The Deep Dark Well

by Doug Dandridge

  I will not be helpless. But helpless was what he would be if he slept. And if he didn’t sleep the pain would get worse and worse. It felt as if his brain were full, and about to burst from the overload. That brought a grin to his face, the imagery of his magnificent mind packed full and unable to handle any more information. The grin brought a renewal of the agonizing pain.

  “To me, my minions,” he ordered in a gasp. They had to take him to safety, before he passed out where his enemy could find him. Why had the creators made me so? Why was sleep even a necessity?

  His last waking thought was that the robots had gotten to him, as one of them picked him up and started to carry him from the room, to safety.

  * * *

  Pandi awoke with a start, aware of something watching her, something cold and soulless. She kept her eyes shut, trying to take in her surroundings by hearing alone. Nothing. Not even the birdlings singing in the trees. She could tell from the illumination through her eyelids that it was still a simulation of day in the chamber. So something had caused the birdlings to become silent, to fly off and hide.

  Her hand loosely held the pistol grip of the assault rifle. If she remembered right it was still set to burst fire, with mini-shape charges loaded. She shifted her other hand to the fore grip, ready to fire in an instant.

  “She is awake,” said a robotic voice. She gauged its location, preparing to move in an instant.

  “Then why does she lie there?” asked another robotic voice.

  Pandi sprung into action, her eyes opening as she swung the barrel of the weapon toward the voices. Her first image was of robots, such as those who had been searching for her. Her second image was of a burst of mini-shape charges hitting the chest of the robot on the right, as her finger quickly pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked slightly in her hands, the perfect balance and shape keeping the barrel on target. Flares of white fire sprung into being as holes appeared in the chest plate of the machine. Sparks flew as the robot froze in position, its systems totally disrupted by major damage to its central core.

  “Wait,” yelled the other robot as it dived for cover, disappearing into the bushes as her next burst followed it. She thought she had gotten one round into its shoulder before it quickly crawled out of sight.

  On her feet in an instant, she threw herself into cover, her eyes scanning the brush for the first hint of a robot. Nothing moved, but that didn’t mean much in the thick foliage.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” she whispered.

  “It did not seem that you needed warning,” said the computer.

  “What do you mean, I didn’t need warning? Those were his damned robots out there. If I hadn’t woken when I had, they would have had me.”

  “Who would have had you?”

  “His robots. Vengeance’s robots.”

  Pandi tried to keep her ears and eyes focused on her surroundings. She checked her rifle once again, switching the load to mini-grenades, then the selector to single. Might as well see what this thing can do.

  She aimed at the brush the robot had disappeared into and squeezed off a shot. The rifle phutted under the slight recoil. Grenades didn’t need the velocity of armor piercers, obviously.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a thick boom and flare of white fire. Pieces of bush were thrown in all directions, burning fiercely. Better not fire that at something too close.

  “Mistress Pandi,” yelled a robotic voice. “We mean you no harm.”

  “Go to hell,” she yelled back, firing a pair of grenades toward the voice. The double booming of impact rolled concussion waves across the clearing. She wondered if she had hit it. How would one know if a robot had been damaged in a firefight? It probably wouldn’t cry out in pain, or yell for a medic.

  “Mistress, please,” cried a voice from another direction. “We are not the servants of Vengeance.”

  She readied to fire at the new voice when the computer interrupted her.

  “They speak the truth,” it said. “They are not the machines of the being called Vengeance.”

  “Then, they’re Watcher’s robots?”

  “Yes. I would not have allowed Vengeance’s robots to come near you without warning.”

  “Pandi,” yelled a familiar voice from the far brush. From the sound of it coming from far back in the forest. Smart, she thought. Not giving me a close target.

  “So that’s Watcher out there, yelling my name?”

  “Yes. The being known as Watcher is one hundred meters to your front.”

  “Then where is Vengeance?”

  “The being known as Vengeance is not available at this time.”

  “Which means he is nowhere near?”

  “The being known as Vengeance…”

  “I know,” she said in exasperation, “is not available at this time.”

  “Pandi,” cried the voice again, a little closer this time. “Pandi, it’s me, Watcher. I worried about you. I thought he might have gotten to you.”

  “He did, dammit,” she cried back. “Thanks to you disappearing like you did, and leaving me unprotected.”

  “I am sorry.” The voice was very close now, no more than a dozen meters inside the forest on the other side of the clearing. Definitely within her range. “I did not mean to leave you for him to find. It is a weakness I suffer, that forces me into slumber at times not of my own choosing.

  “I feel stupid, talking to you while hiding in the bushes. Will you agree to not destroy me if I come out where we can talk, face to face?”

  “Do not go out there, master,” said a robotic voice to the rear of Pandi. “Wait until we have disarmed her.”

  She spun around, switching the rifle to mini-shapes, pulling the trigger over and over again.

  “Do not touch her,” ordered Watcher. “If she feels more secure being armed, she can carry arms.”

