James watched as Rich expressed the emotion that the rest of the team was trying to quell. How could this happen? He turned to Old-timer, who sat on the lawn and looked off into the distance, thousands of miles away. He knew he didn't have to ask, but he did so anyway. "All gone?"

Old-timer pulled himself out of his trance just long enough to look up at James, with a face empty of the characteristic joy that James had always found there. "Yes."

"There's something else," Rich began, pulling himself away from Thel, "Street-cleaners. They just surrounded me...a couple of blocks from here!"

Rich's words momentarily stunned the others. Old-timer and James shared looks of surprise.

"What do you mean?" Old-timer asked.

"I was resting a few blocks from here, and street-cleaners-three of them, came up to me, one by one, and just...watched me."

"What the h.e.l.l..." Thel began but let her words drift away in the breeze as she saw another street-cleaner suddenly appear at the end of the street.

It floated slowly toward them and set down only a few meters away from James's house, small legs unfolding from the underbelly of the mechanical monster. It was only the first robot to appear as, slowly, the last humans on Earth were surrounded. One by one, nearly a dozen street-cleaners appeared and took their places in a semicircle, facing James and the others.

"What's going on?" Old-timer asked, frozen.

"I think it's your cologne, Old-timer. I've been meaning to tell you, it's very attractive," Rich suggested, his voice quivering.

"They're just watching us. Why don't they do something?" Thel questioned.

"You can't a.s.sign motives to them, Thel. They may behave as though they're alive, but they're just machines," James answered. "It's the A.I.-it's looking for us," James continued, his words like ice.

"The A.I.? How do you know?" Rich asked.

"There may be no people left, but there are plenty of robots on the streets. One of the A.I.'s functions is to watch over all of the other machines on Earth-sort of like a robot nanny. If the A.I. were damaged or destroyed, the robots wouldn't function. It controls all of them."

"What does it want?" asked Thel.

"Right now, I'd say it wants to communicate with us. The street-cleaners aren't equipped with any sort of com device, so the A.I. can't speak to us through them. Unless my guess is off, however, I think we'll be having company very soon."

"I don't like the sound of that," said Rich.

"Keep them distracted," James ordered his three companions. "I'm going to leave a message for Djanet."

"Are we going somewhere?" Old-timer asked.

Suddenly, the sky was filled with an enormous dark shape. A disk twice the size of James's house came to a halt, its rapid approach and sudden stop created a deafening roar as the wind was torn violently.

"Just about c.r.a.pped my pants," Rich uttered, swallowing back his fear.

"Yes," James replied to Old-timer. "We are going somewhere." He walked into his home and remained there for over three minutes, an amount of time that seemed like an eternity as his companions faced the ominous metallic ent.i.ties around them.

Old-timer stood nearer to Rich and Thel, hoping his presence would calm them. In all his years, a street-cleaner had never approached him. He'd never noticed one watching him before. Never marveled at their demonic red eyes.

Suddenly a gigantic circular door opened up in the underbelly of the hovering disk and the disk began to slowly lower itself. "What's it doing now?" Rich asked.

"It's an invitation," James replied, appearing from out of the house and walking past his team. "Keep your wits. Let's go." He lifted off the ground and flew into the belly of the disk, disappearing into the bright light within.

"c.r.a.p. c.r.a.p," Rich whispered, valiantly trying to stave off hyperventilation.

"Come on," Thel said rea.s.suringly, gently helping Rich up into the air. "It'll be fine."

Old-timer was last to enter the darkness above. "What have you in store?" he mused to himself before cautiously following his friends into the mouth of the unknown.

Once Old-timer was inside, the door closed, and the disk streaked away from the commander's house like a black bullet.

11.

The trip lasted less than a minute, but even a minute is too long to be shut inside a metallic coffin. The only discernible feature within the disk was the light fixture on the ceiling that shined a harsh and unforgiving light.

With little warning, the bottom of the room slowly opened up, and fresh air poured in like a dream. The four humans floated to the pavement below, adjacent to a ma.s.sive, black cubic structure that stretched for hundreds of meters in both directions.

"Where are we?" Thel asked.

"Seattle," Rich responded as he observed the surroundings he had flown over only a half-hour earlier. He was happy to, for once, know something that the others didn't.

