Limbs

Nero had just swamped, badly. Covered in sticky reagent, mostly torso, his body only partially reconstructed, still encased in his helper matrix, he was limbless, immobile, and for all intents, useless. This moment, he reminded himself, was a milestone – it was as near to angry as he’d ever gotten. This was his first lapse, his first tumble down the mountain of calm so exalted in the tales told and retold in the analyst castes; but then, they’d never told a story of a spray-RNA failure this bad.

He decided to make a note of it, and mentally hummed the command-pitch.

MILE–stone

Nothing happened. No response tone, no egg-white bounce of mental meringue-fluff that usually told him he’d sunk a memory deep enough to stick. He cocked his brainstem and tried again. Not even a surface ripple.

What part of him was broken? His eyes were alive, able to spot the wall-mounted multifunction display whose lopsided diagram indicated that his head was incomplete, somehow locked up in-process, his physical and mental blueprint still spooling in the massive magnetic reels banked in the corner of the room. He also noticed a set of red numbers on a second monitor nearby.

7:34

The numbers didn’t drum up any memories Nero could think of. He began to think it curious – irritation at his poorly-managed reconstruction hadn’t yet worn off. Even at his most vexed, the Reasonable Mind would overcome within seconds, driving down panic and fear, sublime reductions into acceptance of the baser elements of human nature that were byproducts of ribosome-and-RNA-built reasoning.

It wasn’t happening this time. The moments ticked by; the heat of emotion was slowly, almost imperceptibly, rising. He was unable to chip away at it with the usual cerebral tools he was sure he had.

• DIS-UNIQUE. Statistical. Event has happened to others, not simply myself.
• DOWN-CONTEXT. Factorial. Event actual significance ranks low among other concerns.
• NON-DETERMINE. Chaotic. Event possible outcomes not fixed to a bounded number.

But the functions themselves wouldn’t activate. He knew their names, knew their reasons for having been seared into the gelatin of his cortex, even knew the faces and families of the analytical chemists that built the neural packets that carried the message. The messages just wouldn’t fire.

He closed his eyes, trying to simplify the inputs. If there was less to perceive, maybe the half-mind he had would do a better job of analyzing what was coming in. When he opened his eyes, he saw the numbers again, red and glowing on the wall.

6:59

That number appeared different than before, but his brain wouldn’t tell him how. What was missing? What was wrong? Nero’s muscles seemed only connected to his eyes, and the twitchy bit of his nose. A vague feeling of gravity told him there was a part of his flesh that existed elsewhere on his body, but did not carry any reflexive current; it wouldn’t respond.

He let his eyes follow the feeling, down the stringy yellow honeycomb of the matrix that was holding in his internal organs, meant only to be a stopgap until the final loom-pull of skin closed him up. The spray-RNA machines had missed so much of him; his body matched so few of the memories he had of the anatomy that made him unique. Scars from his youth; fencing in the pre-Academies. Puncture holes from the stimulant crazes that swept the caste in his exams decade. The numerical tattoos, the Forgotten Formulae, bloody black ink squirted into the spaces in his skin. All gone. Was there anything of him that he could recognize?

And then, his eyes lit upon it – a pale fold against the reconstruction table, bright in the wash of light. His right arm. Attached, whole, still alive, terminating at a calm, spindly hand.

The hand – his only hand – rested just inches from a silver key inserted into the front slot of an unmarked red box.

“ATTENTION, NUCLEAR EVENT RETALIATION OFFICER.”

The voice – sudden, unexpected – was everywhere; it shook up from his matrix-girdled guts, it burned the back of his eyes. Foreboding, and yet disarmingly familiar. Then – something went wrong. The voice warped, crackled, dropped out in places.

“– BODY HAS — CONSTRUCTED — IN ORDER — — THREAT — NUCLEAR — SCENARIO.”

Nero heard the words; tried to fit in the blanks. Some of it came back. The concept of nuclear retaliation – and the Persistent Permission Program. They were tangible, social, even emotional items. Was this a drill? When was now? How many years had he been stored on tape?

INCEPTION DATE: APRIL 2ND, 2121
CURRENT DATE: OCTOBER 8TH, 10980

Nero couldn’t make sense of the numbers.

5:12

Everywhere were numbers, and none of them were a language he could understand.

