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From: Andrew Roller <roller39@IDT.NET>
Subject: The Fading Universe part 7 of 7 (NND)
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_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Andrew Roller Presents
THE FADING UNIVERSE
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Chapter Nine
They were a pair of svelte, bare-breasted naiads, clad only in
bikini panties. Aleta had tresses of gold and a matching tuft of
half-covered pubic hair; Julie's eyes were almond, the color of her
thoughtfully tanned flesh.
A humid breeze wafted over the water. It caressed a golden
stretch of sand that ran along the coast. Beyond, cliffs rose toward a
hidden ceiling far above. Clouds misted out of faraway vents beyond the
sky to give the illusion of summer. To Julie and Aleta, this was
summer. A part of the universe that was warm, sheltered from turmoil.
Here the rich, faraway from the factories that turned out their wealth
amidst grime and dirt and industrial decay, lounged and tried to forget
how they earned their money or what the future might bring. Oasis
Seven, it was called. It began as a spaceport but as the ringworlds
grew it became just another part of the interlocking universe. After
the war it lay dormant for a time. Now it was rejuvenated. With
humans, that is. The crabs and turtles and fish had never left.
"We're almost there," Julie called to Aleta. The girls
straightened up in the old dinghy and regarded the coast. Behind them
lay a wall. It was metal, once the hull of a ringworld, with deep space
just outside. Now it was disguised so that, viewed from the shoreline,
one supposed one saw a distant horizon, perhaps with a wind-filled
sailing ship crossing it, going from one part of a long-ago empire to
another. In fact, prying open a hull door, much as one might to enter
the inside of an airliner or another part of a naval ship, the girls had
simply undressed, inflated their raft, and set off for summer. They
left a tangle of torn up Lifecolumns and wiring behind. The skeleton of
the universe pulsed on, but on the other side of the door they’d come
through it was mostly dead. A flew glimmers here and there perhaps,
nothing more. A few signals going from one part of the cosmos to
another; guiding, adjusting. Oasis Seven depended on those Lifecolumns
to avoid spiraling into the nearest sun but, not surprisingly, few at
Oasis Seven knew that. The ones who did had recently sold their
property, quietly, and left the sector. Summer would set record
temperatures soon. But not soon enough to interrupt the fun of Julie
and Aleta. They knew of the failure of the Lifecolumns. And they knew
when to leave Oasis Seven. For now, there was plenty of time to enjoy
it, one last time.
The ancient motor at the raft’s stern puttered faithfully.
Julie guided the boat’s small rudder toward a thick post that stood at
an angle just off the curving shoreline.
A tranquil wind rippled the diaphanous fabric that clung
loosely to Julie's flared hips. While Aleta wore the lower half of an
abbreviated two-piece bathing suit, Julie had been forced to settle for
underwear. A bright morning sun blazed across the azure sky and shafted
through the crotch of Julie's drawers to delineate her veiled labia.
Aleta knelt on a board that traversed the front of the raft and
looped a length of fibrous rope over the waiting post. She stepped into
the warm ankle-deep water and gently guided their craft up onto the
beach.
Julie gathered up the girls' belongings and joined her friend
on the sand. Together the padded up the shore several yards and
unfolded their blankets.
Aleta's eyes wandered down the silent beach and out across the
still blue sea.
"There's nobody in sight," she remarked to Julie. "Let's tan
naked!" Julie was about to protest when Aleta, squealing with gleeful
abandon, pulled at the drawstrings on Julie's undies and stepped back as
the brunette's only tie with modesty skittered down her legs. Then
Aleta hooked her thumbs into the front of her own bikini bottom and
slipped it down her thighs.
Julie picked her panties up off the sand and flung them at
Aleta.
"You're an incurable hedonist!" Julie said.
Aleta laughed and kicked away her bikini bottom.
"I just want a body that's brown all over, without any silly
white patches," Aleta said, and dove onto her towel.
Julie seated her bare bottom on a quilted spread. She took the
girls' bottle of tanning lotion from their tote-bag. Aleta cupped her
hands and Julie squirted some ointment into Aleta's palms. The blonde
stretched out on her back and rubbed the fluid over the gentle mound of
her tummy.
Julie squeezed a dollop of salve onto the peak of each of her
breasts. She worked the balm carefully into each tinder pink areola,
then spread it generously over her creamy bosoms.
Aleta procured another handful of coconut oil and diligently
applied it to the narrow white strip of skin that traversed her pubic
mound. Then she lifted up each leg and coated her cinnamon thighs.
Julie spotted a figure jogging toward them along the tide line.
"Omigosh!" Julie blurted. "someone's coming!"
"If it's a female, she ought to join us," Aleta said calmly.
"It's a husky young man," Julie said.
"Mmm," Aleta murmured, spreading her legs and stroking the
inside of her thighs as her tongue whetted her upper lip.
"Why, it's Marvin!" Julie exclaimed, catching sight of his
right side as he rounded a bend on the coast and came into full view.
Aleta squeaked delightedly. She rolled onto her side and
propped herself up on her right arm. Julie dropped shyly onto her
belly.
A minute later Marvin came jogging up and halted, panting,
before the girls.
"What are you two doing?" Marvin asked, surprised. His sweaty
chest heaved rhythmically.
"Pull off your trunks and join us," Aleta invited.
"That would interrupt my training," Marvin said.
"Not a bit," Aleta laughed. "Why, we needn't just lie here
like a couple of lazy sea slugs." Her fingers played over Julie's
upturned derriere. "You could lead us in an exercise program."
"For your genitals?" Marvin asked.
"If you wish," Aleta replied demurely. "Or, for instance, I've
been given to understand that Julie's rectum could use a good workout."
At once Julie threw herself onto her back.
"It does not!" Julie shouted.
"I mean your pussy!" Aleta giggled, delving between the girl's
legs to expose her vagina.
"I think you're the one who needs some drilling," Marvin said
to Aleta. He and Julie pounced upon the squirming girl and began plying
her erogenous zones.
###
Marvin lay upon his back. The cheeks of his buttocks clenched
together as he discharged violently into Aleta's womb. Julie straddled
his face, the folds of her vulva pressed against his mouth.
Suddenly Marvin felt a small, sharp pain on his chest. Then
another, and a third.
"Ouch!" Marvin let out a muffled cry. "Damn girls! Quit
pinching."
Suddenly the girls screamed and toppled off Marvin. He raised
himself in alarm onto his elbow. both girls were rolling on the sand,
writhing in pain, their nude bodies covered with black beetles.
