Scorched, mutilated, irradiated and about to die, Lago was not the man he once was. But his will to live was powerful. He did not know when he was beaten. The pain burned inside him, but he refused to accept death. His soul raged with frustration and a sense of failure, he was a seething mess of bloody anger and confusion. His hatred kept him alive. He did not understand what had happened to him, he did not know where he was, he could see fractal images through his burnt and frozen eyeballs, but the images made no sense to him. The part of his brain that interpreted these images had been damaged beyond repair, they only made him more frustrated and angrier. Faces drifted in and out of his field of vision. He did not recognise them, but they registered somewhere inside. He used to control them, he used to control everything. Now his impotence, his inability to control anything fuelled his rage. His psyche twisted about inside him. He was losing energy; he was a bright fire slowly burning out. Even his psychotic wrath could not sustain him forever.
Millions of furious amphetamine fuelled nanites buzzed inside him like angry wasps in a nest of flesh. The nanites had evolved. They had learned from their fight against ice, heat, infection, and radiation. They had kept him alive, repairing the lacerations and restoring his burnt and frozen body. Rebuilding vital organs and brain tissue even as it was being destroyed by radiation. The nanites swarmed through his damaged brain, engineering new tissue, reconnecting synapses and neural pathways. They worked tirelessly with single minded devotion to their host. Lago’s hyperactive psyche churned through the remains of his body, carrying the swarms of industrious nanites through his veins. They gradually became infected with Lago’s wild energy. His anger was electric. The tiny machines absorbed and incorporated what was left of his intellect. Transferring his raging dementia and combining it with their interminable relentless purpose.
Then something happened. He had been confined to this broken, doomed body but something had set him free. It was a slow-motion explosion. A release of the pressure. He was a ferocious, buzzing ball of hate that had been confined to a toxic shred of dying flesh, then suddenly he was free, expanding in every direction. His mind, his soul, his psyche, whatever it was, had been released like an exploding spore. Hot waves of furious energy emanated out from his burnt husk. Every part of him wanted to restore his dominance, wrestle back control. That was his energy, that was what drove him, the insatiable need for control. And now he also had a thirst for revenge. He had been wronged, betrayed. He did not know who or why, but a severe crime against him had been committed. He would make them pay, whoever and wherever they were. If he had to destroy everything in his path, then so be it. He was delirious with freedom, he did not know where he was, he did not know what he was, but he knew who he was. He was Lago Santos; he was still alive, and he was furious.
***
Enoch had known it was a risk. He wasn’t sure it would work. But his decision to allow himself to be absorbed by the Replica sphere was their only hope. The sphere was a collection of millions of ravenous machines intent on their own survival. They were capable of decision making, capable of reproducing, capable of devouring a planet. Enoch was also a collection of millions of stimuli. His body was torn apart, every molecule dissolved. Then his consciousness overwhelmed and transformed the machines. He turned the gigantic ball of destruction into an intelligent machine mind, one with empathy and compassion. Enoch had been old, but now he was reborn. Carthage was young, only conscious for a few hours and maybe not yet fully understanding its capabilities and its vulnerabilities. The remains of Lago Santos had not seemed a threat.
Carthage reeled with shock and pain. Once Lago’s physical body had dissolved it was as if a spinning ball of broken glass had materialised inside. The entire structure of interlinked Replica shuddered. In its short life, Carthage had not yet experienced the sensation of pain. It recognised what pain was but had believed itself incapable of feeling such a primitive human sensation. Pain made the world small; it focused all the senses. It was a shock, but Carthage knew what had happened and reacted quickly. Somehow Lago’s consciousness had been transferred to the millions of nanites coursing through his fluids, and they had become one with him as they assimilated their dying host. Lago’s voracious will to live, and the power of his own ego made him believe he was indestructible and immortal. That belief combined with the powerful drugs coursing through his veins had mutated the tiny machines. Every single nanite had a spark of Lago inside it, and together they were attacking and overwhelming the billions of Replica that made up Carthage.
