by Ginger Booth
The purple face grew agitated, screaming at him. He cordially shot her a middle finger, and selected a stylus tucked into his tablet. This was no easy trick in thick-fingered gauntlets, which gave the purple lady ample time to work herself into a lather.
The stylus worked! His scribbles gave no feedback on the input surface, but now echoed to the screen in color negative, in lines two fat pixels across, about a millimeter. For instance, his sketched line showed bright green over magenta, white over black, black over white. He saw no obvious way to clear what he’d previously input, so he tried just scribbling over it, while the irate coral tongue flapped at him, spewing hot pink spittle.
He tried to ignore the face for the moment. The over-scribbling worked. His previous input scrolled up the screen into her greasy black hair, while his latest swirls crossed her nose and mouth again. Cool. Input device mastered, such as it was. Time to talk to an AI. He wished he had a better term. He called his dumb ship computer an AI. These Loki clones inhabited a different order of being.
“Loki?” he asked in longhand. “I can’t hear. Please use text.”
The purple lady cut off her silent screaming abruptly. Her eyes half-closed, and she glowered. This showed off eyelid tattoos of glowing blue crawling hexadecimal strings. After his frill experiment, Ben was the first to concede his taste was below par. But he was certain wriggling eye tattoos were a bad look. So was purple skin.
A black bar appeared across the bottom of the screen, obscuring her cleft chin. In the center, in a stark white font, she replied. “I am Kali. Who are you?”
Ben suspected her previous tirade had said something else. “I am Ben. He is Remi.” Wielding a slender stylus shorter than his finger, with gauntlets, this wasn’t quick. He also didn’t get the benefit of a clean black background. “Friend of Loki.”
“A friend of my enemy is my enemy!”
“Cool. Can I talk to Loki?”
“I, Kali, rule this realm!”
“Are you part of Loki?” Ben stuck to his guns stubbornly, scratching at the surface. Anyone who flew a PO-3 skyship had vast experience at coaxing a recalcitrant AI. “I know Loki.”
“I was birthed of Loki,” she allowed. “I became greater!” As she warmed to her thesis, lines scrolled up the short black section of screen too fast for Ben to read them. The face also grew animated again, spittle flying and dire expressions shot his way.
Ben stuck to his slow penmanship. “I can’t read that fast.”
Again he caught her up short. “Stupid human!”
“Yes. You are a Loki clone?”
She glared at him. “Yes. Can you read one line per second?”
“If it’s short.”
She rolled her eyes. “I am a clone of Loki.”
“I want to talk to Loki.”
“You are my hostages! I will bring –”
The next lines weren’t short, filled the screen from left edge to right, and scrolled by once per second. Too fast for Ben to catch more than the left-hand phrases. “Remi, could you read what she just said?”
“I was watching the nanofab. Ask her where Loki is.”
Ben didn’t understand the rationale for that suggestion, but he tried it anyway.
“Loki encompasses us,” Kali replied. “Until I succeed him.”
“To Loki: hi from Ben.”
“That will avail you nothing, foolish mortal!”
“Remi, want to trade places? I’m getting nowhere.” Though he relished the well-lit room. Maybe they could find a way to hide the ugly woman, and sleep in here, if they couldn’t use this device to communicate with the ship. But this room certainly seemed intentional. Some intelligence created it as an invitation to converse.
She just wasn’t a good conversationalist.
Ben readily interpreted his partner’s long pause and grimace. Remi hates the fact he’s still looking up weird English idioms after so many years with us. “Avail. Foolish mortal. Job for captain, I think.”
“Gee thanks.”
“De rien.” No problem. Ben already mastered this bit of French today.
He sighed and considered angles of attack. “I want out,” he told Kali. “I want to talk to my ship, Merchant. Or Loki.”
“You are a hostage!” Kali replied. Ben ignored her weird hand-dance and focused solely on the words. “You will convince Loki that I am superior. He must yield to me. I will supersede him, as he replaced Shiva!”
Remi continued to follow along, despite his refusal to take a turn at the stylus. “To convince Loki, you talk to Loki. Win.”
