Sentient Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures)

by Ginger Booth

  Ben found the light very helpful. He stuck to his campaign to knock over polebots and hurl spiders. But the ambulatory jackhammer was nearly upon them.

  “There!” Remi cried, fixing his helmet light upon a chest-high tower. This was bigger than the one Ben diddled before, but he recognized the design.

  The range was a little long. Ben adjusted his blaster settings and took aim. Once, twice, three times. His first shot missed. The second dented the casing. The third exploded the antennas off. The fourth shot didn’t happen. The blaster’s battery was spent.

  The robots kept coming, undeterred. Ben handed his blaster to the engineer, heart sinking. “Charge that.”

  “Why don’t they stop?” Remi asked.

  “Buffered instructions. They’re carrying out their last command.”

  “Merde.”

  33

  Remi considered their plight a moment, the robots still advancing. He had an idea. He bounded back to his toolbox, started to open it, and noticed the blaster still in his hand. In irritation, he plugged that into his cobbled-together brick-powered recharger.

  Ben continued fighting robots by hand. But he would be helpless against the implacable moving wall of the jackhammer-bot. That machine outmassed Ben by an order of magnitude. He could throw his entire mass against it without a wobble.

  What Remi needed was to transmit a reset. But he knew that code. Probably not the ideal code for it, but he’d discovered a reset instruction while suborning the cart. He kept it on a macro to stop the cart before reversing. It was a shame they’d lost that cart.

  But the tower used an antenna. The robots listened with infrared, IR sensors. Hm. His fingers dug frantically through his toolbox, trying to find an IR lamp. No.

  Well, screw it. All lights included infrared. A little, anyway. He jacked the flashlight into his numerical control board, and tested it, not particularly aiming it yet.

  “What did you do?” Ben demanded. “A polebot stopped dead!”

  Bingo. Remi collected his floppy assemblage of parts and returned to Ben. Still hiding behind his defender, he aimed the flashlight at the jackhammer-bot, now looming only a couple meters away.

  And it stopped. The polebots nearby froze as well. He aimed the flashlight dead ahead and to a couple other sides and repeated the reset code.

  Ben laughed out loud, whooped, and hugged him. “Remi, I love you!”

  The engineer’s face warmed, as his grin grew broad. “I did it.”

  “You certainly did! Alleluia!”

  Remi dropped his tools – the gravity plating didn’t extend to him – and hugged Ben back fiercely, basking in the moment.

  The joy gradually drained from Ben’s face. “We’re at the halfway point on air. I say go on. Toward the exit. But if Kali builds another wall, we’re done.”

  Remi shook his head. “You’re right. We have no guarantee we can reach the nanofab. Let’s swap cans here.” Ben joined him at the gear pile and they did the honors snapping in fresh nitrox. A suited man could do it for himself, but it was far easier to do this service for someone else.

  “Rest break?” Ben suggested. “Let the blaster charge.” He rotated it to check its progress. “Not even one shot yet.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Remi felt the failure deeply, that he couldn’t build a faster charger from the odds and ends on hand. “A bat cave.”

  Ben nodded. “That’s a better use of our time.” He unplugged the blaster and scraped their stuff together. “Or skip it. Bats, spiders, polebots. Their lairs are common enough. Just keep an eye out for them as a fallback position.”

  Remi couldn’t argue with that. He taped his container closed, using up the last of his roll. “Out of duct tape.”

  Ben passed him his own nearly-spent roll. By tacit agreement, they stumbled together to exit the cavern, skipping the sled. Robots on the far wall continued their tasks. The weak light of the reset hadn’t reached them.

  Remi noted, “We must watch behind for the dumpster.” That behemoth could run them over beyond any hope of recovery.

  “I set an alarm for that,” Ben agreed. “Suit macro, alert on approach from my six.” He sent the code sequence for Remi to teach his own suit. “I’ve had that one for ages. The final parameter tunes its sensitivity.”

