Kamikaze by Jayel

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Kamikaze, Part 9
by Jayel

I thought I felt as bad as I could possibly feel about our situation. But as usual, the Martins managed to make it worse.

We were making camp. John had bullied a promise from Alonzo that he would tell the entire group every detail of his dreams once we were settled in, the theory being that fifteen heads were better than one. Although Alonzo seemed to have given up hope of finding a solution that would save both G889 and the Eden Project and I had begun to suspect he was right, John Danziger was determined. "We made it this far; we'll make it a little further," was all he would say, and that with a grim will neither of us could bring ourselves to dispute. Besides, Danziger's determination, as bitter and unreasonable as it was, seemed to be the only thing that comforted Uly. The Terrian in Uly may have felt as overwhelmed as Alonzo, but the little boy still believed in John.

Alonzo had helped me set up the med tent back in its old location, and I found myself putting together a life support unit without ever making a conscious decision to do so. It was as if I knew that someone, maybe Devon, maybe not, was going to need it.

"You're going to take her out of the capsule, aren't you?" Bess said, coming in unannounced as usual.

"Eventually, once we know what's wrong and how to cure it," I said, keeping my voice neutral. "That's what we came for, isn't it?"

"Yes," she agreed slowly. "But that doesn't mean we'll succeed, does it?"

Once again I was reminded that Bess wasn't quite as innocent and empty-headed as she sometimes appeared. "No," I answered her honestly. "It doesn't. And quite frankly, right now, I don't see how we can succeed." I looked around at all my technologically stunning and now seemingly useless equipment and wanted to cry. "I don't know any more about what's wrong with Devon now than I did weeks ago when this first happened."

"Julia, we have got to figure this thing out," Bess said urgently, grabbing me by the arm. "We can not all start getting sick again."

"Bess, we haven't had any indication that Devon's condition is contagious--"

"Julia, please!" She collapsed on a chair with her hands over her face. "Oh God . . . this is so unfair," she wept, her shoulders shaking.

"I know," I said soothingly.

"No, you don't!" She looked up at me with tears streaming down her cheeks. "Julia, I am pregnant!"

The sudden silence gave me several endless moments to clinically analyze all the feelings this statement elicited from me. I was shocked . . . elated . . . jealous . . . But the most powerful emotion of all was a cold, paralyzing fear, not for me, but for Bess and the tiny life she carried inside her. "Are you sure?" I said, seeking shelter in my profession and reaching for my glove.

"Positive," she replied as I scanned her. "See?"

"You're right," I agreed. "You are pregnant. And Bess, honey, this is a good thing--"

"Of course it is," she said. "Unless we're all going to die. Unless that thing kills us, or the planet dries up --Did you notice that? The way the new leaves on the trees aren't getting any bigger? When we first found this thing, this EVE ship, it was springtime, remember? The grass was turning green again, and the trees were putting on new leaves. But they aren't growing. Julia, I've been watching, and the baby leaves are dying."

"I know," I said softly, longing to comfort her but unable to think of a single thing to say that might.

"And this baby, inside me? What if it just dries up, too? What if it dies before it even has a chance to be born?" She touched the respirator as if she, like me, wanted to find the answer in technology and be done with it. "We have to think of something," she whispered.

"We will," I promised, hoping I sounded at least marginally convincing.

But that night around the campfire, there was a frightening but not-unexpected dearth of plausible solutions. I had seen Danziger talking privately with Tara and Val before dinner, and Alonzo briefed everyone else as quickly and as painlessly as possible, simply presenting the impressions of his dream, all of which were verified by Uly. Taken at face value, this image of Devon at the center of a sea of dying Terrians was more gruesome than frightening. But the light in Alonzo's eyes and Uly's pale, pinched face were enough to convince even a die-hard realist like Wolman that we had a serious problem.

"No chance this is just some sort of shared bogeyman, I suppose?" Morgan said hopefully. "Or maybe the Terrians just want to scare us."

"I don't think so," Alonzo said. "I definitely get the impression that they don't have any more control over this dream than we do."

"So that's it," Magus said. "We have to blow up the computer, or the whole planet goes kaput and us with it."

"But if we blow up the computer, we go kaput first," Baines finished.

"Not necessarily." Tara had been listening in silence while we hashed the situation over, but now she spoke up, getting to her feet and pacing like a lecturer. "You have to remember that EVE is still a machine--a very powerful, insidious, and possibly insane machine, but underneath it- -not 'she,' but it--is still subject to the laws of mechanics."