Nero thought through the scenarios. It could be just minutes from his original inception into the protective matrix. Hardly enough time for a whole rotation of the earth. It could be a drill, and any moment, if he could find a way to message his predicament – the failure of the spray-RNA unit – a medical support team would burst through the hatch above his head, unkink the system, and the rest of his body would be strung together properly. He’d be able to stand up, walk around, savor a brew of reconstructed coffee while he studied the incoming reports and made a shoot/no-shoot decision. Then, once he decided whether to turn the key, he’d crawl back into the protective matrix and let the autolysis system break his cells back down onto magnetic tape, to store him until needed again.

On the other hand, if time had passed – time beyond time – there may very well be nobody around, just automated systems that had brought him back into a barren world, overgrown, ruined settlements weighing on the rusted hatch above. Even if civilization had gone on, he could have easily been forgotten, a victim of the cessation of stewardship. Opening the hatch may have yielded a slab of immovable cement, the crushing depths of a risen sea, or some other horror.

There were precious few clues in the arrangement of the chamber. Everything looked as he remembered it when he sunk into his inaugural autolysis bath. The systems around him were driven by his vital signs, de-powered after he was fully stored on tape, only a single plutonium-fed antenna and keepalive circuit listening for the coded signal that meant the orbital systems had sniffed out a potential attack and required him to be transcribed back into life. No lights, no computers, no life support systems. The oxygen generation units stayed off until the RNA spray sequence had begun – he was only instructions, just blueprints for life on a reel-to-reel, until that moment arrived.

That moment, he realized, was unpredictable, in both time and space. It could be any time, in any future. This moment could be any moment, tailings of any one of a billion histories that played out while he was stored on celluloid.

4:08

Red numbers that kept changing, but the shapes wouldn’t resolve into a direction. Was it bigger since the last time he saw it? Was it smaller?

Which way was smaller?

“– DECISION-MAKING PROCESS – GATHER INFORMATION TO FORM A LOGICAL CONC -”

And the system fizzled out, voice trailing off in a slime of slurring and warped tape. Nero noticed a new light, a blue light – the heavy contrast of a text monitor springing to life on his left, searing plasma digits on a burnt-in screen. His eyes strained to read the text. He couldn’t get any closer, but he focused his eyes, squinting until tears started to form. He could just barely make out a word – and the pleading curve of a question mark.

>HELLO?

The question came again.

>NERO 714, RESPOND?

Someone was out there. And they knew he was in here. What did the voice say? Gather information to form a logical - a logical conclusion. He had to gather information. He had to communicate. He couldn’t use numbers, something was wrong with his ability to process numbers – but he could use words.

> OCEANIS IND. NOT A DRILL

The Oceanis Platform, the high-rise dropsonde network, raining disposable sensors down on the planet; flares of information – Nero remembered his tour in the pre-Academies. The dropsondes had seen something, heard something – this digital voice on the other line was telling him this was real.

3:10

Real. How real? He needed data. How many missiles were at hand? How many would launch if he turned the key? Would it be enough? How many was enough? How many was many? It must have been another operator at the terminal – a network of retaliation officers, all sprayed into life, all functioning perfectly – except for him.

> NERO 714 – OTHER STATIONS STARTING VOTE TO RIPPLE LAUNCH

He looked over at his hand resting against the key. The red box told him all he needed to know – the ripple launch system was his to fire; the responsibility was his. He tried to flex his fingers, but the hand wouldn’t move; it was as if he forgot how to use a hand or what the appendage was for.

His brain screamed out to type, to say back HELLO, I’M NERO 714, INFORMATION, PLEASE – but his left arm terminated at a gritty, withered stump just past the shoulder; a drop of fibrin pre-mixture had drooled from the site, leaving him looking like a half-finished painting. No arm, no hand, no fingers to type. And his right hand, worthless, unwilling to work. He could only stare at the screen, hoping his silence would coax his cohort to type more; something that would give him a clue.

Nero’s thought stopped, suddenly, as a new realization took shape. No numbers, no logic, no right hand. He understood what had happened to him: the machine had only sprayed in the right hemisphere of his brain. The left side of his brain hadn’t been laid in yet – there was only empty space in half his cranial cavity. It was why he couldn’t read the numbers. It was why he couldn’t move his right hand – and it was why he’d be useless right up until the very end.

Goddamned machines. GODDAMNED MACHINES.

“Goddamned machines!” He yelled, his training in restraint and rationality all but broken; he was a physical failure, his brain worthless without the simple physical tools he needed to pair it with other brains to make a final decision. Exhausted, he slowly slumped his head back, feeling something shift unchecked inside, and then a pressure, as his half-constructed skull rested against the hollow aluminum arm of the spray mechanism – along with a minute, almost imperceptible shake. A vibration in the core of the machine. It was so little a thing, he mightn’t have noticed it at all but for the quiet of the room and his lack of ability to distract himself from the few sensations that were available to his failed body.