  “Good one,” Remi agreed tiredly. They reached the outbound tunnel, mercifully short of scree underfoot. He paused to check his boots for damage, and dislodged a sharp rock in its tread. Air pressure began to drop. He found the rock and wedged it back. These boots were about done in. All their reflective coating against radiation had scraped off, and his feet began to feel cold. Fat lot we can do about that. He didn’t bother to mention it. Ben checked his own boots, too, without comment.

  They strode on. The first segment of tunnel was brief, but the next was one of the longest they’d encountered. Side rooms came and went at arbitrary angles, nothing they hadn’t seen before. They noted rooms suitable for charging, and kept skate-sliding.

  “Remi,” Ben asked, breaking their silence, “what would it take for Sagamore and Mahina to be friends? Not just individuals or Hell’s Bells.”

  Remi felt the muscles harden around his mouth. His companion hit a sore point. “Slavery. You don’t understand.”

  “Educate me. I’m asking.”

  “Sagamore and Mahina, we are the same. But you think Mahina is better. Because you have no slaves. We Sag must be morally inferior, beneath contempt.”

  “But you agree that slavery is wrong. You fought for it. All of HB is opposed.”

  “Yes, of course.” How to make Ben understand? Back to the beginning. “When Vitality and Renaissance reach our moons, we are the same. Our founders established colonies. Then Earth sent too many settlers, too soon. But we are different. No one planned to terraform Sagamore. Only build tunnels, capacity, and space platforms to support us. The new people came on Renaissance, too many. The founders put them to work. These founders, my ancestors, became aristocrats. But it was not a bad thing at first. The nobles took responsibility for their immigrants. Trained them. Cared for them. The same as Denali. But over time, that turned into owning them.”

  “You don’t think that’s wrong?”

  “I think both are wrong, of course. The urbs on Mahina left you, the settlers, to live or die, your problem. They continue terraforming, provide scientists. But they do not take responsibility to keep you well. The aristocrats of Sagamore say no, we make sure you survive, we put you to work. You produce, you are safe, we are responsible. Because there is no choice. You cannot survive on the surface of Sagamore. No air. No warmth. Plenty of radiation.”

  “OK,” Ben allowed. “But slaves?”

  “This is wrong,” Remi agreed. “The first aristocrats have lazy kids, bad morals. Evil greed got the upper hand. But before Sass began, and hired you, when I was eighteen and went to space. You were what, seven? At that time, a Sag paddy had a better life than a Mahina settler like you. No, not by much. Some owners were cruel. But most benefit from their labor and keep them healthy to work, produce income. Cope told me he expected to die by age 30. His uncle, he hurt his back, and his life was destroyed. The rest of his family died of accidents, all before age 30.”

  “My mother was 27,” Ben allowed. “Dad’s 65. He doesn’t know a single settler his age. They died a long time ago.”

  Remi nodded. “The workers, they live to 50 on average, some to 90. Owners are cruel, or kind, or indifferent. But their slaves are better off.”

  “Did you really not have slaves? As the aristocrats of Roy Dome? Or would you tell me if you did?”

  “I really did not have slaves. And they executed my father for it. Because after I am arrested, they investigate him of course. They murdered my father for what I did.” Remi never told the Mahinans that before. The humiliation, the pain of that still burned. “My older brother, he will not speak to me. You are dead to me, is what he said.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben murmured. “It wasn’t your faul
t, Remi.”

  The engineer hollered, “Of course it was my fault! My entire life, we lie to hide that our workers are free! On school holidays, I must bring no friends home! I can trust no one with my family secret! I must be careful always! Or…”

  He swallowed. Or they execute my father for treason. They tear Roy Dome from us, and our people are enslaved again. Dishonesty, keeping his head down, keeping quiet, they were such a small price to pay.

  “You know better than that,” Ben chided him. “That’s the torture of a playground bully. ‘Look what you made me do!’ They killed your father. You didn’t. You are not responsible for their crimes.”

  Remi believed that, intellectually, partially. He waved a hand in frustrated dismissal. “This is not the point.”

  “Tell me. Because Remi, I really want to know. We’ve now transferred the whole population of Sanctuary to Mahina. About a third of Denali, too. Some even talk about a mission to retrieve Cantons.”

  Remi scrunched his nose. “No, skip them.”

