"What's next?" Herod asked, looking around as he straightened up and put his hands to the small of his back, leaning back and feeling the synthetic bones of his spine pop as it realigned.

There was silence for a moment.

"Sam?" Herod tried again.

"Sorry, was distracted," Sam said. "Something strange happened. What was the question?"

"What's next?" Herod squatted and started picking up his tools. Wally picked up some of the other tools, holding them out to Herod as he put them away. Wally's hard armor shell had a blackened, carbonized gouge down the side from where he'd been hit with 1.21 gigawatts of juice from the temporal stabilizer system when Herod had thrown power to it.

"Phasic energy processors," Sam said.

"Are you all right?" Herod asked.

Sam was silent a minute. "Yeah, I'm all right. I think. There's a lot of damage. Every little bit that we fix, it enabled the damage control systems to come online and identify more systems in need of repair," Sam gave a long sigh. "At least we're getting the automatic repair systems working."

"How bad is it?" Herod asked.

"Phasic energy processors are in really bad shape. Half of them are down and at least three quarters of the ones still working are operating way outside of tolerances," Same said. "But, I do have some good news."

"What?" Herod asked. He coughed, his chest aching, bringing up thick fluid. He raised his face shield and spit it on the floor.

"I figured out where the anomalous brood carrier signal is coming from," Sam said. "It's in the phasic arrays, so even though you'll be bringing up the automated repair system, you'll need to run overwatch and do some fine tuning under my direction."

"All right. Why can't we just let the automatic system do the work?" Herod asked. He closed his face shield and then counted his tools. He had 3 10mm sockets and 2 10mm wrenches left.

The 10mm's had a habit of scurrying away when nobody was looking.

The blue line appeared to show him where to go and he started walking, weaving in between the vast machines of the lethal trauma synthesis manifolds. Robots had started crawling over it, replacing blown out servers in the racks. Everywhere he looked there was dozens of robots that looked to Herod like crabs or spiders crawling over the server racks.

"Because I don't want to lock out the brood carrier signal. It's providing stability across systems that kept crashing prior to the brood carrier signal leaking across the system," Sam-UL said. He gave a low sound of pain. "The next wave is coming, Herod."

"Call me Harry, Sam," Herod said. "How many?"

"Fifty thousand in this batch. Refining facility orbiting Saturn. There's Pubvians, Treana'ad, Gulteknas, all mixed in. How? How did they manage to upload all of these people? I don't even think half of them had SUDS installed. They're all shocked to be here," Sam said. He gave a choking laugh. "Most of the non-Terrans are shocked their in the system."

"Where to now, Sam?" Herod asked. "Stay with me, Sam. Focus on my voice."

"Back to the Mat-Trans," Sam said. He gave a laugh that was brittle, jagged, the sound a man barely holding onto the ledge makes.

Herod kept talking. Not about anything in particular, just about whatever he could think of. He told Sam what it was like growing up at the Deneb Digital Sentience Foundry, talked about his first trip to TerraSol, talked about his teachers in university.

Herod could tell it was helping.

Sam only raved, screamed, and cried a little bit compared to the last time.

The mag-lev slowed to stop, letting Herod out onto the platform. Human and Treana'ad and Pubvian shapes made of pale white energy flickered back and forth, struggling with one another, cowering in front of each other.

Killing each other.

Herod watched carefully. His arm still burned with cold fire from the last time he had been grazed by the phasic energy residue but he'd learned.

There...

The gap formed just as it had last time and Herod ran through it, dodging out of the way of a Treana'ad who was backing up from a half dozen Pubvians who had whitish 'blood' running out of their jaws, skirting a pair of Terrans fighting, each using a bladearm snapped off a Treana'ad, and managing to get around a Treana'ad beating another Treana'ad to death with a severed human arm.

He managed to get through, stopping on the catwalk. He held onto the rail, bending over, gasping for breath, coughing up more of the thick clear fluid.

It tasted like regret.

Wally rolled up next to him, the little maintenance robot's tracks clattering. It beeped with sympathy and patted his leg as he finished hacking up the thick fluid.

"Sam, are you there?" Herod gasped.

