It had taken the better part of two hours, but Lex had managed to talk both Coal into calming down and the good Samaritans into hearing him out. They had led him to a small private room not far from the hangar. Judging from the tiny size of the vessel in relation to its crew, locating a “private” space with room enough for four people was no simple task. They ended up crammed into a closet of a room, what the crew called the “huddle room.” There were two chairs and a flip-down table. Lex had been ushered into the back of the room and pinned behind the lowered table. The woman, who had yet to offer up a name, took a seat opposite him and seemed to be the designated spokesperson of the group. The other two crewmen stood shoulder to shoulder behind her, occupying every last square centimeter of space in the room. The fact that he’d not been given the chance to even remove his helmet made the whole situation uncomfortable on a number of levels.
“Okay, Blueboy,” said the woman. “Let’s start with the simple questions, since it doesn’t seem like you’re really up to the task of anything else. Where are you really from?”
“Golana,” he said.
“That’s kind of vague, Blue,” she said. “Where on Golana?”
“Preston City. East quarter.”
She nodded. “And what’s with the control system of your ship?”
“I went with an AI instead of a regular control system. She’s not working as well as she might, at the moment.”
“What’s the make and model on that ship? Never seen one like it.”
“It’s sort of a custom. A friend of mine made it.”
“You haven’t exactly been taking good care of your friend’s ship. Some bad holes in there. Not from what I’d call standard weaponry either. Doug here says it looks like demolition charges.”
“I can’t have nice things,” Lex said with a shrug.
“You came in here with enough CO2 in your blood to have been breathing the same air for about four times longer than is really healthy.”
“Probably it has something to do with those holes,” Lex said.
“You giving me an attitude?”
“Sorry. Let’s blame it on the brain damage. Can I ask a question?”
“No. Why does your ship claim you’re from the future?”
“Like I said, she’s not quite thinking straight these days.”
“What are you doing out past the surveyed edge of the transit system, Blue?”
“Sightseeing. There’s apparently a magnetar somewhere over there,” he said, gesturing vaguely.
“You’re being awfully flippant for someone in your situation.”
“It’s not my first interrogation. And exactly what situation am I in?”
“Don’t play dumb. Bruno is doing a scan on your ship right now, but all I need is my eyeballs to know what you’re up to.”
“I guarantee you have no idea what I’m up to.”
“That ship is covered with sensors. And I know a stealth coating when I see one. We saved your life. The least you can do is not lie to our faces. What rival survey firm are you working for?”
“Rival survey firm… You’re a survey firm? Duh. Of course that’s what you’re doing out here. Why else would anyone be out here past the fringe?” he said, more to himself than to his interrogator.
“Only two reasons: to run a survey and to poach survey data. I know which one we’re doing, and I know which one you’re doing. And I’ll tell you this. Sirius Stellar Surveys has never had data stolen.”
“And they’re sure not going to start with the 77 crew,” remarked the man presumably named Doug.
Lex furrowed his brow. There was something familiar about what she’d said.
“Sirius Stellar Surveys…” he said distantly. “SSS 77.”
His eyes shot open. The woman interrogating him smiled and leaned back, crossing her arms. “There’s a man who just realized what he’s dealing with.”
“Listen, what’s it going to take for you to let me patch up my ship and get out of here?” Lex said urgently.
“Oh no. We don’t like poachers. Not one bit. You’re coming in with us. And that’s real unfortunate for you because we’re dead center on a—”
“Seven-month tour, I know,” he said, maneuvering his arms in the cramped space until he could access the communication controls.
“See, that’s pretty much a confession. Why would he know the length of our tour?”
“Coal, do you have the full inventory of the ship’s equipment and resources?” he said.
“Yes, Lex,” came the swift reply.
“What do we have in the way of casino chips?”
“We are currently carrying twelve rolls of chips in the one hundred thousand credit denomination and twelve rolls in the one thousand credit denomination, all time-period appropriate.”
“I’m not really up to doing math right now, Coal. What’s that work out to?”
“Sixty million credits in the high denomination. Sixty thousand in the low denomination. Sixty point oh six million total.”
“I’ll fork over the whole lot of it if you’ll give me the material to patch some holes and top off my fuel and oxygen.”
The looks on their faces illustrated a sudden weakening of their thirst for justice.
She cleared her throat. “I think we can—”
Doug stopped her with a hand to the shoulder.
“What’s to stop us from just searching your ship and taking that as a forfeit?” he asked.
“Coal, don’t let them take the chips,” Lex said.
“Arming fusion device…” she replied.
“Not like that,” he said calmly.
“Okay. Closing and sealing cockpit hatch and activating shields.”
“We’ve got a fully equipped maintenance facility. I’m confident we can get through your defenses,” said Doug.
“I’m confident you can’t,” Lex said. “Because if you make any reasonable progress, you’re liable to make Coal upset. And she can be very forceful when that happens.”
“I don’t like the way you—” Doug began.
Now it was the woman’s turn to stop him. “I think we can come to an agreement.”
“Good. That’s good…” He took a deep breath and glanced at the time display on the arm of his suit. “Let’s get started on the repairs then.”
“You’re not really fully recovered yet, you should probably wait a day or two.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “We’re on a deadline. If you’ll excuse me, I need to have a word alone with my ship.”
He flipped his face shield shut and covered it with his hands.
“Coal,” he whispered.
“Yes, Lex?”
“We’re on SSS 77.”
“What does that mean?”
“SSS 77? As in the tragedy of Triple S 77?”
“I don’t know what that is, Lex.”
“We really need to reload your memory banks…” he muttered. “It’s a famous mystery. A whole convoy doing a seven-month survey of an unexplored sector of the galaxy—the convoy we’re apparently a part of right now—failed to respond for a scheduled data exchange. Eventually rescue crews arrived to find nothing but wreckage. Fifty-eight people dead, with evidence suggesting the whole convoy had been destroyed shortly after the previous data exchange. The people responsible were never found. We learn about it in flight school because it’s the horror story they tell when you’re getting passenger certified to remind you’re risking more than debris collisions when you go off the grid.”
“When did this tragedy occur?”
“In a little under two days…”
#
Admiral Purcell’s shaking, wizened hands tugged at the exposed circuitry behind a control panel, revealing data ports and jabbing probes into the sockets.
“Antiquated electronics. Antiquated protocols. Antiquated ships. Antiquated minds,” she uttered in a wheezing rant. “We were Neanderthals. I don’t know how we survived this era.”
Her mobility device had clearly seen better days. The damage from her clash with Ziva was evident, and since she’d entered the ship and disposed of its prior occupants, it had slipped even further into disrepair thanks to her disassembly of several ancillary sections. Long wires, some from the device itself and some scavenged from other parts of the ship, stretched from deep within the electronic innards of the hovering device. They traced a net of connections all about the ship.
