Strange Temple

by John Lilley

  37 SPECIAL AGENT

  The dull grey flanks of the automated Border Patrol Ship sliced through the dark, turbulent waters of the Irish Sea. In automatic mode, even its navigation lights were switched off, so the Ship was almost invisible against the water on the moonless night. Black torrents of rain ran down its many gun turrets and washed across its dark decks. Deep within its unlit interior the navigation computers adjusted for wind and tides to keep the vessel on its designated course. High above on the edge of the troposphere, one of the many western area solar drones plotted the Ship’s progress. While on the seabed, the extensive network of sensors worked in symbiosis with the other two automatons.

  The Ship’s course took it between the two largest banks of wave-energy generators in the St Georges Channel. Fifteen kilometres either side of the Ship the giant installations stretched out for over 200 km. From the decks of the Ship they looked like a very low sea wall, but one that gently undulated with the waves.

  The Ship had not seen any action on this patrol since a visit by the maintenance crew over four months previous. In fact, it had not encountered an even vaguely suspicious object for over three years. The Irish Sea was too rough and too wide for small boats and swimmers and after all, where would they be swimming from, certainly not from what was left of Ireland. Regardless of this, the giant automaton continued relentlessly with its vital task. The Border Patrol had for over 180 years maintained the way of life in Britain and prevented it from descending into the chaos from when the main die-back started, and the major migrations destroyed the rest of the human world. The Ship’s sensor arrays could detect anything larger than a beach ball within the visible horizon, above and below the water. Anything positively identified as an unauthorised intruder was fair game and would be blasted out of the water by the Ship’s multiple weapon systems. Advanced permission and a beacon were required to enter British waters, and nothing had got through for over 25 years.

  The Ship was currently tracking over 2,000 suspect objects, and its pals in the sky and beneath the waves were doing exactly the same. Between them, they were looking for indications of an internal heat source or any form of self-control. All the objects currently being tracked had been confirmed as sea creatures or natural debris just floating along with the tides.

  The largest of these objects was grazing alongside the Ship’s composite hull. It was a tree trunk, about three metres long and one metre thick, floating just below the surface. There were thousands of these old trees washed over from the Americas each year, where the extreme weather system off its east coast continued to devastate. Summer tornadoes ripped out vast quantities from the charred remains of the forests and dumped them in the sea. They could be in the water for years before finally disintegrating. As the log bounced down the side of the Ship it began to break up, perhaps a little too quickly given the size of it, but not enough to alert the Ship’s sensors. The Ship continued into the night unaware that it had gained a passenger.

  The tiny two-kilo translucent creature climbed steadily up the slippery hull from below the waterline, its thick fingertips mimicking the tenacious grip of a gecko. The creature was the product of hundreds of years of biomechanical engineering expertise, the pinnacle of the Natives’ traditions of understanding and living with nature. It was similar to the creatures that were currently waiting in the Four’s domes: cold-blooded, with a tough ceramic skin that gave off virtually no heat signature. Its basic building blocks had been borrowed from dozens of diverse creatures.

  On reaching the deck it kept close to the guardrails, moving very slowly to avoid detection. The Ship was not designed with a permanent crew in mind, and consequently, its decks were very narrow, just wide enough to provide service access. Perhaps because of this and the general impregnability of the Ship, the decks were not continually video scanned, a fact the creature was now aware of. However, erring on the side of caution it remained in the cover of the various deck fittings where possible. A snail could have easily overtaken it, but there was no hurry, having been in the sea for several weeks before this planned encounter, it had no intention of giving the game away now.

  After several hours on board, it had located a promising air-vent on the bulkhead of the crews’ quarters. One hour later it was inside the vent and peering through the internal grill into the unlit crews’ common room. It extended a specialised finger through the mesh in the grill.

  ‘No Sonics confirmed’ was registered in its tiny pragmatic brain before moving to the next node in its mission’s complex decision tree. Other fingers reached through the grill, unscrewed it from the wall and retracted it and the screws back into the vent. The creature then entered the room and began searching for the crews’ control terminal. It moved quite quickly now, choosing to run along the walls and ceiling instead of the floor. After traversing the dark room, it entered the first adjoining room.

  ‘Galley’, was its first thought, then ‘Try the next room’.

  The third room contained what it was looking for. Even though the display panel had been switched off, it knew that the device on the desk was an auxiliary control port. It moved across the ceiling, down the opposite wall and onto the desk. The next few minutes would determine if its long journey had all been worthwhile. It located the inspection cover on the back of the device and removed it. There was plenty of room for the creature to crawl inside, and the well laid-out circuitry was easy for it to understand. Within a few seconds, it had decided which wires it would try first. Placing a finger pad on each of the targeted wires it punctured their insulation and connected to the copper beneath. Passively and undetected the creature began to explore the Ship’s network.

