Lurranus 3 (Part 5/5)

Link to Part 4: https://www.abctales.com/story/trans4mer/lurranus-3-part-45

He paused and breathed in. If he intended to truly see his mission through, he would need to deal with the Mimas. The space station Liam was.
He couldn’t leave it. He had not say of knowing what the people there were like. Maybe they were all kind. Maybe none of them were. He didn’t know, and it wouldn’t do him any good to dwell on it. He needed to remove from the equation, to give humanity the best possible chance of survival. Because if they came back, they could ruin his plan.
But Liam.
Now, Liam, he was a good person. He had been there for John when no one else was. Had never given up trying to get through to him. And while John had never vocally thanked him for it, he had always appreciated the things his friend did for him.
So maybe this would be his chance to repay Liam. After all, he knew Liam was a man with little purpose. Caring for John had been the only thing providing meaning to his life. And now John was gone, and Liam was alone. Like he was before. A man without purpose. He had no family, no friends. It would be for the best. To end his meaningless existence. Give him the death he surely wanted.
And all the other people? They ones he had never known, and would never know? That was a shame. But he could live with it, if it was for the greater good. And for Liam’s good.
He had another memory stick, with contained a virus it’s creator had labelled “The Plague”. John created a message directed at the Mimas, with the heading “Important Developments below, please view documents”. The virus was contained within the fake document. One click on the document, and the virus would cause a near total shutdown. Of course, it wouldn’t effect the emergency oxygen supplies, but within a few days they would run out. He wished he could do that: Liam was a good friend, and deserved the privilege of a quick death. The mental struggle in the final days would be tough, but Liam was strong willed. And of course, as John knew too well, Liam lacked the will to end his tedious existence. John was doing both what was best for humanity and what was best for his friend. He breathed in slowly, and send the email. He looked up for a second, imaging the lights in the base going off in a distance, but looked back down when all he saw was the ceiling.
He repeated the process for any other bases. There were the Mars ones, and one on Titan. Silently, he prayed for the people. He could on pleasure it his actions, but when the alternative was the gradually degradation of everyone in Lurranus and the inevitable deaths of the people on other planets, it felt like he was only really bring forward the inevitable. Either everyone died, or almost everyone died and the people who lived, would make sure the species as a whole survived.
“Alert!” The machine suddenly said. John looked up. Initially it was unclear what the interruption was about, as the machine offered no follow up to its statement, but gradually another machine appeared. Surely summoned after the bald man had revealed his unlicensed return.
“Deal with it.” John said bluntly.
The two robots approached each other, and engaged in a fierce, silent standoff. They observed the structural design of one another. Looking for weaknesses, and attempting to position their own out of harms way. If their opponent was a human, they would be dead in seconds, but now, with both machines having the advantage of being able to make choices within a few milliseconds, to anticipate the others move, neither dared advance.
At that moment, two armed security appeared down the corridor. One had a short black mohawk, the other ginger hair. They were both average height. The security robot cared not for its own state, and seeing an opportunity to remove its opponent from the equation and to benefit the oncoming guards, stepped forward, and released a powerful electronic wave. John’s robot anticipated the move as soon as the other robots frame had begun edging forward, but the security robot had surged frantically onwards, jumping into the air and crashing into John’s robot, who had been unable to accelerate backwards at a greater speed. The pulse was extremely short range, and with the robots both in such close proximity, was an effective attack, as suddenly both machines fell. It would be five minutes before either got back up. John’s defence was gone, the door was open and the security guards approached. John reached for his pistol.
The guards entered. “Don’t move!” they yelled. Then they stopped. They recognised John, and John vaguely recognised the two. Not so much as to be attached, which was good.
The two spared a look of confusion at each other, their guns pointing down ever so slightly. Maybe it was the scars, maybe his sudden reappearance or just the fact it was their former boss that was the security breach. Of course, they knew John only as their boss, and a highly intelligent man. They knew nothing of his service in the War. He had killed, watched as others were killed, and had just survived death with an ugly scar on his chest to show for it. They had made a major oversight.
