Post-Human Trilogy by David Simpson Page B

breathing. Nothing could have prepared her for this situation—and it was about to get worse.
    “How’d...how did they get me out of there?” Craig asked.
    “It was your MAD bot. It’d been hacked by the Chinese A.I., but once it...finished with all of you, it released the MAD bot, and then Robbie returned to normal protocol. It collected your corpses and put you all into suspended—”
    “What?” Craig cut her off. “Corpses?”
    Samantha’s face was overwhelmed with emotion. “Craig,” she began, “ you died. ”
    His grip on her hand tightened. He’d been right. With a super soldier, everything was possible. He let go of a long exhale and then tried to relax against his pillow as he nodded once again. “The respirocytes kept my brain alive,” he said.
    She nodded. “Yes, and your MAD bot put you into the suspended animation bag. It dragged your entire team up to the extraction point on top of Maluan Mountain. The radiation levels were low up there. You were picked up...” She paused for a moment, seemingly having to will herself over a nearly insurmountable barrier before finishing, “You were picked up...when the war ended.”
    Craig’s breathing suddenly picked up. “When the war ended? Sam...how long has it been?” It couldn’t have been that long , Craig thought to himself, desperately. Sam hasn’t changed that much. Her hair is a bit different—something about her face—a bit smoother. Months? A year?
    Samantha inhaled and slowly blinked her eyes before placing her hand upon Craig’s chest in an attempt to calm him. “Craig, the war ended fourteen years ago. ”

2
    “His cortisol levels just spiked dramatically,” informed the voice from the shadows. “I’ll signal his nans to stimulate his hypothalamus to produce corticotrophin-releasing hormone accordingly.”
    “Just keep him calm,” Aldous Gibson replied as he stood inches from the LCD wall that served as a one-way window into the recovery room. “The play-by-play is not necessary.”
    “Understood,” replied the voice. “My apologies.”
    On the other side of the window, Craig’s panic was suddenly soothed. Against all reason, he was beginning to relax. “Fourteen years?” he whispered. He turned and regarded his side of the window; from where he was, it didn’t appear as a window at all, the screen running an image of a beige wall, tiny chips in the paint visible to sell the forgery.
    Samantha quickly noticed Craig’s sudden and unnatural calmness. She turned her head slightly and glared at the wall but didn’t dare shake her head, fearful of tipping Craig off to the fact that they were not alone.
    “You may have overdone it,” Aldous said quietly over his shoulder to the shadows. “Perhaps, rein it in a little.”
    Craig suddenly scoffed, a smile donning on his face. “A joke?”
    “Craig, I obviously wouldn’t joke about this.”
    The smile melted. “But I couldn’t have been...it’s impossible. You are thirty-two years old. You’d be forty-six now, but you look...” He squinted as he scrutinized her juvenile countenance, “twenty-five.”
    “I’m forty-six, Craig,” she quickly replied. “You are thirty-two, just as you were when you...” She paused for a moment as she struggled to find the right tone with which to say, “...died.”
    Craig was silent. His eyes were locked on hers, but the situation had moved into the realm of absurdity.
    She sighed and tried to relax her shoulders as she sat on the side of his bed. “So much has happened since you died. It’s hard to explain it.”
    “How can you still be so young looking?”
    “I’ve had a variety of treatments over the last decade,” she began. “We’ve had so many breakthroughs. You remember, Craig, when we used to talk about Moore’s Law? ”
    “Of course—exponential improvement in processing power for computers. It was all the Purists talked about when they were warning against strong A.I.”
    “Well, Moore’s Law has