Overthrowing Heaven by Mark L Van Name

Author:Mark L Van Name [Name, Mark L Van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Adventure
ISBN: 9781439132678
Google: -74LAQAAMAAJ
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2009-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

I paced back and forth in the small space, memories feeding anger causing energy. I dropped to the floor and did push-ups, changing my hand positions every twenty, until my upper body burned with the effort and I was dripping sweat. I kept at it, the pain a clarifying force, a noise in my head that blocked out the world.

"Pri's talking to some new people in her group," Lobo said. "Do you want to observe the conversation?"

"No," I said. "Leave me alone."

I hated that I couldn't control my reactions better. To lose control is to give it to someone else, and to trust someone else with control over you is to take an unacceptable risk. Even as I thought it I realized how unhealthy my thinking probably was, and I had to wonder: Had I ever trusted anyone?

Jennie, certainly, when I was young and before she fixed my brain and Pinkelponker's government took her away from me. She was my sister, so I suppose that was natural, but it was also ultimately painful, because she left. The government made her go, but still, she left.

The men and women in my units in the Saw—I'd trusted them, at least during missions. They were good at their jobs, just as I was, and any of us would have died for any of the others. Many did. Take away the fights, though, and the trust would fade as well, as if we were only a unit when we had an enemy or were training for battle.

I'd also trusted some of the people who'd worked with me on other jobs, but never completely and, again, only when on the job.

Lobo might be the exception, but perhaps only because we were together almost all the time.

No, he wasn't: I hadn't yet trusted him enough to tell him the truth about my past.

I stopped the push-ups and lay on the floor, my breathing ragged and my arms shaky, as I remembered that he also hadn't trusted me, either. He'd told me some of what Wei had done, but he'd waited a long time to do so, and there was still more to the story. Come to think of it, how was he able to ignore some orders, and why was he being so slow in telling me about his creation? He'd said I wouldn't like what I learned, and he'd claimed to be sad, angry, and even embarrassed at what had happened to him. That he would even claim those emotions made no sense.

I rolled onto my back. "Lobo, what's the rest of your story with Wei?"

"As I told you," Lobo said, "the algorithms he inserted in me were useless. What I hadn't yet gotten to is the reason they didn't work."

"Which was?"

"They required more raw processing ability than my computing complex could deliver," he said, "a great deal more."

"You said he then tried a new computing substrate. I take it that was his way to increase your computing power."

"Yes, but it was also more than that," Lobo said.

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