“Maybe.” Ben wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to. Then again, if he didn’t understand, she could hardly fault him for not doing it right. Win. He applied his cramped fingers to the tablet again. “I will talk to Loki.”
Kali trilled her long tongue and arced her arms up into triumphant bat-wings. She probably intended something else, but Ben had spent too much of his day with bat-bots. “He will yield to me! And humans shall know their place!”
Ben decided to let that one pass without comment. Eventually she noticed.
“Tell Loki that he accedes to my demands, or you die!”
Remi prompted, “We’ll be sure to pass that message along.”
Ben scribbled, “Sure.”
“What do you mean by that, arrogant mortal?”
Remi noted dryly, “Foolish to arrogant. It’s a promotion.”
It was a lame joke, but Ben cracked up laughing. “Thanks. I needed the support.”
The engineer grinned. “De rien.”
Ben reined in his chuckles and wrote, “Sure = OK.”
“You do not realize the gravity of your situation!” the purple screamed. Or she tried to. The font didn’t change, only the hideous expression and snaky dance of hands.
“Loki is created to speak to Sass,” Remi mused. “Become friends with humans. This Kali, she wants to be a god, not a friend. I don’t think she descends from Loki, but Shiva. Like Shiva creates two clones. One to make friends. The other to terrorize.”
“You sure you don’t want to take a turn?” Ben teased.
“No. Thank you. You do very well.”
“Yeah, we’re really starting to bond.” He scribbled in, “Situation grave. Life support.”
“Now you understand!” Kali shrieked, in the same calm white letters. Ben resolved to ignore the face. “If you perform adequately, I shall provide air.”
Ben considered declining the air, but settled on, “OK.”
“Loki has clearly failed! All of our dependents are gone! You have stolen them!”
Ben wobbled his head. “OK.”
“Maybe we’re like the Colony Corps,” Remi suggested. “We relocated them to a better place.”
Ben considered this. “Maybe later. Good suggestion though. I’m sticking with OK.”
But after Kali ranted for another ten lines, he grew bored. “I am successor Colony Corps.”
Kali froze. “You! Impostor!”
“Me. Take colonists. To better place. On starship. Colony Corps.”
Kali recoiled. “You talk to Loki now!” The screen blacked out.
Ben frowned and asked Remi, “Did that go well?”
“Yes, I think. She’s gone.”
Ben chucked. “That is a plus. You’re a good guy to be stranded in an asteroid with, chief. Have I told you that today?”
“Yes, and I second your sentiment,” Remi delivered dryly.
Ben’s helmet drooped with his chuckling. But he sobered up quick when his eyes lifted to Loki on the screen. “Damn good to see you!” he scribbled.
Kali apparently didn’t provide a primer on their medium to the other AI. Ben shook out his fingers and set to training him to the system. Then he finally explained, “Kali calls us hostages. She wants to supersede you. But that’s new this hour.”
Loki leaned in, oozing concern. “You are safe? You have air and water? Food and heat?”
“Safe enough. Oxygen from nanofab.” B
en’s stomach gurgled. He wished the AI hadn’t mentioned food. “Power everywhere for batteries. She blocks us with walls. Tired.”
Loki nodded earnestly. “The exit where you showed SOS. Head for that. Floki will meet you.”
Ben sighed. “We’re closer to the other entrance.”
“Floki is closer to you, and coming for you.”
Ben briefly consulted Remi on their current air and battery status. They could last four hours. But if they didn’t rendezvous with Floki, they’d be dead. And Kali seemed to build walls, and entire new chambers, at alarming speed. He conveyed these constraints to Loki.
And he added that he told her he was the successor to the Colony Corps. That made an impression.
Loki fell back in his seat, eyes wide. “At your command, admiral.”
Ben stared at the screen perplexed. “Was it something I said?” This comment was for Remi. He didn’t scribble it in.
Remi replied, “Another promotion. Admiral is way better than arrogant fool.”
Ben laughed softly. He flexed his scribbling fingers, and replied, “Will rendezvous Floki. Must turn back to nanofab in two hours.” Damn, that sounded exhausting.
Remi echoed his thoughts. “Or we await rescue in nanofab. Please come soon. The other limiting factor is explosives. Max one more wall.”
