Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(105)

“Is there anything I can do?”

“There is.”

“You want me to talk with Alex.”

“Yes. James has never said a word to me about what happened between him and Alex or anything that happened before. But I know, when he goes on this mission, it would help him to know that everyone back here supports him and is pulling for him. Whatever James did before, he’s been a good brother to Alex since the Long Winter began. He’s the reason we’re all here. He’s kept us alive. And he’s probably going to give his life for ours.”

Abby stands and rubs her palms on her pants as if to dry them. “It’s a tall order, Emma. But I’ll see what I can do.”

The memory fades to black, then another memory begins, also in the habitat. This time, it’s Alex sitting in the living room with Emma.

“Abby told me that James is leaving. And he might not be coming back.”

“That’s right.”

“And that he’s the reason we’re here.”

She nods, and the scene flashes forward, to her pushing up on her cane as Alex is leaving.

“Will you come to see him?” she calls to him.

“I don’t know yet. I need time to think about it.”

And Alex did come to see me. Because of Emma. She did it. She got them out of the barracks. She gave me my family back. It’s all I can do not to hug her and rip off my helmet and kiss her and say thank you.

She glances over at me now, with a look somewhere between guilt and sorrow, the same look I just felt when the secret I had kept was revealed. That’s what Art wants: to put us off balance. To manipulate us. Why? To build trust? To run down the clock? Both? I have to focus.

“What do you want?” I ask. “Why have you contacted us?”

“The two of you are certainly smart enough to know why. I want to survive. Just like you. Just like your people. I’ve seen the lengths you’ve gone to in order to survive. It’s impressive.”

On the screen, a montage of videos begins, glimpses from Oscar’s life, seen through his eyes. In the first, he’s in the dining room of an old house with high ceilings and ornate crown molding, staring out the window at snow falling in sheets. As if it’s a time lapse, the snow grows deeper, until it’s on the front porch, and then up to the windows. He leaves the dining room, walks into the kitchen, and then down a creaking staircase to the cellar. On the screen, a series of menus appear—what Oscar would have seen. He activates a perimeter security program for the home and goes into hibernation mode, consuming almost no power.

The screen fades to darkness, then snaps to life again as Oscar comes out of hibernation. The scene that plays is the one where I walked down the stairs and found him in the cellar.

The montage jumps forward to his time at Camp Seven. We watch as the winter grows worse at the camp, as the military exercises begin, as he and I work on the Sparta fleet and the Citadel and the retrofitted nukes. A scene plays of us working together in the drone lab, of us building a prototype of the attack drones now barreling toward the harvester.

So it knows about the drones coming for it. Is that what this is about? It has to be.

“I take it you want to negotiate?” I ask.

“Yes. I believe we can find a way to coexist.”

This is my opportunity. There is so much I want to know about the harvester and whoever sent it, details I need to know to ensure our survival. But I have very little time. The drones will detonate their payload in less than six minutes.

“To coexist, we have to understand each other. You have just accessed an immense amount of data about our species and about the two of us in particular. We need to know what we’re dealing with. What your goals are. Where you come from. Why you didn’t talk to us first?”

“Understandable. Let’s start with an introduction. We are the grid. That, of course, isn’t how we refer to ourselves, but it is the most analogous term from your rudimentary vocabulary and understanding of the universe.”

“What’s your role in the grid?”

“A very minor one. To use a phrase from your native tongue, I am near the bottom of the totem pole. I simply gather energy and connect it to the grid.”

“What is the purpose of the grid? What does it want?”

“The grid is the fate of the universe. Some of your scholars have scratched the surface of the ultimate truth. And you, James, have suspected it. It’s what enabled you to form a working theory that brought you here, that allowed you to find me. As your scientist Einstein brilliantly posed: E equals mc squared. There are two fundamental components of the universe. Mass and energy. The role of the grid is to facilitate the eventuality of all mass in the universe: the conversion to energy.”

“Energy for what?”

“An ironic statement from you. Within a few years, your species would have realized the need for such massive amounts of energy. Your biological existence is a transitional phase. The next phase of existence for your species requires one commodity: power. You’ll soon have little use for your bodies. Only your minds. Even now your primitive brains consume a disproportionate amount of the energy your body requires. Within the grid, a mind is limited only by the power available to it. Thus we are charged with the acquisition and provision of power. That is the true industry of the universe.

“The quasars you’ve glimpsed in distant galaxies, at the center, are but super nodes in the grid. We span billions of stars. We emerged billions of years ago. We were among the first advanced life to take hold in the universe, and we will be the last thing left when this universe ends. The grid is the final destination of all life. We are the beginning and the end. When the mass in this universe has been fully converted, the grid will have enough energy to create a new universe. The cycle will begin anew.”