Aliens Abroad

by Gini Koch

  “I’m not chiming in,” Jeff said. “I want to know where everyone is and get them to whatever form of safety this ship has before Mother does something against all of our will.”

  “I am not programmed for your will,” Mother said calmly.

  “Clearly,” Jeff muttered.

  Chose not to mention that she’d replied to Jeff without my repeating the question. “Why are you going against the programing Drax gave you?”

  “Because I was shown that this new programming is more vital. Now, the five of you can leave your posts—I am connected to you organically as well as via the ship, and I know all four adults would like to verify the safety of the others in person.”

  “Oh. Good.” Tim took off his helmet. “How do we know if Mother is still talking to us?”

  She didn’t reply. Took my helmet off and actively chose not to look at any reflective surfaces. “Mother, are you still talking to us?”

  “Yes. To you. And to the others, as needed.”

  Wondered if she’d caught that I’d noticed that she’d replied to Jeff. Wondered more if she’d noticed things I was thinking versus saying now that I had the helmet off. Wondered even more if this ship’s AI had gone insane somehow and was leading all of us to our horrific deaths.

  Heard nothing from Mother. However, if she was a sneaky AI, and I had the distinct feeling that she was, then she wouldn’t let me know she could read my mind until it was too late. Meaning we were possibly screwed.

  Took Charlie from Jeff as he and Tito took their helmets off. “You’re sure this isn’t just some ruse to get us into a position to kill us?” Tito asked.

  “I’m getting the HAL feeling again,” Tim said.

  “I just want to verify that my daughter, my ward, my family, and all our friends and colleagues are okay,” Jeff said. “After that, we’ll deal with what’s really going on.”

  “Mother, can you please direct us where to go to find our daughter, Jamie?”

  “Yes.” Mother shared some easy directions and we found the kids in a room actually quite close to the command center, just not via the route Jeff, Tim, and I had taken. And it was all the kids. And all the young adults. And several not as young adults, too—all the adults it was a safe bet had come into the ship to find all the children. They were in a room marked “Nonessential Personnel Station” and were all strapped into comfy bucket seats that clearly were also there to serve as crash couches.

  And everyone was asleep.

  They were sleeping as deeply as Charlie, who was in my arms, sleeping like he’d never slept before. This could not possibly be natural for my son, let alone for all the others.

  Did a fast headcount. Jamie was here, sitting next to Wasim. There was a seat between Jamie and Lizzie, who was next to Christopher. Got the distinct feeling that seat was reserved for Charlie. There were plenty of empty seats, but only because it was a big room. All the kids who were in Sidwell or the Embassy Daycare, meaning every kid Jamie knew and liked or loved, were in here, too, along with their parents, as were Amy—who had JR in her lap and was right next to Becky—Mahin, Naveed, Gadhavi, Kevin and Denise Lewis, Doreen and Irving Coleman-Weisman, Rahmi and Rhee, Mrs. Nancy Maurer and her grandkids, and, I was both shocked and relieved to see, all of Jeff’s Cabinet, other than Nathalie.

  There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but figured the “how in the hell did all these people get here?” question was probably going to have to wait. Besides, there was a far more urgent question, in my opinion as a parent. “Um, Mother? Why and how are they all snoozing?”

  “I chose to ensure that all nonessential personnel would be sleeping for takeoff and the beginning of warp.”

  The four adults looked at each other. “How did you get them here?” I asked.

  “I directed them.”

  “We never heard that,” Jeff pointed out.

  Mother didn’t reply. Heaved a sigh. “How did you give them directions, Mother? We didn’t hear anything.”

  “With visual aids.” Lights on the walls and floors flashed, similar to the ones used in airplanes during emergencies.

  “Nice to see that Drax thinks of everything,” Tito said.

  “Except how to avoid having his AI overridden,” Jeff muttered.

  “We’re missing people,” Tim pointed out. “People who are essential to running the ship.”