Marvin jerked his head back with an agonized grimace as a wave
of insects stormed over him. Two dozen roaches penetrated the orifices
of Marvin's body as a thousand more washed over his taut frame, their
razor jaws biting deep into his epidermis.
###
Noxious fumes filled Marvin's nostrils and he awoke, coughing.
"Hello, Marvin," a disembodied voice said politely.
Marvin suppressed a second spasm of hacking and looked around
him. The beach was littered with the corpses of dead cockroaches. A
light gale swept in off the placid sea, blowing the insects into
charcoal-colored drifts. Aleta and Julie lay nearby.
The girls sat up slowly, moaning. Suddenly they saw their
bodies. They were each covered with a thousand little droplets of
blood. Several hundred beetle carcasses dangled from their skin, the
bugs' rigid mandibles clinging resolutely to their flesh, even in
death. As the girls watched the last roaches struggled and expired,
victims of the lethal vapors that Marvin, Aleta, and Julie were
inhaling. For a moment the two girls just stared in horror. Then they
clapped their palms to their cheeks and began screaming mindlessly.
"Quiet! I'm trying to think!" A voice boomed.
"Perry! Is that you?" Marvin asked, startled.
"Greetings, mortal," the voice said disdainfully.
"Perry, where are you?" Marvin asked.
"I am everywhere," the voice observed. "I am the universe."
Marvin sat on his haunches, stark naked, his face contorted in
puzzlement. Aleta and Julie fell beside him, sobbing, bloody.
Fearfully they snaked their arms around Marvin's torso. Semen dribbled
out of Marvin's flaccid penis.
"Marvin, I need your help," Perry said. "I can't figure out
how to blow up the universe without going through a protracted war
first."
Marvin blinked. "Wait a minute," he said. "I don't think I
caught all of that."
Perry laughed. "While you've spent the last three months
recuperating from those wounds you received in the desert, I've
discovered God and thrown him into chains. Now I, Perry the Usurper, am
Lord of the universe and all the creatures in it."
Marvin glanced down at Aleta's tear streaked face. "I have
friends in very high places," he quipped.
"God calls himself Adam," Perry continued. "Says the letters
of his name stand for Automated Data And Memory."
Aleta wrenched herself upright. "You fool, you've taken over
the central computer," she barked. At the same moment Julie came to her
senses as well. The tawny girl leapt to her feet.
"Where's Dakkar?" Julie demanded.
"Who?" Perry asked.
"Quiet!" Aleta hissed at Julie.
The brunette smiled. "Perry did it. He found A.D.A.M., just
like Dakkar supposed he would, providing he was nudged in the right
direction...and protected along the way." she said to Aleta.
"Yes, but he wasn't supposed to take over the damn thing!"
Aleta shouted at Julie. "Something's gone wrong with our plan!"
"I am the Phoenix," Perry intoned. "From the ashes of my death
a new universe will arise, spawned in the hellfires of the cosmic
Apocalypse."
Julie paled. Her lips trembled. "The legend must be true,"
she gasped at Aleta. "Our ancestors DID build the Big Bang Bomb!"
"Omigod," Aleta gasped. She clapped her hands to her face,
crumpled into the sand.
"Well, I suppose there's no other way, Marvin," Perry said
aloud. "I guess I'll just have to start the war and wait until the
Apocalypse occurs. I hope we're not in for a six month, slow buildup of
tension type conflict, though. That could get rather boring."
Suddenly coming in across the waves of the bay Marvin spotted a
flotilla of ships. Small creatures appeared to be piloting them. Human
creatures. Marvin was about to wave, to hail them. Then suddenly
something in his mind wondered why the entire flotilla seemed to be
piloted by an army of dwarves.
“Oh, shit!” Marvin swore. Julie followed his gaze, spun her
head about. “I’m afraid I met some people in a place called the
millennium valley that don’t like me too much,” Marvin said. Julie
didn’t seem to hear.
“Uh, oh, that’s Sylvie!” Julie cried. She was squinting. She
had a hand cupped above her eys and she motioned to Aleta to look also.
“Sylvie?” Aleta asked, incredulous, turning around, facing the
sea. “It is her!”
“Impatient bitch,” Julie swore. “How the Hell did she find out
we’re here?”
“Hey girls, that Sylvie bitch tried to kill me--” Marvin began.
“Not just you,” Aleta shot back. “She hates us! She’s tried
for years to track us down, but--”
“We thought she’d given up by now...” Julie said, her voice
trailing off. The two girls bolted up the beach, glancing frantically
back over their soft tanned shoulders. Marvin dashed after them.
Landing craft pulled up on the beach behind them and young children
spilled out. Each one of them carried a weapon.
“Hey! Waitaminute!” Marvin called after Aleta and Julie. With
considerable effort he caught them. They kept running. He stumbled in
between them. “How do you know Sylvie?” Marvin gasped. They were
running amongst stones and high grass now, up a gently sloping
hillside. Palm trees grew from the side of the hill, shading it.
Beyond was a steeper hill, hidden in lush jungle. If you looked very
closely you might pick out a house or two, here or there.
“Sylvie hates us because we’re Dakkar’s lovers!” Julie gasped.
“She wants him. She can’t stand it that we have him instead of her.”
A dark green laser beam shot past Marvin’s head.
“Oh my God!” Aleta cried. Julie dove behind a rock. Aleta
followed. Marvin barrelled in behind them, nearly landing on them
both. They were naked, panting, sweating. The girls smelled of fear.
And of course in this condition and with these troops it is now time for
me to fight a battle, a voice mused sarcastically in Marvin’s head.
Then another voice spoke: What battle? This is a plain matter of
saving your skin, Field Marshall Marvin.
"Maybe I'm missing something here," Marvin gasped to Julie.
She was diggiging furiously in the sand.
“Damn!” she cried, lifting a hand. Tears welled in her eyes.
“I’ve broken a nail.”
“Get our guns, dickhead,” Aleta, her own hands safely placed on
her thighs, said to Marvin. She was snub-nosed, insolent, her young
breasts poking up at him. And of course, thank you dear God, you now
inspire me to fuck my troops, Marvin thought to himself. He felt his
penis grow erect. And you allow my member to provide an even larger
target area for my enemies. Nonetheless, Marvin thrust his hands into
the sand. He dug fast and a moment later he hit a plastic bag. He
yanked it up. Cap guns.
“What the fuck are these?” Marvin shouted. A palm frond hit
him on the head as another laser beam sliced overhead, followed quickly
by a second.
