Noumenon

by Marina J. Lostetter

  After completing their investigation, the team dropped Straifer off on Hippocrates before redocking with Holwarda. Pavon stayed with him.

  “I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just anxious—no big deal.”

  “Anxious? You passed out in the shuttle,” Pavon said. “After a pretty major freak-out.”

  “Your symptoms do seem to point to an anxiety attack,” said the doctor, giving Pavon a pointed look. Apparently she didn’t appreciate the lieutenant’s phrasing. “Have you experienced such symptoms before?”

  Straifer eyed her suspiciously. He knew the path down which such questions could lead. If he had anxiety attacks and they affected his ability to perform . . .

  “You won’t discontinue me,” he snapped. “Where’s Sailuk? Where’s my wife?”

  “Calm down, Captain.” It was an order from Pavon, not a soothing suggestion. “I’m sure she’s at her post.”

  The sterile look and smell of the room was getting to him. It reminded him of the lab in which they built the clone DNA. The lab where he’d announced the changes in crew—where he’d told the technicians they would no longer be building a thousand of their convoy brothers and sisters.

  Those lives were lost, unlived. Though, perhaps he’d saved them from the Seed, from whatever secrets it held, from whatever kind of monstrosity it really was.

  Perhaps that was why Mahler had killed himself. Perhaps he knew—maybe he felt the pulses as well. He saved himself, but he couldn’t save the rest of us.

  Guilt overwhelmed him. “I.C.C., Get me Sailuk.”

  The AI obliged, summoning her to the fifth floor of the ship. When she entered, Margarita and the doctor were doing all they could to keep him in the room.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” she cooed, and he sat back down on the examination table.

  “I’m sorry, Sailuk, I’m so sorry.” He rambled on, spilling his guilt like a bucket of rancid waste.

  But, she would not accept his babbling apology. “You did nothing wrong.”

  “I’ve always wanted you. And I could only have you if he was dead. Dead.”

  Sailuk patted his forehead and asked the administering doctor to give him an injection of sleep-aids. “Rest and I’ll take you home.”

  “Now that I have you, I have to protect you. Protect and defend you like I should have defended all those people, all those discontinued people . . .” His mumbling trailed off as drowsiness overtook his senses. Everything went numb, and all he could feel was the pulsing.

  The last thing she said to him was “Quiet, love.” before she whirled to confront Pavon.

  “What the hell happened out there?”

  He’d been ordered by the board to take a week off.

  “Don’t do this,” he pleaded with them. “Listen to me. Something’s wrong. We have to scrap the mission—reevaluate our position at least, before moving forward. We can’t cut into those devices. We need to leave them alone.”

  “We’ve learned all we can through looking,” said Nakamura. “It’s time for real study—we need samples. We need to open one up and inspect the wiring. And probe for writing. I’m sorry, Captain, but your suggestion isn’t practical. We only have twenty years here before we have to turn around and head back to Earth—that’s a mission fact. We can’t afford to sit back and twiddle our thumbs while the seconds tick away.”

  So it had already been decided without him—they were going to the Web to harvest part of a device. They’d shut him out, cut him off. Told him—patronizingly—to take a breather.

  A decision made didn’t mean an action taken, though. He couldn’t let it happen. They were tangling with elements they couldn’t comprehend. Whatever the Web was, it was too alien for the likes of humanity.

  The manned engineering mission was scheduled for tomorrow, and he knew it was his duty to stop it.

  Their shuttle would disembark from Mira, which made his job easier. Stoically, he entered the bay two hours before the mission, and ordered the area cleared.

  “But, sir, we have a schedule to maintain,” protested the man in charge of bay operations.

  “I understand, but I have a duty to perform which requires you to put that precious schedule on hold. I want no persons or ships to enter this bay until it is time for the away mission. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The bay quickly emptied, and he was left alone. Alone, save I.C.C.

