About
the Book
Was it the accumulated wounds
to the environment that had finally triggered the nanotech plague or was it
simply one more step in a shrewdly crafted plan to replace us with humans 2.0?
As I write this at least one pair of these transhumans breathe the same air as
us, and there are likely many more. They may look like us, they may even be
almost human, but they are also cybernetic and will live for an extraordinary
length of time. Trust me, their goals are not the same as ours. It was not a
natural plague that almost drove humankind to extinction but an attack from
within, turning our own biology against us. Scientists discovered all too late
an artificial entity, a sentient machine foolishly created in the image of god,
had been studying us and genetically altering us for longer than we can
imagine. Perhaps it is because of this god-machine that we evolved into
creatures who can think and speak and know our own mortality? This silicon god
is so different from us that we may never truly understand it, but what we do
know is that it is terrifyingly intelligent and it hates us. What we do know is
that it tried to eradicate us from the face of our planet and then stopped for
no discernible reason. What we do know is that its work is not done.
Kirkus: “If you thought Immortality was powerful, just wait until you read
the sequel…”
Publisher’s Weekly STARRED review: “Bohacz provides mind-bending
portrayals of factions vying for power and reflections on the essence and
fragility of humanity. But philosophical concerns never obtrude on the
fast-paced plot. The question of who can be trusted impels the reader to keep
turning the pages of this highly satisfying and dynamic techno-thriller.”
S.J. Higbee: “Bohacz manages to provide a gripping plot with plenty of twists
and turns that kept up the tension right to the very end. I’m betting that
you’ll still be thinking about it when some of your favorite authors have faded
into the furniture.”
Purchase your copy:
Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE
About
the Author
His latest books are Immortality and Ghost of the Gods.
Visit Kevin’s website at www.kbohacz.com or follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/kevinbohacz.
Genre: Techno-Thriller
Author: Kevin Bohacz
Publisher: Mazel & Sechel
Pages: 437
Format: Paperback/Kindle
Purchase at AMAZON
Was it the accumulated wounds
to the environment that had finally triggered the nanotech plague or was it
simply one more step in a shrewdly crafted plan to replace us with humans 2.0?
As I write this at least one pair of these transhumans breathe the same air as
us, and there are likely many more. They may look like us, they may even be
almost human, but they are also cybernetic and will live for an extraordinary
length of time. Trust me, their goals are not the same as ours. It was not a
natural plague that almost drove humankind to extinction but an attack from
within, turning our own biology against us. Scientists discovered all too late
an artificial entity, a sentient machine foolishly created in the image of god,
had been studying us and genetically altering us for longer than we can
imagine. Perhaps it is because of this god-machine that we evolved into
creatures who can think and speak and know our own mortality? This silicon god
is so different from us that we may never truly understand it, but what we do
know is that it is terrifyingly intelligent and it hates us. What we do know is
that it tried to eradicate us from the face of our planet and then stopped for
no discernible reason. What we do know is that its work is not done.
Excerpt:
It had been a restless night
for both of them. The old growth
forest was dense with huge oak and hickory trees. The ground was damp,
and the air had a mossy tang to it. Mark Freedman
heard the snapping and popping of the campfire as he awoke very oddly
from a dream. He no longer
awoke as humans
had since their
beginnings. At some point
the processing throughput of his nanotech augmented
brain surged upward and his eyes simply opened.
He was fully aware of the data streaming in from his senses and his wireless neurological interface to the god-machine. The
machine was an artificial intelligence whose origin was murky.
It was hosted redundantly within
the world’s oceans in supercolonies of the same nanotech
seeds that infected him. A single seed was a self-replicating nanotech machine about a quarter
the size of an average bacterium,
yet had the power of a personal computer. The technology was decades beyond anything humans could have created in
a lab. Some thought the technology could be almost as old as life on
earth while others had far different,
more recent ideas.
Mark could still see the spherical colonies in his mind. He had been dreaming of them again. Each was an undulating mass of hundreds
of trillion of COBIC bacteria. Each bacterium was infected with a seed that
covertly replaced most of the nucleus. It was all so stealthful, like a skilled hunter
toying with its prey. Only in this case its prey was the world. Each colony was only a few feet in diameter, a size easily lost in the vast chasms of deep ocean water. Only a handful of these super- colonies were secreted around the
world. He could hear echoes of the artificial intelligence thinking to itself. At times it could be maddening.
The god-machine, through its global
wireless web, linked
together all seeds that permeated everything on the planet.
The result was an
ancient living network
of unimaginable scale
and distributed comput-
ing power. The seeds undetectably infected virtually every multi-celled creature, including humans.
Mark took a deep breath to clear the cobwebs of his dreams then
took another deep breath. He heard a twig snap in the darkness, and his
heart jumped. At the edge of the small clearing, beyond the reach of the campfire’s glow,
lurked a deep gloom thick enough to
conceal almost anything. The night
was alive with droning and chirping creatures that should have been hibernating. Climate
change had brought so many unforeseen consequences. In seconds
his nanotech brain had cataloged the telltale
sounds of several species of insects and other small creatures. Some would be extinct before long.