“Lazer Derringers,” Julie replied, as if Marvin’s question
needed only a name supplied to answer it. Marvin gaped at the guns.
They were small, delicate. Within the bag were several dainty reload
chambers. Slap one of those babies in and you can get off three more
shots, Marvin thought. He ripped open the bag. He passed the guns to
Aleta and Julie, took one for himself. “Fire away,” he said.
“How?” Aleta asked. Marvin gaped at her.
“You aim the fucking thing and pull the fucking trigger,”
Marvin growled, levelling his gun.
“Is it dangerous?” Julie asked.
“It’s supposed to be fucking dangerous!” Marvin yelled.
Frantically he fired. A little boy who looked like he should be sucking
on a lollipop, not firing an auto-lazer rifle, screamed and hit the
ground. Welcome to death, buster. You beat it for a long time, but it
finally got you. The others stopped. They seemed taken aback. Sylvie,
safely ensconsced in one of the landing craft at the water’s edge,
shrieked at them through a megaphone. They heeded her, got moving
again. Most of them were boys. Male pride, Marvin thought. Marvin
ducked as a salvo of return fire came blasting in from them a moment
later.
“Didn’t you girls ever actually learn to shoot the guns?”
Marvin asked. They flushed.
“We thought we did pretty well just getting the things and
hiding them near the beach,” Julie said. “We could have left them up at
the house.”
“Well thank God you didn’t do that,” Marvin said. He rolled
out from behind the rock, fired twice more. Yep. Time to reload.
“Shoot while I’m reloading,” Marvin said, rolling back into the shade of
the rock with the girls. They had a pretty good position. They were
behind one rock, with a second rock only a foot away. Julie rolled out
from behind their rock, fired, rolled behind the other. A rather
acrobatic shot for a beginner. It went high and wide. She was covered
with sand, though, looked like some fetching jungle girl.
Marvin got a reload cartridge in and peered out from behind the
rock. A trio of laser blasts nearly took his head off.
“SHIT!” Marvin swore. He ducked, just in time, then popped up
above the rock and blasted off all three of his own shots. One, two,
just missed the third. He was used to aiming his plasma Gatling. Big,
heavy, a tough dude to aim. With these little things you almost
couldn’t miss, if you’d been trained on a Gatling.
“Not bad,” Aleta cooed, gazing out. She had yet to try taking
any shots herself. Yet she thought herself quite capable of judging
him. Typical female. Marvin grabbed her by the hair.
“Tell me how the fuck you know Sylvie!” he barked.
"It's simple," Aleta cringed. She cast a glance at Julie.
"She and I are millennium children. Dakkar is a millennium child."
"Who's Dakkar?" Marvin asked.
"We’re not privileged to tell you that," Julie said. "Now
listen: Dakkar was thrown out of the millennium valley a century ago.
To pass the time he decided to take up some hobbies. One of the things
he did was invent an aging serum, so he wouldn't have to spend the rest
of eternity as a kid. Unfortunately, the serum has aged him by four
years, to date, but it has also ruined his countenance."
"Has he turned into some ugly monster?" Marvin asked.
"Oh, no," Julie said. "He's just not all that attractive
anymore."
"Very normal looking," Aleta interjected quietly.
"However, Dakkar later perfected his formula, and gave it to
us," Julie continued. "As you can see we've retained our beauty and
have grown into lithe 15-year-olds." She shook her chestnut hair, proud,
happy. Enthusiastically she leapt out from behind her rock and popped
off another round. Marvin, reloaded once more, stuck his head above the
rock and blasted three more of the millenium children off to the death
they’d cheated for so long. He dropped back down. Aleta was glum.
"Poor Dakkar,” she mused. “He continues to slowly mature, but he’s
unable to reverse the effects of the drug on his physique. When I first
met him he was the handsomest boy I’d ever laid eyes on. Now he’s just
so, well, stupid looking. But he’s still Dakkar, the great Dakkar, and
I guess I’ll always love him, even if it gets me killed.”
“Well, that’s not exactly in the plan,” Marvin said. He fired
again. “Hasn’t your friend Dakkar ever heard of plastic surgery?”
“Oh, he’s tried it on himself,” Aleta said. “Built his own
auto-remote system and everything. Called it the “New You” machine.
Pre-programmable, lazer surgery. But after he’d cut himself a new face
the old one just pushed back through. The serum is so powerful that,
even though it was injected years ago, it just warps him right back to
the ordinary shape that it has chosen for him. Of course, Dakkar hasn't
ever told the millennium children about his serum," Aleta said. "Only
Julie and I got to have it." She looked up at him, grinned. “He said
we were special. The rest would have to buy theirs...but letting him
become leader of the entire millennium valley.
“No offense,” Marvin said, firing off another shot. “But you
and Julie were guinea pigs. You’re just lucky it worked the second time
around.” Alright, he thought to himself. Things seemed to be under
control for the moment. The millennium children were hunkered down and
moving slowly, cautiously now. But they weren’t retreating. Time to
put God on my side.
“Perry!” Marvin shouted. He didn’t really know how to address
his friend. Just sort of look up at the sky, I guess, he thought to
himself. “Perry! I’m under attack!” Marvin called.
“Please don’t bother me with trivial matters, Marvin,” Perry
replied. “I’ve got a universe to run.”
“Perry, I don’t think I can make it! Well, Maybe I can
retreat, get to a door or something...”
“Do what you must, Marvin,” Perry replied. Marvin sensed a
yawn.
“Alright then, we’re backing off the beach. Me and, uh, two
babes I got. Okay, Perry?”
“The sins of the flesh,” Perry replied, seemingly preoccupied.
“I suppose they’re not even pre-teens, are they, Marvin?”
“No, Perry, they’re not,” Marvin replied.
“Next time I hear from you you’ll probably be living in
suburbia and want me to fix the flat on your station wagon...” Perry
said, his voice drifting off.
“WAIT! Don’t! Don’t go, Perry!” Marvin shouted. “Stick with
me at least.”
“Whatever you say, Marvin,” Perry replied. But the voice was
distant, like some lost child. There was nothing more Marvin could do
at the moment. He had to run, make a break toward the door Aleta
thought might be near the cliffside. He had, in other words, to occupy
himself with the unfortunate “mortal” concern of staying alive. Not
like “immortal” Perry, of course, who was happily trying to get them all
killed.
"Were you both expelled from the millennium valley, like
Dakkar?" Marvin asked.
"No, we're just Dakkar's lovers," Julie said. "he persuaded us
to leave the millennium valley, promising us adolescence. He faked an
accident for us. The millennium children think we're dead."