"Okay, professor," Wolman said, obviously struggling to keep the sarcasm at a minimum. "But what does that mean exactly?"

"It means there's still a way to pull the plug," Val said.

"Yeah, and when we do, we die," Morgan said.

"No . . . at least, maybe not," Tara continued. "Okay, if you have important data on separate repositories that were formatted for use only on one highly selective computer and that computer goes bad, what do you do?" She looked around as if expecting an answer, but we were waiting for answers, not giving them. "You build a new computer, an upgrade, the next model."

"You're saying build another EVE?" Bess asked.

"No--we don't need another EVE, we need something more sophisticated, something better suited to the tasks at hand," Tara said. "EVE was built with no knowledge of how this ecosystem works--no knowledge of the Terrians or the dream plane. Consequently when Elizabeth and Bennett tried to put it in place, it didn't work--or rather, it worked too well. EVE's task was to oversee and control, but no computer device can oversee and control the kinds of things that go on here. That would be like putting Uly here in charge of the rotation of the planets around a star. Uly's a really smart little boy, and he has a fair idea of what planets do as they orbit. But he doesn't know why, so he doesn't know how to make them start or stop or how to fix the system if something goes wrong." She sat down beside me. "With Reilly's intellect inside it, EVE knows a lot about human behavior and even something about the subconscious, dreaming in the abstract. And I suspect the ZED have been feeding it clinical data on the Terrians. But it doesn't know why or how the dream plane works--metaphysics are still beyond its capabilities." She looked at me and grinned. "I mean, call Reilly what you will, he was never much of a philosopher."

"Agreed," I said. "So EVE's supervisory system for the planet is working in opposition to the natural supervisory system of the planet, this metaphysical plane that holds everything together."

"Exactly," Tara replied. "And each system is treating the other as a kind of virus. Bennett created the virus you and Yale 'cured' to help the natural system--the Terrian system, I guess we can call it-- fight off EVE, not realizing that they didn't have all of EVE's component parts."

"They didn't know we were coming," Danziger said. "And once we were here and she saw us, Elizabeth couldn't let us die, even if it meant sacrificing the planet."

"You know, none of this is really news," Baines pointed out. "I mean, we're back to square one--"

"Not if I understand Tara's reasoning," Yale interrupted. "Tara, you said we didn't need another EVE but rather something more sophisticated."

"Yes," she said. "Something we can plug you guys' network into that can work in concert with the Terrian system rather than against it."

"Can you build such a device?" Yale asked.

She looked around the group, her eyes finally coming to rest on Val's purposely expressionless face. "Build one? I doubt it," she said. "But I think maybe I can be one."

"What are you talking about?" True demanded. "You're not a computer; you're a person."

"That's why it might work," Tara told her. "I'm a person who can access and load data like a computer. Obviously I'll have to downsize EVE's task load--I have no interest in tracking or controlling you guys' movements. All you really need is something to complete your circuit until Julia can figure out how to remove the foreign matter from your neural networks. The trick is going to be disengaging you from EVE."

"How do you plan to do it?" Danziger asked.

"Yeah, baby, tell them how you plan to do it," Val said bitterly.

"I can't explain it," she admitted. "It will be like what Magus saw before, except I'll know you're there, and I'll incorporate your responses rather than overloading them, if that's possible. I know it is possible; it has to be. No component is irreplaceable, even the operating system."

"That's true, theoretically," I said, the possibilities opening up inside my head. "It's like the idea of a brain transplant. If you could maintain system integrity long enough to transplant a new brain and create workable neural connections . . . No one has ever actually done it, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. And this is just another version of that--it's simpler, actually, because as Tara said, we are dealing with a machine, and she has the capability to access that machine and a human data array." I looked over at Alonzo, still looking so grim, and smiled. "'Lonzo, I think we can do this. All we have to do is figure out how to break one connection and make another."

"Gee, you make it sound so simple," Morgan said.

"Yeah, well, it won't be," I said.

"Even if it works for us, how do we disengage EVE from the rest of the planet?" Alonzo said. "Bennett's virus took fifty years and it still wasn't finished. Does anyone here think we have fifty more years to wait?"

"No," Bess said quickly. "The planet is dying now. Whatever we do, we have to do it now."

"Agreed," Danziger said. "But I think we have to take things one step at time. Once we're free of this EVE-network, then we can start worrying about the Terrians."

"But that's just it, John," Alonzo said. "Don't you realize? If Julia and Tara make this work, the Terrians are us. We're leaving one system to become part of another."

"Still, John's right," I said, putting my hand on Alonzo's arm. "One step at a time."

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