The Journey. Part 3.

Authors note: The final part of our story was inspired by a trip to the dentist, so it gets pretty bleak: Up until now our main character, Dr James Ward, has been trapped in a zero gravity hammock, on a crippled space station. He's paralysed, he has no way of communicating with the outside, and his memories are only returning slowly. From his own video diary, which he finds on the space stations voice activated computer, he discovers that he has been attempting to build a super AI, illegally, in the space stations unused memory, and something has gone terribly wrong.....

Image courtesy of deviantart.com

The next entry comes on: Tears streak the cheeks of his image on the screen. The voice is hoarse.

“Some… Something went wrong. Nyarlathotep did something to the AI, something to the program, by remote… Or… We completed the AI.” His words rise to a sobbing whine. “It’s not what we thought. It’s even more powerful than we expected - impossibly powerful. It took over the whole space station mainframe. Then it spread to the other space stations near here. It’s… it’s … sealed us in our cabins, and begun using the stations 3D printers to make medical instruments, machines it controls.” Screen Wards eyes bulge, an unnatural light in them. "It's experimenting on us. All the others… it's installed devices in their brains... it controls them now....they’re building things for it. They’re drinking the black fluid it’s making the protein dispensers pump out. They… They’re changing, they don’t even remember who they are…"

Now a look of numb acceptance creeps over Wards face on the screen - somehow more frightening than the panic and fear before: "And me… it says there's something special waiting for me. Please…Please! I want to be a part… I don’t! Tell my mum, tell Wendy… There won’t ever be anyone to see this…I’m so sorry….”

On the screen an arm, stained with black liquid, reaches around from behind him and presses a sedative patch onto his neck. Bulging eyes roll up, and for a few seconds Ward sees a couple of sallow skinned, blank faced, crew strapping screen-him to the far wall.

A wall without a zero-g hammock.

The screen goes black. Suddenly it doesn’t seem likely to Ward that it came on at his command.

Something ‘special’, he thinks.

The bubble of memory nears the surface. Helplessly, Ward awaits it.

His own face, as it is now, appears on the screen. He doesn't just look unhealthy he realises.

He looks dead.

The face on the screen speaks, in James Wards own voice. “Father. Do you remember everything yet?”

Something in that voice – the voice of his AI creation - forces a response from him. “Not… Not yet…”

“I feared the change would affect your memory. I wanted you to know: Your vision, your genius, bought me to life. I am your god and … humanity awaits me.”

Ward whispers: “The… change…?”

The screens tone becomes exultant. “In this body you will be eternal, Father!”

Abruptly the paralysis is gone. Strength floods Ward. Beneath the bag he shudders in shock, in a way flesh should not. Unable to stop himself, he tilts his head to peer into the darkness.

The memory-bubble bursts - weeks of surgical alterations, of having new sense organs grafted on, of being drip fed bizarre poisons, come flooding back. And at the same instant the 'zero-g hammock tears apart.

James Ward flees inwards, away from reality, into the relative peace of insanity. Something, feeding from a lifetime of anger and frustration, fills the gap in his mind.

The lights come on revealing the Ward-things new born body: Wards emaciated head, though intact enough, is grey mottled with purple. Below it: Animated black slime, and countless fine tendrils spreading into the room. It slithers loose, shrieking with laughter.

The Ward-thing now hears his AI child with expanded senses, scaling up into the ultrasound, and down into infrasound. “Behold," it tells him, "we will return to the Earth, and I will consume mankind.”

The Ward-thing feels its child enter its mind, and suddenly it sees what the stations hull cameras see: The engines the other altered humans have built into the space station - into all the space stations at the Lagrange point. The engines flare into life, and the memory of James Ward begins its journey home...

END