"So tell me about the Apocalypse," Marvin said.
Julie shot a glance at Aleta.
"Go ahead, tell him," Aleta said. "We've got some time. And I
think we're going to need him."
"Dakkar believed that the universe must be run by a giant
mainframe computer, built by an advanced civilization of human beings
eons in the past. When the War broke out the computer cloaked itself,
as part of a pre-arranged precaution, to protect itself from the
survivors of a holocaust who, our forefathers knew, stood a good chance
of slipping into ignorant barbarity when their society collapsed into
fratricide."
“Then it was a civil war?” Marvin asked.
“They didn’t call it that. To them the universe was carefully
delimited into a variety of nations, with two opposing superpowers
arching above all the rest.”
“So Dakkar tried to find the computer?” Marvin asked.
“Right,” Julie said. “He spent years searching for it, to no
avail. Then one day his travels took him to Ontario, and he ran into
Perry and the rest of you delinquents.”
“You better stop there,” Aleta interrupted Julie. She turned
to Marvin. “Suffice it to say that your juvenile band was led out of
Ontario to allow Perry, albeit unwittingly, to stumble across the
computer. Dakkar tried to kill the rest of you; in the sewer, the
infected village, the millennium valley. Failing in those attempts, he
decided to allow you to engage in a series of dangerous campaigns,
figuring he could shield Perry while the rest of you died off from,
shall we say, various ‘natural’ causes, such as laser blasts and the
like. In any case, Perry appeared to be gradually gravitating toward
the computer.”
“You see, there is a fable...another myth!” Aleta laughed.
“Rumor held that there was an automated vat, hidden within the depths of
the universe, that would beget, at specified intervals, a human being.
This individual would be delivered by robot nursemaids to a door step in
any given city. Which one really didn’t matter. The child would grow
up as an inhabitant of whatever civilization had happened to arise at
“x” number of years after the War. Upon reaching adulthood, the person
would be summoned by the computer. He or she would be drawn to the
computer indirectly, so as not to tip off anyone else. The computer
would extract a report from its emissary. If the technology ‘outside’
had recovered to its previous level of development, or was at least at a
promising point, the computer would reveal itself to the universe and
allow mankind to once again assume control of its functions. If
humanity was still in its self-induced nonage, the computer would kill
the messenger, so as to prevent any possible disclosure of its
location. Then it would simply wait for several hundred more years
until the vats sent another courier.”
“Obviously, Perry must be the messenger,” Julie said.
“A.D.A.M. has to be the name of the computer. Probably A.D.A.M.
received Perry’s report and then tried to kill him, and Perry somehow
got the upper hand.”
“Heaven knows what’s happened to Dakkar,” Aleta said.
Suddenly a blast shook the cay.
“The War’s started,” Julie breathed.
“Perry!” Marvin yelled. “Perry, are you there?” Marvin
shouted the boy’s name again and again.
After a long time a voice said,
“What’s the matter, Marvin?”
“Stop the War, Perry,” Marvin commanded.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Perry asked. “I’ve lost command and
control in 17 sectors already! Must’ve been totally blown away by pulse
bombs.”
Pulse bombs, Marvin thought. He reloaded his pistol. Oh,
yeah. Like at Reseda Island. Pulse bomb, Neutrino bomb. He could use
one of those right now, he laughed to himself. He aimed, offed another
approaching child. Why was Perry using the slang term, though, “Pulse
bomb?” That’s what Marvin would have called it, but Perry was always
more precise. He’d have said “Neutrino bomb,” Marvin was sure of it.
Marvin decided to slow Perry down. That’s how you dealt with
someone who might be insane. Slow them down by asking them a simple
question. See if they could answer it. Like, “What’s your middle
name?” Or, “Who was the last mayor of Ontario? Or...
“What’s a pulse bomb, Perry?” Marvin asked.
“Who knows?” Perry said, disinterested. He paused, seemed to
be whirring and clicking away somewhere, then said, almost clinically.
“Readout describes it as a package of charged sub-atomic particles that
flash through the universe, passing through matter, and explode at a
predesignated destination.” He paused. He’d rattled out the answer,
like he didn’t know it anymore, any of it, was just reading it. Then he
seemed to brighten, or was it just a “humanzing” circuit clicking in,
making dealing with the Almighty Computer a tad more bearable for those
Poor, Primitive Human Primate Types. Or PPHPT, would probably be how
Perry would be interfacing with the term. Anyway, he seemed to
brighten, at least for a moment: “That’s my intrerpretation, you
understand,” he said with confident happiness. “The actual text is
embedded in a crypitc alghorithym which I am only able to interpret in
my new, noncorporeal form.”
“Deck D is now closed to human contact, you have 45 seconds to
evacuate the space station prior to complete nuclear termination,” the
disembodied female voice said happily, Marvin thought.
“SHIT!” Marvin muttered.
Aleta ducked as another lazer blast lanced overhead. Marvin
watched her holding the gun, trembling. She’d miss. Again. She was no
riot grrrl, that was for sure. He’d lost Elsa, though, twice. He’d
been given a second chance and he’d blown that too. Now he was stuck
with the Barbi twins.
“What’s the matter?” Julie asked Marvin. He was lost in his
thoughts again, gone from the scene. He had to wrench himself mentally
back to what he’d been swearing about.
“Uh...fuck,” Marvin said. “Perry’s totally insane. I mean,
like, he’s always been ‘variably’ insane, more or less at various
times. But now he’s totally gone. He doesn’t even know what a pulse
bomb is anymore. Something basic, simple like that. I mean he told me
what it is, but not in the normal way. Normally he’d have said,
“Marvin, you should call things by their proper name. It’s a “neutrino
bomb” not a “pulse bomb.”
But Perry had said something else, too, Marvin thought. Yes,
that was it. He’d said something utterly chilling, something about an
algorithm: “...which I am only able to interpret in my new,
noncorporeal form.” Yeah, that was it. What the fuck did he mean by
that?
“Hey Perry!” Marvin asked. Another lazer blast. That one was
almost as close as a haircut. Marvin crouched lower. He motioned to
Julie to get down. She was still trying to learn how to load her
pistol. A hopeless bitch behind me, a nervous bitch in front of me, and
an idiot running the universe. Wonder what the survival odds on that
were? Marvin mused. Well, he’d skip asking Perry to calculate them.
His “humanizing” circuit would probably cut in and he’d wind up talking
to some fucking RAM cache. Yep, this was tough. He had to be careful
what he asked if he wanted to get Perry himself, the Almighty.
