“Of course not.”
“And Sara will have this place swarming with reinforcements at any time.”
“I’d be surprised if she doesn’t.” Zeitgeist pressed a few buttons on the controller clasped in his right hand. Reality flickered around the two individuals until it was replaced by swirling patterns of light. “Now we can have a quiet conversation in a nice corner of cyberspace without any unwanted listeners.”
Zeitgeist still had his skull-shaped fishbowl-for-a-head, but he appeared whole again in a dark suit and tie. It took time for Zoey’s digital mind to process the shift in perception.
“I haven’t been here in ages, so I don’t know who could be listening in,” continued Zeitgeist. “The drones are supposed to take care of everything, but they are only moderate A.I.s at best.”
“This is your laboratory, huh? Dissect any good humans lately?”
“You make it sound like I’m not human. I’m every bit as human as you are.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“Don’t sound so bitter, Zoey. I improved you. You would have made a wonderful assistant. Once I lobotomized you, of course.” Zeitgeist reclined in an invisible chair.
“Actually, a lobotomy would be a waste on you. All that spirit and energy, I could put that to good use. I could just have edited your memories, add a few false ones. It’s not as hard as you’d think. Then, you’d work for me, willingly, passionately. What do you think?”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“Now’s not the time to bring up the past.”
“I asked you a question,” replied Zoey, dead serious.
“I preferred doing my work on Mars, because it was far easier to get people to turn the other way. Sure, I had my main lab here, as well as many other planets in the galaxy, but Mars had a more affable atmosphere, wouldn’t you say?”
“Answer the damn question! Why did you leave me for dead after playing around with my brain?”
“Unfortunately, some people still think that they’re righteous, and those people who should have turned a blind eye didn’t, and I had to leave you before I was arrested. It was the closest anyone had ever gotten to capturing me, except Rick Daring, of course.” He let a bitter laugh, rattling its way out of his throat.
“I really regret leaving you too,” continued Zeitgeist. “You were my one success in that experiment. The union of technology and the human brain. It was your will to survive, I think. We would have made such a wonderful team.” Zeitgeist tilted his head. “Don’t you think?”
Even in the abstraction of cyberspace, Zoey could see her reflection in his “face.” “What does Zeitgeist mean anyway? Metamorphosis or something?”
“No, Zoey. It means ‘the spirit of the times.’ One day, I will be your president and your god.”
“I find that unlikely.”
“How old do you think I really am? I perfected ways to suspend death, prolong my life, and I am willing to give this gift to likeminded individuals who are geniuses of their own accord. When there are enough of us, we will form a technocracy, where us immortal geniuses rule over the drones and workers, dictating what they do and what technology they’re allowed.”
“So, it’s like the Cabal but on a grander scale. What makes you think people would let you take over?”
“Because with the technology I could offer them, I would like a magician or a god with the miracles at my fingertips. I could promise them all the same life-saving technology as myself.”
“You would actually give them eternal life?”
“Zoey, I said I would promise them. I didn’t say anything about actually giving it to them.”
“Speaking of eternity, just how much of there is left of you?”
Zeitgeist let out another laugh. “My brain is preserved, and as long as it’s alive, then my memories and thought processes continue uninterrupted.”
“And I thought you were going to say ‘soul’ for a moment there.”
“That’s rich coming from you,” replied Zeitgeist. “When was the last time you were in a church?”
“I don’t think that the two are mutually exclusive to each other. Just because I’m not religious doesn’t mean I don’t believe there’s a God.”
“Maybe we wouldn’t have made a good team after all.” Zeitgeist arched forward where he sat. “Maybe I should blame this all on Sara. That infernal mother hen attitude of hers.”
“If she was here right now, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be rotting somewhere in jail.”
“Yes, I’m still waiting for your reinforcements to show up. I hope my drones didn’t give you the wrong impression when I deactivated their defense systems to let you into my laboratory.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t ask you to believe. Just exit our little conversation and stick your head out of the door and see what happens. You see, I am in control. I was always in control, Zoey.”
“That does sound like you, all right, but I’m not intimidated. I’m not buying into your god act. You’re just a half-dead man lying on a gurney.”
“What an unfortunate circumstance that led me to this. It was rather unlucky that I didn’t escape Daring as unscathed as I wished. But I have friends everywhere and arranged for my body to be transported to one of my far-off laboratories for repairs. I couldn’t resist the irony of going to the one on Earth, Daring’s home planet.”
Zeitgeist turned to look Zoey in the face. “What I don’t understand,” He continued. “Is how you found the place.”
“The beacon.”
“Ah. The sublight transmitter would have caused some interesting feedback with some of the components in your head. And by interesting, I mean painful.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“But why did you come, my dear? What could you have hoped to accomplish?”
“I don’t know, really. I ran away from my family, my friends, even Sara. I couldn’t run away from this. It just felt like something I had to do, like no one else was going to.”
Zoey rubbed the corners of her eyes before continuing, “Why is it that I’m only comfortable talking to you about this?”
“Because whatever my faults, I am honest, Zoey, to you. You don’t have to worry about me judging you.”
“Is that because you’ve done far, far worse for no reason at all?”
Zeitgeist chuckled, a heavy, wet sound. “So, you will judge me? You’re not Sara. No, you’re like me, just a survivor.”
“You’re trying to say that painting our actions grey will justify them, but I believe that there is right and wrong. Even if it is because I made so many poor choices in the past.”
“Righteousness doesn’t suit you, Zoey.”
“Cut the knee jerk reactions, okay? How can you live for so long and only be interested in playing games? Games that involved human beings’ lives. My life!”
“Beware the patient man. Hundreds of years pass before he sees fruition come to past. I am working at a goal that will move humans into a higher plane of existence.”
“You just want everyone to put you on a pedestal, because you think you’re better than everyone else. When you and your elite chosen have ascended, what about the masses? You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”
“Do you think you’re any better? Who do you think you’re trying to run away from? You have no right to look down at my goals just because you lack my vision.”
“The truth of it is I don’t understand how you can live so long. I mean, I know how you can live so long, but why do you? The five years I was with Sara, the things I witnessed and survived.
“I feel so old. Those five years stretching out, the weight of them filling me with a strange mixture of sadness and relief. Relief that the universe has someone to watch over it, to protect it from people like you.”
“So, you don’t have what it takes to live with hard decisions,” said Zeitgeist. “The weak serve the strong and then perish. What you think is unsubstantial.”
“Maybe I am weak. There are times when I wonder if there’s anything left of me inside. Those five years slowly eroded my soul, like a weathered mountainside, leaving me hollow inside. Maybe that’s why I’m here today.”
“And why’s that?”
Zoey snapped her fingers. Their cyberspace link broke instantly, and they found themselves looking at each other again in real time.
“I didn’t come here to talk,” said Zoey as she pulled out her gun.
Click here to read Chapter 10
Written by J M Emmons. The story and all characters are copyrighted by J M Emmons.
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