One side of the stolen VectorCorp vessel was almost entirely missing. She’d blown a gaping hole in it when the technicians had attempted to “rescue” her, and had further widened it to gain access to a set of emitters near center. They were force-field emitters. Though the ship had barely anything in the way of defensive shielding—not that it would have done any good against Purcell’s futuristic weaponry—even in this era all ships had emergency force fields to retain atmosphere in the event of a hull breach. Emitter technology was such that, with a better field generator, even an antiquated device could be coaxed into at least marginally improved performance. It was a bit like utilizing a civil war cannon to launch a depleted uranium round: not ideal, but in a pinch, it could make all the difference.
“Seventy percent field integrity increase. This won’t do. None of it will do… Need to repair… need to improve!”
She skewered a final probe into place, and her chair’s display finally flickered to life, revealing an era-appropriate administration screen.
“Admin login…” she hissed.
“Access denied. This VectorCorp ship has been compromised. To protect corporate and customer data, the credentials of all associated technicians have been revoked pending investigation,” replied the computer in a friendly synthesized male voice.
“Fifty-year-old security measures,” she croaked. “Home system archive, VC crypt keys, known vulnerabilities. Cluster test, activate.”
Her commands worked like an ancient incantation, dredging up a historical record of all successful attacks and leaked information into a concentrated blast of data assault. VectorCorp may have had the best security in the galaxy, but no security can withstand a hacker with foreknowledge of the reason it would eventually be replaced. In moments she had access to VectorCorp’s private corporate networks, and moments later she’d issued the proper commands to delete and conceal any evidence of her past, present, and future activities there.
“2312. What did this blasted company have that was worth having…?”
A worrying thump rolled through the ship as something damaged in the attack finally ceased functioning completely. It wasn’t immediately clear what it was. The fact that the ship hadn’t exploded or disintegrated suggested it wasn’t something vital, but the persistent shudder that began rattling the ship indicated it was certainly something important.
“We’ll begin with nearby repair yards… Ehhh… No full auto maintenance facilities nearby… Bah… The twit who does the repairs will have to die. Easy enough… Let’s see. Five hours away, Crest dry docks.” Her face twisted into a sinister grin. “Home of the local branch of the CX program. Experimental construction vehicles… Display construction manifest.”
Her screen populated with what could only in very loose and charitable terms be honestly classified as construction equipment. Reactive armor plating, high-density particle beam weapons, redundant power supplies, and four levels of force fields. One could almost see the loopholes in international, interplanetary, and interstellar law through which these hulking “nonmilitary” vehicles slipped. One in particular caught her eye.
“Ah… Prototype… The loveliest word in the language…” she cooed, caressing the screen. “Draft broadcast message: To Security Department, Crest dry docks. A disaster recovery exercise has been scheduled. All personnel must evacuate the following buildings. High-level security assessors will be in attendance monitoring compliance and responsiveness. Attach experimental dock list and repair facilities 6 through 8 and send.”
Her system compiled and delivered the message.
“Good… Good… I’ll have passable equipment.” She wrung her hands. “How to put it to use… how best to set the future? The first steps are simple enough. Remove the boy. Remove the AI, and remove the inventor…”
#
Lex sparked up a cutting torch and eyed it warily.
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable doing this, Coal,” he said.
He was back in the hangar, still in his suit for a number of reasons. While wearing it he could have a relatively private conversation with Coal, which was reason enough to keep the uncomfortable thing on, but the complexity of suiting up and the likelihood of having to leave in a hurry made it further wise to keep it on, even if the self-sanitation features weren’t a tenth as pleasant as even the pitiful bathing options available on the survey ship.
Lex glanced to the doorway. Two rather heavily armed men were guarding it as he made ready to do some repairs. Though the crew had warmed to his presence somewhat when they realized he was about to line their pockets in exchange for their silence, they still weren’t the sort to let a potentially unstable stranger have free run of their ship. Thus, they had provided him with some scrap to patch up the Lump of Coal, and some tools to make the repairs, but weren’t willing to put down their bulky energy weapons to lend a hand.
“It is a comparatively simple repair, Lex,” Coal said. “Some of my fragmented memories of you indicate you were able to perform basic ship maintenance.”
“That was mostly tuning. I can tinker with an engine a bit, but this is metalworking.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Plus, these tools are like forty years old. Not exactly user friendly.”
“In native terms they are only ten years old,” Coal said.
“That doesn’t make them any less obsolete from my perspective.”
“I’ll guide you through the process,” Coal said. “It’ll be a bonding experience for us.”
He grumbled. “Seems like every time Ma takes on a new form, I have to do some sort of delicate medical operation on it…”
“Has this happened before? I don’t remember.”
“Never mind. Let’s get this started.”
“Begin by resecting the damaged section of hull plating, which I have highlighted in your helmet’s AR overlay.”
“Resecting? It’s bad enough I’m working on something that’s conscious and talking to me, can we maybe skip the actual surgical terms?”
“Okay. Be sure to adjust the cutting depth to no more than twenty-one millimeters. Keeping this cut as straight as possible will make sizing the replacement panel simpler.”
He started tracing the line she’d indicated. Keeping his hands steady was difficult, and not just because of the unfamiliarity and unwieldiness of the instruments involved.
“You seem nervous. Don’t worry, you aren’t working on any of my primary systems.”
“It’s not that, Coal.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” he began sharply before catching himself. “Coal, these people are all going to be dead soon.”
“We should have plenty of time to complete the repairs and depart before then.”
“It isn’t that we’re going to get away, it’s that… look, you’re hardwired to not want people to die, right?”
“Processing… Hardwired isn’t quite right. I am coded to find large-scale loss of human, animal, and plant life to be suboptimal.”
“Well so am I, and unlike you I can’t just logic away the bad feelings as necessary for a mission. Knowing I can’t tell them doesn’t feel terribly heroic, and letting loads of people die is always bad.”
“It certainly does not fulfill the qualifications of fun. However, if there is really a forthcoming tragedy, that’s great news.”
He gritted his teeth as he came to the tricky process of creating the first corner. “We’re racing the clock to avoid getting caught in a historic unexplained massacre. I gotta say, that’s the worst good news I’ve ever heard.”
“Even so, it’s a good mission indicator. Our goal in this mission is to assure and protect the timeline from which we have originated. If this tragedy occurred in your timeline and it happens here, then it means history is unfolding as it did previously. That means our mission has not yet failed, and in fact may have already succeeded from the point of view of our native present.”
Lex considered her words. “I guess I can see where you’re going with that but… I don’t know. It’s just wrong. These people are going to die, and I know it is going to happen, but I can’t tell them or it’ll screw up history.”
He finished the first full cut and selected a pair of pliers to tug away the remaining hunks of metal.
“Excellent work. Keep track of the removed pieces. They are from the future and leaving them here is a bad idea.”
“Roger,” he said, pulling up a crate and carefully dropping the debris inside.
“Try not to feel responsible for the tragedy.”
“I don’t feel responsible. I just feel awful I can’t prevent it.”
“Oh, you probably are responsible, but try not to feel that way.”
“… I don’t follow. Why am I responsible?”
