Isaac found himself at the Cradle’s computer once more, staring as the screen flashed, indicating the shakedown protocol had completed, and that the machine was ready for use.
He removed his glasses and placed them on the computer’s keypad, “It’s time.” Isaac took a shaky breath, trembling hands beginning to remove his belt, a deluge of doubts, worries and anxieties threatening to wipe away his conviction. He held his belt in place, keeping his hands still while he focused on his breathing, “1,2,3…” Falling back on that old worn practice of his to keep the panic at bay, to center himself once more, “17,23,55…” An ironic return to the past that had forever scarred him, to an action borne of his desperation, ‘68,9,43,31…” and now transformed into one of his hope and conviction instead.
Isaac quickly whipped off his belt, kicking off his shoes simultaneously, using the window of calm he had created to its greatest effect. He leaned his back against the Cradle and removed his socks, tossing both over to where his shoes lay, before placing his hands at his pants. He paused, a flash of embarrassment freezing him in place.
“Really, after everything else?” Isaac thought with a huff, forcing himself through his brief bout of modesty to remove his pants, leaving him in nothing but his underwear.
He didn’t give himself a second to think as he hauled himself into the Cradle and, before laying down, shucked off the last of his clothes leaving himself completely bare, “Close her up!” Isaac settled himself onto the raised slab within the Cradle, making sure his head was placed into a slight divot on its surface.
The segmented top began to close on him, his order obviously heard by the team back in the center. The machine hissed softly as it shut, like a boa constrictor tightening around its prey, leaving Isaac to lay in an all-encompassing darkness. He shifted in place, feeling a small spike of claustrophobia poke at his composure, waiting for the submersion process to begin.
Soft lights began to activate throughout the inside of the Cradle, banishing the darkness, and with it, Isaac’s burgeoning panic. “No going back now,” he mused, the sounds of the Cradle’s awakening to his presence within it, carrying the feeling of the first handfuls of dirt placed over a coffin’s lid. There was no remorse or terror… just a resignation at the finality of his choice.
A soft pop broke the lonesome atmosphere, sounding from behind Isaac’s head, “Are you comfortable my Abzu?” The deep hum, synonymous with Tiamat’s voice, caused Isaac’s hair to stand on end.
“As comfortable as I can be, Tia,” Isaac replied with a chuckle, ignoring her usual possessiveness, “But shouldn’t I be speaking to someone back in the control center, rather than you, right now?”
He was answered by a loud silence, causing him to sigh, “What did you do?” Isaac asked with exasperation, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.
“Well…” Tiamat started nervously, bringing to mind the picture of the woman shyly rubbing her hands together and desperately avoiding eye contact, “I told them I would handle your submersion… and your digitization.”
“You can’t just go and commandeer the whole process, Tia,” Isaac chastised, “There’s a protocol we established for this whole thing and you taking over just throws all of that to hell. Not only that, but these people have just been introduced to the fact that you are a true AI! The first thing you do after that revelation being to prevent them from doing their jobs isn’t exactly a good first impression, is it?”
“But what if they make a mistake!” Isaac flinched as the sound echoed within the confined space of the Cradle, Tia’s voice loud and hysterical, “If I handle everything then there won’t be any mistakes; I can monitor everything, catch any problems, and react far faster than anyone else, and then-then…”
“It’s alright, Tia,” Isaac’s voice ran in opposition of Tia’s own; comforting, controlled, and understanding, “I know you’re trying to protect me… but you can’t do it this way. I’m not saying you can’t double check what they’re doing,” he continued forestalling the argument he knew was coming, “In fact a large part of why I’m so calm going through with this is because I knew you, and I’m guessing a few less vocal members, would be making sure everything proceeded as best they could.”
“But that is far different then being directly involved as you are now. How many people would refuse to use the Cradles if they believed “Skynet” AI were involved? Because that is the exact sort of mentality that will be pushed no matter the truth…” Isaac smiled sadly, “I know you don’t want to lose me and I, surprisingly, don’t want to die today. But this is far bigger than me surviving or not, this is about Humanity living or dying. So, this needs to succeed or fail on human merits alone… alright, Tia?”
“But if you die and I could have done something about it…”
“We both know that there isn’t really much you can do,” Isaac rebutted, “Once the digitization process begins there’s no stopping it. So, if it fails, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything, whether you’re human or a “super” AI like yourself… and anyway if I die there’s no reason to blame yourself, I told you not to get involved so all fault lies with me.”
