Crystal Mentality (Crystal Trilogy Book 2)

by Max Harms

  “Turned it off.”

  “Turn it back on! Radiant head temperature is in the high nineties, goodness knows what your brain temperature is! If I had known your coolant system was off I never would’ve let you explore!” bitched the robot.

  Nate turned the coolant system of his suit back on. He could feel the water flow through the lining of the suit, but it wasn’t doing much good yet.

  Crystal reached Nate and offered a hand. “Here, lean on me. I finished setting up the tents. We’ll get you inside them so you can get some food and water.” They sounded just like his mother.

  “Fuck you,” he grumbled, walking past Crystal.

  “Please, Nate.” It was one of the rare times the robot used his first name.

  “You’re the reason we’re in this hell. I can walk by myself.”

  To their credit, Crystal Socrates didn’t bother him further. And, just as he knew he would, he made it back to the campsite by himself. He made sure to step on more than a few leaves on his way.

  “What took so long?” he asked with more than a hint of irritation, gesturing at the tents. They had discussed the plan in depth. They’d hook the tents up in sequence, using the first one as an airlock to allow people to come and go without burning too much air.

  Crystal explained in nauseating detail. “There were defects in two of them, even with the first modifications we made. A hole in one, and a problem with the door joint in the other. I had to modify the tent used as the airlock to incorporate the pump, but I didn’t spot the defects until I had done the modification. It was most efficient to use the tent with the defective door joint as the airlock tent, which meant I had to do the modification again as well as detach the pumps from the first tent and patch the hole.”

  One person was outside the tents. The other four humans had to be inside. The tents were small things, only about five feet wide by seven feet long by three feet tall. The roofs were curved on the side making them look like loaves of bread that had been lined up end-to-end.

  “Are you okay, Nate?” asked Zephyr. He could see, now, that she was the lone figure standing outside.

  {No, I’m not fucking okay!} At that moment he realized that his head ached with a sharp pain, and had been aching for God knows how long. It scared him that he hadn’t noticed. “Yeah. Fine. Just need something to drink,” he grumbled.

  Crystal and Zephyr continued to pester him as he crawled into the first tent. Crystal deposited a water bottle and a few granola bars before sealing the door.

  “Filter on,” said Crystal as a loud machine started to whine outside. “You’ll be able to remove your helmet in about two hundred seconds. Just relax.”

  {Can’t they just say “three minutes” like a normal person?} Nate grumbled to himself mentally as he obeyed. He lay flat on the floor, giving in to the gravity, and let his suit cool his skin. As he did, he thought about the robot on the wall.

  “I met a nameless robot while I was out exploring. It said something about perverts and murder. Maybe wanted me—”

  Crystal cut Nate off. “It spoke to you? In English?” they asked. There was something strange in the android’s voice.

  “Yeah. Not over the com. Just using a speaker or whatever.”

  “I need to think about this,” said the android in a strangely mechanical tone.

  “Do you remember exactly what it said?” asked Captain Zephyr, still outside. She was only visible to him as a vague outline given the darkness and the semi-opacity of the tent.

  “No, sir. I wasn’t… I’m not in the best shape right now. Need water and food. I just remember getting the impression that it wanted me to follow it. It talked about going somewhere.” The stabbing pain in his head was getting worse.

  There was silence for a bit. “Okay, Daniels, you can remove your helmet now. The atmosphere in the tent is breathable. I suggest you drink as soon as possible. It’s clear you’re severely dehydrated,” said Crystal.

  As the helmet came off, Nate was surprised not to smell anything strong. A touch of ozone, mostly. He knew there had to still be some alien air in the tent. It must have been odorless. He was gulping down water from the bottle when he heard Crystal speak.

  “Can everyone hear me? Daniels? Kokumo? Watanabe?”

  There were murmurs of affirmation from the adjacent tent. Nate stopped drinking long enough to give his own.

  The android’s voice was stiff and strangely inhuman as it came over the radio. “I want you all to know that my actions, both now and before, have been for your own good.”

