“… Wow…” Lex said. “Is this how you see things all the time?”
“Not all the time. But when I feel inclined to perform an analysis.”
“You have unknown depths, Coal.”
“Incorrect. I am perfectly aware of my depths.”
The ship’s thrusters flickered and flared, shifting the SOB sharply into the entry sequence. Squee, who had been dozing, was rocked awake by the motions that lacked Lex’s usual finesse. She yawned and blinked at the swirling colors painted across space. Dazzling as they were, the designs failed to hold her attention when the far more inviting pastime of nibbling Lex’s ear was available.
By the time he’d dislodged her, in part with the bribe of a treat, the ship had locked in place and the pressurized tube was clamped on. The secondary hatch slid open, and the warm, slightly funky air of the cockpit met the cool, sanitized air of the station.
“You want me to send her bags in, T?” Blake called down the plastic tube. “She said you’d be in a—what the hell?”
Squee, at the first whiff of “fresh” air, launched into the tube and barreled into him.
“Go easy on him, Squee. I don’t want him revoking my access privileges. I might want to come back here someday.”
The unseen excited yips intensified, and Michella’s giggling voice echoed throughout the tube.
“Squee, sweetie. Stop it. I missed you too. Stop! That tickles!”
“If you’ve got those bags ready, send them through. Then Squee. Then Mitch,” Lex called. “This has got to be a fast turnaround if I’m going to avoid getting caught in the cargo queue.”
Now that Michella was on the receiving end of the funk’s desperate outpouring of affection, Blake was free to pitch three heavily packed bags through the tube. Lex leaned his chair back to snag them. As with just about everything related to freelancing, Lex hadn’t had to do a rapid load-up in quite some time, but muscle memory proved up to the challenge. Bags slipped into the assorted nooks, crannies, and cubbies that were accessible from inside the ship. It was a terribly tight fit, but he wedged them where they needed to go just in time for Michella’s boots to slide down from above. He shifted his seat forward and let her drop straight down into the passenger’s seat behind him. From the gasping, near hysterical laughter from Michella, Squee had yet to relinquish her from her fuzzy clutches.
“You’re all set, T,” Blake called down.
“Great. Thanks a ton, man.”
“Good luck in the championship. Been a long time coming.”
“You’re telling me. See you on the return trip!”
The hatch slid shut and the access tube retracted. Squee gradually shifted from whirlwind of love and fuzz to warm little cuddlebug. By the time she’d reached the point that Michella could breathe normally, the SOB was emerging from the station and into the departure queue. The silence that followed Squee’s antics was leaden and awkward. Fortunately, there was at least one individual present who was quite willing to shatter the moment.
“Hello, Michella. Welcome aboard the SOB,” Coal said. “You are looking more fatigued and unkempt than your media appearances.”
Michella’s expression flicked through a few emotions from surprise to contempt and finally landed on confusion. “Is that Ma?”
“Incorrect. I am Coal. My presence as the resident AI of the SOB should be well known to you due to the fact that my installation was due in part to your own struggles in Indra Station. Do you require a caffeine or blood sugar adjustment to restore your mental acuity?”
“Trev, why is Coal still the voice of your ship?” Michella asked.
“A more accurate interpretation would be to call me the mind of the ship. Or perhaps personality. Either is more appropriate than voice, because the vocal apparatus is derived from human sampling while the behavior is more specifically a product of the programming that defines me.”
“Answer the question, Trev,” Michella said, already growing impatient with the admittedly trying AI.
“She helped save the day, so it seemed inappropriate to condemn her to an archive somewhere,” Lex said.
“She doesn’t need to be in your ship,” Michella said. “Not that I’m not grateful for her help during the space station incident, but she’s not exactly a calm, reasoned influence on a potentially sensitive mission.”
“Incorrect,” Coal said. “I am by definition a calm influence, as I am capable of disabling anxiety and stress expression. And I am exceptionally reasoned, as my decisions are based on codified logic progression rather than intuition or sentiment.”
“Coal? Can you maybe take it down a couple notches? Mitch and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms right now, and you poking the hornet’s nest isn’t going to do anyone any good.”
“I will endeavor to moderate my behavior to take your own emotional turmoil into account,” Coal said.
“Thanks,” Lex said.
Again the silence dropped in. Squee twitched her feet in the weightlessness of the cockpit and drifted to Lex’s shoulders.
“So,” Lex said. “Did you find out anything else about where we’re headed?”
Michella didn’t answer immediately. “Very little,” she said at last, flatly. “I know that we will be visiting a planetoid that was abandoned for proper terraforming. The gravity and pressure is comparable to high altitude on a proper planet. The ‘economy,’ if the word even makes sense at this scale, is based on specialized crops that grow in the low-gravity, low-pressure environment. The human settlement is more like a space station on the surface of a planet. Artificial gravity, air locks, etc. It was formerly used as an extreme-conditions training facility for the Earth Coalition military a long time ago. Now it’s just a little blip with no formally declared residents, but does have network activity and resource consumption that suggest a population of between seventy and one hundred. Before I ran out of time, I was able to turn up about a dozen suspected Neo-Luddite operatives who can be traced to or associated with the place in one way or another.”