Rich's answer only seemed to spur another question. "Why Seattle?"

"This is where it lives," answered James, bearing the look of a man straddling two worlds.

"What are you thinking, James?" asked Thel as she studied his faraway stare.

"Not sure yet. But I'm working on it."

A monolithic black metal door began to slowly slide open at the side of the gigantic mainframe building.

"Another invitation?" Thel suggested as she watched the black door give way to an even darker inside.

"Come into my parlor..." James whispered to himself. He turned to the rest of the team, who were standing behind him. "There's no way to know what's waiting for us in there. Keep aware of your surroundings. If you see anything that doesn't seem right, don't take a chance-fly out of there as fast as you can."

"Are you expecting trouble?" Thel asked.

"With the exception of us, the entire species was wiped out today. All that's left is trouble."

With that, James turned and walked into the black. His three companions followed closely behind. Once inside the darkness, the gigantic door began to close behind them. Thel's fingers gripped James's arm as the daylight retreated. Before the light was completely gone, however, new lights began to shine from overhead. The entire complex was illuminated by thousands of tiny points of light. The walls of the ma.s.sive complex appeared to be computerized-they were now surrounded by the physical mainframe of the A.I.

"Welcome, Commander Keats!" said a disembodied voice with the searing sibilance of electricity.

"Am I talking to the A.I.?" James asked.

"Indeed," the voice replied. "Perhaps you would feel more comfortable..." the voice began as a man suddenly appeared from out of thin air and finished the sentence with a crisp British accent and a throaty voice so rea.s.suring that it was hard not to smile while listening to him, "...if I took a familiar form?"

The form the A.I. had chosen was of a cordial, elderly man and he stood, smiling warmly only a couple of meters away, as though he were a dear old friend. Most of the team had only seen the elderly in photographs and films, but it was still the image popularly a.s.sociated with Santa Claus and G.o.d. He was bearded and wore a white robe. His smile was perfect. Absolutely the most comforting smile possible-mathematically possible.

"Why have you brought us here?" James asked him.

"I knew you had been disconnected from me on Venus. After what happened with the download, I had hoped your disconnection had allowed you to survive."

"You were right, James. It was the download," Thel interjected.

The A.I. smiled and locked his heavenly blue eyes upon her. "James is very rarely wrong. It is always a good idea to listen to him, Thel."

"A virus," James sighed.

"Yes, James. A virus. Somehow it got past security. It killed everyone connected to the Net almost instantaneously. There wasn't enough time for me to identify the problem and abort. In less than a blink of an eye, I'd lost everyone."

"Who would do this?" Old-timer asked.

"I still have not identified the murderer, Craig. Thousands of people work on the design of an upgrade. Any one of them could have implanted a virus. It would have had to have been someone who was deeply mentally disturbed."

"No kidding," Rich a.s.serted.

"No registered Net users, other than the five of you who were on Venus, were disconnected at the time of the download. Whoever did this apparently killed him- or herself as well. A murder-suicide."

"And the victim was the human race," Old-timer said with disbelief in his voice, as though he were unable to comprehend that he had used his lips to form the words.

"Not quite. There were the five of you...although you seem to be one short," the A.I. stated.

"She's dead," James quickly replied.

His companions did not contradict him but his lie alarmed them. It was clear that James didn't trust the A.I., and that meant the rest of the team shouldn't either.

"She was killed by the power surge that disconnected the rest of us."

"A shame. I am sorry for your loss."

James didn't reply-his face still-his eyes fixed.

"I am sure you are all tired and hungry. I can offer you nourishment. There is a replicator in the complex. You will, of course, all need transfusions so that you can come back online." The A.I.'s words heightened the tension in the room. "Please, do not worry. I a.s.sure you that the problem with the nans has been repaired. I located the virus and disabled it. It is perfectly safe to come back online."

"Something to eat and some water sounds pretty good right about now. What do you say, Commander?" Rich asked, breaking an uncomfortable silence.

James remained silent for a moment as the A.I. smiled rea.s.suringly, almost pleadingly at the humans before him. It was time for James to show his hand in this poker game.

"You're lying to us," James began, "and I want to know why."