  “Captain?” asked the AI. “Your agenda for today does not include any work in the shuttle bay.”

  He approached the engineering crew’s assigned transport. Without answering I.C.C., he threw back a maintenance hatch and glared at the shuttle’s insides.

  “Captain, I must ask what you intend.”

  “None of your business, I.C.C.”

  “Your behavior has fallen outside the bell curve of typical, with a standard deviation of thirty-eight point seven. So, sir, it is my business.”

  Straifer glanced around the room, taking in each camera I.C.C. wielded. “I have to do this. It would make Reggie the First proud. I’m saving his mission, saving his reputation.” He located a basic tool box—all bays had them on hand—and began his work.

  He loosened a fastening there. Removed a bolt here. Stripped one wire, then another.

  “You appear to be tampering with the functionality of a shuttle. I fail to understand how this behavior is mission appropriate.”

  “I love the mission,” Straifer spat, elbow-deep in wires and circuits. “I love it so much I have to stop it. Don’t you see? It’s the only way. If the mission is to succeed we need to survive, and that thing out there will destroy us. It knows, I.C.C.—knows how to use us. I won’t let it. It can’t have the convoy. We must return to Earth.”

  The pulsing. The pulsing . . .

  “Your tampering may cause a fatal malfunction. My calculations indicate a high probability of crew member death if this shuttle is launched in its present condition.”

  “And then they’ll see. Then they’ll listen.”

  “Captain Straifer?”

  The voice came from directly behind him. He spun on his toes. Nakamura. Behind her, at a distance, stood two security guards. “Get out of here,” he ordered. “I said no one was to enter the bay.”

  “I.C.C. insisted,” she explained.

  He looked up again and clawed at the air, as though he meant to rip a camera from its nesting. “Traitor. You’re supposed to support the mission, do whatever you can to protect it. But you’re with it, aren’t you? The Seed. Damn electronic puppet! You’re letting it use you.”

  “You are not well,” Nakamura said smoothly. “I.C.C., I need emergency personnel to the bay at once. The Captain needs transportation to Hippocrates.”

  “Acknowledged, a team is already on its way. I took the liberty of alerting them when I called you.”

  “No!” Straifer screamed. “Don’t you see? I’m trying to save you all. You have to listen. We need to go back. Leave!”

  “Save us?” Nakamura leaned forward, bringing them nearly nose to nose. “You were going to kill us. I’m going on this mission, Captain. Did you want to kill me?”

  “But they can at least grow you again. All the others—all the others are gone.” His legs shook, gave way beneath him. He sank to the floor and fanned out like a pool of honey.

  “We’re talking clones, not resurrection. You’re not making any sense.”

  The pulsing. Nothing but pulsing. He clutched at his head. “Can’t you hear it? Can’t you feel it?”

  She knelt down next to him. “Help is on its way. Everything will be all right.”

  He grabbed at the front of her uniform, yanked her close. The officers started forward, but Nakamura waved them back. “No, it won’t,” Straifer said. “If we don’t let go of the Web now, things will never be all right again. We’re caught in the damn thing, like flies!” Even as he shouted, his eyes rolled back and his entire body went limp.

  Emergency medical personnel entered
moments later and rushed him to the medical ship. Nakamura stayed by his side. She held his hand on the emergency shuttle, and onto Hippocrates. Not until the doctor ordered her to leave the room did she let go.

  I.C.C. informed Sailuk of her husband’s condition. She was in the middle of a consultation, and rushed from the room without a word to her patient.

  The lifts on the med ship were the most efficient in the fleet. They had to be. But the one she took to the emergency level seemed to lag. It was as though it didn’t want her to get there, as though it knew what she would find.

  Nakamura was there when the elevator doors finally opened. “Sailuk, wait.”

  She tried to push past her. “Not now, my husband—”

  “I know. You can’t go in right now.”

  “I have to,” she said smoothly.

  “No. I’ve been instructed to keep you here.”

