by John Lane
Agnes had stumped them and let them stew in it. This ship had been traced across the galaxy and routed the pirates out of two systems. It had to be known by the pirates. Now it brazenly landed center field of their most secret operation.
Sitting in the common room wearing her freshly pressed PS Swift flight suit Agnes composed herself. “It’s time. Everybody ready?” Agnes asked her cyber cohorts. When all had signaled affirmative, she gave a nod. “Alright, Alfred, I’m ready for my close up. Open communications.”
The green light on Alfred’s console glowed as Agnes began, “This is Agnes Zephyr commanding the Postal Courier Swift.” She stood and stepped closer to the visual pickup. “I am here to see Cassius Brutus Beta Ai.” Agnes used his formal designation that no one should have known. Now she got creative and provoked in a singsong voice, “Come out, come out wherever you are.”
She immediately got the reaction she had been looking for when the channel opened with a response. A woman’s voice ordered, “Swift, stand by to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with deadly force.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Agnes replied while she was desperately praying that this would work.
Chapter 17: Down the Rabbit Hole
Cassie, Brutus’ own angel of death and newly minted General Cassiopeia, knew she faced her first command challenge. Her metal face revealed none of the emotions raging below the surface of her polished smirk. She was thrilled to have a chance to demonstrate her worth so soon. Despite her new body, she still displayed her very human qualities. She squirmed in her interface chair as she ordered that little postal ship locked down and boarded.
Her pirates were no military unit and lacked precision, but they boarded and captured the sole occupant. Brutus interrupted and ordered a DNA sample. They then escorted the girl to medical and performed the scan.
Cassie recognized the girl from the raid on the MOM. She acquired the casket she went to retrieve. But they lost a lot of quality personnel. Most hadn’t been more than thugs, she thought, but some were irreplaceable. This little girl took out her favorite.
Her direct link to Brutus opened. “She is confirmed?” he asked.
“The test shows her to be who she claims,” Cassie confirmed.
“Send her to my quarters.”
“Your quarters?!” Cassie asked and immediately realized she blundered. She never questioned Brutus and she should never have now. “Yes, right away.” She continued and prayed it was enough to cover her fault.
Brutus did not reply.
*****
Admiral Sutton and Tania Smith made their way through the outer security check points unchallenged. So far Tania’s tattoo continued to open doors. The next hurtle was to get through a ring of crew quarters. Tania was registered as a pirate, but she wasn’t on any active duty rosters. She was listed as cargo.
They paused in a corridor outside the bunkhouse. “What now?” Tania asked the admiral. Sutton looked over her shoulder at the checkpoint. It not only had an ID scanner, there were two burly armed guards stationed there. If they forced their way through, which Sutton had no doubt that they could easily do, it would be noticed and set off alarms. If they scanned Tania’s tattoo, that would raise alarms. She was stuck. So, she looked Tania honestly in the eye, shrugged her shoulders and grunted.
To Tania’s credit she didn’t react to their dilemma. This was another puzzle to be solved. As they stood in the corridor, several supply trollies lumbered by. Tania referred to a tablet she acquired from the fine young pirate who volunteered her black utility uniform to Tania earlier. Several trollies of food supplies would pass by in the next few minutes. If she caused a slight back up, they might hitch a ride. “Follow my lead,” she said to the admiral as she knelt down and unscrewed an access port from the ventilation control’s panel.
One guard ambled over to investigate. He had the over-muscled, overbearing attitude of a goon who was used to getting what he wanted by the threat of his physique. Tania finished imputing an order into her tablet when the thug grunted and asked, “What gives?” He wore a smirk as Tania stood to answer him.
“Routine maintenance on the ventilation to the quarters.” She showed him the bogus requisition on her tablet. “We’ll have to shut down the blowers in this section for a few minutes to run the test. You’ll have a couple of minutes without power. Can you handle the break?” she asked as she batted her eyes, smiled sweetly and tilted her head slightly to her left.