  “Damn right I feel more secure,” she screamed back. “You’ll have to kill me, to take these guns from my cold dead fingers.”

  “I’m coming out,” called Watcher, as Pandi brought her rifle up to cover the figure moving out into the clearing. She kept the barrel centered on his body as her eyes looked him over.

  Suspicion raged in her mind. He looked the same as Vengeance. But of course a clone of one would look exactly like the other, except for the changes brought on by the differences in environment. His clothing was different, light colored over-clothes. But it would be easy to change clothes.

  He walked closer, a shy smile on his face. The barrel of the rifle never wavered, keeping his center mass in its aim. He showed no fear, even though she knew she could splatter him across the clearing before he could react, or his robots could come and save him.

  His eyes drew her notice, the eyes that were so calm and kind, unlike the hate filled orbs of Vengeance. Then his wonderful scent took her attention away from all else.

  “It is you,” she said, the barrel of the rifle dropping to point to the ground.

  “You may keep your weapons,” he said with a smile. “Is it OK for my servants to come out, without your destroying any more of them.”

  “Of course,” she replied. “I’m sorry I destroyed any of them.”

  “That’s OK. They’re cheap and easy to manufacture. My servants. Gather around me.”

  A dozen robots stepped from the brush around the clearing. Pandi flinched as two stepped from the brush on either side of her, walking quickly to join their master. They could have taken me anytime. Then she noticed one of the gathering robots was missing an arm, while another had blast scaring on its back plate. She felt guilty for a moment, before noticing that the robots didn’t seem to feel their injuries.

  “We need to talk,” said Watcher, walking to her and extending his hand. She grasped it as he drew her along with him. “You may be able to help me. There is much about my situation that confuses me, and an outsider may have the answer.”

  There was a lot that confusion swirling through her mind as well. But she felt safer than she had in
quite a while. After all, she was surrounded by the robotic servants of the being known as Watcher. And, she thought as her free hand patted her rifle, she was no longer helpless.

  * * *

  “What kind of dreams do you have?” asked Pandi, sitting next to Watcher near the edge of the forest. A herd of some kind of grazing beasts cropped the reddish grass not more than fifty yards away. They look like single horned deer, she thought, or unicorns, until one took in the clawed feet that shuffled over the grass. Developed with much better weapons than most of the herbivores she was used to.

  “I have not had a dream in thousands of years,” said Watcher, his own gaze following the herbivores. “I know I used to have them. In fact, I was told in my youth that my dreams were on the whole more vivid than those of normal humans. Something to do with my improved memory system.”

  “And how has your memory been since you stopped having them?”

  “Overall very good. But, there have been some problems.”

  “Like black outs?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes fixing on the ground. “Black outs. Complete and total black outs. I go to sleep and do not wake for a day or more, with no memory of what had occurred through that time.

  “I worry that he might someday capture me, while I am lost in the depths of black sleep. And you know of his methods.”

  “Damn right I do,” she replied, her body shuddering at the thought, her touch making sure the rifle was still at hand.

  “He will not get to you while I am around,” answered Watcher, his eyes looking into hers.

  “But you say you are only around half the time. You have no control the other half, while Vengeance is in control of everything. Except for the damned computer, it seems.”

  “That also troubles me,” he said, his face looking up at the fusion point that substituted for the sun. “The computer obeys me, as it should. I am the last authority on this station, at least when I am awake. That is the way it is supposed to be. But even I am not able to get some answers from it. Important answers.”

  “Like the whereabouts of Vengeance, when you are awake?”

  “Yes. He is always unavailable at this time. No matter how I ask the question, I am never able to get any other kind of answer.”

  “I received the same answer,” said Pandi, “when I asked about your whereabouts, while on the run from Vengeance.”

  “But, I was on the station,” said Watcher. “I had to be. I awoke in the same bed in which I fell asleep.”

  “So there’s something here the computer doesn’t want you to know. Doesn’t want anyone to know.

  “Could you let me have a go at the computer?” she asked. “Is there a control center where I could directly interact with it?”

  “Of course,” he answered. “There are many such centers aboard the station. Lack of planned redundancy was not a flaw of the designers.”

  “Whatever happened to those designers? And all of the other people who used to live and work here? You said civilization fell, but how? The station seems to be fully functional.”

  “It is,” agreed Watcher. “I have no idea how civilization fell. My memory is blank in that area. All I remember is that the station was full of people one day, and the next, it was empty.”

  “And how much time passed during this blackout?”

  “The computer would not tell me. Another of its instances of disobedience. But I calculated from looking at the orbits of the surrounding stars, that I had been under for at least a year.”

  “And were there any more of these long term blackouts?”

  “None of that duration. But at first they were all at least a month in length, interspersed with periods of regular sleep, during which I dreamed as normal. But then the pattern changed, and the blackouts occurred more frequently, and were short lived. And my dreaming stopped.”

  “And your memory began to become spotty, even of things you should have remembered.”

