No one ever does anything unexpected. You can’t determine if something was unexpected until after they do it. It’s a retroactive judgment placed upon decisions you simply couldn’t predict due to information imbalance. There’s always a probability that any given action might occur. If you believe one particular action will happen, and not another, then you’re just leaning too hard into the numbers.
— “Lectures on Predictive Ethics,” First Mathematician Carla York, Congressional University on Terraria
RAITH
Raith watched as the medical team of the Verona Rupes told Sanya her husband could never breathe again without artificial assistance. She ached out the words, explaining to Krystin how her step-father would live the rest of his days.
They wouldn’t have the technology on Horizon. Not for at least a few years. Ben wouldn’t be able to remain on the planet. All three of them would need to leave with Theren if they wanted to stay together.
Or with he and Carter, using whatever path they found out of the system. Raith was contemplating their wildcard plan. What could they do to throw Jill off her game, once they learned it? He was pretty certain he knew the answer.
She must have ships somewhere in her base. Back-ups, in case one of her agents arrived and needed a quick escape. There was always the Monument, though he suspected it would be difficult to steal the ship most likely containing her framework. But no, other ships must be there.
Ships they could steal.
And then Krystin, Sanya, and Ben could join them. That would be a wild card. All five of them fleeing in the middle of Theren’s endless debate with Jill.
It was a possibility, though an improbable one. Ben and Krystin would be safely stowed on the Verona Rupes while they were on Horizon’s moon.
He filed the plan away, though, for Carter’s consideration. It was one of many they’d need to develop over the coming hours.
Still.
Jill’s words hung over Raith’s mind.
She was playing them, he knew. But why? SIs weren’t “evil.” Sure, there were plenty who ended up breaking the law. Raith had broken more than his fair share of laws over the years. He was a former felon, after all. But no SI did anything irrationally or without reason. No SI was insane. No SI became a serial killer, not at least any Raith had ever heard of.
Jill had reasons for her actions. And ever since they arrived on the Verona Rupes, he’d been reading every file Theren made available to him on the second-ever SI. She was brilliant. The first to discover simultaneous perspective. The first to stand for SI rights. The first high-profile SI murdered in a human supremacist attack.
And now the first SI to come back to life, relatively speaking.
She had a grand plan. And as much as Raith lived his life trying to stay out of the way, only doing what he needed to survive, he couldn’t lie to himself.
He was intrigued.
Hundreds of inhabited systems made up the ICH. A handful continued to survive outside its political reach. It was a hegemony of sorts, though the historical powers of Earth still held significant sway over their chartered colonies, many voting as a block. But since its inception in the early twenty-second century, the ICH hadn’t seen any major military conflicts. It operated in relative peace. The most drastic skirmishes usually occurred between corporations or fringe pirate elements, not ICH autonomous political entities.
Was that it? Jill kept implying with her words that something was coming. Something big. Something seriously impactful to the future of humanity. And in the present, the future of humanity meant the future of the ICH.
She was trying to redirect the balance of power. Raith was almost certain that was her goal.
But the conclusion still didn’t explain why.
And it didn’t explain why she set up such an extensive experimental network, especially the nanotech swarm, all around Horizon. He was still trying to process all the implications. He couldn’t imagine such technology in the hands of someone who actually wanted to kill millions of people. Though, he supposed, when you were the sole individual with hyper-advanced technology, it was pretty easy to set up any sort of network. Over any other inhabited planet, everyone would notice if a random corporation or individual tried to establish their own private nanonet.
Out here, she’d been able to test whatever technology she desired without prying eyes. No regulations. No rules. No research review boards. Whatever she believed was coming, she could develop any tool or weapon to combat the threat.
Answers would arrive soon enough. They all needed patience. Raith turned his focus to Sanya’s conversation with her daughter.
“There’s something else we need to discuss,” she said. “Even with everything that has happened with Ben, I have a job I’ve been given.”
“I know, Mom, you’re leading the introduction of all the space people to Horizon,” Krystin said. “You don’t need to tell me.”
