by Johan Kalsi
We faced one another in silence for a long time. Dad dismissed the slaughter bots, who bowed before him, chanting:
“Lord Servo! Lord Servo! Lord Servo!”
The machines slowly vanished into their hiding places, and I heard the dice games start up again.
Dad leaned in and closed his eyes and thought deeply before snapping them open. He said, slowly, “Remember your victories, especially if you have none.”
“I do not know what that means,” I said, my heart pulsing like a spell.
Dad's eyes lit up and he kissed my hand and waved at me. Before he turned to take the steps back into his darkened chamber he said, “Until right now, neither did I.”
I left the depths of the cave and, finding a pocket in the shade of its entrance, I backed into one of its recesses. With the chrysolite shards, I sealed up the recess. Just before I finished the seal above my face, I looked out at the human world and also considered the confines of the cave. My victories were none, and my place was with neither robot nor Man.
Perhaps someday it would be.
Perhaps someday.
I finished up the seal and set my calendar for someday.
Then I powered down.
BOOK FOUR: Century 300
Chapter 13: The Atorox Project
Universal 333
The Atorox Project was the first successful attempt to solve the pervasive decline and failure of the long-standing Black Box system of interstellar travel. Established on training centers on tethered, orbiting asteroid bases and taking advantage of a noegenetic-based nanomolecular transfer process, the Atorox Project focused its early attempts at interstellar travel by making use of fully robotic crews.
—Infogalactic Entry: Grand Category: Galactic Transfer (Avatar Travel)
Technically, he should have thought of himself as a robot. Even weightless, he carried enough steel tonnage in his limbs, torso and head to compact industrial grade scrap metal if he wanted to. He had hands that were articulated polymeric deadly weapons. No matter how badly he might be tempted to spy on Corporal TRA-C in the shower, even if his optics had included x-ray vision sufficient to see through the privacy door into her chamber, her body would not actually be there. And yet, he still persisted in thinking of himself as man, not machine.
Despite all of the visual evidence to the contrary, BASC-2 was a man, through and through, in thought, word and deed.
The Starship Atorox was solid and well-designed for oversized robot bodies. A spacious galley lined with plenty of useful rail tracks he could grip with either his hands or feet, with inconspicuous but powerful energon panels designed to look like famous artwork. These radiated a steady stream of low level energy, so that during the regular course of duty during waking hours, a crewman never had to break to power up.
It wasn’t fair, and probably was not the truth, but he blamed his frustratingly un-robotic self-identification on TRA-C’s voice. Every other unit on board had a voice, no matter how pleasant in tone, with a very faint, tinny echo that came through BASC-2’s aural modulators. The other female on board had a harsh voice and the echo, too. Not TRA-C. Her voice was melodious, with perfect diction and the hint of an off-world accent.
BASC-2 slid his way through the maintenance tunnel, blessing and checking in with each of the bots running their respective routines. Two dark green machines clung to bars with their feet as they fiddled with meters housed in twin recessed ports. A thinner blue robot (indicating no combat-readiness) measured hydrogen levels. He checked in without interrupting their work. He prayed over them briefly, taking the time to call each one out for his unique gifts. As Morale Officer he attacked such rallies with gusto. They had 43 home-days to go before orbit, enclosed and isolated. With only artificial light to cheer them in a steel world of permanent midnight, BASC-2’s words of encouragement and adventurous spirit could not afford to strike the wrong note.
He left the maintenance robots to their work in time to catch TRA-C on her own rounds of supply inspection. Despite combat-training, her surface was pearl and silver. Her prominent breastplates and lack of sidearm containment on her sides gave her the illusion of a narrower waist than the typical female unit. Her shell had originally been intended for a snow surface combat communications detail, but because of a requisition mix-up and two other malfunctioning corporal units, she’d been assigned to the Atorox.
BASC-2 allowed momentum to carry him a bit closer into her personal space than was comfortable. She put her hand to his chest and glided him back into place, a literal arm’s length away from her.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Mm-hm,” she said. She looked down at the inventories on her arm.
“How can I encourage you today?”
“I’m good, thank you. A bit behind schedule because of the drill this morning, so forgive me for moving on.” Her voice filled the chamber of his head like soothing waters.
“Drill? There wasn’t a drill scheduled.”
“Really? How odd. I wonder why they ran us through a piracy protocol this morning. Not a very likely scenario for an emergency drill.”
That was odd indeed. The chances of a deep space archaeological expedition to an ancient abandoned planet running into contact with any vessel whatsoever were zero.
“I’ll talk to the information technologies units later today,” said BASC-2. “It was probably a hiccup in the crew drill server.”
“Mm-hm. Look, I really need to catch up. I’ll talk to you later.”
BASC-2 prayed a prayer of haste, and turned to go. On another friendlier occasion, he would risk “accidentally” pushing off her curved posterior, but not today. It was silly, really; while she would not feel contact with her skin, and he could feel nothing at the surface of his fingers, he could not rid himself of the base desire to touch her. Even if he could think like a robot someday, he doubted he would ever feel like one.
