Bridging Infinity

by Jonathan Strahan

  Then it was time.

  Euclid walked slowly, almost reverently, to the soprano pan at the centre of the stage. Picked up the sticks, just as he had in the simulation room. Looked up at his audience. This time he did not freeze. He played a simple arpeggio, and the audience responded: lighting a wedge of stadium seating, a key for each note of the chord, hammered to life when he hammered the pan. He lengthened the phrase and added a trill. The cohorts followed him flawlessly, perfected in teamwork and technology. A roar came from overhead as the hovering skyboxes cheered on the Mighty Slinger playing the entire stadium like it was his own personal keyboard.

  Euclid laughed loud. “Ain’t seen nothing yet!”

  He swept his arm out to the night sky, made it a good, slow arc so he was sure they were paying attention. Then the other arm. Showmanship. Raise the sticks with drama. Flourish them like a conductor. Are you ready? Are you ready!?

  Play it again. This time the sky joined them. The arc of the Ring blazed section by section in sync with each note, and in step with each cadence. The Mighty Slinger and his cohorts, playing the largest instrument in the galaxy.

  Euclid grinned as the skyboxes went wild. The main audience was far quieter, waiting, watching for one final command.

  He raised his arms again, stretched them out in victory, dropped the sticks on the thump of the Rovers’ last chord, and closed his eyes.

  His vision went red. He was already sweating with adrenaline and humid heat, but for a moment he felt a stronger burn, the kiss of a sun where no sun could be. He slowly opened his eyes and there it was, as Abrams had promised. The real last section of the Ring, smuggled into Earth’s orbit during the interior transits permitted by Venus, now set up in the mother planet’s orbit with magnifiers and intensifiers and God knows what else, all shining down like full noon on nighttime Brasilia.

  The skyboxes no longer cheered. There were screams, there was silence. Euclid knew why. If they hadn’t figured it out for themselves, their earpieces and comms were alerting them now. Abrams-Bouscholte, just hours ago, had became the largest shareholder in the Ring through a generation-long programme of buying out rights and bonds from governments bankrupted by war. It was a careful, slow-burning plan that only a cohort could shepherd through to the end.

  The cohorts had always been in charge of the Ring’s day-to-day operations, but the concert had demonstrated beyond question that only one crew truly ran the Ring.

  The Ring section in Earth orbit, with its power of shade and sun, could be a tool for geoengineering to stabilise Earth’s climate to a more clement range... or a solar weapon capable of running off any developers. Either way, the entire Ring was under the control of the cohorts, and so was Earth.

  The stadium audience roared at last, task accomplished, joy unleashed. Dhaka, Jeni, Kumi and Vega left their instruments and gathered around Euclid in a huddle of hugs and tears, like soldiers on the last day of a long war.

  Euclid held onto his friends and exhaled slowly. “Look like massa day done.”

  EUCLID SAT PEACEFULLY, a mug of bush tea in his hands, gazing at the cold metal walls of the long-sleep hospice. Although the technology had steadily improved, delayed reawakenings still had cost and consequences. But it had been worth the risk. He had lived to see the work of generations, the achievements of one thousand years.

  “Good morning, Baba.” One of Zippy’s great great grandchildren approached, his dashiki flashing a three-dimensional-pattern with brown and green images of some offworld swamp. This Baptiste, the head of his own cohort, was continuing the tradition of having at least one descendant of the Rovers in attendance at Euclid’s awakening. “Are you ready now, Baba? The shuttle is waiting for you.”

  “I am ready,” Euclid said, setting down his mug, anticipation rising. Every hundred years he emerged from the long-sleep pool. Are you sure you want this? Kumi had asked. You’ll be all alone. The rest of the band wanted to stay and build on Earth. Curiosity had drawn him to another path, fate had confirmed him as legend and griot to the peoples and Assemblies of the post-Ring era. Work hard. Do well. Baba will be awake in a few more years. Make him proud.

  They had done well, so well that this would be his last awakening. The Caribbean awaited him, restored and resettled. He was finally going home to live out the rest of his life.

  Baptiste opened the double doors. Euclid paused, breathed deeply, and walked outside onto the large deck. The hospice was perched on the edge of a hill. Euclid went to the railing to survey thousands of miles of the Sahara.

  Bright-feathered birds filled the air with cheerful song. The wind brought a cool kiss to his cheek, promising rain later in the day. Dawn filtered slowly over what had once been desert, tinting the lush green hills with an aura of dusty gold as far as the eye could see.

  Come, Baba. Let’s go home.

  THE LIGHT STATION filled the entire viewpane from the shuttle’s cockpit. It looked like an ancient naval mine tossed into the sea of space, as large as an asteroid. There was a feeling of entity to it – as if its creation had sprung into existence from some natural sideshow in the universe. The meteoric impact on a burgeoning planet, maybe. But in reality it was the impact of human necessity on a fraction of the cosmos. Like a moon, the blinking lights and spinal columns sprouting from the transsteel sphere gave Luis Estrada the cold face of indifference. The entity itself offered no warm welcome, but why should it? This was a place nobody wanted to work.