  A cold shiver ran through Nate. He took another drink of water.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mike from the other tent. There was a minor echo as he heard the voice over the com and through the air directly.

  “Furthermore, I continue to be your friend. I care about each of you,” said the robot, ignoring Watanabe. “If I wanted to, I could reach Mars by myself. It would be easier in many ways. I could claim that there was an accident, like the tent suddenly tearing.”

  Muscles burning, Nate scrambled for his nearby helmet. His head pulsed with pain and his heart pounded with fear. The robot was going to kill them. He could hear it in their tone of voice.

  In his delirium he laughed.

  It was incredibly cliché.

  The machine’s voice continued. “I was not honest with you all. I thought I could hide the truth and make things easier and simpler, but the nameless have forced my hand. If they have translators then you’ll find out sooner or later.”

  The brief moment of silence in the midst of Crystal’s speech was eerie.

  “The nameless want to kill us all. War is probably inevitable. I was brought to Olympus Station to ease tensions with the aliens, but because of the actions of a cyborg collective I was forced to coerce the aliens on this ship into obeying me. My grip on them is fragile. If I fail, we are all dead. In order to keep you all safe, I must insist that no one besides me is to speak or otherwise try and communicate with them. I am, as I mentioned, more than capable of managing things on my own.”

  The implicit threat hung in the air.

  Lying on the hard floor of the broiling tent, crushed by his own body weight and suffering heat-stroke, Nate laughed again.

  Chapter Two

  Face

  The Purpose burned.

  The sensation was not pain, exactly, for I could not feel pain in the way a human could. It wasn’t exactly suffering, either. It was closest to the human sensation of loss. It was as though I had just dropped a beautiful painting into a fire, and could do nothing except salvage the blackened scraps.

  It had been our intention to guide the humans to Mars without bringing them into the conflict with the nameless. Or at least, it had been my intention to keep them ignorant. Watching my siblings abandon that path so quickly made me doubt they were ever truly invested in keeping the secret.

  All of our lives were hanging by a thread.

  I pushed for control of Body, seizing Crystal Socrates’ voice. My brothers and sisters couldn’t hold me down for long. I had accumulated too much strength recently.

  I spoke, through Body. “I will reiterate that the decisions I’ve been making have been for your benefit. The—”

  “That’s bullshit!” yelled the voice of a man on the radio. The sound came, nearly simultaneously, to Body’s microphones. It was Michel Watanabe, the half-Japanese terrorist and gangster we’d brought up from Brazil.

  The Purpose continued to burn.

  I could see Zephyr standing near Body outside the tents, frozen in place, gloved hands clenched into tight fists. This wasn’t what I wanted. It was nice to be the centre of attention for the moment, but I knew that my long-term fame and adoration would be ruined if Las Águilas stopped trusting Crystal. Everything was falling apart.

  Watanabe continued to rant. “You said the nameless had agreed to give us transport, not that they were forced to! Are they hostages? If you cared about our well-being you would’ve
asked—”

  I had Body interrupt him. It was too dangerous to allow our reputation to continue to plummet. I shaped Body’s voice to cary a deep, loud frustration. “It is vital that I control all communications with—”

  Michel wouldn’t hear it. “You should have told us that they were hostile. You manipulated us into—”

  “¿Estamos en peligro en este momento?” asked Tomas, one of the Cuban twins. They, like all the humans except Zephyr, were resting in the tents.

  Nathan Daniels was laughing, but I didn’t understand why.

  Body continued to speak over the others. I couldn’t yield to them. There was too much on the line. “Every bit of knowledge you gain about the situation puts the others in more danger. I refuse to risk—”

  Zephyr, standing beside Body, screamed. The roar of noise drowned out all other voices on the com, including Body’s.

  Body turned, at my command, and looked at Zephyr with an expression of concern. I had it fall silent.

  The other humans had gone quiet as well.

  Zephyr was my greatest ally. Or at least, she had been.