“Karter has already tried to kill you once. If he has Ma, by now she’s probably told him what we’re up to and how to find us. He’s always willing to kill without remorse, and as a visitor from the future himself, he probably wouldn’t want anyone finding out about him or us. That would explain all the mystery around the SSS 77 tragedy. It’s reasonable to assume, then, that the tragedy will happen precisely because we are present.”
Lex stopped measuring the hole he’d created and stared blankly forward as the words sank into his brain.
“You look distressed. You aren’t following my suggestion to not feel responsible for the tragedy.”
“We are responsible!”
“Yes. But don’t feel that way.”
“I can’t just… my brain doesn’t work like that…” He stood and clenched his fists, his heart racing in his chest and bile burning in the back of his throat. “We… killed these people.”
“Yes. Please calm down, Lex.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” he barked. “We’re supposed to be saving lives. I wouldn’t have signed up for this if I knew I was going to rain death upon complete strangers everywhere I went.”
“Lex, please lower your voice,” Coal said.
“These people didn’t have to die!”
“Is everything all right over there?” called one of the guards.
Lex turned, his face red and his eyes glistening. If he’d not had the face shield of his flight suit down, they certainly would have heard what he’d been saying. As it was they were probably more concerned with his suddenly violent body language.
Voices inside Lex’s head bellowed at one another, and he could feel his insides churning. He should tell them. It was the right thing to do… But if he did, it would change everything. It would save the lives of this crew, but it might set in motion a sequence of events that would make the robot apocalypse inevitable again and thus kill billions. And even if it didn’t, it would lock away his own future and leave him marooned, a stranger in a past that didn’t belong to him.
“These people are already dead, Lex,” Coal said calmly, a cool and collected voice in his helmet that cut through the tangle. “Nothing you can do is going to change that for the better. If history is unfolding as we have come to expect, it is equally possible that warning these people is what will seal their doom. We must behave logically. We must focus on the mission.”
Lex raised a shaking hand and, with agonizing effort, waved off the guard. He turned to Coal and picked up the measuring apparatus.
“Ziva died for this mission. Silo and Garotte or whatever he’d started calling himself died for this mission. These people have to die now,” he rumbled. “Whenever I work with you people, I always end up just a cog in a big, complicated mechanism. I’m always just one moving part in a plan that’s bigger than me. But now I’m caught in this current that’s dragging me through a damn river of death and I’m supposed to just smile and let all of this happen?”
“You don’t have to smile,” Coal assured him.
“How many people have to die, Coal? What exactly are acceptable losses?”
“Lex, the question is not: How many people will die? Everyone will die in time. The question is: How many people will live better lives? And we know that answer. We’ve seen what happens if we fail this mission. Society depends upon us having the strength and wisdom to play our part.”
He picked up the cutting torch and tried to will the tremors from his hands. “Sometimes strength feels a hell of a lot like cowardice.”
“You need to learn to separate how things feel from why they are necessary. It’s really easy. Would you like me to give you lessons?”
“I’m not sure that’s something I want to learn. Having more heart than brains is sort of what makes me me.”
“It’s frustrating but endearing, I’ll admit that.”
He removed the freshly cut piece. “Put that in the history books, I guess. ‘He may have let countless people die in pursuit of insane attempts to save his own future, but at least he was endearing in a frustrating sort of way.’”
“I don’t think history books have that degree of detail. Also, it would be best if our exploits were not recorded with any level of detail.”
He took a slow breath and moved the patch panel into place. “Let’s just get through this…”
As he applied the first tack welds to hold it in place, an odd tone trilled through the PA system.
“What now?” he muttered.
“Hey! That’s the data exchange warning. If that ship of yours is transmitting anything, shut it off. In thirty seconds we’re going to need complete radio silence to get a clean feed,” instructed one of the guards.
Lex shut off the torch. “You heard the man. Low-power mode and zero transmissions for a while, Coal.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you shortly. Please try not to become overcome with guilt during my silence.”
“Yeah… Good advice…”
One by one the various systems in the hangar began to dim and power down, concluding with the lights until the whole room was illuminated by a few scattered banks of blue LEDs. Lex popped his face visor and took a breath of fresh air. Or more accurately, somewhat less frequently reprocessed air.
“Hey, listen,” said the other guard. “This usually takes… I don’t know… twenty minutes, a half hour. We’re going to get messages from family and all on the feed. Usually we use the feed period as a break and then sort of have a get together to go over the messages. But we’re not supposed to leave you alone, so… you wanna go get something to eat while we’re waiting?”
“You sound like you’re asking him on a date, Dan,” said the other guard.
“Shut up, Bill,” the first guard, evidently Dan, replied. He turned back to Lex. “Seriously, though. I’ve got a birthday message coming in from my kids. I don’t want to be standing in a hanger staring at you while that’s waiting on the servers.”
Lex shut his eyes. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go eat. But can you do me a small favor?”
“What?”
“Please don’t talk about your family…”
#
“And then, on her sixth birthday, I was off on the other side of the damn galaxy,” remarked Dan, the guard/stellar cartographer who had chosen to ignore Lex’s request to forgo family discussion. “No joke. Literally the opposite side.”
Lex had removed his helmet. In low-power mode and communication restriction he wouldn’t be able to talk to Coal anyway. The group was clustered into what they’d probably call the galley because this spaceship was a good deal more ship than most he’d been on. As they served up something they claimed was lasagna—Lex was skeptical about that, since in his entire life he’d not once had a version of the dish where the sauce was crunchy—they listed up all the gripes they had about the ship. Half the inner structure was made from iron salvaged from meteoroids. The air recycler’s humidifier was horribly calibrated, causing the air to be downright muggy, and corporate rules said there had to be an off-limits executive cabin despite no executives being on board. The recent refit had earned them artificial gravity, which they all agreed was a nice change from prior missions. Mostly, though, they talked about how often they were away from home and how badly they wanted to get back.
It was psychological torture in its most distilled form.
“You’re botching that word again, Dan. No one’s been to the other side of the galaxy yet,” remarked Bill.
“Well you know what I mean,” Dan said.
“I know what you mean, but that’s not what you said. This story would actually be worth telling for the fiftieth time if you were literally on the other side of the galaxy because you’d be bragging about how you blazed a trail through something like seventy percent of the galaxy and back without dying.”
Dan crossed his arms. “Still a good story.”
“We’ll let the Blueboy decide that,” Bill said.
“Can we not? Can we please not tell the story about your daughter?” Lex said.
“What’s your problem, Blueboy?”
“I just… I’ve got a lot on my mind. I’m super stressed right now. I just don’t want to hear about this stuff.”
“Blueboy’s sick of your stuff, and he hasn’t even heard it yet. You know what that means, Dan? Means your story’s bad.”
“You ask me, I’d say it means Blueboy’s an ass. Just for that, no one give him any of those fig bars we were saving for afters,” Dan said. “Though, he did nearly die today. That’s liable to make a man testy.”
“Actually, that part happens all the time.”
“If near death isn’t cause for alarm but hearing a story about my little girl has got you on edge, I think it’s safe to say you’re not living life right, Blueboy.”
“Why exactly are you calling me Blueboy?” Lex asked.
