by Corey Ostman
Then they left Kyran to his work. They left her alone in the chair. They left him. Scattered in vials and jars and cups.
“That should be enough,” she said. “Right?” She needed to hear Kyran’s voice. When he didn’t reply, she filled the desperate void. “He had me remove some of his gel before. It doesn’t bother him.”
Kyran said nothing at first. Then he unstrapped his goggles and set them on the table, switching off the sterile field. He bit his bottom lip as his jaw muscles worked, his face fixed in deep furrows as he stared at the PodPooch chassis.
“It’s over, Grace,” he said. His voice grew huskier with each word.
Grace’s heartbeat rose into her ears.
“Is there more missing gel?” she said. “I could go out, backtrack my way to—”
Kyran reached out a hand and she stopped.
“There’s plenty of gel here,” he said.
Grace stared at his face, unable to look down. Well then. He’ll be fine.
“The liquid has lost its viscosity,” he said. “The connections are gone. There’s no mind left.”
She looked at the PodPooch on the table. He was on his side, his mimic coat a uniform black: no texture, no movement. The adorable spaniel form he had assumed when she’d released him from the bag had melted into neutral canine.
“Tim,” she said. Grace hadn’t allowed herself to think his name, and now it pierced her to say it aloud. She reached out to one of his floppy ears and brushed her thumb across his snout, just above his jawline.
“I’m sorry,” Kyran said. He was using both hands, manipulating something unseen inside the PodPooch chassis. She didn’t understand exactly why, but the action disturbed her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Disconnecting his power pack,” he said.
“No!” Grace shouted. “Raj told me that if he ever malfunctioned, I should never remove his power pack.”
“This isn’t a malfunction,” Kyran said calmly.
“Just let him be,” Grace said, trying to soften her voice but hearing the rage tearing at every word. “Maybe attach the backup. We have a backup. It might help.”
Kyran nodded, turning away from her and wiping his face.
Grace settled beside the table. Tim’s never been this still, she thought. Even when he was dreaming he’d twitch, doglike. She moved her hand down his front leg, her fingers touching the paw, curling around it, feeling it against her palm. He’d normally curve his paw until his nails touched her hand. I’m right here, Tim. Can’t you feel me?
Her vision blurred, and she rubbed her eyes. Her fingers came away wet. Not gel; only tears. The gel was inside Tim now, but there was no Tim inside Tim. She stared at him, tears running down her cheeks. If she looked at him long enough, she knew he’d open his eyes. Reaching down, she shook his chassis. Gel sloshed back and forth inside his body.
“What am I going to do without you, you stupid dog!” Grace cried.
Kyran’s hand rested on her shoulder. He had the spare battery in his other hand. She sniffed, swallowing the salty fluid of her tears.
“On—on the way here,” Grace sobbed, “he said I was going to miss him.”
Kyran squeezed her closer. “I know.”
Grace took a deep breath. “I loved him, Ky. I hope he understood that.” She looked into Kyran’s face, hoping not to find incredulity. To her relief, she saw only tenderness. “I think I’ve loved him since I woke up in the surgical pod in Port Casper. He’d sat for days on a cold floor, looking out for me, making sure I’d be ok.”
As her vision swirled, she heard another voice. She wished it were Tim’s, but it was Jacob. At some point in the last few moments, he’d started speaking to Kyran.
Grace blinked. A clear image of Tim followed by a distorted veil. As she looked, snippets of Tim mixed in with the conversation.
“Mhau feels awful about what happened,” Jacob said.
Grace’s mind had been staggering from one thought to another, but with Jacob’s pronouncement she found focus. Mhau feels awful? Is that some sort of excuse? Am I supposed to feel sorry for that aposti tool?
“I’m going to miss Tim, too. I wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for his help.” Jacob’s voice again.
“And now that he’s dead. The aposti has what he wants,” Grace blurted out, her words flowed bitter past her tongue. “Tim’s death has saved your precious colony.”
“We’re not out of this.”