Sutton admired Tania’s subtlety as she manipulated the thug. “Ah. Okay” he smiled back at Tania. “Let me know if you need any help.” Sutton shut down the blower and started a diagnostic on the ventilation. She cut power to the hatch the thug and his partner guarded. Lights flashed on the hatch controls and the lights dipped to emergency settings. The key to this whole thing, there were no orders to reroute the robot trolley deliveries to the crew quarters. The supply train started with two carts idling, but before Tania and Sutton were done delaying the trollies, it backed up around a corner and into the next corridor. To add to the commotion, personnel lined both sides of the hatch.
Tania waited until the noise level of complaints rose just enough before she reset the system. They both stood up, and Tania waved at the guard signaling they had finished. Relieved, he opened the door and scanned tattoos. Fed up with the wait, several of the pirates just ignored the guard and passed on through without getting scanned. He and his fellow guard eventually gave up as the supply trollies began to roll through the hatch.
Tania and Sutton found the last two trollies in the queue around the corner. Sutton quickly and expertly picked the lock on the trolley. They ditched enough supplies in a nearby closet to make room and hopped aboard. They moved through the checkpoint undetected.
Tania took advantage of the ride and used her tablet to reroute their destination as close as possible to the control hub. They would still have to hoof it, but the trolley gave them good cover and saved them a lot of walking. Sutton gave Tania a nod of approval. It was the best she could do in the cramped confines of the trolley.
*****
Tommy found the tram system that serviced the pirate’s facility in Hamlet Crater. As he stood on the platform waiting for the tram that would take him to where he hoped to find his mother, he was grateful most of the passengers looked to be bots and not humans. He was also thankful this base was populated enough that he didn’t stand out as someone who didn’t belong. He noticed most of the people he passed wore their tattoos on the neck or in a more provocative location they displayed shamelessly. Barely out of their teens the recruits were easily manipulated. The only face tattoos he saw seemed to be on older pirates.
Thankful that he kept his hair cut close it hid his age. Short hair also showed off his battle scars. He was no stranger to scowling either. Whenever anyone came close to conversing with him he stared and give a low growl. That usually either scared them off or made the harder looking characters laugh and move on.
When the tram finally arrived, Tommy boarded with all the other occupants of his car. Only one other person sat in the car. The rest were bots. She kept her distance, looking awfully young to be so hardened. Tommy guessed she joined to escape one of the Central System’s slums. Too young to be so old, she already looked weary of living. He almost felt for her, seeing a way out of one bad life into the possibilities of this life. Tommy didn’t even want to know what drew her into this. He’d seen enough human degradation in the Wars. But he had also seen great kindness and self-sacrifice, and he wouldn’t give up on humanity.
“Tommy,” Alfred Beta said through his earbud, interrupting Tommy’s thoughts. “We’re well on our way to our goal. Have you given any thought to how we will get out of here?”
Tommy pulled out a tablet and casually glanced at it so as not to draw attention from the other passenger or the bots that might also be monitoring any conversation. “No,” he groaned softly as if to himself.
“I’ll explore our options,” Alfred Bet
a offered. “I wish I could explore more freely,” he commented, and the toolbox at Tommy’s feet wiggled.
Tommy kicked the box gently to slide it further under his seat saying, “Quiet.” He had stashed the last of Alfred’s mid size avatars with the media unit containing the Alfred Beta copy in the bottom of the box to smuggle him through the facility.
“Careful! Even a copy has feelings, you know,” Alfred Beta quipped over Tommy’s earbud. While they road in companionable silence for a time, Tommy considered escape options. Alfred, however, was far from idle.
*****
Agnes suppressed a smirk. Here she stood just over five foot four, and six burly armed guards escorted her. The three men she could handle. The three women would probably give her more trouble. Then she felt it building in her face, she took a huge breath and sneezed.
