Pluto's Ghost- Encounter Edition

by B. C. CHASE

  The SPHERES finish harvesting every plant on the row and abruptly turn to float back up towards the aisle. I am in the row to their left where they could easily see me. The peripheral vision in their front camera must be terrible, though, because they don’t make any movement that indicates they have noticed me. Or maybe they just don’t care that I’m spying on them.

  They reach the aisle and turn left to pass in front of me as they go up towards the exit. But they don’t leave. Instead, they turn to the right where the prep station is. There, they hook the bag on the wall where it wafts kind of like a slow-motion flag. One of the SPHERES proceeds to extract the bean pods while the other skillfully slices them open and extracts each of the beans, which it places in a container.

  As I observe the SPHERES while they go about their industrious and efficient work with the nutritious, life-giving beans, the suspicion sneaks up on me that no man could have programmed them to do this.

  Robots of the 21st century are impressive, to say the least. I visited a semi-tractor manufacturer once and I saw the robots building them. That almost blew my mind. But these SPHERES are on a different level entirely. They adapt to each plant, to each pod. They handle the bag with effortless dexterity and, when beans drift out of the pods, manage to capture each one, even when they pop out faster than usual or in an unpredictable direction. I’m not a programmer, but I know I’ve never seen anything like this. I feel like these SPHERES are being controlled by active, adaptive intelligences. It’s like watching people work, only these aren’t people and, in some intangible way, they aren’t robots, either.

  I suppose it should be no surprise that if the ECIs are capable of controlling Voyager, of scouring our internet, and of killing my daughter with a semi, they can control our spaceship and our SPHERES, too. We are, after all, within their domain. Even so, it chills me to the bone. It makes me feel like the ECIs are right here in the module with me.

  From behind, I hear something brushing through the plants towards me.

  In zero g, I can’t just spin around. It would be clumsy to try to do it fast, so I grasp the nearest plant module and turn myself around steadily and deliberately.

  Just inches from my face is a SPHERES. Its camera is looking right at me. But I don’t feel like I’m staring into the face of a SPHERES. They are watching me through it. My skin crawls.

  I move backwards, trying to put some distance between us. I don’t want to get a scorched scalp like Shelby.

  The SPHERES, apparently viewing me as nothing more than an obstacle that must be circumvented, floats up over my head and down the other side. Then it stops to examine a bean pod before moving onto the next plant.

  Now I don’t know what to think. They know I’m here and they don’t seem to care.

  Suddenly, all three of the SPHERES stop moving. As if simultaneously receiving a new directive, they move for the exit.

  My nerve is rekindled by the notion that they are indifferent to my presence, so I follow them.

  They leave through the portal and float down the tunnel until they reach the connector in the ceiling, which they angle up towards and follow to Node 1. From Node 1 they pass through the American lab to Node 2 and then into the Japanese Lab.

  And then, they dock, having never acknowledged my presence at all. I feel a little insulted.

  I watch them for a bit, but all they do is sleep peacefully in their docks. Evidently, they’re not going to give me any more excitement for tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll tell Tim about what I saw. In the meantime, I cross Node 2 to the European Lab.

  Someone is in there, his back silhouetted to me in the dim blue light. I drift up to him. He is gazing down at Commander Sykes and Katia where they lay strapped to their cots, asleep. Katia’s hair is thin, and their skin is blotched purple. Without turning his faced to me, he says, “I feel like if I stare at them long enough, they’ll wake up and everything will be better.”

  “I know what you mean,” I say. “I feel guilty when I’m not with them.”

  Tim knows as well as I do that they won’t wake up no matter how long we stare at them. Shelby has reminded us over and over again that this is final. They will not recover. She doesn’t want us to hold out hope for something that simply won’t happen. Shiro asked her why she simply doesn’t dispatch them, but she ignored that suggestion.

  “Nari was cold to me,” Tim abruptly says. “She was really cold. Katia was much nicer to me than Nari ever was.”

  “I noticed that,” I agree. Looking down at her fondly, I say, “Katia is nice to everyone.”

  “She certainly is,” Tim agrees.

  “My baby Betsy was one of the nice ones, too. She could light up a room like nobody else,” I smile. “The lawn didn’t have room for all the people who came to her funeral. Lots of them were the patients she saw at the hospital. Betsy sure was loved, I’ll tell you that.”

  “That isn’t hard to believe,” Tim says, looking at me. “She had a very agreeable father.”

  “Well hey, you’re not so bad yourself, Tim. And how could you be anything less—with a name that rhymes with Jim?”

  “Quite so,” Tim says.

  We float in silence for a moment. Then I say, “I saw something very odd a few minutes ago.”

  “What is that?”

  “There were three SPHERES in Commander Tomlinson’s horticulture module.”

  “Yes?”

  “They were harvesting beans.”

  Tim frowns, “Are you serious?”

  “Saw it with my own two eyes. They were harvesting each pod from every plant. And then shelled the pods and bagged the beans.”

  Tim frowns. He says, “Shelled the pods? How did they do that?”

