"That would be amazing for everyone. Oh, and please, call me Ayan, not Admiral," she told her. "Even running a daycare and watching new scanner results come in is still using very little of your processing power, though. Even after you launch a care centre."
"You underestimate the demands of caring for children," Daisy said, laughing lightly. "I promise that I'll be happy and my hands will be full."
"Then I'll start working on getting the crews to warm up to the idea of a synthetic looking after a child care centre. It might take a while for some people."
"I understand, until then, I'll be happy to care for this one," she said, gently stroking the babe's head. "Oh, she's going to be a little rascal in the best of ways."
"You can already tell?" Ayan asked. Her comm unit sent an urgent notification signal up her arm. It was enough so she knew there was someone from Command who urgently needed to get in touch with her.
"Oh, her activity level is higher than normal, and I believe she'll start trying to crawl very early." Daisy looked at Ayan. "Something has come up?"
"Someone's trying to get through to me, it's urgent," Ayan said with a nod. She kissed Laura and sighed before handing her to Daisy. "I could just stay here with her until she's old enough to want to cut the apron strings."
"You're an important woman," Daisy said, holding Laura exactly the same way as Ayan was.
Even still, she fussed as Ayan started to leave, so she returned, kissed the top Laura's head and whispered; "I'll be back soon."
"She'll be fine, we'll try a few different settings with the mobile, see what kind of colour pattern and speed she likes," Daisy reassured.
"I still feel a world of guilt whenever I leave," Ayan commented as she passed through the thick door. The room, like others in her quarters, had armoured bulkheads made to protect everyone inside. It was too soon to use the nursery, though. The crib would be moved to her bedroom before she went to sleep that night.
Leon was waiting for her in the living room. "We found something interesting," he said. In as brief an update as possible, he detailed Carnie and Pixie's encounter, then Traveller and Rip's fight with the ship they discovered as he showed her holograms of the more important scan results. The last one was the most interesting to her.
A cabin sized pod held dozens of androids. She focused in on their faces first, finding no distinguishable features. "They're covered in some kind of malleable skin. It looks like it can change."
"The one that Carnie and Pixie found was male with a face that looked human, like a specific human," Leon said as he brought the image of the deactivated android back up.
"Okay, that's interesting," Ayan said, looking inside the head of one of the blank androids at the brain and other sections. "You said one of our analysts had a theory about how the brain works?"
"Right. It was a few of them, actually. They said that the synthetic brain matter wasn't used to process sensor data, you can see the wiring from their sensors going into this old-fashioned neural circuitry. Instead, the synthetic bio-brain is used to change the input into something that closely resembles a human experience and stores the memories in a compatible format. At least, that's the theory. Then there's the transmission node at the back, connected to all the feeds leading to the bio-brain matter. It requires a high bandwidth cable connection. They believe…"
"That it's used to upload data from the bio-brain," Ayan finished. "And download? Are we talking about androids made to be remote hosts for humans?"
"That's the working theory."
"Do they know they're remote hosts and not the originals? Copies?"
"No one can say for sure," Leon replied.
"All right," Ayan said to herself, thinking. "There was a theory several scientists had before our faster than light technology was developed on Earth. An idea that people who explored deep space wouldn't have to go there at all, but send machines with human analog brains out instead. They would carry the consciousness's of the scientists and engineers out so human minds would be aboard along with their artificial intelligences, so we would still be making human decisions while the originals waited back home for the data and memories to be transmitted to Earth. The project got so far as to create a full human analog, one of the first advanced androids, but they never got a perfect match for human memory transmission."
"Until framework and a few predecessors," Leon added, excited.
"Right. Is there any sign of framework technology aboard that ship?"
"No, it's a completely different technology branch."
"It's heavily armed," Ayan said, bringing a hologram of the ship up. It looked beastly, a ship of war more than exploration. "Weapons, androids, arms for all of them, and just enough accommodations for their survival. It's confusing. We'd use this kind of thing for exploration, but it looks like they use it for warfare. Do we have enough scan data to duplicate their technology?"
Leon relayed her question to the analyst team and shook his head when the answer came back. "They say definitely not. We have enough to guess how it works, but not enough detail to duplicate it."
"Then get the Triton after it. We need deep scans of the entire ship if they can get it without sacrificing crew."
"Admiral Lamonthe sees them as a threat. He thinks 'these people upload their essences to these androids, hit prize targets like the moon base we found and send the best finds back home.' Those are his words."
"Maybe, but we should tag the ship, see where it goes. It might take years for us to get results, but it could lead us back to their makers. Maybe they were war like a century or two ago and they've advanced. This could be a leftover, like a land mine that survived a war."
"What about using this solar system as a temporary base?" Leon asked. "I'm guessing…"
"We leave a couple satellites behind to watch what happens after we're gone and to forward our next destination on to our allies in an encrypted message. We're definitely moving on. The last thing we need is to start a new fight with people we've never met."
"Admiral Lamonthe and his team are interested in the ruins on two of the planets in the system, and they suggest the abandoned mining operation would be a good source of rare materials," Leon offered.