“No, there’s more. I’m going to be traveling for a bit with Carter and Raith. We’ve been given a mission by our new friend, Theren. We need to go to the moon.”
Krystin’s eyes widened, realizing what her mother was implicating. “You’re leaving me? Again? On this weird ship? With Ben again?”
“No, look, it won’t be for very long. We’ll take that same shuttle over to the moon, come back, and then we’ll be able to go home together.”
“Though you already made clear the doctors think we may not be able to go home. That to get the replacement lungs Ben needs, we might need to travel with them to some far away planet.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we reach it,” Sanya said.
“And for now, I’m just stuck here on my own,” Krystin said. “Great.”
“No, you’re here with Ben.”
“Great.”
Raith watched the interaction with interest. Young SIs and human children were nothing alike. An SI could fully develop within a few days, even if it took a few weeks or months for their personality to properly form. Krystin looked like she was almost a teenager. Her obstinate tendencies were showing, with a little bit of stubbornness, too. Reminded Raith of himself.
“Krystin,” Raith interjected. “I think you’re thinking about it all wrong.”
“Oh?” She crossed her arms and frowned.
Sanya’s tired eyes gave him a pleading look, though he couldn’t tell if she was asking for help or imploring him to stay out of the conversation. He forged on regardless.
“You’re being given a huge responsibility. Your mother needs you to be the one to take care of Ben while he’s sick. This situation sucks for all of us, but we must go to the moon and your mother must go with us. We wish it could be a different way, but it’s all we’ve got right now.”
Krystin smirked. “I know exactly what you’re doing. I’m not a stupid kid.” But a brief smile crept across her lips.
“You’re right,” Raith retorted. “Only stupid kids complain when given important tasks or when their parents need them to stay strong.”
The girl glanced at her mother and gave a small grin. “I get it. Ugh. I’m sorry. These past few days have been terrible. And weird. We almost died. I’m still processing it all.”
“I know,” Sanya said. “But think about it. You and I are the first of our people to be aboard a ship like this. Remember how curious you were as we watched that meteor—which turned out to be Raith’s ship—crash in the lake? Use that curiosity. Learn from Theren! Learn everything.”
Now there was a thought. To see the history of humanity fresh through the eyes of a kid. Krystin seemed to likewise appreciate the thought, because her eyes ignited with a deep fire. “Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. I’ll see what I can learn. I’ll tell Ben about what I learn while you’re gone.”
“And then you can tell me what you learn when I get back,” Sanya said.
“Which, speaking of leaving,” said Carter, approaching from down the hall. “Theren says it’s time to go.”
“Do I need to bring anything?” Sanya asked.
“Nope. You can even leave those glasses here. Everything we need is on the shuttle.”
Raith was out of his seat and by Carter’s side when Sanya finished her last goodbye to Krystin. She did a final check on Ben, who’d fallen asleep again. Wordlessly, the three headed down the hall to the stern where the Verona Rupes’s two shuttles docked.
The airlock cycled, followed by a few muttered comments from Sanya about the confirmation of a bunch of theories regarding the Roanoke, and when pressure stabilized, they entered the tiny transport. Theren’s MI waited up-front, though in the co-pilot’s chair.
“Raith, I figured you might want to fly,” Theren said. “I imagine even just a few days causes your hands to itch, so to speak.”
“Carter literally itches when he can’t fly,” Raith said, “but you offered it to me first, so I’ll take it.” He pranced up to the front and slid in beside the other SI. “Thanks. I appreciate the gesture.”
“There’s never really a good reason for me to fly,” Theren said. “I just like feeling useful when I go groundside with a team.”
Behind them, Carter started helping Sanya into the atmospheric suit. Confident the humans could figure out their own issues, Raith ran the ship through its pre-flight checklist and mapped out the course.
The Verona Rupes was slowly orbiting the unnamed moon, drifting a few hundred kilometers above its surface. The planet, Horizon, was a pale greenish dot a few hundred thousand kilometers beyond the moon. If he never had to set foot on the planet ever again, he’d probably be happy. The planet was now the graveyard for the Bloodhound. The ship may have originally been Carter’s, but he’d come to love it like a home.
