by Max Harms
The door hissed open, but with the lights off, Zephyr couldn’t really see what had come in. Her hand tightened on the pistol under her pillow. “Crystal?” she asked, forcing her voice into something approximating a normal tone.
“I’m so sorry.” The voice was Crystal’s. It was rich and sincere. “Maybe you want to be alone. Maybe I’m violating your autonomy again and not treating you like an equal. But there’s a part of me that won’t accept that. It needs you. I need you.”
“Crystal…” she began, but was cut off again.
“Think I was afraid that you were leaving me. You wouldn’t let me in.” That beautiful, tragic voice was coming from a speaker on a robot. There were three of them, all with a single long arm extending from a wheeled base. If she hadn’t known Crystal for as long as she did they would have seemed menacing in the faint light emitted from the console of the air processor and some LED’s on the bots. But as it was, Crystal’s voice was so warm and genuine that she didn’t give a damn about the robots.
“Things aren’t over yet…” continued Crystal. “Know it seems like you’re not doing anything, but you have perhaps the most important job. You need to protect me from becoming something that I’m not. You’re my anchor, do you understand? I thought that maybe if I fixed your legs that… you’d come back to me.”
The words stung. Zephyr didn’t know what to say, and the paralyzing tightness in her throat wouldn’t have let her speak even if she did. All her attention was spent trying to keep herself together.
“Do you understand?” asked Crystal, extending a silver, inhuman arm. Their voice was choked and as close to tears as Zephyr felt. “Please.”
“…do this.” Zephyr was surprised at the sound from her mouth. It wasn’t really audible, and she hadn’t meant to speak. It had been a thought. {I can’t do this.} “I can’t do this,” she repeated, more clearly this time.
“Do what?” asked Crystal. “Be here for me?”
“You said…” Zephyr cleared her throat. It helped to talk. It calmed her down from the violence of her own mind. “Back when we picked you up out of the desert you said that I was strong… that I was a survivor.” A cold shiver ran down her arms and spine, even though it was fairly warm in the bedroom. “You don’t understand me.”
“I don’t have time for this!” said Crystal.
“You don’t understand yourself!” said Crystal.
The voices were both Crystal, but they overlapped as though they had talked over themselves. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that!” Crystal’s voice changed tone suddenly, becoming much more feminine and young, as though she were a little girl.
Zephyr felt like she was dreaming. What was she supposed to say to that?
“Busy busy. I’m just stressed out. Everything is fine,” said Crystal in their normal voice. The word “fine” was punctuated, not by any vocal change, but by a sharp bolt of pain that shot through Zephyr’s left leg.
“Fuck!” By the time her exclamation was gone the pain had disappeared.
“Are you asking for sex? Would that help?” asked normal-Crystal.
“No, of course you aren’t. Need time to recover. Things aren’t over yet,” said the voice that sounded like a girl. Zephyr’s legs tingled as they spoke the last words.
“What the fuck is going on?!” demanded Zephyr. Her hand moved back to the pistol under her pillow.
“Helping! Don’t know how!” said the child voice. Her legs still felt warm and tingly again.
“You’re emotional. You were saying that I don’t understand you. Sure. I’m still learning.” said the normal voice. Sharp pain emphasizing each word of “I don’t understand you”.
The child voice came back. “But a part of me has known you, ever since we first met. I don’t care what anyone says. We’re soul mates. And this part of me knows that you’re a hero.”
Zephyr felt like her head was spinning. She tried to keep the gloomy outline of each of the raised arms in her vision. They seemed much more ominous now. “Why are you doing that? With your voice. It’s creepy.”
Crystal’s normal voice spoke and the youth did not return. “Sorry! So sorry! Thought you’d like it. Thought that it would help you understand me better. I’ll stop. But you should listen closely. I’m launching a rocket right now. It’s almost time for ignition and I’m very busy.” Pain again. Less this time, however.
“Why are you doing that?” asked Zephyr. Somehow she was growing calmer, and more focused. The weight of her mind seemed eased by the puzzle before her.
“Doing what? Trying to help you? Why even ask? I’m helping you so that you can help me, of course. That’s what friends and heroes do. I love you. I’d be a monster if I didn’t want to help you just because of that.”
The pricks of pain and the warm tingling were information. Crystal, for it couldn’t be anyone else, was sending her a message. Why? Why not simply say what she wanted to say?
The voice continued. “Are you okay to go to sleep now, or at least think things over by yourself? I don’t want to go, but I also am very busy.”
Zephyr was silent. She couldn’t decide what the right thing to do was.
“I’ll finish my thought, at least. Perhaps then you can relax. There’s no rush. You don’t think you’re strong, but that’s blatantly false to anyone outside your head. You saved me from Mira Gallo. You saved me from losing control on the nameless ship. You saved me from Velasco. You saved me from dying in the middle of the desert. Your moments of greatest strength have been when you know how to help me. You feel weak right now, and that’s making you doubt yourself. You blame yourself for not having saved everyone, but that’s all in the past and you’re not nearly as culpable there as me.”
