Ice Moon 4 Return to Enceladus

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Correct. However, if we modify the program and do not decelerate, the conspirator or conspirators will know we discovered them.”

  “Good, then you have 24 hours. I hereby grant you my authorization, Marchenko, so you can access all necessary data.”

  “Where do we start?” asked Marchenko. Martin once again sat alone in his cabin.

  “How about Jiaying? Then at least I will know right away she is innocent,” Martin said.

  “I do not want to mention Io...”

  “Marchenko, that was different.”

  “Regardless, I was not actually referring to a specific person.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to look for clues and see whether these four have any motives?”

  “Martin, this is not a mystery novel. If it were a novel, it would be science fiction.”

  “It would be nice if it were fiction, but the problem looks rather real to me, unfortunately. So, where would we get started if you don’t want to begin with the suspects?”

  “The layer between the outside world and our perception must be some kind of software, I think. It must be running with high priority directly in the kernel layers. I cannot access the process table, even with Amy’s authorization.”

  “I cannot imagine Francesca or Jiaying doing this.”

  “You underestimate them. Furthermore, they might not be alone.”

  “So what is your plan?”

  “The software is supposed to create a false image for us, until the very end. It is probably adapted to everything we are going to encounter on the way to Saturn.”

  “That sounds perfect. Someone must really be seeing the big picture.”

  “This deceptive software assumes, though, that it is getting correct data from the instruments.”

  “Sure, Dimitri, otherwise someone would have detected the software, and it would be meaningless. The programmer could ignore the case in which the software keeps running, even though the input data are falsified.”

  And anybody who has the slightest experience with programmers knows they leave out everything they can omit, Martin thought. “Now if I myself falsify the measurement data...”

  “Then the software might not be able to handle it, at least if something happens it does not expect. You have to simulate something the program is not prepared for.”

  “And if we are lucky, the conspirator will intervene personally. So we have to watch all the others carefully, Marchenko. I am afraid I won’t be very useful for this. If I follow Jiaying around all day long, for example, I might keep her from giving herself away.”

  “Right. Spying will be my job. You just have to act naturally. Be panicky when something happens, and do whatever else you do in case of a catastrophe.”

  “Marchenko!” Martin heard his friend and colleague laugh. Hmmm... he does still have a sense of humor.

  Nothing happened before lunch. Martin had the afternoon off, so he decided to take a nap in his cabin for an hour. After all, he was supposed to act naturally. Shortly after he lay down, an alarm rang.

  “Ship on collision course,” stated an excited computer voice, repeating the warning over and over. Martin went toward the command module as quickly as possible. Was this the incident staged by Marchenko? Really? A collision with another spaceship out here, where there was only ILSE—any second-rate conspirator had to realize this was faked. What was Marchenko thinking?

  Martin almost collided with Jiaying in the hub of the habitat ring. She must have been working in the garden. He let her go ahead, which caused a minor traffic jam, because Amy and Francesca climbed up into the hub right behind her.

  “What is going on?” asked Jiaying when she saw him enter.

  “No idea,” he replied. “Come on, let’s quickly check. ‘Collision course’ does not sound good.” Martin actually started to feel afraid, and he had no problem acting naturally. Maybe Marchenko had planned his surprise to happen later?

  They saw Valentina sitting in front of the control console of the command module.

  “You again,” Francesca spat. Martin had never heard so much venom in her voice. “Get out of my pilot seat right away!”

  Valentina obeyed, but not without objecting first. “I am also trained as a pilot, you know, just like you.”

  “And how many near misses have you avoided? Back when I was in Afghanistan, you were not even a gleam in your daddy’s eye.”

  Francesca sat down. “Display control system on the pilot screen, now.” She acted quickly and deliberately, just what Martin would have expected from her. Valentina sat down at another console and started typing something.

  “What are you doing?” Martin followed her and looked over her shoulder. “Dear Father,” he read off the monitor.

  “I am writing a short message, in case Francesca does not succeed,” she said. Her smile hides so much suppressed sadness she simply cannot be acting, he thought.

  “What kind of shit is this?” he heard Francesca swear. “This thing is passing by kilometers away from us! Why is ILSE making all this fuss?”

  “Ship on collision course,” the computer voice said again, ignoring Francesca. It sounded quite convinced.

  “Detailed image,” Francesca ordered. The optical telescope zoomed in on the other ship that would soon collide with them—or would it? It was ILSE. Well, no it was not the ILSE they were traveling in. It was her younger sister, ILSE 2, with which they had rendezvoused in the past to get fuel, food, and oxygen. Then she had supposedly drifted into the outer solar system.

  “Display trajectory of object,” the pilot said. The screen showed a flat ellipse that on one side reached to the orbit of Uranus, and on the other one passed behind the sun. The second outermost planet, an icy world, must have captured the ship and hurtled it into the opposite direction.

  “I never thought we would ever see ILSE 2 again,” Martin said, dumbfounded.

  “ILSE 2? Were there two copies of this ship?”