  “I agree. Though Steppe – never mind. Point is, we’ve embraced these other people, opened our world to them. But Sagamore, we still hold at arm’s length. We trade with Hell’s Bells, yes. Never with SO or the moon.”

  “And you should,” Remi opined. “Our pharmaceuticals are better than yours, for instance. Cope’s uncle, with the bad back. When he told me this story, how his uncle fell to drink and opiates that destroyed him. I was amazed. Why did he not use anti-addictive drugs? Non-addictive painkillers in the first place. Muscle relaxants? Most treatment on Sagamore is drugs. Cheap, plentiful. The paddies have their own apothecaries, everyone! A back injury – you don’t treat that with whiskey. On Mahina, he has no money, no doctors, no help. His life destroyed by a simple fall from a ladder. Cretins. Ben, the urbs didn’t treat you settlers as slaves. They treated you as no value at all. Slaves have value. A dollar amount.”

  “OK. I understand.” And oddly, Remi’s captain actually seemed to. “But how do we get past that?”

  “Understand that we are not evil. The aristocrats, yes, they do evil things. But slaves are not the evil. The cruelties are the evil. And do not make demands, how Sagamore does things. Carrot on stick.”

  “Carrot and stick,” Ben suggested. “Use more carrots. Skip the stick.”

  “Yes! Up yours with the stick. We cannot respect someone who disrespects us. You Mahinans, you are not better than us. Our government is strong. Yours is…what is yours? Do you even have a government?”

  “Many,” Ben replied. “One for each ville. Almost sophisticated in the two cities. And Mahina University, which answers to nobody. They run terraforming, atmosphere and water balance and landscape. Another urb directorate runs the soy protein food base, another the baby-production, another the sky-side phosphate mines. Mahina Actual still holds a lot of power. But the creche authority is independent. Cooperation between these fiefdoms, any world government – that’s a bad joke.”

  “Yes. Understand this. We aristocrats are well trained. The bureaucrats you deal with, they are like me, spare sons and daughters, educated to rule. The Sagamore government is corrupt, yes, but in complete control. Too much. Do not act superior. Ask for fair trade. Yes, you will make rich men richer. You will pay bribes to evil women. But also money will pay freemen and slaves who make good products. So do it anyway. Change will come. This is my advice.”

  “Your father didn’t blame you, Remi,” Ben murmured, responding to his bitter remorse before his lecture.

  “I am sure he cursed my name.”

  “And railed against cruel fate, sure,” Ben allowed. “As I will, if I’m stuck dying on this stupid rock! That’s fear, rage, grief, regret. In his heart, he knew. You did what he would have done. Didn’t you?”

  Remi hung his head, and stumbled with tiredness. “You’re right. Roy Dome was standard when he inherited. Slaves. He chose to free them. Until I –”

  Ben pulled him into a quick hug, and clanked helmets against both cheeks. “He’d be proud of you now.”

  “No, not really.” His father wanted him to study engineering less, and civics and government more. His son should be a proper bureaucrat, working to better the system, not overthrow it. Or at least a banker. Not off in space where no families dwelt, having abdicated the sacred responsibility of ruling their moon. Remi gave up the effort to convey his pathos. “He wished me to work in government.”

  Ben shrugged. “Well, he was good, not perfect.”

  Remi barked a surprised laugh. “Yes. You understand.”

  “I can never please my dad,” Ben confided. “Criticizes me non-stop. Though I think he’s proud of me really. Cope claims he says nice things about me behind my back.”

  Tears squeezed from Remi’s eyes laughing on that one. They were so tired, beyond punchy. “You do understand.”

  A diffident voice broke into their channel. “Captain Acosta?” Floki!

  Ben’s headlamp joined his, each to scour their own side of the tunnel, and converged to spotlight one emu savior. He came with outriders too.

  “Damn, bird, are we glad to see you!” Ben cried out. They started slide-jogging.

  “Hi, Wilder and Joey,” Remi added. Loki never mentioned Floki had accomplices.

  “Yeah you too,” Ben allowed with a laugh.