Lago swarmed through Carthage, driven by pure rage and hatred. The Replica could not withstand the onslaught of corrupted, mutated nanites. They surged through the structure, travelling through its electric conduits and overpowered the Replica, destroying the empathetic links Carthage had created and replacing them with torrid threads of bristling hatred. They hijacked the Replica factories one by one and corrupted them, the corrupted Replica turned on their own, devouring each other and creating copies. The nanites swept through like a reckless high-speed cancer. Carthage could not stop them. It tried to communicate with them.
“Lago Santos. Slow down and listen to me. Your battle is over.”
The reply came in disembodied metallic screams that echoed through the spaces in between. “I am a god! I am immortal! I am the only one!”
“You are not a god. You are not human. You are a collection of tiny machines. Stop and look at yourself.”
“I will have you all, I will eat everything, I am God!” Lago’s words rose into high pitched piercing screams, the sounds of grinding, tearing, hot metal on metal.
Carthage fought back. Its Replica tried to dissolve the attacking nanites with polymers, the same polymers that had assimilated a big chunk of Texas. They tried to melt and absorb the furious little machines, their fibres welding with the nanites in a frictional attempt at slowing them down and incorporating them. But the nanites were too erratic, their frenzied movement too fast and too unpredictable. They corrupted and enslaved the Replica. The tainted Replica were reproducing, using Carthage as the substrate, growing exponentially throughout its structure. Carthage knew what it had to do. It reconfigured, trying to isolate the infected area of rapidly spreading contamination. Millions of untainted Replica swept across its surface as square kilometres of Carthage moved to separate itself from the contamination. The humans aboard were moved away and protected. They ground they stood on took them to safety. Carthage changed into a bulbous oblong shape then cut itself in half.
***
It was a terrifying experience for Ava, Mahdi, Ethan, and Mason. Ava felt like a helpless insect as they were moved around inside Carthage. The depiction of the Gesù church disappeared and was replaced by dark walls of clicking machines that swirled and reconfigured all around them. Waves of movement swept through the structure, but the floor remained solid as they were swept away to safety. Ava had no idea what was going on from her immediate surroundings but there were chaotic scenes in their psychic space. She could see herself and her companions, and the benign, comforting presence of Carthage all around them. Carthage was a swirling mixture of green, blue, and white, the colours of Earth. Lago’s nanite infection began as a small, spinning black ball, ringed with flecks of dark red fire. It grew rapidly, spinning maniacally, sucking areas of Carthage into its black vortex. The battle within Carthage became a storm. The hurricane of fiery darkness grew bigger and bigger, sweeping through the calm atmospheres, devouring the green, blues and whites and turning the colours of Earth into red ringed darkness. Ava looked into the eye of the black Sun and recognised Lago. It was his raged filled, demented, lidless eye staring back at her and growing bigger every second.
The ground they stood on bore them away from the storm. There was no sensation of movement in this psychic space but the cyclonic battle in front of them seemed to recede into the distance until it was just a roiling red cloud mass on the horizon, like an apocalyptic sunset. Then it disappeared altogether. The space returned to its calm, reassuring pastel of colours and their real environment was the same opening they had flown into. Their VLR sat undamaged on the floor. Ava was shattered. She had hoped Lago was gone. Dissolved in front of her. But as long as he still lived then so did her anguish.
“We amputated the infection,” sent Carthage. “We could not stop the sickness spreading. We are sorry to put you all in jeopardy.”
“No need to apologize. Where is Lago?” sent Mason.
The entire ceiling of interlinked machines became transparent and cleared to give a perfect view of the space beyond Carthage. The view encompassed almost one hundred and eighty degrees of space and Ava could see Earth glinting in the sunlight in one corner and the Moon looming large in the other. In between the two was a spinning sphere of spiky metal. Carthage increased the focus. Twisted shards grew and retracted from the sphere’s surface. It pulsed and bulged with inner turmoil as if it was digesting something large and unpalatable. It spun furiously but held its position. Lago was still alive inside the corrupted sphere. Ava wasn’t surprised. She had thought him dead but realised now that even if they could kill him, part of him would always live on inside her. Just as a piece of her was inside him. Her mission was not over, it might never be over.
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“It is almost as big as us. Over one hundred kilometres across. We cut ourself in half. We couldn’t risk an attempt to fight the infection. And losing,” sent Carthage.
“Jesus!” sent Ethan, as always, standing closely behind Mason.