"They're right, it would be, unless he's right about that ship and the androids. If they are still war-like, and those wormhole transmissions that it sent out were calls home telling their people that there was a new target in the area, we could be caught with our vacsuits open as we're setting up a new base. We have other options for hiding places, we're moving on."
Leon smiled a little, his sign of agreement and started putting her orders together in a message. "So, tag and release on that ship after we get a good scan without spending lives. Then the fleet packs it in and moves on to the next temporary resting spot."
"I'm afraid so. I'd love to find out more about what happened here, but we'll have to be satisfied with a few hard scans aimed at the nearby worlds. Hopefully we don't wake anything else up." Ayan changed her uniform to black and gold from the blue and white. "I'm going to say goodbye to Laura and Daisy, then run up to the Command Centre. I should be there, make sure we get out of the system with as few problems as possible."
"Wise," Leon said. "I'm wondering, though; why don't you have the ship destroyed? We could get all the scans we like before it's blasted to bits."
Ayan was surprised to hear the question from him. Leon's attitude suited his explorer spirit more than a violent approach. "What would that say about us if there is a civilization watching our reaction?" she asked.
"You have a good point," he replied. "I'll relay your orders while you pop in with Laura."
Ayan took a moment to check her transmission log before going in to see her daughter and was disappointed to see that there was nothing about Alice. She hoped her eldest daughter, the one she still felt she didn't know well enough, was all right. The last she heard, Alice was in a deep sleep she wasn't either willing or able to recover from. As the door to the nurser
y opened, she hoped being a parent came with the occasional break from worry, but knowing Alice, she had her doubts.
Twenty-Eight
The Pilot's Den
* * *
It was the end of Rayman's time as a commander in Sabre Wing, the Space Superiority Group set aside for training pilots and other small ship crewmembers to be officers. Uncharacteristically, Pixie was silent on the subject as she and Carnie returned to their patrol, leaving the android they discovered in the hands of the Rhino crew. After a little prying, Carnie finally got her take on Rayman's removal from command. "His decisions are being reviewed by a higher power. He'll be lucky if he gets out of this as a Second Lieutenant."
The patrol pattern they were assigned kept them moving in a broad circle around the Nafalli ships and the War Forge Battlegroup. They were forming up, getting ready to move on to another solar system. Carnie found his thoughts drifting back to the android, and he wondered how badly he screwed up. Rayman would try to blame whatever he could on him and Pixie. Carnie was sure some of the blame should go to him, it was his decision to speak to the android. Whatever consequences came of that act were his fault, as far as he was concerned.
An hour before the end of their patrol shift, a welcome distraction came along. The Commodore decided that Suit Week was over. It was early. "Thank God! I was starting to feel like this under suit was part of me!" Pixie cheered.
"I forget I'm wearing it unless it's time for bed. Waking up behind a faceplate is a little weird. I dreamt that my HUD started giving me relationship advice because my ship's landing gear was jealous. I don't know what it was jealous of, though."
"There's a sim that's supposed to make dreams easier to remember and sort them out before they fade completely," Pixie offered from her cockpit.
"Oh, no. I don't have to understand my dreams, I'm just happy that the filing system in my head still works."
"Aw, really? I mean, we could make a thing of it, invite people to jump into the sim with you. It would be a great team building exercise, like really getting to know Carnie, who you really are."
"There's plenty of info in my Crewcast Profile."
"No one checks those unless they're stalking someone. What would I see there, anyway? Probably stuff like your favourite drink, a hobby or two you don't have time for anymore, and some kinda video statement about what was on your mind when you recorded your profile. It's all outdated anyway, I'm sure."
"I tried to keep mine short and interesting," Carnie replied, amused that she was right about most people's profiles.
"Oh? What would I see if I looked you up?"
"I guess the first thing is that I used to be a real carnie. I think that's why my dreams get a little crazy. You couldn't imagine some of the crap my head tosses around while I'm sleeping. There's a whole database of weird memories and amazing but screwed up runaways in my head, so it can get pretty weird."
"You're one of the few people who should use the dream translator sim," Pixie enthused.
"Nah, I'll keep that to myself."
"Boring."
"Why don't we start with you? I'm sure checking out your dreams would be just as good for team building."
"But I don't wake up with weird dream fragments about my Heads' Up Display giving me advice."
"I'm sure there are plenty of dream fragments we could follow in a sim, see what's going on in your…"
"Forget I mentioned it," Pixie laughed nervously. "Please?"
"Ah, fine. Just hope Command isn't listening to our chatter. They might just make it part of the curriculum." An uncomfortable silence settled in for a while, but before long they were talking about what they'd eat as soon as they got cleaned up, and the plan to go straight to the Pilot's Den became more certain.
* * *
Both of them were pulled into a quick debriefing session, where they confirmed that their recordings of their encounter with the android were correct. To Carnie's surprise, it wasn't the kind of android he thought it was. It was a host for a human consciousness that had been transmitted to the android a very long time ago. They wouldn't tell him more, and after he asked; "Did you bring it back to the ship?" they told him to stop asking questions. The incident wasn't classified though, and that was a little surprising.