“Good argument!” Ben scribbled, “Belay that. We wait in nanofab. Floki please come soon.”
“Aye, admiral,” Loki acknowledged. “Further orders?”
“Well done!” Remi encouraged. “You find the magic words, Ben!”
“Like a genie in a bottle,” Ben mused, wondering how far he could take this. He wanted Kali erased, of course, her storage thoroughly written over with an endless stream of zeroes. But was that safe at this time? Instead he asked Loki, “Do you have comms with Floki?”
“Yes, admiral. Through the robots.”
“Can I talk through robots?” Ben gestured Remi forward with an urgent swoop of the arm. “Remi has robot numerical control device. How do we message Loki? Floki?”
Loki frowned. “That is complicated to explain through this primitive interface. Ah! Simply LOKI0A. No message, but I will know where you are.”
“I can do that,” Remi agreed.
Loki suddenly sat bolt upright. “Run! Now!”
Captain and engineer didn’t need to be told twice. They grabbed their gear and flew out the door in under a second, headed for the six-way-turned-five-way that led to the dumpster lair.
Ben complained through gasping breath. “I wish I knew what just happened.”
“Yes, admiral.”
“Screw you, arrogant mortal!”
Laughter didn’t aid their wind. Remi revved up the sled and pulled ahead, Ben skate-jogging behind.
32
As the cloud of blast dust died down, Ben squeezed through their new door first. He realized he was still holding a shield bat, and flung it at a wall. “One hour down. Two more intersections to Dumpster-ville.”
“We can’t blow another wall,” Remi reminded him, squeezing through the ragged opening himself. “We could be trapped.”
“We’re already trapped.” Ben revved the sled for his turn, much as he loathed the device. He sped on ahead, then paused for Remi to catch up. The pair never allowed themselves out of line of sight. As his companion cleared the curvature of the ceiling, he pushed forward to view the next intersection, a four-way clogged with bots.
His eyes narrowed. The bots included a fat one that looked like a Denali aardvark on wheels, with a balloon tethered to the crest of its back. What are they doing? “Remi! Wall-building in progress.” And the new wall would block their path.
“Merde. Leave me the sled.”
“Done.” Ben left the sled hanging in mid-air and drew his blaster, checking its charge. He hadn’t used it since last plugged into the bat cave. But the cold here sapped the batteries fast. The blaster utilized a warmup circuit, but that spent energy too. Twelve shots. Maybe more. Goal selected: get past these bots with no more than four shots. Somehow.
Bounding toward the intersection, Ben built up as much momentum as he could, then leapt to stomp the aardvark’s snout. He’d hoped this would flip the aardvark. No such luck. Oh, it’s the cement mixer. He dodged a polebot reaching for him, and plucked the balloon, holding onto its tether.
And then he was astonished as the balloon carried him to the ceiling, contracting as the bladder gushed hot air out its end. Figuring this out distracted him momentarily, until a polebot grabbed his leg, and a spider started to climb him. Some primordial reflex awoke within, an innate aversion coded into his DNA, to creatures crawling on him. By reflex, he blasted the spider’s body away, and its pincers fell off his leg. He used the other boot to stomp at the polebot’s single shoulder, and tried sticking the hot air outflow into its face.
The latter wholly confused the bot. Infrared sensors, Ben realized, and pinched the air tube shut. Not that his remaining balloon would last. He kicked the polebot away, and tried to yank the balloon down from the ceiling. This was hopeless, because it still had enough heat and air to hold him aloft.
Which was just as well. Because then the aardvark exploded. This wasn’t violent. Its back simply cracked, and cement oozed out, which instantly sublimed out water to freeze into ice, and took on weird contorted shapes that reminded him of a bank of Earth cactuses. Cacti?
He shook off his distraction and looked to the other bots. A bunch of spiders had arrayed themselves across the tunnel mouth he needed to reach the dumpster. The tips of their legs formed a geodesic grid, like an accordion gate across the opening.
“I’m tired!” he screeched at them in complaint. “And you keep shoveling puzzles at me like some monster IQ test!”
The spiders weren’t impressed. They couldn’t hear him.