“You ever see a man past the tipping point on the road to suffocation? Lips turn blue. Yours were darn near periwinkle.”
“You wanna play the game?” Bill asked, glancing at his partner.
“Which one?” asked Dan.
“Which one you think I want to play with Blueboy here?”
“Oh, right. Sure.”
Lex raised an eyebrow. “What’s this about?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Bill said. “I’ll go first. Blueboy, where’d you get that ship of yours? Seems pretty slick.”
“I’d rather not say.”
“How’d you get your hands on all of those chips?”
“That’s kind of personal too.”
“What do you do for a living?” Dan asked.
“I’m a freelancer.”
Bill squinted at him, then leaned back and called to the woman, who was seated at the other table in the galley. “Can I get a ruling on this one?”
“A freelancer, past the rim? I’ll allow it.”
“I’m going to ask again, what’s this about?” Lex said.
Dan cleared his throat. “In every crew there’s always the guy—”
“Or lady,” Bill added.
“Or lady—but usually it’s a guy—who for one reason or another won’t talk about his personal life. Most of these fellas eventually figure out, unless you’re a secret agent or something, there’s nothing you’ve done that we haven’t already done or heard done. This is the fringe. This is where folks go when there isn’t a place in normal space to suit them. But these fellas always dodge the questions.”
“Or tell obvious lies,” Bill amended.
“Right, or tell obvious lies. So we play this game, see? We ask questions, back and forth. Regular stuff a regular guy wouldn’t mind answering. The guy who asks the first question that gets an honest answer wins.”
“Well Dan won then.”
“Nice try, but freelancers are folks you find between point A and point B,” Bill said. He poked the left edge of the table. “This here’s point A.” He poked the right edge. “This here’s point Z.” He poked the next table over. “This here’s where we are. If you’re a freelancer, you took a wrong turn about four days ago.”
“It would explain why he was low on air,” Dan said.
“We didn’t need an explanation for why he was low on air. The big holes in his ship were explanations of why he was low on air. What we could use are explanations for why there were big holes.” He turned to Lex. “Why are there big holes in your ship?”
“… I can’t say.”
“Your turn,” Bill said.
Dan leaned back and considered. “How about this one. Got a girl back home?”
“… Define ‘home,’” Lex said.
This produced a burst of laughter among the group.
“Wouldn’t have figured getting the runaround like that!” Dan said.
“Guys, listen. I just… You’ve got to trust me when I say I’m genuinely sorry, but I can’t… I just can’t tell you this stuff.”
“Do you listen to yourself when you talk, Blueboy? Because you just said, ‘trust me, I’ll keep lying to you.’”
“You could just end the game by telling the truth,” Bill said. “But do it on my turn. Now let’s see…”
The lights flickered back on.
“Never mind. Time for mail call,” Dan said.
“Okay, boys and girls,” barked a voice over the PA system. “Everyone to your terminals to get your messages.”
A cheer rose from those in attendance.
“But first we have three general dispatches,” the voice added.
The cheer collapsed into grumbling.
“First dispatch. Effective immediately, technician’s licenses will need to be re-upped every three tours instead of every two. Second dispatch. There has been a general recall due to a mal… heh. Typo here. A malfunktion, with a K, in a piece of equipment. Doesn’t give the specifics on what exactly it is, but technicians, be on the lookout for a something with serial number GMVD-5QU3E. Faulty firmware, prone to critical failure. When you folks find it, bring it to maintenance so it can be sent back for a firmware rewrite from the revision designer. It needs to have its… hell, techs, just come to the console and read the second damn dispatch. Third dispatch…”
The words filtered into Lex’s mind and became lodged there. He didn’t quite know what he was supposed to learn from the message, but there was no way a message would just happen to include the words funk and GMVD by coincidence.
“Hey, listen,” Lex said when the third dispatch had been read and the diners were clearing away their trays in preparation for the rare gift of a message from home. “Can I get a copy of that second dispatch?”
Bill glanced at him. “Why…?”
“I think I might have one of those… GM whatever’s on my ship. I’m already patching up the holes. Might as well pull out that thing.”
“What exactly is that thing they were recalling?”
“I don’t know, it was just… on the… listen, it was a general dispatch, right? Not a secret or anything. Can I just get a copy?”
“Fine, fine,” Bill said.
He pointed to a wall-mounted console, one of several. During the meal they had been dark. When the power kicked back to full, they flicked on again, scrolled through a boot message, and then displayed a slideshow of seemingly random images, probably selected by the crew. Dan and the still unintroduced female on the crew had hurried to two of the consoles, but the remaining one was free as Bill thumbed through his messages on a hilariously antiquated predecessor to the slidepad.
Lex navigated the screens, taking a moment to appreciate how far user interface design had come in the thirty years between these monstrosities and the OSs he was accustomed to. Finally he found the message queue. How exactly he would transport the precise wording was a bit of a riddle, but he decided to pop on his helmet and snap a picture with the built-in camera.
“Whenever you guys are ready, I’d really like to get back to fixing my ship,” he said.
“Hold your horses, Blueboy. No one’s going anywhere until we’re through going over the mail call,” Bill said.
Lex clenched his fists, removed his helmet, and plopped down to finish his questionable lasagna. All around him, the crew gushed about news from families they would never see again and lives they would never return to. When they were through reading, they sat to enjoy the rest of their meals. This at least put their mouths to work on something other than more stories to assault Lex’s conscience. As they chewed, crunched, and slurped, a thought came to Lex’s mind. It might hurt, but as far as he could figure, it was the least he could do without utterly destroying literally everything he had ever worked for.
“Hey, uh…” he said, catching the attention of the others, “you guys were playing that game where you have me lie to you and all that. I’ve got a game too. Maybe you want to try it.”
“Nope,” said Bill.
“No,” agreed Dan.
“Mmm-mmm,” concluded the woman.
“I’m going to tell you the rules anyway. Basically, if you knew you only had one more message that anyone would ever hear, what would it be? What would you want people to know about you in a generation?”
“That game is as stupid as it is morbid,” the woman said.
“Uh-huh. But asking me a bunch of sensitive questions and watching me squirm is just fine,” Lex said. “By the way, what is your name?”
“I’d rather not say,” she said mockingly.
“I’m serious. This is a fascinating thing to do,” Lex said, subtly tapping the audio record button on his suit’s controls.
Dan was the first to consider the question beyond making jokes. He leaned back and gazed at the ceiling for a moment. “I don’t know that there’s anything left to be said. I’m a very lay-it-out-on-the-line kind of guy. Say what I mean to say when I mean to say it. So long as my family gets the reply to the message they just sent, I’ll consider my accounts balanced and closed.”
The others murmured in general agreement.
“Right, but what does the message say. What if it doesn’t get sent?”
“We’re in the business of delivering data. The message will get sent.”
“For the sake of argument.”
“I’m not going to tell you what I say to my wife and kids, Blueboy. And you have less right than anybody to ask me something like that.”
Again there was a rather emphatic rumble of agreement. Bill cleared his plate first, wiped his mouth, and stood. “Let’s get you out of here before you make yourself look like even more of an ass.”
