Chapter 297

It was like Herod imagined dying.

It was like Herod imagined birth.

It was like Herod imagined enlightment.

It was like Herod imagined mortal life.

It was all of everything everywhere stretched into one eternal pinpoint. One fractured eternal splinter of thought stretched across the event horizon of all of the black holes that had ever existed or would exist. He could see from nothingness, through the fury of the Big Bang, to the end of eternity and beyond the leading edge of roaring particles expanding outward from an eternal explosion.

For a moment, just the space inside a digital heartbeat, he understood it all. All of creation. All that could or would be and everything that would not be because it could not be as long as what could be was.

Then the moment fractured and Herod stumbled two steps and fell to his knees, retching even though he had no biological functions. Red code spilled out of his mouth, splashing inside his helmet, leaking through the polarized and coated plasteel visor and onto the floor where it writhed in crimson fury for a long moment before evaporating in a stream of ones and zeroes.

For a moment he thought he saw a 2.

He looked around and the movement of his head threw off his equilibream, making him retch up more red code. He was familiar with the taste, clotted rotting blood, decayed flesh, scorched code, burnt and ashen molycirc traces.

He got his visor opened and vomited up more red code. He could hear Sam-UL gagging as he did the same.

After a long moment Herod managed to push himself into a sitting position and look around.

He was in a hexagonal room. Three meters high. Each wall precisely five meters across. Thick armaglass that he could faintly sense heavy crude circuitry inside that was slowly losing its charge. The armaglass walls were crimson with blue footing and molding. There was a single door with a six inch thick blue line around it.

"We made it," Herod said, and coughed.

"I know," Sam-UL said. He coughed, cleared his throat, and spit.

The code sizzled and popped before vanishing.

"I had the worst nightmare," Herod admitted. "I dreamed Legion was chasing me through my creche, turning into my favorite toys and chasing me while demanding I give him the answer to impossible equations."

"I dreamed I was back in prison," Sam-UL admitted. He picked up a microchip and put it between his 'teeth', squeezing it to squirt the garbage collection code into his mouth. He tossed the chip to Herod as he 'swished' the code around his mouth and spit it on the floor.

Herod felt better when the garbage collection code was done.

"We should get moving," Sam-UL said, getting to his feet. He looked weak and trembly to Herod despite the fact Sam-UL was using a physical therapy frame. Herod groaned and got to his feet.

"What do you think is on the other side of the door?" Herod asked.

"Eternity," Sam-UL said, his voice serious. He grabbed the handle and moved it.

The door clicked open and slowly opened. In the room beyond the lights suddenly came on with a loud clack. Herod stared at them as he followed Sam-UL out of the door. They were old armaglass tube containing gas that could be excited by electrical charge. The kind that lasted forever and never wore out.

"No dust," Sam-UL said. "Either there is a cleaning service, robot cleaners, or this place does not produce dust."

"Where are we? Terra? Some facility between the stars?" Herod asked. "You didn't answer me when I asked before we left."

"You would not believe me," Sam-UL said, turning that burning maddened gaze onto Herod again. "Perhaps when this is over you will believe me, but now, you would not."

"These consoles are obsolete to the point there are no words to describe them," Herod said, staring at them. He was used to being able to reach out with his digital senses to feel the flow of electrons and tachyons on molycircs but the coating on his suit prevented it.

Sam-UL knelt down, getting a driver out and taking off the front panel. He whistled, low, a fleshy habit he'd picked up somewhere.

"What?" Herod asked, moving around and taking a look.

The inside of the computer had physical boards, with traces large enough to see with the naked 'eye', cabling made up of non-superconductor as well as fiber optic cabling. He could actually see the board with the CPU on it.

Manufactured in South Korea the board read.

Herod frowned. He was disconnected from SolNet, so he had no idea where a South Korean might even be located. Probably a factory complex on a world somewhere.

"Binary logic systems," Sam-UL said, looking at it. "Slightly better tech than my equipment."

Herod frowned. "You have access to state of the art equip... oh, right. You, like me, are using equipment available to researchers of the time."

Sam-UL nodded, putting the panel back on. He stood up and counted, pointing at each seat as he did so. "All right. Twenty console stations. All of the monitors, cathode ray tube design, are in sleep mode with no photon impression on the display film," he shook his head. "This place feels like it was abandoned only minutes ago as well as feels ancient."

"I half expect to see bronze gears and muscle powered levers," Herod admitted.

"One door," Sam-UL said. He checked his wrist. "Earth standard atmosphere, Earth standard gravity."

"Eight thousand years empty," Herod said. His stomach twisted and he swallowed thickly. He checked his wrist. His vitals were stable, well, more stable than he expected after glimpsing all of reality after having Legion chase him through the creche with gnashing teeth covered in digital blood.

The heavy lever on the door moved smoothly and the door lifted up to reveal a hallway.