So whilst the two looked each other, John took action. He shot the first man in the head, whilst still on his chair, and as the seconds guard began to move, promptly finished him off with a bullet right between his eyes. The gun jammed signally it was empty. The man’s head recoiled backwards, and he slowly slid down. They both died without a word, or a grunt of pain, which provided John some comfort. They looked at peace, but there were two harsh blood stains on the white walls, and blood continued to seep out their wounds as they lay on the floor. They seemed decent men, and John took no pleasure in their deaths, unlike Oaktrus would. He would do right by them, and Liam, by finishing his mission, and creating a better world in their name.
The computer beeped. It had selected the candidates, based on its extremely strict selection criteria. Eighteen. It was a low number, and there were more they enough bodies. It would work. John ordered the robots to begin extraction. It didn’t matter if the people went into the right bodies. After all, if they was to be more than one copy of these people, at least one would be in a body that wasn’t their own. It would be better if they were all in different bodies. Strange, no doubt, but it prevented them from feeling there was a “fake” and “real” version of each person. He ordered the process to begin, and ordered the candidates to be delivered to one of the six former Empirius bases where, from the comfort of Mimas, he had ordered the necessary tools to be sent, using the stolen file of Noel Davidson to backdoor some of the systems more basic capabilities.
And so it began. John breathed in deeply, satisfied he had completed his task.
For these people, the people his algorithm had determined to be the best people in Lurranus, would now spread across the earth, wherever there was an Empirius facility and supplies waiting and would be tasked with rebuilding the earth.
He regretted that Lurranus hadn’t worked. It was a well intended work that his younger self had devoted himself to, consumed by the belief it would fix all the words problems. He fought that, with the terrorists of Oaktrus now dead, the world was full of good people, who deserved a life in paradise. But he was mistaken. Evil still existed in the hearts of men. It was human instinct, to trample over others for personal gain, and in many cases, to enjoy it. And Lurranus remained much like the real world. An imperfect place, with imperfect people. Full of the abuse he had worked so hard to purge, despite the system‘s efforts to combat these problems.
So the solution was to purge the virus that was evil, to save the good. It was like Noah’s Ark again. And the inescapable truth was that one day this whole process would have to be repeated. And likely another time. Maybe even an infinite amount of times. But at least John was guaranteeing the good people at least a dozen generations of peace and prosperity.
John would have preferred to leave the good people in Lurranus, and remove only the people like Noel Davidson, but his associates at Intrexal had prevented his, so John had had to resort to this alternative. And, truthfully, they couldn’t remain in Lurranus because, ignoring the way their minds were slowly unravelling, they couldn’t reproduce in Lurranus. There couldn’t continue their lineages, or ensure the creation of new people. In some cases, people had wished for children, but but the creatures they deemed their offspring weren’t really their children. Just blank canvas they evolved according to the world around them. Lines of code, nothing more. Maybe that was all children were, impressionable creatures, but the things created in Lurranus were not truly human. They didn’t have the animalistic traits present in ever humans. Essentially, they were a different species.
The short answer was, as humanity remained in Lurranus, it slowly died. It could only survive, or reproduce, in the real world. For both those reasons, and the fact it was now impossible for John to make such massive changes to Lurranus now Intrexal had dismissed him, meant this was the best idea.
He thought of Liam again, and thanked him. Prayed for him. He hoped a place like heaven existed, so Liam could be reunited, with Chris and with his brother and his family. He spoke of them a lot. John knew he missed them. He hoped he would be happy soon, as a whole group of guards ran towards him. They reached the door, and John heard a party of confused and agitated voices. He lowered his gun, and reached for something else. A detonator, designed to set of the charges in his bag. One man noticed with and suddenly the whole group retreated back from the door.
“Gentlemen,” he called out in as soothing a tone as possible. He knew deep down what he would say next would provide them no solace, but still, he saw no reason not to try. There were likely good men. Giving them some peace of mind was the lest he could do.
“I want you to know you’re dying for a better world. That one day, the survivors will look back, and they’ll say... those brave man...” He stuttered and stopped. At best, his words sounded like a series of cliches. At worst, he was further unsettling these men. He saw no reason to delay any longer.
He thought of Liam. He thought of the man before him. Then he thought of his own family, of Molly, Tom, Jessica. Maybe they would be reunited to. It was certainly a nice idea.
He pressed the button.
The ground shock up. The man exchanged shocked looks.
“Men, it was an honour to know...” John began. Then the whole complex began caving in. The walls crushed those men. John sat down, closed his eyes, breathed in slowly and awaited his fate.

