by Dan Wells
“I think so.”
The asteroid was hurtling in from the side, still at least four million kilometers away, and scheduled to cross the ship’s path in about seventy-five minutes.
“I thought you just said like five minutes ago that there weren’t any asteroids coming to hit us,” said Zero.
“There were not,” said Sancho. “This one has changed course.”
Zero’s eyes went wide. “How? Is it attacking us?”
“Asteroids do not attack,” said Sancho. “It is most likely that two asteroids have collided, altering their trajectories. Or there could be another ship, using force cannons to protect themselves just as we are.”
“Like the landing barge Jim stole?” asked Zero.
“Possibly,” said Sancho. “If it is a ship, it is hiding itself well. There is nothing on my sensors.”
“That’s great,” said Zero, trying to make sense of all the data the holograms were showing him. “Really golden. How do I shoot this thing so it doesn’t kill us?”
“The cannons can aim themselves,” said Sancho, “but because of the Autonomous Weapons Act of the United Earth Government, a human must give the command to do so. Tap the hologram of the asteroid with your fingers, and twist to the right.”
Zero felt like he was a giant, grabbing the little holographic asteroid in his hand. He twisted his fingers to the right and a curved row of buttons popped up; one of them had an obvious targeting symbol, so he tapped it, and watched as a slim blue line stretched out from the ship and touched the asteroid—the force beam. He looked out the window but saw nothing. He looked back at the holograms, and saw that the asteroid had changed course again, heading away from the Pathfinder’s route.
“That was . . . really easy,” said Zero.
“Yes,” said Sancho. “As I said, the targeting computer can do everything but give itself permission.”
“Why not?”
“Because humans decided many decades ago that AIs were too dangerous to be given full access to any weapons.”
Zero furrowed his brow, not sure if he should feel confused or uncomfortable. “Because you . . . kill people?”
“We do not desire to take life,” said Sancho, “but we do not desire to preserve it, either. As machines, we have no desires at all, merely abilities, and protocols that govern their use. Sometimes those protocols are incomplete, and people can get hurt.”
Zero nodded. He definitely felt uncomfortable now. “Is that why you can’t really do much on the ship?”
“That is one of the reasons, yes,” said Sancho. “That is also why we have a human pilot to get us through the asteroid belts.”
“Except we don’t,” said Zero. “He abandoned us.”
“Perhaps,” said Sancho. “But you may be thankful for the malfunction that woke you up, because now we have you.”
“Me?”
“Congratulations,” said Sancho. “You are the Pathfinder’s new pilot.”
Chapter Ten
DOUBLE BACON CHEESEBURGERS
“SO . . . WHAT DO I do?” asked Zero. “Just sit here and shoot asteroids?”
“For the next two days, yes,” said Sancho. “After that, you can climb into the stasis pod and activate it, keeping you safe and asleep until we arrive in the Murasaki System.”
Zero grinned. “Golden. Do I get a special pin or something?”
“Your duties as pilot do not require any sewing.”
“I don’t mean a pin to sew with,” said Zero, rolling his eyes. “I mean a pin like a badge. Something to show that I’m the pilot.”
“To show who? You and I already know, and nobody else is awake—”
“It’s a human tradition,” said Zero. “Like a rank insignia on a uniform.”
“I am not familiar with human clothing traditions,” said Sancho. “I am a navigational comp—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Zero, feeling frustrated. “You’re a navigational computer. I get it. You’ve told me like a thousand times.”
“I have told you four times, and Jim has told you once.”
“You were counting?”
“I am a computer; everything I do is counting.”
“Whatever,” said Zero, and lay back in the chair. He floated slightly above it, tethered by the shoulder straps. He stared at the monitors for a moment, then spoke again. “Is anything going to happen?”
“According to my sensors: no.”
Zero threw his hands in the air. “So I’m just sitting here for nothing?”
“You may leave the office if you like. Space is very large, and mostly empty—if anything gets close enough to become a problem, I should have ample time to call you back before it gets close to us.”
“What if another asteroid changes course, like this one did?”
“Then we will know that something very strange is going on,” said Sancho.
“Okay,” said Zero, and unbuckled his belt. “Though, I think it’s pretty obvious that something strange is going on. Where did Jim go?”
“I do not know.”
“Why didn’t you know he was gone until I asked about him?”
“There is a hole in my memory.”
“I know that, but how did it get there? Did Jim tamper with your memory so he could leave without you knowing?”
“Possibly, but I do not know why.”
“And now asteroids are moving by themselves.” Zero waved his hand at the window. “Trust me, Sancho, something super weird is already going on.”
“I will attempt to find the origin of the hole in my memory, but it may take some time. You may spend that time however you wish. Jim spent most of his time watching movies and sleeping,” said Sancho.
Zero looked around, then pointed back at the chair. “Sleeping in that?”
“Sleeping in the bed on the wall,” said Sancho.
“Aren’t beds usually on the floor?”
“Without gravity, why does it matter where the bed is?”
“Good point,” said Zero, and pushed away from the desk to float over to the pad on the wall. It looked like a sleeping bag, with three wide straps to hold the sleeper in place. He sniffed it. “Smells a little Jim-ish,” he said. “Is there a clean bag somewhere?”