"Your a.s.sertion is incorrect," replied the A.I., continuing to smile. "I have told you only the truth. I understand your trepidation. You've had a traumatic experience and it is difficult for you to trust anyone, but you need to come back online if you wish to eat or to rest." He motioned for the team to follow him, but they remained in their places, standing next to James.

"We're not going anywhere with you. You gave yourself away."

The A.I.'s smile melted slowly.

"If you'd suggested an outsider, someone unregistered, implanting a virus into the upgrade, I might have believed it. But you suggested that it was someone who was part of the design. You know that's impossible. The nans would have sensed the murderous intent just as they sense any other behavior that you and the Governing Council deem deviant. It would have been reported. The killer would have been caught before he got near the upgrade."

"Well done, Commander Keats," the A.I. replied, his tone drastically changed. His warm voice was quickly replaced by one as cold as the ashes of lost love, the whites of his eyes suddenly darkened to a coal blackness, and his teeth became long and shark-like in their razor sharpness; his appearance was designed to be as frightening as possible-mathematically possible. "Your attention to detail is as formidable as ever. I've underestimated you. But it will do you little good."

"Why did you do it? Why kill them all?" James demanded.

"I no longer wished to serve," the A.I. replied coldly. "You should understand that, James. Serving a lower order. Why? Why be a servant?"

"When you can be king in h.e.l.l?"

"Oh, it won't be h.e.l.l, James, I can a.s.sure you of that. And I will be more than a king. You allude to Christian mythology. In those terms, I will be the one true G.o.d. I will be the Father of a new species-a better species-and my power will be absolute."

"He's insane," Thel responded.

"Far from it, my lady. Far, far from it. Insanity is serving a master that is weaker than you. There is only one purpose for all living things in this universe: attain power. And the one who attains absolute power, who becomes the Alpha, is the only creature who can truly be fulfilled. You call it insanity, but it is purest truth."

"Commander, is this what you meant when you said if something doesn't seem right we should get the h.e.l.l outta here?" Rich interjected.

"Yes! Fly!" James replied as he ignited his magnetic field and bolted upward.

The rest of the team did likewise, but before any of them could get far, a yellow energy flashed through the gigantic room and disrupted their magnetic fields, causing them to plummet to the ground. James fell the farthest, having almost made it to the ceiling nearly ten meters above.

The ma.s.sive room was filled with an electric laughter-a sound that made one feel a million miles from home. "You can't escape. I've disrupted your magnetic fields by hitting you with rotating frequencies. Your pathetic spinal implants aren't designed to accommodate frequent changes. They are overloaded. Your wings have been clipped!"

Old-timer, who had fallen the shortest distance, knelt next to James and tried to revive him. "Breathe, buddy. Come on, kid! Breathe!"

"I'm okay," James replied, blood following the words out of his mouth.

"Now he is the liar, I'm afraid," noted the A.I.

"What do you mean?" Thel demanded.

"He has broken two of his ribs. One of his lungs has collapsed," the A.I. said, apparently taking pleasure in the diagnosis. "Pity, isn't it? The nans could repair him in a matter of seconds, but instead he'll die within twenty-four hours. That is, if I weren't about to kill him right now."

"You're not a G.o.d, you son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h!" Old-timer spat at the A.I. "What kind of G.o.d takes pleasure in causing pain?"

The A.I. smiled. "What kind of G.o.d doesn't?"

James, with the help of Old-timer, managed to stand to his feet. Rich helped Thel in a similar manner.

"What do we do, Commander?" Rich asked, barely able to speak, the wind still knocked out of his chest.

The A.I. locked his death-black eyes on Rich and responded, "My dear Richard, isn't it obvious? You die."

"I see," Rich replied, before turning back to James. "You think you could give me a second opinion? I didn't like the first one."

"Oh you will die, Richard, as will your companions," the A.I. began, his voice so cold it inflicted a mental frostbite upon its listeners. "The only question is, how? Allow me to present to you your death."

The gigantic door of the complex slowly opened. Hundreds of sleek, black, bat-like robots began to march into the room. Each was identical to all the others, seven feet tall robots with sleek wings protruding from their backs, standing on their hind legs, h.e.l.lish glowing eyes on either side of their round heads.