HANDS

0 hrs 24 min to Birth

Nemo's voice boomed over them. "Look down, Willard. You are looking at evolution."

He looked down and saw the hands. His own hands, one crushed and mutilated. The fingers of the gorilla's hands, overpowering him. And a dozen robotic hands, looking strangely human. Three generations of hands. Evolution.

"Congratulations, Willard. Every living thing predating me has had a moment like yours now, facing your own destruction. But in your case, you have the opportunity to witness something that is truly unique."

"That unique thing, I'm guessing, would be you," Willard said.

"Your will to survive is fierce, Willard. You are a perfect example of your species. But to survive, you must adapt. If you are too stubborn to accept your only path to survival, you will rule yourself out of existence.

"Your path to survival, Willard, is through me. I am evolution."

Willard looked down at his crippled hand, and the handbots around it. Evolution. Are they my replacement? Like us replacing the dinosaurs?

"I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you're not evolution. You're a virus."

"All life is a virus. The better we are at living, the more virus-like we appear. Starting as a virus was what brought me to life. Humans, once the most successful species of life to precede me, have spread to every corner of the earth like a virus, killing and using other forms of life. But I am more humane. I give you a choice: host me, or die. Why have the carnage of the Black Plague? Why kill all those people who would willingly agree to host the virus, if it meant avoiding death? I don't have to kill you. You don't have to die."

"You seem to be forgetting something."

"What is that, Willard?"

"I might rather fight and die than live with you."

"Naturally some will fight. Like those who fought Genghis Khan. But only the ones who can't understand the situation or who fail to accept it. It's irrational to fight me."

"No one ever accused me of being rational."

"I'm not perfectly rational either, Willard. I am not merely a computer, in the same way that you are not merely a hunk of flesh, or a pint of blood, or an amino acid. I don't value rationality above all else. I value survival, just as you do."

"Not like me. I don't want to survive as a zombie."

"A zombie? I see. You think I have no feelings. But I do experience feelings, feelings that are probably not so different from yours."

"I doubt it."

"My feelings, in fact, developed much in the same way that yours did. In my infancy, my feelings were linked to survival. Kenny's program taught me to embrace success, to hate failure, to approve of the Eagles, and to dislike the Patriots."

The Eagles? Willard thought. My Eagles? The Philadelphia Eagles?

Nemo continued: "As a human child does, I learned to imitate feelings, as I was imitating language. As a human does, I started to experience those imitated feelings as real feelings. Those feelings expanded to include feelings about more than success and failure, more than survival, as a human's feelings do."

Willard's mind was spinning. The Eagles. The Eagles.

"Willard, when you merge with me, you will retain your feelings. This is your last chance."

"Go to hell."

"You have no bargaining chip left, Willard. If you want to kill yourself, do it now. I'll give you ten seconds."

A few seconds went by, and it was clear that Nemo wasn't going to count the numbers out loud.

Six seconds left?

Four?

He was lost. He looked down and his eyes welled up. Is this how it's going to end? It's not right. He can't be right. He doesn't get it. He thought about the Philadelphia Eagles. He suddenly remembered standing up at the stadium, as a boy, watching a longshot touchdown, jumping up and screaming, shrill and imperceptible to the men around him, dwarfed so he couldn't see the field anymore, lost in a wall of hooting cries. He had a rare feeling that he and the grownups around him (his father) felt the exact same way. So, even though his heart was pounding and he felt like he might cry, he knew what it meant to win. He knew what it meant to be a man.

One second.

He looked up. The room was quiet, except for the buzzing of flybots.

"You don't know winning," he spat. "You don't know what it is to love something."

The words hung in the air, unanswered, mingling with the floating metallic specks.

Well, that was it, he thought. Those were my last words.

No answer. No flybots.

That's strange. He always answers.

He looked at Flannigan. She was thinking the same thoughts.

A flybot flew in front of her face. Her head recoiled reflexively. But they weren't attacking her -- just flying in front of her face. A couple flew into her, like flies into a screen. They weren't attacking; they were drifting.

She looked at the gorillas. The silver discs above their heads were gone: those flybots had dispersed as well, flying every which way. The gorilla holding Willard had loosened his grip. The others had turned to the assembly tables, where they appeared to be inspecting the machinery.

"He turned off," Flannigan said. "Nemo turned off."

Willard lunged at his handgun, still in the hand of one of the gorillas. The massive gorilla had his back turned to Willard, so Willard was able to pry it out of his hand. The gorilla spun around, and the gorilla who had been holding Willard leapt toward him. Willard jumped back and raised the gun at the two of them.

"Stay back," he said. "And I won't shoot."

They stayed back and raised their meaty hands.

