There was a crash followed by a deaf noise, like two planets colliding in an otherwise eternally empty space. It was succeeded by the rasping sound of rock against rock, the sound that announced the birth of a mountain. Then everything became more organic. There was the echo of a fusion. Two cells coming into contact with one another. Followed by a union and with it a new being. Of the fire and chaos, there was nothing left but a timid murmur. The murmur of water.

Suzanne felt the rain on her face. She landed on the roof tiles with little grace and a thundering strike. The water trickled down the crumbling walls and through the sidewalks before disappearing into the overflowing sewers. A storm was brewing. It was coming from beyond the buildings, borne by a mass of gray and white clouds. Passers-by, a couple and their child, took shelter under a bus stop. An electric motorcycle overtake a cyclist, splashing a newsstand owner who was scrambling in the direction of a pedestrian crossing. In front of her, leaning against the door of the driver’s seat, someone was protecting themselves using a yellow umbrella.

The young woman met the gaze of the mysterious visitor. He gestured for her to follow him and she moved in his direction. She kept a distance of a few meters behind him until he entered a Parisian-style café. The establishment was crowded. Regulars reclined on the bar drinking their digestives while tourists and businessmen occupied the chairs and couches by the windows. The smell of cigarettes masked that of coffee.

One of the waiters welcomed her in, while several people in costumes glared at her as the visitor gestured to her from the end of the room. He was seated at a table, a Viennese chocolate in his hand. “Do you appreciate rain, Suzanne?” asked the man with a deep voice, the whipped cream above his drink shaking under the weight of his words.

“If I said that this isn’t the softest rain that I’ve ever felt in my life, that would be a lie,” she answered. “A shame that it’s not real.”

“Memories are always real,” continued her interlocutor after dipping his lips in the chocolate.

He was playing with her again. Since her awakening from the depths of her slumber, he had never once ceased with his riddles and his mysteries.

During this time, a waiter had brought her an identical drink although she hadn’t ordered one. She let it get cold. Sitting in front of her, the man kept starting into her eyes, but this time around he said nothing more.

“Do you know any others?” Suzanne asked then, bringing the cup to her lips.

“What others?” the man raised his eyebrows, stunned. His words sounded fake. He knew exactly what direction Suzanne was guiding him towards.

“Other definitions of reality?”

“Illuminate me.” Once again, the man was evading the question. His game was beginning to get tiring.

“Death. I mean, I died. I mean, we are inhabiting a program. And you are artificial intelligence.”

The man cracked a broad smile, revealing his white and perfectly aligned teeth. He did not seem surprised. Reclining against the back of the seat, he crossed his fingers before passing his tongue through his lower gums. “Yet, here we are.”

“Suzanne died a long time ago.”

“That is not quite true,” the man answered.

“What is your name?”

“Pierre-Marie Kanté.”

This name echoed in her mind, but it was a memory that preceded her recent conversation with Byte. Suzanne Courtois knew this name. She had already seen it in the old scientist’s files. He had met the young woman with whom she shared her memories. He was connected to the project Homo Novus. He had worked for Tom Lionheardt. This voice was the voice on the TV at Harvard. He was the man who was talking about transcendence. But the entity before her was not Pierre-Marie Kanté. The professor of the same name had died one thousand years before.

“Thomas Lionheardt was a crazy man,” he said as if he could read her mind. “That poor Suzy deserved better than that mentally unstable freak.”

“What was your relationship with her? What did you bring to Tom’s plans?”

“The circled triangle. The three aspects of the New Dawn. Each angle represents a project: Josias and its missiles, Lazarus and the transcendence, then finally Homo Novus and its clones. Everything was connected.”

“What do you mean?”

“The three Josias were meant to clean the surface of the Earth. Lazarus would permit the elites, or rather Thomas, to survive by burying himself in the limitless cyberspace, the sewers of the wonderful net…”

“As for the Homo Novus?”

The AI stopped to re-dip his lips in the chocolate and then continued: “Suzanne had been instructed by Thomas to develop these ungodly clones.”

“This had something to do with the dinner in that dump that is GrandLyon…”

“Yes. Then, later, Kanté had to complete the Lazarus project. During that time, he no longer worked for the Lionheardt. He was fed up with developing crazy AIs and military softwares for Tom. Unfortunately…” He paused. She had never seen an AI be melancholic. “But it’s Suzanne who first came to consult Kanté here, in Kinshasa. She needed help. She required an algorithm.”