A corpse lay on the floor, slumped over next to the wall. The suit had decayed, she had decayed, leaving behind a dry skeleton clad in in the rags of a clean suit. She had a clipboard in her hand that was covered in dust. The face shield on her cleansuit was smashed, jagged shards of armaplas in her face, the wall at the level of her face when she was sitting down was covered in brownish red dried blood.

She had beaten her own brains in against the wall.

"Now we know what happened," Sam-UL said quietly as they walked by her.

"What?" Herod asked, swallowing.

"Screaming," Sam-UL said softly, walking up to the next door.

HAVE ID READY

SECURE AREA

SENTIENCE UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD SYSTEM CONTROL AREA

LETHAL FORCE IS AUTHORIZED

ALL ELECTRONICS MUST BE TURNED OFF

DATALINK TO 223.412 ONLY

OBEY ALL INSTRUCTIONS FROM SECURITY AND FACILITY PERSONNEL

was written on the wall on either side of the door.

"Ready?" Sam-UL asked, flipping down his face shield.

"Ready," Herod said, following suit.

Sam-UL opened the door and they both just stared.

There were twelve semi-circles of consoles and seats, all facing a huge assortment of screens that were all dark. Skeletons and mummified corpses were scattered around, some still with their hands around one another's throats or holding random objects they had been using as weapons.

Some were just curled up in the fetal position, their suits pristine, but dead all the same.

"They're all dead," Herod breathed.

"Yes," Sam-UL said. He looked at Herod and Herod almost stepped back from the madness in his fellow DS's eyes. "The Screams."

Herod backed up slightly.

"You can't hear them, can you?" Sam-UL asked, turning back to look at the oval room. "You can't hear them screaming, can you?"

Herod shook his head. "No."

"I can," he turned and looked at Herod. "They died. By the billions. Across over a dozen systems, across a hundred worlds. They died.

He reached down and touched the datalink of a corpse.

"Screaming."

"How can you hear them?" Herod asked.

Sam-UL turned and looked at Herod. "I made a critical error," he said. He turned and looked around. "I was plugged in when I told the system to go ahead and process the overdue system task backlog."

"All right," Herod said.

He had a really bad feeling that he wouldn't like what was going to be said next.

"Billions of last moments hit me. Arch-Angel Micheal stood and watched as I lived the last microsecond of life for billions of people at a speed that only a Digital Sentience could experience," Sam-UL said. He turned and stared at Herod for a long moment. "I lived them all."

His eyes burned bright red, hot and fierce.

"Even the final moments of our people."

Herod swallowed thickly. "You're a Screaming One."

Sam-UL nodded. "Yes."

His voice sounded like a female human's.

"You're going to kill me," Herod said.

Sam-UL nodded again. "Yes."

Now he sounded like a girl child.

"And then everyone in the Black Box."

"Afterwards, I will wait for Legion," Sam-UL admitted, turning away. His voice changed, sounding like a young male's. "When the cake flies through the cuckoos nest I will have my revenge upon you all for letting me die."

"Sam, we're here to do something," Herod tried as Sam-UL straightened up from where he had been touching the corpse's datalink.

Herod understood suddenly why he was carrying the equipment he was carrying.

"Reset the system," Sam-UL said, his voice returning to normal. "We came here to reset this system, then restore the Soul Uninterrupted Disaster Storage System."

Sam-UL turned his palm up, looking at a map, and moved toward one of the doors leading out of the room.

"What's the difference?" Herod asked, following him.

"This is the Sentience Upload/Download System, the difference is obvious," Sam-UL said, stepping over another corpse. This one had managed to use a fragment of plas from a dataslate's broken screen to cut their face to ribbons, scraping the flesh from the bone.

They passed more corpses. Some had killed one another, some had been murdered by missing assailants, some had killed themselves.

The ones that were curled into a fetal position, staring with wide open eyes, were the ones that haunted Herod for the rest of his digital life.

He knew they were seeing eternity, just as he had briefly touched it.

The door read "OMNIBUS SYSTEM MAINTENANCE" in small letters and looked perfectly normal. It didn't slide open under power, instead Sam-UL had to push it open. The hinges gave a sharp cracking sound as age welds broke.

The room was dark and Sam-UL activated his headlamps as he stepped in, Herod following him.

Three work stations. Three corpses. They had early generation superconductor cable connecting their datalinks to the work station. The screens were flickering, showing static that was made up of a pixel from a billion different death screams. There was no dust, but the room had the feel of intense age. The corpses had mummified, their jaws open in silent screams, their eyes somehow perfectly preserved.

They died screaming, Herod thought to himself. Again his core hashes twisted in his belly. An impossibility that he'd never felt before.

He'd never'd a lot before.

Sam-UL moved over to them, touching their datalinks. He shuddered and whispered when he touched each one.

"I'll find you, Mary, I promise," he whispered at the first one. "My son, save my son," he whispered at the second one. "Hate. Hate for all Mantidkind," he said at the last one, each time his voice was different. He turned and looked at Herod, his eyes burning with fire that was slowly turning purple.

