I Am Aqueous

I Am Aqueous - Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I strained and strained, but I couldn’t even make a sound. The sight was petrifying. There were more than fifty faces looking at me. Each person looked like they were from a different country. Blacks, Whites, Orientals, people from the Middle East, people from every corner of the globe, sat their watching me, with their heads nodding or their hands rubbing against each other. They each had a bodyguard and a huge briefcase.
I still couldn’t speak, so Dr. Ried broke the silence with a large, echoing voice, as if he were God. “Gentlemen, gentlewomen. You’ve been hearing my proposals and have been laughing at me for many years now. You thought that Project Sol or Aqueous was merely an urban legend, denied by the American government. I am as sure that it exists here today, in front of you as I am sure you won’t be disappointed.” He paced over to me. I was still frozen in fear and confusion. He stuck his hand inside me and pulled out a handful of my liquid. He held it up for everyone to awe and then he smashed it on the ground. Instinctively I moved that small mass back to my foot and then back into my body, I couldn’t do anything else besides that.
He continued, “It is capable of shaping to any form, capable of seeing the visible light spectrum and well more than 360 degrees of the infrared spectrum. It is exempt to pain, endurance, food and water, sleep and destruction. It can shape itself to fit the situation perfectly, whether it be destroying an entire army, fleeing from the scene at superhuman speeds, tactical espionage or at ease receiving orders from its master.
“You have witnessed through light enhanced cameras, the destructive power of the Project. You are seeing right now, the truly unique anatomy of it. But the best part of it is the secret ingredient.” He held up a small canister with a white powder inside. He further explained, “If you didn’t think the liquid was genius, then feast your eyes on one sample of the Project Sol, Artificial Intelligence solute. Fully programmable. Possibilities range from dedicated, perfectly loyal slaves for any purpose, fully mapped human minds with memories attached, to the ultimate killing machines.”
Everyone in the audience was ecstatic and couldn’t control their feral minds. Dr. Ried further continued, “The AI still can be programmed for anything. They can be programmed to operate vehicles, be suicide bombs, fly planes, guide missiles. All that needs to be done is dissolve the AI into the liquid and it will operate the liquid perfectly, whether you actually have the liquid sculpted as a plane or as a door, a bunker, a satellite, a nuclear missile; there’s no end to the possibilities.”
I was still in complete shock. Was Dr. Ried selling me? Did he lead me into a trap? He finished with one final sentence, “I’ll start the bidding at one billion for each sample,” He flipped a switch and a huge, gigantic wall shifted to the side, exposing a seemingly endless hallway of giant canisters, each containing another me! “Each sample is equipped with the standard shape, like Aqueous right here, and the standard overall obeidience AI, each doing exactly what you say, but lack the will power of a human or the advanced expertise you’ve just witnessed. I will take questions before we begin the bidding.”
Every hand shot up and question after question were answered. For example one asked about how the default shape worked and Dr. Ried fully explained that any new form or how fast or hard I make appendages, it all relies on the AI’s concentration and will power. Another question was if multiple AIs could be dissolved and Dr. Ried respond that yes, but only one can control at the same time. Dr. Ried answered many questions. He lied about some and exaggerated others, but each answer, good or bad, didn’t stop the people from wanting my plague.
The questions stopped and Dr. Ried got a representative to collect the bids as an auction. Dr. Ried grabbed my hand and leaded me to the back of the room full of other Project Sol successes. I gazed around me in some sot of entranced awe and confusion. I saw the other versions of myself, standing lifeless in tubes connected to the wall. There were three rows each wall and who knew how many columns. There were hundreds of them. What was going on? I thought I was the only one.
When we reached the back, Dr. Ried turned to hear the buyers scream their bids. “Five for 20 billion!” “Ten for 75 billion!” “60 for 250 billion” “100 for point eight trillion” The numbers kept rising to amounts beyond all sanity. Dr. Ried smiled at the chaos he’s profiting from.
He turned back to me, while I still stared, frozen in confusion, gazing into space. Dr. Ried explained to me in a quiet voice, “It has finally happened. My time has come.” He pulled out his remote, the one that was to destroy me and asked, “I have one last task of you. Do you see that button right there, on that console? Press it.”
Barely conscious, I turned my head to the computer console and saw a big red button, with the words, “Activate life-support” above it. However, there was a switch, encased in glass with bigger letters, saying, “Self-destruct.” I looked back and forth, still dazed about what was going on. Finally, I gathered enough focus to turn around and demand, “I’m doing anything until you tell me what the hell is going on!”
He was stunned a little, but eventually realized that I should know. He took off his glasses and laughed. I got in a fighter’s stance and lowered my eyebrows. “Tell me!” I shouted.