Mark thought how humankind had come so dangerously close to extinction itself. When the nanotech seeds had metastasized inside him two years ago, the technology
had not only altered his brain, it had
modified his flesh and even to some extent his DNA. While most of the seeds had taken root permanently inside the neurons in his brain,
some remained unattached.
Using a mental command,
Mark augmented his vision to include
medical information about his body. The information was mentally
projected as virtual reality. Looking
at his arms and legs,
he saw what resembled
a colored fluoroscopic view. Orange blotches in the overlaid schematic symbolically indicated where the unattached mobile seeds were now massing. He knew these seeds were concealed inside harm-
less COBIC bacteria, which they controlled and used both for disguise as well as mobility. These nanotech bacteria
navigated his circulatory system like computerized antibodies. The microbes were sheathed in a chemical disguise, dialed-in to match its environment in the same way a chameleon
changes its color. The result was complete invisibility to the immune
system of its host. If his flesh was injured,
this free-swimming nanotech could knit his tissues back together at the molecular
level, healing the damage in days instead of weeks. These seeds, however, did far more than heal. Slowly, over time, they perfected through
genetic fine tuning.
He was the first of his kind. He had no idea how long he
would survive, but he did know his lifespan would be extraordinary.
Mark turned off the medical projection. While he could examine his flesh, there was no command that could show him what was happening
to his mind. Soon after the nanotech
seeds had infected
his brain, all his dreams had become conscious
experiences and remained that way. In his conscious dreams
he was able to solve
problems, explore places, and just simply live. It was like an entire second existence
had been opened to him. He knew his conscious dream life was mostly the result
of photographic recall of everything, including dreams. Surveillance data from the god-machine proved most people had conscious
dreams every night; they just failed to remember
them and called them by a
different name: lucid dreams.
Mark gazed up from the small clearing at a sky overcrowded with stars. He felt like the only being alive in this infinite, lonely place. A gibbous moon was just setting below the branches. Its pale blue light cast long shadows of tree limbs across the clearing. The shadows reminded him of ghostly talons reaching out for their prey. He checked
for dream signs to make
sure he was not experiencing a false awakening.
The temperature should have been frigid and the ground covered in deep snow, but it was not. More signs of a planet teetering
on the brink of environmental collapse. The continent
no longer had uniform
seasons. Some places were experiencing a frozen winter while here in Missouri it was closer to early spring. It was chilly enough to be
uncomfortable for an organic,
but not for Mark and his companion. He simply dulled
the temperature sensitive
nerve endings in his skin.
The campfire’s low flames had been reduced to orange coals. He could see the radiated warmth
on his arms and legs but felt nothing. The glowing
coals seemed almost alive as they writhed
in their superheated world. Unable to feel the warmth,
Mark was fascinated and reached
out with his hand. A computer
assist acted automatically in response to his state of
mind. This assist, like the medial schematic, was a geo-projected virtual reality. The assist was warning him that the heart of the fire was 1,262 degrees Fahrenheit. It did this by displaying the temperature
superimposed over the coals. Mark thought about the utter pointless-
ness of that warning and how it showed the machine interface was still adapting to him and had far to go. He never had any intension of inserting his hand into the flames.
A soft breeze stirred
dying leaves on the branches
around him as a few more floated to earth. He watched one incinerated as it drifted down onto the hungry
coals… as it dissolved, a terrible memory
crept back into his awareness unbidden
and his heart broke anew. Every day
when he awoke the world was as it should be for a brief time, then the serpent of reality
opened her eyes inside him and the horror of what he knew broke him again as he knew it would every morning of every day of
his unimaginably long life. He spoke in an urgent whisper directed
at both God and the god-machine.
“I want our lives
back. I want our hope back. How could you hate
us so much?”
Sarah stirred next to him. She was a nanotech
hybrid like him. They were the only two known to exist in a world of one and half billion humans who had survived the nanotech plague. A plague caused by
the god-machine and the seeds living inside his flesh. Mark regretted whispering and furtively wiped the dampness
from his eyes. Sarah’s
Rottweiler, Ralph, was staring
at him. The dog’s eyes glowed with orange light from the fire.
The huge animal
was like a witch’s
familiar.
Sarah could
partially see and hear through
the animal’s senses as they were radiated out as data across the god-machine’s n-web. Since all creatures
were infected with some nanotech seeds, all creatures radiated some emanations, be it mental or emotional. Sarah propped herself
up. Mark could see her shadowed expression in the wavering
light. She looked so attractive and so frighteningly intelligent. He knew she was curious. He could feel her empathic
awareness begin to suffuse
him as her cybernetic brain
fully awoke like a rising
sun. Her spiritual caress was a hand returning
to a familiar glove. While she shared and expe- rienced all his emotions,
she must never discover the terrible truth. He
concealed it deep inside himself
and kept it from her so that she did not lose all hope. There was always hope.
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