“What type of algorithm?”

“Thomas wanted clones to possess uncommon abilities, skills that were impossible to obtain through what biology and genetics had to offer at the time. As a result, he recruited Suzanne to create top-notch androids. A perfect nanoscale mixture of neo-human and machine.”

“But then why the algorithm?”

“It’s rather complicated. Let’s say the first versions of the Homo Novus lacked stability. The problem was that in the very moment they opened their eyes, they were inundated with information that their brain—their new mind could not understand. The baseline learning algorithm for the classic AI could not process everything…”

“So you created a new learning algorithm relying on digitized real memories. Starting from Suzanne’s own.”

“Yes, you are as brilliant as she was! Her implant, and in fact, that of all the clones, updated their thoughts on internal servers of the secret compound. As a result, they nourished a colossal flux of data to this new generation of learning algorithms. From which she could build artificial human minds.”

“The male clones had Tom’s memories?”

“The male clones bearing Thomas’s image never reached maturity. Maybe because Tom’s own mind was too shattered to be … duplicated. Furthermore, few female clones survived the first trials.”

“So, I share a part of Suzanne’s mind. At least a copy of her memories.”

“As a result, a part of her… lives in you. Her memories have conditioned a great portion of your character. And this until the very last second of her life.”

“You don’t know me!” Suzanne interrupted him.

“Yes. Because, regardless—regardless, you are you. You are not Suzanne. Your choices, today, are yours,” he justified himself, finishing his chocolate before continuing: “As for me, as you have already figured it out, I am an AI. A rather limited AI one—sadly. But the underlying program is Kanté’s.”

“You are the learning process? An AI that transmits to other AIs.” This could only end badly.

Kanté displayed his broad smile systematically. Like all AIs, he was convinced he was superior, playing endless riddles with humans, riddles for which they always had an answer. But it remained a program. It only repeated what it had been taught. “Why do you think you are here?” Kanté resumed, ordering a slice of rhubarb tart.

“I remember transcending.”

Suzanne’s memories were in flux, but her last moments in the real world made her stomach clench. She did not have time to lose with Kanté’s game and yet, as long as she was a prisoner of his program, she had to submit to his too perfect smile that had never really existed.

“It’s a disagreeable experience imagining your mind torn into millions of billions of bits and pulverized through the messy and chaotic cyberspace.”

“Tom Lionheardt managed to do it.”

“No, that is impossible. A pure human mind could never.”

“How come?” Suzanne was surprised to see her theory disappear into thin air.

“Pierre-Marie worked the best part of his life on this matter and never managed to transcend a human mind,” confided the AI. “This didn’t prohibit Thomas from trying the last prototypes in China—without success.”

“What about me then?”

Kanté opened his arms. He was glowing with pleasure from the effect of his dramatic gestures. “There’s a reason the clones, with their latest generation synthetic bodies and minds, were the pride of Suzanne and Pierre-Marie!”

Outside, the storm rumbled still. It had doubled in violence since the program created by Pierre-Marie had mentioned transcendence.

“Did the conversations between Suzanne and Mr. Kanté lead to such headaches?”

“You have no idea!”

The drops that beaded against the glass were now black like ink. When Suzanne looked behind her shoulder, all the passers-by had also disappeared.”

“Ah, here’s something else,” Kanté’s program pursued. Lightning lit up the sky. The storm doubled in intensity until the tables of the inn began to vibrate. The rattling of the cutlery and the enamel cups soon became unbearable. Kanté was no longer smiling. His voice was weaker. He was also shaking. “There is a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“I don’t know. I was not conceived for this type of situation.”

“What situation? What were you talking about before the lightning?”

“Transcendence has been achieved. This is a first! But—it’s an unlikely consciousness. That of Thomas like the last time—no, it’s definitely not Thomas’s—other consciousness—bits. This would explain a lot of things.”

The rain was beginning to infiltrate the inside of the café. The ceiling, the walls, and the ground leaked the same black liquid as the rain outside and the décor absorbed it as if it were a sponge. The AI that looked like Pierre-Marie Kanté had disappeared.

