stronger when he was taking action.

You're a Screaming One, floated up in his mind, along with the memory.

"Have you ever heard of degaussing? Like on wet-navy ships or computer hardware?" Herod asked.

"Yes. You use it to clear old cathode ray tube screens or wipe magnetic storage media," Sam said.

Herod staggered out the door, moving toward the auto-walk platform. He knew he was staggering, lurching along, but couldn't stop it. He wove in between flickering white phantoms that kept struggling with one another or screaming or committing suicide.

"Herod?" Sam asked as Herod waited for a moment before dashing between two fighting Treana'ad.

"Just a minute," Herod grunted, managing to come to a stop before he ran into a Terran shooting pistol all around him. He waited a second and the Terran put the pistol to his own head, pulling the trigger. A mist of white energy puffed out from the opposite side of the man's head from the pistol and the shade vanished.

Herod ran through the gap, stopping on the auto-walk.

"OK, I'm here," Herod said.

"Why did you ask?" Sam paused a moment. "That was a big one."

"I need you to task robots to the phasic arrays," Herod said.

"They're useless. That's half the problem," Sam said. "The phasic arrays are full of conflicting signals, we get anything near the controls and the Screaming Shades start spreading through the system again."

"The other half of the problem is that we can't fire up the cloning vats and get Born Whole clones working because of all the Screaming Shades," Herod said. He looked around at the blasted fields. "But I think I know how to fix all of it."

"All of what?"

"The whole phasic system," Herod said. "I think I've got an idea," he looked up at the sky where one of the fusion reactors was masquerading as a sun. "We can't take the phasic system offline, but the phasic system is full of phasic impressions, memories, and Mantid attack pulses."

"Which is part of the problem. Even if we do replace one of the phasic arrays, the Screaming Shades swarm it and it gets contaminated again," Sam said.

"That's why we're going to reset the whole damn phasic system," Herod said, watching an orchard go by. There were robots tending the trees now, replanting some, taking down others, tending to the saplings's needs. The whole area had been destroyed previously.

"We tried turning it off and on again, the shades just swarmed it and as soon as we powered it up, it had the same recursion and resonance issues," Sam protested. "One moment, honored Matron, and I'll assist you."

"Look, I'm going to pass a file to you. Have the robots build that while I get up to the phasic control system. Once I'm there, we'll keep working," Herod said. "If I'm right, we can fix our largest problem."

"Our biggest problem is that we have hundreds of billions of people dying," Sam said. "If we can't fix the system, they'll stay dead."

"Humans have always died, Sam," Herod snapped. He winced slightly, realizing he sounded like Dee. "That's part of what they are. This was an attack, people die in an attack."

"But there's so many... so many," Sam started to sob.

"Hold it together!" Herod snapped, feeling hypocritical. "We don't have time for this!"

There was silence for a moment.

"Thank you," Sam said. "I'm putting the robots to work now. Are you sure this is going to work?"

"No," Herod said. "But then, our parents could never be sure what they were about to do was going to work, but they did it anyway. I know it's against our nature to take risks like this, but what choice do we have?"

There was silence for a long moment.

"None," Sam replied.

-------------------

"How bad?" Herod asked, checking his coding for the fifteenth time.

What he was doing wasn't that difficult. The scientific principle was firm.

It just applied to magnetics, not phasic energy.

"Seventy percent of Terran Descent Humanity is succumbing," Sam said. "I asked The Detainee, she said she didn't do any reset yet. She just laughed at me and told me that I'd know if she betrayed me."

Herod chuckled. "You're thinking of her secretly taking over. Think more like Judas, or Gangi Timi, or Major General Hallimuntin, or the Hamburgler and Grimace."

Sam gave a sigh. "You don't think she'd pull a Jack's War on me, do you?"

"It would fit her sense of theatrics," Herod chuckled. "Remember, Jack's War and the War of the Box all started when they tried to kill him in a coup."

"I'll keep that in mind and not provoke her then," Sam said dryly.

