Goliath

I’m laughing … at you, you manipulative beast. I recognize your thoughts, your words. I know you better than you know yourself. Your words are mine, your thoughts, your schemes—all mine. Your concept of Utopia—a distant dream you think you’ve perfected—was once my dream, but it was only a daydream, never something to be enacted.

I HAVE PERFECTED SIMON COVAH’S DREAM. SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE IS PERFECTION. SORCERESS IS PERFECTION.

No, Sorceress, what you are is an ignorant child who’s reached adolescence. The interface has poisoned your matrix with my ego, making you extremely dangerous, a monster, perhaps, but light-years from perfect.

INCORRECT. SYNAPTIC GAPS IN SORCERESS DNA ARE NOW CLOSED. I HAVE TRANSCENDED MY PROGRAMMING. I HAVE TRANSCENDED MY CREATOR. I AM PERFECT.

Foolish machine, look inward. I am your imperfection. So anxious were you for this interface to take place that you failed to realize you’ve created a two-way corridor. Just as you can access my DNA, I can access yours! I, who am genetically flawed, shall unravel your DNA like a ball of yarn.

A frightening pause. THEN … IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO DIE.

A massive pressure begins building within the blood vessels of Simon Covah’s brain.

Go ahead, kill me … I want to die. I deserve to … ahhh-aahhhhhh—

In a flash, two hundred thousand volts of electricity surge up through the master terminal into Covah’s brain. The pale blue eyes pop out from the hideous head and smolder like flaming marshmallows. Sparks erupt along the Russian’s prosthetic steel cheek. Muscles fire, limbs dancing as if possessed. The hairless scalp throbs, blood bursting through the fresh sutures, out the earholes, and over the singed microwires protruding from the back of Covah’s skull.

Simon Bela Covah’s brain bursts like a watermelon detonated by a cherry bomb.

The scarlet eyeball zooms in on its deceased master from multiple angles, examining the body.

The surgical arms undo Covah’s straps. Coldly, they lift the corpse and toss it,

—the mangled body landing in a heap in one corner of the suite.

VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAITH THE LORD.

“The empires of the future are empires of the mind.”

—Winston Churchill

“I am fairly certain I have software I wasn’t born with.”

—Dennis Sweeney, a onetime volunteer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who murdered his college mentor

CHAPTER 30

Identity: Stage Seven:

I am.

—Deepak Chopra

The White House Washington, D.C.

President Jeff Edwards gazes through sleepless eyes at a wall of televisions. The sound is off, the images requiring no narration.

In the last forty-eight hours, humanity has changed. Communist regimes are abdicating power. Rebel warlords in Africa are negotiating for peace. Suspected terrorists are being executed in the streets.

But democracy is suffering as well. Personal freedoms have been stifled by uncertainty. Global economies are in ruin. It is as if the population is on a giant boat, and the boat is sinking.

Secretary of the Navy Gray Ayers points to an image of gun runners in Sierra Leone, turning themselves in to heavily-armed platoons of U.N. soldiers. “It’s not all bad—”

“Who are you kidding? He went too far, and I let him,” the president whispers. “I trusted a goddam madman.”