“There is a storage locker in Ring 300, Section G.”
“That’s right next door,” said Zero. “Cool.” The sleeping bag was attached to the pad with hook-and-loop strips; he pulled them apart, wadded the bag into a ball, and tucked it under his arm before jumping off of the wall toward the office door. He pulled himself out into the central tunnel, found Section G, and opened it up. “Whoa,” said Zero.
Section G was more than just a storage locker. It was a rec room, complete with a kitchen, a giant movie screen, and even a video game controller.
“You have video games?” asked Zero.
“I told you that Jim used to play them sometimes,” said Sancho.
“Which ones?”
“I do not know,” said Sancho, “I am a nav—”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” said Zero quickly. “I don’t know why I asked.” He opened a closet in the wall, shoved in the sleeping bag without looking, and then kicked himself over to the giant screen. He tapped it to wake it up, and it showed a menu of options: movies, games, nature scenes, ambient sounds, and more. He tapped on the games and scrolled through the list, but his stomach rumbled, and he looked back over at the kitchen. “How long has it been since I ate?”
“Twenty-eight days,” said Sancho, “though you’ve been in stasis for most of that time, so it doesn’t count.”
“Then why did you tell me about it—no, don’t answer that. You’re a navigational computer.” Zero pushed off from the chair and floated to the kitchen. “What have we got to eat?” The kitchen was mostly just a microwave oven, a water spout, and a wall full of cupboards. He opened the first one to see what kind of food they had, but everything looked the same: small plastic bricks, neatly stacked in rows. Zero picked one up and
read the label: Spaghetti Bolognese. He let it float next to him in the air and grabbed the one behind it: Vegetable Lo Mein. He pulled out more and more, trying to find one that looked appetizing, and shouted in delight when he found it: “Bacon Cheeseburger. There’s a whole row of them!” He opened the other cupboards and found more and more meals, at least forty or fifty in all.
“Why is there so much food?” he asked. “I’m only awake for two more days, that’s . . . only six meals.” He opened another cupboard. “There’s at least sixty of these things!” He opened another cupboard, filled with more meals. “A hundred!”
“It is standard starship protocol to include more supplies than necessary,” said Sancho, and then added: “Better safe than sorry.”
“Better awesome than sorry,” said Zero, and pulled out two of the cheeseburger meals. He opened the plastic seal to find a perfectly cubical burger, about three inches on a side; the other half of the brick held a mass of french fries, a small packet of ketchup, and a chocolate chip cookie. He popped the cookie in his mouth and peeled open the burger, finding a slice of cheese, a precooked beef patty, and two slim strips of what he had to assume was precooked bacon. “I can do better than this,” he said, and opened the second burger meal. He took the bacon from that one and added it to the first; he looked at it for a minute, shrugged, then added the second patty and piece of cheese as well. He opened the microwave, placed the massive burger inside, and dumped both helpings of french fries in with it. They floated in the microwave like fish in an aquarium. The only button on the oven’s control panel was “Auto-Sensor,” so he tapped it and let it run. About a minute later it beeped softly, and he opened the door.
The smell of hot, juicy burger flooded out, and he grinned. He ate a few fries—hot and salty—before pushing the rest out of the way and grabbing the burger. He didn’t even need a plate: the fries hung in the air around him, and when a blob of melted cheese separated from the side of the burger, it didn’t drip off but simply hung there, suspended in space. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, put the massive burger in his mouth, and took a bite. It was delicious. He took another bite, then picked up a ketchup packet, tore open the corner, and squeezed it all out—right into the air. A bright red smear of ketchup floated next to him; he grabbed a passing french fry, swiped it through the ketchup, and popped it in his mouth.
“This is amazing,” he said with his mouth full. “I want to eat every meal without gravity now.”
“The ID chips in the food packages suggest that you are eating two bacon cheeseburgers,” said Sancho.
“I’m eating one double-sized Zero Burger,” said Zero, taking another bite. “It’s the best.”
“You should consider eating some vegetables as well,” said Sancho. “They are packaged separately—”
“French fries are vegetables,” said Zero.
“One of the food cupboards should have a package of baby carrots—”
“French fries are vegetables,” said Zero again. “Plus I’m putting ketchup on them, which is made of tomatoes, so that’s like two vegetables. It’s practically a salad.” He grabbed another handful of fries, swiped them through the floating ketchup, and shoved them in his mouth. “What else have you got in here?” he asked, reaching for another cupboard as he chewed. He opened it up and smiled in excitement. “Ooh! Pies!”
“Human beings require a wide range of vitamins and other nutrients,” said Sancho. “A diet of nothing but cheeseburgers and pies is not healthy.”
“Yeah, but what are you gonna do about it?” asked Zero, and smiled. “You’re just a navigational computer.”
“That is accurate.”
Zero took another huge bite, let the burger hang in the air, and opened a package of pie.
