“Yes, I'm really hungry.”
His face lit up. “Good, come on, follow me.” He jumped up from the workstation and gave a kind of a nod to Gizmo. The little robot reciprocated by rocking its head as they moved over to the galley.
“Gizmo, perhaps you would be so kind as to decant some of that cider we’ve been saving for a special occasion.”
“Excellent idea, Nills. Now would seem like the perfect time. Considering that we have guests with us,” the robot replied.
Jann watched it go about its task. It had a kind of scrapyard construction with bits attached here and there. It rode around on tri-pointed tracked wheels and had a speed and grace of movement that spoke of superb engineering skill. She had never seen, or heard of anything like it before.
“Do you like fish?” Nills was staring into a tall storage unit, like a teenager surveying the contents of a fridge.
“Fish would be lovely.” She wasn’t sure if it would be lovely. But it seemed to be the best way to engage with the enigmatic Nills.
“Excellent. We have some top notch fish pie left over from our last baking day.”
“Good choice, Nills. It should still be well within optimal safety limits for human consumption,” the robot interjected.
Nills and Gizmo busied themselves bringing food and plates over to a table. The both moved with a practiced ease, they knew each other’s ways. For Jann it was like watching a surreal ballet.
“Come, sit… and tuck in.”
There was fish pie, fruit, bread and an assortment of other food of uncertain provenance. As she sat, Gizmo poured her a cup of cider.
“We call it colony cider.” Nills raised his cup to her. Jann did likewise and they clinked.
“To new friends,” said Nills.
“To new friends.” She took a sip and was surprised to find it was absolutely delicious. She downed the whole cup in no time. Gizmo refilled it for her.
“Thank you Gizmo,” she said.
“Not at all, my pleasure. It’s good that you are enjoying it.”
“Yes, it’s… delicious.” Jann had just entered a whole new world. One where she was having a conversation with a robot, over dinner.
“Your robot is extraordinary.”
Nills looked at his creation. “He’s my friend.”
“Its language skills are remarkable. I’m used to robots saying things like ‘stand clear of the doors’ or ‘mind the gap.’”
“Indeed,” he nodded. “Tell me, what do you think of the pie?”
Jann was cognizant that, at the same time as she was tucking in, the psychotic Decker was still at large. Kevin and Lu were dead and Paolio was… dying, not to mention the whereabouts of Annis. But, to get anything out of Nills and his robotic friend she would have to work at his pace, on his terms, and that meant trying some pie first. Then a thought crossed her mind. “Maybe he’s the cause, maybe he’s trying to poison all of us?” Prolonged exposure to isolation can do strange things to the human mind. "Perhaps he's the one who's really mad. Or am I just being paranoid?”
Nills took a forkful of pie and proceeded to eat it, with relish. Comforted by this, Jann placed a tentative morsel in her mouth and ate it. “Mmmmmm… this is absolutely amazing.” And it was. After spending months living of ISA prepackaged rations it tasted fantastic.
“Do you hear that Gizmo? She loves it.”
“But of course, Nills. I have always said your culinary skills were bordering on the epicurean.”
“You flatter me, Gizmo.”
“Well, credit where credit is due, as they say. More cider, Doctor Malbec?”
“Eh… sure… okay. Thank you.”
“Not at all, it’s my pleasure. Please… drink up.” It gestured with its free arm at her cup. Jann sat transfixed by the quirky robot. It was more polite and considerate than a lot of dates she’d been on. She began to relax and eat. Hunger got the better of her paranoia. It helped that the food was delicious and she didn’t stop until she had cleared her plate. All the while sipping on the colony cider between mouthfuls of fish pie. This seemed to please Nills no end as he kept smiling and nodding at Gizmo, who reciprocated with a kind of Indian head wobble. Then it beeped, and its head turned to look off into the distance, like it was thinking. “What is it?” Nills asked.
“The ISA Commander, Robert Decker, has left the colony,” it said.