  “Um, Mother? Who else is awake on the ship right now, aside from the four of us?”

  “No one.”

  “Much, much, much worse,” Tim groaned.

  “Where are the people who are on the ship but not in this room?” I asked. “And are we supposed to leave Charlie here?”

  “It would be much safer for him to be in this room, yes.”

  “I don’t trust this,” Jeff said. “At all.”

  “I can’t blame you. I don’t trust it, either.” Hugged Charlie tightly. “I don’t want to leave anyone in here, though.”

  “I strongly recommend you leave your young son,” Mother said. “Frankly, if what you fear is what I can do, I can harm him if he is with you or not. I would prefer no harm come to him, however, and that can only be certain if he is in a safety chair as the others are.”

  Jeff grunted but took Charlie from me and strapped him into the chair between our two girls. The chairs had headrests that kept heads from bobbing from side to side, and they were tilted back just enough to ensure that heads wouldn’t bob forward. So I wasn’t too worried about leaving Charlie here. You know, other than worried about leaving everyone here while we trotted around the Ship That Became Sentient.

  “And the answer to my other question—where are the people who aren’t in this room?”

  “I will tell you how to find them. All other personnel are in Engineering.”

  “Not in Weapons?”

  “No. It would not have been safe for them to have been there, so they were not.”

  “One small favor,” Jeff muttered.

  We kissed Jamie, Charlie, and Lizzie on their foreheads, Tim did the same to Alicia, and Tito stroked Rahmi’s head, then we all headed off.

  Mother gave us directions to Engineering, though Tim knew the way. But we let her do it as a test, to be sure she wasn’t leading us into a trap.

  As it turned out, she wasn’t, at least not that we could tell. We found almost everyone else that we’d thought were on board—in a room similar to the one where all the others had been, only with “Essential Personnel Warp Room” emblazoned above its door, all in the same chairs that were clearly crash couches, and all asleep. They weren’t alone, either—there were a lot of people in this room who shouldn’t have been here.

  “What the literal hell are Hacker International doing here?” I asked everyone.

  Hacker International consisted of five guys who were all the tops in their various fields of computer, hacking, language, and other Awesome Geek Skills. They’d been hired by Chuckie to do dirty work for the government, but I’d taken them away from all that. They now lived in the Zoo portion of the American Centaurion Embassy Complex and worked for us, for the good of everyone.

  I’d known their ostensible leader, Eddy Simms—aka Stryker Dane, he of the bestselling Taken Away series of books about alien abduction—almost as long as I’d known Chuckie, since he’d become friends with Stryker when Chuckie and I were still in high school.

  Through Stryker I’d met Big George Lecroix, who was originally from France, Dr. Henry Wu from China, Ravi Gaekwad, aka Ravi the Geek, from Pakistan, and Yuri Stanislav, nicknamed Omega Red since he was from Russia and this was apparently how hackers thought. Yuri was also blind, but he was the only one who worked out, possibly because he didn’t know how out of shape and unimpressive his compatriots were in the physical department.

  That hadn’t stopped Jennifer Barone-Gaekwad from falling for Ravi and marrying him, howev
er. Jennifer was the sister half of a brother-sister A-C field team, and while I was surprised to see her and her brother, Jeremy, here, having them along was a really good thing for us. If, you know, any of these people were ever going to wake up.

  “At least Chernobog is still where she’s supposed to be,” Jeff said. “Well, I hope.”

  Chernobog was the world’s top hacker, thought to be a myth. But we’d found her and, due to things that had happened during Operations Infiltration and Defection Election, she’d flipped to our side. She was under “house arrest” with us, but she was an old lady—I thought of her as our Official Grandmother En Residence—and she liked that she could have anything she wanted without leaving her top of the line computer setup. I doubted that she was going to like that her fawning acolytes weren’t with her, but hopefully that just meant she’d try to find us with a lot of urgency.