  Docking was a procedure executed mostly by System, which spoke to his shuttle in the language of comps while Luis tossed chocolate covered raisins into his mouth, hands off the control panel. He wasn’t a pilot, even if he could, technically, fly a transport as elementary as a short-range shuttle. Not that he was licensed, he just knew how – for purposes best left off the job application that got him the interview that eventually sent him here to deep space.

  For a company contracted by the military: Jupiter Construction. A banal name for people that made billions on the backs of shmucks like him. He wasn’t sure which was worse, working indirectly for the military or working for the people who made money off working for the military. The part of his soul that was still close to Earth was naturally suspicious of both, but a man had to eat.

  Truth be told, he hadn’t thought he would get far in the application process since he tended to volunteer detrimental information about himself (something about poor verbal impulse control and a problem with authority), but in this case he’d managed to stay mum. Or Jupiter Construction was desperate. Maybe both.

  He’d just finished his candy when the cockpit announced all clear. System – the overriding intelligence of the light station – confirmed it in a gender-neutral tone of voice. Luis tossed the wrapper onto the cockpit seat, gathered his two bags and met the humanoid AI waiting for him on the dock: the physical manifestation of System.

  “Welcome, Luis,” it said, in the same gender-neutral voice. Bipedal and broad-shouldered, with interlocking white carapaces in place of soft body parts, it was meant to normalize interaction and also provide an extra pair of ‘hands’ should it become necessary in the day-to-day maintenance of the station. He’d been told it was highly nuanced, like an entertainment bot, but that remained to be seen. Even entertainment bots got boring after a short while.

  “Hi.” He looked around at the empty dock. The shuttle was already turning about like some kind of lumbering walrus, preparing itself to return to the ship that had dropped him off on its way toward some other mission (they hadn’t told him, he was just cargo).

  “You may call me SIFU,” the AI said, its vocalization coming from nowhere that Luis could discern. There wasn’t an obvious voice box on the thing, though it had a strip of silver across where the eyes would’ve been on a human. That was the only ‘feature’ on it. Its white multilayered shell pieces gleamed under the high lights, making him squint. He wasn’t used to surroundings that were so damn clean.

  “Is that an acronym for something?” Luis asked S
IFU. Then quickly thought better of it. “Nevermind. It probably is.” Conglomerates, the military, and the meedees loved their acronyms.

  SIFU paused for a fraction of a second, as if processing the comment. But that would’ve taken less time to do, so Luis assumed the hesitation was just politeness. To make sure he’d finished speaking. “I look forward to working with you for the next six months,” it said instead of addressing his comment. “Let me show you to your quarters.”

  “Thanks.” He handed his bags to SIFU and walked beside it out of the dock.

  This was his first stint. Six months to a year wasn’t that long a haul by modern standards – it wasn’t like he was signing over five years to the military – though a deep space assignment with no other prolonged human contact still took some consideration. Or desperation. Nobody clamored for work like this, even if the pay was predictably high. Or, really, nobody well-adjusted clamored for work like this, which went against the prevailing mandate that only people of sound mind could take on a job of this nature. But who, in their sound mind, would want to peel away from humanity for six months – or a year if they renewed the contract?

  He’d met a lifer back on Pax Terra. They were known around the bars as Lagrange Loonies. It had both scared and intrigued him.

  The light stations were entirely automated behemoths in space, but they were too important to leave entirely to computers. Should anything go wrong and System became unable to fix it, it would take too long to send out a human engineering team and it cost too much to employ said team all year round to basically babysit some technology.

  So he was the redundant back up that the Navy Space Corps depended upon to help get their ships through the vast, problematic reaches of space, as well as transmit important communications and celestial updates. Military expeditionary vessels had mapped this yellow star system, of course, but when it came to navigating the cosmos, redundancy was a plus. The EarthHub ‘powers that be’ wanted what amounted to a combination of signal buoy and replenishing depot lit along the lanes, just in case.

  With armament, of course. Just in case a corporate entity other than Jupiter Construction decided to pilfer anything. Like the tech. Luis assumed they were also afraid of cabals less official, because those were beginning to infiltrate the stars as well.

  Still, Luis wondered why a signal buoy and refueling station needed to be so damn large and take months of time and expense to construct? But whatever, it wasn’t like the government – any government – ever had a rep for logic or efficiency. The answers to things like ‘where did the money go’ were above his pay grade.

  As it stood now, Beacon Station MX19 was 85% built. He was here to make sure the rest of it was completed and to monitor the station’s activity. It was a functioning outpost already – at least as a signal station and communications hop point, not for replenishment yet – and he’d have an army of bots at his disposal. So it was now his responsibility to make sure the build ran smoothly. He’d been told he’d meet the outgoing human engineer for a brief, but clearly the woman didn’t think he was important enough to greet at the dock.

  Fine. He supposed he’d better get used to the lack of biological contact. This job suited him because it paid well and he didn’t much like most of humanity anyway.

  “So you’re not gonna freak out at me at the half-way point of my stint, will you?” he asked SIFU, just to test the bot’s nuance.

