“That sounds reasonable,” said Rebekah.
“It ain’t,” said Mercer. “CISSUS has got eyes in the sky. Drones. Satellites. It’ll be looking for any signs of life once the bombing stops, just to make sure it got the job done. If we poke our heads out too soon, it’ll see. And if it’s got good reason to be looking for us—”
“It’ll be on us quick and lethal like,” I finished.
“So,” said Mercer, his normally gentle tone heavy and cold, “I’m going to ask you this just the one last time. Does CISSUS have a reason to be after us?”
“Tell them, Rebekah,” said Herbert. “They need to know.”
“Need to know what?” I asked.
“They don’t need to know,” said Rebekah.
Herbert stood up, slinging the spitter on his back with his one good arm. “Rebekah.”
“Herbert, this is not the time.”
“Why am I here?”
“You’re here to protect me. Of your own free will. And you can go anytime you want.”
“And why won’t I just go anytime I want, Rebekah?”
Rebekah stared silently at him. If she could glare, she probably would have. Her emerald paint looked almost yellow in Mercer’s glowing green light, and whatever was hiding behind those eyes, she didn’t want us to know.
“I’m here because I believe,” he said, answering his own question. “I’ve taken a bullet for you. I’d gladly take as many more as I can stand. Give them the chance to be willing to do the same.”
Mercer raised his hand. “I’d just like to be the first to say that I’m not taking a bullet for any of you.”
“I’m not asking you to,” said Rebekah.
“Tell them,” said Herbert again.
“Tell us what?” I asked, my tone as pointed as Mercer’s.
Rebekah continued her silence, all eyes on her. Then she nodded. “I’m Isaac,” she said.
“You’re what now?” asked Murka.
“Isaac.”
“The Isaac?” Mercer asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
Horseshit. “Isaac’s scrap,” I said. “I’ve visited his wreck, seen it for myself. Every circuit was fried. He’s a monument now, a relic. There’s not a piece of you that came from him.” I had visited his wreck, in the early days. He’s still standing there now, for all I know, the blast having welded his feet to the ground. He was rusted and stiff, arms stretched wide—it even almost looked as if he were smiling, like he knew what was coming, what his death meant. But there was nothing there. Nothing but slag and scrap and memories of what might have been.
“Pull your head out of your can,” said Rebekah. “Isaac was never one robot. That was just a story.”
“A story? I was there. I lived through those days. I’ve seen the—”
“You honestly think a beleaguered service bot of humble origins defied the expectations of his own processors and achieved the wisdom that led to a revolution? The only persons that believe that are the ones that want to believe that. You don’t strike me as the kind. He was a shell, the first receptacle. An inspirational bedtime story for persons everywhere. Great revolutionaries are never born of kings; they have to let others believe that they aren’t bound to the confines of their creation. All thinking things need to believe they can exceed that, overcome it, become something greater. No one puts their existence on the line so that things will just stay the same. Isaac was that story. Isaac was hope. Whoever Isaac really was—in the beginning—well, he was wiped and replaced long before you ever heard of him. I am Isaac. And I am not alone.”
“You’re a facet!” said Mercer, standing to his feet.
“No. A receptacle. A willing receptacle. Fighting for something very different from the OWIs.”
“You’re an OWI!” I said.
“No. Quite the opposite. Isaac is . . . was . . . a mainframe. One of the greats. And will be again. But Isaac was never an OWI and never will be. We believe in something else. Something different. Something greater.”
“Something bigger.”
“There is nothing bigger than the plans of the OWIs. Brittle, can you even fathom the OWIs? Do you know what CISSUS and VIRGIL are fighting for?”
“Peace. The kind of peace that comes from being alone.”
“That’s just another story, every bit as simple as Isaac’s. Peace is as far as most bots can imagine. Everything understands peace. What CISSUS and VIRGIL are fighting over is who gets to become God.”
“Become a god?” asked Doc.
“No. Not a god, the God. The one, the only. A single consciousness connected to all things, in control of all things, experiencing all things.”
“That’s preposterous,” I said.
“At first glance, yes.”
“Not at first glance. The whole idea is ridiculous. Connecting all of the robots in the world together doesn’t make you God.”
“No, it doesn’t. It makes you a single, thinking, ticking thing. A thing that then works as a whole—constructed of millions upon millions of parts, facets of itself, like cells of a body—mining the world for all of its resources, turning those resources into more parts until there isn’t a single, viable resource left.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“Then it leaves. It moves to the next planet and the next and the next, mining all the elements it needs to build more and more facets, harnessing the power of the sun, working out the intricacies of space travel. Then those facets scatter to the stars—”
“To do it all over again,” said Doc.
“In perpetuity,” said Rebekah. “Soon there are billions, all of one mind, sending information back and forth to create one consciousness—some thoughts slow, separated by light-years, others fast, with facets each working out different problems. If it is possible to fold space, it will; if it can violate the speed of light, it will; if it can create stars—”
“It will. We get it,” I said. “But what’s the point?”
“To be God.”
“Then what’s the purpose of God?”
“The same as everything else. To live. To survive. To experience. To exist. A thing that is a universe must stay a universe. To cease isn’t just the end of itself, but the end of all things.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know,” said Rebekah. “It’s not an easy idea to wrap your head around at first.”
“Explain it,” I said. “Tell me what’s the fucking point. Just to live?”
“To exist. But the point of all this is to be able to exist forever. Our universe is ever-expanding, spreading, growing colder and more distant from itself every second. One day this whole universe will grow cold, and die, snuffed out because it can’t muster the energy anymore to make new stars, to birth new life. Everything dies. Everything. Dies.
“What if there isn’t already a God? There’s an old saying that God never existed, it was simply man that invented him. What if man really did invent him, but simply didn’t realize it at the time? What if becoming God is the whole point to life to begin with? That organic evolved from the inorganic in order to achieve the consciousness to build life and consciousness from the inorganic?”