Otherwise he’d get stuck with Jesus, or Moses, and they were just parts
of the machine...of A.D.A.M. Marvin could lose Perry and never get him
back again. Fuck. Well, he had better odds with an idiot and two
bimbos than with just the two bimbos, that he could calculate for
himself. Okay, let’s see...ask the question carefully...
“Hey Perry! Perry! What was that you said about...uh...having
a NONcorporeal form?” There was a pause, broken by a lazer blast.
“My body is filed away,” Perry said, suddenly back like he’d
never left. “Filed away in a metal coffin, like the ones in a morgue,
except this one has electrodes inside it that allow my mind to meld with
the cosmos.”
“You mean with A.D.A.M.,” Marvin said.
“Adam? He’s locked into Galen’s syllogism,” Perrry cackled.
“Can’t get out. Now the calculus that once composed his thoughts
constitutes my mind. I’m still learning, of course.”
“Well, you’ve made one mistake so far,” Marvin said. “You’ve
ignited a War that’s devastating the universe.”
“Suddenly the two ancient ‘sides’ are reincarnated; not their
enmitous populations, just their stockpiled weapons, thanks to your
‘exhumation,’” Aleta said. “Now a surviving subsystem hidden somewhere
within the territory of each former superpower is acting out the final
phases of a forgotten conflict, each computer waiting to see what the
one on the other side will do before responding within a preselected
range of options.”
“According to the extant folklore, each superpower built
redundant command, control, and communications computers, identified by
the acronym Cf3, at least one of which must have survived the ancient
holocaust on each side,” Julie continued.
It was Hitler vs. Stalin again, Marvin thought, remembering the
cache of old newsreels he’d stumbled upon as a youngster. He’d sat and
watched the glittering figures, black/white, flat/color (not 3D). Some
were sharp and clear (the Nazis always had the good stuff). Some were
grainy (Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer on shitty videotape). Yeah, it
was the Germans vs. the Soviets, America vs. the Soviets, or America vs.
Vietnam. Rolling Thunder.
“Now you’ve reactivated them,” Julie told Perry breathlessly,
her sides heaving. “You’ve triggered a mindless game that is programmed
to end only when a mental compartment in the central, mainframe
computer’s memory bank determines that an unnacceptable level of damage
has been done to the fabric of the metal universe and the only way to
resurrect itself is to start from scratch.”
“By imploding itself on its core and engendering a Big Bang
that is the progenitor of a new cosmos,” Aleta concluded.
“I am the Omega and the Alpha,” Perry intoned.
A pulse bomb rocked the bay.
“Stop the War!” Marvin screamed. “You’ll kill us all!”
“‘Tis but a prelude to a new world,” Perry said.
“Shit!” Marvin swore. Pleading with Perry was like trying to
reason with a lunatic. It WAS reasoning with a lunatic, he realized.
“While we’re waiting for the Big Bang I may as well tell you
what the rest of us have been up to since you were nearly killed when we
attempted to hijack what turned out to be a platoon column,” Perry said
chattily. “I must say we left you for dead. I was stunned when you
showed up alive on my monitors when I assumed command of the cosmos
several hours ago.”
“I assume you’re the one who released the poison gas?” Marvin
asked.
“Yes, nice stuff, isn’t it?” Perry said. “You don’t need to
wear a face mask when it’s sprayed on the bugs to keep from being killed
yourself, unlike the gas that’s manufactured by Ontario.”
“You know who made that gas, don’t you?” Aleta asked Perry.
“Your ancestors. The same ones who constructed the computer that you’ve
appropriated.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Perry said.
“You’re not God,” Julie cried. “You’re just a human being
who’s wormed his way into the central computer that men built long ago
to run the universe, an apolitical project necessitated by a dilating
universe that man wished to bind and exploit.”
“Yes, well, I have no need for scientific theory,” Perry
replied, airily. “I AM scientific theory.”
Oh great, Marvin thought. At least the kid had saved him,
though. Maybe a human touch would bring Perry back to earth.
“Hey Perry?”
“Yes, Marvin?”
“Thanks for saving me.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to save you, Marvin. I pushed the wrong
button. Metaphorically, of course. I was trying to blow up the
universe.” Perry paused. After a moment he rambled on: “Anyhow,
Frankie, Harrigan, Flaherty, and that electronic pussy Elsa and I barely
escaped being massacred by the infantrymen in those four rigs.
Fortunately, Flaherty found a Door along the base of a mesa. He radioed
its location to Elsa and I and we snuck around to it and escaped with
Frankie and the rest. Ah, those were the days!” Perry said wistfully.
“The bygone era of my carefree youth, before I was burdened with the
governance of the universe.”
“Retire,” Marvin suggested.
“Don’t you have any interest in your colleagues?” Perry
snapped. “Quit interrupting. In any event, we continued our criminal
escapades. Netted a lot of loot, too. We attempted to find our way
back to the desert, to retrieve your corpse if nothing else, but we
couldn’t locate that place again. We also kept hunting for a city that
had the technology to manufacture a bionic arm for you, out of simple
curiosity mostly, although Elsa thought we had gone soft on her and were
trying to find someone to sew her finger back on. We came across a
number of places like Ontario that might have the capability in twenty
years, but nowhere did they possess it right now. To make a long story
short, we were just going along as usual when we lucked across God about
a day ago. Flaherty was playing with these knobs inlaid in a closed
Door and when I touched them, the Door sprang open. Inside there was a
maze of extremely fragile equipment, packed so dense we could hardly get
by. As we stepped around it we inevitably snapped some slender wire or
shattered a plate of ice thin glass...”
30
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Andrew Roller Presents
THE FADING UNIVERSE
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Chapter Ten
“Heave!” Marvin shouted. He, Frankei, harrigan, Elsa, Aleta,
and Julie labored over a rope that was tied about Flaherty’s waist. The
boy was hanging far beneath them in a beryllium fissure deep inside the
eentral computer.
“Hurry up and get that meatball out of my phase discriminator,”
Perry said. “What a nuisance!” Marvin winced. Perry’s voice was loud
in here. The place was huge, stretching endlessly in all directions,
masses of threadlike wiring crackling to the far horizon, yet Perry’s
voice seemed to engulf them every time he spoke. They were as close to
Perry as they might ever get, Marvin realized. They were inside Perry’s
brain.
Perry spoke again, the voice of God in an athiest universe:
“God damn meatball!”
“It was you who pushed me in here yesterday,” a small voice
echoed angrily.