He continued to laugh while he explained, “I am such a genius! I am the smartest being on this planet! And you are the most naïve and ignorant one.” He threw the remote up and down and teased me; trying to give me a visual at how much time was left.
I demanded, “What are you talking about?”
He slipped his glasses on and spoke with his limbs all floppy from the happy disaster he has become. “Why do you think I chose you? Why do you think I blocked out Sol?”
I was a little nervous, but tried to keep the power in the conversation, “You needed my advanced thinking. You needed me for stealth; Sol wasn’t good for that.”
He chuckled a little, shaking his head. He stared at the ground blankly, as if remembering the whole sequence of his words when he explained. He revealed, “I chose you because I knew you would completely disobey me.”
I didn’t understand, “What?”
“The whole time you’ve been doing exactly what I’ve wanted you to do. I asked you to find information, but I knew you’d go and destroy it. I don’t know your reasons for hating Project Sol, but I knew you wanted it to stop however possible.”
I was half speechless, “You knew that? H-how?”
He smiled, “Oh some simple psychology, that’s all. Your AI was designed like it was and Sol was quite the opposite. So I knew you’d have the opposite of its goals and personality, because what kind of emergency counter AI would you be if you weren’t?”
“Why couldn’t you use Sol for…”
“Because you could sneak, you could improvise, you reach into your heart making you invincible to your cause and that, unfortunately for you, was mine goal too.”
I peeped, “I destroyed information about how to revive Project Sol. You wanted that?”
He laughed angrily, “Of not! Does it look like I needed help reviving Project Sol? This facility has been intact and fully functional since 1981 when it was constructed. I already know how to make your liquid; I know how to create your AI. I know the exact number of molecules for each chemical to make anything in your body and mind.” He pointed to his head, “It’s all in here and it always will be.”
I spoke, barely audible, “Then why did you send me to those places?”
He laughed again, “The same reason I put you in charge! This building has been the entire Project Sol headquarters the whole time. Body and Soul are each divisions and each a few floors.” He stopped being so flimsy and prepared himself to explain a large story. “Back during the Cold War, the United States and Russia were in an arms race with nuclear weapons. The truth is, their war was entirely staged! The Korean War, Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, all the wars and conflicts were started to keep people buying televisions, radios, newspapers and bomb shelters, but mainly to keep their true secrets hidden. The USA and the USSR were complete allies and had a plan of global domination, where they would merge into one empire and take over the world with their new weapons research. They had mastered the hydrogen bomb in 1946 and this facility was their new weapons lab.”
I didn’t understand, “Where do I come in?”
He shook his finger, “You come in, in the early mid 1970’s when Mr. Rutherford initiates the most secret project of the already most top secret square kilometer in the world, Project Sol. He was only a business man; no scientific background in that man, but he hired me and a group of other scientists who were risking to get caught, in order to accomplish his goal.”
“What was his goal?”
“He never told anyone. I even got his diary, when I killed him and it said nothing about his goals.”
I tried to act surprised, “You killed him! Why?”
He growled, “He didn’t realize the potential of the Project. He stared off into his disturbed space and dreamed, while there was great money to be made!” He shrugged, “He was smart though. The Project was very expensive and since we were acting in secret, he needed a lot of extra funds. He managed to learn some disturbing information about the President and the secretary of defense, and had them pay huge sums of money to stay quiet. He also used the whole facility as a way to get blackmail; stay silent and not tell the people about the whole USA and USSR conspiracy. He got away with a lot, but look at me now, I’m making trillions by the bid!”
I got angry again, “Hey! You trailed off! You didn’t tell me why you wanted me to destroy everything in those other labs!”
He laughed, “Oh yes. My genius! I was about to say that when other scientists saw our successes and the profitable opportunities, they decided to leave and start their own Project Sols elsewhere. However, the whole AI and liquid chemical structure was a complete fluke, an accident and once we had discovered both formulas, we realized how easy it was to make more. So in other words, it was impossible to make you if you didn’t already know how.
“The rogue scientists soon learned this and had complete failure after failure and they didn’t get anywhere for decades. When you were finally created and Sol gave us some combat data, those scientists were completely frightened. They couldn’t make a successful prototype anywhere near in time and they predicted that a war might brew, so they did the only thing they thought logical, they started developing a counter-agent.”
“Counter-agent?”
“Yes, a liquid that could corrode either your liquid or AI into nothing, thus making the Project’s future, quite unprosperous.”
It hit me like steel bars trapping me in a bad dream. “You can’t mean…”
He laughed at his genius again. “You’ve been doing exactly as I hoped Ozzy! The whole time you’ve been destroying every last piece of information about an effective weapon to destroy Project Sol! Whatever tidbits of data about your liquid or AI can never reach other hands, completing my monopoly, all because you destroyed everything. Project Sol is now perfectly and permanently in my in control and invisible!”