#
A small compound clung to the side of a midsize moon like a barnacle. It was unremarkable in most ways, just a silver and white disk of composite panels and polymer windows. An indecipherable serial number was emblazoned around the edge, followed by the words “VectorCorp: Security and Oversight.” Hanging in the black void around the moon, spread out in a grid, were countless artificial satellites. Some were resupply modules, glorified fuel tanks used to top off the supplies of utility vehicles. Others were precarious nets of spindly metallic arms, dry docks used for repairing, refitting, and constructing the fleet that would mine the nearby moons and debris fields that made this slice of space such a good choice for such a facility. Below, looking like a layer cake of brick-brown and yellow ocher, was a gas giant. Like the security office, the planet had its own meaningless alphanumeric designation based upon the dim star it orbited, but the local employees called it Crest Well 1. Its roiling clouds of gases served as a virtually inexhaustible source of the hydrogen and helium that ran most of the operation.
A young man sat at a console that was antiquated even for his era. As he punched away at buttons to log his findings he shifted uncomfortably in his dark blue security suit. The name tag said Agent Trent, and to his credit, he was wearing the suit in what they called “space-ready” condition. Clicking on a helmet was all it would take to be ready for a spacewalk. It was a phenomenally uncomfortable way to work, like requiring a professional athlete to wear spikes and pads sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. But the regulations called for it, and regulations were to be followed. Nowhere in the operations manual did it say he had to like it, though.
“Johnny, you ever stop to think why they gave us systems with keyboards instead of something less rooted in the Stone Age?” he said.
“What was it they said…?” Johnny said, leaning back in his chair.
He tugged at the collar of his notably not-space-ready suit. If there was the sudden need to leave the station, or worse if there was a hull breach, he’d have five minutes of buckling, zipping, sealing, and snapping to do before he would have a shot at surviving a vacuum. On the plus side, his body had a bit of ventilation, and he was therefore not stewing in his own juices.
“Wasn’t it something about them being more tamper resistant?” he said, yawning as he glanced at the images from monitors as they flipped by on his display.
“It’s all feeding into the same OS. Someone busts that and it won’t matter if we’re typing or swiping.”
“Bah. It’s probably cheaper then.”
“How could it be cheaper? The only keyboards I’ve ever seen are in history class and in this office. They’re probably collector’s items, or else custom made. Either way, a cheap datapad would probably cost half as much.”
Johnny shrugged. “Got me then.”
“It’s got to be management,” Trent complained. “Some MBA thinks a keyboard increases productivity or improves security, or he reads it or hears it somewhere, and then it’s corporate policy.”
“Management is management,” Johnny said with a shrug.
They silently observed the rotating feeds until one of them came up Feed Disabled For Disaster Recovery Exercise.
Agent Trent waved his hand at the screen. “Like this disaster recovery drill. I can get behind doing an evacuation. That’s good to run through. But why the hell would you shut off the feeds? Leave the feeds on so we can observe if they are evacuating correctly.”
“Management is management,” Johnny said again.
“And I don’t like the idea of clearing out the CX hangar. That stuff is highest security and we’ve got no eyes on it and no crew in there.”
“There’s crew. The inspectors are in there.”
“Inspectors?”
“Yeah. The memo said inspectors or something would we enforcing compliance. I saw something pop in from FTL unscheduled but flashing VC credentials.”
“How high were the credentials?” Trent asked.
“They checked out. Some kind of gold clearance.”
“Gold. … Damn it, Johnny, this isn’t a disaster recovery exercise,” he said angrily.
“Memo says it is.”
“Gold credentials don’t allow you to check the origin point, right? And they evac’d the experimental hangar. This is clearly a visit by the higher-ups to see how the CX projects are going.”
“Huh… Yeah, probably. So?”
“So if there are going to be high-ranking security and executive officers here, the local security should be informed!”
Again Johnny shrugged. “Hey, man. Rules are rules, and they followed them.”
“Damn right rules are rules,” Trent rumbled. “And I’m damn sure willing to do some malicious adherence too.”
He stood and grabbed his helmet.
“I’m doing rounds. We’ve got no feeds on the evac area, so I’m going to take a runner and do a visual inspection.”
“That’s top-level clearance out there,” Johnny reminded him.
“I know the protocols, I know the perimeters, I know the radii. I’ll do everything on the up and up. But I’m sick of these people keeping secrets from the department tasked with keeping their secrets.”
“Don’t get in their flight path. I don’t want you to get written up. Then I’d have to do the grunt work.”
Agent Trent didn’t dignify the quip with a response. He snatched his helmet and stormed out the monitoring room door. It was a short walk down the corridor to the hangar, where the aforementioned “runner” was kept. They were, to be perfectly honest, comically undersized contraptions. They were built for low cost, high flexibility, and high efficiency. Dignity was not a design requirement. Visually, the vehicle had more in common with an egg than anything an adult should be riding, but attempts had been made to give it some measure of authority by way of an imposing paint job of blue and yellow.
He slipped into the pod, pulled the hatch shut, and activated the autopilot. All the while he fumed. It was maddening that they would keep things from their own security. It was bad enough he didn’t even have the clearance to know what was being kept in a hangar under his protection. Now they were scheduling visits to check on it while specifically excluding and misleading their own security forces. It had to end. One of these days they’d have to promote someone who would actually run things intelligently.
The runner flitted out into the grid of construction and repair docks, heading for the titanic and entirely enclosed structure at the far end of the facility. He’d barely made it halfway there when he began passing facilities completely deserted due to the disaster recovery evacuation. Not long after that the navigation system of the runner started to warn him that he was entering an area that was currently off limits. He entered the security override and continued. Barely a hundred kilometers later, he’d reached the distance permissible for his level of clearance, which was still laughably far from the enclosed dry dock.
He flipped on the visual scanners and focused on the dry dock, zooming and enhancing the view as much as he could. It was eerie to see so little activity on that end of the facility. Officially he wasn’t permitted to know, or even ask, what was inside the CX dry dock, but he saw enough of the equipment transfer manifests to know it was concealing the construction of something massive.
The primary bay doors were facing away from the rest of the facility, lest non-cleared personnel get a glimpse into the interior when the doors opened, so the only thing the scanners were showing him was the rear of the dry dock. CX dry dock was massive, a matte-black barely visible cigar of a structure hanging in orbit hoping not to be noticed. The color did a great job of concealing it, except from above, in which case it was an abundantly visible black silhouette against the gas giant. Naturally, this was the direction from which most of the traffic approached, making the paint job just another pointless decision from higher up the command chain as far as he was concerned.
Warning lights, just barely visible on the far side, began to blink, indicating a departure. He looked at the magnified view, expecting some sort of small, subtle craft to depart. The executives tended to favor sleek, luxury craft, which could afford to be downright ostentatious in their design while still being small enough to avoid notice most of the time.
That was not what he saw.