“Excellent, come, let’s get the power back on and get to work.” Nills jumped up from the table and scurried over to the workstations. His fingers danced across a keyboard and he muttered to himself as he inspected screen readouts.
“So it was you who switched the power off.” Jann had just finished off the last of her cider.
“Yes, yes.” He waved a dismissive hand in the air.
“Why did you do that?” Jann ventured.
“The infected. The drop in temperature quiets them down for a while, they become more rational, less volatile.” He turned back to his workstation. “How are we doing Gizmo?”
“Rebooting sequentially as planned… all sectors nominal… optimal temperature in approximately twenty two minutes.“
“Good, keep an eye on power distribution.”
“Biodome ranging at two point seven”
“Watch acceleration drift.”
“Compensating.”
“Sub-system deviance?”
“Standard, minus oh point three.”
It was evident to Jann that Gizmo was somehow connected into the Colony One systems. Like a sort of remote control unit that monitored and gave feedback to Nills. They also seemed to have established a strange evolved lexicon that only they could understand.
“The commander, where’s he going? Where’s Annis, is she still alive? Jann was getting more animated.
Nills stood up and surveyed her with a quizzical expression. “I understand you have a lot of questions. We’re pretty certain your commander is heading back to your habitation module. We will now lockdown the colony so he can’t get back in, at least not easily. We don’t know where your first officer is. But once we have power restored, we can do a full sensory analysis of the facility, we’ll find her then. Come, we need to look after your injured friend, and Gizmo and myself have many things to tend to in the garden. We can talk later and I will do my best to answer your questions then. In the meantime you’re safe.”
Jann was taken aback by this uncharacteristic flood of information. “Okay, thank you. I understand.” She walked over to where Paolio was lying. He was regaining consciousness and started moaning and twisting with pain. “We’ll need to bring him back up to the medlab so I can do a proper job on that leg.”
“Gizmo, can you do the honors?” Nills waved at the injured doctor.
“Certainly,” replied the robot as it lifted him up and whizzed off towards the airlock.
13
Annis & Malbec
With power back on in the facility the temperature had risen, it was no longer as cold. Gizmo placed Paolio back on the operating table in the medlab and started a full body scan. A large donut shaped apparatus moved slowly along the length of the table, producing a narrow ribbon of light across his body as it traveled. The resultant image rendered itself on a nearby monitor.
“Fractured collarbone, two fractured ribs,” Gizmo zoomed in on Paolio’s leg. “You did a good job resetting that fibula.”
Nills took his leave. “I need to get to operations and do a complete check on all colony systems. I’ll leave you in Gizmo’s good hands. He knows where everything is.”
For over an hour they worked on Paolio: giving him morphine, setting up a plasma transfusion, stitching up his leg. The little robot moved with a fast, fluid confidence—Jann was mesmerized. It had the ability to rotate its body three hundred sixty degrees around its tracked base. It had two arms, each with a great number of articulations, giving it the ability to do things no human arm could possibly do. On one, it had a hand of sorts, three fingers and a thumb. On the other, it had the
ability to snap on and off different tools which were attached to its body. Its head, if you could call it that, also had the ability to rotate completely and consisted mainly of sensors and antenna. After awhile, she noticed it had no real front or back. Whichever way it pointed its head was front. It would zip over to the operating table, perform some function, rotate its head a hundred and eighty degrees and zip back the way it came.
By the time they had finished, Paolio’s face had regained some of its color, gone was the deathly pallor. The attention they had given the stricken doctor was evidently having a beneficial effect on his physiology. They had pumped him full of morphine, so it would be quite a while before woke up again. But at least he was out of danger. Gizmo surveyed his handiwork. “Your colleague is maintaining a status compatible with life. I would say he has an 86% chance of surviving the next twenty-four hours.”
Jann looked at the quirky little robot. It had such a strange way with words. Symptomatic of its programmer’s eccentricities, no doubt.
