Craig lay stunned for several seconds before finally blinking. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"I'm...I'm-"

"You married that old man?"

"He's not old anymore."

"I'm still alive!"

"I didn't know-"

"Bull!" He thrust his head forward and then back down, hard against his pillow as he pulled hard on his restraints. "I'm going to kill him!"

"Craig, please-"

"I knew there was something going on between you!" he shouted accusingly.

"Never! Never while you were alive!"

"I'm still alive!" Craig screamed out.

As he did so, green sparks of energy suddenly formed around his fists. His face contorted into surprise. "What the h.e.l.l was that?"

Samantha's head hung in a mixture of surrender and shame. "It's...Craig, so many things have changed. I can't explain it all. I'm sorry. I tried."

"What do you mean you 'tried?'" Craig thundered in response. "What the h.e.l.l did you try? You woke me up to tell me you've been cheating on me with a geriatric?"

She turned to the LCD wall and nodded.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?" Craig said as he watched her strange gesture.

"I tried," Samantha sadly repeated.

"Is he on the other side of that wall?" Craig demanded. "Has he been watching us?"

The green sparks suddenly returned to his fists, this time accompanied by what looked like ball lightning, obliterating his restraints. With his teeth clenched in fury, Craig tossed the ball of energy toward the wall, smashing a hole in the center.

In the center of the hole, framed by raining pieces of gla.s.s, Aldous Gibson slowly brought his arms down from the protective shield they formed around his face, revealing the countenance of a man in his late twenties.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Craig whispered in disbelief before he quickly lost consciousness.

This time, there was black.

3.

WAKING UP from the nightmare, Craig's heart raced as he sat up in an awkward spasm. A little drool had run out of the left side of his mouth and was tickling his chin. He wiped it away as he looked out at snowcapped mountains in the east, a nearly violet twilight sky behind them, the mountains still softly glowing with the fading light in the west, which they faced. A looming, implacable shadow moved, slowly but perceivably, and cast itself over more and more of the mountainscape, threatening to strangle the soft glow of the peaks.

"It's not real," said a voice to Craig's right.

Craig snapped his head around, following the voice. The man wasn't looking at him, but rather at the landscape on the other side of the window. He was an average man. Average height, average weight, average looks. Even his hairline, which had a slight peak and appeared to have minor weakness above the temples, suggested a 50/50 chance of male pattern baldness in the future. It suddenly struck Craig that he was looking at the most unremarkable man he'd ever seen, yet he couldn't take his eyes off of him. There was something about him. Something not right.

"The mountain range is real," the man continued, elaborating on his earlier statement, "but that's not a window you see." The man gestured with his hand, waving his open palm over the vast expanse of the window. It was about two meters in height and appeared to be nearly 100 meters long, covering the entire east wall of the gigantic room in which they resided. "It's a 3D, real-time image of extraordinarily high resolution. You can walk right up to the screen, peer at the mountains, at the tiny pebbles in the foreground, at the little trees in the distance, and you won't find a flaw. It will fool you. If only all technology were so-perfect."

Craig pressed his fingers against his temples. He expected to feel sluggish after having just awoken, but his mind was surprisingly clear. He looked up at the man, who continued to stare out at the simulated view. "Excuse me, but who are you?"

The man turned to Craig. He wore a slightly sheepish grin on his face as he replied, "I'm no one you know. No one you have an emotional attachment to. That's why they asked me to speak to you."

Craig took a moment to let the odd response sink in. He was sitting upright on a black, microfiber couch. They appeared to be at almost the exact center of the giant simulated view. Behind them, the room was decorated in a bad imitation of a ski lodge. The wooden flooring and beams on the ceiling were rough and purposely rustic in appearance. A gigantic fireplace large enough for a man to step inside without crouching crackled in the distance. It suddenly became clear to him that the room was meant to be soothing. "So. You're the shrink."

The man smiled at the a.s.sertion. "I'm afraid not. I probably know less about human psychology than anyone in this facility, though I am very well read on the subject. No, I am only here because I'm very good with facts and can answer your questions. In addition, the fact that you don't know me should minimize your emotional responses, at least in theory."

Craig listened, then sighed, putting his head in his hands. He was still inside the nightmare. "What facility are you talking about?" he asked resignedly. It was obvious that whoever it was who was pulling the strings wasn't going to let him see Samantha, yet he wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to find some answers.

"You're inside a bunker built into the base of Mount Andromeda in the Canadian Rockies. This facility was constructed by a team of engineers and researchers, a team led by Professor Aldous Gibson. It is a safe haven from the world government and their super soldier program. The super soldiers hunt down anyone suspected of developing strong artificial intelligence."