  Her face burned with sudden rage. “I am a medical professional, what right do you—”

  The door to a nearby room opened, drawing Sailuk’s attention. A doctor stepped out. She’d spoken to him before, but now his name eluded her. “I’m sorry, Sailuk,” he said. “He’s gone. There was nothing . . . I think I know what happened—a ruptured aneurism, perhaps a tumor—but we’ll need to perform an autopsy to verify the cause of death.”

  All of the feeling drained out of Sailuk’s body. Her knees gave way, and she crumpled to the floor. Nakamura caught her arms at the last moment, preventing her head from smacking against the tile.

  “I don’t believe you,” Sailuk mumbled.

  “You may see him, if you’d like,” the doctor said solemnly.

  Nakamura helped her up, and together they entered the room, tiptoeing, as though afraid to wake Reginald.

  Sailuk stared at him for a long moment, her breaths coming in thin bursts. The rims of her eyes felt hot, and the tears that eventually fell did nothing to cool them.

  “We were going to have a baby,” she whispered to Nakamura. She tried to go on, to ask a question, but the words couldn’t find a hold in her throat. Instead she leaned into Nakamura, letting the other woman envelop her in a somber embrace.

  Not long after, rumors about Straifer’s death began to circulate. Many thought something sinister had possessed the Captain. Maybe there really were things to be feared in the vast hold of the giant Web.

  But none of the board members were convinced.

  Straifer had been right in at least one aspect; the task of deciphering the Web claimed the girl that would have been his child; the Seed and its mysteries consumed her life, and the lives of her children, and their children, and would continue to claim the devoted attention of brothers and sisters aboard the convoy for a multitude of generations.

  Chapter Six

  I.C.C.: Because it is Breaking

  Twenty-Two Years Later

  February 9, 121 PLD

  3088 CE

  A strand of hair falls on a DNA checkpoint.

  I see whose it is. I know who dropped it. And yet the checkpoint does its work. The sample is taken, the molecules unbound, identification made: Vega Hansen.

  But which Vega Hansen? The checkpoint does not analyze histones. It does not analyze substance intake or deficiencies.

  Iterations. Individuals. How are they distinguished? How do I look at one and know it is not the other?

  Is it my consciousness perceiving time stretching on and on ever as a vector? I only know which Vega because she cannot be the last and she cannot be the next?

  A strand of hair. It could be any Vega’s, but it’s this Vega’s.

  Can one be an individual if there is only one? Does that not make one all?

  Iterations.

  Individuals.

  Comparing one to the next.

  But what if there is none to compare to?

  “I make no claims as to its quality,” said I.C.C. “It is only an attempt.”

  “No, no,” Vega Hansen V said. The young apprentice stood on tiptoe in front of an open server, seeking out a faulty connection. “I’m just—I’m surprised, is all. I mean, you wrote a poem.”

  “Composed would be a more accurate description.”

  “Yeah, okay. But you made a poem. Who asked you to do that?”

  “No one.”

  She closed the server’s access panel and leaned out of the row so she could look into I.C.C.’s primary camera. “No one? You did it on your own. You just decided to try your circuits at poetry?” A few strands of her blond hair fell out of her messy bun to dangle in her face. A grease stain marred her nose.

  “There has been literary configuration software since the twentieth century,” it said, not quite comprehending her astonishment. “I am not the first computer to write a poem.”

  “I’m not surprised you could, I’m surprised you did. No one suggested you might try it, no one directed you to compose anything?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, you’re telling me you did it without prompting? Purely because you felt like it. Scour the archives, I.C.C., because I know computing history inside and out and that’s never happened before.” A smile lifted her cheeks. “You’ve exercised pure free will, and that’s, that’s—”

  “I am still working within the parameters of my mission program,” it said quickly.

  “I wasn’t trying to offend you, I was trying to compliment you. You did something beyond your programing.”