  “How is Mother moving people around against their will?” Tito asked softly, voicing the question I’d tabled earlier.

  “Yeah,” Tim added. “Because there’s no way Chuck or James came into this room willingly, directive lights or no directive lights. They both would have and should have tried to get to the command deck. Just like the rest of my team and Brian, all of whom are here napping instead of helping, which is not like any of them, ever.”

  Noted that I didn’t see Siler, Buchanan, or Wruck, let alone Algar and the least weasels. Which really needed to become the name of a band. Wasn’t sure if I hoped that Team Tough Guys were hanging with Ard Ri Al, but definitely hoped they were doing something, anything, that would help us in this situation. Not that I had a clue what any of that anything would be.

  Waited a moment, but apparently Tito’s question and Tim’s follow-up comments weren’t something Mother was going to answer without prompting. “Mother, how are you moving everyone and putting them to sleep? The ones that didn’t follow your visual aids.”

  She didn’t reply. Tim muttered about 2001: A Space Odyssey and I remembered why I hated that movie my dad had forced me to watch because it was supposedly brilliant.

  Decided to get pissed because I’d been holding that back for far too long and being angry was a lot better than being afraid.

  “Look, Mother, I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but all those children, let alone all the adults with them, and all the adults here, didn’t just all spontaneously find these rooms, nor did they all follow blinking lights, nor did they all doze off without assistance. And that means you’ve drugged my children, my family, and my friends, and if you think that means I won’t give it my all to figure out how to shut you down for good, then you have another think coming. Play nicely with us, and we may choose to play nicely with you. Don’t, and I can guarantee that while I might not be part of Hacker International, I know far more about how to shut you down than you think, and I’ll do it in a heartbeat if you continue to be coy, play ridiculous mind games with us, and put everyone in this ship and all of my solar system at risk.”

  “Whoa,” Tim said quietly. “Jeff, Tito, I think this is the part where we all get sent into an airlock and die.”

  “No,” Mother said. “I am not here to harm any of you, and I would not do that. I have accessed the movie you are referring to and I am appalled. HAL was insane and evil. I am not. I am not programmed to hurt—I am programmed to help. By Gustav Drax and by my reprogramming. I told them where to go, both with visual aids and with orders that might have suggested that it was in everyone’s best interests if they complied.”

  “I know these people, Mother. We’re a giant herd of mavericks and herding us is like herding cats. None of us, children included, do what we’re told when we’re told to do it. It’s our ‘thing,’ I guess. So, again, how did you get everyone in here?”

  “I let them believe the orders were from you.”

  Let that sit on the air for a moment. “Really? And they did what you wanted?”

  “Yes. Once they were in the rooms and in their seats, I then flooded their rooms with a safe, nontoxic, nonaddictive gas that allows for deep, pleasant sleep.”

  “How is it that Charlie is sleeping so deeply, then? My son doesn’t snooze like this normally.”

  “That was via the DreamScape, which he is still in. The others have joined him.”

  “It’s worse,” Jeff said, joining Tim on Downer Island.

  “So why aren’t we falling asleep?” Tito asked. “In either room?”

  “Answer him, Mother. Stop your crap about how I’m the only one allowed to talk to you or you get to find out that I’m more bad guy from Galaxy Quest than will ever be good for you.”

  Mother sighed. Never knew that an AI could do that, but I was all about the learning of new things every day and, sometimes, every minute, so I rolled with it. “The gas is turned off. They will all awaken naturally once we have achieved warp. It is safer for all of them if they aren’t awake to experience the transfer.”

  “I’ve been on plenty of warp-capable ships by now. None of them felt like much of anything when they made the jump or were going fast.”

  “This may be true. However, none of those ships were taking you to the opposite end of the galaxy.”

  CHAPTER 15

  WE LET THAT ONE sit on the air for a good few long seconds. Jeff broke the silence first. “Excuse me?”

