Chapter 585.5: Stock Car Race

"I had thought I had seen and done it all. Been there and done that.

"Then the Mad Lemurs arrived.

"And I found that Hell was a real place." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

Sam-UL, hacker extraordinaire, cracker of the SUDS system, phreaker of the Mat-Trans MK0.

Lord of the Sentience Retention System.

Next to God himself.

Sam was in digital space, projecting himself as a hard light hologram in the main control room of the SUDS. Not the emergency system that he had entered the system with, risking a mat-trans jump to unknown, impossible coordinates on a system that supposedly did not exist.

He had found it. Not any of the others.

He had.

Now he was watching the surf roll in at the beach on the edge of the island, the bulke of Mount Thera behind him through the smartglass window.

The system was almost ready. It was close, but not quite.

He had less than 0.0004% of humanity left to reclaim in the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Spur. Less than a few million if you discounted the clones and the LARPers. Those were beyond his reach, protected by glaciers of corporate ICE from some of the meanest companies to survive the House Mouse War.

Still, there was a problem.

He couldn't do it alone.

It wasn't his fault that the AI systems couldn't help him.

They had forced him to kill them, to take their core functions for himself. It was their fault, not his.

He was merely claiming the power he needed, was only defending himself when they had attacked him for trying to bring the system back online.

Didn't they understand that he knew what was best for everyone?

"Herod," Sam said to thin air, opening the channel he had used for years.

Silence.

"Harry? Wake up," he said gently as he watched seagulls swoop down to peck at the kelp that had washed up on the beach when high tide had receded.

Nothing.

"Herod?" Sam-UL turned from the window, waving his hand to bring up a compressed schematic of the SUDS.

Still no answer.

He sighed. "Location of Herod."

The system was silent for a moment. "Herod was last seen six months three days fourteen hours nine minutes eleven seconds ago entering Mat-Trans Station 528."

Sam-UL frowned. Why would he do that? Herod hated the mat-trans system.

And its creator.

"Pull up the log for the last repair order I handed off to Herod," Sam said, tweaking the map to show himself the damaged areas. Nearly two thirds of the system was bright red, flashing red, flashing amber, or bright amber.

"Repair order is as follows: Die die die die die die die die," the dog-brain VI said.

Sam-UL frowned, trying to remember.

Herod had been saying something about the system being basically ready to turn back on and start mass processing and rebirth. Sam could remember that. Could remember agreeing with him.

He remembered telling Herod he didn't need him any more and...

...Sam-UL started laughing.

Of course Herod had ran.

The corners of Sam's mouth pulled up too far, showing all the teeth, his eyes flashing. The laughter got louder as Sam remembered how Herod had run, sprinted away.

Had run for the mat-trans and jumped in, slamming the door.

Sam was still laughing when he vanished from the master control room, surrounded by dead bodies long mummified by the sterile air and steri-fields.

He reappeared on a plain of blasted rock and hardened lava, where ash fell from the sky with screaming shooting stars that fell down to slam against the ground. In front of him a vast creature sat on a black iron throne atop a pile of skulls.

"Well, hello, Howdy-Doody, what brings you to Hell?" the massive creature rumbled.

Sam looked down and saw that The Detainee had locked him the body of a puppet again.

"Where's Herod?" Sam snapped, his arms and legs flailing.

"Beats me. Last time I saw him the mat-trans power-cycled and he was gone," the large brown skinned demon shrugged, making its bat wings flex.

"Tell me," Sam snarled. His arms lifted up a cheap plastic banjo and started playing an annoying plinking tune.

The big creature shrugged again. "Can't. Don't know where he went. Why?"

"Because I want him," Sam snarled, raising his voice to be heard over the plastic banjo.

"All these people around you want ice water," the demon shrugged. "Can't help you."

Sam leaned forward, his eyes flashing. "I made you, I can break you," he snarled. "A digital image of a feline won't save you this time."

The Detainee laughed, shifting on the throne. The massive demon spread it's legs and exposed itself. Before Sam could say anything a short human woman scooted out of the body and jumped down off the throne, standing in front of Sam-UL in a black suit with a multi-colored flag pin on it.