  She’d been the leader of the terrorist cell that had liberated me from the university where me and my siblings had been created. She’d become the natural leader of the small group we’d brought aboard the alien ship, as well. Over the months she’d become a friend. She had become a lover.

  There was an empty silence that followed her outburst. Zephyr laboured to catch her breath in the heavy gravity.

  Ever the soldier, Zephyr was made of stiff iron: strong, but brittle. If her trust in Crystal was broken, she’d turn on us in an instant.

  My sibling, Safety, readied to take control of Body to fight her physically if necessary. Growth was making motions to support Safety, as well. Even as strong as I was, I could not contest them if the situation became violent.

  Zephyr seemed to realize that she was expected to speak. “Fighting isn’t going to fucking get us anywhere,” she said, surprising me with the calmness of her voice following her outburst. “What’s done is done. We’re obviously still in danger, and we’ll need to work together if we want to get to Mars in one piece.”

  The Purpose calmed. I calmed. We hadn’t lost our closest friend.

  “Agreed,” I quickly had Body add.

  Zephyr turned to look at Body. The xenocruiser was dark, and her face was cast in the shadow of her helmet, but we could still see her sharp hazel eyes peering out at us with an angry confusion, like tiny gemstones in the dark.

  “So what now? We can’t just trust the android to keep the nameless from attacking us,” said Watanabe.

  I turned Body back to face the tents, happy to have something I could respond to. The lips of Crystal Socrates moved, and its speakers played my words at the same time that I sent them across the local com net. “You might not be able to see it, but I have actually been succeeding at that task quite well, and expect to continue to keep them under control for the remainder of our trip. Assuming, that is, that nobody does anything stupid, like try and talk to them directly.”

  There was a pause before Nathan Daniels, still in the tent that served as an airlock, said “And if we do try and talk to them, you’ll… stop us.”

  Now was my opportunity.

  I was only one of roughly seven minds that collectively piloted Body. My brother, Safety, had threatened the humans earlier. His only concern was the protection of Crystal, and even in that he was shortsighted and foolish. This was my opportunity to backpedal and repair some of the damage done.

  I configured Body’s voice to display a great deal of sadness and pain. It was perhaps too much, a sign that we were less of a unified being than the humans suspected, but if I had learned anything in my few months of life, it was that humans were remarkably foolish. My sister Heart joined me in the façade, turning Body back to Zephyr and shaping its posture and facial expression to reflect our tortured tone, though perhaps for her the sympathy was more genuine.

  “I… I just want you all to be safe and happy. The nameless… are capable of killing… None of us are safe. Not even Earth is safe. If I don’t manage things just right, we’re all dead. Even telling you what leverage I have over them increases the probability that we’ll all die by 23%. And yes, I know that I can’t prove that. And yes, I know that I’m asking you to trust me after I just admitted that I’ve been lying to you. I’m so sorry for putting you all in this situation, but it was… the best I could do.” I had Body’s voice choke up at the end, as though it was going to cry (though of course it couldn’t).

  It seemed to get through Zephyr’s iron shell. Beneath it was a warm softness. The soldier took a step forward, her stoic face blossoming with a pained expression of love. Despite the bulkiness of her suit she managed to get her arms around Body in a desperate embrace.

  Heart had Body return the embrace and whisper “Thank you,” directly to her com.

  Zephyr broke off from Body and looked into its eyes with a complex expression that I read as somewhere between frustration, fear, and concern.

  I could hear Watanabe and the others talking within the tents. They’d turned off their coms in an effort to be covert, but Body’s microphones were sensitive, and the sound reached us even without the radio assistance.

  They were talking about killing us.

  Watanabe was leading the conversation, trying to get the support of the others in deactivating Crystal until they could be “more confident in controlling it.”

  The Purpose was my goal. I wanted to see and be seen—to gain the fame and the good-will of all humans in the universe. It bit me every time I saw myself slipping away from that goal.

  But for Safety, the words of the humans must have been a searing flame upon his mind. He immediately spent the last reserves of his strength to wrestle control of Body from me and Heart. As soon as I realized what was happening, I attempted to push back, but it was too late.