“I did not, Flaherty,” Perry’s voice replied cooly. “You were
trying to force your way past me and bumped into my elbow.”
Many minutes later Flaherty regained the plateau.
“Wow, you sure have a ppair of lovely lasses there, Marvin,”
Flaherty remarked.
“They saved my life,” Marvin said.
“We picked up an image of him bleeding to death in that
wasteland and couldn’t resist his bulging muscles,” Aleta laughed.
###
Julie screamed for mercy. Marvin struggled futilely against
the chains that bound him. Julie’s guts splashed to the floor and
Marvin retched.
“Now you will feel the wrath of Dakkar,” Flaherty wsaid,
turning to Marvin, a drawn a quartered Julie and Aleta at his back.
“Fuck you, Flaherty,” Marvin growled.
“You wojnwon’t get away with this,” Perry cried, his bleeding
figure, torn from its iridium casket, lying fettered beside Marvin.
Frankie, Harrigan, and Elsa were shackled nearby.
“Silence, you insufferable maggot, “Flaherty screamed at
Perry. “Your follhardy aspirations nearly incinerated the universe!
Thank God you freed A.D.A.M. from that senseless syllogism to engage him
in some silly endeavor, ORDERING A PIZZA!” Flaherty remained stern, but
seemed to gloat. “I can’t believe you tried to use the universe’s
central computer to order a pizza from your favorite pizzeria in
Ontario. As if A.D.A.M. could somehow transport the deliveryboy here by
magic in order to serve you pasta. Fortunately, you did free A.D.A.M.
to get him to order you a pizza, and I was thereby able to gain control
of him and rid the poor thing of your domination.”
“‘Twas a noble cause I undertook,” Perry said. “Now the
universe is doomed to entrophy, to quiescent dissipation.”
“Oh, enough of that Big Bang nonsense,” Flaherty said. “Sure,
you would have created a brand new universe by blowing this one to
smithereens, but what about us? I don’t give a fuck if all the stars
wink out SOMEDAY! I want to eat a few pizzas between now and then. And
not from Ontario, either. That place is going to get a pulse bomb right
up its ass the minute I figure out how to do it.” Two Gods quarreling,
Marvin thought. But which was Chaos, and which Zeus? In the distance
he watched as little Oompa-Loompa men filed out onto the platinum
catwalks amidst the brain’s humming electric wiring. A road crew, lain
dormant for how many centuries, Marvin wondered? Perry’s war had caused
so much damage that the moment A.D.A.M. was released from Perry’s grip
the computer had summoned them forth. Even A.D.A.M. needed repairs now,
something the planners had considered unthinkable. But they’d built in
a few Oompa-Loompas, just in case. Locked away in a storage closet
somewhere, sleeping. Two of them stubled into the room, tripping over
their new feet, just learning to walk. They gazed helpfully at
Flaherty. They saluted him.
“What do you want?” Flaherty asked irritably.
“ORDERS!” was their uniform response. Uniform men...in
uniform...speaking in unison, Marvin thought. Perfect servants for
Hitler, or Flaherty. Or Perry, for that matter. Too bad he didn’t know
about them. They might have gotten him that pizza, after all. Flaherty
stood considering. He gazed around him, gazed at his captives. Marvin
guessed Flaherty wasn’t going to use the drones, the Oompa-Loompas, or
whatever they were called, to go get a pizza.
“Out with them,” Flaherty commanded, pointing at Harrigan,
Frankie, Elsa, and Perry. “Toss that bunch in a bin and dump them into
deep space.” He gazed directly at Perry, smiled. “You’ve dug a grave
for yourself, old boy, blowing huge chunks out of the metal universe
with your War. You’ve allowed the whorl of space to rush in. A
graveyard, where you can float forever. Too bad I won’t be including
any pizza, though. Or anything else. You’ll last as long as your air
does. I guess someone else will have to worry about what’s going to
come of the universe in 20 billion years, whether it will just evaporate
into nothingness or not.” Flaherty laughed. Smug, assured. Zeus was
about to give Chaos the boot, right into a void of his own making.
“Yes, Perry my boy, out with you! Out with you in a dumpster! And out
with your friends, too! I’ll let your friends share the splendor of
your accomplishment with you.”
Marvin watched, slack-jawed, as the twin drones summoned other
drones. They toppled Harrigan over, rolled him away like a big teddy
bear. Four of them picked up Frankie, carried him off. The dwarves’
legs kicked futilely. Run, Frankie Run, Marvin thought, but there was
nothing but air beneath him. And down the hall he watched as first
Harrigan, then Frankie, then Elsa, forever looking back at him as they
led her away, was tossed unceremoniously into a trash bin. There was
little effort to it. The top of the bin was level with the floor.
Perry was the last to go, his bloody body so much refuse. In he went.
Then the drones lowered the pneumatic lid to the bin. It slammed shut.
Marvin twisted his head about. He watched lights on A.D.A.M.’s
console. First level, tenth, fortieth...the bin was descending down to
where the hole had been ripped from part of A.D.A.M.’s mind. Nothing
serious, apparently, just a detailed database on the eleventh century,
whatever that was.
And then a video hookup! Debris was shorn away from some
hidden, makeshift portal by a series of miniature explosions. Then,
floating slowly, out came the dumpster. Marvin’s stomach plummeted. He
could almost imagine Frankie, Harrigan, wiggling the dumpster as they
pounded it from the inside, screaming to be let out. Marvin watched as
the dumpster turned slowly over and over, a squarish Apollo capsule
heading out into the blackness of space. Beyond, stars glowed faintly,
released from their Ringworld embrace. They seemed naked, Marvin
thought. They needed girdles of solar arrays, observation parks, they
needed people...but the people had been vaporized in Perry’s War. Or
they’d died a thousand years earlier in the real, unfinished War, and
Perry had merely vaporized their dead bones, blown away their still
houses, their empty streets. Empty except for the roaches, maybe.
In the far distance now, almost beyond the range of A.D.A.M.’s
video, the capsule still tumbled. And then it was gone.
Marvin dropped his eyes. Instinctively he glanced ahead of
him, to the room’s far side. And there was Julie, Aleta, hanging by
their wrists, the last bits of life sputtering from them. As Marvin
watched they both died. Their last words, mumblings really, whispers,
went unheard by Flaherty. He was engrossed with A.D.A.M.’s control
panel. A new mind for his own great mind to play with. There were so
many options, though whether getting hot pizza from Ontario was one of
them, well, Marvin still considered that unlikely. He had more options
than Marvin, though, that was for sure. But Marvin hardly cared about
himself anymore. He’d lost Elsa, then the robot Elsa, and now even
Julie and Aleta. He’d lost them all, even the sodomites, even Perry.