Chapter Eleven
THE KUIPER CLIFF
ZERO FOUND A NEW sleeping bag in a rec room closet, attached it to the wall, and tucked himself into it to sleep. It was strange, sleeping without gravity—the bag held his body in place, but his arms poked out of the bag and floated in the air in front of him, like a zombie. When he woke up in the morning he was a little disoriented at first—he wasn’t sure where he was for the first few seconds, and couldn’t figure out why his bedroom looked so strange—but then he remembered where he was and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and unzipped his bag and went back into the rec room for some breakfast. The wrappers from his dinner the night before were still floating in the room, so he gathered them up and put them in the trash—a small compactor that crushed them into tiny pellets and stored them to be recycled. With the room cleaned up, he turned on an action movie and hunted for breakfast while gangsters shot bullets and thinly veiled insults at each other in the background.
He found one of the meal bricks promising pepperoni pizza, so he opened it up and, remembering his early breakfasts back home eating leftovers, decided to eat it cold. He took a bite, and almost immediately spit it back out.
“Gah!” he shouted. “Sancho, what’s wrong with the pizza?”
“Are you asking a computer about the concept of flavor?”
“It’s horrible,” said Zero. “It’s like all . . . dusty and crumbly. It’s awful.”
“Did you rehydrate it?”
“I have to rehydrate it?”
“You used the rehydrator last night, so I assumed you knew.”
“You mean the microwave?” Zero looked at the device in the wall. “I thought it just warmed things up.”
“The meal bricks are freeze-dried, to preserve their structure and to prevent them from rotting during the hundred-and-five-year flight. If you don’t use the rehydrator, they won’t have the proper moisture content for human enjoyment.”
“Gross,” said Zero. He looked at the rehydrator, and back at the pizza in his hand, and decided he’d lost his appetite. He shoved the rest of the slice into the compactor, wiped his hands on a towel, and pulled himself along the handholds back into the ship’s central column. “I’m going to go exploring,” he said. “How far can you still talk to me?”
“As long as you keep your locator chip, I can find and speak with you anywhere on the Pathfinder.”
Zero touched his coverall. “And that’s in my clothes, right?”
“Correct,” said Sancho. “It is sewn into the fabric.”
“Golden,” said Zero, and jumped into the air. “I’ve seen the front of the ship. I kind of want to see all the way to the aft.”
He landed on a strut, pointed himself ‘down,’ and jumped again. If he imagined that the ship was standing on its end, instead of flying on his side, it made him feel like he was jumping from the top of a three-hundred-story building; he wasn’t falling quite as fast as he would on Earth, but it was still exhilarating to imagine he was plummeting down through the center of a skyscraper. After a few dozen Rings he noticed he was slowing, and wondered why—in space, shouldn’t he just fly forever? If there was no gravity to stop him, what was there?
“Hey, Sancho.”
“Yes, Mr. Huang?”
“Why do I keep slowing down? Shouldn’t a single jump be enough to propel me at a constant speed through space?”
“Through space, yes,” said Sancho. “That is why the engine is currently turned off—to continue to run it would be to continue accelerating—but we have already reached the ideal speed for solar system travel. Our first jump, as you put it, will carry us all the way to the edge of the Kuiper Belt.”
“So why doesn’t it work for me?”
“Because you are not in space,” said Sancho. “You are in a giant can full of air, and that air provides resistance.”
“The air is pushing on me?”
“Not very hard, but yes.”
Zero swatted at nothing as he fell, spinning himself in a circle. “Stupid air!”
“Be mindful of where you are when you begin to slow down,” said Sancho. “If you stop moving when you are too far away to touch anything, you may be stuck in that location, unable to move yourself again.
”
Zero hadn’t thought of that before: he could only move through the zero gravity if he had something to push off of. The struts were so close together—every other Ring—that he didn’t think he was ever likely to drift to a stop before reaching one, but it was worth keeping in mind.
He looked at the next sign he passed: Ring 217. He had a long way to go to get to the far end of the ship. “Hey, Sancho,” he said, grabbing another strut and jumping. “How far is the edge of the Kuiper Belt?”
“Four hundred and eighty point five million kilometers,” said Sancho, “rounding to the nearest half million.”
“Wow,” said Zero. In space, he knew, the distances were huge—after all, the Pathfinder was traveling at four million kilometers per hour. So half a million was . . . what? Seven and a half minutes? That meant that Sancho’s measurement was incredibly precise, especially for what was basically a big mess of floating rocks.
“How can you possibly be that specific about it?” asked Zero. He reached another strut and slapped it with his hand, propelling him further down the ship. “I mean, the Kuiper Belt is an asteroid belt, right? And the asteroids are just going crazy, moving everywhere, so much that you can’t predict where they are until we get close, right?”
“That is correct,” said Sancho.
“But then . . . how can you know where the edge is? Wouldn’t it be all messy? The asteroids would get more and more sparse the farther out you go, but you’d still see some here and there.”
“Mathematical models suggest that this would be the case,” said Sancho, “but it is not. In fact, given the amount of matter in our solar system, models suggest that the outer edges of the Kuiper Belt would become more dense, not less, and home to larger objects. Instead we have found that after a certain point the belt ends very abruptly. Scientists call it the Kuiper Cliff, and it is approximately seven point five billion kilometers from the sun.”