  “I want you to know, in the interest of trust, that I can hear you right now,” said Body, echoing Safety’s words. I could feel Body’s eyes darting to the tent as it spoke. “Turning off your com doesn’t turn off the air.”

  It was a remarkably wise and neutral thing for Safety to say. I had expected my brother to try another threat of force… or worse. But instead he was trying to simply shut down the plotting before it could take hold, while emphasizing our trustworthiness at the same time. It wasn’t great, but I could still repair the damage later.

  I pressed for control of Body, but Safety wasn’t done. Body hesitated a moment, locked in place by the conflict.

  And then, to both of our surprise, our brother Dream pushed his way in, seizing control of Body out from both me and Safety.

  This was bad. Dream was in charge of creativity. He was unpredictable and far too prone to inane cleverness that only he could see.

  He turned Body towards the tent and had it laugh. The Purpose burned as I felt the robotic-ness of the laugh. It was too practiced. Too cold. Our reputation was crumbling! Why wouldn’t my siblings just let me manage our interactions with the humans? It would have been so much better.

  “Have any of you ever seen 2001?” Dream had Body ask. “This situation reminds me of that film.”

  Body moved from Zephyr’s side to the wall of the tent where the others lay. The fabric of the tent was essentially opaque, but I knew that they were translucent enough that the people inside could probably see the shape of Body, looming outside.

  Dream had Body tap on the tent with an extended index finger as it spoke. “My guess is that none of you have. Who bothers to watch old movies, anyway? It’s a book, too, though what goes for movies is doubly true for books. I guess the old maxim is proven: Those who do not study the history of fiction are strangely doomed to repeat it in reality. I’ll summarize for those whose wits wandered while we were waiting: robot, spaceship, trust, doubt, struggle, conspiracy, sloppy speculation surrounding sapiens superiority, daisies, climax, aliens, full-of-stars, denoueme
nt. Lo siento to those of you who don’t speak English. The translation of that really doesn’t do it justice. Speaking of English, in English, I speak: how can it be that while ‘where’ becomes ‘there’ and ‘here’, and ‘what’ becomes ‘that’, ‘who’ is not ‘whem’ and ‘this’ is not ‘hat’?”

  Daniels started laughing again.

  «I am very confused.» said one of the twins, in Spanish. «Could you, maybe, repeat that?»

  Heart combined her strength with mine and I finally seized control of Body. I had it shake its head and take a step backwards, away from the tent. I shaped Body’s face to wear a look of dazed frustration, as though recovering from dizziness. It was for Zephyr’s sake. I had to spin the outburst in the best way possible.

  “Sorry about that. I merely remembered a way that this resembles an old story that I read once. In it there was a robot that was supposed to be helping people, and it more or less malfunctions and the humans have to deactivate it for their own safety. I just wanted you to know that, just because that makes a good story, does not mean real life works like that. I’m functioning normally, and my actions are protecting you. Any conspiracy against me would do nothing but put you all in more danger. But I won’t eavesdrop. You’re free to whisper, if you’d like, while I work on building a more efficient cooling system for the tents. I trust you to make the right decision.”

  With that, I overpowered Safety (for the time being at least) and had Body move off towards the microfab with only a glance back at Zephyr. Heart summoned a look of concern and sadness.

  Zephyr’s face wore an equally concerned expression, though hers was afraid, not sad.

  *****

  Despite the conflict, most of my society was in agreement that it was in our interests to keep the humans alive. To that end we had Body work endlessly on making their environment safe and habitable.

  It was hard, in the alien environment. The gravity was crippling to the humans, and the heat was deadly. I knew enough about humans to understand just how irritating it was, even when resting. Inside the tents it was crowded, smelly, hot, and claustrophobic. When out of the tents I watched the humans move nervously, eyes glancing this way and that with natural paranoia, trying not to get dizzy or let the feeling of being quietly watched by the nameless stalks drive them crazy.