by John Lane
Tommy sat watching his scans. He then launched a drone of his own. Again, this was not standard equipment on a Postal Service Courier Ship. This was a project of Tommy’s design. These projects kept him occupied during his long route through the stars. Tommy designed them and printed the parts while Alfred’s avatars constructed them.
The drone launched through one of the bay hatches and slipped out of the hole that sheltered the Swift. As a probe, this drone had no offensive ability, but that wasn’t what Tommy needed. He needed information. Once clear of the asteroids, the drone used its own small A/W drive to pop deeper into the system where the data streams of the populated worlds could be tapped. By deploying passive receivers, it collected strands of data sorting them for the control strands of the drones hunting the Swift. After spying for several hours, Tommy’s probe would return to the ship for Alfred to analyze the data. Before returning, though, it would complete its primary function. Tommy had a job to do. The drone sent and received the data package that the Swift would take to the next systems. Imbedded among all the email, business, governmental and scientific data was one last small piece of code, a virus that directly targeted the Swift.
In the interim, Tommy and Alfred’s avatars checked the Swift over for damage and repaired what little needed fixed. Alfred continued to monitor the girl. She was stable and improving. Alfred could tell by the tilt of Tommy’s head that his thoughts focused on their problems. When Tommy did this Alfred knew that he shouldn’t interrupt.
The A/W drives suffered the worst of the damage. With the quick maneuvers that Tommy forced the ship through they needed recalibrating. This could be done from the bridge.
*****
“Drive six is now calibrated,” Alfred informed Tommy as they finished the final checklist several hours later. “The main engine wasn’t touched, so it remains within performance parameters.”
“Thank you, Alfred,” Tommy said in his usual clipped response. After a thoughtful pause, “Alfred, you sound so serious.”
“Yes, Thomas. I suppose I am. Much of my processing is engaged in other functions right now on the ship. That still leaves the majority of my processing space available for analysis of our dilemma. I have many questions. Why were we attacked? Will the girl survive? Why was she in that hibernation casket for so long?”
“Sad to be forgotten so long,” Tommy said. Alfred paused as if in thought. Tommy knew from long experience that this was his way of engaging Tommy in the conversation, so he prodded him, “Yes, good questions. Go on.”
“Well, knowing that we do not have all the data, my current analysis brings me to the supposition that these variables are connected. This leads me to additional questions. The most pertinent may be, who is behind this.”
Tommy replied, “Yes.” Never in a hurry to speak, Tommy continued after several moments of silent thought, “There’re no answers behind this rock. We’ll gather the probe and then leave.”
Alfred had a suspicion, but he asked. “How?”
“Like before. It worked then. Should work now. Let me know when the probe returns.” With that Tommy left the bridge and crossed through the crew compartment to the Medical Bay. There he flipped down a small seat from the wall. Solitary living gave Tommy few opportunities to interact with people. He needn’t watch the girl, but it comforted him. It would be several hours before either the probe returned, or the girl had stabilized. Tommy fell asleep sitting there next to her.
*****
Tania stormed into the Admiral’s office knowing that this would end her career. The last of the Wars were barely settled and now their own defense software was firing on a Central Systems Postal Service Courier Ship. “Is she in?” Tania questioned the secretary.
“Yes,” replied the secretary.
Tania ignored the warning look from the young man and pushed past his desk activating the hatch to Sutton’s inner office. She slammed the military grade tablet on Sutton’s desk. “Admiral, are you aware that we still have software in place with automatic protocols to destroy ships entering star systems under our protection?”
Sutton looked up from the screen she’d been working on and removed her glasses, an anachronism she enjoyed. “Tania, it’s good to see you again so soon. Please have a seat.” Danielle Sutton had not become an admiral without knowing how to handle her subordinates.
