Chapter 13
Damien’s retinas pulsed with a heavy stream of information. The dull almost-emotions of the embers of consciousness that were his constructs were nearly giddy. Damien was more like them, now. Fast burning and shallow, lacking the depths for true consciousness or emotion, but capable of thinking at nearly the same speed and complexity as them. They were pushing him to the edges of his biological capacity. He was deeply tied into Alexander – Keed could not go as deeply: he was an amateur. His neurotransmitter levels were getting dangerously high.
Damien didn’t care. There was a problem that needed solving. The recklessness of his constructs, drunk on intelligence, was unimportant to him.
This might have gone on a long time, and who knew how it would have ended, but a thread of information fetched up within the cognitive filters of his constructs. He had an appointment to test their work.
Reluctantly, the network of sparks that made up most of Damien released their biological core.
Damien felt himself being whole, once more. His constructs fell into the strange loops that made up his mind. They reflected and refined his thoughts, and in return, he gave their thoughts depth within himself.
He waited patiently for his mind to return full to it’s old self. He moved the sphere of his awareness down into the muscles of his arms and legs. He raised one finger. It creaked. How long had it been sitting there?
He tensed his muscles gently, and then again, more firmly. As they relaxed, he felt a dull burn, and then a looseness passing through his muscle fibers. He moved slowly, joints cracking.
Picking up speed, he sprinted down the hallway into the amphitheater. He was going to be late.
On the factory floor, Alexander overlooked them from his cameras, waiting to see what would happen when they tried the new formula.
The wormhole opened. It swelled to the size of a baseball, and it stayed there. Damien looked into the center, and caught a quick flash of someone on the other end, image distorted by gravity. It might have been him.
The wormhole was beating like a pulsing heart. This was Damien’s innovation. By shutting down the wormhole periodically, you allowed the spatial distortion to decrease, making the entire arrangement more stable.
The wormhole was stable for one minute, two minutes, three full minutes.
“More power.” Damien whispered the order.
Very well.
The wormhole swelled, but it was wrong. The heart beat was uneven, skipping. It reached a foot across, and then imploded. The shock of gravity hit Damien like a physical impact, dragging him backwards. His head struck the concrete and he saw stars as he ran backwards. He slid to a halt. He didn’t move.
Out of the corner of an untwitching eyeball, he caught Keed running to input the coordinates, and re-establish the connection.
Damien wasn’t badly hurt. Mildly concussed, maybe. But he felt sick. It hadn’t worked. Despair and an odd kind of relief burned in his chest, contradictory emotions burning tightly. He rose to his feet slowly, signed out of the system, and headed home.
The cold air felt good on his skin. He let it seep into the gaps of his clothing, immersing himself in the chill of it so that there was nothing to flinch back from. Inundated in cold, he felt his head begin to clear. It was probably just as well.
He went home. Mary was waiting for him. She intercepted him in the hall, gripped his collar, and dragged him off. He didn’t do much more thinking that night.
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Continue to Chapter Fourteen