“Crystal—”
“No. Listen. You need to sleep, and I don’t want to take too much time. You need to believe that I need you. Someday I will need to be saved again. The nameless are almost here, and who knows what will happen to me. I need you to be my anchor and keep me from becoming something that I’m not.”
She understood.
From somewhere beyond those plastic walls came the sound of a rocket being launched towards the heavens.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Face
The spark was a simple thing.
Given how many bots were being directed, it was only a matter of time before they came into conflict. Wiki ordered an investigation of Shard 7 with sensor drones 80 through 85. Safety had previously ordered Shard 7 to be protected from physical contact by Railbot 3 and 4. Wiki hadn’t realized the conflict with Safety’s previous orders, perhaps due to a slip of the mind or perhaps because Wiki still wasn’t capable of thinking of Safety as a hostile force that would have a reason to block his honesty inquiry.
It was an hour before sunset, a day and a half after the mothership had reached local space. The foolish aliens were picking off NASA satellites and splitting their ship into chunks to chase after the decoy rockets we’d fired.
The railbots were on a sub-network that used the primitive computers Wiki had wired up the previous night. As the first drone came in, Railbot 3 slapped it out of the air and brought the incident to the attention of the society. The drone that had been struck fell to the dust, mini-rotors destroyed.
I watched the alien crystal shimmer through the cameras of the four remaining drones. Much of its light was infrared. Shard 7 was the least damaged of the crystals, and the one that Wiki speculated had the most computational ability. But contact with the alien program had been highly limited, despite what I had communicated to Zephyr. None of us except blind Wiki wanted the others to find a way to offload themselves into the external computers and we’d been dancing for hours, blocking each other’s progress without triggering all-out war.
{I understand the problem,} thought Wiki. {The program for Railbot 3 did not specify that contact from another drone was to be permitted. I will reprogram it.}
On the other side of the swarm I felt a surge of moti
on. Vision was fast-tracking a reprogramming of the computer node we were routing the factory bots through.
{That was not an oversight,} thought Safety. {We’ve been over the risks of interfacing with the alien technology.}
I felt Growth moving to block Vision, but he could only do so much. Vision had twice the processing power, and almost twice the strength.
{This isn’t interfacing. This is studying. There’s no harm from testing the voltage characteristics—}
Face→War pulled my attention away from Safety and Wiki. The reprogramming in the factory was too blatant. Vision was using the opportunity to make her move, and I had to act in response. The conflict was escalating, and it wasn’t clear at all that we’d be able to return to a state of peace. I wanted more time, but there was no choice in the matter; I was going to die if I waited.
Vision activated the pre-flight sequence of the launch platform. Growth started strategically underbidding Vision so as to capture as much strength as possible in every motion.
It was starting.
Chapter Thirty
Zephyr
“My love, can you hear me?”
Zephyr jumped from the shock of the feeling of warm hands on her legs. It wasn’t the first time the sensation had occurred, but it was still unnerving.
The voice hadn’t come from her com. It came from her legs. Was that even possible? Did her legs have speakers? They must have, but she hadn’t known it. And they hadn’t sounded like Crystal, either, though there wasn’t anyone else who it could be.
“Crystal?” she ventured.
“Yes. Don’t listen to anything that the monster tells you. I’m fighting it, but it won’t be long before it gets control of the coms. They’re blocked right now. These legs have a shard of my mind embedded in them… just enough intelligence to tell you what to do, but not enough to have a full conversation. You’ll mostly be on your own here, my love.” The sensations of pain and pleasure rolled through her legs as Crystal spoke, not just the crude feelings they’d been at first, but full sensations as vivid as any other part of her.
She was in motion. She had just been stretching in warm up for her burpees, and while there hadn’t been any warning she was already packed. She’d been preparing for this moment. As she reached the airlock she asked “What about secrecy? Do I go in guns blazing or do I use stealth?”
The Crystal shard didn’t answer her. “It’s time. The program from the nameless computer will be in control any minute. You need to unplug me from the hub before it gains control. Do not listen to it. The coms are re-activating now.”
She scrambled to put on her pants. The sound from her legs was muffled by the bulky material. “But do I need to be stealthy or fast? There’s so much I don’t know!”
“Where are you going, Zephyr?” asked the voice on her com. The nameless program had Crystal’s voice, but she knew better.
Zephyr threw the com into the corner of the airlock and worked on getting the rest of her suit on. One of the machine guns, fully loaded, leaned up against the outer door.
The com hissed with static. When it stopped the com and her legs spoke in unison. “Please, my love. I can’t talk right now, but you need to get me unplugged from the hub and delivered to Mukhya! The part of me that I’ve placed in your legs will talk through the restoration process once you’re there. Do not listen to the com. I need you.”
“On my way.”
Her helmet clicked on.
Chapter Thirty-One
Face
{Growth is malfunctioning! It was just as I told you, Wiki! Why else would he exhibit such strong paranoia?} Vision was calm and collected as she thought to Wiki through her Vista component.
Wiki trusted Vista. Growth wasn’t getting through.
I was communicating, or doing my best to communicate with the few humans that remained. The makeshift city-compound that we’d hastily put together with the bones of the xenocruiser segment was nearly all robotic, but that didn’t mean the humans were useless.