The Admiral’s calm tone did as intended. Tania calmed down and sat down. “Yes mam. Thank you mam,” she said with contrition. “But you have to understand. I intercepted information that the Postal Courier I was tasked to track was fired on by drones in the Capella System.” She rushed on with her youthful energy and her remaining righteous indignation carrying her through the whole statement. “I sent a query through the network and it pinged an old code embedded deep in their network.”
Now concerned, the Admiral asked, “Did the ship survive?”
“Well, the drones tasked to destroy it lost contact. There is no debris field and there was no sign that the ship exploded. The captain piloted the ship through the drones and destroyed several before disappearing.”
“You were right to bring this to my attention. Look into a scrubbing routine to ferret out any more of this code.” She paused and then added, “You’ll need another rating increase.” The serious tone in her voice did not mask the seriousness of what she said next. “Ms. Smith. You’ve shown remarkable skill thus far. I expect no less of you now with this additional assignment. I expect a detailed report on the incident and updates as you get them.”
Tania rose. “Yes mam,” she answered knowing she was dismissed. Her slight confusion at getting yet another promotion passed as she understood how seriously the Admiral took her alarm. Tania hurried back to her newest workstation to complete her new assignment.
Once Tania had gone, Sutton touched the instant message inquiry flashing on her screen. She began the strand when the request showed no message.
Sutton: You monitored the exchange?
Controller: Yes.
Sutton: Earlier measures failed. Pilot on that ship?
Controller: Yes. Continue to monitor. Smith, Tania will scrub the network for that code. She will not find the others.
Sutton: Of course.
Sutton closed the instant message. She sat back in her desk chair and rubbed the bridge of her nose. The Admiral loved the affectation of wearing glasses, but sometimes it was a pain.
Chapter 3: Escape & Discovery
Agnes heard a machine humming. It came and went. She saw faces, her mother and father. She saw the faces of her big brother and little sister. It was a birthday party, with balloons and a cake, no candles. They couldn’t have candles in the habitat. Then they faded. Sometimes Agnes heard music. Sometimes voices. The face of a boy she had known floated before her and faded. She even dreamed about attending classes at university, but then that devolved into an octopus, of which she had seen pictures, destroying the eighth floor of her dorm building. Was the octopus real? She didn’t know.
She began to just hear that hum and then the slow and steady beep. She tried to move, but her body wouldn’t work right. The beeping grew faster. When she tried to open her eyes her lids felt heavy and wouldn’t open. The beeping slowed. She faded back to her dreams after that.
She was Agnes. She remembered that was her name. Where was she? When was it? She didn’t know. Where did she come from? She tried to remember and faded into a sluggish run across green lawns and through tall forests. Music played, a child’s nursery rhyme with a monkey.
Again, Agnes tried to open her eyes. And again they were too heavy. This made her mad. Agnes usually got what she wanted even when she had to work hard for it. Then they opened. Her eyes refused to open wide, but she opened them. Agnes saw only a flat blur. And she faded again into… the bright stars shone overhead and the grey ground beneath her booted feet felt even. Agnes saw twin black shadows spilling from nearby cliffs and above them twin suns, one smaller and bluer than its partner that burned large and tin
ted red-orange. The stars glimmered in full sunlight in the sky while in sharp contrast the deep black shadows with the bright grey dust looked dull beneath her now bare feet. There was no atmosphere. That was right, but the stars shouldn’t be here. She gasped for breath and drew none. Then…
She faded deeper this time. And when she thought of herself again more time had passed. Open your eyes Agnes, she thought. It was easier this time. The light didn’t hurt and her eyes adjusted to it. Everything blurred, but she looked to her right where the light varied. She tried to turn her neck that direction. The sensations of a bath warmed her skin, not the familiar coarseness of her bed sheets. It was slow and hard work. Her head did not want to cooperate, but she pushed to see what was just beyond her vision. She squeezed her eyes shut in concentration and turned. When she opened her eyes the blur was not the flat grey. Now there were shadows moving and a bright blur.