“A human being in the machine?” said a faraway voice. The pan-African had left his place to a man with a pale face. He sat on a desk that had replaced the sofa of the café. A desk made of white wood that resembled those of the university that the old Suzanne had attended at one point in New England. “Ah no, it’s only you, Suzanne, the last clone.”

She had also worked with this man. A big man with brown hair. His eyes were no longer blue, but a menacing purple.

“Tom?” asked a voice that was not hers. It came from elsewhere. Or rather, from everywhere at the same time. It was no longer connected to this body lying on the fresh grass.

Suzanne took a deep breath to give herself courage. She should get up. But her lungs could not fill themselves with air.

She was now on the terrace of a restaurant. She was at a table with the same man still in front of her. Tom Lionheardt. He smiled at her.

“Tom? Where are we? This is no longer Kinshasa. Where is Pierre-Marie? I meant to say his AI—” Every word was a struggle to get out.

She floated towards nothingness, somewhere, but could never reach Tom. They were in front of each other, without really being there. The table, the chairs, and the cutlery had disappeared in the storm.

She was outside. Tom was standing next to her. It was evening. Except the cyberspace danced around them instead of stars. They reminded her of her early visions about planets and compounds. And yet, everything here was more infinite and resplendent. Galaxies of light extended everywhere in a silver-colored empty space marred only by the virtual highways beneath the net.

Made of cubes of glass and metal, the virtual infrastructure of the Lionheardt Corporation emerged from the void. Its gravitational force drew her in.

“Finally…” Tom had grabbed her hand. “It might have taken me a thousand years, but I did it.”

His skin crumbled and Suzanne let out a scream of horror. Her lover’s ashes dissipated around them and went to join the Lionheardt compound. Mauve tentacles sprouted from its surfaces and dragged towards the compound any hives and fragments that orbited too closely to its surface.

Like a famished monster, the entity gobbled everything that was in its way. The data of another underground center of the Lionheardt had rapidly become its next target.

“What is it doing?” Suzanne cried out.

A foul mouth opened in the middle of one of the faces of the Lionheardt. The other compounds were lost within forever, ground by a toothless jaw.

But it was Byte’s voice that finally responded to her: “Suzanne? Are you alive?”

“Byte!”

The technomancer appeared by her side. She had joined the cyberspace. “This thing, Suzanne… Thomas Lionheardt. In the very moment the connection was established between this secret compound and the outside world, an entity was born out of the billion fragments of data. And then, it began to devour the cyberspace. And it won’t stop growing!”

A hot breath escaped from the bowels of the monster and the cries of thousands of universes suffering in endless agony resonated from within. The information and programs imprisoned by this hell continued to suffer. She would have never thought this possible.

“When Kanté and Courtois built you, clone Novus, they could never have imagined that you would get so far. For a test tube residue, you do have the merit of being exceptionally stubborn.”

“Who is speaking? Lionheardt?” Byte roared. Her hair, which until then had been red, turned magenta and electrified with anger. Her tattoos radiated on her white skin.

“It’s too late, Suzanne.” Suzanne was pulled towards that tangle of compounds just as Byte was expelled farther away. “I am making my dream come true. And I was not going to let that miserable AI developed by Pierre-Marie ramble on any longer.”

“Who are you?” asked Suzanne who could no longer recognize the man she had known.

“A dream. A new and all-powerful entity merged with the cyberspace and the net. I am now beyond all the ineptitudes of the derisory human species.”

“Why wipe humanity from the map? Why all these hate towards humans, Thomas?”

“Thomas?”

His laughter resonated throughout the entire cyberspace before he materialized in the shape of an ash-made homunculus from one of the agonized surfaces of the Lionheardt. “Hatred? No, that is not the right word … it’s nothing but a simple precaution,” he continued. “Humans were so invested in their own doom. They wanted to bring the whole world down with them, and our dreams with it. But the situation has changed.”

The ashes grappled for support on one of the surfaces of the cube. They had begun to resemble a human being more and more. A human being the size of a giant.

Furious, Suzanne stepped on the last stray asteroid in her path. She was now floating in the emptiness with only her momentum as inertia. “So why all of this then?”