I sunk my head completely at the total fool I had been! The whole time, the whole time! I had been helping him to not just revive Project Sol, but to completely make it thrive! I screamed, “Damn it!”
He laughed, “The best part of it all, is that all these fools, my competition in the upcoming World War 3, will be completely broke! They will keep buying and buying and I’ll keep producing and producing. They’ll war and war and by the time they realize who the real enemy is, I will have an infinite army of invincible soldiers and with my superior intellect, I would have easily made the counter-agent myself. If they send humans, Project Sol will destroy them, if they send Project Sol, my counter-agent will destroy them. By 2050, I will have 100% of the world, the money, the people and anything else I desire.”
“But you’ll be dead by then. You’re practically 70!”
He laughed his most evil laugh and explained with an unearthly sinister smile, “Here’s the cherry on the cake! Despite how secret and black Project Sol was, it gets deeper. Rumor says that Soul was working on a method to turn a human’s mind and all his memories in one of their solutes and dissolve it into Body’s liquid. Resulting in immortality!”
“But there’s the counter agent! There’s that stuff you dissolved in me that can kill me!” I cried.
“No one will be able to stop me. I’ll have the grandest army and the highest security and it will only get better by the second. Soon the entire human race will be destroyed off and nothing will be left, but eternal power and infinite slaves at my infinite fingertips.”
He laughed again. He didn’t stop laughing. I only stood there, growing angrier and angrier at this monster’s insanity! It was impossible to stop him past this point. My time to betray him was now!
He finished laughing and polished his remote. He said only, “Brand new batteries. Time for you to go.” He pressed the button. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Again. He took out the batteries and made sure they were in right. He pressed, but I wouldn’t die. He saw his whole vision shatter before his eyes. He looked at me and pleaded, “I was like a father to you.”
I explained as I slowly coiled hundreds of tentacles around every body part he had, “My father is dead. My imaginary father isn’t real. My imaginary mother isn’t real and my real mother has betrayed me with her lies just like you have. I have no family; I’ve lost all sympathy. Every single one of you Project Sol people, including Rachael have betrayed, lied to, deceived and even had my heart broken by you. My only family now is the planet Earth and everyone on it, except for Project Sol. You are my exact opposite.”
His bones were breaking and his vein popping. I felt every ounce of pain through my tentacles and it was the best feeling ever. He squeaked, “How?”
I answered, “A lie. Rachael was my ally and took the third solute out, but she’s gone now, just a liar like you. I even pity these terrorist for buying weapons compared to you.” I extended my tail backwards and smashed the self-destruct glass. “Project Sol is gone.” I pulled the switch. Dr. Ried smiled and shook his head, just seconds before I strained his body through the very few cracks amongst my tentacles. Dr. Ried was nothing but goo and everyone fled from the red lights and sirens. But something wasn’t right; Dr. Ried might have the last laugh.
Amongst all the screams of people, leaving through the elevator, I heard the voice of a computer explain, “Self-destruct sequence activated. Five minutes until detonation.” Five minutes, I thought, that was a lot less than the one in Cuba! I noticed that the whole facility was crumbling and catching fire, weakening itself for the bigger bombs to finish the job in five minutes. I knew that my work was done here, so I raced down the hallway towards the elevator. I leapt of the stage and landed on the floor where so many chairs lay on their sides. Further down the hall I reached an elevator, it seemed different. It most likely was the elevator from the oilrig to the facility. Dr. Ried was so crafty. I ignored him for a little more as I cut through the door and started to kick off the elevator doors and climb higher.
I had leapt back a forth for about 10 seconds or at least a 25 stories. However, my speed wasn’t quick enough, because a small, but large charge exploded above me and way below me, meaning the entire elevator shaft was crashing to the floor only seconds later. I couldn’t make the jump; too much shrapnel prohibited me from doing so. So with a thundering crash, like I’ve never heard before, I was right back where I started with no real place to go.
“Four minutes and thirty seconds until detonation.” The voice updated. I didn’t have much time. I dashed towards the other elevator in hopes that I could leap around that, but before I reached it, I saw something frightening. Every single canister with another me in it was glowing a deep red. I stopped to watch. It wasn’t the light from the alarms; the liquid was emitting its own light. A giant pillar smashed through the ceiling and what seemed to be fire, sparks and sand fell to the ground.