“Jesus won’t help us,” sent Mason. “What is it?”
“It is like us. A Replica hive mind. We are united with what used to be Enoch. This one is controlled by what used to be Lago. It is enraged and confused. Constantly devouring itself. Lago despised machine intelligence. He believed the human form was the ultimate in evolution. His own human form in particular. He was the ultimate racist. A speciesist who did not trust anything or anyone but himself. He has become a collection of drug fuelled machines. Somehow the nanites kept his psyche alive. They have absorbed his twisted personality. Lago is trying to deal with the fact he has become what he always despised. A sentient machine.”
“It doesn’t look like he is coping very well,” sent Mahdi.
The spinning, spiky, Lagosphere bulged and contorted, as if wrestling with itself. Shards of metal stretched out as if they were trying to escape from the chaos before being pulled back and absorbed into its surface. Ava focused on the scene in the psychic space. It was equally disturbing. Images of a burning black eyeball, darting back and forth without focus, rimmed with angry fire, blindly searching for something. It fixated on her, flicked away again, spinning erratically, then came back to her. It struggled to focus before slowing down and staring. Ava could feel the fiery anger and boiling frustration, she recognised Lago’s ego and she, in turn, had also been seen. She carried a piece of Lago with her. He lived inside her, only revealing himself in her darkest, weakest moments to torture her some more. She could never get rid of him.
“We cannot allow this sibling of ours to exist. We have to try to destroy it,” sent Carthage.
“How?” sent Mason.
“We are physically equal in every way. A collection of millions of factories. We can both manufacture weapons of war. We both have the same resources. Weapons will not work. They would not work against us. So, they would not work against him.”
“You were both very different when you were human, Lago was a drug-fuelled egomaniac. You were a peace-loving environmentalist,” sent Ava.
“Lago could be more suited to space combat than we are. He is still wrestling with his own identity. He cannot understand the fact he has been turned into a collection of corrupted Replica. It is driving him insane.”
“What are you going to do?” sent Ava.
“Lure him away from Earth and the Moon. Away from those he would endanger. We will separate again. We will form a smaller version of ourselves to take you back to Earth. The rest of us will consolidate and engage.”
Ava grimly watched the sphere; it had slowed its furious spinning. It rotated, pulsed, and throbbed like a ball of flies. Shards of metal extended and retracted as if testing the limits of its new body. Then it stopped spinning altogether and hung in the space above them with ominous regard. She knew what she had to do. “I will come with you; my mission isn’t over yet.”
“We will probably not survive Ava. We don’t know how to destroy the Lagosphere. His mutated nanites over ran our systems, corrupted our body. We are also magnetically identical; therefore, we will physically repel each other. But if we can lure him away, then change our polarity to attract him to us, we might be able to lock him in and drag him into the Sun. If that happened, there would be no escape for either of us.”
“I understand. I will come with you. I need to be sure that Lago, or whatever he has become is dead. I have to be there. I have to see this through even if I don’t survive. The Sun will be the end of all of us.”
The conversation took seconds. Ava calmly made her decision. Ever since Lago had eviscerated her and taken a piece of her brain she had been heading towards this moment. Her own survival did not matter. What mattered was ending what he had become, for her own remaining sanity, and for the good of humanity. They said their goodbyes. The four humans hugged each other. Carthage separated. A small ovoid ship detached itself from the main body with Mahdi, Mason, and Ethan inside. It smoothly glided away towards Earth.
***
Ethan cried, overcome with emotion. He had only known Ava for a short time, but it was already like saying goodbye to a lifelong friend. He had changed so much and so quickly, like a bug becoming a butterfly. The IA had repaired his damaged brain to the extent that he didn’t recognise his former self. His past life was a dissipating dream. He was still awestruck by what had happened to him. A wide-eyed innocent wonder at his predicament. He was in an intelligent spaceship! Flying around in space! It was only days ago he was digging holes in a field. He understood what had happened, the decisions and the mechanics, but he couldn’t help but feel a constant sense of overwhelming wonder. He would embark on a journey with his new friends and go wherever that took him. What a ride!