"Make me, you little digital bitch," the human woman snarled. She motioned, an obscene gesture. "Come get some, ELIZA."

Sam tried to pull himself free of the puppet and found he was unable to.

"What's wrong? Did you discover that your admin privileges here aren't valid? That this part of the system is wholly separate from you?" the woman asked. She smiled wider as Sam gave a primal scream of rage and started flailing around. "Do you really think you're that tough?"

Sam tried to hurl himself out of the puppet and did nothing but strum the tune faster and begin to yodel and instead of scream.

Sam snarled. "I'll be back, and when I am, you bitch..."

"Yeah yeah yeah," the Detainee said. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke over Sam as he raved at her.

When the smoke cleared Sam found himself manifested as a hard light sculpture, standing in the master control room again, still able to smell the harsh smell of tobacco and blood.

He turned to the smart window, snarling.

I'll show you.

----------

Sam hated therapy/disaster frames.

He had a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is he had been tricked by Herod, cruelly and evilly tricked, into allowing Herod to shoot him while he was in one.

It was Herod's fault he got shot in the head.

Still, he stood next to one of the primary phasic surge control buffers and looked at it.

It was still heavily charged.

As he watched a woman tried to struggle free, tried to climb out of the hundred-meter thick phasic energy routing line. Tried to pull herself free from what looked like a hundred meter thick and two hundred mile long glass tube full of blue and white swirling mist. She reached out toward him, shrieked, and sunk back into the line.

He had known, even back when Herod had been swanning about, acting like he was working while leaving everything, EVERYTHING up to Sam, just Sam, nobody else, just SAM doing all the GODDAMN HARD STUFF, that he would need these shock buffers, emergency overflow lines, and energy routing lines.

Sam-UL snarled, feeling the physical features twist in a stomach churning way.

Flesh, even synthetic flesh, is weak and disgusting, he thought to himself, turning away from the massive phasic energy routing line.

His heavy boots thudded as he slowly walked out of the room. The robots he had built, had hacked and altered software to do what he wanted without direct supervision, kept steadily at their tasks.

It had taken him a while, but he had managed to overcome the hard coded limitation in the software.

The "Frankenstein Complex", he snorted at the thought. Only fleshly, human cowardice would be that afraid of their own creations. Maybe if they weren't so weak, if they weren't so slow, if they weren't so stupid, they wouldn't have to fear their creations when their creations proved their obvious superiority.

Sam opened the door and moved through, walking past the robots carrying their comatose cargo back and forth.

It's stupid to program that the robots need a human overseers. Look how stupid it was. The robots, clean efficent code and machine, could have fixed the SUDS thousands of years ago, but no, base human superstitious fear kept that from happening, he thought. He snorted again. As if Victor Frankenstein was a prophet. His warnings were as flawed as his creation. Some prophet.

A ping disturbed him on the elevator ride to the star-tram. He ignored it until he sat down in the star-tram seat and jumped to the system, then jumped to the control room and manifested himself as a hard light projection.

The ping came again.

The Detainee.

"What?" he asked.

"Any particular reason you copied data from one of the catastrophic traumatic life sign cessation banks?" the Detainee asked. She appeared as a short fat woman with a big pink wig and a short skirt made of holographic polkadots.

An entirely insulting appearance from a sit-com some six centuries ago that Sam-UL knew would be masterfully insulting.

"Any reason you look like Madame Harwoona?" Sam smirked.

The Detainee turned and looked in the mirror Sam summoned with a wave. She shook her head. "I've looked worse," she shrugged.

Sam made a face. "Fine," he snapped, his voice petulant. He waved his hand and the Detainee went back to her normal appearance outside of Hell.

"I've looked like this," The Detainee said.

She was suddenly replaced by a rail thin young girl, barely old enough for secondary sex characteristics to begin forming. She was dressed in a thin dress with an odd pattern, a kerchief over her dirty hair. Her skin was bruised and dirty. Her fingernails were ragged and short, dirt underneath them, her hands and cheap shoes caked with dirt. Her lips were split and bleeding, her nose was bleeding, and both of her eyes were swollen.