Only sobs answered him.

Herod kept following the blue line, starting to talk again. Telling Sam about the time he had visited the Hate Anvils of Mars. How he had been forced to wear a protective frame and a protective suit as well as heavy psychic shielding. How the chrome warsteel coated mantid skulls adorned pillars next to the skulls of other species that the Terrans had defeated.

Finally Sam was quiet for a long moment as Herod walked down the hallway just past the heavy security gate of the Personnel Mat-Trans System Facility for the section of the layer that Herod was in.

"I've got the Mat-Trans codes for the Phasic Energy Facility of Alpha Layer," Sam said after a moment. "Be careful there, Herod, it's the oldest layer and the largest, it also has no layers between the surface of the layer and the anomaly that is the partially fired Big Bang here," he gave a sharp giggle. "Don't look directly at the sun, Herod, it'll be bad for your eyes."

"Describe bad," Herod said, waiting for the heavy foot thick door to raise.

"Your eyes might become a new sentient life or you might end up seeing all of eternity," Sam said.

"Again," Herod answered.

Sam laughed then suddenly stopped. "Harry, remember how I told you that there was some serious black ICE in here?"

"Kind of of," Herod admitted.

"You should see the ICE around the Mat-Trans system," Sam laughed again, trailing off into sobs for a moment before erupting in loud riotous laughter for a moment.

"It's pre-attack, right? You're a hacker, supposedly the best one out there," Herod said. He paused, leaning against the wall, gasping for air again.

Sam laughed again. "Harry, I'm a standard hacker. Nobody uses ICE any more. Well, they do, but not like this stuff."

"Explain it to me then," Herod said. He knelt down on one knee, bowing his head, hacking up more of the clear fluid.

"Modern Intrusion Countermeasure software, ICE to use the slang, is more are less advanced firewalls, design theory, hardware security, stuff like that. It's been changed over the eons, but its relatively the same, just more advanced now," Sam said. His voice was firming up, steadying out. "But this stuff, this stuff is crazy."

"Crazy how?" Herod lifted his face plate, spitting out more of the fluid, while Wally patted his back.

"Imagine taking a high end, cutting edge warboi, now arm him to the teeth, give him full roaming access to the system and allow him to devote computing power to operating outside his home system. Make him able to disrupt sentience's vital processes," Sam said. "Now, armor and arm him up, make sure he's got the ability to toe to toe with anyone who attempts to penetrate the system."

"Is that even legal?" Herod asked.

"No. It hasn't been. Every now and then people try to legalize it, or it gets legalized, but an ICE, well, ices someone," Sam said. "Or it tears into rival corporations or governments computer system, even goes so far as to attack people."

Herod spit a few times and slapped his faceplate closed, slowly standing up.

"OK, and?" Herod asked. Wally was patting his leg as he slowly got his breathing under control.

"The Mat-Trans system is guarded by some serious intrusion counter-measure VI's. We're talking barely a step down from you or me. Heavy armor, autonomous attack defense programs," Sam said. "We're talking real old, real ugly stuff. The portals into the Mat-Trans computer system are all guarded by at least a dozen of them, not to mention lesser ICE. White and gray. Not mobile systems, these ones stay at the portal. All of them have the portals rigged with dead man's switches. You'd have to Uncle Leo your way past them."

"All right. Sam, you're drifting, why is it important?" Herod asked.

"Because, Harry," Sam said quietly, almost whispering. "The Mat-Trans went off about two hours ago. It looks like the damaged file I found in the buffer and sent for repair was a transmission engram. Since it used the Personnel Transport System rather than the Materials Handling System, I have to assume it's a living person," Sam's voice held a slight edge. "Which means..."

"I'm not alone in here," Herod said softly.

"Exactly," Sam said.

"Who is it? Do you know?" Herod asked. He found his own stride slowing, taking smaller steps.

"I can't get into the Mat-Trans System's computer records or any other system," Sam admitted. "Even the smallest port is heavily guarded. I might be able to access the cameras by going through the security system main systems."

"Shit," Herod paused. "Sam, I'm right at the doors to the main transmission chamber," Herod said. "I open this door, I'm inside."

