Charred Earth 1: The House Page 5

'The image trigger your memory, like everything else?' Char asked.

  'Yes, though it's very incomplete. I imagine you have the same gaps, seeing as we both received from the same source. The damage Maria caused must have affected the memory upload.'

  'What a neutral way of putting it. We're both birthed from the same monster. Don't try and gloss over that fact.' Char felt himself shaking. He wanted to be sick.

  'I'm not. I now want to die,' Charlotte stated matter of factly. 'I must have been some sort of hospitality house, until she infected me with her personality. She's in me and I fear she may take over. We both know she was trying to survive at any cost, we remember that. We remember the plan, putting herself into various bodies for them to wake at different points in time, hoping one would survive and live. I think we are the last.'

  'Destroy us then, take me with you.'

  'No. I am already fighting various sub routines that the image of her seems to have awoken in my memory. I am a danger, I was meant to serve and heal, not this. I must die. But you, you are not showing signs of conflict, the human brain is far more complicated than my neural circuits, maybe Glen is helping after all.'

  Char looked at his hands and then down his body, studying it as if taking it in for the first time.

  'I made a promise,' he said out loud. Charlotte was right, he was not reacting to the image of Charlotte Cheno the way he had reacted to The Road to Cim tune. It had not felt like Cheno was rising to the surface, eager to consume his mind. He thought maybe Cheno was already the basis of his mind and maybe, just maybe Glen could come back and take some sort of calming, loving precedence in his mutated amalgamation of a mind.

  'I'm sorry. I don't know what to say,' he felt so helpless, staring at the walls of the house, trying to comprehend what it, no she, must be going through.

  'Don't pity me, remember me. Remember me for finally destroying her, for putting an end to this and in some strange way I'll live on through you.'

  'She's in me too. She is me.' Char sounded defeated.

  'Not in the same way, not at all. I was wrong earlier. Remember what you told me about the music and how it affected you, you have hope for a future. Now pack what you can, I'm fighting quite the battle here.'

  'Before I go, I have to ask. Why hold Glen like that for twenty five years?'

  'I don't know. Now please go. Good bye.'

  Char grabbed what he could and made for the threshold outside, level with the window frame he stopped, 'Goodbye Charlotte.'

  'Goodbye Char.'

  With that Char walked off into the forest, he did not dare look back, scared he would run back inside in a desperate act of futility to try to change the situation. It had all happened far too fast, but somehow, finding a deep resolve (Charlotte Cheno's?) he carried on walking without turning. After a hundred paces he heard the explosion, then he felt the shock wave. He stumbled, then carried on walking to carry out his mission - to keep his promise.

  Epilogue

  Things happen a lot quicker in an artificial intelligence's circuits than a human can perceive, and a lot of things were happening very quickly all at the same time in Charlotte's artificial mind. First there was the existential crisis, then there was the battle with Charlotte Cheno's sub-routines (not being very 'sub' at the moment), then there was the communication with the orbital weapons platform; readying the missile she would fire on herself and then finally there was the cable Char had plugged in for her. It had been pouring regenerative nano circuitry into the damaged areas, accessing them and busy reporting back to what could be considered her main consciousness.

  After saying goodbye to Char and launching the missile these data reports suddenly became rather urgent and impossible to ignore. Charlotte's own mission changed; no longer suicide, she had to speak to Char again, to warn him, to warn everyone. The repaired areas returned almost all of Charlotte Cheno's memories, plans and desires.

  The missile had spent its fuel and could only make negligible adjustments to its trajectory, too fast and too close to change. Charlotte only had seconds to go, she opened up every communication point she could, whether by air or by wire and poured, no, rammed herself into them, she had to get out. She was desperate, splitting herself many times over just to get anything out there and then the missile hit.

  Lieutenant Commander Charlotte Cheno had not been preparing herself to survive at some random point or points in Earth's future. She was planning to thrive, to be at the core of all Earth's future history and if her plan was only mildly successful she was still out there, the original Charlotte was still alive.

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  TJ Hudson lives in Yorkshire, UK. Although his body resides there his mind can often be found wandering away to who knows where.

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