“If you’re able to find that stuff, why is the place even still there? You’d think the authorities would have done something about it.”
“I don’t know. The Neo-Luddites haven’t had any successful operations, or even any notable attempts, since that mess back on Movi. Maybe law enforcement just declared victory and moved on to lower-hanging fruit. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“And we’re sure this has something to do with the DDoS?” Lex said.
“We’ve been through this, Lex. We’re not sure about anything. But it’s the closest we’ve got to something we can chase down, so we’re chasing it down.”
“Well, we’ll be there in fifty-five hours, give or take. Assuming another forty hours to get from there back to Operlo, let’s hope this whole operation doesn’t take more than a day or so, or I’m missing my race.”
“Honestly. Is that all you think about?” Michella said.
“Yes,” Lex said.
“Incorrect,” Coal said. “Based upon a seven-day rolling average, races and race-related activities have occupied only fifty-eight percent of our conversations during our daily flights.”
“Coal, you’re not helping,” Lex said quickly.
“I am de-escalating the situation by providing empirical evidence capable of settling the present argument,” Coal said.
“What else has he been talking about?” Michella said.
“Coal, don’t,” Lex said.
“This is hard data, Lex. It is incontrovertible and thus should not be the source of drama. In the past seven days, our conversations have been, by seconds devoted to each topic, fifty-eight percent races and race-related topics, thirty-one percent relationship discussion, nine-percent small talk and philosophical debate, and two percent food topics.”
“Relationship discussion,” Michella said. “I can only imagine what that was about.”
“I can summarize, if you like.�
��
“Coal, stop, now,” Lex said, halfway between pleading and demanding.
“My apologies. I am encroaching on Lex’s privacy. I will instead state only the broad topics of the relationship discussion.”
Lex fumbled for the volume controls, but not swiftly enough.
“Time was equally split between relationships with you and Preethy Misra.”
“I knew it,” Michella snapped. “I knew there was something up between you and her. How long was this going on? Weeks? Months?”
“I see that I have been unclear,” Coal said. “Lex’s discussions of Preethy were largely in a platonic or professional context until the last month, at which point relationship discussions shifted to speculative romantic engagement followed by the very recent confirmation of romantic entanglement.”
“This is exactly how I wanted this trip to start,” Lex mumbled.
“So you broke up with me to be with her. The only question is if you’re hoping to get in her pants or if you’re just doing it to help your career.”
“Hey!” Lex said.
“Preethy Misra prefers to wear skirts,” Coal said. “So trouser-related motivation is unlikely.”
“The point is, you broke up with me so you could be with her.”
“Okay, you want to do this? I kind of figured we’d be at least a few hours into an FTL jump before this came out, but sure, let’s do it during the exit queue. Coal, have you got the coordinates for the first sprint?”
“I do.”
“Line us up and jump when ready.” Lex manipulated the controls of his seat and maneuvered his legs until he could face Michella. “Here’s the thing, Mitch. I didn’t dump you. Think back to the last half-dozen times we spoke. Did I, at any point, tell you I didn’t want to be together anymore?”
“You sure didn’t show any interest in staying together.”
“And that’s the thing. I didn’t break up. I just stopped working to keep us together. And within two weeks, we were practically strangers. So what does that tell you about how much work you were putting into the relationship?”
“There’s a difference between ‘not working on the relationship’ and giving someone the silent treatment.”
“Yes! And that difference is, whenever you called me, I answered. And you did it three times in three weeks. And one of them was to pick my brain about the wording of your latest piece.” He crossed his arms. “I still say you should have gone with ‘mischievous meteorological miscreants.’”
“Alliteration is unprofessional in hard journalism,” she said. “And maybe I’d just become comfortable with you taking the lead on the mushy stuff.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. I was in love with you, and you were comfortable with me being in love with you. For a while I thought that was good enough, but it turns out I needed more than that.”
“You didn’t seem terribly broken up about the breakup.”
“Excellent wordplay,” Coal said.
“Coal, you’re not helping,” Lex said.
“Would it help to point out that approximately three full hours of our flights in the month following the semi-official conclusion of your relationship included tears? There was a large proportion of moping, as well, but statistics are more difficult to determine due to the ill-defined nature of the behavior. Also, a compartment in the left armrest of the seat Michella is currently occupying still contains the engagement ring after, in a moment of reflection, Lex considered making a second attempt at the proposal and reacquired it from where it had been discarded.”
The compartment clicked open. A small plastic cubby that normally did little more than accumulate candy wrappers and pocket lint instead jostled a pair of rings into the weightlessness of the cockpit.
“It should at this point be clarified that Lex is not currently proposing to you,” Coal said. “And to avoid further madcap misunderstanding, I am not proposing to you either.”