A long shower and a quick change later, he was in the Pilot's Den. A place with a lot of history. The half-skull symbol that the entire fleet used for their emblems was at the entrance. Semi-circles of reclining seats for people running simulations were in the darker corners with large booths lining the rest of the walls to the right and left. There were plenty of tables throughout the middle, and the bar was huge. It almost didn't feel like it was on a starship, more like a high-end starbase or moon station.
He slipped into a booth before anyone noticed him and accessed the Triton's communication system. When he tried to call Alice, he was blocked by an annoying but familiar notification: THE CREWMEMBER YOU ARE TRYING TO REACH IS USING SILENT MODE.
"The problem with having an important girlfriend," Pixie said as she came into view with two glasses filled almost to the brim with something gold. It took him a moment to recognize her. Only an hour before she was bald like him, but she'd re-styled herself quickly with wild shoulder-length dark purple hair and a version of her vacsuit with big flared sleeves and legs. The fitted suit had been colour shifted to match her riotously purple hairdo. "I bring drinks, something new."
"Have a seat," he said, abandoning his attempt to contact Alice after making sure that the system would tell her that he tried as soon as she was free again.
Pixie put the drinks down but didn't sit. "I tried to get Traveller over here, but he's looking at the schematics for some kinda new dropship. Looks like it can take fighters."
"Are you sure he saw that it was you talking?" Carnie asked, leaning out of the booth so he could see Hal. She was right, Traveller was looking at a hologram as though mesmerized. What it was wasn't clear until Carnie opened a channel to him, then the image of a heavily modified Clever Class Corvette with seven punters along the left and right sides of the bottom of the craft came up. "That is really cool, looks like some kind of mini-carrier gunship idea. Room for the pilots inside, not much room for maintaining fighters, but there is plenty of firepower along the sides and top of this thing."
Pixie threw up her hands; "Not you too."
"Oh, right, sorry," Carnie said. He sent Traveller a priority message that interrupted his viewing. "Hey, Traveller, we've got a spot for you over here. Booth at the back." He added a holographic arrow that would lead him to his booth.
He was frustrated at first, then turned to them and nodded before taking his tall, black drink with him to their booth. "Sorry, I was looking at something Command sent me."
"I saw, looks cool. Any idea why they put that in front of you?"
Hal's gaze avoided Pixie as she slid into the same side of the booth with him. "You didn't get it? I mean, everyone who flies something with a gun on it should be able to see it."
"I didn't know that thing existed until I checked in on you."
"Checked in? You could see what I was looking at?" Traveller asked.
"Yeah, you opened your public viewing channels up to all your friends on Crewcast," Carnie chuckled. "Didn't mean to do that, did you?"
"Uh, no. Just a sec," Traveller said, tapping his command and control unit so he could get into his Crewcast settings.
"Ooh, were you hiding something spicy?" Pixie asked.
"Uh, nothing, just personal stuff. You know, old messages from Mom, some records, favourite mission recordings…" he answered hurriedly. "There, all private again."
"Any pictures of me in there? I saw you link up with me yesterday," Pixie teased.
"You sent me an invitation," Traveller replied, finally making eye contact with her and blushing. He looked intimidated, as though he had no idea what to expect.
"Do you have any favourite moments from my profile?"
As the conversation continued,
Carnie pulled one of the golden drinks to his side of the table.
"Oh, you don't want to drink it just like that," Pixie warned.
"I know, you have to change the flavour with a little fire," he said, activating an igniter in the bottom of the glass. A flame appeared in the centre of the liquid in a bubble half way up the drink.
"Oh, that's cool," Traveller said, watching the fitful flame cast sunlight yellows across the table.
Pixie feigned a frown for a moment then activated her own. "I thought I'd be showing you something new."
"Sorry, I've seen this a couple times, never had more than a sip of someone else's though. I was too young for my own."
"Oh, that stuff will get you wasted?" Traveller asked.
"It just loosens you up, relaxes some inhibitions," Pixie said.
"How many of those have you had already?"
"This is my first drink of the night, and I'm hoping it won't be the last," she replied. "What are you drinking?"
"Fizz Mix, the dark stuff," Traveller replied, taking a drink from his tall glass. "It doesn't change your mood, just keeps you up."
"Oh, wow, that's sweet too, isn't it?"
"Well, yeah, that's kinda the point," he replied, looking back at the golden glasses. "How do you put the flame out in those fancy things?"
"Oh, it consumes the oxygen, so it'll be out in a few seconds. The carbonation activates next, and it's pretty sweet too, actually." Carnie said as his flame went out. "See, there it goes." A healthy head formed as bubbles started moving up through the drink.
"There goes mine, too," Pixie said. Then without missing a beat, she raised her glass to Traveller's lips and grinned at him; "Wanna try?"
Whether he was lowering his head to nod or to sip, it was difficult to tell, since Pixie had the glass tipped so he got a taste. It was withdrawn after a couple sips. She was having too much fun flirting with him, and Carnie smiled to himself as he realized that he'd never seen anyone actually make someone else drink something. "That's not bad," Traveller said. "I don't think I'll switch, but it's pretty good."
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 13 Page 22