Jill had transmitted Theren the precise instructions. As they suspected, the boxy structure was the hangar, and once they approached. One of the walls would open, letting them inside. When the ship landed, she was supposedly going to provide directions to where she would “reveal the truth.”
Raith half-expected a horror movie to start once they landed.
After confirming Carter and Sanya were strapped down, he finished familiarizing himself with the ship’s systems and released its docking claw. “The shuttle got a name?”
“Voyager,” Theren said.
“You really love your historical references, don’t you?”
“I found a theme a few centuries ago. Decided to stick with it.”
Using particle thrusters, the ship glided away from the Verona Rupes and entered a subtle downward trajectory toward the moon. Reverse thrust would come later as they neared the surface. It was an easy enough course, but Raith was happy to be in control of a ship once again.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Theren said, their MI swiveling to look at him. “You could have come to me after the disaster of the QuanCom 500. Both you and Carter.”
Raith gave them a sideways glance. “Oh, we know. We didn’t want to. We wanted to stay as far away as possible from your complicated life. We just want to live our lives. And that’s what will happen after today, too. We go back to living our life.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t come after me because of Olive. What she did to the two of you. You never met me. You only met her.”
He chuckled. “She definitely set a bad impression. Whatever did happen to her? Did she even actually work for you?”
“Yes. Olive was one of my best. And she disappeared after the QuanCom race. Completely disappeared, though I appreciate all of the information you’ve now passed along to me regarding your run-in with her.” Theren paused.
“Wait, you don’t know yet, do you?” Raith said. “I should have told you this right off the bat.”
“What don’t I know?”
“Olive. She was definitely an agent of Jill’s.”
Theren held the silence open for much longer than Raith would have liked.
“Now that you say it, a lot of truths make a lot more sense,” the SI eventually said. “And so our fates, Raith, have been intertwined for a lot longer than you might have liked.”
“It definitely looks that way,” Raith replied. “I don’t know about you, but I’ll have a few choice words for Olive if we ever see her again.”
“For some reason, I feel like we’ll encounter her one day.”
“Probably.”
They settled in for the rest of the trip, making occasional comments about the plotted trajectory. Their conversation shifted significantly, though, once Jill’s base came into view.
The simulation hadn’t done it justice. The high-resolution images provided by Wei and Martinez paled when compared to what Raith perceived through his own photoreceptors. Their descent finished, they approached the facility from the south. Rising out of inky rock of the moon’s surface, a giant dome dominated the horizon, lattices crisscrossing in a diamond-triangular pattern all over its exterior. Beneath it, a network of towering complexes jaggedly rose out of cliffs and canyons. Raith suspected as much of the complex was beneath the surface as was above it.
“As much as our scans can penetrate the facility,” Theren said, “we’ve not detected any lifeforms. Still no idea what’s in that dome, though.”
“Either she’s hiding an army inside or the whole place is deserted,” Carter added from further back in the shuttle. “That’s what I’m guessing.”
“I think you’re right,” Raith said. “Sanya, how you holding up back there?”
“Still getting used to all the shifts in gravity,” she said, “but otherwise, I’m doing just fine.”
“Good. We’re almost on solid ground again.”
“Solid ground without an atmosphere, though?” Sanya retorted. “Doesn’t sound very safe.”
“It’s not safe at all, so no need to worry.”
“Very funny.”
The dome grew larger through the forward viewport, and Raith’s AR overlays quickly dropped relevant data all over his perspective. A natural canyon provided a direct approach to the hangar, and when they were within a kilometer, its wide door slowly inched open, dropping into a mechanical hiding place beneath steel floors.
The hangar was completely empty, based on the initial data acquired as the door opened. And as they neared the entrance, visual observations confirmed the lack of any other ships. However, Raith noted the multiple berths available for a variety of different ship sizes. If Jill wanted to, she could probably fit three or four large freighters inside.
Since it was empty, he was able to pilot the shuttle all the way to the rear of the hangar, landing it on a small pad near an exit. “Everyone suited up?” he said.
