by Ginger Booth
20
Another robotic fist punched through the drywall into Hugo Silva’s office. So far Sass’s steel chair under the doorknob, plus her rump pressing it into the door, prevented entry. But if the polebots were breaking down the wall, she needed a weapon with authority.
She desperately scanned the busy electronics shop for a steel pole or something. Or…could she electrocute her pursuers? Preferably without electrocuting herself again.
Her eyes lit on a hard-core battery, and jumper cables that reminded her of frosty mornings in Upstate New York. This DC power supply was twice the size of the truck batteries of her Army days. But the setup looked similar, right down to the industrial grade alligator clamps on black and red cables.
No sooner seen than clamped. She couldn’t remember where ground came into play in this scheme. Sass never worked the motor pool. So she clamped red on one end post of the battery, black on the other, and hesitantly brought the far ends together. They started to spark within a foot of each other. Good to know.
The next punch through the wall from a polebot, she touched it with the red clamp. A spark arced beautifully. The jointed arm fell dead, hung through the wall. Perfect. Its little friends had no time to learn anything from is misfortune. Another one punched through seconds later. The captain shorted that one, too, using the black electrode this time.
But she wasn’t careful enough. The red claw dangled into the steel chair. The sudden voltage made her drop everything and jump back, hair standing on end, heart racing. She focused very carefully on inhaling for the next few breaths, until she was fairly sure her heart and lungs would continue on automatic.
The red alligator still touched the steel chair, though maybe on its seat, which might or might not be an insulator. The black claw rested only inches away. Ever so cautiously, Sass reached out her toe and –
Someone banged on the door. “Captain Collier?” a man cried. Startled, Sass’s toe nudge the clips closer together rather than apart, where they danced in sizzling sparkly abandon.
“Don’t touch the doorknob!” she cried. “Um, who is it?” Maybe she did want him to touch the doorknob.
“Scholar Silva. This is my lab. What’s going on in there? Why are dead robots embedded in my wall? Commander Lumpkin told me you arrived.”
“Ah, hang on. I need to disconnect a battery.”
Silva squealed in horror. “Captain, I have priceless machines in there!”
“Black to ground?” Sass queried. He talked her through the wiring challenge.
Sass’s hand hesitated above the battery. Did she trust him? “How do you feel about your AI, Scholar Silva?”
“Shiva runs this colony. Without her, we die. Other than that, I have issues. Let me in.”
She definitely wanted to talk to this guy, especially about that list of names. How did Silva know about Cope and Ben? And Teke of all people! Removing the first red clamp from the battery was scary. But once she transferred that to ground, she gained confidence and completed disarming the door.
She hauled the steel chair away and pasted on a friendly smile as she let him in. No one seemed to shake hands here. “So good to meet you in person –”
“Not yet!” Silva cried. He pushed past her to seize the aluminum foil helm and don it, molding its skirt to close around his neck. With that, he sighed in relief and sank to his monitor chair. “Captain Collier. Am I glad to see you!”
Perhaps foil hats weren’t a bad joke here? Sass pointed to her head. “Why?”
“Ah, I believe they mentioned ‘chipping’ to you?”
Sass pointed to her outer arm, in the typical inoculation spot.
Silva shook his head energetically. Then his hands nervously went to his neck again to assure coverage. “Yes, it’s not a chip. Oh, there’s a weak tracking transmitter, too, but they inject nanites. Those travel through the bloodstream and lodge in your brain. All our communications go through those, and Shiva.” He shuddered.
Sass’s eyes widened. “Your hat. It blocks Shiva from giving you orders.”
“It would be impossible for me to control her otherwise,” Silva agreed. “Not that I control her much now. I don’t have the god password. And she shuts down any process seeking to find the password.”
The captain dragged her doorstop chair next to his to join him. “How long have you been at the mercy of your AI?”
“Oh, it started innocently enough. I’m sure you had the same issues on your little moon, didn’t you? Weak or no atmosphere or magnetosphere to protect you from radiation. Environmental toxins out the wazoo. Too few skilled workers. So we drilled habitat underground to protect our bodies. And we built robots, and robots to build more robots, and an AI to control them.
