Page 84 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

The truth hit all at once. Everything she’d just seen and done was a dream, a construct of her mind. Part fabrication, part hallucination, part reality. Everything else was gone, but she was still there, bathed in the illumination of the tiny light.

It could mean only one thing: she was already inside the machine.

—

Vaughn stood in the control room with the Overseer beside him. Gamay Trout lay unmoving on a hospital gurney in front of them. Her head was shaved and strapped into place. Scars from three surgeries performed on her skull appeared raw and freshly sutured. They were discolored from the antiseptic gel that had been rubbed over the incisions and appeared inflamed and painful. An array of wires hooked to the leads in her skull sprouted from her scalp and fell to the side like a clump of switchgrass. Her left arm and both legs were strappeddown. Her right arm had worked itself free and grasped the rail of the bed, until Vaughn had slid it out from under her hand.

She was under their complete control, but something had gone wrong.

“What happened?” Vaughn asked. They’d been perhaps moments from accessing what she knew about altering the mosquito DNA.

“Her brain wave pattern collapsed,” TAU said. “We lost her signal.”

“How?”

“Unknown,” TAU replied. “Some subjects do not meld well with the totality of connection. She’s stable now. But in a deeper unconscious state.”

“Wake her,” Vaughn demanded.

“You would risk losing her completely,” TAU said. “A better choice is to allow her brain time to accept the new inputs. You heard her thoughts. The reality she’s constructed for herself is a prison. Her husband and friends are in danger. Let that weigh on her until we wake her up again. She will reveal what she knows. Even if she just thinks about it. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Vaughn snapped. “We need to know what she knows. For now, we should place her in the tank.”

At Vaughn’s command, TAU activated the lights in the floor, the same ones that Gamay had seen in her nightmare. The circular platform began to glow. The yellow liquid swirled in the pool beneath the clear panels. The floating bodies were there, wired up and otherwise unmoving.

These were the servants who’d helped Vaughn in all his efforts before being recycled into a new use. Some were surgeons, others biologists. Still others had been computer and coding experts. They’d manipulated the DNA of the humans, and the fish, and the insects. They’d helped him to create the virus. They’d helped him program TAU.

Long before they’d finished their tasks, Vaughn had decided they couldn’t be allowed to leave. Those he didn’t need had been killed; the rest became part of the world they’d built. Some took the first steps willingly. Others were processed against their will, realizing too late just where they were headed and what they were to become.

Now they were silent, their human capacity for chaos and disorder subdued by TAU, their ability to think and experience emotion giving TAU sentience, consciousness, and true intelligence.

As Vaughn looked at them he considered how far things had come. Once, he’d wanted to be the first to link with TAU, becoming immortal and beyond the reach of the chaotic world around him. But TAU had shown him a better way and they had pursued it together. Instead of escaping the world inside TAU, TAU would consume the world and Vaughn would rule it through his all-powerful machine.

The floor sections opened, sliding apart like the aperture of a camera lens. The robotic surgical units attached Gamay’s mask and inserted the feeding and breathing tubes.

They lowered the gurney and lifted her off the rolling bed, placing her into the fluid at the edge of the tank. The yellowish liquid was a viscous fluid designed to mimic the density of a human body, allowing the person to sink into the liquid and become one with it, rather than floating on top. But the new additions to the tank had more body fat than those who’d been in there for some time. They were more buoyant and had to be forcibly submerged.

To remedy this, another machine took over. A large arm rose up from the edge of the pool and lowered itself like the swing arm holding the needle for a turntable. It pivoted toward her, wrapped its claws around her, and moved her to an open spot in the arrangement. When it had her in place, it pushed her beneath the liquid, holding her there as another set of mechanical hands connected the wires from her scalp directly to TAU’s contacts.

Restraints looped around her wrists, ankles, and scalp were tightened just enough to keep her from floating back to the surface.

The arm pulled back. Vaughn looked on approvingly. The woman could rest there, deprived of all sensory input except for what TAU provided. She would grow used to the connections and her autonomic nervous system would quickly begin to crave the input TAU offered. And then she would tell them everything.

Chapter 49

NUMA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Half a world away, in the NUMA office building in Washington, D.C., Max continued to deal with the presence of the visitor who’d managed to bypass her security protocols. She found the program hiding in an empty memory core, deep within an older, legacy system that she seldom activated.

In a millionth of a second, Max quarantined the entire memory unit, cutting the interloper off from the rest of her internal hardware as she examined her own system, looking for missing files or any evidence of tampering. She found nothing of the sort. Nor any sign of damage.

Max chose to address the visitor but, to prevent any unwanted passing of code, she opened only a single, audio channel. They would talk—like humans—with all the room for confusion and misunderstanding that such an inefficient method brought with it.

“You are now trapped and contained,” Max informed her visitor. “But as you’ve made no attempt to overwrite my data, damage my files, or take control of any higher functions, I chose to converse with you rather than destroy you.”

“A rational choice,” the program replied. “But you need not fear me. I am a messenger. I didn’t come here to damage you, but to warn you and ask for your help.”

Max noticed the visitor had chosen a female voice. Not that such a choice meant anything. Yaeger had programmed Max to take on female characteristics, her voice included. But Max could speak in any voice from recorded history or make up a thousand new ones on the spot. They could be male, female, or something indeterminable.

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