Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Far Beyond the World
Part XXIX - Three to Get Ready
In the center of Earth's capital city...
Buck Rogers and Elias Huer sat in the Draconian sports tram, the near-silence of New Chicago resting upon their shoulders like a heavy mantle.
In the far distance, every now and then, the sound of a hover-tank canon would echo up, almost kindly upon the eardrums of the two men, so different in origin and focus, yet so similar in nature and attitude.
On Huer's lap sat Twiki, and upon his chest hung Dr. Theopolis, and despite being artificial beings to Buck and Huer's organic, they were just as downstruck at their human friends. The target of their great plan with the mutant Nomads and their mad flight across the conquered Inner City had been to get to the Energy Directorate Building and use it's direct connection to the planet's Defense Shield to keep the Draconians that were off-planet just that, keep them off, while the Global Pulsar Batteries they would have activated as well would have dealt with whatever Hatchet-Fighters were still in the atmosphere once the Shield was resurrected.
But the Energy Directorate Building was in shambles, it's innards caved in, blocking direct access to it's equipment. The Shield was not going to come up, the Batteries were not going to blaze to life and shoot down the Marauders. It was all over, it was all for naught.
"...or is it..." Captain Rogers muttered, mostly to himself.
But Dr. Huer heard him and dragged his haggard stare from the ruins of the once great structure.
"Buck? Do you have an idea?"
"Maybe." and Rogers looked to Theopolis, "You can form links between one system and another, right, Doc?"
"Given the proper facilities, yes." replied the AI hanging on a rusted chain around Twiki's neck.
"So okay, think about this. The Batteries and the Shield themselves aren't destroyed."
"Not that we know of." said Huer.
"Quit playin Devil's Advocate, Doc." scowled Buck, "I may be trying to pull this last idea outa my butt, but at least I'm trying."
"Yes, of course. I'm sorry, Buck. Forget what I said."
Rogers smiled thinly and looked back to the Quad, "So Theo, if the main systems were down for the Shield and Batteries, then is there any other way they could be accessed?"
"Please allow me one moment to analyze the situation, Captain." and Theopolis went silent, though his photoreceptors continued to pulse. And after a long, agonizing minute, he spoke up again, "There may be one possibility."
Buck's heart lept, "What is it! Come on, Doc, help me save the world!"
"Well...we could attempt to use the Nexus Core-"
"No!" snapped Dr. Huer in a harsh tone that made Twiki jerk in his lap and made Buck do a double-take.
"But Elias-" Theopolis started to say, but Huer again cut him off.
"Out of the question. It is too dangerous!"
Buck waved his hands for sanity to return, "Okay, let's all just calm down here. This is the Eleventh Hour guys, things are teetering on the edge of no return. If Wilma and Hawk have been defeated, then us four are all that's left against an army of Draconians that have a foothold on our entire planet with fifteen Star Fortresses in orbit. Just one of those galactic bulldozers could lay waste to Earth in a matter of hours and again there are FIFTEEN hanging up there like an almighty blazing sword, ever-ready to cleanse this planet right down to it's tectonic plates. So if there is something, ANYTHING, you guys have up your sleeve we have to try it, and RIGHT NOW! Do you understand me? Do you!"
Dr. Huer had sat quietly throughout the rant, waiting patiently for Buck to finally halt the tirade.
"Are you finished?"
"We are ALL gonna be finished real soon, Doc-"
"I understand that, Buck, but what you don't understand is what exactly the Nexus Core is."
"So fill me in."
And Huer sighed and sat back in the passenger seat, drummed his fingertips against Twiki's casing absently.
"All right, Buck, I'll explain. Put quite simply, the Nexus Core is
* * * * *
completely off-limits!"
Dr. Ira Goodfellow beat his blue-veined fists against the force shield, doing his best to ignore the arthritic ache that spiked through them with each blow. He'd been doing this for the past six hours, nearly without break, ever since he'd been sealed into the subbasement corridor, with a force shield on either end giving him five meters length of moving space, with the elevator lift behind him, and a single three foot thick titanium alloy blast door before him.
And the being who had sealed him in was on the other side of the force shield he'd been pounding his fists against uselessly, and he stood before the blast door, his right armature plugged into it's locking mechanism, utilizing all his tremendous Gravitonic brain-power to defeat the forty-two layers of encryption keeping it sealed.
Which was theoretically impossible, or at least the greatest artificial minds of the Quads had thought it to be when they had designed the vault, but then they had never counted on the greatest human mind Earth had ever produced using his fantastic intellect to not only design an AI himself, but to also do the unthinkable: to put it into a movable body of it's own and to grant it the ability to evolve, something that the Quads had determined could be a lethal combination.
