The Bridge

by Simon Winstanley

  Picking up a model fairground carousel that had taken him a few weeks to make, he wound the mechanism and it began to turn. Static horses, cars and space rockets began to orbit the thin shaft that turned at the centre.

  “You know why I like these things so much?”

  Toby gave a disinterested shrug, “A status thing?”

  Devon shook his head.

  “They have no digital or chemical components,” he smiled, “Fai can’t scan for them.”

  Toby suddenly seemed to understand.

  “If Fai can’t detect something,” he sat up straight, “she’s blind to it.”

  Devon placed the carousel down on his desk and watched the parts move along the path he’d created for them.

  THE CONVERSATION

  Marcus had been wanting answers about Ebony, but when the window appeared in front of him, he felt more questions begin to stack up.

  The woman in the bright room on the other side of the glass seemed to be studying him intently. Somewhat hesitantly, she raised a hand and placed it on her chest.

  “My name’s Raven,” she said, “Raven Meznic.”

  He took a step closer to the glass but, before replying with his own name, he felt the need to verify an assumption.

  “What am I?”

  She seemed unsure how to phrase her reply.

  “Records of your life,” she began, “and a Cryotrace were… compiled… into a program by Fai -”

  “Who’s Fai?” he cut in.

  The woman’s hesitancy seemed to return.

  “A… computer.”

  Somehow the news that he was being simulated inside a computer did not come as a surprise. He’d already experienced the supporting evidence. In some ways it was a comfort to know the limits of his world.

  Assessing those limits, he looked around his environment. He felt two pieces of information merge. His sudden laugh apparently startled the woman.

  “What is it?” she stepped closer to the glass.

  “This dark room,” he looked at the six surfaces that now contained him, “It’s a black box.”

  The irony seemed lost on her.

  Essentially he was now the digital flight recording of his former life. His former ‘indestructible’ hacker alias now defined him.

  Another thought swiftly followed. Without the window in front of him to provide input, his experiences would be limited to endless reinterpretation of his life’s events.

  The logic of his situation became clearer.

  “Am I a prisoner?”

  “What?” she looked genuinely confused and perhaps a little offended, “Of course not, you’re… you’re my grandfather.”

  “Error,” his mind rejected the data.

  He recalled the final mother-daughter photo. As far as he was concerned, the idea of descendants had ended when Ebony’s data had suddenly stopped.

  “No, I’m telling the truth,” she insisted.

  “Nice try,” he shook his head, “but I’ve read all the files.”

  Her look of confusion slowly dissolved and she seemed to realise something.

  “Maybe not all of them,” her eyes looked from side to side, “Fai?”

  “Yes, Raven?” the computer’s voice spoke from the opposite side of the window.

  “When you…” she looked slightly awkward, “merged the sources of data, did you exclude anything?”

  “Yes, a folder that was omitted from the public data record at the request of Lana Yakovna and Ivan Meznic.”

  “I know the one,” Raven closed her eyes, “Is it possible to merge it?”

  “No,” Fai replied by return, “However, I can create a folder that the simulation can access.”

  Raven faced him again, “It’s up to you.”

  Marcus knew he wanted answers.

  “I wanna see it,” he said, “What do I need to -”

  A folder symbol appeared on the glass in front of him.

  “Read-only access granted,” the computer announced.

  He had to remind himself that, of course, he wasn’t standing in a dark room with a window. This was merely an interface. The information had been sent to him, so he had to choose to open it.

  Making his choice, he reached for the symbol.

  Instantly, his mind was injected with missing data fragments. Like multiple lightning strikes within his mind, new pathways flashed into existence, connecting events, people and places.

  A census data file showed when Ebony had come aboard the Eridanus using a different surname, and the baby she’d brought with her. He saw an adoption certificate that detailed how her baby had become ‘Raven Meznic’. He was beginning to arrange the factual data when his Cryotrace began work; washing through his revised knowledge to give him emotional perspective.

  A wave of grief engulfed him.

  He felt his daughter’s life end.

  A lifetime of emotions compressed itself into a dense summation of her existence. The young girl aboard the Sea-Bass. The smiling young woman next to Sabine. The woman with her own child. The name on the death certificate.

  Everywhere he looked, he saw deaths throughout his database.

  “I’m so sorry…” Raven was now standing next to the glass, “I didn’t know it would…”

  “Is this all I am?” the cold data ran through him, “A living catalogue of everyone who died?”

  Everyone he’d known was gone.

  Even Sabine was dead. The passing millennia made her death a logical certainty, but the mother-daughter photo had been keeping her alive in his mind. The long and happy life that Sabine had led after leaving the USV was now a cold, historical footnote.

  She was as dead as his daughter.

  His electronic immortality would ensure that he’d have forever to dwell on the fact. He could feel the chaotic disorder, the endless loop failure in his own thought processes; an emotional stack overflow with no debug window.

  Raven placed her hand on the glass.

