And yet, despite having been hunted down and butchered to near extinction, the cephalopeds refused to hate their enemy or rebel against them. Having congregated last night, the colony had agreed that Oscar would accompany and assist us in preparing a weapon to dispose of the “GOLEM entity,” provided it would do no harm to the transhuman race. No matter how I tried, I could not convey to these giving but simpleminded creatures that, even with GOLEM gone, the humans would most likely continue to hunt the cephaloped out of sheer habit. At one point, I confused them further by telling them the story of the scorpion and the frog—the frog offering its enemy a ride across a stream upon its back, only to be stung by the scorpion, who knew it would drown yet struck the frog anyway because that’s what scorpions do.

I realized the tale’s lesson was lost on the cephalopod after learning—in this time period—that frogs eat scorpions.

Yes, and what cephalopeds do is allow their kind to be butchered.

The parallels to the Holocaust infuriated me.

And then there was Dharma. In terms of beauty, she was not as exotic as Andria, and yet I found myself drawn to her in a deeper way—one which I found both compelling and at times annoying, for she would never hesitate to “push my buttons.”

Was she intended to be the Eve to my Adam? I had fallen into that mental trap back at the farmhouse. Of course, at the time I had been convinced that I was in the midst of an Omega dream; now that I realized I was awake, any hope of a normal existence while GOLEM and its creations were around seemed impossible.

Was there even a chance Dharma and I could live out our lives in peace? In truth, I had serious doubts GOLEM could be destroyed by any combination of components found aboard Oceanus.

So why risk exposing myself or Dharma to regain access to the crippled sphere?

The answer was as simple as it was terrifying. GOLEM was omnipotent. Driven by its own closed-looped ego, the machine would not let us live. Nor would it allow us to die. It would send its minions to capture us, then it would torture us for eternity because that was its nature. And that was the real reason I was returning to Oceanus—not to construct a weapon to short-circuit the computer but to find a quick yet humane way to end our lives.

I thought about the Titanic. While the women and children were getting into lifeboats and the men scrambled to remain out of the frigid sea as long as possible, some couples had faced death by cuddling together one last time in their beds, even as the icy waters reached their cabins.