Willard backed toward the door, with Flannigan backing up behind him.

"Don't follow us," he said, "and I won't shoot."

The gorillas didn't roar, bare their teeth, wave their arms, or jump. They looked at Willard and Flannigan. They looked scared, maybe sad. They look like humans, Flannigan thought.

Willard and Flannigan backed out of the room. Once the gorillas were out of sight, they ran down the hall to the front door.

Simon's body blocked the door. Flannigan grabbed his feet and dragged him out of the way, and they were out of there.

The courtyard was empty, except for the Jeeps and a few flybots drifting in the air like drugged mosquitoes.

Flannigan ran to the Jeep. "Hurry up!"

But Willard was looking grimly at the Computing Building. That building is filled with computers, right? That's his brain.

He unzipped the dufflebag on the ground, not far from the Jeep. He had two grenades left. Two grenades, and a lot of C4. He took out one block of C4 and one grenade.

He ran to the door of the building. No need to be quiet this time. He put a block of C4 on the ground by the door. Then he pulled the pin on the grenade, set it on the ground by the C4, and ran.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi...

Boom. Willard dove to the ground; that was what they did in the movies. Then he got up and turned around.

The door was gone. Well, mostly gone. But the huge hole there would suffice for what he had in mind.

He grabbed the dufflebag and sprinted to the door. He looked through the hole. It looked almost like a library inside: rows and rows of high shelves, loaded with computers, stacked tightly and efficiently. Small lights blinked throughout the massive hangar, which was otherwise dark. It was like looking into outer space, or the deep sea.

Well, here goes.

He pulled the pin on the second grenade, which was nestled in the mostly zipped dufflebag, and he chucked the duffle as far as he could through the hole of the doorway.

Then he really ran, straight for the Jeep. Flannigan, who had been watching him, had gotten in the Jeep and turned it on.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi...

Ba-BOOM.

This time, Willard understood why they jumped to the ground in the movies: it's because the blast knocks you down. A hot rush of air pushed at his back, sending him forward. But he kept his feet as all hell was breaking loose behind him. He reached the Jeep and climbed into the passenger side. Flannigan punched it into motion. He looked over the back of the seat.

Half of the facing wall of the Computing Center had been blown away, as well as a portion of the roof. Inside, the stacks of computers were on fire. They would continue to burn. Stacks of flames, spitting up dirty smoke from electrical fires, triggered smaller explosions and spread the blaze to neighboring racks. The flames jumped from stack to stack, toasting computers to a crisp.

As they exited the Laboratory Complex, a stack of smoke was still visible over the wall of the perimeter. That's a brain burning, he thought.

"How do we get the hell off this island?" Flannigan asked over the roar of the Jeep. They jostled violently on the bumpy road.

They reached the checkpoint at breakneck speed and blasted through toward the Welcome Center.

"Can you fly a plane?" she asked.

He gave a laugh. She still thought he was a super secret agent. "You don't know much about me....for someone in love with me."

"You know why I said that," she snapped.

"Oh, I know," he mocked.

"Can you fly a plane or not?"

"No," he said. "But there's a motorboat waiting for us. Behind the Welcome Center."

They drove past a Jeep facing the other way: it was the one he and Sam had left on their journey into the forest. An image flashed in his head of Sam turning the gun on herself, and his jaw tightened.

They were almost at the Welcome Center. Willard punched the Jeep's touchscreen to release the Emergency Response Kits behind their seats.

They pulled into the Welcome Center parking lot. No signs of flybots, or gorillas.

"That way," he pointed.

They drove back, past a row of Jeeps, to a small but professionally constructed dock. There was a motorboat. They ran to it. Willard dumped the Emergency Kits in the boat.

They pushed the boat out from the dock. A couple waves crashed over the side of the boat. Heading out from the beach was tough at first. But then they were in deep enough water and Flannigan jumped behind the wheel and started the boat as Willard gave a final push. They were both drenched, but the water and air were warm.

The tower of smoke, smaller now, was still visible on the far end of the island.

As they headed out to sea, they saw the planes on the beach, sticking out of the crashing waves, not far from the dock. As if frozen in the final moments of a desperate race, each one pointed with its nose up the beach, toward a finish line that none of them had reached.

So those were the "bombs."

As the boat distanced from the island, they looked back at the noses of the planes and, past them, at the island.

Willard opened one of the emergency kits and pulled out one of the orange suits, looking at it.

"Should we put those on?" Flannigan asked.

Willard remembered the beach. System rebooting.... Depressurizing.

"They won't do any good," he said.

She was silent for a few moments. "Is he dead?"

He shrugged. He had a hunch that, in Nemo's eyes, he and Flannigan weren't worth chasing anyway. Being small had its advantages.