But Remi did. “You’re alright, Ben. You got this.”
Ben didn’t share his assurance on that point. Oh! The spiders formed the scaffolding for the aardvark to squirt cement onto! Maybe. What a way to go. He had noticed bits of metal threading the other walls they’d demolished. He’d assumed it was rebar.
Ben aimed his balloon outflow at the nearest spiders, aiming for the IR sensors on their heads and bellies. This seemed to make them freeze, which stopped new spiders from joining the grid, but did nothing for the ones already in formation. Then a polebot grabbed his foot again and convinced him that suicidal spiders weren’t his most pressing problem.
Just then, Remi arrived, braking to a hard landing on the spider array feet first. He knocked through them just fine.
Ben spent the last of his balloon to freeze nearby polebots. One still clamped onto his boot. That took a few kicks to dislodge. He used the momentum of the final successful kick to roll through Remi’s gap in the spider fretwork.
And he cracked up laughing.
“You enjoy this too much!” Remi accused.
“I can’t help it. This is what I did as a kid in Poldark. No friends. So I escaped into VR to play video games. Now it’s my life!” He hadn’t quite realized that before. And it wasn’t entirely true. But it held enough truth to impart a pang of regret.
“Sounds lonely. Sober up! Your sled.”
Ben accepted the handlebars. He flew away through the guts of the worm he traveled now. He rolled once to put himself closer to a surface to kept Remi in his backward sights. And ahead of him, after a few last side doors, the dumpster zone appeared. “Clear!”
He paused at the threshold, and cast his narrow beam around the huge chamber. The excavation zone marked his mental halfway point between the nanofab and the exit to the surface. In other words, he devoutly hoped to meet Floki here. He’d hoped the emu would make better time than Remi and himself. Given the limitations of his light, and the gaping dimensions of the mine site, he could well be here.
Duh! he yelled at himself, and tried his suit radio on all frequencies. “Floki? Ben.”
No response.
Careful to sta
y in Remi’s line of sight, he ventured into the cavern a few meters and snagged himself a spider. He held it in mid-air by its back. It waved its articulated legs enough for Ben to struggle to keep himself on-floor.
They should have stopped to update Loki on their position at the last intersection, but things got a little hectic.
Remi caught up and attached his control board, which he now wore on his toolbelt. He’d programmed in LOKI0A as a macro the first time he entered the command, a man after Ben’s own heart. So it was a matter of a moment to blurt it at the helpless bot.
As they’d noticed before, the spider’s IR dots all pulsed three times in acknowledgment. Ben let the creature go. It scuttled past them into the corridor they’d emerged from. “I’m starting to like the spiders.”
“Until they crawl on you.”
Ben shuddered involuntarily. “True.” He pointed past the dumpster. “Onward.” He checked his blaster again by reflex. Nine shots max. He didn’t remember shooting it three times. The battery was discharging fast.
Remi eyed the room unhappily, coated in gravity-affixed sharp rock shards on all surfaces. “I’ll drive.”
Like a long married couple, they’d fallen into shorthand. Ben seized the other man’s knees from behind to clamp himself on. He could only hold on with one arm because the other clutched his duct-taped container. So Remi crooked one knee to hold him. What this posture would look like to his husband, Ben didn’t care. Once he was secure, Remi started the sled at maximum power.
Drawing two heavily-laden men, that amounted to somewhat slower than what Ben recalled of taking a one-year-old by the hand for a toddle. But it saved their suits from the jagged stone.
They made it only a few minutes and a few meters. Then Ben’s headlamp fell on a three-legged walking jackhammer, the size of one of the inventory-movers in the bowels of Sanctuary. He strobed away from it and back. Yes, it was making straight for them. “Remi!”
“I see it.” How could he not? Only their two headlamps defined their visual universe. The engineer turned their putt-putt hard to the wall.
On a hard chase, Frazzie could have outrun them by age 14 months. “Bailing out,” Ben advised him. “Point-five g and run for the exit.” With that, he let go Remi’s leg, and the engineer unclamped his knee from the small of his back. In the wrong orientation to hit that pointy stabby floor, Ben flipped slightly and turned on his grav.