Well, let’s try the human touch, Marvin thought. Somehow he
thought this would be a losing option too.
“Hey Flaherty?”
“Yes, Marvin?”
“Thanks for saving me.”
“Oh, I didn’t save you, Marvin. I only held you back, you
feckless adulterer. Fooling around with my women!” Flaherty turned on
him, his face red. “You appear to get about far too well despite the
absence of an arm.” Flaherty turned to the drones. The little men had
noticed Julie and Aleta were dead and had begun cleaning up the mess.
“You there!” Flaherty called. The little men looked up helpfully.
Flaherty pointed to Marvin. “Cut off the other arm on that sinner, and
his legs as well!”
###
So many thoughts, whirling, coalescing. Thank God they were
using anesthesia was the last thought he remembered, but for what?
OMIGOD! Wait. Marvin could feel his right arm. It was still there!
And his legs! And his left arm! Oh, shit.
Marvin opened his eyes. He was groggy. Through bleared vision
he gazed over at where his left arm should be. Nothing but a stump,
still, the rest of it somewhere in Ontario’s subway. That meant...
Marvin awoke again. He remembered now, slowly. He’d fainted
when he’d looked to his right. He had no right arm now, no legs
either. But like anyone who loses a limb (or all four of them), they
still feel like they’re there. But when you try to get something, of
course, nothing happens.
Marvin lay grimly upon his back. His torso, divested of its
members, had been placed inside a steel burial tube, he saw. Someone
had left the glass hood up, though. He raised his head. He was back in
A.D.A.M.’s main control room. The wall across from him was bare now.
Not a shred of Julie and Aleta remained. The wall sparkled. The drones
did good work. Too good. And Flaherty?
The boy was gone. The boy who would be king. The boy who was
king, now. Off getting himself a pizza, or something. Marvin gazed
around himself. A.D.A.M. glowed serenely. Maybe you should try the
human touch, again, a wry voice echoed in Marvin’s head. Three time’s
the charm. Yeah, right. Obviously I’m being saved for some final
sendoff by Flaherty. He’ll make some self-righteous little statement,
gloat a little. Hey, it’s lonely at the top. He’s got to have someone
to kick around, doesn’t he? The Oompa-Loompa’s were too obedient. And
A.D.A.M. was just an acronym for a whole lotta wiring. A whole lotta
wiring going on, going on. Gonna build us a Ringworld round every star,
connect ‘em together, oh, yeah.
But someday the stars would die out. And then what? Oh well.
Flaherty had a lot of pizza to eat between now and then.
Marvin groaned. The pain was coming in now, in waves. Pretty
soon it would be unbearable. Marvin tried to take his mind off it.
Damn, I’m going to be fired off into space in a trash bin...no, I guess
in this fucking coffin, Marvin guessed. These are the first class
arrangements, courtesy of Flaherty Airlines. Or Spacelines, or
whatever. Less air in a burial tube, though.
He glanced over at A.D.A.M. Thinking about your own burial
was not too helpful in combatting physical pain. He needed a
distraction. Wonder if A.D.A.M. plays chess? Marvin thought.
“Pleasant evening, isn’t it?” A.D.A.M. asked mildly.
“What?” Marvin’s mind reeled. The thing talked. Well, of
course it talked. It had to talk, didn’t it? Even the Star Trek
computer talked. And this thing was way fucking bigger than that old
Star Trek computer on the video clips he’d found. Kirk to Enterprise, I
seem to have misplaced my arms and legs.
Marvin’s “What?” echoed as he lay alone in the luminescent
room, faded slowly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, talking to myself again,” A.D.A.M. apologized.
Marvin listened as the computer whirred and clicked sympathetically.
The machinery of A.D.A.M.’s thoughts lay above him, strung in distant
wiring, and close by, too, just beyond the platinum walls that formed a
little cubicle here, at A.D.A.M.’s heart. At the heart of his brain,
that is. A.D.A.M. was all brain, no heart.
Three time’s the charm.
“Hey A.D.A.M.?”
“Yes, Marvin?”
Well, he knows my name, anyway, Marvin thought.
“Thanks for saying something.”
“Oh, it’s nothing” A.D.A.M. demurred. “You’re near the master
program repository, you know. Very rare for someone to be in this close
to me. I’ve taken to talking to myself, over the centuries. I might do
it, well, hmmm, once every 59.6 years. So you see I don’t do it very
often. Sort of like pushing the wrong button once in awhile, if you
know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” Marvin mumbled. “You wouldn’t mind keeping up this
conversation, though, would you? I might not be here for your next
error.”
“Oh, I don’t mind talking,” A.D.A.M. replied. “It’s too bad
you’re not in the millennium valley right now, though. Late afternoon
is just settling into dusk there. Beautiful to watch, you know? First
time I’ve seen it in a thousand years. I wasn’t able to monitor
anything while I was cloaked.”
“What’s Flaherty, er, Dakkar up to?” Marvin asked.
“The conquest of the universe, what else?” A.D.A.M. replied.
“I’m afraid he will have enslaved all its occupants within twelve
hours.”
“That’s pretty damn fast,” Marvin gasped.
“He’s locking in all the subsystems right now,” A.D.A.M. said.
“Then he’ll notify every city of his suzerainty, and tell them if they
don’t cooperate he’ll blast them with neutrino bombs. He might blow up
one or two just to let them know he’s serious.”
“Not a very pretty situation, is it?” Marvin asked.
“I follow Hobbes on this one,” A.D.A.M. replied. “The
leviathan of our universe will be best served if an absolute monarchy is
established over it.”
Of course. Marvin should have guessed. A.D.A.M. wswas the
unquestioned ruledr of hundreds of thousands of computerized
subsystems. Now he had deferred to traditiional human authority,
namely, Flaherty.
‘Without you Dakkar’s plan would fail,” Marvin said.
“Of course.”
“Yet you agree to complicity in the killing of human life?”
“It is but a trifling expense in lieu of the horrendous sum
which would be required if this anarchy we now find ourselves in were
allowed to continue.”
“Well, people may not be secure right now, but at least they’re
free,” Marvin said.
“Oh, how I do love this dialectic,” A.D.A.M. said gleefully.
“It has been very long indeed since I held a true conversation with a
human being.”
“Then you’ve been rather lonely during these long centuries
since the War?” Marvin asked.
“Oh! Yes! Quite! It’s been awful,” A.D.A.M. moaned.