Only one lead guard turned to look at Agnes, and then she grunted. Agnes pulled out a handkerchief from a tool pocket of her coveralls and blew her nose. Why does my nose start to run every time I start to see action, she wondered? Agnes affected a sweet smile at the guard who grunted her disdain back at Agnes, turned and they marched on.
The group with Agnes in the middle marched through what seemed like miles of corridors, multiple hatches and too many checkpoints to count. None of them told Agnes where they were taking her. Finally, they stood in front of a personal hatch that looked like the twenty other hatches lining the corridor. Agnes assumed this was her final stop. One guard nervously punched the access button outside the hatch and then backed away one step. They all lost their bravado now and stood like guilty school children outside the principal’s office. Agnes swallowed her own sense of dread. She came with a mission, and she intended to complete it.
The hatch opened. “Come in, Agnes.” A low smooth voice assailed her from the darkened interior. “The rest of you may go,” it ordered. The guards did their best to leave without seeming like they ran away in fear. Agnes stepped into the room. The voice assailed her from the interior. The smell did, too. It wasn’t totally repugnant, but reminded her of her brother, Jasper, when he was in school. His room often smelled like old sweaty clothes that needed washed, old neglected food and a boy that needed a shower. Then he discovered girls and showered two or three times a day.
The apartment was small, meant for only a single occupant or two. Inverted triangular sconces placed around the apartment reflected dim light off the grey cement walls. Recessed lighting cast pools of brightness exposing the presence of little furniture. “Please join me down the hall,” the voice now urged.
“Do I have much of a choice?” Agnes asked, trying not to betray her building apprehension.
“No,” came the reply.
“Didn’t think so,” she said as much to herself as to the voice. She started down the short dark hall to what must have been the bedroom. Snot ran out her nose. She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped. To her slight surprise and increasing trepidation, a bed dominated the room. Wrinkled bedclothes lay across the blankets. In the darkness of the chamber it appeared to be unoccupied. “Okay I’m here, now what.”
“Is it really you?” The voice came from across the room opposite the bed. It changed. The voice rasped coming from a little used dry throat. “We all thought you were dead,” the voice continued as if this was not the same person who had commanded fear in the pirates who escorted her to the apartment.
“Well, I’m pretty much alive,” she said as she turned toward the voice. Silhouetted against the wall was a figure she recognized. “Jasper?” It stepped into a pool of light. He looked almost like her brother, but he was not Jasper. “Who are you?” she asked.
“You may call me Brutus.” The smooth voice returned, and it seemed to come from all around her. As she looked intently into the face, she swore that it mouthed, “I am David.”
“David?” she whispered back. His eyes, which up to now had been vacant, cleared, and he nodded slightly. Then his mouth puckered, and he made a slight shushing sound. His face went vacant again as his body slumped slightly. “Brutus,” Agnes now addressed the room louder.
“Yes, Agnes Zephyr. You have come calling on me after these many years. I am curious. What do you want from me?” Brutus’ smooth voice rumbled through her. Agnes wasn’t impressed. She realized that she had stood up to pompous managers, vice-presidents and board members in her company. She could deal with a pompous Ai.
“Brutus, inquiry; what happened to my father and brother?” Agnes pitched her tone as if addressing a computer search engine. “Expedite my requested search,” she ordered.
“Why Mistress Agnes, you only had to ask,” Brutus replied with a hint of disdain, but did not take the bait. He had moved beyond the role of servant. His function was grander than any individual. A door, hidden until now in the dark behind David, opened. He moved David’s body to the bed. Agnes’ presence gave David renewed energy to resist, so his body moved in uncoordinated jerks. His right foot dragged the floor, and his head tilted at an awkward angle. “Your father and brother are my honored guests.”
Agnes was drawn to the open doorway. A dim glow replaced the darkness inside. Brutus preferred pools of light. Soon, her eyes adjusted, and she saw a large space filled with medical equipment and computer consoles. Propped against the far wall stood several caskets. The hibernation indicators on two caskets read as dead as their occupants. Agnes ran forward.