Grace’s throat constricted at the sound of Mhau’s voice. She turned as the engineer slid into the room. Tim. You murdered Tim. She pushed off her chair and flew at Mhau. Kyran and Jacob moved to intervene, but she got to Mhau first. She grabbed the traitorous woman by both shoulders and shook. She felt Mhau struggle, but the engineer was no match for Grace’s strength.
“Not out of what? Someone else you’re planning to murder?” Grace yelled.
“Grace, don’t!” Mhau pleaded. “The aposti—”
“He gave you the pawns to murder Tim, and you were so willing to murder—it was so easy for you—”
“It was a choice between the station and just a—” Mhau began.
Grace shoved her away. Mhau slammed against the wall near the door.
“Don’t you dare say ‘just a toy!’” Grace shouted. “Tim was never the problem. You could’ve asked, could’ve talked instead of thieving and threatening like the other criminals at this outpost.”
Jacob bounded to Mhau, wrapping his arms around her. He glared at Grace, but Mhau just stared forward, not meeting Grace’s eyes.
“I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”
“Grace, we need to listen too,” said Kyran, gently closing his hand over one of her fists. Grace ground her teeth.
“The interference is back—” began Mhau.
“I don’t care about the interference!” Grace snapped. “Where is the aposti, Mhau?”
“She doesn’t know,” said Jacob.
“What do you mean she doesn’t know?”
“I don’t, Grace,” Mhau said. “The last I saw of him was when he tossed the PodPooch into my room.”
Tossed. Red haze tunneled her vision. Grace couldn’t trust herself, couldn’t look at Mhau.
“The interference—”
“What about the aposti?”
“Grace…”
“The blurp network,” Kyran said.
Everyone looked at the doctor.
“What?” Grace asked.
“Tim turned it on,” he continued. “The sleep squeeze locator might not work, but we should be able to listen for the aposti. Right?”
“Isn’t it glitching too?” asked Mhau.
“Tim didn’t report any problems.”
“Can you do it,” Grace said, slowly, not wanting to finish her thought, “without Tim?”
“Maybe. With Mhau’s help.” Kyran shook his head. “It would have been much easier for Tim.”
There was such finality in Kyran’s statement. Tim’s gone, she thought. That’s what he’s telling me. She wanted to sink to the center of Ceres and pull slush all around her until she vanished.
Chapter 31
Kyran dropped to his console, strapping himself into the seat. He looked at the circular optical port next to the display, where Tim had connected just a few hours before. He reached out and touched its cold, transparent surface. He’d fought to keep Raj from creating Tim, but now that he’d known him, lived with him… Kyran swallowed. An AI was as alive as any human. Tim had been his own person, beyond the parameters of Eugene’s old mind. I’ll miss you, pup, Kyran thought, his hand still on the port.
He glanced at the others. Jacob and Mhau were huddled together, quietly talking. Grace was looking away from him, motionless. He knew she was thinking of Tim, trying to integrate the loss with her reality.
His console pinged. Blurp connection at last. Kyran leaned forward, then frowned as too much raw data flew across his screen. Tim would have sorted it easi
ly. Kyran would have to create at least a dozen filters.
He reached to his left and pulled another chair closer, its casters squeaking as it rolled across the floor. Mhau and Jacob stopped talking at the sound of the chair.
“Mhau, I’m going to need your help,” he said, swiveling the seat toward her.
Mhau looked at him gratefully, but Kyran saw Grace’s eyes flash. He knew Grace might never forgive Mhau. Neither would Raj. Kyran suddenly realized he’d have to break the news to his brother. He shook his head. Later. He’d attend to that later.
“What do you need me to do?” Mhau asked, sitting next to him.
“We need some filters on the blurp feed,” he said. “I’ll connect you. My workstation’s at capacity, so you’ll need to code using your ptenda.”
“What kind of filters?”
Kyran rifled through his memory. Tim had explained the process in detail. At first, he’d thought the PodPooch was showing off, a characteristic reminiscent of Eugene Bransen. But he’d soon realized Tim just wanted someone who could appreciate his work, maybe document it properly in a research paper. Kyran had liked Tim, then. He was a colleague.
“Kyran?” Mhau asked.