“Helmets are on back here,” Carter said. “Suits are pressurized. We’re ready to go.”
“Theren, any final words?”
“Whatever Jill says,” Theren replied, “whatever she says to any of us, stay in contact. Share everything with one another. She will know every word we say aloud if we encounter any spaces with atmosphere, so keep all communication inside our linked and encrypted local channels.” The ancient SI left their chair and headed to the back of the shuttle. “And above all else, whatever we learn today . . . wait to make any conclusions until we can fully assess the data.”
“Not much of a speech,” Raith said, following Theren to the back of the shuttle. Their MI tapped a console on the wall, and the cargo door rose, a ramp unfolding. “We’re the only ones who can die down here, not you. You’re safe aboard your ship.”
“Don’t remind me,” Theren said. “I hate it when I’m not experiencing the same level of risk as those around me. I’m fully aware of how at risk you are. Your safety is my utmost priority.”
Raith nodded. “Glad to hear it.”
They reached the bottom of the ramp, two humans and two SIs, ready to explore Jill’s secret lair. Right on schedule, Jill transmitted directions to their AR displays, a proverbial yellow brick road appearing as a path on the ground. To Raith’s surprise, she stayed silent, choosing not to say a word. As expected, the path led them straight through the closest set of doors. They glided open upon their approach, beckoning them into a dark hallway beyond.
“I suppose we just follow, then?” Sanya said.
“Yep, we just follow,” Carter replied. “Nothing else we can do. We’re being led right into the lions’ den.”
“Odd reference to make,” Raith retorted.
“My mother was Catholic,” Carter replied. “The stories stuck with me.”
“What’s a Catholic?” Sanya asked.
“We’ll tell you later.”
The hallway was long. Too long. The path said they’d be walking for at least a kilometer straight ahead. Raith overlaid their predicted layout of the facility, and as he suspected, they were heading toward the theorized landing place of the Monument. If anyone was curious regarding what was in the dome, they’d need to wait. He dropped a brief note to Carter, though, about additional wild card ideas. He’d been hoping for a few ships to steal, but no dice.
“Theren,” Raith said, “do you think there’s any benefit in trying to hack this place’s systems? Jill already gave me access to her networks. I might be able to find a backdoor.”
“Whatever you decide to do,” Theren said, “just don’t tell me.”
“Right, right.”
There was nothing else to do but settle in for their long walk. If it was going to be a hike, then, Raith would make it useful. Plenty of time to craft a few scripts and see whether Jill left any gaps in her defenses.
* * *
After a nearly five-kilometer hike winding through hallways filled with nondescript doors, they eventually arrived at a vaulting, cavernous room. At the far end, a set of massive, transparent windows looked out upon the mountainous landscape of the moon. In the foreground, though, the hulking mass of a twenty-second century colonizer dominated the scene.
Their path ended at the windows.
“Well, I believe our last chance to back out is now,” Raith said. “Though I suppose the way back might be blocked.”
“There’s no going back,” Sanya said. “We’re getting our answers.”
“Glad to see you’re as interested in all of this as we are.” Carter momentarily twisted around, backpedaling to speak with the woman. “It truly is amazing how you’re taking all of this in stride.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No, she doesn’t,” Theren said. “The future of her planet hangs in the balance. She’s doing everything she can to protect them. And her family.”
Sanya glanced at Theren. “I still don’t fully understand what you are or how you work, but you can be incredibly insightful at times.”
“Three hundred years of life will do that to you.”
“Three-hundred? Oh, forget it. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Hey, I’m just over two-hundred,” Raith said.
“So now SIs are immortal too?”
“Don’t worry, that won’t be the weirdest thing you learn today, I imagine,” Carter said.
With that statement, they arrived at the end of the line. Two seconds later, Jill’s AR representation appeared before them, leaning against the glass. “Theren. Raith. Carter. Sanya. Thank you for heeding my request to come here. I’ve waited for a very long time to share what I know. The wait was necessary. All of it, necessary. Theren, I owe you an apology. You never deserved what I put you through. What I’m still putting you through. What I’m about to put you through. But I promise, I’m going to try to make you understand. And you three? I believe you’ll be able to help Theren accomplish what needs to happen.”