  “Yes, Valentina, if you had bothered to research this...” Francesca’s words had not lost their caustic tone. It was obvious the two women were never going to be friends.

  “Well, it’s a nice reunion, but what about the collision? Is the whole system going haywire, or only the collision warning?” Francesca stood up from her seat and walked, or rather floated around the command module. She stopped at several displays and tried to use diagnostic routines to decide on one kind of truth or the other. Or, was she only pretending while manipulating—in plain sight—the ominous system that falsified sensor data? Martin hoped that Marchenko was keeping an eye on her.

  And Jiaying. His Jiaying? She had sat down at a console at the very end of the command module and was typing something. Was she trying to fool everyone here? Martin would not want to be in her shoes if it came out that she had betrayed the crew for a second time.

  “If I may say something,” Watson chimed in, “I would recommend that you heed the collision warning. There appears to be a discrepancy between the optical sensor data and reality.”

  “What did you say, Doc?”

  “I am saying that you should get us away from ILSE 2 as quickly as possible, Francesca. Right now! In 60 seconds only a cloud will be left of us. ILSE 2 is moving approximately twice as fast as we are.” Was there a tone of panic in Watson’s voice? Martin could well understand it, as sweat was dripping down his own back.

  Francesca grabbed handholds and swung back to her seat as quickly as possible.

  “Watson, I don’t see anything out there. Just tell me—left or right?”

  “Right! Now!”

  The pilot grabbed the left joystick and pushed it all the way. This fired the thrusters on the left side and turned the trajectory of ILSE slightly to the right. Now they should have felt a slight pressure, and floating objects should have started moving, but nothing happened.

  “What the hell is going on?” Francesca stared incredulously at the screen, which displayed the message ‘Authorization denied.’ “Can someone get rid
of this?” she shouted, her usually strong voice threatening to crack.

  “All clear,” Marchenko said via all the loudspeakers in the command center. “We are not going to collide with ILSE 2.” Everyone, including Martin and Amy, who should have known better, started to clap.

  In a moment Marchenko explained. “This little drama was an attempt to explain a strange phenomenon. For a while, I do not know how long, a software layer has been falsifying the data provided by our external sensors, obviously with the intention of keeping us from reaching Enceladus. Amy and Martin knew about this.”

  “Who was it? Valentina?” Francesca got out of her seat, intending to move toward the Russian woman, but Martin blocked her way.

  “No, I can guarantee she is not the guilty party,” Marchenko said. “Francesca, please stop accusing her.”

  Francesca asked, “And how come you are so sure, Mitya?” Martin was also curious about Marchenko’s explanation.

  “We hoped that during my staged crisis the culprits would do something to give themselves away. They had to assume the information about the impending collision was genuine, even though in the falsified version the other ship would have moved past us at a safe distance.”

  “Don’t keep us in suspense,” Amy said.

  “I am sorry, but it is suspenseful. First of all, Jiaying, Francesca, Valentina, you are all off the hook. And you, Doc Watson, are also loyal.”

  Martin glanced at Amy. Was it the commander after all? Or Marchenko? Or is it I, without me knowing it? He was confused.

  “Shortly after I uploaded the faked data about ILSE 2 into the system, a transmission reached our ship that I have not yet been able to decipher,” Marchenko said. “Immediately afterward, the collision warning was activated. The timing cannot be a coincidence.”

  “And just where did this transmission come from?” Amy asked the question everyone was desperate to have answered.

  “Somewhere from empty space,” Marchenko replied. “At least if we used the faked position data for our calculations.”

  “And using the genuine data?”

  “I first have to warn you we used a manual calibration, employing the COAS. The coordinates based on this are not very precise—the less so, the farther away the signal source is.”

  “Yes, yes, we get that. So, what is the source? I command you not to tantalize us one second longer,” Amy said loudly.

  “The source is Enceladus.”

  November 8, 2049, ILSE

  “Thank you for trusting me.” Watson’s words reached Marchenko on the acoustic level. The ship’s former doctor was always amazed at how flexible his consciousness was. The Watson AI encoded this statement digitally and transmitted it electronically to him, in the form of tiny variations of electric voltage. Yet this did not feel any different to Marchenko than a soundwave stimulating the hair cells in his cochlea used to feel.

  But when he thought about what lay ahead of him, Marchenko had his doubts. If his consciousness was reunited with his body by some process hitherto unknown to mankind, how quickly would it be able to adapt? Would he have to relearn dealing with a pile of cells only awakened to life by his conscious and unconscious commands? Maybe he had already forgotten how to breathe. On ILSE he never had to take over primary functions such as life support, as there were independent and redundant algorithms responsible for it. He could monitor and control their functions, just like a human could hold his breath or breathe faster, but he did not have to check constantly to see if the system received enough oxygen.

  “To be precise, I did not automatically trust you, Doc, I tested you just like the human crew members,” Marchenko said.

  “Yet you approached this without prejudice. You only formed your opinion afterward. Is this the same as trust?” asked Watson.