Kyran blinked his suddenly misty eyes. “Are you connected?”
“Yes.”
“Ok. Tim identified three vectors that could be used to target individuals via the blurp network,” he began.
Kyran noticed Jacob slide closer to Grace. The protector still wore her anger on her face, and the earlier aggression made him uneasy. He hoped he wouldn’t have to break up another fight.
“The first vector is audio,” Kyran said, turning back to his console. “The blurp circuitry has wide-band audio, infrasonic to ultrasonic. Tim applied a band-pass filter covering three hundred hertz through thirty-four hundred hertz.”
Mhau nodded, her fingers dancing across the screen of her ptenda.
“The second and third vectors are electromagnetic. The second uses the infrared detectors on blurp panels—the ones typically used to target advertising on Earth. As with audio, the panels detect a wide range of electromagnetic wavelengths, everything from radio to gamma rays. But what Tim was interested in was the heat signature of the human body.”
“A wavelength of ten micrometers, then,” Mhau said, continuing her rapid ptenda programming. She’s fast, he mused. Tim had patiently sat with him for over three hours, working through the initial parameters.
“Next?”
“Carrier wave for the sleep squeeze,” he said.
“Twenty-seven gigahertz,” Mhau confirmed. “But I didn’t scan Panborn when he arrived, Kyran.”
“True, but since everybody wears one—”
“Even an aposti?” Grace asked. Kyran turned. Grace was looking over his head. She’d pulled back her hair and had her arms crossed. Working mode. He was relieved to hear her voice sound a little less confrontational.
“Maybe,” he said. “If he does, it will have a fresh identifier. And if he doesn’t, we’ll have vectors one and two without a squeeze carrier wave.”
“He wore one. If he hasn’t removed it,” said Mhau. “I’d like to try for the unknown ID.”
Kyran nodded. He had the choice of sending the ID list to her ptenda or asking her to send the ID stream through his console. Kyran trusted Mhau, but didn’t trust that the aposti wouldn’t have access to her ptenda stream. Getting a list of every squeeze ID could prove deadly.
“Route your stream through my console and I’ll compare it against my ID list,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t ask for the ID list outright.
She didn’t. “Incoming.”
IDs began to stream onto his screen. They followed an expanding list—the squeeze IDs in his castle arrived first. Then new data packets, sometimes individually as the blurp network detected a solitary squeeze, sometimes a squad or family. As the scan reached the mess, his screen flooded. Then it trickled as it reached the edges of the bode, followed by a few lagging slush crews.
The stream stopped, END flashing at the bottom of the list.
“That’s it,” he said. “No rogue ID.”
“Are you sure it would have been rogue?” asked Jacob. He’d anchored himself to a wall nearby.
“Rogue or not, none of the names fit,” said Kyran. “And he didn’t clone an existing ID. No duplicates.”
“So he removed his squeeze manually,” Grace said.
“Probably,” Kyran said, rubbing his chin. “Not that messy of an operation.”
“Could he have access to the blurp network? Hidden himself?” asked Jacob, tentatively. “It’s an old technology, isn’t it?”
“It was defunct. No one knew Tim had started it up again,” said Grace. She shot a look at Mhau. “Unless someone told him.”
“I didn’t,” Mhau said flatly. “Reconfigure your console,” she told Kyran. “I’ll send you all three channels. See which signals have the first two parameters but don’t have the sleep squeeze.”
Kyran nodded. He tapped his console. Random signals blinked throughout the colony.
“I think there are too many nonhuman audio signals that match our band-pass filter,” Kyran said. “Tim’s filter was more selective, since his blue gel matrix had trained specifically for human sounds.”
Mhau looked up from her ptenda. “So you want me to just send you infrared and sleep squeeze?”
“Sure,” he said, clearing his screen.
One by one, squeeze IDs were paired with infrared signatures. Kyran inhaled deeply, trying to relax. It had to be there: an anomaly. But it wasn’t. There was no infrared unpaired with a squeeze.
“Crap,” Grace said. “Where does that leave us?”
“Here!” Mhau pointed at Kyran’s console.