  “Your daughter, Ebony,” she said quietly, “She was my mother.”

  On impulse, he reached out to the glass and placed his hand on hers. Immediately he felt a connection; a faint pathway to the world beyond his dark room.

  “Nobody understood why she took her own life,” Raven stared at her feet, “least of all me. You’re the only connection I have to her past.”

  The background chaos within his mind began to reorder itself. It began to dawn on him that he’d been given a gift: the means to live beyond his physical years and be part of his granddaughter’s life.

  The looping, chaotic introspection slowly ceased, and he was left with a quiet sense of calm.

  “Raven…” he spoke her name for the first time, “Thank you.”

  Using the visual interface that both separated and united them, they discussed what little information they had.

  To Marcus, it made no sense. All his records about Ebony had pointed to her being a fighter, both mentally and physically. Yet, according to the Eridanus records, she’d chosen to end her own life.

  Whilst he was well aware that suicidal thoughts could often be masked by people who seemed perfectly happy, this didn’t fit Ebony’s history. She’d had a difficult life, but the emotional logic was all wrong. There had to be a reason behind her drastic action. Something had been missed, and he suspected that he knew where to start looking.

  Beyond cold data, facts meant nothing to an emotionless computer. Fai had recorded Ebony’s death with as much interest as writing a shopping list. Fai lacked the intuition to join dots that were only visible with the filter of a human perspective.

  He didn’t possess Fai’s calculative functions, but he did have a lifetime of hacking human targets and remaining hidden from Archive. If the reason for Ebony’s death was in Fai’s records, he was uniquely qualified to find it.

  “Give me access to Fai’s public records.”

  “I don’t know if…” Raven frowned, “Is that possible, Fai?”

  “For securit
y purposes, I can grant read-only permission. Any analysis conducted within this simulation will not be updated to my central core.”

  When Marcus began nodding his head, Raven joined in too.

  “Do it,” she said.

  Among the other documents that were spread across the window, an external link arrived.

  As he raised a hand to access it, he looked over at Raven. Again, she was watching him expectantly. She’d helped him with so much already, but hadn’t asked for anything in return.

  “Raven,” he dropped his hand to his side, “before I do this, I’ve gotta ask… why bring me back?”

  She looked over at his Cryotrace still docked in the desk.

  “Honestly, I didn’t know all this was going to happen,” she said, “I only remember seeing a few video clips of Grandma Sabine. If she gave the pendant to Ebony… I don’t know… maybe I just hoped to find out what happened after the ARC.”

  Marcus gave a nod.

  He knew there were a few historical ARC records that had been collated from various sources and incorporated into his own database. Items that Raven may not have been aware of. He didn’t know how much of it would be of interest to her, but he thought he should share what he knew.

  “OK…” he accessed the appropriate files, then put them on display, “Here you go.”

  He studied the small window now in front of him.

  NIGHT

  He studied the small window now in front of him.

  “Seriously, Nate?” Marcus looked out at the watery darkness, “I gave up my comfy spot, lying on the floor, for this?”

  Nathan joined him at the Britannia’s narrow forward window, “At least you’re back on your feet, old man.”

  “Watch it, Westhouse,” Marcus found himself smiling, “Forty-seven ain’t old.”

  “Middle-aged,” Nathan conceded, then peered out at the night, “Once we’ve got the all-clear, I’ll see if we can surface and get a better look.”

  “Some fresh air would be good,” he agreed.

  Hearing footsteps, he turned to see Dixon approaching.

  “Everyone’s accounted for,” he reported, “Bumps and scrapes, but nothing major.”

  Nathan looked out over the control room.

  “How’s the hardware?”

  “Sonar’s down,” he said, “Seabed topology mapper’s still trying to get a match for our position.”

  “OK, I’ll come and take a look. Marcus, do you need anything? A walking stick, a nice comfy chair…”

  Marcus could see Nathan was suppressing a smirk, so he replied in kind.

  “Some boxing gloves would be great…”

  Nathan held up his hands in mock submission, then accompanied Dixon to a nearby console.

  Marcus walked back through the control room, rubbing at the mild ache behind his temples. Given that he’d fainted during the anomaly episode, he thought he should go to the medical bay and get checked for signs of concussion. On his way down the main staircase, he met Megan on her way up.

  “I was just coming to find you,” she said, then spotted him rubbing his head, “You got the headaches too?”

  “A bit,” he shrugged, “Was just gonna get it checked out.”

  “Not a bad idea,” she turned and headed down the steps again, “I’ll go with you.”

  “You know, I can probably make it on my-”

  “I’m sure,” she said, “but I’ve heard a few people talking about feeling light-headed.”

  “Hardly surprising really,” Marcus thought of the spectacle he’d seen through the forward window.

  He heard her sigh.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I swear,” she said, “The longer I live, the weirder it bloody gets.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  Although they were slightly different ages, he knew that they’d both lived through an equal share of weirdness.