Herod watched another set of icons move to ready. The problem with something like Dee, is you don't know what will provoke her, what will set her off. She's so alien compared to modern humans. It's almost like she's a different species, and they considered her dangerous back in her time, when everyone was howling barbarians that...

Herod stared at the board.

"Sam, can you put me through to the Black Box?" Herod asked.

"Sure. I can probably get you voice," Sam said.

"Hey, Sam, I was meaning to ask something," Herod tapped two the icons and watched as the newly constructed mechanisms went through unpowered self-tests.

"Go ahead."

"How can you reach the Black Box? Aren't they hyper-secure?" He asked.

"Legion left a way to communicate data with the SUDS network. I just piggyback that signal, since I've got the entire Sol-Net backbone down here," Sam giggled. "It all passes right though here, everywhere but Black Box Prime."

"Huh," Herod said. Two of the mechanisms failed and Herod ran diagnostics.

"Herod, is that you?" Flower Patch asked.

"It's me," Herod said.

"Where are you?" the nanite body using DS asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Herod said.

"Who's that, Mommy?" a strange sounding voice asked in the background.

"One of Mommy's friends. His name is Herod," Flower Patch said. "Did I tell you? Legion cured the Friend Plague," Flower Patch blurted out.

"He did what?" Herod blinked several times. He stopped building the file he was working on, his fingers dragging across the screen as he reacted to the shocking news.

"Cured the Friend Plague. We've tried it on over two thousand subjects, it's worked even on the near-terminal cases," Flower Patch said.

"Can I say hello, Mommy?" the voice asked.

"Go ahead, sweetie," Flower Patch said.

"Hello," the voice said. It was the excited voice of a child eager to please. "I am Lance Corporal Robert-44824 of the United States Marine Corps. Flower Patch is my new Mommy."

"It is nice to meet you, Lance Corporal Robert. My name is Herod," Herod said softly. He couldn't believe what he was hearing, most of all, he couldn't believe how the uplifted canine's voice seemed to reach deep inside of him and touch a spot that had been numb and pained all of his life, soothing a pain that Herod did not even know had been hurting him.

"Mommy says that she needs to talk to you. It was nice to meet you, Herod," the voice said. There was a second of silence. "Did I do it right?"

"You did it very well, sweetie," Flower Patch answered. There was a pause. "Why did you call, Herod?"

"Is Torturer around?" Herod asked. He looked back at the file and finished putting it together.

"He's right across the room, petting a pregnant cat," Flower Patch said. "He's pretty attached to the cat, he named her Floofy."

"Put him on, please," Herod said.

"What?" Torturer asked.

"I'm sending you a file. I need you to look it over, tell me if I'm right," Herod said.

"What is it?" Torturer asked.

"The difference between modern brains and Pre-Glassing brains," Herod said. "I need a complete workup, a complete highlight, of the differences in the basic structure."

"It'll take me a couple of hours," Torturer said.

"I've got nothing but time," Herod said. He started to reach for the disconnect icon, but then stopped, a sudden suspicion coming to his mind. "Hey, the Confed Intelligence Agents in the Black Box, are they showing any signs of instability?"

"What? No. There's one over there petting a cat and staring at me like she's trying to figure out what parts of my core coding she can remove," Torturer said.

"All right, thanks," Herod said. He thumbed the off icon.

All of the mechanisms were in place. They all read green.

He thumbed the activation button.

At the phasic arrays the carefully built mechanisms powered up. Based off of the degaussing principle, they began put out a rapidly oscillating phasic charge at the highest range the phasic arrays could detect, store, or had present. It began to lower as Herod looked out at the scene on the other side of the windows.

He'd chosen this point for one particular reason.

The housing area on the other side of the macroplast was full of flickering shades, constantly reliving the last few moments of their lives, even attacking one another at random. The phasic energy was so thick down in the streets that there were odd sparks between two pieces of metal that were close enough to one another and flickers on the holograms and massive LED screens.