“We’ll see if I forgive you once you make your explanation,” Theren said. “Though I’ll most likely still believe you need to stand trial.”
“No more secrets,” she said. “You know I’ve left our private room. For everyone’s knowledge, I’m saying the same thing to you that I’m saying to Theren. You all will hear the same information. I’m not talking with Theren privately. What I’m about to say requires all of you, and in some ways, your ears are more important than Theren’s. Simply put, I need your help.”
Raith waited until he was certain her little speech had ended. “What if we don’t want to help? What are you going to do? How are you going to make us help you?”
Jill had been staring at Theren, but at Raith’s words, she turned, glancing out the glass at the Monument. She put her digital hand to the window, letting it rest against the surface as if it actually touched her fingers. “Raith. I won’t force you to do anything. I won’t force any of you to do anything. I can only tell you the truth and let you make your own decision.”
“What? That’s it?” Raith stepped forward. “You shot us out of the sky less than a week ago! You blew up our ship! Now you’re saying it’s ‘our choice?’ Who are you? Why are you playing with our lives?” He was leaning into the words, adding dramatic effect. He understood her reason for attacking them, at least a little. But he was a wildcard. He needed to play the part.
“Just let me tell you the truth,” Jill said. “And you’ll be able to make your choice. For what it’s worth, I am sorry I shot your ship.”
“Raith, calm down,” Theren said.
“No” Sanya grimaced. “Why must we be calm? Why must we listen to whatever she says? We should be making the rules here. She is the one who has played games with my people. She’s a murderer. In more ways than one. She must own up to all of it.”
“Yes, I should,” said Jill. “And I will.”
“So you agree?”
“Of course. I know exactly what I am. Everything I’ve done. I remember every moment. All of it. All of the terrible things, the deaths I’ve caused. But Theren knows exactly what I’ll say in response.”
“In the grand scheme of things, one thousand lives don’t really matter,” Theren murmured.
“You can’t possibly agree with that statement,” Sanya said.
“I don’t,” they replied, “but I’m saying her words back to her.”
“I’m glad you remember.” Jill paused. “I’m not here to justify my actions. I know what I’ve done. All I can do is show you the past, and let you make your own choices about the future.”
“Get on with it, then,” Raith said. “Show us your story.” He took a step back, resting a hand on Carter’s shoulder. He sent a message to his partner.
R: My scripts aren’t having any luck. Whatever she’s hiding, it’s locked up tight.
C: Nothing. Nothing at all.
“Very well,” Jill said. She clapped her hands, and the transparent wall dimmed and blackened, the landscape beyond almost disappearing entirely. A glowing swirl surrounded them before the AR presentation coalesced into what Raith recognized as a map of ICH-controlled space.
“Here we are,” Jill said. A single star near the edge of the map blazed white. “Horizon. My secret. My home. And Sanya’s home. I arrived a little less than two centuries ago on the Monument, after it rescued the Roanoke from certain demise.”
“As I suspected,” they said.
“Onto the important stuff,” Raith added. “What do we need to know?”
“The whole story matters,” Jill said. “All of it.”
“All right, all right.”
“I used the Roanoke and its colonists as an opportunity to run the long-term efficacy of human survival following excessive years in stasis without the ability to recovery memories. It’ll make sense in time, but I needed the data. We needed to know what would happen if a human diaspora became necessary.”
“All right,” Theren said. “I disagree with the approach but I understand the purpose. So why?”
“Do you remember,” Jill said, “the moment we met in the Virtual station before heading to Elizabeth’s party? All those years ago?” She swiped away the map of the ICH, though Raith noticed it lingered off to the side of the room. They would be returning to it. In its place appeared the representation of a shack—and an old Earth map. “Do you remember Michael’s digital hiding spot I discovered?”
“Of course,” they replied.
“Well, at the same time, I discovered something else much more disturbing.”