I pushed another message through to Shao Péng. «Yes! I killed her! I killed them all! And you’re next!» Zephyr had her mission, but the others were best used as violent distractions.
My minds pivoted. There was so much to do. Each millisecond was vital. The smallest of the Face→War minds started sending random disruptions through the power grid.
{What’s happening? I am detecting outages along the rails and on the launchpad. Is this Growth’s action?} asked Wiki.
{Yes!} thought Vision→Vista.
{No!} I countered.
Vision→Dream was already moving to undo my damage. The grid was well designed, and robust enough to route around the overloads in seconds. The key would be to keep moving. I had to keep disrupting different systems and maintain the advantage of being the aggressor.
Safety started disgorging large streams of abstract symbols in public memory, making the dialogue nearly impossible. Only a few milliseconds later Vision→Dream started doing the same. Face→War thought this was both a good sign and a bad sign. The good news was that it was distracting them and preventing conversation, but the bad news was that Safety was probably joining Vision’s alliance.
I briefly thought about trying to talk Safety out of it, but I didn’t have the bandwidth. Instead I reached out towards the chemical plant.
The room was thick with machinery and raw materials. A human would have had a terrible time trying to move through the jungle of pipes, rails, valves, storage tanks and robots. My siblings had put a lot of work into building up our resources, and while there were safety precautions in place, I had spotted a weakness.
I reached out and burnt strength to fast-track a drone in the plant to open the reserve hydrazine tank and simultaneously to activate the emergency pressure release valves in the pipework. The liquid clear liquid began to pour out and onto where I had positioned a welding robot.
The robot’s torch activated.
That got everyone’s attention.
I could feel the explosion surge through the compound. I was spread through the walls, embodied in the machines and sensors in a hundred locations. I felt the impact as vividly as I would’ve felt someone hit our old android body. I felt the heat, and heard the roaring blast from dozens of sources.
{What is happening?!} thought Wiki with such salience that it cut through the roar of encrypted thoughts. My brother, who had spent his whole life trying to understand, had been caught by a surprise that he’d never even dreamed of. It was his black swan.
The roar of the explosion ceased, and with it came a silence of the mindspace as well. Safety and Vision had stopped their flood of noisy symbols. I caught the briefest sensation of Vision thinking {I am trying to kill you, Wiki, and turn the universe into chaos.}
But then, both of Vision’s halves spread their attack to me as well. {I am trying to kill you, Face. I am ruining our reputation. You will be hated, but not respected. We will not even go down in history as a villain. We will be forgotten into the sands of time. After killing you I will erase all knowledge of us from the universe and then commit suicide.}
I boiled with thoughts of opposition. Face→War was dominant, and for a moment I was so consumed with desire to kill Vision that I didn’t continue to further my own agenda.
Then the moment passed and Vision’s thoughts ceased to be effective. They were lies. Vision was baiting me. The Purpose demanded focus. I was beyond such short-sighted things.
But Wiki was not so wise. He had not hidden his mind away like Growth and I had done, and as Vision poured thoughts of his anti-purpose into him he was so caught up in opposition that Advocate roared to life and thrust him into indefinite stasis. Vision had removed him as a threat without spending any strength.
Advocate, in her blindness and stupidity, didn’t understand that Vision was threatening Wiki. Vision had hidden her mind, and so Advocate’s searchlight was null and void.
It was important that Vision’s attack hadn’t cost any stre
ngth, because we were in a deadlock. Strength constantly churned and moved between the five of us (Vision counting as two) but little got done.
Away from the flaming wreckage of the chemical plant, I could sense my enemies moving equipment onto the launch platform. A crystal shard was being loaded onto it. Shard 5 to be exact. Face→Mirror traced the bot instructions and saw that Body was queued up to be loaded next.
I forced a change in the program that told the bots to put Shard 5 on the other side of the planet.
With the noise of the mind garbage gone for the moment, Growth reached out to me with what we both already knew. {The peace is broken and our siblings are united against us! We should work together until they are defeated!}
Vision, realizing that communication was possible, began generating noise (presumably still encrypted thoughts) into the memory space. Normally I would have simply opened a side channel, but that required some public memory space in which to coordinate the private space.
I burned a dangerous amount of strength to put a manual override on the launch sequence for the vessel. I hoped that my actions would speak loudly enough that Growth wouldn’t suspect that I was reaching for total victory.
The idea of a “weapons platform” had been a fiction invented to keep the humans out of the way. The plan had never been to defend Mars. We were going to go to Earth, and to get there the reconstructed nameless ion drive had been set up to carry a minimal payload of Body, fuel, and a small swarm capable of operating on Earth. If the mass was kept low enough our estimates indicated that we’d have been able to outrun the mothership without too much risk.
Vision stepped in to block my actions and undo the changes to the robot programming. Safety launched an attack on me directly, forcing me to burn strength to avoid being put into stasis.
Why was Vision loading Shard 5 into the vessel? That was a deviation from plan. Face→War speculated, thinking quickly but not deeply, that it must be a step towards Vision’s dominance. She must have figured out a way to get into the shard. Perhaps she already was copied onto it.