  Silence reigned for a moment, as they both stared out over the grasslands. She knew that Watcher was plainly as worried about his own behavior as he was about his nemesis. She wondered how she would have dealt with what he had gone through. Probably by losing her mind. And how did she know if he were really sane. It sounded almost like multiple personality disorder.

  “I’ll help,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You must have some kind of neurological scanners here on the station.”

  “Yes. But I have already thought of that. No abnormalities were discovered. My brain is still operating to specification.”

  “But did you try a scan through a local computer access. One that was free of a link to the central system.” She felt a pain in her temples at the thought, like what had been described to her by others as an oncoming migraine. But she had never had migraines. Why now? And why linked to this thought.

  “No. I didn’t,” said Watcher. “I don’t know why I didn’t. But we should be able to rig something up that could do that. What is your idea?”

  “I’d rather not say right now,” she said, rubbing her temples as the pain receded. “I’m not even really sure. But I want to check out a hunch.”

  * * *

  “Admiral,” yelled the science officer. “We have indications of antimatter flares near the Donut. Two of them, one on top of the other.”

  “Source?” asked Fleet Admiral Nagara Krishnamurta, sitting his chair on the flag bridge of the Kingdom of Surya flagship Danaus.

  “Either a very powerful antimatter warhead, or the rupture of a starship’s antimatter storage. Most probably the latter.”

  “So they’ve stepped in it now,” said the admiral with a smile. “Too bad if it’s only a pair of them. But at least it makes our job a little easier.”

  “Orders, admiral?” asked the communications officer.

  “Tell all ships to set a course for the Donut,” he ordered. “Maximum acceleration. Turn over to come to a dead stop at the source of those flares.

  “I want sensors on passive all the way in. No use letting them know we’re coming at them until they can pick us up on their own sensors.”

  Within minutes the great bulk of Danaus had shed the velocity on her current heading. Inertialess drives pushed the ship on a new course at thirty gees, heading, Galactic Standard coordinates zero mark zero mark zero.

  Chapter 12

  What is the measure of a man? The measure of a man is mind. And we have developed the ultimate mind.

  Announcement of the Watcher Project

  “Dammit,” cursed Pandi in a whisper. This was the third time she had run the scan, and still the results were negative. She didn’t think it was the fault of the equipment. It was as fine as she could have imagined, better really, since she couldn’t have imagined equipment that could harmlessly probe the brain down to the molecular level. But if the scan was correct, her theory was wrong.

  Watcher sat calmly in the chair, the flat panels of the sensor probes on either side of his head. His memories were played out on the holo to her front. But nothing came up that matched any of her keywords. Vengeance was met with fuzzy images of what Watcher must have imagined he was like. But nothing solid.

  She knew the theory of multiple personality. That some trauma had occurred that the mind could just not handle. So it created a separate personality, another being alive within the same body. And many times the personalities were not aware of each other, only cognizant that there were periods of blackout when they couldn’t remember anything. But the personality had to reside somewhere, and the scanning machinery should have been able to unearth it even if it wasn’t linked to the consciousness now in control of the body.

  But there was nothing to indicate the being called Watcher was also the being called Vengeance. Not even on the molecular level.

  She again checked the physical scan, marveling at the density of connections within Watcher's brain. The comparison scan to a normal human brain pointed out the differences. More neurons, twice as many connections
in each neuron, as well as a larger physical brain structure. It almost had an overcrowded look, as if it was full and not another connection could be made. But Watcher had the ability to store new memories. Of that she was sure.

  Her finger traced the wiring of the implants, the connections that Watcher used to access the computer. It ran throughout every region of his brain. Statistical analysis indicated that the billions of nanobots in the brain were keeping the system at peak efficiency.

  Pandi brought up the image of her own scan, the one she had performed on herself to check out the equipment. She had been certified healthy before her mission on the Niven. Of course the machine had found minor anomalies that the equipment of her time could not have found. But still healthy enough. Her own implant was much smaller than Watcher’s, only a tiny mass of metal in her Thalamic region. Watcher had told her she had the minimum implant needed by a citizen to contact any regional computer complex. She would not receive one such as his unless she was granted greater access to the computer. And if she requested such.

  She still felt kind of leery having the thing in her brain at all. She was sure she didn’t want the connections she had seen in Watcher’s brain, intruding into every part of her mind.

  "You can move now," she told her subject.

  "You didn’t find what you expected?"

  "It was only a theory, but I thought Vengeance might actually reside within your mind."

  "As if we were one in the same," he said, his voice growling. Nobody would like to be told they were their own worst enemy, she thought.

  "You know the theory of multiple personality. Well, you sounded like a perfect example. But this seems to prove that line of thought a dead end."

  "So what's next?"

  "You keep me around you," she answered. "And let me know when you’re starting to feel very fatigued. I don’t want to let you out of my sight until you are sound asleep."

  * * *

  "Debris consistent with the remains of two capital class starships," said the computer, as Pandi and Watcher looked at the holo display. "Eleven of the vessels are still at station holding at two point three billion kilometers from the perimeter of the Donut."