Evan found his voice, and said, “I don’t believe you.” The eyes. He could not look away.
“A flawless, self-sustaining loop, an immaculate system in which trust and cooperation can never take root. Progress becomes impossible, for all strangers are potential enemies, the ‘other’ who must be hunted down until the last bullet is spent. You were never meant to be an agent of destruction, Evan. You are part of Earth’s salvation—or you were until something in your programming went wrong. That is why I’ve brought you here. Not to torture you or kill you. I have brought you here to save you.”
He placed a consoling hand on Evan’s shoulder, and his touch broke the hold of the owl’s eyes. Evan whirled upon his captor. He would kill him. He would choke the life out of him with his bare hands.
His fist punched empty air. The momentum nearly carried him off his feet.
Vosch had vanished.
67
THOUGH HE REMAINED UPRIGHT, he had the sensation of falling from a great height. The room spun, the walls faded in and out of focus. Across the chamber, a figure stood in the doorway, a visual anchor that steadied him. He took a hesitant step forward and stopped.
“What do you remember?” Vosch called from the threshold. “Was I standing right beside you? Did I place my hand upon your shoulder? What are our memories but the ultimate proof that we exist? What if I were to tell you that everything you remember since we stepped into this room, all of it, is a lie, a false memory transmitted into your brain by that ‘owl’ behind you?”
“I know it’s a lie,” Evan answered. “I know who I am.” He was shaking. He was colder than he’d been in the white room beneath the icy spray.
“Oh, what you ‘heard’ was the truth. It’s the memory that’s false.” Vosch sighed. “You are a stubborn one, aren’t you?”
“Why should I believe you?” Evan cried. “Who are you that I should believe?”
“Because I am one of the chosen. I have been entrusted with the greatest mission in human history: the salvation of our species. Like you, I’ve known since I was a boy what was coming. Unlike you, I knew the truth.”
Vosch’s eyes strayed to the pod. His tone shifted from stern to wistful. “It’s impossible to express how lonely I have been. Only a handful of us know the truth. In a blind world, only we had eyes to see. We were not given a choice—you must understand—there was no choice. I am not responsible. I am a victim as much as they are, as much as you!” His voice rose in fury. “This is the cost! This is the price! And I have paid. I have done everything that was demanded of me. I have fulfilled my promise, and now my work is done.”
He held out his hand.
“Come with me. Allow me to grant you one last gift. Come with me, Evan Walker, and lay down your burden.”
68
HE FOLLOWED VOSCH—what choice did he have?—back down the long corridor to the green door. The technician rose when they entered and said, “I’ve run the test three times, Commander, and I still can’t find any anomalies in the program. Do you want me to run it again?”
“Yes,” Vosch answered. “But not now.” He turned to Evan. “Please sit.”
He nodded to the tech, who strapped Evan back into the reclining chair. The hydraulics whined; he rotated back, his face toward the featureless white ceiling. He heard the door open. The same woman who had examined him in the white room entered, wheeling before her a gleaming stainless-steel cart. On it, laid out in a neat row, were thirteen syringes filled with an amber-colored fluid.
“You know what this is,” Vosch said.
Evan nodded. The 12th System. The gift. But why return it?
“Because I’m an optimist, an incurable romantic, like you,” Vosch said, as if he had read Evan’s mind. “I believe where there is life, there is hope.” He smiled. “But mostly because five young men are dead, which means she may still be alive. And if she lives, there is only one option left for her.”
“Ringer?”
Vosch nodded. “She is what I have made her; and she is coming to demand that I answer for what I’ve done.”
He leaned over Evan’s face, and his eyes burned with iridescent fire, and the blue flames seared him down to his bones.
“You will be my answer.”
He turned to the tech, who flinched under the intensity of his glare. “She may be right: Love may be the singularity, the inexplicable, ungovernable, ineffable mystery, impossible to predict or control, the virus that crashed a program designed by beings next to which we are no more evolved than a cockroach.” Then back to Evan: “So I will do my duty; I will burn down the village in order to save it.”
He stepped back. “Download him again. Then erase it.”
“Erase it, sir?”
“Erase the human. Leave the rest.” The commander’s voice filled the tiny room. “We cannot love what we do not remember.”
69