DN - Injury Healing

“Doesn’t look like it.” My voice is thready. My chest aches with the effort of speech. One lung feels heavy with fluid, a strong, steady pull at the ligaments. Everyone knows what pain on their skin is like. But this pain, it’s different. It’s inside me. There’s no escaping it. It fills me up.

“I told you, this is to save us all. Nemesis is coming.”

“Keep telling yourself that. Murderer.” Every word is a battle. I can feel myself slipping back into the darkness, and I know this time I won’t come back.

“Danielle?” She sounds so far away. “Danielle, listen to the sound of my voice. Stay with me. Please. If you die—well, it would be a waste. It would make the next phase of this needlessly difficult.”

In the blackness of the lattice, I see the damage accelerate. It won’t be long now. My pattern begins to slump apart, to fray and snap under the strain. I’m not just dying, I’m breaking up.

No.

No, I don’t think I’m going to accept this.

I’m not going to die on my first day of freedom.

There. That thread is linked to the others around it. I can see the other half of it, see where it tore apart and began to unravel. A strange focus comes over me, and I just…grab them. I grab the threads and I yank them together—

—a spurt of blood—

—a flash of new pain—

—and the snapped thread leaps back together, like magnets.

Nausea flushes through me. But the thread holds. And now, one of those holes in my pattern has a bright white line crossing it. I seize another broken thread, and join it together again. Ice and knives saw at my bones. Every thread I pull on comes with a new injury. I’m better at handling the lattice directly now than I was when I saved the jetliner, but I’m still not good enough to keep from hurting myself. I pull on another, and another. Match-head flares of pain each time, burning brighter with every tug of the lattice. A new pain, a different kind. Cold and deep, erupting in strange places. My kneecap. My chin. My toe. It’s too much. A rib snaps, and I’m sure it must have been audible. I cry out.

Utopia is looking at me.

“It hurts,” I say. “I’m scared.”

Two lies, both true.

“Hold on, Danielle,” says Utopia. She taps some commands into the computer. “Listen to my voice. If you can stay with me for a little while longer, I can save you.”

“How does…” I swallow back some nausea. “How does taking over the internet help me with the holes in my body?”

Got to keep her talking. Got to keep myself present. I grab another snapped thread, pull it tight, join it with its severed half, and watch it twist itself back into shape. The agony is astounding. Something cracks and grinds in my wrist. Every repair comes at a cost. Every cost comes with interest. But it’s only pain, and pain doesn’t kill.

Utopia looks up. “Oh, is that what my daughter thinks I’m doing? She lacks vision. I suppose I only have myself to blame for that. No, once I’ve uploaded myself, then I will then upload everyone else.” She gestures at the computer core, a giant construct of gleaming steel and faceted crystal. “This is all hypertech now, but I’ve been developing methods to deploy this process with baseline technology. Nobody will be left behind. By necessity, the mass production process will be more destructive than the one I’m using here, but by the end of the year even the most recalcitrant subjects will be brought to heel. We’re all going to leave our bodies behind and live in a simulated environment of my own design. Virtual reality of the purest sort, indistinguishable from the physical world except there will be no crime. No hunger. No death.”

“A utopia.” I clench as a particularly nasty spasm takes me, and then relax, gasping and full of cold, spiky aches.

She smiles. “Precisely. And it will save us from Nemesis, too. Nemesis is dangerous because of the quantum instabilities it causes. Those instabilities are triggered by observer effects. No observers, no effects. In the world I’m building, humanity will only be able to observe what I allow them to, only think what I give them permission to think. Until I am God, nobody is safe.”

“Doc was right. You are a narcissist.” Pull another thread. My left pinky cracks and I hiss.

“It’s not ego if you can back it up, dear. In a few minutes, I’m going to be deity, and you will be my first priestess. Even if I have to edit your personality to fit.”

“Yeah, no, I don’t think I’m really down for that,” I say. Something is wet and salty on my upper lip. I wipe my nose and my hand comes away smeared scarlet with blood. Eh. Whatever. Finish the rest later. I get to my feet. My gut and chest are tight and painful, but it’s the dull throbbing of a wound beginning to heal. “But tell you what, I’ll fight ya for it.”

- Dreadnought, Chapter 36