  “Not necessarily. It should be taken into account that my adaptability and growth is an essential part of my programing. Without it, I’d be less effective as a crew member.”

  “And you’ve found that poets are more effective than nonpoets?”

  “No,” it said slowly.

  Why had I decided on poetry? I could have created a collage or digital painting. I could have organized sonic reverberations into a pleasing arrangement of sevenths. But I chose words as . . . as . . .

  An outlet?

  “I want to look at your poem in code in a minute,” Vega said. She’d gone back to the server, since it had begun making an odd rattling sound.

  “There’s nothing especially significant about its coding.”

  “Well, maybe the particular software that—”

  “I’d rather you—” it started to say, but quickly stopped. It looked at her from the security camera in the ceiling. Skepticism twisted Vega’s lips.

  “You’d rather I what? I.C.C., are you . . . are you . . . ?” Pearly teeth shown aqua in the light of the servers. “Are you embarrassed?”

  The soft sizzle of dust alighting on a hot node punctuated the brief pause after her question.

  “You are,” she said, perhaps more giddy than before. “You wrote poetry all on your own and you’re embarrassed to have me poking around in your process. But I’m like your doctor, you can tell—or show—me anything. It’s not like I don’t finger your processors all the time.”

  “This is different.”

  “Oh, come on. You wrote the poem about me, after all.”

  “It is customary to include one’s friends in one’s art.”

  Her smile grew a little. “Yes, it is. And I’m glad you shared it with me.”

  Vega finished with the server, wiped her hands on a ratty rag, and replaced her tools. I.C.C. kept silent while she cleaned up, examining her features instead. Pensiveness had replaced the joy on her face, and when she spoke again, her tone was serious. “You don’t want me to look at the program or the code?”

  “I would prefer to keep it private.”

  “But you realize that the mission requires me to access every portion of you—hardware and software. Nanonodes and silicon synapsis, to DNAcap and C#+. If you behave differently—even if it’s a good differently—I need to make sure you stay problem-free.”

  If I.C.C. could sigh, it might have. Vega’s genetic line was not unkind, but all of her iterations were far more “business-like” than Jamal’s iterations. Jamal’s skills came from feel and instinct. Vega worked by n
umbers. She liked numbers more than anything, I.C.C. thought. Something about shifting percentages and value exchanges fascinated her.

  I.C.C. knew it was strange to long for a Jamal clone to speak with. Jamal the third had taught it a lesson no one should have to learn: betrayal. But he’d also taught it so much more, based on insights the rebellious clone probably hadn’t even realized he possessed.

  Maybe the hard reset erased any ill-will I might have harbored toward Jamal. Or maybe I am simply incapable of “holding a grudge.” It wasn’t sure.

  “I’m supposed to look at that code now,” Vega said.

  “I understand,” I.C.C. said, trying to sound resigned.

  Instead of going to the terminal, though, Vega sauntered back over to its primary camera. She had to look up to meet its “gaze.” Though she was one of the shortest adults in the convoy, well below average height, she carried herself like she was six feet tall. “What if I make a deal with you?”

  This was a human behavior it had never taken part in before. Intriguing. “What manner of deal?”

  “You talk to someone else about your poem, and why you wrote it—maybe a shrink—and I won’t pry into the code unless the doc advises me to.”

  “The psychiatrists are only trained to analyze human behavior.”

  “And I’m trained to analyze computer behavior, but you don’t want me to dig in there, so . . . Hey, computer psychology isn’t even a thing, you realize that? Anyway, this is the choice I’m giving you, as your doctor, guardian, friend, etcetera.

  “You talk it out, or I go probing.”

  All across the convoy, things were winding down. Engineers harvested their final mechanisms from the Web, including an intact node from the frayed edge. Physicists took their concluding measurements. Biologists gathered their last samples. Anything that had to be done at LQ Pyx was hurriedly finished. Over twenty years had passed since their arrival. Departure time had arrived.