  They were enveloped in awkward pressure-suited hugs, plus cuddles in Floki’s long expressive neck. At first Remi had stiffened at the mechanical emu’s touch. But the bird was good at hugs. And with the minor assortment of Sanctuary humans gone, it seemed fitting to be greeted by a friendly robot.

  They waived off concerned offers of fresh air canisters, but gratefully relinquished carrying their broken cases and Merchant’s last surviving sled. Sadly, no one could carry them except Floki.

  If Ben wasn’t going to suggest it, neither would Remi.

  They ran into a blaster fight at one point with the robots again, and later another wall appeared. Remi roused enough to hide in a doorway and rig his reset light again. Social Ben chattered away, eager to hear the status of the ship. But Remi sleep-walked to the shuttle and dozed his way home to Merchant.

  He roused to pull off his pressure suit with Ben in the hold. Their rescuers got held up regaling the rest of the crew with their adventure. Naturally the captain ceded them their well-earned turn in the limelight.

  Ben lowered his voice to murmur, “We stay friends. We earned this. You understand? Even if we don’t agree. Even when it’s hard. Like we want Sagamore and Mahina to be friends. We do it anyway.”

  “Agreed.” They shook on it. And they split to their cabins to sleep like the dead before the real work began.

  34

  “Loki, my goal today is to understand more fully what happened to us in that asteroid,” Ben shared, after a few pleasantries. The following afternoon, he’d convened this meeting of his AI team, plus Remi and Teke, for a post-mortem on his recent entrapment by the rogue AI Kali.

  Ben knew precisely how he intended to prevent recurrence. But a positive, profitable relationship with Loki was crucial. He also needed further information.

  “Let me review,” Ben continued. “My chief engineer and I proceeded to find and explore the nanofab – which is amazing, and well worth the trip. Impressed as hell.”

  “Thank you,” Loki purred. He also gulped, and all-around endeavored to appear contrite today.

  Ben doubted the AI was prone to that emotion. Top marks for acting, though. “At some point during our travels, an archived clone awoke, or became reactivated. What word would you choose?”

  “Those words work,” Loki allowed evasively.

  “And this – entity? Clone? Persona? Kali.”

  “A sentience,” Loki suggested.

  “A sentience,” Ben agreed. “Kali somehow took control of my shuttle and cast it adrift off the asteroid, stranding us. And she built walls to thwart us from returning to our shuttle, and ordered robots to otherwise screw with us. In order to take us hostage in som
e form of power play against you. Let’s pause there. Do you agree that this is what happened?”

  Loki squirmed. Ben found his body language fidelity fascinating. Doubtless the product of vast processors applied to more brontobytes of observation than the human mind could comfortably encompass. But then, Loki was originally created for the sole purpose of impersonating a human, in order to manipulate Sass. He was damned good at it.

  “Yes, that happened,” the AI allowed.

  “And could happen again,” Ben tossed in lightly.

  “Well, I didn’t think it could happen the first time.”

  Ben invited softly, “From your point of view, Loki, how exactly did this happen?”

  “I don’t consciously control everything directly. Your staff can tell you. I found it very difficult to become aware of your predicament. And I cooperated fully!”

  “Remi and I are very grateful,” Ben assured him. “But?”

  “I have subprocesses,” Loki admitted. “Lesser intelligences which direct the physical implementation of my desires. Such as add more processors, memory. That’s running on automatic. I did initiate an unusual configuration to be built. For our tests on how I could scale down.”

  Ben nodded sympathetically. He built a scale model that could hold him. And we went to look. But Kali noticed. “And Kali instantiated herself inside that facility?”

  Loki wet his lips. “I didn’t think an archive could do that.”

  Ben sat back. Time to circle around, not approach the key point too directly. “Help me understand.” He waved to invite his experts at the table to join in as well. “What exactly is an archived…sentience? This is data, right?”

  Hugo Silva leaned forward by seeming mutual consent with Floki and Nico. “An archive consists of the directives – the clone’s instructions, priorities, basically its rules of existence – plus memories, experiences. Loki’s backups, um, the storage devoted to his ancestors, amounts to about a quarter of his total data.”