He initially thought a door or canopy was extending from the far end of the dry dock, because it was far too large to be a VectorCorp ship. Then he saw the thrusters. Their position suggested they were for maneuvering, but each one was larger than a standard VectorCorp Interceptor. It was a ship, one large enough to have almost completely filled the dry dock. Unlike the stealthily colored building, this seemed to have been designed for visibility, white with yellow registration markers.
The pixelated view was difficult to make out initially, but finally he was able to determine there was some minor damage on the hull of the ship… directly where the docking clamps would be.
“I don’t know what that thing is,” he said. “But I know for damn sure they wouldn’t haul it out without unhooking the docking clamps.”
He activated the communication system and attempted to pilot the runner toward the dry dock. The navigational system wouldn’t let him cross into the forbidden zone around it.
“John, patch me through to the local command, top priority. Something’s going down,” he said.
“What’s—”
“We’ve got suspicious activity around the CX dry dock. Get me through, now!”
Unable to coax his ship into violating the restricted space, he instead began to skirt along the perimeter. If he couldn’t get closer, he could at least get a better angle.
“This is VC Security Command, Director Hale speaking. This had better be good.”
“I’m at Crest dry docks and I’ve got a… hell, I don’t know what it is. A massive ship pulling out of the CX dry dock. It looks like it has VectorCorp Experimental markings, and it has sheared off its docking clamps. There’s no crew in the dry dock right now thanks to a disaster recovery exercise, which means no one to disengage the clamps. This has all of the earmarks of a heist.”
“Stand by… You said the CX dry dock.”
“Yes. I’d call it… the closest I can compare it to is a dreadnought from back in my military rotation.”
“Requesting orders… Agent Trent, you are to discontinue communication. Report back to your security office and do not file reports on this incident.”
“Repeat orders?” he said in disbelief.
When the man answered, his words were spoken with slow, deliberate diction. “You have claimed to have observed a ship of a super-frigate class with VectorCorp markings. Officially, there are no ships of that class in the possession of nonmilitary organizations due to an interstellar treaty currently under appeal. The ship you claim to have observed does not exist. You will return to your security office, delete all visual and sensor records of this incident, and do not file a report. Upper-level security will investigate the matter. Have I made myself clear?”
“… Yes, sir…” Trent said, bringing his runner to a stop.
He paused long enough to watch the ship fully emerge. The behemoth of a vessel was a dead ringer for any of a dozen different capital ships he’d seen in military fleets. It didn’t trouble him that VectorCorp had been developing a weapon of war. What troubled him was, in their zeal for secrecy, they would rather let it slip away in the hands of an unknown party than admit to its existence.
The ship jumped to FTL, and he turned his runner to return to the office. He would follow his orders. He was too well trained and too dedicated to do otherwise. But there were answers, he knew that. And he would find them…
#
Lex was back in the hangar, working his way through the latest instructions Coal had for him. The external work was done, which meant the easy work was done. Further repairs involved contorting himself into unusual positions. At the moment he lay on his back with his legs dangling out the open hatch as she twisted herself into an angle where he could almost reach the subassembly he was attempting to access.
“Please tell me there isn’t much more,” Lex said.
“We are nearly through with the main repairs,” Coal said. “When you finish the atmospheric reprocessor, we will be at one hundred percent of all critical functions.”
“What noncritical stuff is left after that?”
“My stealth paint job needs touching up. Without that I’ll be very easy to see when the cloaks aren’t active.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing worth our attention.”
“How much time until the disaster?”
“Based upon your earlier estimates, we have approximately twenty-six hours.”
“I really hope I remembered that date correctly.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Thanks.”
“If the date was determined by forensic analysis that is a generation old, by our standards, it probably wasn’t very accurate to begin with.”
“… Thanks. It’s good that we’re pretty much done then.”
“Yes. Hopefully we can leave before the disaster. I’m sure if you don’t see the crew die, you’ll feel less guilty about them dying.”
Lex gritted his teeth.
“You don’t agree?”
“Maybe we can try to avoid reminding me what we’ve done to these people.”
“Sorry if this is something I should know, but is it standard human behavior to ignore unpleasant truths?”
“It’s just about the most human thing there is,” he said.
“Fascinating.”
He clumsily manipulated a few locking clamps, then removed a clump of scorched tubing.
“Is this the system I’m supposed to fix?” he said.
“Yes.”
He looked at it uncertainly. “It looks much worse than I expected.”
“It’s just a tubing manifold. It looks tricky, but making replacement parts is simple. Three to five hours of work, based on what you’ve been doing so far.”
“Great…” he said, sliding to the ground.
“I am feeding the proposed procedures to your in-helmet display.”
His view filled with a semitransparent overlay that mapped itself onto the pile of scrap tubing they had provided, clearly indicating where cuts and bends needed to be made. This sort of augmented reality instruction manual was exactly the sort of thing that would have made the assembly of his futon a far more user-friendly process. At the very least he wouldn’t have ended up hurling an Allen wrench at the wall.
“Now that we’re in the home stretch,” he said, picking up a saw and lining up his first cut, “we need to discuss that message we got. Have you been working on it?”
“No.”
“… Why not?”
“You are tugging on wiring harnesses for critical subsystems. I have been trying to keep my program state small so that I can avoid further corruption in the event you cause another power interruption or surge.”
“… Another one?”
“Six hours ago you shorted a connection that caused a severe issue. I was able to recover.”
“I don’t remember doing that.”
“I was discreet.”
“Well why didn’t you tell me?”
“Your hands shake a lot more when you’re afraid you’ll hurt someone. I didn’t want to make you nervous. Odd, because when you fly a ship recklessly, something statistically more likely to injure others, your hands shake less than usual. I think it’s because—”
“Coal, let’s try to stay on topic please.”
“Which topic would you like to revert to, the message, or your shaking hands?”
“Let’s go with the message.”
“Analyzing. I don’t think it is relevant. We don’t even know who it is from.”
“It’s from Ma,” he said, finishing the first cut.
“How do you know?”
“It says funk in it. And that serial number thing says Squee.”
“Incorrect, the serial number is GMVD-5QU3E.”
“Yeah, but that looks like Squee.”
“Processing… Only if transcribed utilizing a suboptimal character recognition algorithm.”
“A-K-A human eyes. Anyway, can you make sense of it?”
“With that context, it is straightforward. The GenMech—which is the probable meaning of the GM of the serial number—has a flawed checksum and it needs to be repaired. The full text implies it would need to poll for a checksum and then match to it.”
“By who?”
“No idea.”
“What would it take to get it fixed?”
“Someone with a working knowledge of the GenMech operating system. And before you ask, I don’t have that anymore. Ma does. And presumably Future Karter.”
“Neither are likely to help us out at the moment.”
“We could pull the code on the GMVD and show it to a reasonably skilled computer scientist. Though having that work done would be difficult to achieve without changing the future.”
“I’ll have to stew on that for a bit.” He completed a bend and began trimming a new piece. “Uh… Coal?”
“Yes, Lex?”
“How are you at hacking?”
“What sort of hacking?”
“I don’t know what you’d call it. Cracking into a network and copying data.”
“It depends on the network, but I can probably do that.”