“But there aren’t enough resources here on the planet. Metal extraction is far easier in the asteroid belt. But you can hardly remote-control a mining drone with such a long lag time. So the AI grew more sophisticated, so the miners could retire and live safely underground here in the colony. I’m not sure when she became self-aware.”
“Did you build Shiva?”
“Oh, no. My grandmother did that. My mom, she wasn’t interested. But I took after the old geezer and studied at her knee. I was young when she passed away, though. So much more to learn. Though I’m older than I look. Like you, I’ve warped twice. I lost 14 years objective.”
“How long since the AI took over the people?” This was a wild guess on Sass’s part.
Silva shrugged. “Everything was incremental. I first heard the mayors recite that stupid credo after the last wildcatters returned.” He aped a sing-song falsetto to recite, “‘We made the ultimate sacrifice and now enjoy our leisure.’ All three borough leaders lost their minds at the same time. That’s about when the children started staring into walls.” He patted his foil hat. “And I made my helmet to keep her out!”
Sass hardly knew what thread to pull on next, there was so much wrong in what he was telling her. But that notebook was specific to her. She tapped it. “Where did you get this list?”
“Oh, that! A message arrived for you. Here, I’ll play it for you.”
Sass watched carefully and memorized his unguarded login and password, easy to do by watching his fingers. She hailed from a far less innocent place and time than small-town Sanctuary, and learned bad habits. The screen awoke to a familiar Ganny operating system, not much changed on Mahina since the Corps departed so long ago. Clearly Sanctuary had advanced its software little more than Aloha, aside from their monster AI.
The scholar found a video file and played it for her. The image and sound were perfectly clear, no static. But Copeland and his environs appeared in a silvery grayscale at low resolution. Labels on coffee machines used more pixels than this.
“Hello, this is John Copeland, president of Thrive Spaceways, owner and chief engineer of the ringship Prosper, Mahina Colony in the Aloha System. Our captain is Ben Acosta, and our science officer Teke. We’re trying to reach Captain Sassafras Collier of the starship Thrive. She and her crew departed eleven years ago en route to Sanctuary, before we discovered this FTL communications device. We’d also be happy to speak to her first mate, Clay Rocha, or her chief engineer Darren Markley, or anyone else on the Thrive. Or anyone on Sanctuary, really. Please respond.”
Sass stared until her eyes welled with tears, and replayed the message. Cope didn’t appear any older really. His nanites aged him about one year in ten. The washed-out silver didn’t betray much detail anyway. No, it was his voice and bearing that matured. This man was fifteen years past the one she’d recruited so long ago, a beaten-down mechanic from the wrong side of the Schuyler docks, now a confident executive. And he was speaking now, across the light years.
“How is this possible?”
“We developed the ansible technology to communicate with our courier ships before we sent them to check on the other colonies, maybe 35 years ago. But the one we slated for the Aloha system was hijacked by a man named Belker.”
&
nbsp; “I know of Belker. We found his courier ship Nanomage. That’s where we found our warp drive.” Which was broken, but that could wait. “I wasn’t aware of an – ansible?”
“It allows instantaneous communications, across light years, via some physics I don’t understand. It’s very limited. That’s why the picture is so bad. They had hopes the technology would lead to a better warp drive. But.”
Sass smiled sadly. “You have too few people to produce more than one physicist of that caliber in a few generations. Or ever.”
“Exactly. This message arrived a week ago. Do you want to answer him?”
“Now?” Sass replied, startled. “I could talk to Copeland? Really?”
“Well, as long as I can keep the robots at bay,” Silva hedged. “Hm. Let me see what I can do about that.”
His fingers flew over the archaic keyboard, opening unfriendly white-on-black screens where he communicated in pure code. Sass understood none of it. Meanwhile she considered what to say to Cope. She knew so pitifully little yet about Sanctuary. She longed to have him by her side.