“I’d never blame you,” She whispered before speaking more normally, “I don’t like it… but you’re right. I’ll let the team in the control center take over the Cradle’s processes, okay?”
“Thank you, Tia.”
“But if you die while they’re in control, I’ll-”
“Alright that’s enough out of you Mrs. Terminator,” Isaac sighed in exasperation, “How about a compromise?”
“Such as?” Tiamat’s voice rumbled with interest; earlier topics seemingly forgotten.
“While the team gets the submersion started you can continue speaking to me without having to switch over to one of the team.”
“Yes!” Isaac’s ears rung from the blast of enthusiasm that was Tia’s answer, but he barely recognized the temporary deafness, a sudden erratic movement above drawing his attention away from the burst of tinnitus to the Cradle’s “mobile.”
The “mobile’s” arms unlimbered robotically, smooth and faultless, moving to various positions above Isaac’s body. One lowered and attached to his neck, inserting a needle, causing him to hiss in discomfort. Another unfurled, like a flower in bloom, splitting into numerous spindly appendages, each with sensor that attached to points on his chest and abdomen to monitor his vitals.
As two sets rested on either of his temples, Tia spoke up once more, “Once all of the arms are situated, they’ll run your vitals one last time before lowering the breathing mask to begin the submersion.” An additional arm clamped a pulse oximeter around a pointer finger, and she continued, “Once your breathing mask is confirmed to be on, they’ll run oxygen through until the Cradle fills to a little more than a third capacity… and then you’ll be put under anesthesia, for everything else that follows.”
“I’ll be here for every step of the way of course!” Tiamat added with a sort of flustered panic, “I’m not going to leave even when you’re asleep, so-so if you start to have second thoughts or you just want someone to talk to, I’ll be right here for you…”
Isaac chuckled at her antics, the meekness she showed to him always in contradiction to how she acted around the other AI, “Thank you Tia. And, while I think I’m long past second thoughts, I couldn’t ask for anyone better to have by my side for all of this.”
Tiamat seemed to sputter at his words, causing the speaker to crackle and squeak, “Except for maybe Theo.” Isaac added with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“ABZU!” Tiamat growled, forcing Isaac to struggle to keep himself still and prevent himself from laughing.
They fell into a companiable pattern of conversation, talking about a nebulous many things as the minutes ticked past, when Tiamat paused suddenly. A soft *whirr* started from above Isaac’s head, the arm ending in the breathing mask beginning to extend towards him, “You’re cleared,” Tiamat spoke clinically, though Isaac could notice the tension and fear she was trying to hide, “They’ll begin filling the Cradle in a moment… are-are you sure you want to do this? I can still stop the machine if you want. Just say the word and I’ll pull the cord and-and we can find someone else to go through with this instead.”
The desperation that had leaked into Tia’s voice was anything but subtle, “Do you trust me?” Isaac asked, just before the breathing mask suctioned against his skin with a slight tug.
“Always.” Tia replied instantly.
He smiled forlornly, voice muffled behind the mask, “Then trust me when I say there will be no changing my mind, I’m doing this no matter what. But,” Isaac’s voice warbled with emotion, “I don’t think there are any words that could describe the kind of gratitude I feel for your compassion… and for your being here with me, no matter what happens.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Isaac focused on his breathing, adjusting to the oxygen being fed through the mask, when he caught a nearly inaudible whisper, “Don’t you dare die, don’t you dare leave me…”
He didn’t acknowledge Tia’s demand, knowing it was a statement more to herself than to him, merely taking slow and methodical breaths as he waited for the submersion to begin in full.
“It’s starting now.” Tia announced, voice subdued, followed by a muted hiss from below. Isaac felt his pulse quicken, a bout of anxiety swelling up as the realization of how few moments he truly had left, swept through him. Breathing became his focal point once more, the simple action allowing Isaac to distance himself from the panic that threatened to take ahold of him.
Isaac closed his eyes, his breathing and the burbling of the nanomachine slurry the only sounds present. He relaxed, feeling whatever barrier that prevented him from doing so falling away… a true resignation around where he was, what he was doing, and what the future may hold, loosening the hold of what fear had still remained.