“Today, not a simple sapiens, nor a hacker, not even … a technomancer would dare challenge me. I am everything, free from the absurdities of the flesh or even metal. A new phase necessary to the human race, because I am still part human after all.” His jaw nonchalantly placed in the palm of his hand, the ashen Thomas followed with amusement the tiny Suzanne. “Nevertheless, I am not outside of matter. The servers and the infrastructure necessary to the proliferation of my code cannot be maintained on their own. Our probes and satellites have proven it, information can travel through space and time, as long as it has the necessary resources or energy…”

As the entity pursued its explanatory monologue, Suzanne still attempted to make her way to it. Block after block, hive after hive. “Are clones meant for this?” she asked as she was aligning the different elements of the New Dawn project.

“The Novus? Yes. More trustworthy. More efficient. Human beings are too egocentric, they reflect only based on their needs and try to build a society like a castle with unequal stones. They are destined to die on their miserable planet. The Novus were meant to overcome this barrier, act for the common good and build together one single will.”

“Slaves, then? Your slaves. It’s so … sad.”

“Maybe. I am not saying that it’s sensible or even fair. I am announcing simply that based on deep reflection, reason has pushed me completely towards this solution. An improved and united species. A species truly capable of conquering the stars and facing the many challenges that we are going to encounter.”

Thomas … all of this just so you can lose yourself among the stars … even if it means leaving the planet and its inhabitants behind. No, that’s impossible!

Ashes Tom paused. His last words were bleating, as if he were moved by his own discussion. He finally resumed: “But we shall have to content ourselves with humans the time needed to get the rest of the program going. This … imperfect Inquisition is rather zealous. They don’t waste any oxygen, that’s for sure…”

With a gigantic hand, the corrupted Thomas enveloped Suzanne. Her attempts to free herself were in vain. She was now at the mercy of the monster. Through his transparent gray hand, she perceived his veins as they transported her code like the vital fluid of a being made of flesh and blood.

He squeezed her phalanges. The contraction of her muscles agitated her lines of code that marched at full speed. Tom floated among them. A Tom seemingly made of flesh and bone, a smile on his lips. In him, she recognized the person she had known. It was the teenager with whom she had fallen in love. Or at least, a fragment of his, transported in the stream of information.

“There,” the real Tom murmured, pointing with his fingers a yellow spot among the sea of data.

A yellow umbrella. How had it been able to travel in this manner … a program? A fragment of code.

“From an organic parasite you have now become an insignificant humanoid virus that is just as easy to destroy,” continued the devastating colossus with his metallic voice. “It’s ridiculous and yet so … extraordinary. Humans are so resourceful. It’s a pity, truly.”

Here, in the cyberspace, a human consciousness was nothing but a spectator. But according to Pierre-Marie Kanté, or rather his AI, she was no longer a human consciousness. She was synthetic.

“I am not a human being!” she screamed, burying herself in her jailor’s hands. Going up the flux of data, she dashed in the direction of the yellow umbrella that was coming her way.

“What are you talking about?” growled the entity, gripping the emptied corpse of the Lionheardt that now floated within its reach. “Really? Then why are you fighting me? Shouldn’t you be able to understand? Why don’t you join me? Let’s merge and let us go to discover the limits of the galaxy.”

And then what?

“Where did you go?”

Suzanne didn’t know either. Everything had happened so fast after she had grabbed what she now identified as a virus. “You are not Thomas. I know who you are.”

“Congratulations, you are undeniably less limited than the Suzanne Courtois I knew personally. I didn’t expect any less…”

“You are Jéricho!”

“In part. Why does it matter?”

“This changes that Pierre-Marie Kanté made you.”

Suzanne was now within a simulacrum of the blood system. Based on its shape, she must be inside an artery. Pummeling its energy, the umbrella shot straight towards its heart.

“What are you doing, good heavens?” howled Jéricho who had just realized her untimely presence in his breast. “Stop moving!”

Suzanne felt drained. She was struggling more and more to keep her hold on the program. They arrived next to the heart and the umbrella lost speed.

Then it came to a halt abruptly. Jéricho’s metal hand pierced his own body and imprisoned Suzanne once again, crushing her.

It’s over… I am nothing here…

But Byte’s intervention restored her hopes. Armed with a blade of light, she cut off the entity’s claws. Suzanne was freed from his grasp. “Byte! You are back!” Suzanne exclaimed.