He craned his eyes upward to see the spray aperture of the arm, resonant yaw from a stuck servomotor ticking up the length of the long metal skeleton, wiggling the tip of the needle that atomized the RNA compounds that would construct the rest of his physical form. The needle that held the rest of his body was right above him, and a stuck motor was all that was keeping it from spraying. He watched the arm attempt to move, jerk against the stuck motor, and return to position. And again.

2:20

With a flash of hope, he realized his only chance; a long shot, impossible against all that could still go wrong, but there was only once choice.

He flexed his neck muscles, bringing his head forward, and closing his eyes, thrust his head back into the armature as hard as he could, feeling the hollow tubing ring with the impact of his skull, the frequency shuddering down into his spine. He relaxed his head and readied for another strike. His eyes felt out of focus, his mouth twitching slightly, out of his control. He felt something warm and slippery dripping down the side of his head, leaking from his open skull. Closing his mind to the consequences, he jerked his head backward against the armature, feeling the metal shake and whine as the servomotor started to clear.

He slammed it again, the edges of his vision failing, phantom smells and sounds starting to crest in from all sides, his heart racing, the organs inside of his body starting to revolt at the rogue waves washing in from his contused brain. With a final slam against the tubing, the mechanism came unstuck, and with a pirouette of shining metal the entire gantry came alive. A slap-brace fixed on both sides of his unfinished head, locking his movements in place as the needle came down and he felt the ticklish buzz of the ribosomes layering into his head, laying down the folds of the missing half of his brain.

The calculations started to return – he coaxed them to come faster. Faster. How long would it take to spray in the rest of his brain? He reached back into the neurons that were being constructed, searching for long term memory that was being spooled back like train tracks folding out in front of an express.

The process took – it took – what was the one with the curl at the top and the flat bit at the bottom; he knew what it looked like, he could draw it, he tried mental pictures -

Two minutes. It took two minutes. It would take two minutes to spray in the rest of his brain. He looked up at the clock.

1:50

That’s not a two. That’s – a – less than two –

97%. Probability of false launch. Where did that come from? 98%. Probability of single-system malfunction past 5,000 years life service. The numbers were coming back into his head. 99%. Probability of multi-system malfunction past 7,500 years life service.

The numbers were streaming into his thoughts faster than he could make sense of them. He cranked his eyes as far over as he could to see the calendar:

INCEPTION DATE: APRIL 2ND, 2121
CURRENT DATE: OCTOBER 8TH, 10980

8,859 years difference, he calculated, feeling the numbers come back. Why didn’t anyone else on the net realize the enormous improbability of this event being a genuine act of war? Why wouldn’t anybody put a stop to this? Why are they voting to ripple launch their entire arsenal?

The entire arsenal. 385,714 warheads as of 2121. Failure probability calculated, by now there would still be over 200,000 viable warheads that had not succumbed to fuel leaks, blown circuits, sabotage, or civilian decommissioning.

Terminal probability: 58%
Average yield: 88 MT
Kill radius: 120 miles

Enough to cover the entire earth countless times. If these missiles ripple launched, it would be the end of any semblance of a civilized world, even one ten-thousand years on. Nero didn’t know what was up there but if there were other voices on the net, there could just as easily be other voices above; voices Nero didn’t want choked out by the earth-swallowing deluge of death’s heads that were poised on this panicked decision.

He looked up as the gantry swung around his head to reposition for a lateral spray – and he saw a discolored glint in the uniform shine of the aluminum arm. The arm slowed to a fine adjustment, giving him time to understand what it was: a shear pin, shoved into the metal, the bent head and slight dent in the nearby tubing betraying a hasty hit with a hammer. His beating had dislodged it, far enough away from the motor to allow it to work.

0:32

It wasn’t a bad repair, it wasn’t a manufacturing defect. It wasn’t a coincidence. It was sabotage – and Nero, to his horror, understood why. He wasn’t meant to come back to life at all.

4,075 NERO units. 1 Command unit. NERO 714.

His console was the main kill terminus – the red box – the final check against the network of Nuclear Event Retaliation Officers. He was Nero 714; the command branch, and his key didn’t fire the missiles: it stopped the missiles. The missiles would fire by network vote at the conclusion of the countdown unless he turned his key.