Epilogue:
The twenty or so figures looked at the contents of the recently opened boxes grey Intrexal boxes.
One contained solely Cubes. One contained pick axes, and other mining tools. One contained some books, which on further examination were novels generally considered to be classics, as well as books about survival. Another had a few rare pieces of food, as well as seeds, and instructions of how to plant them.
Essentially, it was a massive survival kit, complete with various how-to guides.
The two Adam’s slowly walked out through the hole in one of the grey building’s walls.
They also were accompanied by another man, called Alex. He had approached them as they had awoke, informing them something terrible had gone wrong with Lurranus, and they had been given the prestigious task of building a new civilisation, having been deemed the best people for the job. On asking what exactly had gone wrong, the only response had been “a fatal programming oversight on the part of John Closer, with regards to the projects long term sustainability”.
In front of them was a wide expanse of open trees, which lined around several huge empty fields. There were no buildings in site. The land was empty, untouched. Neither Adam could understand how that could be. How a world so desperate for space could have missed even this small expanse of land.
The same way they couldn’t understand how they both had the same identity. The same memories. How they were the same person, but with slightly different bodies, which they both didn’t recognise as their own.
But, they both supposed it didn’t matter. It appeared that, for whatever reason, both had been taken out of Lurranus, and brought back into the real world. And not just them. There were other duplicates. Two Rachel’s, two Dan’s. There were twenty people, but only twelve different ones. Why were they the same? With the same memories? They supposed it didn’t matter. What did matter was survival. Something they, rather conveniently, had all the tools necessary for. Very, very conveniently.

-

Suddenly Noel was back in Lurranus, for the first time in a a year. Not that he knew that. For him, it had only been a second.
“-fucking thing! Get me out!”
He realised he had just left his previous environment and suddenly entered a brand new one.
Around him was an impossible amount of black. Everything out of the nothingness around him was that lifeless colour, with one exception. A single road, trailing off an infinite distance. The road itself was a light grey, with yellow lines, a pavement on either side, and bright overhead lights offset from each other at a constant distance. From these lights came a low buzz of noise. Beyond that, was only the darkness, and the stillness.
“The hell?” He breathed slowly. “What is this bullshit?”
He smarted running in one direction, going for a minute before he realised he was going nowhere. He stopped, pausing for a good few minutes, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. He started walking away and...
Suddenly he was in searing pain. He screamed, collapsing and flailing about. Them, suddenly the pain disappeared. The feeling of the road beneath him disappeared. Then the buzz of the lights disappeared, and Noel rose, feeling and hearing nothing as he did so, and somehow still moving. And then the sight of the road disappeared, and he saw nothing. Not even darkness. It was as if the concept of sight had never existed at all. However, the buzzing suddenly returned, rising to an agonising pitch before lowering to a near silent whisper over three seconds.
Then he was in the desert... in the forest... in pain... feeling nothing... everything. His brain exploded, and he felt everything, and it was back in one piece, and then it exploded again, and again.
Why did I kill them all? He asked himself. I’m a monster. I don’t deserve to call...
I WANNA BURN! I WANNA KILL EVRY LAST MOTHER FUCKER WHO EVER LIVED ON THIS FUCKING PLANET!
Why did I do that? He was innocent, he was fuckin...
BECAUSE THEY’RE NOTHING! BECAUSE I’M MORE THAN THEM! I DON'T CARE FOR THEM. I DON’T CARE FOR ANY-FUCKING-ONE!
ARGHHhhhhhHhhhhHhhhhhHhHnfjfkkfdlkxd!
Meanwhile, in the real world, Lurranus burned. The whole complex burned. And Noel, and everyone else in the system, endured their endless last few minutes of life, feeling everything and nothing and all the things in between.

-

“Hey folks, it’s the Captain again. We’re no closer to getting the power back, we’ve really no idea what happened. We’d send a message back to the base, but we can’t get anything to work. I don’t know. I’m really sorry for the inconvenience. Maybe it’s some kind of problem on Intrexal’s end, or a space related one of ours. We really don’t know. I’ll be sure to keep you posted over the next few hours. But don’t panic. I’m sure, with hard work and-or luck, the situation will be resolved. I’ve no doubt about it. Until that time, take care folks. Captain out.”

-

“Hello? Hello? This is Captain Donnely of the Empirius vessel The Lurranus, does anyone respond? We’ve...
We’ve got a lot to bring you up to speed on...”