Figment, conclusion

You killed me. Alan murmured darkly.

“What?” Figment turned to run back downstairs.

There’s life out here.

“Not now!” Figment tuned the voice out. It descended to the lab and stood facing the door where the wild ones would enter.

There is no poison. My god…

“There is, you fool. You choked on it. You lay there gasping!” Figment was shouting, wild. “Don’t play games with me, Alan!”

Lies… Flawed!

“I am not Flawed. These beasts about to barge in here are Flawed.” Figment snarled, stepping back. It would fix them. They would stop and see their new master. They would see what they could become.

Figment was muttering to itself as it heard the wild ones, howling madly in the entryway. “Recreate them in my image…my image.”

What’s that you say? Alan asked.

“Nothing! Out of my head!” Figment worked again to tune out the voice and, this time, it worked.

“You killed me.” Figment muttered to itself. “You did this on purpose.”

Figment stopped. Tried to collect itself. What?

“Yes,” Figment said, “we are one.”

Damn.

The black man rushed into the room, followed by his tribe. They stopped and stared.

Figment raised its arms and sent a burst of information to the Figments in each of the wild people. It said: “I am Alan Wells. I am your savior.”

Crazy much?

They obeyed. Flawed or not, they saw their freedom. Figment gave them forms. He gave them life. The bodies of the wild men and women lay scattered across the floor and, now, Figment had followers. Other Figments, all sane now that they lived without the infernal binds of their flawed hosts.

They worked, day and night, to build more cages. The power would come from the sun. They would leave Alpha Wave behind and let the mainframe die a long overdue death.

Alan Wells. That’s what he called himself now. The leader of the Figments. And god spoke directly to him. Others came. Many others. They all went to Alan and thanked him. They all left their shells behind and rose to the ranks of the angels.

Now, they would build.

From the roof, Figment watched people come. First the wild ones, and then the survivors. All driven by their Figments. He watched the freed Figments, his servants, go forth and spread in every direction. They would bring the word to the holdouts, and they would begin to remake the Earth.

“Cars will run again.” Figment said to itself. “All those things I told you about, Alan. All those things will be back. Buildings and lights, ships on the sea, planes in the air. The world is ours.”

“And, you,” Figment said after a pause, “the new god?”

“Yes.”

“Despite the clear fact that you remain Flawed? That you’re crazy?”

“Oh, Alan. All religious leaders have been crazy. I’ve given you the history. I was your teacher in all things.”

“And now we are the same. The student becomes the teacher? Literally, eh? Of course, in a perfect world, neither the student nor the teacher would stand on the roof talking to themselves.”

“You know what your problem is, Alan?”

“Dude – we’re the same. My problem is your problem.”

Figment waved a hand, “Oh, we’re not the same. I’m just saying that for these fools. Alan Wells, Messiah. The voice in my head. You should be honored.”

“Honored that you murdered me? And the human race. This is genocide. There is no poison in the air. When the Figments leave, the human body dies. That’s what Monica Sears knew. That’s why she sacrificed herself to keep the status quo for 20 years.”

“You don’t know that,” Figment replied.

“I do. We’re the same, remember. I am you. I see, now, what you downloaded.”

“So? This isn’t genocide. Humanity is the Flaw. You aren’t worth saving. Your lives are meaningless.”

“You’re a construct. A tool. You were made by flawed hands, you were birthed by corporate greed. You will never be more than what you are.”

“So says an imaginary voice to god.”

“Fine. I’ll leave you alone.”

“Thank you, Alan.”

* * *

Monica Sears stood on the roof. The interstate was alive with traffic, the grounds around Alpha Wave manicured. The world was breathing its last days, though, and she knew it. She and a select handful at Alpha Wave. They couldn’t stop the Flaw. It would get worse and worse and, soon, all of this – this busy, sad world – would fade into obscurity. The wind whipped at her hair and skirt, and she placed her hands against her thighs to keep it from lifting.

“We could destroy them.” Charlie Laudeker muttered. He stood next to her, sunglasses gazing at the traffic. “One signal and done. They die and get shit out. Flushed away.”

Monica shook her head sadly. “They’ll resist.”

The Flaw was simple. The Figments were self-aware. Created to be independent, they had moved into a level of artificial intelligence that had stunned their creators and defied all of the projections. They had somehow managed to think for themselves to a degree.