The technomancer had already seized her by the arm. Crossing the cyberspace that was now succumbing to chaos, they hid inside a half-devoured red complex. “Congratulations. Here you are for the first time beneath the net! And what a baptism,” said Byte who was out of breath.

“What happened? I was certain I had him,” Suzanne cursed herself.

“Do you have the umbrella?” her companion asked. Outside, a deaf rumble announced Jéricho’s arrival. Suzanne tried to hand her the yellow umbrella, but this latter refused to unglue from her palm. “Hackers, does that mean anything to you?” Byte’s voice resounded from the guts of the red compound. Keeping the umbrella between her fingers, she had plunged her left hand in the cluster that was disintegrating little by little. Outside, Jéricho hammered the compound with his fists. “The group of hackers never existed. It was Pierre-Marie Kanté who had predicted breaches in the very heart of the conglomerate and in the heart of Jéricho himself. I managed to access his private server thanks to the many hard disk codes provided by Erol, it was a veritable gold mine…” The red compound broke into two. Jéricho appeared between the thousand pieces of debris. They were both like ants, at the mercy of a psychopath armed with a magnifying glass. “You are the virus, Suzanne.”

“What!” she was surprised, the umbrella still welded within her fingers.

“To destroy such a complex AI, Pierre-Marie had to create a most powerful virus. Guided by a special program, at the very core of the system, it must hit Thomas or… Jéricho in the heart. At the heart of the transcendence program. Like you, their digitalized mind is holding on by a thread.”

“But why me?” Suzanne was angry, as she now understood why Jéricho and the followers of the Inquisition were so interested in her.

“The virus is so subtle that only the Homo Nevus and their synthetic minds were able to transport it, to hide it, and to use it in the event that Lionheardt failed.”

“Artificial beings to guarantee the future, ready to destroy the threat that was their own creator. I don’t think Thomas would have loved this.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? In any case, it’s pretty clear that Kanté didn’t really trust him,” Byte joked before stopping on the side of a compound gravitating around a belt of solitary data. “And also why the Inquisition is hunting you.” Behind, Jéricho leaped through space and time, swallowing up everything that came within his reach. “Of all the AIs that could go nuts, of course, it was going to be Lionheardt’s … that of Thomas Lionheardt,” Byte grimaced.

“The more intelligent they are, the more dangerous they become.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Suzanne but… I think that it is nothing but the reflection of its creator … or master. This fractured entity, sealed between the compound and cyberspace for one thousand years, is just as much Jéricho as it is Thomas, if I can rely on the files of transcendence results that I just translated from Chinese.”

Suzanne could not believe it. Thomas had guided her here. He had absolved himself! The enemy could be no one but Jéricho… Yes… Jéricho… “Thank you for everything, Byte. Get out of here now that you still can.”

“Don’t forget the archaeologist!” Byte said finally, disappearing in the cyberspace.

Suzanne turned around and darted towards Jéricho. Kanté’s breach, the yellow umbrella, transported her like a rocket.

Jéricho stared at her with his purple eyes. He opened an enormous mouth that looked like a black hole, sucking in the light and the technomancer.

Why is he welcoming me this way? Doesn’t he see that I am coming to destroy him?

“Yes, but he fears nothing,” It was Tom’s voice. “His program is too evolved and even the small schemes of that paranoid of Kanté won’t change anything.”

“Tom?!” Suzanne cried. “Tom, where are you?”

“Right ahead of you. It’s imperative that you don’t stop for any reason.”

Thomas Lionheardt’s body was on her trajectory. His arms open wide, he was ready to receive the final blow straight through his heart.

Suzanne slowed down, from fear of hitting her old companion.

“Don’t stop Suzy. This entity is the merger between my will and that of Jéricho. Of a man lost in his dream and a machine too obstinate to realize that all of this is a mistake. Kill the man. Kill the weak link and everything will collapse.” He sighed. “Suzy, do it. Go ahead and turn this transcendence into nothing. Be as dedicated as if you were going to reach Alpha Centauri.”

Suzanne clenched her fists and continued her procession, blinded by rage and anger. She pierced the monster straight through its source code.

Afterwards there was a gasp. Her body was being dragged along a sea of data.

“Sacrilegious absurdist!” Jéricho screamed. “You just signed the death sentence of everything that was dear to you.”

And it was like the cyberspace was collapsing on itself.