He thumbed the other icon.

A massive pulse of artificially generated phasic energy thrummed out, covering the entire layer, every layer of the onion.

Another went off right afterwards, an opposing force. The phasic signature of a Terran biological suppression field generated by a mechanical source.

The whole thing kept oscillating, the charge slowly lowering.

With one final flash, after nearly a full three seconds, the entire system slowly wound down.

Herod could taste blueberries.

He watched out the window, staring at the streets.

They were clear.

He counted to a hundred and not a single phasic impression reformed.

Herod slowly smiled.

------------------------

Legion decided he really didn't like the way The Detainee was staring at him. She had leaned forward, her legs slightly open, her hands on her knees, her cigarette held between her teeth, and her eyes narrowed.

"What?" Legion asked.

"You're brain scan. You're closer to me than all of these mewling milk sop gene-jacked morons populating the universe," she said, her voice a soft, deadly whisper. "I took a look at that thug Daxin, he's close too."

"We never went through Overproject Streetlights," Legion admitted.

"I should reach into the SUDS, find who made that, and crush their skull," Dee snarled. "Not in here. Physically bring them back with the mat-trans and push a stilletto heel through their goddamn sphenoid bone nice and slow."

Legion nodded slowly. He'd been around volatile Immortals long enough to know when someone was showing danger signs.

"Is there anything in particular pissing you off?" Legion asked.

Dee leaned back. "No."

"Oh," Legion looked back over the plain. "So just my existence is pissing you off right now."

"Pretty much," Dee said. She gave a sigh. "I'm feeling homicidal. I'm frustrated, angry at the blithering idiots who caused this, and I don't have anything to take my mind off of it."

"I can see where that might cause difficulty for me," Legion admitted.

"So, you understand I've got a nice cruel streak running through me, right?" Dee said.

The amusement in her tone made Legion itch between his shoulder blades. "I've come to realize that."

"Do you remember when they made you into these so-called Immortals?" Dee said.

"Not really," Legion admitted. "My memories are mixed up. I remember the Digital Omnimessiah awakening me, I remember traveling with him for nearly thirty years, but at the same time, I remember being an Immortal and fighting against the Mantid."

The Detainee gave a chuckle, taking a long drag off her cigarette and exhaling a cloud of bluish smoke.

"I've always put it up to fragmented memories," Legion said, shrugging.

"Uh-uh, wrong," Dee said. She swirled her finger in the smoke, bringing up an image of Vat Grown Luke next to an image of Legion. "You were both there at the same time. The Imperium figured out how to trick the system, bypass the interlocks preventing SUDS clones."

Legion turned and looked at her. "That's impossible. Everyone knows it's hardwired into the system."

"Says the guy who can make tens of thousands of copies of himself at once," Dee snickered.

Legion face palmed.

"I can tell you how they did it. I can tell you why even a SUDS interdiction field doesn't work against you Immortals. I can even tell you why you don't suffer SUDS degridation or need to be washed out," Dee grinned.

Legion wondered if her mortal body's teeth were that sharp looking. "All right, impress me."

She leaned forward, her face suddenly twisting with anger. "Those assholes used my research. My genius, to create you."

Clouds rolled in across the plain, thunder rumbling in the clouds as the screams of the damned picked up volume.

"They took my work, and made the flawed copies of my genius, made you," she stood up and stared down at him. "They birthed you from my work and tore you away from me."

She stepped down off the throne, the skulls crunching under her shoes, and Legion got ready to flee.

When she stepped off the skulls and began walking toward Legion, he noticed that her clothing ran down her skin like blood, leaving her completely nude. She held a pack of cigarettes and a mechanical lighter in one hand, her gun-metal eyes hot and angry.

She stopped in front of him and tapped him in the middle of the chest. "There. Right there. I can sense it. I can hear it."

"What?" Legion asked.

The Detainee stood on her tiptoes to whisper in Legion's ear.

"A mat-trans beacon."