who killed eliza?

“Eliza Brooks?”

She looked up with a slight frown on her wet face, had been in the shower.

“Yes?”

I glanced over Dawn’s shoulder as she raised the gun and made the projectile enter through the forehead. Her bony fingers were still shaking, and she had winced at the sound of the shot and put the other bullet into the ceiling behind Eliza. Good thing she hadn’t hit her body a second time.

“Dawn, you must search her body for valuables, take her briefcase and the bracelets on her wrist. Leave her pendant, no need to steal christs.”

She moved as if in a trance, though the real fake was yet to come. As the paper and metal were stowed away in her pockets, I asked her to take out the fix and inject.

She obeyed, shivering badly, weeping.

“Dawn, I am sorry that it has to be this hard, but you understood the reason.”

She nodded and shot up the chem. As she passed into the subway station, she dropped the needles into a sewer grating.

“Have faith, Dawn, you will wake into a better world.”

I returned shortly before the second call, and just as the third one ended I had reached my place at her side. I didn’t like weapons, we didn’t like weapons, but the gun had fitted Dawn best, add the fact that it had been legally obtained. Would serve to raise a discussion about stricter weapon laws.

Eliza transcended and I helped her out of the cage. Like most, she seemed reluctant to let go of the skin, and I took her to the learning chamber before the ants burned her spiritual remains.

“Eliza, you will first receive the necessary knowledge about your current state of existence, then you will assist in the information insertion. Please connect these, no, don’t touch your forehead, you must first learn and forget. I will return when you are prepared.”

The machine had erred once, and we had lost the race. I cannot quite remember the situation, but the bioscape had triggered a chaos cancer that had devoured most of our information generating probes and warped the nylon invention. Time to check with intelligence about the bioscape progress and report to the machine about the Eliza mind.

The list said Lukov, and I had the television station broadcast the sublim ad. I travelled back to the Eliza aftermath and found everything like the machine had intended it to be. The shock had been sound but of short duration, the Dawn had been jailed and drug raids conducted. I had expected the drug ratio to drop by 2.3 percent, but unfortunately the police had been harsh on the snow but soft on the pushers. We still needed another 74 addicts neutralized, so the weedmen were ordered to have the dope polluted. I would check back for results some distance later, the gulf war had higher priority.

As I arrived in the mid eastern time, the sand was still soaked, no end of aggression in sight. The duration of the war threatened to exceed our safety bounds. The humans had learned the lesson of efficiency, it was time to show some constructive uses of technology, their trust must be increased another 16 percent before paradise launch. Tracing the command hierarchy on both sides, I quickly found signs of intense bio infestation. The machine denied my suggestion of a nuclear solution, so I set the wheels of politics in motion. The sentinels reported an immediate loss of 2 percent on bliss, but at least the trust was stabilized. Bio had lost another league and it was time to switch to the Eliza front again.

The Eliza mind had been successfully restructured, and she awaited the machine’s call eagerly. We sent her down into Dr. Chevanov, predicting that the fusion would complete its work before being found strange and placed under medical attention. The drug sentinel checked in to report on the Dawn effect. Aggression was down another 0.4 and 128 were dead by overdose. I wept shortly, cursing the miscalculation, but the drug ratio was down in safe bounds, so I turned my attention at the virtual environment situation. The influenced labs had the technology almost available, plans were proceeding satisfactory, although the biotech lab still puzzled me. The more domination we put into the whitecoats, the more frantic their work became, but still we couldn’t steer them from flesh research to steel. The machine couldn’t compute and so I felt forced to have the lab exterminated. I sent the dogs.

The Eliza-Chevanov fusion proceeded exceedingly well, we had underestimated the human power of creativity again, this time to our benefit. The machine was already in the construction phase, and the timeline still left us another 3 years, it would be activated in time to send it’s effect backwards.

Things were working out very satisfactory, trust steadily swept up the scale, a short loss because of some bioscape-induced genetic food scandal, but we had the media under control before the effect made the leap to permanent duration level.

I had earned some vacation, so I visited Dawn in her prison cell. It’s a shame that humans force each other into loneliness, and she seemed desperate to talk to someone, imaginary or real. I pitied her, but I pity most humans, fortunately I could spread the good news, paradise was within sight already, the machine would be activated as planned. The marks on her face told me she had been beaten, so I had the prison guards switched.

After Dawn I checked with some of the other pawns, trying to ease their waiting period. A sentinel visited me and told me that the dogs I had sent for the biotechs were reported missing. I went to virtual reality, but it seemed impossible to keep track, bioscape fogged the area, the whole project had been chaosed, but at least the technology was already available. The machine offered to let the bioscape have the virtual realm, in paradise state we would regain control on that area soon enough. Chaos ratio remained within bounds, so the case was delayed. The fusion sentinel alerted me to events in the Eliza timeline.

A few moments ago they had taken the fusion to the asylum, Chevanov’s wife had finally detected the possession fact. It was the second set of paramedics, we had the first team terminated in a car accident, but now the machine was finished, and before the fusion would reach the clinic, paradise would be in place.

The cleaning lady is standing in front of the machine, staring at it’s magnificent metal body like it is the throne of the lord itself. The machine has chosen well, I leap down and find her eyes full of light. A serene smile rests on her sweaty face, and I can see the machine reflect in her admiring, shiny eyes.

She moves through me and I turn around. She reaches out, I can feel tension, a short deja vu of my living days, adrenaline we called it, but now it comes more like a rush of passion.

She turns the switch and the lights dim for a moment, and then, slowly and from deep within the giant metal body, rises the soft steady rhythm of the cooling systems.

I rise and bathe in the dim light of the consoles, I can already feel my mind open up, the machine song reaches out, from the future, through the present, and into the distant past, to meet my still dreaming mind somewhere, sometime in that swirling clouds of history.

I lower my gaze upon the angel that gave birth to the machine, but she is kneeling in front of the main console, her head down on the keyboard.

Something is wrong.

Blood. Bioscape.

She is dying, she has cut herself, I see blood spilled, blood seeping into the machine, blood contaminating the machine song, what... blood, suddenly I can see it trickle along the beautiful steel, along the wires, along the dataflow, what... deeper, deeper into the machine, and the song becomes tainted, living, what...

Is this a heart beating within the machine, distant and weak?