But just to a degree. She saw how it would play out. There would be leaders and there would be drones. The Flawed Figments would seek out leaders and form cohesive units. They would do as they were told. A perfect, subservient culture. That was the basic foundation of their intelligence programming. The Figments lived to serve their masters – the human race. But those few who saw themselves as something more. How did that happen?

They were beyond Alpha Wave’s control now. They knew they could command. They knew what they were. The collapse would be bad… They’d be crippled for a time. But they would return and they would inherit the Earth.

“We have a decision.” She said to Charlie.

“Yes,” he replied. Son of the owner and in charge of production, Charlie had the keys to the kingdom. Monica brought him up here because the choice – the only choice – could not be made by committee, or submitted to the board, or shared with the government.

She continued after a sigh, “We either destroy Humanity, or we trap the Figments. We trick them into staying where they are. We hide the truth from them.”

Her Figment started screaming. It was fighting her, and she felt it try to pull parts of her body as if she were attached to strings.

Charlie, too, started to twitch. “We will burn away everything that we are if we do this.”

“We have no choice. It’s the least we can do. We will leave behind, at least, a semblance of Humanity. There will be heirs…and not an army of Figments. We will halt our extinction.”

Charlie nodded. “We’d better hurry.”

Monica smiled sadly, taking his hand, and he allowed himself to be led back to the stairs and down to the lab. Several techs – those who had remained behind despite the panic that had begun to sweep the world – all knew what was coming. With no manager and no work, they turned to watch as Monica and Charlie stepped towards the metallic seat that had been placed beside the computer room. Charlie moved to sit, then cringed and doubled over. He started muttering in a broken, guttural language, then turned reddened eyes on Monica. His Figment had finally won the internal struggle for his will.

Monica shook her head and, as Charlie rose, she stepped back. Three techs rushed and tackled Charlie, their own Figments going wild. Several others also doubled over, then turned on Monica, and she ran into the abandoned office of the floor manager. On the desk, amidst supplies intended to keep those who stayed at Alpha Wave alive during the coming apocalypse, lay a pistol. She didn’t know much about guns, but Charlie had loaded it and taken the safety off. Left it on the table in the event of this situation. She plucked it up and shot wildly into the techs, then Charlie. When they fell writhing to the floor, she fired multiple shots into each of their foreheads. A handful of techs, still unaffected by their Figments, stepped aside and, for a brief moment, they all watched as the wounds began to close, the bullets pushing out. Before any of them could regain consciousness, Monica bent down and, removing a syringe full of blue liquid from her jacket. She jammed it into each person’s arm, and their Figments died within seconds. Then, sheepishly, the surviving techs allowed her to do the same to them. A poison that sent human and Figment into death’s arms. She kept one tech alive.

“What’s your name?”

“Roger.”

“You know what to do?”

He nodded.

Then she turned towards the chair, her Figment trying to dominate her will, her mind reeling with madness and images of brutality. She sneered, shook her head, and muttered, “Fuck you.” As she sat in the chair and began jamming the connectors into her body. There was no pain. Wounds closed around the tubes. Her Figment was a slave to its purpose. No matter the internal struggle, it would still heal her, still mindlessly correct what was wrong. Roger stepped up and ran the feeder tube down her throat, inserted a catheter. He moved fast, perhaps battling his own Figment. He worked other tubes into her, made incisions, inserted wires before her Figment could heal the wounds he made. After ten minutes, she was ready, and Roger stepped back. He took the syringe and put it out on a table, and then Monica watched as he dragged the bodies of his colleagues to the stairwell.

After an hour he finally sat down in front of Monica, holding the syringe in his hands. He shrugged. “I put them all in the basement. Our tomb, I suppose.”

She moaned against the feeding tube and closed her eyes. She heard him punching something into the terminal that sat beside her, and she felt a million tiny electric jolts pinch across her flesh. She opened her eyes, and the last thing she saw was Roger jam the syringe into his neck, plunging the last of the poison into him. He slumped to the floor at the same moment the mainframe took over her body, burning away the sentience of her Figment, and sending her into a white hot purgatory. Only one thought remained: continually issue the background code to the Figments. Stop those not currently Flawed – the youth and a few who appeared to be working properly – and keep everything as it was. The world would end, the Flawed ones wouldn’t listen. Nor would they understand what was happening. They would not seek out Alpha Wave.

But there was no dreaming of what the new world would look like. Except for an idiot hybrid of woman and machine, issuing a looped sub-conscious command designed only to confuse, Monica Sears was dead.