A lone squeeze ID had popped up—no infrared. Kyran tapped for more information. When he did, three more IDs unaligned with infrared appeared. All were from the Bode-6 database, else they would have been highlighted on their previous scan.
“Bode squeezes,” said Kyran. “And they’re paired to gray grafties.”
“Same owner, according to the ID tag,” Mhau said.
“One owner with multiple squeezes? And grafties?” asked Grace. “But why?”
Jacob laughed, short and bitter. “That’s the mark of an Ink trader, Grace. Take a wild guess whose squeezes they are.”
Chapter 32
Mhau sat with Kyran, monitoring Grace’s progress in Spiral-3. Jacob stood to her right, silent. She felt helpless, nauseated as she kept playing what-if scenarios in her head. All the choices that she could have made: talking to Panborn, stowing the PodPooch, confronting Grace, releasing the pawns… Seeing better outcomes that would never happen. Realizing she’d killed a sentient being. Realizing she’d been used like a stupid puppet.
She returned to Grace’s telemetry. How she must hate me. Mhau couldn’t wrap her mind around how much despair she’d feel if something ever happened to Jacob. With no legal recourse for justice. But Grace somehow seemed to be keeping it together. She had even volunteered to investigate the group of squeezes and grafties they’d detected. She’s so much stronger than me, Mhau thought. If I had even a sliver of that resolve, I wouldn’t have panicked into releasing the pawns, and the AI would still be alive.
She stared at the data streaming into her ptenda. There was a ghostly image of Grace amidst the ultrasonic sweep from the blurp panels. She was coming to a stop near Spoke-J.
Unsure if Grace would want to hear her voice, she showed her display to Kyran, tapping on the oxygen indicator. He nodded.
“Secure your suit before entering the maintenance tube, Grace,” Kyran said.
“Done. Climbing to the tube.” Grace’s voice was clipped.
Mhau was familiar with this particular maintenance area, and she didn’t like it. There were too many conduits and not enough crawlspace. Although it was located near the center of Bode-6, it had been part of the exterior spiral when the colony was first constructed, and much of the critical
power, life support, and communications systems snaked through this particular tube. In that tight space, Grace will find even the most mundane tasks difficult.
They watched as Grace climbed five rungs to the hatch, then reached up and spun its locking wheel. Her external mics registered a brief hiss as pressure equalized between the spoke and the maintenance shaft above. She ascended another rung and pushed. The hatch swung open.
Mhau sighed. “I should be the one in there.”
“What?” asked Kyran, his eyes still on the screen.
“It should be me instead of Grace.”
“You’re not a trained protector.”
“But this is my fault.”
Kyran turned to look at her. She expected her anger to reflect back in his eyes, but he was, at most, grim.
“Some of it is your fault, yes.”
“Most,” said Mhau, her voice cracking.
Kyran shook his head.
“Leave some for the aposti,” he said, looking back at the screen.
Mhau stared at him. She’d worked with Kyran since arriving at Bode-6, but she realized she didn’t really know him.
“Focus on the blurp network,” Kyran said. “Let’s help her find those squeezes.”
Mhau was skeptical about the location of the sleep squeezes. Conduit runs could cause spurious electromagnetic readings. She followed the tube cameras, and the single helmet camera attached to the exterior of Grace’s pressure suit. Grace was using her hands, and sometimes her elbows, to pull herself forward. Conduits hung from overhead, and snaked and coiled along the base of the tube.
“I hate the cramped space in there,” Mhau said.
Kyran chuckled. “It won’t bother Grace. She grew up exploring caves, wedging into small openings. I think insects and reptiles were her only companions back then, before she met Raj.”
“Getting closer,” Grace reported.
“But she’s never been in there before,” Mhau said. “It’s easy to get tangled in those conduits.”
“Hmm,” Kyran said. Then, “Grace, Mhau says watch out for the conduits. They can get tangled with your suit.”
“Copy.”
Grace passed a ventilation unit as it turned on, jerking in surprise, the roar loud enough to hear over Grace’s headset mic. Mhau quickly cycled through her station menu, turning off the ventilators in Grace’s part of the bode.