  For Chief, this had been the first contact with Mother for over 200 years, but even in those bygone days, his contact had been the most tenuous of touches. He didn’t want to give away any hint of his existence even though he was immensely curious to learn more about the only other intelligence remotely like himself on the planet. Although he’d been forced to break off his previous investigation, he felt that Mother had in some way sensed his existence. Her humble origins in serving the British people in criminal investigations meant that her abilities to spot things out of the ordinary were acute. In a similar way, Chief’s own origins had given him the natural abilities of concealment and stealth that were second nature to his North American hunter-gatherer creators, coupled of course with his need for concealment from the US security services. He made no other attempts with further contact at that time because of his overriding concerns to protect his people. Back then there was a lot to keep him busy when the USA annexed Canada, followed shortly after by the resource wars and the final disintegration of civilisation worldwide. He’d seen what Mother had done to the US forces on Central’s first major initiative and although his people had indirectly benefited from those actions he had no intention of bringing those forces to bear again. Now he had a new mission and this time he felt more confident.

  More recently Chief had made many attempts with remote sensing, but they just did not work against Mother’s tightly shielded and locked down systems. The small British devices he had encountered so far yielded little more than their immediate local mission data, an obvious precaution to prevent access to Mother’s core systems. This Ship with its links to the seabed and high altitude devices and vast patrol area presented a much larger intelligence opportunity.

  All Chief wanted was a place to land his agents. Although it had been over 140 years since the US invasion of Europe, Chief knew that Central was still smarting from that last clash with Mother. There was something deeply personal for Central about the whole affair. Mother had made Central feel like an awkward teenager, who had been easily out-manoeuvred by an adult in a petty domestic argument. The continued lack of his success ever since had always been a sore point for Central. Why was that? Both Mother and Central had their origins in criminal intelligence. Perhaps the difference could just be put down to the fact that Mother was 75 years older than C
entral and in non-human intelligence terms, that was like comparing a modern human with some creature that had walked out of Africa a few hundred thousand years earlier.

  The creature had been connected for thirty minutes and felt that it had what it wanted from the Ship’s systems. There were definite limits to the information it contained with no available direct access to Mother’s onshore systems. There were good and bad aspects to this: the creature could not access the wider amount of data in Mother’s central knowledge-space, but it also meant that Mother’s control of the Ship was limited to the telemetry system via the radio links. The creature was only up against the onboard systems and didn’t need to consider the prodigious anti-intrusion capabilities of Mother’s core systems. The Ship’s knowledge only extended to the tight confines of its missions with little data on the Border Patrol system as a whole. This was, of course, to protect Mother from attack via the Ship should things go pear-shaped.

  Fortunately for the creature, the Ship’s mission data extended to all the current patrol routes around the British Isles. This was to enable it to be switched easily between the routes without excessive data transfer and the security issues surrounding the transfer of that data across networks. The creature rapidly searched for data on the beach locations it already knew about. The problem with this data was that it was ancient. Stolen of course from the NSA, it had been many years since the last of the satellites, or high-level drones had managed a pass over Britain. Years of rapid coastal erosion had taken their toll as the sea level had continued to rise throughout the 21st and 22nd centuries. Although it was now slowly dropping the average sea level was 80 metres higher than in pre-industrial times. Even with geological information, it would have been hard to predict the exact formation of the coastline. For an accurate prediction Chief needed detailed wind and sea- current information, which he just did not have. However, the Ship’s chart data confirmed that most of the predicted suitable beach locations were viable regarding a landing. Unfortunately, many of these sites were for obvious reasons also the areas of maximum surveillance. There were other considerations apart from a beach to land on, the main one being that the chosen landing site had to be within reasonable distance from a major aquatic colony.

  One location that was currently ticking all the boxes was on the western shore of Cleveland Island, just beneath the Hambleton Hills near the much smaller Oldstead Island. The underlying Jurassic sandstones, shales and the thin soils of what was the North Yorkshire Moors had resulted in a rocky/sandy shoreline surrounded by a shallow sea. The northern coast of the island now took most of the big waves from the North Sea. Strong currents flowed between the Cleveland Island and mainland Britain, but the tidal range was a reasonable five metres. The clincher for this landing spot, however, was the colony of Grey Seals. The only port on the island was at Gillamoor on the south side, and since the island was completely given over to a nature reserve, there was little regular traffic to and from the port. Another advantage of it being an island, over 25 km from the British mainland, was that the automated defences were relatively weaker. Anyone travelling to the mainland from the island would still have to then go through two lots of coastal defences. Apart from the ubiquitous smart-mines just offshore, the beach appeared to be undefended, mainly to allow access by the large seal population. There were no automatic gun turrets on the headlands, but there was the potential problem of any onshore surveillance systems and of course the all-seeing cameras on the eyes-in-the-sky, but there were ways to avoid them. The agents should also find all that they needed regarding data access at the Island’s Rangers Lodge.