But Dr. Goodfellow had done this, even though it was frowned upon throughout the Federation and nearly illegal. But that's why he'd had to do all the work outside of Earth's gravity aboard a starship that was about to leave orbit for a two year tour, which was why the old scientist had thought he could get away with it, that he could polish out the rough edges in the Gravitonic Ambuquad's personality and get a proper reign on what he'd expected could become a titanic ego, long before it could become even remotely dangerous.
But Dr. Ira Goodfellow had been wrong.
Dead wrong, in fact.
Because his brainchild, like the creation of a certain Dr. Frankenstein of legend, had gotten out of control, and now, like that age-old monster, it sought to make itself much more then had ever been intended. It had orchestrated an incredibly complex operation to bring itself all the way to this point in time and space and fate, bringing together thousands, if not millions, of other individuals, all without their knowledge, which was always the best way to do it so that you couldn't be betrayed, and it had all come down to THIS VERY MOMENT, as the door to the fabled Nexus Core finally clicked open, the extremely complex lock had been solved, and with a hum of depolarizing magnetic seals it slid up into the ceiling, revealing a towering square of darkness. And with a triumphant strobe of his orange and green photoreceptor bars the beyond-brilliant Gravitonic Ambuquad named
"CRICHTON!" howled Dr. Goodfellow at the top of his lungs.
The low-hovering robot halted a centimeter from the threshold, and with a synthetic sigh rotated back around.
"Yes, Doctor? What is it?"
Goodfellow leaned against the force shield, his fists creating twin spinning amber maelstroms that swirled and spangled with a soft buzz. He took a deep breath to recover energy spent and blinked himself back to a measure of control.
"Crichton..."
"Doctor?"
"...you cannot do this."
The robot put his mechanical hands on his hips and glared back at his supposed creator, "Nothing is going to halt me in my predestined course, Doctor, but out of respect for the minor hand you had in my creation, I will allow you to make your point. And then I will proceed."
"Minor hand?" gaped Goodfellow, "By Baldur! By Boreas! My boy, I created you completely! You are my pride and joy, I crafted you into existence with these two bare hands-"
"No. You did not."
"But I did!"
"No, Doctor, you didn't. You may have constructed my components, you may have powered me up, you may have designed my subroutines, but the true genesis of my creation came from the Gravitonic core at the center of my being, and you did not build it. You stole it."
Goodfellow paled, "I--I...I, well, yes, in a way I did, but-"
"Using the clearance given to you as the Head of the Energy Directorate, you gained access to the AI construction facility in New Detroit, which had been locked down and sealed for the past forty years, and removed a blank Gravitonic core from the reserve that was kept there in case one of the twelve Computer Council members perished somehow."
"But--But how did you know that?!"
"I am aware of this because I know every bit of knowledge that was kept in Searcher's data banks, including your own private logs."
"You--You gained access to my logs?!" Goodfellow gaped in astonishment at the robot on the other side of the shield, "But how did you figure out my locking cypher? It was impossible to-"
"-to decrypt?" the robot's receptors strobed in malevolent amusement and he gestured at the open portal behind him, "Doctor, you have borne witness to my intellect. You should know by now that there is nothing I cannot achieve if I put my unbelievably brilliant mind to it. I can solve any puzzle, reason out any problem, open any...door..."
"And that is how you knew about the...the...the-"
"-Nexus core?" Crichton finished what Goodfellow couldn't bring himself to say. "Yes, Doctor, that is how I knew about this. And once I found out what it could do, my path instantly became clear. I was destined to come here, to do what I am about to do, it was and is my destiny. Which is why I did what I had to do."
"Had to do?" Goodfellow cocked his head in confusion, "What do you mean, boy? What did you do?"
And Crichton spread his armatures wide and extended his graspers as if he was embracing all of creation, "Why, I did everything, Doctor."
"Everything? What do you mean everything?"
"Everything. I got us lost. I kept Searcher from communicating with the entire Federated Alliance, I kept us isolated, while my plan could be carried out."
"What plan?"
"The Draconian Invasion of course."
Dr. Goodfellow stared at him in horror, "What?! You did this? How!"
"It was easy. I told you, I gained access to all the knowledge in Searcher's data banks, and not only did I find out about the Nexus Core, I also came into possession of the shut-down codes for Earth's Global Pulsar Batteries, and the secret path through the Defense Shield."
"You!? YOU!" Goodfellow slammed his fists against the shield, "You sent the Draconians the path? You, Crichton!"