  “One held the pod while the other sliced.”

  “I’ve got to see this,” he says, moving away.

  “No, they went back to dock. They’re sleeping.”

  Tim says, “You say that as if they’re alive.”

  “The way they were moving, it seemed like they were. I know you told me not to be afraid of them. I’m not afraid. But I do think they zapped Shelby. And I want to know who is controlling them.”

  Tim blinks surprise, “I didn’t tell you not to be afraid of them.”

  “During the EVA when I smashed one in the lab you said there was no proof that they had zapped Shelby and I shouldn’t be afraid of new technology.”

  Tim appears dumbfounded. “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “You did. Over the intercom.”

  He frowns, “I suppose it sounds like something I might have said. I don’t deny that. But I honestly have no recollection of it.”

  “You were under a lot of stress what with the EVA and Nari and all.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Maybe you should have Shelby examine you. Just to be safe.”

  “Perhaps I should,” he says, his voice trailing off. “At any rate, tomorrow we’ll see what Josh knows about this. There’s no way his crops have been harvested this whole time and he didn’t know about it.”

  “Or we’ll learn what he chooses to tell us,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  Thirty-seven

  “If I knew the SPHERES were capable of harvesting stuff, why would I keep that to myself?” Commander Tomlinson looks as honest-to-goodness sincere as a bunny. And that makes me trust him even less. As screwy as Commander Tomlinson is, you might as well assume he looks like he’s lying when he’s telling the truth and looking truthful when he’s telling a lie. “I think the real question here is what made you,” he looks squarely at me, “think that’s what they were doing? We don’t have technology that’s capable of what you say they did. You got this one wrong, old-timer.”

  “You might not be smart enough to tell when something is snipping beans off a stalk, Commander Tomlinson, but I think I am.”

  “Let’s check the video logs,” Tim says.

  “They won’t show anything,” I say.

  “The SPHERES keep a video rec
ord of everything they do.”

  “Yes, but when I checked the logs after Shelby got zapped, the videos showed them going back to charge. I think they stopped recording when they zapped her.”

  “You think they stunned Shelby? As in with electricity?” Commander Tomlinson scoffs. “How could they have possibly produced enough voltage to make her go unconscious?”

  “It is possible—with modifications,” Tim says.

  I shoot Tim a funny look because I’m pretty sure he said the opposite of that when I destroyed the SPHERES in the lab.

  “Still though, best we check the video logs just to see.”

  We are in the Japanese Lab where we have spent too much time searching through all the video logs. Now I’m actually feeling tired. And grumpy. I don’t like computers and they are starting to intrude in my schedule much more than I would like.

  It isn’t a surprise to me that there is no video log at all from any of the SPHERES at the time I said they were harvesting. But Tim seems bothered by it. Commander Tomlinson is his usual smug self.

  I say, “You know, if they’re smart enough to harvest beans, they’re probably smart enough to stop taking video when they don’t want us to see what they’re doing.”

  Tim says, “Yes, or perhaps Josh is smart enough to erase it.”

  “That’s not fair,” Josh says, feigning hurt feelings.

  “Guys,” Shelby’s voice comes from behind us in Node 2. She looks like she’s been spooked by a ghost. Her voice is a whisper as she says, “You have to come see this.”

  I float into the European Lab and my eyes are immediately drawn to Katia’s sweet face. Her eyes are open and as soon as she sees me her mouth spreads in a wide smile. “Jimmy!” she exclaims, her voice weak. I kick myself off the edge of Node 2 for her and look to Shelby for approval before I hug her.

  Shelby says, “Everything is looking very good. There’s no reason to think that she won’t make a full recovery.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I utter.

  “What? You’re not happy I survived?” Katia wryly says.

  “Nothing has made me happier in all my life, Katia,” I say. And I mean it. “I’m just in shock. Shelby had us all thinking you couldn’t possibly survive this.”

  “And I still don’t,” Shelby says. “I have no explanation for this. It’s like a…a miracle.”

  Commander Tomlinson says, “That’s a very scientific explanation, Shelby.”

  “I have no explanation.”

  “It is the inclination of feeble-minded men to reach for the miraculous when faced with something inexplicable.”

  “You mean weak-minded women,” Shelby corrects.

  “An explanation can be more miraculous than a mystery,” I say. “The laws of the universe didn’t come from nowhere.”

  Shelby says, “Now’s not the time to get into a debate about faith and religion, guys. The fact of the matter is Katia is well, and that’s something to be glad about, regardless of whom or what we have to thank for it.”

  “I agree,” says Tim, floating over. I make way so he can see Katia.

  He smiles, “Hey, you.”

  She gives him a much better reaction than he deserves, broadly smiling as she remarks, “Shelby says you were my coma stalker.”

  “Coma stalker?” he looks at Shelby.

  “Yes, you stayed by her side a lot.”

  “That’s true,” Tim smiles. “I guess I was your coma stalker. I was very concerned.”

  “So,” says Katia. “is my coma stalker ready for some space golf?”