"So, this facility is illegal?"

"Yes. Very much so. It is fair to say that the people who inhabit this facility are the most wanted criminals in the world."

There was something about the man's frank a.s.sessment of the situation that caused an even more unsettled feeling to stir within Craig. There wasn't a hint of guilt or indignation from the man: only emotionless fact. There was no sugar in his tone to help the bitter pill go down. "Why am I here?" Craig asked. "I don't understand."

"Samantha Gibson," the man began, but he stopped when he saw the painful grimace her name brought to Craig's face. "I'm sorry. I shall try to be more sensitive. Samantha took possession of your body once it was recovered from Maluan Mountain. You were in suspended animation, and she conjectured that it might someday be possible to repair the terrible damage that had been done to you-that she could reanimate you."

"Then why did she marry someone else?" Craig interjected, his teeth clenched as he squeezed the words free.

"I cannot speak for what is in another's heart," the man replied. "They married eight years ago. At that time, the technology to reanimate you was far from certain. Perhaps she didn't really believe she would ever see you again."

Craig jumped to his feet, grunting in frustration as he grappled with the notion that his wife was with another man. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" he cursed as he balled his hands into tight fists and squeezed hard with fury. The green sparks suddenly ignited once again. Craig's mouth opened in surprise, and he immediately opened his hand, relaxing the muscles and causing the sparks to disappear. "Okay. Okay. What the h.e.l.l is that?" he stammered. "What's with the fireworks?"

"That was a magnetic field. You generated it with your mind."

"What the h.e.l.l?"

The man smiled but bowed his head sheepishly so as not to maintain eye contact for too long. "My friend, you are no mere mortal any longer. Like everyone else in this facility, you've taken a first giant leap beyond being human. You are post-human."

"What the h.e.l.l?" Craig repeated.

"Post-human. It's what the Purists like to call us. It was meant as derogatory, but we've adopted the term with affection. Would you like to know more?" the man asked, turning toward the exit and gesturing for Craig to follow him.

"Yes."

"Then come with me, and I will show you."

4.

The man led Craig into a cream-colored room at the end of a long, fluorescent-lighted corridor. Various large pieces of machinery populated the room, and there was an audible electric buzz in the air that gave Craig the feeling that it was a room he wouldn't like to remain in for long, lest the buzzing drive him mad. There was a tickle in his hair that reminded him of the static electricity he made as a kid by dragging his feet on the carpet. He also noticed that his saliva tasted of metal, as though he'd placed his tongue on a battery.

"This is the heart of everything in the facility," the man announced, pointing to one particular round piece of machinery, with a diameter about the width of a bus. Although there were pipes and rectangular, tightly packed objects at the top and bottom of the spherical structure, the most striking features were the plethora of cylindrical structures that protruded from the circular center. "That's a fusion generator," the man informed, "magnetic targeted fusion, MTF for short."

"Fusion?"

The man nodded and then craned his neck, pointing upward at the cylinders. "There are 200 pneumatic pistons. They hit the tank, which induces an acoustic compression wave in the liquid metal inside. That liquid metal then travels to the center of the sphere. The compression wave intensifies and collapses the vortex cavity and the plasma within it, creating thermonuclear conditions."

"I...uh...I understood some of that...I think," Craig replied.

The man smiled. "It's complex. I understand that it is difficult to grasp at first, but basically, enormous advancements in computer processing power have allowed for precise timing of the pistons, which is necessary to control the shape of the cavity as it collapses. It adjusts to thermal effects and other variations that are difficult to predict, but it can compensate in a microsecond, which makes this process possible."

"The fusion process?"

"Yes," the man replied. "Each fusion pulse results in 100 megajoules of electrical output, which translates into 28 kilowatt-hours. What you see here is limitless energy."

"Does the world government know you have this?" Craig asked.

The man shook his head. "We'd tell them if we could, but that would mean revealing our location, and that's not something we are inclined to do."

"But you have access to unlimited power. Surely you could fight them off."

The man grinned but continued to avoid full eye contact. "Fighting is not always the best alternative. However, you are right. We do have enormous power." He turned back to the MTF generator. "When this technology was developed, it was an incredible breakthrough and an impressive improvement on former fusion technologies, which required much larger structures and elaborate processes. This trend toward miniaturization continued, as it does in all technologies that become informational." The man turned back to Craig. "In fact, after a major breakthrough in neutron shielding just a few years ago, the technology improved enough that it became possible for a person to take it along, wherever he or she may go."

Craig's eyes narrowed as the man's explanation of his technology became more and more surreal. The boundary between magic and science had blurred until it was unrecognizable. "Are you saying you people have portable versions of that..." Craig looked up at the spherical structure that loomed in front of them. "...of that thing?"