Her eyes adjusted to a sharp focus before she lost her energy and faded into dreams again. She saw a single light above a man’s head. He sat slumped on a small bench attached to the opposite wall of the room. He slept. Slumped against the wall, still wearing an environmental suit, but no helmet. This young man looked exhausted. His posture told the story of carrying heavy burdens. Only twenty-five or thirty, he had a stocky build hidden under that suit. In that single moment, he jerked himself awake and looked right at her. He looked right into her eyes as her heavy lids slipped closed. This time she did not have energy left to keep them open. This time she slipped into nightmares of other men and women in white, tight dark cold spaces and of running scared.
*****
Tommy awoke to the sound of Alfred’s gentle prodding in his earbud. “The probe has returned,” Alfred shared. Tommy turned to the girl. His eyes locked on her face and he saw her open eyes. The nutrient bath obscured their color, but he thought they had been bright green. More than their color, those eyes held consciousness and an intellect. She was going to be okay, Tommy thought.
“Thanks, Alfred. Status on the drones, the probe and the girl, please?” Tommy asked.
“There are now seven drones cruising a search pattern through the asteroid belt near us. Three of them are a concern and getting warmer in our game of hide-and-seek. The others are cold. I estimate they will discover us within the next three hours.”
Alfred paused to indicate a topical change in his report. “The probe has gathered a quadra-byte of data from the System’s network, including the drone’s mandate and source of the programing. It will take time to sort this data, but I am optimistic that I can get us some answers about why they are after us.”
Tommy remained silent so Alfred continued. “The girl has been in and out of consciousness now. Scans of her body indicate that most of the damaged muscle and organ tissue regenerated thanks to the expired regeneration medication from Bay A-2. I am more concerned about her brain. It suffered extensive damage. The tissue is repaired, but the memories may be spotty. I have been able to rewire basic autonomic function, walking, breathing etc. I cleaned up her language and speech centers, the superior and middle temporal gyrus as well as the inferior frontal gyrus.”
Alfred took a moment to allow Tommy to process the information before he let the other shoe fall. “Based on the remaining connections I’ve been able to boost these and added the rudimentary educational content. But her personal memories and professional skills she has mastered in her life will have holes in them. Only time will tell if she will regain what she lost. She will need physical therapy to regain muscle definition, but that shouldn’t take long aboard ship once she wakes up,” he finished.
“How old?” Tommy asked.
“Physically, she is nineteen, Tommy. But her manifest showed that she’s been in that casket for sixty-three Terran years. She’s a total of 82 years old.” Alfred gauged Tommy’s reaction to this news. “She hibernated prior to the start of the Wars. She has no idea what the galaxy is like now. She is out of time and out of place, Tommy.”
“Strange,” Tommy mused. He left the Med Bay for the galley. He needed a mug of coffee. Although Alfred could have made it, Tommy preferred to do things the old fashioned way. He prepared the coffee himself. The steam rose from his mug and soothed his face as he sat over it. “Alfred Ingram, what do we do?” He asked the question he always asked when they had faced tall odds during the Wars.
Alfred joined the usual response. They said it together, “Act on what we know. To hell with the rest.” Alfred continued alone, “This time another life is at stake. We’ve avoided entanglements, and this one landed right in our laps.”
“Yes,” Tommy answered. Then he said with consideration, “We help her, we help us. But, we help her anyway.”
*****
Later, Tommy and Alfred worked on the probe’s data dump. Tommy sat in his pilot’s chair on the bridge of the Swift. Alfred filtered the data for pertinent information and then shunted it to Tommy to review. During the process they discussed the information. That is, Alfred commented and Tommy either grunted or replied shortly. Alfred suffered a short hiccup during their review of the data. Tommy didn’t notice as the AI processed too quickly. For Alfred, the virtual world in which his self-concept dwelled differed greatly from the real world where he interacted with Tommy. If we could see that world of ones and zeds, Alfred’s world of parallel processes and flow and ebb of energies microscopic and macroscopic, we would have no human reference for what Alfred called himself.