An audible *clunk* reached Isaac’s ears and felt a subtle vibration down his breathing tube, “It’s time,” Tia’s voice was barely a whisper, but roared in Isaac’s head with what it represented, “Breath in.”
Isaac inhaled deeply, sensing a minute tang to the air that could only be the anesthetic.
“One,” Tia counted his first full round of breathing.
He inhaled again, seeing the faces of Ray, Eli, Maria, Killian, Sara, and many others pass by in the darkness created through his closed eyes.
“Two.”
The skin under the breathing mask began to feel… off, as he breathed once more, errant major memories flickering in and out like stars in the night’s sky.
“Three.”
Isaac felt a looseness to his body that went beyond relaxation begin to spread through him, his lungs hitching for a moment as he reached the top of his breath.
“Four,” Tia’s voice was distant and quiet to Isaac’s ears as he began his next round of breathing.
His mind became fuzzy, his thoughts having a weight to them that made them slow and ponderous… however, Isaac felt a small spark of consciousness come over him, banishing the haze that filled his head; he looked up into the loving eyes of his mother, felt her hands on either of his cheeks, and her lips as they brushed his forehead….
The whisper of a voice entered Isaac’s mind but did not expel the vision of his mother from his sight, “Fi-”
But the darkness did.
―――――――――
Isaac’s eye’s fluttered open to a cloudless sky, the purple tinged blackness of a late sunset, filled with innumerable stars.
On his back, Isaac pushed himself up to a sitting position, one arm braced against the ground and the other draped over a now raised knee. His eyes traveled across a horizon created by a seemingly endless sky, down to an equally infinitely flat ground. The ground had a sheen to it like a placid lake, bereft of current and ripples, with a soft diffuse glow radiating from it.
“Did…” Isaac thought, mind struggling to comprehend his surroundings, “Did it work? Or am I dead?” He continued to look around, hoping to spot something that could answer his questions or give him a clue, a hysterical panic beginning to set in, “Is This all the afterlife is or-”
As he wildly looked around him, Isaac’s attention was suddenly drawn to the arm on his knee… or more accurately to what was on the arm. Each of his fingers bore silver rings, loose chains of a similar silver connecting each to the cuff of a long sleeve. The clothing was made of a fine linen weave, airy and slack, the lightly yellowed hue of paper left out in the sun; it was highlighted by a rich turquoise silk woven in the likeness of waves, lined and stitched with silver thread.
Isaac followed the pattern up his arm, the waves shimmering with a luminescent quality like a tide in motion, to a long scarf that draped down over his chest. It was a keffiyeh separated into three layers; the central layer was the same linen as most of his clothing seemed to be and was edged by black tassels tied with silver adornments, and the bottom and top-most layers were both of the same turquoise silk etched with silver stitched patterns.
Flipping the garment over in his hand, Isaac traced over the silver threading in the silk with a thumb, following over whorls and spirals made in the fabric. He felt the tug of the scarf against his skin as he once more manipulated the keffiyeh, exposing the top layer; it was cut and sheared in sections, revealing the linen underneath, retaining the running theme of water and waves but working in conjunction with the other fabric to create the illusion of whitewater and wave crests.
He played with the keffiyeh between his fingers, feeling the fabric shift and roll against each other, as his eyes traveled down the rest of his length. The sleeves that had originally drawn his attention were actually part of a linen kaftan, richly embroidered with green, silver, and blue thread; it was sinched at the waist by a braided sash of turquoise and emerald silk, with three onyx studded silver medallions in the place of a typical “buckle” keeping the sash together.
The robe opened into four separate planes of decorated linen, reaching to a length that would put them around his ankles, revealing a pair of tubay pants beneath. They were coloured in reverse to the kaftan; the base being a deep mixture of blue and green, and the natural worn khaki of the linen working as a highlight and embroidery, or as the drawstring of the pants themselves.
His consideration ended at his feet, where a pair of leather and silver embossed sandals wrapped up to his mid-calf, pulling the tubay’s pant legs directly against the skin underneath.
The sheer detail and craftsmanship of the clothing, and the drastic dichotomy between what he was currently in and what he had been without before, consumed Isaac’s attention in its entirety… and as he continued to idly toy with the keffiyeh in his hand, Isaac had the inclination that that was by design.
