Trans-Human (Post-Human Sequel) by David Simpson Read Free Book Online Page B

green magnetic fields shone like fireflies and streamed away from the blue orb. Draping the spectacular view was the swarm of aliens that formed a sickening black claw, enveloping the cradle of humanity, grasping it in its palm like an apple plucked from a tree, ripe for devouring. Rich, like everyone else in the room who was looking out of the windows of the main living area at the panoramic picture of Earth’s demise, felt utterly distraught and helpless.
    “Where will we go, Richard?” asked Linda, who sidled beside him and held onto him for comfort like a frightened child as a storm neared. It had been decades since she had shown that kind of vulnerability.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Rich replied. “As long as we’re moving away from that.”
    He took her hand and put his arm around her to comfort her. It appeared as though they were going to be safe, and yet his thoughts weren’t with his family anymore. He had been monitoring the situation with his friends and the Purists—it was not going well. The ship wasn’t going to be constructed in time and they might die in their attempt to rescue the last pure humans.
    “I should be there,” Rich whispered.
    Linda looked up, startled, and grabbed a firm hold of her husband once she saw the look in his eye. “Are you crazy? You’d be killed! It’s a miracle that we’ve all made it out together! We have to stick together !”
    Rich’s eyes didn’t move from the planet that was slowly shrinking in the distance. The alien swarm was now starting to dwarf the Earth and he knew that there wasn’t much time. “If I stay here, I’ll regret it the rest of my life.”
    “What? Richard!” Linda shouted as the rest of the people in the room started to take notice of the commotion.
    Rich spun and took a firm grasp of his wife’s arms and looked her in the eye. “I love you, Linda. But I have to help them.”
    He kissed her but she clutched hard onto his shirt, trying to prevent him from leaving. “Don’t,” she said.
    “I’m not a coward. I have to go,” Rich asserted as he struggled to remove her grip on his shirt.
    “No one thinks you are a coward, Richard! Everyone loves you! We need you!”
    “Not as much as they do, Linda,” Rich responded in an almost desperate tone that Linda had never seen before. “Don’t you see that? I have to help them! I have to or I’ll never be able to live with myself!”
    “If you go, you’ll die!” Linda screeched as she plummeted into sheer desperation. “Are you insane? You can’t leave your family! What kind of person would abandon his family at a time like this? No one thinks you’re a coward!”
    Edmund reached into the fray to hold his mother back while Rich put on his jacket and grabbed his helmet.
    Linda’s words had stunned Rich, but he had no choice now and he knew it. “I promise you, I am coming back. But keep going!” Rich put a firm hand on his son’s shoulder and then gave his wife one last smile before heading out the front door, igniting his cocoon, cutting through the house’s magnetic field, and blasting at top speed back toward Earth.

24
    “One minute until contact,” James announced gravely. “This is all your doing,” he growled at the A.I..
    The demonic entity performed a bow.
    “Not everyone has managed to get away yet,” James continued. “There are still millions of people on the surface.”
    “The ones who have only launched recently are not out of danger yet either. The alien’s numbers are so vast that they’ll be able to snag a great deal of the fish that think they have gotten away.”
    “Every death will be on your head,” James seethed.
    “It won’t be the first time—and may I point out once again that it was you who attacked the aliens first.”
    “If they didn’t want to be attacked, they could have tried to communicate. No one is blocking communication,” James replied.
    “They’ve reached the atmosphere,” the A.I. suddenly observed as he watched the