  “Not completely. Until you tried to use the radar to measure the distance to the approaching ship, I did not know if I could trust you. If I had trusted you, I would have let you in on the plan from the very beginning, the same as with Martin and the commander.”

  “What did my measurement change?”

  “If you had been responsible for the manipulation, then you would have known the simulated ship would hit us without having to measure.”

  “You would have suspected me if I had warned Francesca without turning on the active radar sensors, right?”

  “Precisely.”

  “But then I might have tried to escape suspicion by using the radar to measure, even though I already knew what would happen.”

  “But you would have needed to know I was monitoring everything. During my tests I always assumed no one but Amy, Martin, and I knew this.”

  “Humans think in complicated ways… and what if your assumption was wrong?”

  “Technically speaking, that would be possible. Amy, Martin, or I, myself, could be the bad guy or guys. Then my test would be useless. However, humans act out of certain motivations. Amy wants to return home because she loves her child. Martin would never endanger ILSE because he is in love with Jiaying. And I…” Marchenko stopped.

  “Should I continue the sentence? Is this a test for me?”

  “Gladly, Watson.”

  “You want the expedition to succeed because you love Francesca.”

  Marchenko thought for a moment. Then he said, “That is entirely possible.”

  “Is it always about love with you humans?”

  “I never thought about it that way,” Marchenko said, “but there does seem to be something to that idea.”

  Since yesterday, Watson and Marchenko had been attempting to remove the extra layer between the instruments and the results that falsified the data, but the illusion was too perfect. Marchenko assumed this program was running on a layer he had no access to. Any advanced operating system—including that of the ship—was organized in onion-like layers that were similar to consciousness. The core of the operating system only dealt with the fundamental requirements, as the autonomic nervous system does in the human body. Even the layers above the core still pursued basic goals—they adjusted the sensitivity of sensors, for instance. It is similar to a fishmonger being able to work in his shop without being continually aware of the ever-present odor. In humans the next outward layer is the subconscious, which triggers some of our actions through a mixture of instincts, imprinting, and habits.

  This was the area to which Marchenko and Watson had access. Of course the ‘subconscious’ of a spaceship looked completely different from a human one. Searching for specific processes inside it, however, was equally difficult. It was a mélange of program sequences that together made ILSE function. Not even the programmer who wrote the code would be able to understand every single command anymore, because by now, unknown interactions would have developed. Marchenko hoped the routines added by each unknown person would display some specific quality—just like a missing picture on a wall was marked by the darker color of its former location, or a body buried in a forest by an area of disturbed earth—but he did not find any such thing.

  Marchenko could not be sure that he had uncovered everything. It was like being equipped with only a flashlight and rummaging through a huge, dark basement full of junk. Sticking with this analogy, he had walked from room to room, found some sections locked and other full of cobwebs. The air smelled musty and moist. He found antique machines emitting glowing steam, the function of which he did not understand. There were also old bicycles without seats, and rusty metal bed frames below which blood stains spread—or maybe they were just pools of water. Now and then he found something familiar, like an electric kettle, that looked like it might still work. He also inspected the pressure boiler in the boiler room and was glad to find that for once he did not just see question marks displayed.

  The basement was unwelcoming, and Marchenko mentally sighed. The fake data could even be buried deeper, in the concrete foundation, so to speak. He had no idea how this could be true, because the foundation had been poured by computer companies on Earth abou
t 30 or 40 years ago, and if this were the case he would never be able to remove the falsifying software.

  This rankled Marchenko, as if he had found his own apartment cleaned out by burglars. ILSE’s computer system was his home—at least for now. Knowing that unknown entities could move into his house at any time took away much of the comfort of being at home. Maybe this is a good thing, he told himself, because then it will be easier for me to leave when we get to Enceladus. But what if the burglars return?

  “Marchenko, could you please come here?”

  Watson was calling him from another basement room. He put the electric kettle down and turned toward the door. “Where are you?”

  “Sector 3ACC3ACC, FF08080A, 1901C04B,” Watson said. It sounded as if Watson was standing right next to him, but that sector was far away from Marchenko’s current position. Down here the memory segments were organized three-dimensionally and labeled using the hexadecimal numbering system. This made it possible to potentially address several yottabytes—trillions of terabytes. The basement was not that large. Of course Marchenko was not in a real basement, but it was easier for him to imagine the digital storage labyrinth that way. He definitely would have to ask Watson how he perceived his environment. After all, the AI had never been in a real basement.

  Shortly afterward Marchenko stood in a corridor. He swept the beam of the flashlight over the walls. The plaster was crumbling, while there were several thick pipes that were attached to the ceiling. The iron door in front of him displayed the hexadecimal numbers 3ACC3ACC, FF08080A, 1901C04B in the Latin alphabet. He was in the right place. The broken door handle dangled by a wire, resting on the floor, so he simply pushed against the door and it opened. The handle scraped across the stone floor, making an unpleasant sound. Inside, the beam of his flashlight fell on Watson, who had taken on the form of Sherlock Holmes’ friend as his avatar. He turned toward Marchenko and shielded his face against the light.