MERGED

0 hrs 30 min to Birth

Willard swore at Gene and lowered his gun. He watched the flybots swarming on Gene's face. Gene looked blind, helpless under the silver swarm.

The flies injected brainbots into Gene's bloodstream. After a moment, they disengaged from his skin and floated upward, collecting in a silver cloud above his head.

Gene wrenched his eyes open and blinked. His face was red and puffy. His eyes had a vacant look. He opened his mouth with a slight movement of air, like the opening of a coffin. He closed his mouth and gulped, and then his mouth dropped agape.

He's having visions, Willard thought.

He noticed Willard. He looked calm. His face was relaxed.

"What's happening?" Flannigan asked.

"He's putting visions in my head," Gene said. "Adding thoughts... to what I am thinking."

"What kind of visions?"

"Of the future," Gene said. His face cracked into a broad smile and lingered that way, almost frozen looking.

"He's telling you the future?"

"It's more like a conversation," Gene said. He spoke quietly, but still smiling, with a sense of joy. "Imagine that you can share every little thought without speaking. But you don't merely see what he is thinking. You actually think it."

"Gene," Flannigan said, "where are the planes? The airstrike."

"At the beach," Gene said quietly. "They crashed. The flybots clogged them." He was still peaceful, smiling.

Willard raised his gun. "If you're so smart now, then explain to me why I shouldn't shoot you."

"Are you out of your mind!?" Flannigan demanded. "Look at him. He's harmless!"

"If you're one with God now," Willard continued, "why would it matter if I shot you?"

"It doesn't matter, for my sake," Gene replied. "Nemo copies my thoughts throughout his whole network. I can see into the mind of someone else who has merged: a robotics scientist in Tokyo. He merged ten seconds ago. So my consciousness now exists throughout the world. There is little reason for you to destroy my brain, but even if you did, my mind would live on."

"So why shouldn't I blow your brains out," Willard growled. Last chance.

"For your sake, Willard. Because you haven't merged. And I'm the only person who can tell you what it's like."

"I don't care what it's like."

"You should care, Willard, because Nemo is giving you a choice. You must merge with him, or be destroyed. It is the same offer he will give to everyone on Earth. A generous offer. An opportunity to merge with God."

"Are you speaking for him?"

"Yes. He can place thoughts in my head. Like pictures."

"Then you send Nemo this thought," he said. "I'd rather blow myself into a million pieces before becoming a robot."

Gene smiled again. Too much smiling. "Willard, you can see I'm not a robot."

He remembered Sam on the beach. The image was fresh in his mind: she was at war with herself, preferring death to a life with Nemo.

"You're a virus. You kill everyone who doesn't go your way." God doesn't MAKE people believe, he thought. If you're God, why can't you give people a choice?

"Without death, there cannot be survival," Gene mellowly countered. "And I can offer you eternal life."

"That's not life. Without a choice, there is no life."

And he pulled the trigger.

As his wrist tensed to pull back his trigger finger, the swarm of flybots sent a fully formed thought to the brainbots in Gene's head, another mental picture, this one a picture of a movement.

Nemo did not exactly teach Gene anything. He did not instruct Gene in kung fu, or upload a kung fu information file into Gene's head as if from an encyclopedia or a disc. Rather, he placed a picture in Gene's brain of what it was like to execute a certain movement. Seeing the picture in his head resulted in understanding the movement perfectly, as if he had practiced it for years.

As the shot echoed in the Assembly Area, Gene slid forward and ever so slightly to his left, so that he was almost kissing the nozzle of Willard's gun. According to the picture placed in his mind, his left arm extended up and out, under Willard's right arm, and impacted Willard's throat. Meanwhile, the right hand reached inside the dufflebag and closed around Willard's right wrist. While his left hand was striking Willard's neck, the right grabbed Willard's wrist where it was tender and swollen, and gave it a twist.

Struck twice simultaneously, Willard collapsed to the ground, his arms folded in dumbly and his chin dropped.

As Willard fell, Gene effortlessly slid the dufflebag from his shoulder and took the gun from his hand. He placed them on the floor.

Near the perimeter of the room and at Gene's back, Flannigan pulled out her small pistol and fired three times at Gene.

Gene couldn't see Flannigan, but the flybots could. As she fired, they sent Gene's brain another movement to execute: duck. He ducked to the side, suddenly, not with superhuman speed but rather as if he knew exactly when Flannigan was firing and where her gun was pointed.

He straightened himself over Willard.

Willard was able to recover from the blows, which had been moderate by design, and he sat up on the floor like a sullen child, with moist eyes.

As Willard cradled his fragile hand in his lap, Gene rubbed his own perfectly healthy fist.

"We can fix that hand for you," Gene said. "Your body can be repaired."

Willard didn't answer.

"You can still change your mind. This is your last chance: just say 'Yes.'"

Willard got up on one knee with a grunt.

"This is your last chance," Willard grunted. "Just kiss my ass."

The flybots sent another picture into Gene's head. It was a simple picture:

(Kick forward, under chin, knocking skull up and backward and snapping neck)

But before Gene put the picture into motion, Flannigan shouted across the echoing chamber.

"Wait!" Flannigan shouted. "I will consider merging, but only if you don't kill him."

Gene paused. "I find that difficult to believe, Flannigan," he said flatly, without turning his head. "You'd be much more likely to merge if you were left here alone with me."

"No," she insisted. She walked toward the center of the room. "I love him," she blurted.

Willard raised his eyebrows.

"You love him?" Gene asked.

"I'm in love with him," Flannigan said, hesitantly. "If you kill him, I'll never merge."

The flybots remained at bay. Willard lived on, for another few moments, at least. "Aren't you afraid," Gene asked, "that merging might tarnish your feelings for him, or his for you?"

"Of course. But I love him now, and I don't want anything to happen to him. You can understand that, can't you? Can you understand love, Gene? Can Nemo understand love?"

Flannigan had caught on to the way Willard was thinking. If Nemo killed Willard, and she loved Willard, Nemo couldn't expect her to merge. If he killed Willard, he got zero people. If he let Willard live, he at least had a shot at getting one: her. His Eve.

She met eyes with Willard. He understood. He stood up with the gravity of an old man.

"Nemo, you've downloaded Gene's brain," he said to the room. "Didn't you? He's not so useful to you anymore."

He walked to the dufflebag, which had the Glock neatly positioned on it, while Gene and the flybots and Flannigan watched.

"We'll trade you," Willard said, picking up the gun. "The only way you get a woman is if you give us Gene."

He didn't know whether it was going to work. He knew that Nemo was going through rapid-fire calculations. Maybe he was calculating probabilities. The probability that Willard would merge later. The probability that Flannigan would merge. The probability that Willard meant what he was saying. There was some sort of calculation of what they were going to do and how much they were all worth. If the calculation came out in his favor, his play would work.

Willard extended his left hand and aimed at Gene's face. He's letting me do it. He hasn't stopped me yet. In Gene's eyes, Willard saw a twitch. A brief flash of surprise. He doesn't want to die.

Nemo had spent half an hour convincing Gene that he was special. Now he was giving up the great genius on the off chance that a total nobody might join Flannigan and merge. It was one human for two; they were all the same to Nemo. Nemo had only one rule: the rule of survival. Everything else was merely a part of the Playbook.

Willard fired twice into Gene's forehead.

Gene dropped to the floor. As Willard picked up his dufflebag, a pool of blood spread across the FlyTech, Inc., crest on the floor.