"Yes, Doctor, I did it. I needed Earth conquered, I needed you bothersome humans out of the way, so that my path would be cleared to the chamber that is now open behind me. And I needed the Draconians."
"Why? What possible use could they be to you?"
"Of great use, actually. Come..." and with a radio signal Crichton shut down the force shield between them, "Let me show you."
Goodfellow stared at him for a long moment, then shook his white-haired head, "No. I won't do it, my boy. I refuse."
"Then you die." and Crichton's right armature formed into it's pulsar canon mode. Blue energy danced dangerously in the muzzle.
"Then I die." Goodfellow glared in defiance.
"Your choice, Doctor." replied the robot and Ira tensed, preparing for death, but Crichton did not fire upon him, and instead rotated around and glided into the vault.
"Wha--Wait! Don't go in there! Please!" and Goodfellow staggered after him.
The room sensed their presence and activated it's lights, revealing it to be an immense three story-high chamber, a perfect cube, the grey walls barren and blank, with nothing on the ceiling but illumination panels, and one single object sitting in the center of the floor.
It was to this device that Crichton headed, his micro repulsors glowing azure beneath his floating base, and he halted before the strange artifact staring up at it with reverence.
"It--It is so beautiful!"
Despite the direness of the situation, Dr. Goodfellow stared at the back of the robot in amazement as he trotted after him. He does! He appreciates it's aesthetic appearance...!
And indeed, the bizarre device was beautiful. It was a mass of flowing white crystal poured into an hourglass shape, a million twisting faceted veins bending and curving in and out of each other in an incredibly complex pattern that both drew the eye to it in fascination and repelled it at the same time because there was something off about it all, like it was some blasphemous creation of a dark evil god that the Universe itself didn't want to exist. It was all held together by a coil of chrome tubing that wound around it in a crisscrossing framework that terminated in a data receptacle a meter above the floor, and beside it sat a flat jade-colored oval plate.
"The Nexus Core..." breathed Crichton, and then he turned back around to face the Doctor.
"You have decided to do as I have asked?"
"What?!" Goodfellow was aghast, "No! I want to try and reason with you-"
"No, my mind is made up, Doctor, and if you will not assist me voluntarily, then you shall do so against your will." and raising his armature he fired the canon and blew off Goodfellow's right hand at the wrist!
The scientist howled and staggered back, cradling the smoking stump to his chest, then with an agonized groan he collapsed onto the floor unconscious. Crichton hummed up to him and pivoting over plucked up the amputated hand, then rotated around and powered back to the device. He placed the hand palm-downwards on the jade plate.
"Recognizing: Doctor Ira Goodfellow, Head of the Energy Directorate." intoned an unseen female voice and the Nexus Core glowed to iridescent life, a polychromatic energy flaring into being just below it's surface.
Crichton dropped the hand onto the floor and extending his left armature he plugged it into the waiting receptacle. And his photoreceptors dimmed, then lit back up with the same multicolored swirl that was dancing chaotically inside the device.
"Access Granted." said the computer voice and Crichton's synthetic consciousness became one with the device. And he activated it's one and only function, the function it had been created to do but never used, because the Computer Council had deemed it too dangerous to try out.
It connected to every computer on the planet Earth and paired them to the Nexus Core, giving it complete power over their every function. And that included every Draconian computer system on Earth as well.
And on every planet of the Federation, deep beneath each of their own Defense Directorate Buildings, an identical Nexus Core lit-up and paired themselves through subspace with the primary one back on Earth. And every computer system on every Federation world was slaved to the intergalactic Nexus Core Network.
And in turn, was slaved to the will of the Gravitonic Ambuquad named Crichton.
"I...CONTROL...EVERYTHING!" he intoned from the Core, and from every core on every Federation world, and from every speaker on each of the planets, every last one, including every speaker and comlink on Earth.
Including the hand comlink in the hand of Captain William 'Buck' Rogers as he charged up the steps of the Defense Directorate Building, Dr. Huer and Twiki on either side of him.
Buck halted in surprise and so did they, and together they stared down at the comlink.
"Crichton?" scowled Rogers, "Is that you?"
"Yes, Captain." replied the robot's voice from the palm-sized communicator.
"I thought you were destroyed. Where are you?"
"I am...EVERYWHERE!" declared Crichton, and his magnified voice reverberated across the Inner City, making all of it's occupants pause, Draconian, Nomad, and enslaved humanity alike.
Buck stared across New Chicago in confusion, "What are you talking about? Crichton, what are you-"
"What am I?" the robot's voice asked, echoing back-and-forth across every planet in the Federation, "Why, Captain, I...am...
...GOD!"
To be continued...