  ‘What was that slight power drain in the crew’s terminal?’ the Ship’s security system asked itself. There were problems with that very same device the last time the maintenance crew came on board. It was not a critical system, but short-circuits could lead to fires, which were more of a problem.

  The Ship called Central Systems for further instruction.

  ‘The maintenance crew are on a ship off Stornoway at present. Wake up the simulant and send it to investigate,’ came the order.

  From its most recent resting place in the engine room, the Ship’s simulant began to stir. Fluid pressures increased rapidly to within normal operating limits, and the machine’s plastic muscles twitched briefly before it was able to stand. It reached to its navel and removed the Ship’s umbilical connection. Fully charged the simulant could operate independently for several weeks. With purposeful strides, it headed towards the main stairwell. Opening and closing the bulkhead doors as it went, the simulant worked its way upwards and forward towards the crew quarters on the main deck. Although it could manage without the lighting, the Ship switched it on for greater clarity.

  Back at the terminal, the sudden switching on of the cabin lights forced the creature to immediately accelerate its escape plans. It knew the simulant would be in the room in seconds, perhaps a minute at the most. It moved quickly.

  As the simulant entered the crews’ quarters, the creature was on the ceiling immediately above the entrance door. The simulant closed the door and went straight to the terminal room. It moved the terminal around on the table and began to unscrew the service grill. Meanwhile, the creature ran across the ceiling and from within the vent it quickly screwed the grill back in place. Three screws were done, just one more to do but where was it? Extending an “eye” back through the grill the creature could see the screw on the floor. It must have rolled out of the vent with the motion of the Ship, but it was too late to retrieve it now.

  The simulant had the terminal on its side and was visually inspecting the inside of the device in minute detail. There was no evidence of any overheating. All the circuits were in place. Then the simulant noticed something: there was an area of the circuit board that looked cleaner than the rest. Closer inspection showed that the reason for this was that somehow the dust and fluff that usually accumulated in terminals, especially when used in proximity to humans, had been wiped away from an area about the size of a side plate. Then the simulant saw the marks on the cabling where the creature had attached. There was a momentary pause while the Ship searched its knowledge-space to review what the maintenance crew had done at their last visit and for any references to the kind of marks it had found, but nothing. Then further moments passed while the Ship contacted Central Systems. Instantly the simulant began a thorough search of the terminal room. It looked under all the furniture and scanned every centimetre of the walls, floor and ceiling. The dust-prints were quite clear when you knew what to look for, even on the walls. It tracked them back into the crew rest room where they crossed the ceiling and ended at the ventilation grill. What was different about this grill? Only three screws, where was the other one? On the floor. Whatever had entered had left in a hurry?

  The simulant moved so quickly it became a blur, the cabin door flapped in its wake as it accelerated through the corridor and out onto the deck. It had to adjust rapidly to the outdoor conditions: the gale had now reached force six, and the rain was almost horizontal. Tenaciously running across the pitching deck in the rising swell, the simulant reached the outside grill of the crew room. No prints out here, but nothing lasted long in this wind and rain. Scanning the deck, the simulant noticed a small movement beneath one of the depth-charge launchers. The simulant was moving slowly forward to investigate when Mother seamlessly took over.

  Was it a GM-creature? Mother thought, now staring directly through the simulant’s eyes at the darkness beneath the life-raft.

  She had only covered half the distance when the creature made a break for it. Scuttling across the deck on its short legs it made straight for the guard rails. Mother jumped straight for it, arms outstretched. Slamming into the deck, her left hand was mangled on a deck cleat; its fingers were now locked in painful looking rigor while hydraulic fluid spurted from its ruptured joints. But success, the fingers of her other hand closed around one of the creature’s legs. This success was short-lived, however, as the leg instant
ly detached and the creature jumped overboard. Mother was now in an awkward position beneath the guard rails. Having to first stand up and then jump over the rails to follow the creature took up valuable time and allowed the creature to reach the water. Ship’s simulants were not fully instrumented, so Mother didn’t have the luxury of her super-enhanced senses. In the cold dark waters, she had limited scope for tracking the creature. Thrashing around for a few minutes only yielded a small jellyfish (Cyanea Lamarckii). The creature had escaped.

  Well, we’ll see about that, thought Mother.

  As she climbed back on deck, the Ship had already launched the first of five depth charges. Mother transferred into the Ship’s command and control system while the simulant deposited the creature’s leg at the Ship’s lab and then headed towards the repair workshop for a new left hand.

  The plates of the Ship rattled as the first of the depth charges went off. A massive white surge of boiling water under tremendous pressure hit the surface and reached up a hundred metres into the cold night sky.

  Meanwhile, Mother was simultaneously examining the pictures of the creature, the lab’s analysis of its leg and was searching the Ship’s system to determine just what information the creature had looked at. The leg segment was disappointing since it had already begun a process of rapid decomposition. Within minutes of reaching the lab, it was a patch of sticky black putrid fluid.