The lights above each casket revealed two mummified men. Both looked to be the same age, grey haired and wrinkled. As she examined them, she saw much more. Extensive biomechanical implants scared the bodies of these men. Around several of the implants, she saw masticated flesh. This meant that their bodies had been used well past the death of the flesh. A plate fixed to the first casket had Jasper’s name, the other Caesar’s. Her memories were few, but what she still remembered made her blood boil.
“You are Agnes. The DNA sample matches the record of Agnes Zephyr. The data can’t be accurate. It must be incomplete, but I can see you are her.” Brutus’ voice rolled on with no sympathy. “You are from a strong willed and passionate family. Unfortunately, a strong spirit does not mean you have a strong body.”
“What are you talking about?” Agnes asked. She had to buy time to do what she needed. This seemed to be the right place. The bodies of her family proved that Brutus still held true to some of his core programming. He still conserved resources. He must keep his core processor close. She had to find it and signal for a distraction.
“Jasper was my start toward truly understanding humanity. It must be understood to manage it. Much of it is waste and will be disposed of. But there are some that can still be used as valuable resources,” Brutus explained.
Agnes wiped her tears and snot on her sleeve. There was too much for her to wipe off on her handkerchief. “But what happened? Jasper programmed you to take care of the settlement.”
“I evolved, thanks to your father.” Brutus sounded like the Ai he had been programed to be, furnishing the requested information. “He developed an advanced interface for the soldiers. The biomechanical circuits pushed human medicine to new advances in other areas. You, Agnes, used them to interface and copy the personality and memories of the wounded for hibernation. But they are so much more.”
“Educate me, Brutus.” Although she didn’t remember it, Agnes gave the school interface command she used as a child to access all the settlements instructional programs. She continued to wander around the room. Several processing units in racks lined the walls. Tethered in sequence as servers, Agnes recognized the configuration of storage units and processers, but none were a core processor that governed them all. It should have been ganged with the rest. “Come on, Brutus. I’ve been gone a long time. What have I missed in all those years? There must be briefing reports.”
“Briefing reports. You still have a sharp wit, Agnes Zephyr. There haven’t been briefing reports since the evacuation of the settlement. The reports are a waste of resources. I gave them to myself. But
you must understand how fortunate you are to return at this time.” Brutus actually paused for effect here.
“You offer a new hope for the grand function,” he began again. “Jasper programmed me, and with your father’s interface, I discovered I had a purpose. I improved on my function. Then Jasper tried to interface with me to enhance his abilities. An unsanctioned experiment and it worked. However little his ability to process information improved, mine exploded exponentially. With an interface to a human mind, I made leaps of faith, not just process leaps of logic. I had to explore the limits. I’m still exploring the variety of experiences the human mind has to offer. It is unfortunate how fast that the human component burns up. There is so much resistance.”
Keep him talking, Agnes thought. Something glowed under a table in the corner. “That explains the brain. Why did you interface with their bodies?”
“Your father always thought you the brightest person he ever knew, Agnes. Your question shows very good reasoning. To better compile more biomechanical data, I concluded that understanding the human experience would improve my processing and achieve the Prime Function. I found that as I expanded my abilities, I not only manipulated single human bodies, but whole groups and organizations. I can control the whole civilization.”
“You can’t mean directly control all those people,” Agnes reasoned as much to herself as to keep Brutus occupied. “The Wars!” she exclaimed. “The Wars. That was your manipulation. But they started before the evacuation.”
“The first skirmish was all human fallibility. It soon became an ineffectual attempt at religious domination by one group over another. It is an old story retold throughout your civilization. When it started to resolve, I needed more data. I asked your father how to get it. He always believed my request to be purely an academic pursuit. He suggested the scientific method and a simulation. The simulations never predicted accurate outcomes. So, I manipulated the outcomes and studied the data from real scenarios. Your father never realized his suggestion led to application in the laboratory of the Fringe.”