"With you in there, I can probably get in simpler," Sam said. "I'm going to ride sidecar on you through the biometrics monitor system. If I get a chance, I'll jump to one of the internal systems if it will let me reestablish a gateway back to the main system that isn't guarded by that nasty ICE."

"I take it you don't want to try to take it on even from inside their own systems?" Herod asked. He had a vague idea of how hacking could be accomplished, mainly from popular media.

Sam laughed. "No, Harry, I'm not taking on this stuff. See, a lot of the then high tech systems look like they were proprietary to various nation states that existed before the Mantid attack."

"I thought TerraSol was unified back then," Herod said. He leaned against the wall, waiting for a dizzy spell and the pain in his knees and back to retreat.

"Harry, TerraSol has never been unified, despite what the history docuvids show. They're almost proud of that fact," Sam said.

"I thought that the different nation-states were more a return to historical primitivism for tourism," Herod admitted.

"Yeah, that's what they want you to think," Sam said, his voice gaining an edge.

"Who? Who's they?"

Sam laughed, trailing off into giggles. After a moment his voice came back, firmer this time. "The Ancients. Age of Paranoia Ancients. They built this, crafted TerraSol in some strange image after the Mantid Attack was repulsed as some kind of echo of this, of the Ancients who built this."

The giggles slowed and stopped.

"So you're not going to try to get past the ICE?" Herod asked.

"Not a chance. It's old Age of Paranoia stuff. Hamburger Kingdom stuff, before they took the Hamburger King moniker," Sam answered. "Look, be careful. Whoever is in there, they might be from the Great Glassing. They might have tried to escape through the Mat-Trans and got stuck in the buffer. The time-stamp was completely garbled."

"Which means they might be a Screaming One," Herod guessed.

"Correct," Sam said. "All right, I'm hooked in, past the security. It'll think I'm a biometric monitor program for high security VIP's."

Herod sighed. "I'm ready."

"Go."

Herod reached forward and pressed the hand-scanner, waiting for it to log him. It took a moment before it beeped and the door slid open. A foot and a half thick of warsteel high security door.

Which made him chuckle.

Age of Paranoia indeed, he thought to himself. That thick of a door, inside a high security facility, located on a high security layer, built around a hidden and secrecy shrouded Big Bang event, located in an unregistered and concealed dimension.

The Ancients loved their security. Their paranoia was almost sexual, he thought as he stepped inside the square room and waited. The door closed behind him, locked, then he put his hand on the scanner plate. When the lenses rotated out, he put his face shield against them and waited for his eyes to be scanned. The system thought to itself for a long moment, then the lights went green and the door slid sideways into the wall.

Herod headed down the hallway toward the primary mat-trans and its control room.

The corridor felt icy for some reason, the lights seemed to buzz above him, and the shadows were close and twisted.

When he opened the door to the control room just before the master control room that the mat-trans chamber sat against the far wall he walked in, acting like nothing was wrong, like there wasn't a naked woman leaning against the far set of computer work station consoles.

She looked to be a youthful middle age, her body unmarked by scars or imperfections, her features sharp and severe but still pretty, her eyes were gun-metal gray and her karencut black hair was sweaty and slightly disheveled.

Herod's onboard systems gave her a scan as soon as he saw her.

HEART: 245 bpm

BLOOD PRESSURE: 240/130

WARNING! CARDIAC ARREST IMMINENT

"Allo," she said. Her next words were nothing but gibberish to Herod.

Hang on, she's using a pre-Glassing dialect of Iron Fence, of Franz-Swass, Sam printed across Herod's retinas. Loading a translation program.

A thin drop of pinkish fluid ran from the woman's ear and she wiped it with one finger, looking at it for a moment, then reaching out and licking her fingertip.

She babbled more at Herod, picked up what looked to Herod to be a pack of cigarettes and an old style flint and fluid lighter, and walked out of the room, toward the mat-trans chamber itself.

"Follow her," Sam said.

"Wait," Herod said. He moved forward to where the human woman had been standing. He'd seen her do something with her hands, slide something behind the thick old style liquid crystal display monitor. He looked behind the monitor and saw the strangest thing.