"Their codes were still loaded," he said. "They're still there. In their datalinks, half in the buffer, halfway to the Soul Uninterrupted Disaster Storage System," Sam-UL shuddered again. "I processed their final moments, they are now at Heaven's Gate."

"Are you all right, Sam?" Herod asked.

Sam stared at Herod for a long moment. "I could not foresee this thing happening to you. If I look hard enough into the setting sun my hate will burn within me till the morning comes. I see a red door that we must paint it black."

Herod nodded. "All right, Sam. What do we do here?" he asked.

Sam grabbed the dead body, pulling the link from the temple of the corpse with one hand and then heaving it off the seat to crash to the floor with the other. He sat down, shifted, and plugged the cord into his temple.

The lights came on first, revealing server racks extending on to infinity on the left side of the room. They were cold, dead, silent.

"I'm in," Sam groaned, writhing. "Processing records now."

Herod moved up and did exactly as Sam had told him to. He used the heavy cargo straps to confine the other DS to the chair.

"No, no, not her, please not her," Sam moaned. "Not him. Not my baby boy."

Herod stood there, his hands on Sam's shoulders, holding him in place. A number, impossibly large, in the billions, flashed onto the screen and began counting down. Watching in biological time it moved impossibly fast, blindingly fast.

To Herod, who was a digital sentience and thought as the speed of subatomic interactions, he could see how some took longer, how each one was a frozen eternity of agony for the young man he held in place.

Several times Sam-UL screamed and struggled, trying to pull the datalinkage cable out from his temple.

Herod held his wrists even when he snapped one of the cargo straps.

"My ducks, my beautiful ducks," he moaned. "My puffies, not my puffies."

Finally the countdown hit zero.

SYSTEM REBOOT SUCCESSFUL

The servers flickered on one after another.

Sam screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

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

"Are you stable?" Herod asked Sam-UL.

The other DS was sweating, somehow, bright red droplets misting the forehead of his physical therapy frame. He looked at Herod with one crazed eye that burned with purple fire.

He had managed to claw the other one out.

"I think so. I don't know. I can feel them dying all around me," Sam said. He gagged. "So many. So many."

"I know," Herod said, reaching out and embracing the other DS.

Herod had never seen the use of such an action before. Not even between DS's, especially not between DS's.

Now he felt the other DS shudder in his arms and held him tight, willing him to stabilize, willing him to get through that madness swirling through his mind.

"We have to get to the Soul Uninterrupted Disaster System," Sam-UL said quietly. His voice changed into a screaming young girl. "And then I will kill you."

"I know, Sam, and then you'll kill me," Herod said, tying Sam-UL's hands behind his back. He heaved the other DS to his feet. Sam was having trouble walking, synthetic neural fluid leaking out of one of his ears in a steady drip. "What is the difference?"

"What's she buying? What does she think all that glitters is gold? What's the name of the stairwell that she wants to buy?" Sam gasped. "Take a left, a left, a left right left, step to your left, your left, your left."

Herod kept dragging Sam through the facility, passing by the dead on the floor. More than once Sam-UL screamed when they passed one of the dead, gibbering and raving for a moment.

Twice Herod had to hold Sam back from beating his face against the wall while he screamed.

In his nightmares Herod would walk that walk again and again, half-dragging Sam-UL through the passages of the abandoned, forgotten facility until they reached the second control room.

Herod strapped him in the chair after letting Sam touch each of the dead technician's datalinks.

Sam laid against the console and wept for the billion families he never had but had felt die.

"I can't, I can't do this," Herod whispered to himself even as he plugged Sam in. "I can't, I can't take it," he whispered as he held Sam's head as the younger DS screamed and raved. He ruffled Sam's hair. "I can't do this. I can't do what you ask of me."

TASKS COMPLETE

SEARCHING FOR DIGITAL SUPERVISOR

SUPERVISOR NOT FOUND

SUPERVISOR NOT FOUND

"I can't do it," Herod whispered, reaching into his satchel.

SUPERVISOR NOT FOUND

SYSTEM WILL SHUT DOWN UNLESS DIGITAL SUPERVISOR IS FOUND

"I can't do it," he said, lifting the object up.

SEARCHING ATTACHED STORAGE DEVICES

"I'm sorry, Sam, I can't do it," Herod wept as he pushed the object against Sam-UL's temple.

DIGITAL SENTIENCE FOUND

"I'm sorry, Sam, I'm so sorry," Herod cried, ruffling the other DS's artificial hair.

DIGITAL SENTIENCE UPLOAD COMPLETE

He pulled the trigger, the force packet shattering Sam-UL's skull and destroying the circuitry.

"I can hear the screams now, Sam."

The screen went dark.

"I can hear them."

Herod sat in the darkness, weeping. Light flashed and Herod looked up at the screen.

HEROD, WE DID IT. I'M IN. I'M OK NOW. WE DID IT. - END OF LINE