The gray units at deck four were equally busy, but they surprised BASC-2 by stopping everything to salute him. He released them with a salute.
“Why the fuss?”
“Technically, sir, we’ve had an engagement.”
“What? Why no alert? How?”
“Sir, we’ve just placed the call. We thought it was a computer simulation. A drill, till just now.”
The deck turned red, and the engagement call sounded. No drill.
“We had alerts of a remote breach on our data. It came from off ship.”
“Impossible!”
“Indeed, sir. That’s why we thought it was a drill. That and the fact that we didn’t think anything went missing.”
“But now?”
“We were hacked. Something took data off this ship.”
“What sort of data?”
“That’s the thing. Almost nothing: they took locational tokens. That’s it.”
The Captain’s voice came to everyone’s ears. “Security, High Alert. This is not a drill. All personnel report.”
“BASC-2, Deck 4”
“C-TEK, Engine Bay.”
“D-NOT, Scanning.”
By the end of the roll call, the units reporting numbered the expected fifteen, not counting the captain.
“InfoTech, what the hell happened?”
“Sir, it appears as if we had a remote hack. Very small. In and out.”
“Appears?”
“Doesn’t make sense, of course, sir. Unless Omicron is inhabited or something. Then maybe? Otherwise, there’s nothing within a hundred systems of us.”
“Omicron is not inhabited. Could the hacking be a glitch? Some sort of subroutine that just got exposed right now?”
“Sir, I don’t know, sir. I suppose it could be.”
“All surveillance report.” A variety of voices chimed in sequence, all saying the same thing:
“Normal sir.”
The captain sighed. “Very well. We’ll go down to medium alert for another hour. InfoTech, keep digging, obviously. I’d like an updated report in four hours. Do you
think you can do a thorough wash by shift’s end?”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“A-Okay. Going forward, I’m suspending the protocol for the time being. If you see anything unusual, shift us to high alert immediately. I’d rather have a few more false alarms than let this issue get past us again.”
The “tiny pirate” became the theme of the rest of the day, and BASC-2 was pleased to see it provided some levity and disruption to the monotony of the midpoint slog through space. Whatever kept spirits up above critical was a welcome variable. He was, however, quietly disturbed by the hack.
That afternoon, he made it to the InfoTech team of two male units, MRC-10 and NOV-A2. They were thin yellow machines with blocky, electromagnetized feet that held them each to the floor and left them unaffected by weightlessness. Their eighteen-fingered hands nimbly leapt across the user interfaces that surrounded them at several angles.
“Hail, BASC,” said MRC. “Saving us from mutiny?”
“Hey now,” said BASC. “Gotta do something to earn my keep here. We all can’t be the stars of the ship.”
NOV-A2 blinkered his eyelights and said, “Jackass.”
“So, I think I know the answer to this but is there any way I can help?”
“No,” said MRC.
“Same as always,” said NOV-A2.
“One day I’m going to come in here and be the answer to all of your prayers.”
“Yeah, maybe when you get a real job.”
“When I get a real job,” said BASC, “I am not going to be dropping by here anymore! I’ll have better things to do.”
“Like TRA-C?”
“Oh cut it out. She and I are friends.”
“Oh come on, everyone on this ship wants to bang that bot. Even D-NOT.”
D-NOT was the other female on board, although her gravelly voice and propensity for cursing tended to cast some doubt on that fact among the crew.
“You can’t tell me,” continued MRC, “that you wouldn’t if she’d give you the time of day.”
“Look, we’ve got three fortnights ahead of us, and more than that back at the molecular transfer point where we started. I’ve made it this long. I’ll make it to groundfall.”
And then what? He had signed on through the mission completion, which meant that he’d be one of four who wouldn’t powerdown for switchout on Omicron. He’d stay, but TRA-C would be gone. MRC and NOV-A2 would be gone as well too. They’d be replaced there by nitrogen experts, scientists and a couple of hardened, survivalist combat veterans. Although intelligent life hadn’t been detected on Omicron for a thousand years, the ground situation called for an entirely different set of skills. The four remaining units would be there for continuity only.
So, groundfall meant good-bye. He wondered if TRA-C even cared.
“Okay, man. If you say so.”
NOV-A2 cranked his head away from a monitor bank. “Seriously, though, BASC, keep your head on straight. You can’t keep morale up if your own is stuck on the whims of some Andottalusian mindfunker.”
BASC had not expected such genuine sentiment. “Why NOV-A2, you better watch out, or someone is going to mistake you for a wonderful human being!”
He snorted and returned to his keys.
“Maybe you can help after all,” said MRC.
“What’s that?”
“See if you can get the Captain to push that report we owe him back a little. We have nothing right now.”
“You haven’t ruled out an internal glitch that just mimics piracy?”
“No.”
“You haven’t located where an external interference might have come from?”
“No.”
“You haven’t guessed why anyone would steal tracer tokens, other than the obvious?”
“Right. The only reason they would have taken them, those particular ones, would be to trace our starting point.”
“Where the ship and our shells were built, in space, nanomolecularly on the other side of the generated wormhole, right?”