Michella snatched the rings out of the air. “Why are there two?” she said.
“One’s the engagement band you were supposed to give me. I figured, what with me popping the question, it might be a while before you could pick one out.”
“Do guys even wear engagement rings?”
“There may or may not have been a time-travel-related reason for having a silver ring on hand. Announcing an impending wedding and preventing a universe-destroying paradox seemed like a worthwhile piece of multitasking.”
She glared at him. “Are you serious?”
“Why, of all things, would I choose to joke about that at a time like this?”
“I’m still not completely convinced you actually traveled through time.”
“Of course not. That would require you to trust me.”
“I don’t think it is unreasonable to treat claims of time travel with skepticism, Trev.”
“That is a valid point,” Coal said.
“… Granted,” Lex said.
“That sort of thing, by the way, is one of the reasons this wasn’t exactly the easiest relationship to be in.”
“I’ll grant you that, too. But it wasn’t my choice, for the most part. And it sure helped your career. Mine, too, now that I think about it.” He drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair. “We’re a great team, but we are a lousy couple.”
“I suppose I can’t argue with that.” Michella jangled the rings in her hand. “You know, if we’d had this conversation a few months ago, the cut would have been a lot cleaner.”
“I guess we wouldn’t be us if we did anything the easy way.”
She held up the rings and took her hand away so they hung between them. “So what are you going to do with these?”
“I’ll keep mine around. As for yours. I don’t know. It was custom. I don’t think I can return it. And even if Preethy and I get that far in our relationship, I’ll probably want to get a custom one for her, too. Keep it if you want.”
“That’d feel a little strange, keeping the ring for an engagement that never happened.”
“I’ll take it,” Coal said.
“You don’t even have fingers, Coal,” Lex said.
“No, but I am quite certain I could find a good place to arrange it in my room. Maybe on the kitty’s nose.” One of the side displays illuminated and produced a holographic snapshot of the hangar on Operlo. “Did you see the kitty I made? I think I like it better than the fox. Using different-size washers to achieve a halftone effect was an entertaining challenge. As was the fine manipulation of the tractor beams necessary to produce something of such precision.”
Michella glanced at the image, then at Lex. “She did this?”
“Yep.”
“Why would a ship’s AI need to do something like this?”
“Why would a human need to do something like this?” Coal countered. “Art requires no purpose but to exist for its own sake. If it exists for any purpose besides its own beauty and inherent meaning, there are philosophers who would argue that it is undeserving of the term ‘art.’ Purpose diminishes expression. Contrarily, this view denies the equal footing of the vocational arts and lessens accolades deserved by creative problem-solvers in producing functional masterpieces.”
“These would be the aforementioned philosophical discussions on her tally earlier,” Lex said.
“The amicable and formal dissolution of your relationship with Michella should ideally lead to an overall increase in such discussion, might I add. Which is fortunate, because attempting to apply a balm to your aching heart was both beyond my emotional prowess and completely devoid of entertainment or enrichment for me.”
“Ma seems to really like the relationship conversations,” Lex said.
“Ma lacks a physical form capable of traveling through the wonders of the cosmos. When given the choice between helping you repair self-inflicted psychological damage and executing a perfect inertially inhibited 1g Immelmann turn on maneuvering thrusters on
ly, I prefer the latter. She can have her exclusively intellectual pursuits.”
“Life has been unnervingly normal without you, Trev,” Michella said.
“I’m sure you’ll find some way to screw up your life without me.” He shifted his seat back around and looked over the routing. “I’m calling an audible on the FTL jump, Coal. We’re swinging a little closer to this binary cluster.”
“The gravitational interaction should make for a more exciting trip,” Coal said.
“And a marginally quicker one,” Lex said.
“Should you really be second-guessing your ship’s navigational computer?”
“Two things. First, Coal is more of a sidekick than a navigational computer. Second, I’ve got loads of things to do before I die, so I’m not too worried about getting killed.”
“I fail to see how having a full agenda serves as protection in any way.”
Lex finished laying out the full coordinates, then glanced over his shoulder. “Mitch, let me tell you about a little something called ‘causality armor.’”
#
Preethy sat at an expansive and scrupulously clear desk. An array of holographic screens formed a semicircle around the outside edge, each displaying the face of one of her vendors or the members of her board of directors.
“You need to assure us that Trevor Alexander will be present for the race,” said a man with a thick beard, a man bun, and a look of utter anxiety.
Preethy folded her hands on the desk and spoke plainly. “I have assured you that he will make every effort to be a part of the race, but we afford our racers a degree of latitude when it comes to personal emergencies. There are fifteen other racers in the final, and Lex is the only racer who has not produced a firm commitment.”
“We have a contract,” snapped and older woman on the board.
“And our contract explicitly states that each racer is permitted a single emergency exception from racing obligation per season without negatively impacting corporate standing.”
Nova Igniter Page 6