Not that he was a better engineer than Darren Markley and Remi Roy. She probably brought better engineers with her, and felt a trifle guilty about stripping the Aloha system of two of their finest. No, what she missed so desperately about Cope was his scrappy attitude and outlook. The world sucked, he didn’t understand the tech, yet he managed to bang the damned stuff into submission anyway. His memory brought a crooked smile to her face.
Silva’s fingers slowed to an occasional desultory tap, then dropped to his lap in defeat. “Every time I send the polebots on another errand, Shiva overrides another group to head this way. Pretty soon she’ll figure out how to lock me out.” He scowled in thought. “We could take the ansible to your ship. You’d have to take me with you. And you can’t keep it. Promise me?”
Promise me. Sass’s heart went out to a kindred spirit. One who had no excuse to be that trusting, but did it anyway. She grinned. “Be sure to wear your hat!”
He nodded whole-heartedly, then adjusted the neck-piece again. “Here. Take my seat. When this prompt comes up? Press this key. I’ll get the ansible.”
Sass transfered to the control seat and performed as requested. She tried to understand what she was looking at, but it was gibberish to her. Between prompts, she took a snapshot of the screen to show her geeks, and surreptitiously made a note of his login credentials on her comms tab. Her comms couldn’t reach the ship at the moment, or Clay. Underground, this wasn’t surprising.
Working across the room, Silva unhooked a dark box with odd fold-out antenna reminiscent of moose antlers. Like the foam cutout sort Canadians used to attach to knit winter hats, in a charcoal grey metal with a strangely oily patina. This he dumped into a plastic carton. He added a small but heavy CRT monitor like something out of the early Apollo space program, truly archaic. On top went a pile of cables, and smaller power-modulating bricks. After that he switched to adding random tools and pet projects, so far as Sass could tell.
“I’m getting more warnings.” Sass stood decisively, and waited for one last prompt. She stabbed the keyboard one last time. “Go!” She swooped up the carton before Silva could lift it, and bounded out the door.
21
Darren Markley rushed into med-bay, heart pounding and out of breath. He threw himself into his wife Dot’s arms, ignoring the grad student on the bed. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, darling!”
Dot patted his shoulder twice. “Darren, get off me. I’m busy.”
“But that thing, the chipping, they got me too, Dot!”
“So sit and wait your turn.” He pouted and perched on the second stool. She reached over and tugged at the hole in his shirt, and peered through it at his arm. “Wash that. Soap and water.”
“Yes, dear,” Darren growled, and headed for the sink. “Zelda, how are you?”
“I feel funny,” the grad student admitted. “I mean, I’m not complaining. I would never do that.”
Darren stripped his shirt, then opened the spigot with an elbow. “Why would you never do that?”
Dot emitted a put-upon sigh at her monitor.
The engineer once hoped this trip would rekindle their romance, a honeymoon through their twilit years. In retrospect, they were simply sick of each other after all these years. Close quarters were not an improvement. She even asked for permission to ‘fool around’ on Sanctuary, explore other partners as a ‘change of pace.’ The only thing that would rekindle was screaming marital warfare.
“I mustn’t be a burden,” Zelda replied, startling him out of his cranky reverie on his wife. “Time to go to the community fields for the big game.” She started to rise.
Dot shot out a hand and pressed her into the mattress. “Darren, close the door, and buckle her in. Computer, crew members Darren Markley and Zelda Maier are not permitted to unlock doors until further notice.”
The computer confirmed these instructions after checking with Remi Roy, presently in charge of the ship as third officer.
Back on his stool, Darren wheedled, “But sweetie, don’t you want to monitor me? To see an earlier stage of the chipping process?”
“Not really,” the nurse breathed, intent on her medical imaging of Zelda’s brain.
“I talked to one of their mayors, a Loonie, Major Petunia Ling –”
“Why would anyone name a child ‘Petunia’? That’s just hostile.”