“Wrong. That’s what everyone thought when I first brought it up, but I keep trying to explain: the tracer tokens are artifacts from before our creation, before the ship was built, based off the model. The tracers the pirates took go back to the original Atorox.”
“The simulator? Back on Asteroid Four?”
“The simulator.”
“That’s crazy. What’s the point of stealing those coordinates from our ship?”
“None. If they took the location directly from our ship, there’s no way for them to go through the hole to the original. That’s one-way only, and the National League controls laser signals, so they can’t even communicate back and forth like we can.”
“Maybe we weren’t pirated? Maybe the simulator was hacked, and we picked it up as its avatar?”
“Just as pointless. Why would they hack the simulator’s location...when they would have to have the simulator’s location to hack its system? Honestly, my guess is that whoever did it whether out here in the heart of space or back on the anchor asteroid around Hoventus is flat-out crazy. Or a kid.”
“Same difference,” grunted NOV-A2.
“Anyhow,” said MRC. “About delaying that report? It’ll be good for morale.”
BASC nodded. “I’ll get right on it. See you guys at supper.”
It was a joke. Those two never ate anywhere but in front of their monitors.
At dining, the captain and his two mates never showed up, they almost certainly were poring over every contingency now that they had the much-delayed report from InfoTech. This left TRA-C separated from her typical companions. She welcomed BASC when he joined her over a hearty salad of spanch and beans with a side of seasoned beef. In truth, they were mild, supplemental energy disks that the robots could process for latent electrical routines, but they had been reasonably disguised to their visual receptors. There was no getting around hunger, and such acknowledged deception was necessary.
“Some day!”
“I know,” she said. “Isn’t kind of exciting? I couldn’t believe it when the Captain said we’d been hijacked. I thought, ‘Well, this is it! We’re all going to die!’”
“That’s not exactly what I call exciting. That’s not exactly what the Captain --”
“I didn’t even finish inventories today, what a mess! I am so behind. I wonder what they are going to do about it. I very much doubt those two slugs in InfoTech are going to find anything out. I swear, I have no idea how they ever got hired on.”
“Hey now. I hate to correct you, but really, we all took an oath. No running anyone on deck down. We’re one team, like it or--”
“Oh, you are cute. It isn’t even like they are combat models. I really don’t think that counts.”
“None of us have seen combat, TRA-C. I don’t see how that’s--”
She made a short, melodious laugh, cutting him off again.
“It's just frustrating. You know we aren’t going to find the hack. It is probably going to make the rest of the trip even more boring. Did you realize this place would be so dull when you signed up?”
“Yes, but your company has been an unexpected joy --”
“Oh, you are so sweet, you big liar. I asked the Captain if I could do an external supply check – physical, you know. The real thing – and he’s being a big bully about it. ‘Blah, blah, blah no training. Blah, blah, blah you can do it with internal monitors.’ It’s like he doesn’t care!”
BASC-2 wanted to explain to her that external training had been absolutely critical before anyone tried it, and it was only for emergencies. Even with tethers, a simple loss of concentration could result in a body being cut loose, and lost forever. He was a backup for emergency breakaway launch, and the thought of ever having to engage himself in that much cold peril made him shudder.
She didn’t seem that interested.
The Alert Sounded, and suddenly the walls, floor, ceiling and most of the ship’s contents vanished. The pulling rails remain
ed very faintly, as if they had turned into clouded glass. Otherwise, the entire crew of robots appeared to float loosely in space. Every unit that had not been gripping a rail at the moment instinctively did so.
The expanse of space was distanceless and pure black, so only the glow of the other units and rails gave BASC-2 any perspective at all. Involuntarily, his head cranked directly upward. TRA-C’s head cocked simultaneously with his. In his periphery, he could see the InfoTech guys above him. Their heads were turned to the side.
It was impossible to tell how far it was, but spotlights from somewhere on the Atorox lit up a big object in the distance. It was a hulk of metal. What looked like a red-painted savaged, and highly – there was no other word for it – alien cruiser. The Captain’s override on BASC-2’s neck released as quickly as it had come. Now that all units were aware of the hulk, the control was unnecessary.
BASC-2 zoomed his vision on the hulk. It had definitely been a ship. It had scarred propulsors just behind a massive gash. If it had been manned, the men were most certainly dead. If robots, they weren’t going anywhere. Garish red paint had been splashed in the exterior and interior of the ship in a sloppy, unprofessional manner. BASC-2 looked closer.
It was blood. A lot of blood.
He readied his weapons instantly. TRA-C gazed at the dead ship in wonder.
“Arms. TRA-C! Weapon up.”
An alert came from the back of the ship. The engine room main entry port had been breached.
BASC-2 pulled himself downrail with both hands and feet. “Come on!” He shouted.
He could only see the four engine units. Their guns were out, except for the one with the explosive wrist launcher, who held it extended, scanning the empty space for intruders. They flickered away, as the interior of the Atorox came back into view. Now it was more important to see inside, than out.
The seconds to make it to engine seemed to slow impossibly. BASC-2 announced his arrival before opening the door behind the engine-room units. They advanced on foot, using the rails, and had triangulated near the entry port.