  People carrying boxes were making their way up the stairs, so they both moved to one side to allow them to pass more easily.

  “You said you were coming to find me about somethin’,” he said, “What was it?”

  “Oh, you know,” she nonchalantly looked ahead, “No reason.”

  They walked on down the stairs.

  INTERROGATION

  Prompted by a comment from Chris Powell a few days earlier, Lawrence had felt the need to verify a statement he’d made about Fai.

  The journey up from the surface had been characteristically uneventful. With every vertical metre of travel, the apparent gravity was reducing. He’d soon arrive at the central axis and find himself weightless. Although others had complained about feelings of nausea, he’d never found zero gravity to be a problem. Unusual, certainly, but not disturbing.

  “Deceleration,” Fai reported.

  The elevator slowed and he felt the reaction force from the restraining harness; without it, his momentum would have separated him from his seat.

  Below him, the Greenwich Hub continued to get smaller. From this height, he could now see most of their concave world. He found it remarkable that this perspective might soon become a distant memory.

  Outside the elevator, protective sunlight shields swept into view, masking out the distant landscape.

  “Your attention please. We are about to change orientation,” said Fai, “Please prepare for axial transport.”

  The vertical motion of the elevator smoothly transitioned into a horizontal transport through the central axis. The last vestige of gravity faded and the elevator continued its journey through the dark, hollow interior of the axial sun.

  Within a few seconds, the elevator slowed to a halt and the doors opened. Some people had noted the tendency to hold their breath in zero gravity, but this wasn’t his first visit. He unclipped his harness and, after stretching his jaw to relieve a slight pressure imbalance, pushed himself out of the elevator.

  “Lawrence Clark,” he announced himself to the nearby door, “Identification nineteen oh seven.”

  The door unlocked and began to swing open.

  “Biomag ID confirmed,” Fai’s voice came from within the room, “Hello, Lawrence, how may I help you?”

  He pulled himself into the room and closed the door.

  “I wanted to have a conversation with you.”

  Pushing himself off from the door, he travelled through the wide, square-sectioned space. Drifting over dozens of plate-sized access ports within the walls, he checked to see that the port covers were still in place. He arrived at the far end of the room and tapped at a touchscreen. According to the logs, he was the last person to visit the room.

  “All good so far,” he clipped himself to the wall, “Fai, I’d like to run a primary level diagnostic, is that OK?”

  “Yes,” a small keypad appeared on the screen, “Please enter your authorisation.”

  Although the room was empty, he concealed the keypad with one hand and entered ‘Directive2112’.

  The screen cleared.

  “Primary level diagnostic,” Fai’s voice confirmed.

  “OK, Fai,” Lawrence began, “Give me your functional definition.”

  “I am a sixth generation, transferable heuristic matrix with stochastic-chaining intelligence.”

  “State the last interaction you experienced within this control room.”

  “Access log, Clark L., Biomag ID number one nine zero seven. Earth standard time, fourteen August twenty-one ninety, thirteen-forty-one hours.”

  He saw the time and date on the screen. It matched with the last time he’d been here.

  “Confirm that there have been no log deletions. Aggressive scan.”

  “Working…” there was a long pause, “Confirmed.”

  First query answered, he thought. If there had been any tampering with Fai’s central core, it would have shown itself here.

  “Fai, I’m going to ask you a series of questions and you must answer without distortion or omission, do you understand?”

  “Yes.”


  “In the year twenty-one twelve, you established a long-standing protocol with Anna Bergstrom. The directive was to assist the surviving ISS crew members by aiding in the construction and maintenance of the Eridanus vessel. Is that statement correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And has that directive been altered in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he said, “Thank you, Fai.”

  At the very least, it told him that the basic human protection rules were still in place.

  Earlier he’d told Chris that it was impossible for Fai to have falsified the Eri probe reports. But having thought about it since, Lawrence knew there was another condition that had to be checked.

  If the Eridanus itself was in danger, Fai would best ‘protect’ the humans aboard by getting them to leave. This would be achieved more easily if the probe data suggested that Eri was habitable.

  Even if he believed that Fai lacked the creativity to construct a lie, he knew he had to eliminate the theoretical quirk of logic.

  “Fai, you launched two probes from the Eridanus. Before their departure, were their data banks empty?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did those probes successfully enter orbit around Eri?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the probes relay their data back to the Eridanus?”

  “Yes.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Did you alter the relayed data in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you, Fai,” he breathed out, “Exit diagnostic.”

  The screen in front of him reset.

  “Hello, Lawrence. My access logs indicate that you have conducted a primary level diagnostic. Can I ask why?”

  He wasn’t sure that he could explain the illogical doubts that people were expressing about the planet.

  “It’s just humans being humans,” he sighed.

  “Parsing error. Please can you rephrase your statement?”

  “OK,” he tried to think of a way to explain the problem, “Despite being given the facts about Eri, a lot of people don’t believe the data.”

  “They are in error,” said Fai, “Facts are not a function of belief.”