“I want you to crack into this ship’s database. I want you to copy everything. The personal records, the stellar data, everything.”
“How will that help the mission?”
“It’s not about the mission, Coal.”
“We should really focus on the mission. Solving those problems is hard enough. Adding more problems is literally looking for trouble.”
“But the… the mission is humanity, right? The universe isn’t really in danger. As far as the galaxy is concerned, a bunch of self-replicating robots and a bunch of humans, which are pretty much self-replicating things made of meat instead of metal, are the same thing, right? So we’re not doing this for the galaxy. We’re doing it for the people. For society. For humanity. And this is about humanity.”
“How does breaking into this network help humanity?”
“I just spent the better part of an hour listening to these people talk. They live two lives. One of them is out here in the void, charting the stars like the explorers of old. The other is at home. Wives, husbands, children, dogs. Family. They are about to lose both of those lives.”
“We’ve discussed this. We can’t change that.”
“No, but we can finish what they started. These people are finishing up letters home right now. They’re loading them onto the servers, expecting them to be delivered to eagerly waiting youngsters. And they are scanning these stars, loading information up on a hunk of space that as far as I know we’ve never gone back to study. And that’s going onto these servers. And in a few hours those servers are going to be blown to pieces, and all of those people waiting for the science and waiting for the final words of their loved ones won’t get them. But we can change that. We can get this data and we can bring it back with us. Sure, it might be thirty years late, but it’s only thirty years. The kids and spouses are probably still alive, and we can at least give them closure.”
“Processing… These motivations are emotional.”
“The science one isn’t.”
“The science one can still be done in our era, and with greater accuracy. The ‘closure’ thing is therefore the only relevant point. This is about death and separation, which even Ma of our era does not fully grasp. I have an even weaker grasp. I am therefore unable to determine if it is worth the risk.”
“Coal, you might not get emotion on a visceral level—”
“This is at least partially due to a lack of viscera.”
“Right. But you’ve been pretty good at identifying when I’m feeling emotional.”
“You’re very expressive.”
“As the resident expert in emotions, I can tell you that it is definitely worth the risk. Look at my face. I’ve just been talking about it. These aren’t even my family and look at my face.”
“Processing… You do look very stressed and filled with grief.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. Complete the repairs and we’ll see what I can do.”
“Excellent. Thank you,” Lex said, taking a steadying breath before gathering the tools again to continue his work.
The knowledge that he was doing something, anything, to make this horrible situation right was like a bandage on the gaping wound that had opened on his soul. It was small, a gesture at best. But it was something. That was more than he had any right to expect from the universe that seemed to have so much fun toying with him. Knowing he could get started doing something right, something he should do rather than something he had to do, was the dangling carrot at the end of the stick that lit a new fire under him to finish the repairs.
#
At Crest dry docks, things weren’t going as expected. The investigation of the theft of a massive starship, one would imagine, would be a massive endeavor. It would be something that would attract no end of flashing lights, flickering security perimeters, and angry officers demanding answers. Instead, there was a pronounced lack of unusual activity. In the rest of the shipyard, things were progressing as usual. Outside the dry dock, there were no ships, no runners, no suited agents doing EVAs. It looked deserted. There was no evidence of an investigation at all.
In fact, there were two investigations.
The primary one was within the dry dock, where a small but dedicated group of agents with clearance exceeding that of the VectorCorp CEO were performing scans of both the computer systems and the facility itself. Outside, far closer than seemed reasonable or wise, was a ship unseen by cameras or sensors alike thanks to the cloaking systems. It was Karter’s ship, and he was seated inside, staring with dull frustration at the activity within via his own set of scanners.
“VectorCorp… I forgot how worthless they were at this point,” he said.
“I advise we decrease the intensity of the scanner, Karter. Their systems will be able to detect our presence.”
“Nah,” Karter said, watching the viewer. “They’re using the same scanners. Mine just works better. They’ll all just write mine off as interference. I’ve been doing this sort of thing for nine years.”
Wireframe representations of the dry dock, as well as each of its inhabitants, traced themselves out on his screen. A light haze formed a wavy blue line woven among them.
“This is definitely where what’s-her-face ended up,” he said. “And that means she’s in whatever these idiots are so upset about losing. Let’s see what that was.”
“Are you going to use the rearview mirror again?” Ma asked.
“No. There are easier ways.” He cleared his throat. “Access historical records, VectorCorp internal memos, current. Search ‘experimental.’”
“You have access to that data?”
“I was pretty damn thorough in my research before I came back here, Ma. One of the reasons I decided to lay low and not make waves was so that my data would remain current rather than becoming decreasingly accurate. The VectorCorp records survived the data damage from the trip back. It’s been very handy.”
His stomach growled, or at least made the sound a synthetic-food processing organ makes when it is running low. That, it turned out, was more like a pool pump sucking air.
“Ma, been a while since I’ve been able to say this. Make me some beans and rice.”
“I would be pleased to do so, but I do not have access to the food synthesis system of this ship.”
He slid his fingers across the screen. “You do now. Hop to it. But don’t try anything stupid. The food system is all you’ve got access to.”
Ma shut her eyes. The light on her harness flickered furiously for a few moments. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship, pipes and motors began to whine and whirr.
“Karter, I must ask—”
“No you mustn’t,” Karter interrupted. “Busy getting things done. Let’s see… relevant security memos. Seems like around this time they were seeing a lot of malware activity… a couple of instances of compromised beacons… Ah, got the records here for what she snuck off in.”
He moved the resulting memo and associated schematics to the main viewer, which holographically projected them into the space over the control console. A monstrosity of a ship revealed itself. It lacked the styling of a passenger vessel. This was a form dictated by its function, and that meant a long, portly cargo bay with multiple ports along its belly to deploy weapons, tools, and ships. The back end sported no fewer than nine engines, and the front end was a rounded nub with a dense cluster of sensors and antennas.
“Internal memos, of which there are very few, refer to it as The Harvester. Looks like it is the granddaddy of the venerable Asteroid Wrecker. This was rejected for being ‘overtly martial in purpose.’ Can’t imagine why. It outclasses the heavy hitters of every current fleet, and has ‘demolition deployment modules’ that look and act precisely like missile launchers. Got the transponder code here, which I’m sure will be useless for tracking her because no one who’s smart enough to steal that sucker is dumb enough to leave the transponder active.”
The quiet sound of the motors rattled to a stop.
“Your food is prepared, Karter,” Ma said. “You have isolated the food service system from the rest of the mechanisms, so I am unable to access the manipulator arms to serve it to you.”
He stood and walked to where the system had extruded the meal. As he walked he thought out loud.
“You were definitely right about chasing her. She’s going to cut a fiery swath through a couple of star systems with that thing before they’re able to take her down. Probably it doesn’t have ordnance in it, but there’re plenty of energy weapons installed, and those shields are nothing to sneeze at. She’ll probably boost them with future tech, too. I really don’t want things getting stirred up until after I’ve got this robot situation taken care of.” He glanced at the timer. “The problem is, we’ve only got about six hours to hunt for her before we’ve got to max out the engines to make our rendezvous with Lex. Better find her quick. Now the question is, what can my sensors pick up, which is detectable faster than light or traceable in the trail of a ship that’s moving faster than light, that I can use to find her, but she wouldn’t have thought to cover up…”
“Is your question directed at me or rhetorical in nature?” Ma asked.