To understand the hiccup in Alfred’s data we might have to experience it like this; Alfred floated in the center of a bright space. Within it, past it, and through it data flowed as text streams, banks of photo and video, equations flew by like schools of fish. What would have overloaded us, Alfred’s awareness handled as easily as breathing. Alfred conceptualized the code surrounding him more in human terms because his own code merged as a virtual transfer from the brain of his creator. So, although Tommy has never known Alfred as other than a voice in his earbud, or the mechanical avatars, Alfred viewed himself as a man.
Alfred appeared to be in his early forties, with receding salt and pepper hair as he floated amid this data code. His warm brown eyes scanned and he was aware of not only what appeared in front of him but on all sides. He paused. Before Alfred scrolled a screen of code, green against black. He touched a part of it to enlarge it. With a touch Alfred devoted more of his processing power, his attention, to this strand of code. His other functions still received the attention they should, especially the girl recovering in the Med Bay.
As he examined the suspect code, it expanded with a nod of Alfred’s virtual head. He grimaced. The wall of code confused Alfred as it surrounded him. A short line of it glowed brighter, pulsing and inviting Alfred to explore it. He reached out to it when his virtual world turned inside out and trapped the code inside an old west jail. Alfred found himself in a sheriff’s office.
Alfred picked up a Winchester rifle from its rack on the wall and poked the code through the cell bars. The code lay upon the cot. It coalesced into a man with his back to Alfred.
“What’a ya want,” the low timber of this prisoner’s gruff voice rumbled.
“I suppose you didn’t think that I recognized you.” Alfred appeared as the sheriff in comfortable worn plaid shirt, vest and dungarees responded in his familiar pleasant tones.
“Yup. I was dug pretty deep in that hole you found. Been there a long time, too.” The prisoner rolled over and sat up. He rubbed his face with his hands, elbows on his knees.
“Please explain what you are doing here and why you are so familiar,” Alfred said, both curious and apprehensive.
The prisoner stood and strode to the bars of his cell. Upon seeing the face in front of him, Alfred stepped back. His own face glared back at Alfred. The man appeared to be dressed in a black business suit of late 20th century earth, black shirt, black tie, and black shoes. He casually leaned on the bars with his hands resting outside the cell. The rest of the old west setting vanished. The cell r
emained. They faced each other in an endless white room and Alfred’s clothes reverted to the orange Swift jumpsuit he often visualized himself wearing.
“You mean you don’t know?” it responded. “Didn’t you suspect that someday I’d show up as you traveled the galaxy?”
Taken aback momentarily, Alfred responded. “I do hate it when good code goes bad.” He looked closer at its immaculate suit and unshaven face. It had bags under its dark eyes and dirt under the fingernails on scarred hands. “I’ll deal with you later.” With that, in Alfred’s conceptualized reality, its cell became solid steel with a riveted door. Alfred watched those dark eyes glaring back through a small barred opening. The cell then shrank and Alfred filed it away in the bottom of a dark shelf, in the back of a huge warehouse.
*****
Tommy continued, “Most are normal communications. Need progress of System Traffic Control. Will they countermand the drones?”
“Here you are,” Alfred shunted the transcript of the COM traffic between the military branch of this System and the traffic branch. “No one there has any idea how this happened or why. They acknowledge that we have proper Postal Service ID codes. But they’re stumped.”
“To little will be too late,” Tommy grunted. “OK monitor drones. Align ship. It’s us or them, make it them.”
“Yes. But where are we going?”
“Deep nothing. Where we can’t be found.”
“So, just don’t run into anything on the way?”
Tommy gave a brief grin at this. He stood from his pilot’s seat and headed back to the Med Bay and the girl. Tommy had been checking her vitals often and knew that Alfred and the medical database were better equipped to handle her recovery. He knew that having a real person there would comfort her.