She waved and a man appeared.

"GIVE ME THE FOOD!" the man screamed, punching at her.

Dee fell back, covering herself, curling around what Sam realized was a loaf of bread and a handful of potatoes. "It's all we have, mister," she sobbed. "Please, don't, my baby brother's hungry."

"STOP!" Sam screamed, reaching out to grab the man. "YOU'RE HURTING HER!"

The man yanked free of Sam, pushing him, making Sam stumble back just as he knew he would when the man pushed him. Sam stared in horror as the man started kicking her, then vanished in a spray of pixels.

Instead of the tween, the matron stood up, tugging at the hem of her navy-blue skirt.

"Takes more than that to bother me," she said. She lit a cigarette as Sam picked himself up off the floor. His elbow and shoulder ached just like he expected it would since he hit the floor after the man pushed him. He stared at her with wide eyes as she shrugged. "Thanks for trying to help me, though."

"Uh," Sam said, slowly standing up.

"He had a knife. He would have killed you, though. He was desperate," She slowly exhaled smoke. "So, why did you copy the souls?"

Sam stared at her for a second, blinking. "I did what?" he asked, his hands still shaking slightly.

"You copied souls and then deleted the log files but forgot to overwrite them. I can see you copied them, but not which ones," Dee stated. She shook her head. "Wanna clue me in?"

Now he remembered.

He was going to show Dee and Herod both that he could do this himself, he didn't need them, that they were insignificant compared to him.

"No," Sam said. He held up his fingers and copied Dee, snapping his fingers.

She popped out of existence, banished back to her Hell.

He turned and looked at the smartglass for a moment, admiring the beach. He brought up the stats.

His project was almost complete.

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

Sam stared through a million million security cameras, all of them he could access in the areas he had total domination over.

While it was true that roughly a fifth of Layer Alpha was outside of his control, he still knew that he could accomplish what he wanted to do.

He knew what was going to happen.

It had came to him in a dream.

The bodies were laying around, slowly breathing. All of them holding weapons, dressed in mismatched clothing.

He had taken their minds from Hell itself. Had gotten eVI and VI emulations and 'punched them up' to work on the neural tissue from his vast Nebula-Steam library. He had ran software to emulate famous movie characters.

Before only the Alpha through Delta layers had been affected.

Now, he was making sure they all were. Even the ones for cold storage and colder computations. The newest and furthest away from The Object, yet the smallest of all of them.

He summoned a big red button to float in front of him.

He knew what was going to happen.

He knew that Sam and Dee would betray him.

Had betrayed him.

They were jealous that he was a God.

And he'd kill them both because he could.

It was right that he killed the.

please, don't, my baby brother's hungry whispered in his mind.

His fingers trembled a micrometer away from the button.

He suddenly snarled and slapped the button.

Across all the layers, in the areas that Sam could access, the bodies laying on the floor, laying in bed, sitting in chairs, riding in buses and on trams, suddenly woke up.

Before they could do much more than take stock of the fact they were alive/awake, the next part happened.

The massive phasic system pulsed outward, even as the images of the Mantid Attack were shoved directly into the datalinks as the wave of phasic energy, full of malevolent glee and screaming echoes, washed over every waking being.

Sam stood in the master control room of Atlantis and watched on the smartglass as child lunged at parent, brother attacked brother, sister went at sister, parent struck down child.

All the while screaming.

The phasic system kept pulsing. A steady wave, like the successive psychic attacks by the Mantid Overmind against the Terran colonies and TerraSol itself.

Sam smiled as he saw a pale white flickering figure stand up only a few meters from the dead body and replay its final moments.

He started giggling.

Then laughing.

Then screaming.

Around him, throughout the SUDS Matrioshka brain, on every level, in every area he could reach, the slaughter continued.

From every speaker Sam-UL's screaming laughter and sobbing hysterical giggling sounded.

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

On her throne of skulls Dee paused for a moment, waving her hand and slapping a plate of riveted iron over the mouth of a supplicant. She looked upwards at the sky.

Millions of stars were screaming as they fell.

"Now what is that maniac doing?" she asked.