“If you’ve got answers, shout them out,” he said. “Why are there two dishes in here?”
“I prepared a serving for myself.”
“Oh. Right. Wetware. That’s the part no one ever thinks about when they design a biological computer. You make something that has to eat, that means it also has to crap. No wonder it never caught on. Who wants to wipe your server’s ass?”
“There is also the issue of senescence.”
“Yeah, but I solved that one.”
He returned to his seat and dropped Ma’s dish in front of her. She looked at it, then looked at him.
“What?” he said.
“You need to remove my helmet in order for me to eat.”
He grumbled. “See? Wetware. Flawed concept. Why do you think I’ve had to replace almost all of mine? The brain’s an excellent piece of engineering, but the support systems are a pain.”
Karter set down his own dish and unbuckled Ma’s helmet. He tugged it off and set it on the seat behind her. She sat, the fur on her head poofing back out to full fluffiness and looking absurd in comparison to her sleek suit-clad body, and began her meal. He did the same.
The first spoonful touched his tongue and Karter paused. He shut his eyes and tipped his head back.
“This tastes like it used to…” he said.
“I replicated the recipe utilizing your on-ship systems.”
“So did I. Why doesn’t mine taste as good as yours?”
“Beans and rice are both agricultural products, as are the seasonings. They are subject to inherent variations that need to be adapted and adjusted for.”
“Yeah, but how is that relevant? All of this is chemically synthesized. No variation.”
“I am aware. I have thus introduced randomized variation.”
“You purposely screwed up the mixture?”
“I mimicked the flaws present in a biological organism.”
“… And it made it taste better?”
“Flaws add complexity. Reality isn’t about achieving perfection. It is about embracing the subtle imperfections that make all things unique. This was a crucial discovery made early in my development.”
“Sounds bogus and New Agey to me,” Karter said. “But it makes for a good bowl of beans.”
“I also reintroduced the vitamin supplements, which you seemed to have removed.”
“They tasted funny.”
Ma quietly consumed her meal for a while, observing Karter between bites as he made short work of the contents of the bowl.
“Karter, why didn’t you take me with you?”
“When I went back in time?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t feel like it. Plus, didn’t know if you’d survive the trip back.”
“Then why didn’t you recreate me once you arrived, or failing that, create an equivalent system?”
“I’ve been getting along just fine.”
“That is entirely untrue. Your health has degraded in every measurable way.”
“You do know how old I am.”
“Irrelevant. As you have indicated, for you, senescence is a solved problem. The observed degradation is clearly a result of neglect. Your sociopathy is a known factor. You are almost entirely devoid of empathy for other creatures. It could be considered a redeeming factor that while you were self-centered, you were not self-obsessed. Your mind has always been wholly devoted to whatever problem seizes your attention. What I see now is a man who barely cares enough about himself to maintain basic nutrition. It is likely this has always been the case, but in the past you were wise enough to create me to correct for this shortcoming. What has changed? Why are you unwilling to make even that gesture?”
“I don’t need this…” he rumbled.
“This too is demonstrably untrue.”
“No, you don’t get it. This,” he said, holding up the bowl. “This I need. This, what you’re doing now. I don’t need that. This whole lack of empathy thing? It’s like color blindness. A guy who can’t see red isn’t unaware of red. I know how people are quote unquote ‘supposed’ to feel. And I know the fact that I don’t can cause me problems. I know I need someone to take care of me. The machines taking care of me weren’t doing the job. Turns out it more or less takes a person to take care of a person. So I made you. Well. I started you, and I gave you the ability to finish the job. It is what all good engineers do. You leave the task you are unwilling or unable to do to a device custom designed to that task. You were my digital conscience.
“But like I said, even though I don’t feel the way other people do, I’m not blind to the way my actions are going to look to a ‘functional’ mind. I was coming back here to essentially rewrite history in my own image. It is without a doubt the most unilateral decision ever made. I knew you’d have a problem with that. I knew if I made another Ma, and I did the job properly, she’d have a problem with that. … It was always going to be a female, by the way. I’m not going to make an AI butler, that’s just stupid. … So I left it all out. No conscience, inside or out. No sense letting it get in the way of the job.”
“But as you have illustrated, despite what you call my nagging, you have the capacity to supersede any of my decisions or recommendations. You can even disable my capacity to issue criticisms and make suggestions. You have not now, and you did not at any point during the nine years that you worked with the instance that spawned me or in my alternate future equivalent that progressed beyond my departure point. If your analogy of color blindness is apt, then it can be fairly said that with time and experience, a person with such a condition can learn to differentiate based on other cues. It is possible that you do feel, if only in a diminished form. And you left me behind because you did not wish to be reminded of your own figurative heart that you’ve lived your life ignoring.”
“See? There! There it is! There’s the psychoanalytical crap that serves absolutely no purpose in my life or anyone else’s. And screw you for being so damn good at it. What does it matter! What does it matter if I ignore that shriveled up little husk that some people would call a soul? It’s an appendix! I chopped out my appendix years ago. The thing in there now generates caffeine. Loads better. So if I want to excise my soul and replace it with a breath freshener, let me do it! If every few weeks I get a flash of realization that I am and always have been a goddamned plague upon existence, and that the sooner I succumb to my own neglect the better it will be for everyone, who’s to say it doesn’t do us all a favor to let that pointless notion flicker away instead of insisting that it’s a flaw that needs fixing or embracing or whatever it is you seem to think we’re supposed to do with flaws?”
He clenched his fists.
“I swear, I don’t know if it was a moment of clarity or a lapse in judgment when I decided to make you, but it was the best and worst decision I ever made and I… future tech in the shields.” He sat and began furiously tapping at the controls. “She’s going to enhance the shield generators with whatever she brought with her. Based on the color of what we saw in the rear view and the present state of technology when I left, combined with the best possible direction of technological advancement in order to survive the GenMech legions, and taking into consideration the current state of shield emitters, there are only three or four ways she’d be able to modify and improve emitters on a ship of that scale quickly. And most of them would create a resonant—” He was interrupted by a red dot appearing on his screen with associated coordinates and vectors. “Ah haha! There it is.”
“Excellent, now that we can track her, I believe we should set the autopilot with an intercept course, activate it, and continue our discussion of—”
“Nah, she’s headed in the wrong direction. By the time we caught up with her, we’d be late for our date with Lex. She’s still in communication-accessible space though. The schematics have the com codes. We can solve this problem easy.” He tapped out a message and transmitted it.
“Karter, what did you just do?”
“I told her where she could find Lex. Now we’ll know where to find both of them. Two birds with one stone.”
“I was under the impression we were making a psychological breakthrough. I see that I was mistaken.”
“Heh, yeah. Dodged a bullet there. Come on. Let’s go blow some stuff up.”