It was a standard VR visor, old style goggles type. Only the side had been popped open and several data cables and wires attached to it as well as the dip-switches having been altered. He lifted it up and looked at it carefully, keeping the solid white of the display away from him.

It was flashing tens of thousands, millions of times a second, the display part of the goggles overclocked and running fast enough that the goggles were hot in his hands. Images were moving so fast that even as a digital sentience with high quality optics he couldn't see more than one out of every fifty or hundred of the images and then at a weird angle.

His head started to ache.

It suddenly cut off, the displays going dark.

"What was that, Sam?" Herod asked.

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like that before. What was she doing with it?" Sam asked.

Herod dropped it back behind the flatscreen. "Watching it for some reason."

Herod looked around the room slowly, bringing up his memories of how it had looked when he passed through it the first time with Wally.

A dozen keyboard's positions were shifted. The monitors with them tilted slightly. The six computers in the center of the concentric U's had been shifted, the monitors and the keyboards out of place, the chairs moved.

"Could she get into any systems if she didn't have the passwords or logins?" Herod asked.

Sam snorted. "Doubtful."

"Is there a chance her login and password would still work?" Herod suggested.

Sam was quiet for a moment. "Possibly."

Another long moment passed while Sam spoke to someone that only he could see. The lights dimmed and came back up.

"Herod, there's a massive power draw, like someone just used the mat-trans," Sam said. "Damn, the system is completely locked down even inside the facility."

"Could she have left?" Herod asked.

"Scanning for any identical power draws. No. None. Not unless she put herself back into the emergency buffer or something," Sam said. "Herod, I've got another batch incoming. Nearly a quarter million. I don't know how long I'll be gone."

"Take care of them, Sam, I'll figure this out," Herod said. "I'm in what's left of a hazardous environment frame wearing hazardous environmental armor, she's a naked Terran. I should be fine."

"I'll be back," Sam said.

Herod felt suddenly lonely and reached down to pat the top of Wally's head. Wally responded by hugging him.

The door opened and the naked human female stood in the doorway.

Heart Rate: 55 bpm

Blood Pressure: 125/82

Herod frowned as she stood there for a moment, almost as if she was posing. She put the metal cased lighter in between her teeth and bared her teeth in a smile. She slowly peeled the cellophane top off of the pack of cigarettes, opened it, tore the foil free and tossed the foil to the side. She withdrew one cigarette, turned it upside down, and put it back in the pack. She then took out a cigarette, closed the pack, replaced the lighter with the cigarette, then lit it.

Herod frowned. The movements were smooth, practiced, as if it was something she had done for a long time.

She exhaled a cloud of bluish-white smoke.

"So who are you?" She asked in perfect Confederate Standard. "Maybe you can help me, I think I might be lost."

Herod nodded slowly.

"You didn't work here?" he asked. He watched his retinal display, which was currently running her biometrics to detect if she was lying or telling the truth.

"No," she said. "I was in transit and everything seemed to stutter and get really weird, then I was here."

Herod looked at her closely. Her hair didn't hide a datalink, he couldn't see any cybernetics. She looked perfectly normal.

TRUTH his implant stated.

"Can you help me get somewhere where I can put on some clothing?" she asked.

TRUTH still flashed.

Herod suddenly wished Sam was present.

"Sure. Follow me. We can stop by a survival locker on the way," Herod said. He crossed over, opening the door to the mat-trans chamber. It had only three doors, the one he was standing in, the one on the left that led to a preparation room, and the one of the right which was a receiving room.

Mat-trans was normally only done after the person being transmitted had been sedated.

Herod moved over, looking at the console that Sam had taught him to use in the four previous mat-trans control rooms. He carefully brought up the menu, aware the Terran woman was staring at him and the screen, and punched in the code for the destination he wanted.

"Do you need sedated?" Herod asked as he watched her sit down, her back against the wall.

"No," she shook her head and smiled.

TRUTH

"All right," Herod said. He closed the door. For a second there was nothing but a building whine, then darkness.

He had no idea he had left behind twenty other versions of the woman across from him.

But that was OK, they were all dead, their brains completely fried.