After Death(94)

They scurry like frightened attic rats. Unlike rats, which are able to squeeze their spongy skulls and flexible bodies through any chink that’s half an inch or wider, Mace and his companions can’t escape from the refuge that has become their prison. The promise of human evolution accelerated by technology, the vaunted Singularity, has produced nothing more than a desperate outsider, a man-machine who is less than either a man or a machine, who has become nothing more than an animal on the run.

In high spirits, Calaphas leaves the bedroom at the southwest corner of the house, crosses the hallway, and enters the room at the southeast corner. He is the Pied Piper, and this house is Hamelin, soon to be rid of all rats. He’s brother to the farmer’s wife with her carving knife and bloody collection of rodent tails. He’s the exterminator, annihilator, eradicator, obliterator, and his moment of ultimate triumph is at hand. No one can stand against him. In a flash of profound insight, he realizes that he is Death; either he always has been Death but unaware, or he’s an apprentice to Death and has by his dedication earned the hooded robe and scythe. The kingdom of Death is everywhere and always, not just in this present simulation but also in the higher realm to which he’ll soon ascend. Everyone is born to die, but he is not of their kind. He is Death, and therefore deathless, harvesting lesser beings throughout all of time. When this night’s work is done, he must think about this new understanding, the ramifications, the power. The revelation is so exhilarating that he wonders what even greater satori might be visited on him if he took another ten milligrams of Benzedrine.

In the southeast corner of the southeast room, Durand Calaphas aims the rifle at the ceiling and squeezes off five rounds in rapid succession. No one screams, but he isn’t disappointed. They will be screaming soon enough. When eventually he goes into the attic, he will thrust his priapism into the woman, whether she is alive or dead, and he will kiss her on the lips. He will kiss the dead boy, and he will kiss the dead Singularity, and this virtual world will dissolve around him, and he will rise into his kingdom.





Showdown.

Juan and Walter share the same fear, and it’s not a fear of death, a prospect to which they’ve adapted during their long lives. They are afraid that these alien machines will escape, that they will have no evidence that this encounter occurred, that they will therefore not be able to tell anyone about this most astonishing event in their lives, for fear of being dismissed as liars or as dupes who fell for an absurd hoax. Walter says, “Marty Bellock,” whereupon Juan says, “Exactly what I was thinking.” Marty had been an acquaintance of theirs long ago, a successful businessman who claimed to have bedded the sexiest actress of that decade, a star for whom millions lusted. The details of his story were verifiable to the extent that he and the actress had been in the same city at the same event and had booked rooms in the same hotel. He even had a photo of him and her, which was signed by her and inscribed “What a night!” However, she hadn’t given him her phone number or address, and he preserved none of her DNA that might have lent a measure of credibility to his story. Besides, he was round faced and stocky, not a Greek god to whom women were irresistibly drawn. Although everyone previously thought Marty was a man of principles, reliable and trustworthy in all matters, his insistence on the truth of this unlikely one-night stand damaged his reputation beyond repair, and no one ever again quite believed anything he said.

Consequently, when the alien machines rush forward, each on two legs, when one of them proves to have a weapon incorporated into it, when a muzzle flashes twice, and when the shots strike with laser-guided accuracy, blowing out both front tires on the F-150, Juan is motivated to stand on the accelerator. The shrieking truck surges forward on shredding tires. The robots fall onto all fours and peel off in opposite directions. One escapes. The other is clipped hard and tumbles away, casting off showers of multicolored sparks, as if it is a Fourth of July rocket that, having failed to launch, wastes its wonders in the tall, wet grass.





With no cupped hand limiting it, the powerful LED beam spreads its bright cone the length of the attic. When the second barrage of gunfire rips through the floor, crickets of pressed wood leap into the air; swallowtails of pink fiberglass insulation flutter up and then float in the silence of the aftershock.

Gog is down, but Magog is less than a mile away and coming, guided by the coordinates of the Chandra house that had been installed earlier.

Michael’s mind is processing data slower than a supercomputer would process it, but he’s coming to a wet-brain conclusion no different from that arrived at by dry-circuit silicon. The first volley of shots had shattered into the southwest corner, and the second had riddled the southeast corner, with no salvos between those two widespread points. Below the attic, the second floor of the house provides rooms on each side of a hallway. After the first fusillade, Calaphas had left one room and directly entered the room across the hall before opening fire again. Seconds are racing away. He’s on the move, seconds are racing away, and he isn’t shooting. Because he isn’t quartering the attic. He is going from corner to corner. Calaphas assumes that both instinct and some knowledge of construction will draw them into the greater safety of a corner, the presumed safety. First southwest, then southeast. Now he’s coming the length of the second floor, toward the northeast corner. They are in the northeast corner.