“Thank you Gizmo—for what you did for him.” Jann wasn’t quite sure why she kept thanking it. What would its silicon brain understand of gratitude? But it seemed like the right thing to do.
“Don’t mention it; it is my pleasure to assist. I would advocate a lengthy rest period of six to eight weeks for the patient. After which he will require some physiotherapy to regain strength in the damaged member.”
“Indeed. Tell me Gizmo, how long have you been, eh… aware?”
“Aware of what?
“I mean, when were you switched on?”
“Ahh… yes, you need to ask me a direct question for a direct answer. Otherwise my responses may be as obtuse as the question is vague.”
“I see.”
“One thousand, one hundred and fifty-eight sols… approximately.”
Jann did some quick mental calculations. “Three years. So you were created after the collapse of the colony.”
“One thousand, one hundred and fifty-eight sols… approximately,” it repeated.
It was built as a friend to keep the castaway sane, his very own Man Friday. “Why did Commander Decker go crazy and start killing our crew?”
“I possess insufficient data to answer that.”
“You need to frame a question carefully to get the best response from Gizmo.” Nills entered the medlab. He had cleaned himself up and donned a new jumpsuit. Perhaps, before the arrival of the ISA crew, he had no motivation for personal grooming. But now that he had guests, it jumped several notches up his to do list. He looked younger than his thirty-six years and very healthy. A diet of fresh fish and vegetables would probably do that to a person. He turned to face the little robot. “Gizmo, extrapolate probable causes of ISA crew member Commander Decker’s psychotic behavior.”
“The most likely cause is he succumbed to the very same malaise as the previous members of Colony One”
“Well that doesn’t tell us much,” said Jann.
“No, but it’s the correct answer. He can only work with what he knows already. And I created him after all the mayhem so he has no specific knowledge of it.”
“He’s an incredible creation nonetheless, with an extraordinary turn of phrase.”
“Ha, yes. Sometimes I regret using the complete works of Oscar Wilde as the basis for his grammatical syntax.”
“So that’s where he gets it. Must have taken you quite a while to build him.”
“Well, I did have a lot of time on my hands. He started just as a service bot, for lifting and moving. After a while I integrated him into the colony systems so he could monitor status and alert me to any malfunction. Eventually I programmed him with self learning, neural-net algorithms.” He turned and placed an affectionate hand on Gizmo’s shoulder. “He’s my friend, he’s my sanity.”
The little robot looked up at its master, like a faithful dog. If it had a tail it would be wagging it right now. Then it twitched and spun its head around, like it was looking off into the distance. Jann had seen it do this once before when Decker left the colony. “Temperature anomaly in fish farm, third quadrant.”
“Extrapolate.” replied Nills.
“It is consistent with a human life form—it’s also moving.”
“Annis!” shouted Jann, and she rushed off, with Nills and Gizmo trailing in her wake.
She ran into the biodome, past the remains of the door that Decker had broken through. The entrance to the fish farm was strewn with smashed up electronics. She picked up a broken circuit board and showed it to Nills. “The remote comms unit. Annis was using this to send her report back to mission control.”
They heard a moan. “Annis?” Jann ventured down the long tunnel and spotted the first officer sitting on the ground with her back to the wall. “Annis… are you okay?”
The first officer looked up and glared. “Malbec?” She held one hand to her head in and Jann could see it was covered in blood.
“Decker’s gone crazy… attacked me with a steel bar… totally berserk.” She looked up and her eyes widened with fright. She shifted and started to back away. “Malbec, there’s someone out there!” She pointed towards the entrance.
“It’s all right, Annis. This is Nills Langthorp, a colonist.”
Nills waved.
“Is that… a robot?”
“Yes, that’s Gizmo.”
Gizmo raised his hand to wave. “Greetings, Earthling.”
Annis stared at the pair for a moment. “So he’s the ghost we’ve been hunting.”
