THE  SCIENCE  OF  LOVE

(The direct continuation of the Sid storyline from the end of Too Quick To Die)

By Jo Anzalone

PART ONE:

It all began with a mind-numbing crack. Or did it end? Your perspective on things would determine that in the long run. Only one being, though, even had a long run. The runs of the

rest were quite over. Done. Finished.

The one being, the different one, didn't even hear the crack. His audio sensors were, well, they weren't in working order at the moment the crack rent the world.  He lay motionless, a lump

of non-functioning wires, tubes, and parts so utterly complex as to be indescribable to a merely human brain.

The crack was not in the ground under where he lay as though carefully arranged by some parting hand. Neither was it in the sky. It simply...was. And it broke everything apart, ground, sky...existence.

He fell upwards only there was no 'up'.  'Up' was a matter of nothingness and everything all mashed together and then scattered to some invisible current that moved while it went both everywhere and nowhere.  It was here the cracking took him and only him.  No one had ever been here before.  It was not actually a place. It lay somewhere in between the things that exist and the things that do not, being neither real nor unreal, unique unto itself...as he was unique.

Awareness was not involved. That had been taken from him by the virus injected in his back.

He was solid, rather as though he'd been pumped full of concrete. Nothing moved, nothing flowed, nothing  functioned.  Had he  been left where he lay on the floor of the saloon in Redemption, he would have remained like this indefinitely. But an unknowing hand had broken something, some small thing which contained the whole of a particular world. Terry, in what

he thought was a gesture of finalization, had snapped the silver disk of the DVD in half.  He had set Sid...free.

However, there was for Sid no warping link back to Emerald City. The world where he had lain was no more, yet he was not in the real world, either.  No human would have survived it.

But Sid only...looked...human.

His presence in this non-place disrupted its balance. The vastness of non-solidity could not tolerate his very solidness. Some reaction was inevitable.  The dissolution of solidity began.
He lay suspended there, unaware.  That is until his concreteness was softened to the point

where blue could flow again through intricate tubing.

Seagreen eyes opened wide as he felt himself becoming more cloud than form. "NO!" he bellowed in the soundless vacuum. He fell, directionless, again, in some inward spiral that shoved him outwards toward some indefinable edge of edgelessness.  Everything about him imploded, triggered by his cry, unable to bear the silent sound of it.  He fell, knowing he was falling despite the complete lack of motion to it all.

He splatted hard against a marble floor, spreading out like dropped jello, then reshaping into man-like form. Small crackles and little fizzing sounds came from deep within his core. Closing his eyes, he centered his concentration inside himself, his brain somehow able to run along the nerve-simulation lines of his body, checking, repairing by thought alone.

Never would he be exactly as he'd been before. The virus' effect on his systems combined with what had happened to him in whatever sort of transit that had been, had changed him.  Lying there, his eyes closed, he knew it. He just didn't know the extent of it.  Quietly, he began to assess himself.  It was as though every cell-like building block in his composition had its own eyes, was able to think, to know...self-awareness amplified endlessly. New circuitry, new tubing, new pathways for everything.  His lips curved into a slight smile of satisfaction and he opened

his eyes, looking around.

He was in the room that he'd set up to be Maximus' in the 'palace' section of his inner, private compound of the main building comprising the headquarters of the NanoCorp campus. Memory flooded back, everything to do with the palace, the island, the time in Redemption. The baby. What of Rachel and Cort's baby?

Lifting his right hand up above his face, he flexed his fingers, turning the hand, admiring its shape. He could, all at once, see the hand, see into the hand, and every part of the hand was seeing itself.  He  made it into a fist, smiling. No, the baby would be terribly inferior now, probably not worth wasting his time on.  Rising to his feet, he  stretched both  arms  wide, reveling in the sense of himself.

Voices, sounds, came to him, even through the thick titanium walls. John Biebe was growling

at a door that seemed loose on its hinges, wouldn't close right. Bud was flipping through a

stack of files. Three toilets flushed. A secretary on the second floor sneezed. He turned them

off. He could hear them or not hear them at will. Right now he did not wish to be disturbed.

Going to his personal quarters, he changed out of the Herod outfit and into a more suitable

deep blue Armani suit. Straightening his silk tie, he looked into one of the several full-length mirrors in the room. "You ARE beautiful," he said to himself, lifting his chin, admiring its smooth, clean line.  "Not scraggly and scarred like the gladiator." 

Maximus. His eyes narrowed slightly. Where would the General be now? Probably in bed with his new lady-love. Silently, quickly, he turned on his polished heel and headed down a corridor, stopping just outside a chamber with a white wooden door.  He lay his palm on the door a moment before entering. It was the only door in his compound made of wood. He'd done that
deliberately, had  made sure it  was white  deliberately.  Brianna in white.  Yes, even here.

Brianna in white.

His hand slid to a flat panel in the wall which he touched lightly and the door opened, not sliding to the side as the doors to other rooms  did here, but  slowly moving inward.  As he entered, recessed lights turned on, triggered by his presence. The room was small, completely painted white, walls, ceiling, floor. There was but a single thing in the windowless room and he walked toward it, stopping and resting his hands flat atop it. Brianna. Brianna dressed in white, her pale hair carefully arranged with white ribbons woven through it. She lay much like Snow White in a glass-like coffin atop a carved, white base. She had not changed a bit, even the
bruises on her face remained as they'd been, though greatly lessened with the aid of make-up.

"So beautiful," he murmured, leaning to kiss the glass. His brow creased at the unbidden memory of her dying in his arms on the beach, her body broken by the the rocks and pounding surf. Maximus. She had gone to see Maximus and in so doing  had been lost to Sid forever, both her and the baby within her. "Why?" he whispered. "Why did you need to see him again? Wasn't I enough?"

He knew the answer. She had loved him because...then...he was nearly indistinguishable from

the General. It was always Maximus who held her heart in his hands. She loved Sid then because he was...nearly...Maximus. "But you did love me, Brianna. You did."

It had been the only time in his life that anyone had ever loved him, had ever looked at him with a smile in their eyes, had ever made him laugh with joy.  He would never forget it. It had changed him. More than the Maximus chip, more than the virus or the transit, her love had changed him. "I want it, Brianna," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. "I want it again."

But he was no longer almost Maximus. He was no longer even Sid 6.7.  Not that he'd been the latter for a long, long time now. He'd been way past that the moment he got out of the computer, so far past it that he was, finally, able to escape Virtuosity itself and walk about in the real world. Evolving constantly, he'd been given some large boost by the removal of the Maximus
chip. Now...well, he was so much more than he'd ever been. There was no longer any numbering system to put behind his name to describe the level he'd attained.

He looked down at her quiet face under the glass. "Would you love me now, Brianna?" 

He knew the answer to that, too. No, she wouldn't. Her love had come into being when he was human, when he could fill her with his warm seed and create new life. He could no longer do that. He could not now share a bowl of peach slices with her and see her dancing eyes as she
watched him discovering...taste.

What remained of her was completely human and she required a human to love. "I can't be that for you," he said, "not again."

He turned to go, got half-way across the room and stopped, looking back at her. His brain was thinking so fast he blinked, not yet used to what it could do. One step, then two, he headed back to the side of the coffin, cocking his head, studying her.

"But...if...."

He smiled.

ON TO PART 2

BACK TO LIBRISCROWE

BACK TO  CHAPTER 33 OF TOO QUICK TO DIE

BACK TO NANOCORP INDEX

BACK TO THE PRISONERS IN THE PALACE

BACK TO DESPERATE MEASURES (the story on the island)