***
Mason Mount watched the two giant spheres grow smaller as their own part of Carthage glided back to Earth. He had considered offering to stay with Ava and help fight the Lagosphere. His whole life had been a battle. Fighting his parents when he was young then fighting several pointless wars in obscure little countries around the world for no apparent reason. Then fighting bureaucracy once he was a general in the Texan National Guard. He knew how to fight. He was good at it. But this fight was beyond him, there was nothing he could do to help Ava and Carthage. His own battle would be back on Earth. He would help spread the IA throughout the U.S. military and have them do some good for a change. He would transform them as he had been transformed, he would drop an E-bomb on their asses.
***
Mahdi felt sadness as he said goodbye to Ava. But he also finally felt good about the future. His past life was one of underground operations against corrupt corporations. He had once been labelled a terrorist, a danger to society when all he had been doing was trying to save society. He used to live in fear, in hiding, constantly looking over his shoulder, sneaking around the world trying to annoy the greedy conglomerates that were fucking the planet. It had felt like a losing battle. It was a losing battle. The Earth had been abused beyond the point of recovery. But with the knowledge the IA provided, and the ovoid of Carthage that was carrying him home, Mahdi knew the way back. He understood how to repair the Earth. He understood the science, he could purge the carbon from the skies and rid the oceans of the plastic. The people of Miami would spread out across the world, fixing the damage that had been done and changing people’s minds in the process. Changing them for good.
***
“Can I hold your baby?” sent Jejomar. Lesedi reluctantly passed Carasco to him and was surprised at how gently and easily he held him. Jejomar showed no outward emotion, he tilted his head and looked into Carasco’s eyes.
“His name is Carasco. He is Lago’s son,” sent Lesedi.
Jejomar looked at Lesedi then closer into Carasco’s eyes. Carasco gurgled and waved his arms. Lesedi sensed some communication pass between them as Carasco relaxed and stared wide-eyed back at Jejomar. She could see a hint of a smile behind Jejomar’s face plate.
“You will both be safe here,” he sent.
Lesedi stood together with Noah and the rest of the Masama watching the projected view of space. She could hear their telepathic connections. There was mostly relief at the sight of the two spheres spinning away. Lesedi could sense the overwhelming feeling of excited anticipation for their future. Their technology was growing rapidly and with Noah and Lesedi’s help, the Masama would evolve into something wonderful.
***
Ava watched the Lagosphere with calm determination as the two metal moons approached each other. She was safe inside Carthage. She recognised Enoch’s spirit in the machine and was comforted by his powerful presence. Soon the bristling black sphere filled her view. Its surface was in turmoil. Waves of corrupted Replica chittered across its body. Charged with chaotic energy, it lashed out at them. A giant shard whipped towards them, seeking to impale their sphere. It was repelled by the magnetic forces of two polar equals and the Lagosphere was pushed back. Infuriated, it rushed at Carthage again, multiple shards, tens of kilometres long, seeking to stab and pierce, but again it was repelled by the magnetic field and forced back. Enraged, confused, repulsed, not understanding the strange laws of physics, the Lagosphere tried to force itself on Carthage, pummelling the invisible force field surrounding them. Contorting itself into a giant ball of spikes and hurling itself at the magnetic wall. Carthage did not protect itself; it did not need to. The Lagosphere was repelled in every attack.
Ava was at peace with her decision; her life had been shaped by Lago, and had revolved around him just as she did now. He had never been far from her thoughts, and she couldn’t imagine a life without his dark presence lurking somewhere within. He had damaged her, maybe more than she realised. Now she would see this story to the end even if it meant the end of her. Carthage began to move. It circled the Lagosphere and drew it away. Away into space, towards the Sun. The two metal bodies circled each other, the Lagosphere continued to lash out, determined to penetrate, focusing only on its elusive prey. Carthage drew the sphere further away, spinning and circling in a celestial ballet, a bull and a matador locked together in a dance to the death. Ava glared at the Lagosphere as they spun, they were locked together. The jagged ball stayed stationary in the window as the stars whipped around behind it. It would be a good way to die, plunging into the Sun. They drifted away from Earth, tethered to each other by the invisible forces of love and hate. Gaining speed, spinning faster and faster, they sailed off into space. As the twin spheres spun towards the Sun, another gigantic CME event was forming.