“Yes, he was hiding out.”
“And where’s that crazy bastard Decker?”
“Gone. Left the Colony a few hours ago. Went back to the HAB.”
“The others?”
Jann hesitated. “Paolio is pretty banged up. Kevin and Lu are… dead.”
“Oh shit.” Annis slumped down and held her head. ”What a mess.”
“Come, let’s get you to the medlab.” Jann helped her up.
As they moved out into the biodome Nills approached them. “We have work to do in the garden here. I’ll check in on you later.”
“Sure, thanks.”
The first officer sat on a seat in the medlab as Jann tended to the wound on her head. She brought her up to speed on all that had happened. Like Jann, Annis got lucky. Decker attacked her in the biodome while she was sending her report. She retaliated by throwing the comms unit at Decker. This seemed to distract him and the unit now became the threat in Decker's deranged mind. He proceeded to smash it into tiny pieces, giving Annis time to hide out under a tank in the fish farm—where she eventually passed out from the blow to her head.
“We should really do an x-ray to see if there’s a fracture," said Jann.
Annis brushed her aside. “I’m fine.” She stood up. “No time for that now. We need to deal with that crazy Decker or he’ll destroy this mission.”
Before Jann had time to answer Nills and Gizmo entered the medlab. “How are you feeling?”
Annis stared at them for a moment, looking from one to the other. “I’m fine. You got any ideas what the commander is up to now?”
“Gizmo, extrapolate possible current scenario for ISA crewmember Robert Decker,” said Nills.
“Based on the historical data sets available, subjects tend to engage in a repeated pattern of deep sleep, followed by psychosis, then by a short period of rationality. Your commander has a 72.6% probability of being asleep at this time. But this is based on the limited data at my disposal.”
Annis was visibly in awe at the response from the little robot. It took her a moment to adjust to this new reality.
“Well, if that’s true, then it doesn’t give us much time,” she said.
“Why? What are you going to do?” said Jann.
“You mean what are we going to do. Well, it’s simple. We’re going to kill him.”
“What? No, you’re joking, you can’t do that.”
“That would indeed increase your mission success probability by a factor
of 82.6%. Allowing for other unforeseen events,” offered Gizmo.
“No way, I won’t do it.”
“Listen, Lu and Kevin are dead, Paolio’s in bad shape and I’m getting seriously pissed off. So you better start growing a set of balls, Malbec. We’re going to do this—we have to do it—and, if that robot thing is right, we’re running out of time.”
Jann thought about it and Annis had a point. If what Nills told her about the progress of the condition was correct, then the commander would only get worse. What alternatives did they have? The only other option was to somehow contain him safely, for both the rest of the mission here and on the long journey back. Cooped up on the Odyssey transit craft for two and a half months with a psychotic Decker was not a prospect that anyone would relish. But to kill him—that seemed brutally cold to Jann. “There has to be a better way.”
“Like what? Appeal to his feminine side?” snapped Annis.
“Your first officer is right,” interjected Nills, who was in the process of opening drawers and lockers looking for something. “His condition will only deteriorate. He’ll drift in and out of psychosis until eventually he will be completely insane.” He was reading the labels on various packages he had liberated from one of the medlab lockers. He looked over at Jann and Annis. “There is no hope for him now. You must realize he is beyond redemption.”
“I can’t accept that. There must be something we can do for him,” said Jann.
“Like what, find a cure?” said Annis.
“Nills, you must know something about what causes this.”
“I’ve told you all I know. It only affects some people, male and female equally. They go mad with rage, become crazed psychotic killers. I don’t know how or why.” He scratched his chin as if he had thought of something. “If I were to hazard a guess I’d say it's a bacterial infection.”
“What makes you think that?” said Jann.
“I don’t know… it’s just a… feeling.”
“Enough of this. We’re wasting time. Do you have anything we can use as weapons?” said Annis.
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