A shear pin could have sent the motors of his spray-RNA unit amok, his ribosomes spraying every which way, his body flung in half-coagulated bits and blobs to congeal on terminals, displays, onto the ceiling and floor, his entire existence a pale red desperate jelly, a half-formed slime, in agony, barely able to realize it was alive, while the missiles auto-launched without him.

But Nero 714 was alive, and all that mattered was stopping the launch. He could be wrong – the hell with it, he’d take that chance, his programming be damned. If humanity hadn’t learned enough in nearly 9,000 years to make Nero unnecessary, he wasn’t going to be the one to doom it now.

The countdown had become painfully clear, his eyes locked to the blood-red numbers, his brain now full aware of the few precious seconds that were left to him:

0:11

Eleven seconds. A final klaxon horn began to sound in the chamber. He closed his eyes, focused on his hand, feeling the familiar weight of the brain mass in his skull cavity growing as the RNA machine pumped in the proteins and silicon primers that held his thoughts, his memories, and his ability to move.

Why did muscle memory have to come last? He stressed against the brace, his teeth gritting against each other as he tried to get the hand to move. Turn the key. Turn the key!

0:04

> NERO 714, VOTES APPROVED, GODSPEED

Fuck you, Nero thought.

TURN THE KEY!

Fuck all four-thousand of you and your perfect bodies -

TURN THE KEY!

- and perfect goddamned computation merits pinned on the inside of your skulls -

TURN THE KEY!

- and your God complexes with your organs shut inside your sewn-up skin -

TURN THE KEY!

Nero strained, imagined the hand, imagined death, imagined life, a pinpoint of light, extinguished forever -

The hand twitched…

A fire of nerve bundles, pain like he’d never felt -

 

0:01

For God’s sake! Everyone on Earth will burn! THE KEY!

0:00

*CLICK*

The horn stopped wailing. The countdown disappeared. The terminal ceased its cyan burn, winking out into a silent black. He heard the clicking over of the solenoid banks that gatekept the oxygen generators; the low hum of life within the walls of his room faded out, the lighting systems shutting down along with the rest.

The spray-RNA unit, purged of power, fell silent, the last drops of building liquid dripping into Nero’s head, each one a splotch of bright color in his rapidly-starved eyes.

In the dimming lights, Nero caught a glimpse of his hand, fingers firmly pinched on the head of the bright silver key turned ninety degrees in the red box. There was no rumble at his feet, no long drone of the nearby launch sites disgorging their payloads. He had done it.

But tomorrow, Nero realized, it could start all over. If launch conditions were falsely generated once, they could be made so again. Nero had to remain a safeguard. He had to ensure he’d be brought back -

The shear pin!

His eyes darted up to the gantry that now lay dormant, seeking out the loose pin. It wasn’t stuck in the mechanism now, but if the gantry moved in the right way, it could wriggle back in and leave him a shotgun pattern of protein sludge the next time the constructor came to life. If he could just remove it -

A single, sterile beep emanated from the bed below him, coupled with a creeping cold that began to spread from his back, up through the rest of his body. The autolysis process had begun. Nero was being eaten away, broken down to be stored on tape. Urgently, he fixed his attention on his hand, trying to move it toward the tubing where he remembered the shear pin being placed.

The fluid was dissolving muscle first – the bones of his spine would take longer; if he could just reach the pin, he would ensure a full construction – he’d be whole again when next he was called. His arm stiffly, hesistantly began to move, his hand reluctantly releasing the key, which calmly rotated back into the firing position, readied for another event.

Cold enveloped him – the fluid was now covering his entire body, and he felt himself sinking into it as the tissues collapsed into liquid, unable to hold up the rest of him. His hand jerked down an inch, the tips of his fingers brushing the hollow bones of the gantry.

Darkness was everywhere now. He could only navigate by feel, the lysis fluid seeping into his head, flowing around the cracks in his unfinished skull, eating away at his brain. Panicked, his memory slipping from him, he realized that his own mind would betray him in seconds by forgetting the sabotage, the near-disaster, the future, the past, the present-now – the gantry – the pin.

The pin!

With a ripping of flesh, Nero flung himself up one last time, the remnants of his liquefying body convulsing in one last electric shock of motion, his arm in a grand sweep across the metallic tree of life, the nerves barely able to register the signals coming from his fingers and palm as they raked across the gantry in a final, desperate spasm as his body collapsed into the fluid.

Nero’s mind registered a sound, very faint – a bright sound, metallic, a single pinging in the darkness – and he was swallowed up, infinite, in a sea.

 

 

Charles Cox, 2011