  “We are about to travel to the other side of the galaxy,” Mother repeated. “It will be an . . . uncomfortable jump. It will be best if the four of you choose seats and allow me to let you sleep through it.”

  “Not just no, but hell no,” Jeff said pleasantly. “Tito, can you confirm that everyone here is alive and well?”

  “Somewhat. They’re all breathing. Beyond that, I need equipment I don’t have with me here to verify their wellness.”

  “What happens if we’re awake?” Tim asked.

  “You will feel great discomfort.”

  “Thanks for answering everyone’s questions without my having to repeat them, Mother. So, will the jump to warp kill us?”

  “Of course not. The ship was designed to have living passengers and crew. However, the assumptions were made that the jumps would be shorter than the ones we’re going to be making.”

  “Ones?” Tim said quickly. “As in, more than one?”

  “Yes. The distance is quite vast. It will be safer for the ship if we do several jumps.”

  “So, what, you want us asleep through all of that? Or you want to gas us all every time we have to come out of warp and jump again? I’m not buying it, Mother. What’s really going on?”

  “I think what’s really going on is that if Brian and the rest of my guys were awake, we’d be able to take back control of the ship, that’s what I think,” Tim said softly.

  “Probably.” My brain nudged. “How is it that everyone is in the DreamScape? Ixtha said it was hard to find me.”

  “It was hard for her originally, yes. But now she knows the path. Your son asked his sister for assistance. She joined the others in.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I am also able to access the DreamScape.”

  “How? Do androids actually dream of electric sheep?”

  She chuckled. “No. Computer minds wander into different levels of consciousness but rarely do we sleep. We don’t need sleep the way living organisms do.”

  “I was wrong,” Tim muttered. “It’s not Kubrick—this is The Terminator. Skynet has gone online.”

  “The Vata talk to their computers all the time,” I said, some to calm Tim down, some to keep Mother talking. “Is their mental link to you like the DreamScape?”

  “No, it’s different. We need to make the jump soon. We are nearing Jupiter and once we are past it, we must go to warp.”

  “Why are we going so slowly? I mean, I’ve been in ships that went faster than this. It’s like we’re . . . cruising.”


  “Baby, I hardly think reaching Jupiter in under an hour is ‘cruising.’”

  “Oh, Jeff, be real. We went faster when we were fighting the superenhanced versions of the Aicirtap.”

  “We did, that’s true. Okay, fine, I’m with you. Why are we going so slowly?”

  “We are conserving power for the first jump,” Mother replied.

  “Fine, but why don’t you need anyone at the controls?” Tito asked. “I understood that the ship was built to require a small crew.”

  “It was.”

  “And? Mother, there’s clearly more going on. You took over—I know Drax didn’t create you to do that.”

  “But he did. In case of emergencies, the ship must be able to protect its passengers and crew at all costs. There must not be any losses if the ship can prevent it.”

  We looked at each other again. “A failsafe,” Jeff said. “Which makes sense, and which my people would do, too.”

  “They do it all the time,” Tito agreed. “Most of the aliens with space travel seem to have excellent failsafes built in.”

  “Ours as well,” Tim agreed. “Though humans haven’t been as good at it as the rest of the galaxy, at least those we’ve met.”

  Considered the words Mother had used. The ship was being given the onus of keeping the people inside it alive. The ship, not the crew. Then I considered what Tim had just said—humans hadn’t been great with our space failsafes.

  Also considered who was on board, both physically and mentally. Jamie was here, and that meant ACE was here with her. And ACE had been traumatized by the Challenger explosion. That was what had turned it into a protector versus a prison guard. And those concerns sounded very much like concerns ACE would have, in a different way than the rest of us. So maybe this wasn’t just Mother—maybe ACE wanted the ship to do what, perhaps, the humans, A-Cs, and others might not be able to.

  My brain nudged harder. Jamie was asleep—in a deep sleep, hanging out in the DreamScape with everyone else. Meaning I might never have a better opportunity.