Darren reflected that Dot named their firstborn Grover Vrooman Junior, after her father. Their son still bore a grudge, and went by Mark Markley. “Yes, dear. She’s age 71, and looks ancient. I mentioned our nanites kept us young –”
“I’m busy, Darren. Is there a point to this story?”
“She wasn’t interested in our nanites. In being young again.”
“You met an idiot. Congratulations.” Dot zoomed her display and stuck her nose into it, a habit Darren found ever more repulsive as the years passed. She smeared fingerprints on the display, too.
Stop that, he admonished himself. She’s a good woman plying exceptional skills. He believed it was crucial to a happy marriage to extend an honorable thought. Especially when the effort wasn’t reciprocated.
“Dot, remember what people look like a couple years after their nanites give out? When they’re stooped over and shuffling along with joint pain? Ask them how they are, and they say they’re just waiting to die?”
“That’s nice, dear,” Dot said, raising her head back from the screen thoughtfully.
“Dot, it isn’t normal not to care whether you die. Is my point.”
“Novel nanites in Zelda’s brain,” Dot replied. “Darren, take a look.”
He stepped around the cot to peer into the monitor with her. He didn’t know much about brain structure. But green dots converging on the central bottleneck couldn’t be good. “Dot, get this damned thing out of my arm!”
She picked up a hand scanner and systematically waved it around his neck and head. The screen reconfigured into a new brain display, labeled with his name instead of Zelda’s. “Too late.”
“Dot, darling. Cut this damned thing out of me before I find a scalpel and –”
“Such a drama queen!” Dot yelled at him. She slammed open a cabinet door and grabbed a scalpel and swabs. He hastily sat on his stool. She grabbed him by the elbow and turned him. She splashed clear liquid from a couple bottles onto his shoulder, an antiseptic followed by a mild analgesic. Then she slapped a gauze wad below the chipping entry wound. “Hold that.”
He did as bidden. “Is this going to – OW!”
“Yes, it’s going to hurt. Baby. Hand me the tweezers.”
“My hands aren’t sterile. Did you even wash your hands first?”
“Maybe not,” Dot conceded. She reached for the tweezers, then doused her fingers and instruments with the antiseptic solution. “It doesn’t matter, Darren. Our nanites are more than capable of – Well, maybe not fabric.” She transfered a pinch of cloth
threads to a steel surgical bowl.
This trash receptacle already held debris from Zelda’s arm. Darren leaned to look in. Dot rapped him on the head with the scalpel handle. “Hold still.”
After a few more moments of painful probing, she extracted his chip and clinked it into the bowl. Then she gave him another liberal squirt of antiseptic, and shifted his wad hand to cover the wound. “Your nanites will heal the rest.”
Darren wondered what her bedside manner might have been like without nanites. Not that it mattered. Life was pointless anyway.
Dot rattled the bowl, making the tiny chips slither, the size of oat grains. “So chief engineer. Study the chips.”
Darren dolefully checked his boo-boo gauze, but the bleeding already slowed. He leaned on the over-bed table and peered morosely into the tray. He blinked his way through a menu system to set his Clark Kent glasses to their maximum magnification, suitable for studying the scales on a human hair. Bacteria would take more orders of magnitude, let alone nanoscale circuitry.
“It’s a receiver, repeater, transmitter combo, with battery,” he reported. They called it a battery, anyway. Technically it was a tiny generator that drew on the host’s biochemistry as a battery. He bet its range was sorely limited, less than room-scale. “Radio, I think. For more than that, I’d need my nanite workbench.”
Dot rapped him on the noggin again. “What you need is a Faraday cage.” From decades of conversation, the couple knew more than they ever cared to learn about each other’s disciplines. She rummaged a cabinet, then handed him a small metal box.
Darren picked out a foam insert bearing some lenses, then transferred the chip flakes inside and shut it.
Dot leaned over Zelda and smoothed her hair from her face. “There, sweetie, are you feeling any better?”
“But I wasn’t complaining!” Zelda insisted, near tears.
Darren suggested, “Do you need to rush to a sporting event?”