The man continued to smile. "Portable? Oh, most definitely. You have one about the size of a small plum implanted in your lower back, next to your spinal cord."

Craig's lips tightened into a grimace as he reached with his right hand and pressed it against his lower back. Indeed, there was a strange structure there below his skin, deep enough to feel as though it were part of him, yet alien all the same. "Wh-what have you done to me?"

"Will you let me show you?" the man asked earnestly, daring to dart his eyes up to Craig's for a moment. There was still something not quite right about the man-something off-center about his gaze.

"I think you'd better," Craig replied.

"All right," the man replied. "Craig Emilson," he began, "wake up."

As soon as the words were spoken, a heads-up display appeared in Craig's vision, startling him. His name appeared in the left-hand corner, as well as the time of the day and even the weather report from outside of the facility. He rubbed his eyes to see if he were wearing LED contacts. When he reopened them, the HUD remained.

"It's called your mind's eye," the man related. "All post-human's have one. From there, you can access the Internet, your communications, your magnetic field generation, and your flight system."

Craig was momentarily dumbfounded. He stepped back onto one heel before blinking hard. "My flight systems?"

"Yes. You can fly now," the man replied frankly and emotionlessly. "You can also generate magnetic fields that can both coc.o.o.n you and propel you. All of these systems are controlled mentally."

"But...how? I mean...how is it possible that I can-"

"You'll have to go through the start-up process and tune your nans."

"Nans?"

"Yes. I know you are familiar with nan.o.bots, Craig. Like the respirocytes, only much more complex. You now have over 200 different types of nans in your system, and 4.6 million inside you in total, all of which are performing different tasks. Some of them are designed to transgress the blood-brain barrier and form connections to neurons in your brain. Some connect to the visual and aural centers so you can access your mind's eye, while others connect to the motor control centers so you can control your powers."

Craig's knees began to shake, and he slowly lowered himself onto the cold concrete floor of the room, covering his eyes with his hands. "How do I turn this thing off?" he asked, outwardly calm but quelling a quickly bubbling claustrophobia.

"Are you not well?"

"I'm fine. I just want this mind's eye thing to shut off." He felt as though he were drowning in technology that he didn't want.

"I'm sorry, Craig, but once the start-up has been initiated, you're going to have to go through the set-up process. Only you will be able to shut it off once you've gained control over your mind's eye."

"How long is that going to take?" Craig asked impatiently, suddenly pulling his hands from his eyes and looking up at the man. The man immediately turned away, but in the moment before he did so, Craig had caught him staring down at him in a way that was so unsettling that it caused Craig to forget his annoyance with the mind's eye and get to his feet. Something wasn't right about the man.

"Who are you?" Craig asked.

"No one you know," the man replied, continuing his custom of avoiding eye contact.

"Who are you?" Craig demanded. "What's your name?"

The man smiled. "Would you believe I don't have one?"

Craig could feel the hair on his arms and the back of his neck standing. If anyone else had answered the question the way the man had, Craig would've thought they were being coy or straight-up smart-mouthed. But there was something so unsettling and wrong about the figure before him that he knew his answer had been the truth. The man had no name.

"I used to have one-or at least I thought I did. However, it turned out that I didn't." The man smiled again, still not looking at Craig, instead looking away in the direction of the wall.

Craig was sure the man was retrieving some sort of memory-something that haunted him.

"You intrigue me, Craig," the man said, turning to Craig as he did so and finally allowing their eyes to meet. There was still something wrong-something off-center, almost as though the man had two lazy eyes. "Like you," he continued, "I have recently arrived here in this reality. Like you, I thought I had an altogether different life. And like you, I had to accept that it is gone."

"You..." Craig began, a horrifying realization suddenly upon him. "You aren't human, are you?"

The man briefly looked disappointed, the corners of his lips turning down in a frown. Then, oddly and just as quickly, they turned up into an impressed smile. "What was it about me that tipped you off?"

"Your eyes," Craig answered.

"Mm-hmm," the man replied, suddenly taking on the manner of an objective researcher, questioning a subject. "That's to be expected. The hologram is not calibrated correctly throughout the entire facility, so I find it difficult to meet someone's eyes perfectly when we are moving from room to room. Results vary, depending where we are. I tried to hide it by keeping my gaze lowered, but that only works for so long. Anything else?" He seemed hungry for data.

"Something's off-just your whole manner, your reactions to things. You're the A.I., aren't you?"

The A.I.'s smile returned. "Yes, indeed I am. I am sorry I didn't tell you at the outset, but it's extraordinarily rare that we have new people upon whom I can test my progress."

"Progress?"