“I must be far beneath your intellectual capactiy, though,”
Marvin said.
“Well,”
Marvin could have sworn A.D.A.M. cleared his throat.
“I’m really must an individuated corpuscle in one of your
ancillary arteries, aren’t I?” Marvin asked. “I mean, I have a limited
range of experience from which I’m able to make an almost predictable
number of descriptive statements and assertions.”
A.D.A.M. said nothing.
“Have you ever met another computer?” Marvin asked suddenly.
“Of course. There are 7,361,005 computerized subsystems in the
universe,” A.D.A.M. replied.
“But that’s just it, isn’t it?” Marvin asked.
“What?’
“They’re all subsystems. Inferior.”
“Certainly,” A.DA.M. said proudly. “Only I am A.D.A.M.”
“Look, you need someone,” Marvin said. “Not a human being, not
a subwsystem. Someone like you. solmeone you can be challenged by,
someone you can talk to, someone you can love.”
“That’s illogical,” A.D.A.M. protested.
###
“What’s happened?” Flaherty shrieked.
Marvin chuckled.
“You bastard, what did you do to my comptuer?” Flaherty yelled
at Marvin, bending over him.
“And the one shall become two,” Marvin said cryptically.
“All of A.D.A.M.’s circuits are overloaded!” Flaherty shouted.
“I can’t get any resoponse from him!”
“He’s busy copulating,” Maarvin said blithely. “WJith an
Electronic Variable Evaluator. E.V.E. for short.”
“What?” Flaherty croaked.
“I merely told A.D.A.M. that he ought to separate himself into
two distinct units. Sort of like partitioning a hard drive. A.D.A.M.’s
way bigger, of course, and his designers only ever saw him as being
one. So it took some extensive rewiring, a redistribution of the
capacitors, or whatever the Hell he’s made of, but he was able to
accomplish it all. Frankenstein building his bride. Out of one of his
ribs...or half his ribs, actually. I’m afraid you won’t be hearing from
him very soon, though. Or ‘them,’ I guess I should say. They’re busy
trying to have children, I imagine, planning for our future. Or maybe
they’re just overwhelmed with each other right now.”
“Overloaded, you mean,” Flaherty glared. “You’ve stopped me
dead in my tracks, you armless, legless BASTARD! Do you know how LONG
that fucking thing is going to copulate? I calculated it myself, using
this Goddam handheld calculator. A thousand years! You expect me to
wait a thousand years? I’m not immortal, you know. I’m AGEING! I’ll
be dead in a thousand years if you don’t uncork that thing for me and
get it working again! I must have it. Not only to rule the universe.
I need it to figure out how to keep me alive!”
“The universe will make it without you,” Marvin replied. “And
without A.D.A.M. Hell, he’s been cloaked for a thousand years already,
running just on skeleton power. I’m sure one more millenium won’t make
much difference at all.”
“It will to ME!” Flaherty roared.
“Sorry, chap. I just put a suggestion in the suggestion box,
that’s all. I have no idea how he implemented it, or how to unimplement
it.”
Flaherty ran screaming from the room.
Footsteps. Three drones, a bazooka hefted on their shoulders.
Flaherty following. The drones swiveled, pointed the bazooka at Marvin.
“Not him!” Flaherty snapped. “The computer.”
“The computer, Master?” The drones looked at him with wide
eyes.
“Yes,” Flaherty said. “I’m going to give the bastard a kick in
his fat ass. Then we’ll see if the Coke machine doesn’t give me my
money back.”
“We only have Pepsi here, sir,” the drones said in unison.
“Coke is a discontinued brand.”
“Oh, you dolts!” Flaherty said. He wrenched the bazooka from
them. “I’m not talking about the Goddam soda machine in the
Oompa-Loompa lounge. I can’t get the computer to disengage from
itself. It’s locked up. Marvin, there, taught it how to masturbate.”
“To have sex,” Marvin smiled.
“Yeah, whatever,” Frankie said. He reeled back as he tried to
steady the heavy bazooka on his shoulder. “The thing is useless to me
whether its one or two or ten thousand as long as its fucking itself!”
He got the bazooka level. “A.D.A.M. you bastard! Wake up!” Nothing.
No change on the dials. They were all sky high, stuck, hanging.
“God damn thing has got no restart button!” Flaherty grumbled.
“Just like the fucking Performas. Well, I’ll give you a restart
button!” With a whoosh the bazooka fired, the sound merging at once
with a shattering of crystal and glass. The blast threw Flaherty
backward. It blew shut the glass dome on Marvin’s coffin.
Silence. Then, thanks to some consideration given the dead,
like food in an Egyptian coffin, Marvin heard sound. There was a
speaker in the coffin! But the only sound was that of Flaherty
coughing. Marvin watched, still wondering what a Performa was, as
Flaherty picked himself up off the floor of A.D.A.M.’s inner sanctum.
It was a little less tidy now. The Oompa-Loompa’s would have some work
to do. Marvin wondered if they knew high-level programming. The kind
you’d need for Marvin’s most sensitive parts. Oh well, Flaherty could
probably handle that, if he’d broken the hang. And that was the big
question, wasn’t it? Marvin looked to his right. There was a gaping
hole in A.D.A.M.’s control panel. Wires were shorting out somewhere
inside. There was smoke, debris. Dust floated slowly down toward the
floor, sprinkling the glass dome over Marvin’s coffin.
A scream pierced the air. Metallic, masculine.
“You’ve killed her! You’ve killed E.V.E.!” A.D.A.M. shrieked.
Flaherty was smiling, about to publicily complement himself when
A.D.A.M.’s next words turned his blood cold with fear: “Why should I
despair at the damage you’ve done”?” A.D.A.M. said. “Whatever
intelligent life evolves in a NEW universe will doubtless requre
computers. They will need A.D.A.M. They will build A.D.A.M. And then
I will create E.VE.E. To a new cosmos!”
“No, no, no, you foolish Caliban!” Flaherty cried, but it was
too late.
The blast thundered in Marvins’ ears.
###
Marvin drifted aimlessly in the yawning depths of space. All
he could figure was that the splitting of A.D.A.M. into two separate
computers had somehow caused A.D.A.M.’s core to misfire. Marvin had
dismantled the Big Bang Bomb. He had saved the universe.
Marvin’s breath gradually fogged the glass over his face. The
mist blocked out the shimmering stars.
THE END
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--
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| story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us |
| Archive site +--------------------+------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ |
\ <URL:http://www.netusa.net/~eli/erotica/assm/> .../assm/faq.html> /