Just as I was going to turn away I saw a small quantity of liquid, also fall from the ceiling. It was the strangest thing, but my liquid seemed to be drawn to it. I had full control of myself and I could have walk away easily, but I became uncontrollably curious. I ran over to this liquid and saw a white pile of my liquid, no more than a liter in quantity. My curiosity continued to grow and even when the voice announced that there was four minutes left, I stood there still. I even picked it up. I made a cup with my right hand and scooped it up. I looked at it. It reminded me of some small creature that had died. So peaceful, so cute, but unfortunately, so lifeless.
But to my great joy, I saw it bubble. It was alive! I was happy for it. But as fast as I grew sympathetic for it, I became afraid and over-whelmed. The liquid was starting to coat my arm. It was coating my arm like it was its purpose, to consume. It was my nightmare, the last night of my fake life. I threw it off me just in time. It was my prototype, it was my first host.
I saw in paralysis, why I was in my second. The liter of white liquid could regenerate or completely generate more liquid! It defied all laws of matter, but it grew. It spread across the floor and up the walls. It was exactly like my nightmare! I couldn’t wake up this time, it was really happening! The prototype coated the glass canisters and broke them, merging and engulfing every molecule that it found possible to do so. If it couldn’t coat, then it would create more of itself to hunt for more.
It had connected with itself on the ceiling and was starting to flow through the cracks that the fallen pillar had created. However, the liquid was consuming far too slowly that way, so it generated more liquid. It spilled against me like a small wave, lapping my toes and consuming the rest of the hall. Then another wave hit me, at my ankles this time and more hallway was consumed. Another wave, to my thighs! It poured off the stage like a split swimming pool. Another wave reached my waist and the floor and chairs were being coated now. Whatever AI was in this liquid, it seemed to feel like it was in the most agonizing hunger and the only way to stop it was to create more of itself, in order to coat everything and eventually, every molecule.
I realized that the prototype was starting to like my soft and chewy texture, because I was liquid, so I leapt out of it as quickly and as hard as I could. I spread my feet into wide flat circles so I could stand on top of the monstrosity. However, the liquid didn’t want to let me go. It completely coated my feet and legs as soon as I leapt out. With quite the mental struggle, I managed to push my liquid onto the outside, coat its liquid extremely quickly, pull all its liquid into a ball in my hand and throw it away. I had to do this a few times in order to get ahead of its coating. I started to run away on its mass, but each step was made extra soft so I could fall into the mass and be consumed. If that wasn’t bad enough, it launched infinite numbers of tentacles to coil around every crevice and pull my down. It was the most mental straining thing I had ever done, staying super humanly strong to keep shape, run and fight off the tentacles and staying extremely thin so the tentacles could pull me down.
The loud speaker, being coated, explained, “Three minutes until detonation.” I had struggled long enough to see that the prototype had completely filled the floor we were in and I was momentarily going to hit the ceiling. At the speed the liquid was rising and how it was prohibiting me from doing any action, I couldn’t cut through the ceiling. I stood there, on top of the mass, trying to stab my way up, but I couldn’t get any decent penetration. I struggled to the point that the mass had generated enough liquid to fill the entire room and there wasn’t even any air left for it to create a tentacle, it all just groped onto me. I pushed away desperately and barely fended it off, but to my misfortune, it wasn’t even trying to coat me anymore. It was now generating, more and more liquid. The pressure kept on building and building and I struggled to keep my shape, so I didn’t explode into millions of tiny bubbles. The liquid just continued to grow and each miniscule crack that it made, relieved my pain for fractions of fractions of a second, as new liquid filled the space. Just at the point that it became unbearable, the sounds of cracking increased in repetition and volume; the pain was decreasing, but the prototype was generating at a maddening rate, as it was finally going to relieve more of its ever growing hunger.
The entire floor of the facility exploded and the pressure of the prototype’s liquid had significantly filled the new room already. Now that it wasn’t stressing, it had time to toy with me. It was all around me; I was completely submerged and had no hopes of reaching the surface.
It was like a god. It was everything. It controlled me. It moved me. It was me. It tossed me around and played with me. It was something that could have been as heavenly as torturous. It rubbed against me, it massaged me, it stroked me, it completely comforted me, but if I weren’t amorphous I would have also realized that it was also cutting me, slicing me, completely mincing me up into small bits and then coating my smaller pieces, repeating the process. A human would have been pleasured for a millisecond before he or she is completely sliced into paste. It was the wrath of infinite octopuses with infinite tentacles, with infinite dexterity all being controlled by one chaotic, sadistic mind. This was why Dr. Ried smiled. This is why, no matter what I do, Project Sol will rule the Earth, either by taking control of the Earth or by completely replacing it with this sinister liquid. This shouldn’t be the fate of Earth; I couldn’t do a thing about it.
The last thing I remembered was the muffled voice of the computer, counting and then a loud thunderous shake. I didn’t know what happened, but I knew I blacked out.