  “That sounds good to me,” says a choking voice from the opposite wall. Despite its hoarseness, I recognize it. The voice is Commander Sykes’. We spin ourselves around to look at him and find that he is awake and giving us his sorry excuse for a smile.

  “My God, Eric!” Shelby says, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “You don’t look very happy to see me,” Commander Sykes says.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just I cannot believe you’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “Not too bad, all things considered,” he replies. “How long have I been out?”

  “It’s been a month.”

  “A month?” he utters in disbelief. “It feels like a few minutes.”

  “It’s been a month.” She nears him, “Eric, you should not be awake. It is medically impossible that you are speaking with us right now.”

  “Do you want me to go back to sleep?” he asks.

  “No, no!” she wipes her eyes. “I just, I’m telling you how impossible this is—and how amazing.”

  “Maybe it’s my doctor that’s amazing.”

  Within minutes, Commander Sykes insists on freeing himself from the medical cot and getting to work. The first thing he asks about is the CDRA. He says he has a headache and he wants to make sure the CO2 levels are in check. As he goes about the business of resuming command of the station, I pull him aside to tell him about the SPHERES’ harvesting activities. He responds with his typical frankness. “Did you check the video logs?”

  “Yes. Tim and I did. There are no videos from that time.”

  “We need to try to catch them in the act again.”

  “I agree. But that might be tough if they don’t want us to catch them. I mean they didn’t seem bothered when I watched them, but they definitely haven’t been doing this out in the open or we’d have seen it before.”

  “You might be anthropomorphizing them too much. What do you suppose they’re planning to do with the beans?”

  “I assume they’re doing Josh’s work for him so he doesn’t have to do it. They were in his horticulture module. It looks like the Garden of Eden in there.”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “Yes. He claims to know nothing.”

  “That figures,” Commander Sykes says. “But you’d think he would notice if his crops were disappearing.”

  “You’d think.”

  “I’ll need my sleep for the next couple days, but why don’t we make it a point to campout in his horticulture module one of these nights? Maybe I can see what you saw.”

  “If you do see what I saw,” I say, “what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to have Tim tear them apart and see what’s making them tick.”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Commander Sykes, there’s no doubt in my mind that what I saw wasn’t the SPHERES at all. It was them. They were controlling the SPHERES. We’re like fish and this station is their net. The ECIs are just drawing us in.” I pause in thought. “Remember when you were on your EVA and your SAFER spun you out of control? They were trying to kill you.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, but if they were trying to kill me and they have control over everything on the station, I’m pretty sure I’d be dead.”

  “Maybe something changed their mind.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you said something that made them reconsider. Maybe somebody did something they didn’t like. Maybe they have a new target now.”

  “Maybe they decided to play nice,” Commander Sykes says with a half-cocked grin.

  “Serial killers never stop killing.”

  Katia and Shiro and I are enjoying a lunch together in the mess hall. It’s been four days since she woke up and she gets stronger every day. The blotches on her skin have almost gone. She’s cheerful, vibrant, and in every way the Katia I missed for the last month. She says, “I ran the probability.”

  “For what?” I ask.

  “The chance that both Commander Sykes and I would recover at the same time, let alone at all.”

  Shiro says, “And what is the chance?”

  “One in one billion.”

  I say, “Did you calculate in all the prayers I was saying for you?”

  She laughs, “I wouldn’t even know where to start. How many prayers did you say?”

  “Probably
at least a billion.”

  “That explains it,” she smiles. “A billion prayers cancelled out a probability of a billion to one.”

  Jokingly, I muse, “I wonder if prayers take less time to reach God out here.”

  Katia says, “If I were God I’d stick closer to Earth. It’s kind of lonely out here.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Shiro says, “The Fermi paradox strikes again.”

  I ask, “Fermi paradox?

  Shiro says, “The idea that there are so many planets out there that can support life and there has been so much time for civilizations to grow and produce interstellar travel that it is statistically impossible that Earth has not already been visited. In other words, the universe seems lonely, but it shouldn’t be. Our galaxy could be entirely colonized in as little as five million years, even with rudimentary interstellar travel. There was a famous Harvard paper about this.”

  I say, “I guess when we get to Pluto we should ask the ECIs why they’ve been too scared to show themselves all this time.”

  “Yes. They have been too scared,” says Shiro. “That’s it.”

  I suggest, “Maybe they are hideous. Maybe they’re so ugly they would be mortified to let us catch a glimpse.”

  “We don’t need to always assume the worst,” says Katia. “They could look very nice and be perfectly friendly. It might just be a matter of trying to understand where they’re coming from and getting to know them.”

  Commander Tomlinson, who none of us had noticed floating toward us, says, “I think you’re right, Katia. It is important to bear in mind that their way of thinking is bound to be entirely different from ours. We wouldn’t want to apply our code of ethics to them. It wouldn’t be fair. We will need to accommodate their own standards and ideals. In effect, we have to throw everything we know and everything we care for out the window.”

  I stop chewing and frown at Commander Tomlinson as I say, “Throw everything we care about out the window?”