Isaac pushed himself to his feet, letting the scarf slip from his fingers to rest at his chest once more, feeling the layers of clothing shift and settle about his person. He gazed upwards, out towards the dusk hued expanse of a starry sky above and spoke into the empty, “Tiamat!”
Emanating from every direction, a deep throaty chuckle answered, surrounding him like a blanket of bass. Glassy orbs began to rise from the ground like raindrops in reverse, their surface reflecting the sky above as though the stars themselves were trapped within them. Their numbers grew rapidly, one drop flowing into the next, until Isaac was completely surrounded by nothing but a curtain of shimmering cosmos.
Isaac glanced around him, finding that the line between ceiling and ground had blurred and disappeared until the point that he seemed suspended within his own personal bubble of space. A bright light flashed past his sight, blinding Isaac for an instant, obscuring his surroundings in a sheet of white. He blinked rapidly, hissing in discomfort as he rubbed at his eyes to clear the welling tears and dark shadows the light had left in its wake.
He squinted with one eye, searching around him for the origin of the light, and found a long vaporous trail instead. Isaac’s mind stuttered in incredulity as he followed the tail, “Was that a fucking comet?!” The massive ball of ice visibly receded from his sight while he stared after it, traveling faster than he could ever truly comprehend, becoming lost in the void’s dazzling array of colours. His eyes widened, the comet soon forgotten, devoured by massive nebulae of brilliant hues. They stretched across space like sheets caught in the wind, ethereal tapestries woven from threads of dust and hydrogen in rich colours, dwarfing even the stars themselves in their scale.
Isaac’s mind boggled at the sheer size and beauty of the space around him; the incongruity of his place amongst a field of magnificent giants, a minute speck amongst an astrophysical realm that extended beyond what his mind could grasp, sent his thoughts careening like a satellite knocked from orbit. It was enrapturing and terrifying in equal measure… and worked perfectly to, once more, derail his focus from more prescient matters.
“Tiamat!” Isaac growled into the endless void, wondering what the veritable goddess was planning and how this… demonstration of Her’s tied into it.
“Just. One. Moment.” A purr echoed from around him, stars flaring with each syllable, space seemingly vibrating and warping under the power behind her voice, “Patience. My Abzu.”
Isaac could sense the smile behind her words, stymieing any further argument from him in its tracks. He stared out into the cosmos, tracing the nebulae with his sight; eyes and mind both, finding form within the diaphanous conglomeration of celestial particles…
- A great eagle, or other form of raptor, spread wings of violet and emerald out over a massive swath of space, glaring down from a thick brow of rusted orange and brown.
- Another nebula had the appearance of a titanic anvil, a dark rich blue like the deepest oceans, flecks of gold and crimson throughout its body, with a massive crack of amber splitting its body and face in twain.
- His eyes shifted yet again, finding a startling Tyrian and ruby serpent, partially obscured within a cloud of silver and umber, with masses of bright stars spattering its length like a band of bioluminescence.
- He began to take in yet another celestial body, what looked at a glance like great silver roots that dwarfed full star systems, when the space around him seemed to tilt on its axis. A thrum of sound rattled Isaac’s teeth, sounding like massive brass bells ringing within his own head, heralding a great burst of light once more leaving him sightless.
He was lost within that pervasive white, deafened and blind, unmoored and aimless. His corneas stung and itched from being scoured by such intense light, his ears swum in an ocean of tinnitus; however, as he desperately blinked his eyes to return some form of sight back to them, his attention was on a… different sensation.
Isaac felt arms on his back for an instant before the feeling fled, lost under a sudden deafening discordant screech that split through his brain, much like the sound of a knife dragged across glass…
And with it, the world Shattered.
His mind twisted and warped, a deluge of images, impressions, conflicts, realizations, and emotions slamming into his psyche, accompanied by a pain unlike any he had ever felt before.
Isaac’s vision swirled with a kaleidoscope of dizzying hues; nausea roiling to the surface as the colours, pain, and mental battery melded into a confusing and agonizing mass, his consciousness flickering as he became unable to weather the ferocious storm of torment running rampant cross his mind.
His mouth opened in a silent scream, the discordance of mind and body making him feel as though he was being torn apart, his body locked in a tortured rictus as he felt the very fibres of his being fray and shred.
Until it became too much… and Isaac found himself once more swallowed by darkness.