  “What do you mean, Luis?” said the AI.

  “You know... like in all of that literature and screen. Crazy AI manipulates human and eventually kills him? Takes its minimal sentience too seriously and tries to uplift itself?”

  The hard white face turned to him, silver band reflecting his features in a blur.

  “Of course not.”

  “Just checking.”

  Bantering with AIs could be amusing for the first while, a walk and talk to pass the time through the narrow corridors of a remote station. The sleek sameness all around him displayed a furious sort of impeccability, as if the engineers and designers had gone to great lengths to make the place as pristine and pretty as possible. Not because the ambulatory AI would care, and certainly the disembodied System as a whole had no opinion, but because a pleasing environment psychologically helped the human inhabitant. His eyes landed on lots of soothing pale colors, rounded edges on the archways and corners, and in the wider junctions of the corridors, even plants. Other life.

  “Am I responsible for watering those?” He pointed to a particularly verdant fern perched beside a seemingly random pink loveseat between corridors. Taking care of foliage hadn’t been mentioned in the work package he’d been sent, but then again he’d skimmed some parts.

  “No,” SIFU said. “The plants are fitted with an automatic watering system. Here you are, Luis.”

  They stopped at a wide doorway, equally white. Luis pressed the panel and the doors slid into the wall. The AI followed him in and placed his bags neatly out of the way of feet and furniture.

  It was a generous room, of course. They could afford the space and wanted him to be comfortable. A full kitchen of shiny surfaces popped occasionally by primary colors, a pit group of sofas and cushions in beach inspired blues and beiges, and a hallway that he guessed led to the bed and bath area. Everywhere was cast in tones of bronze, brown, ivory, and butter yellow, with striking shards of various shades of green, maybe to mimic the plants in the corridors. It reminded him of images from Earth – Earth colors. That was probably on purpose too.

  SIFU left him alone and he wandered around the quarters. Not bad, considering his normal flat back on Pax Terra was a quarter of this size and decidedly less well kept. He’d routinely had to clean out that dive with bug repellent. On a station above planet Earth but somehow those damn things still made their way.

  “Living lux.” He fell back onto the tan suede couch. The cushion provided an impressive bounce. It was a couch made to fall asleep on.

  THE BEEP AT his hatch awakened him. He yelled at it to open before realizing he hadn’t voice authorized the quarters yet, which meant he had to drag his body off the comfy couch to manually open the doors. On the other side of the threshold stood a very tall woman with a very pinched expression, as if she’d spent her entire life squinting at a display. The top of his head only reached her shoulder, but that didn’t bother him (he was used to being the shortest man in a room, generally). What bothered him was the way she pushed herself inside his quarters and looked around before looking at him. Did she expect to find something scandalous in here?

  “What’ve you been doing?” Her judgmental tone was both perturbing and unwarranted.

  “Nothing,” he said. “What’ve you been doing? I got here like an hour ago.”

  She narrowed her gaze even further then brushed by him again to get to the corridor. “Follow me.”

  He didn’t bother to hide the annoyed sound he made through his teeth. But he followed her. She walked like someone who’d been trained in combat. It was even more annoying that she made him half-jog to keep up.

  They got into the lev at the end of the corridor. She said, “Control room,” and down they shot.

  He started to yearn for SIFU’s company. Pride or prudence kept his mouth shut, not to give this woman the satisfaction of telling him to be quiet. But then again there was an upside to one-sided conversation.

  “So something they didn’t mention in the employee package,” he said. “There any porn saved in System? I mean, it’s six months and sex toys can only go so far.”

  Yep, combat trained. The look in her eyes said as much.

  “Maybe I’ll just ask SIFU,” he continued. “I take it we’re not allowed to use it for...”

  “Shut up.”

  He smiled at her back as the lev bounced to a stop and the door grated open. He trailed her out. “You got a name?”

  She kept walking one step ahead of him. The corridors here looked the same, minus the plants. “You don’t need to know it. I’ll be gone as so
on as I brief you.”

  “That’s... inconvenient. But okay. I’m sorry your stint here couldn’t teach you some courtesy, maybe allow for some meditative soul-searching –”

  He didn’t realize the deck was no longer beneath his feet until he couldn’t quite breathe. Because she had her hand clamped around his throat and his back to the wall... up the wall. Off the deck. As if he weighed nothing. Or as if she wasn’t quite human. Even with the difference in their stature, nobody without mods should’ve been able to pick him up one-handed – by the throat.

  She let him choke for a few seconds then released him. Made him stagger a few feet away to the other side of the corridor, where he rubbed his neck and coughed. Maybe her arm was bionic, maybe she was some kind of jacked-up vet, but now he wasn’t going to ask. Point taken.

  “Thanks,” he said. Deadpan if not sarcastic.

  She walked off and he fell in behind her, their established dynamic in five minutes. They entered a room at the end of the corridor rather abruptly. The cavernous space filled by blinking black towers screamed WORK at him. He hadn’t even had time to unpack. Nap, yes, but not unpack.

  “This is where you’ll sit,” his friendly comrade stated, pointing to a glassed off booth in the corner.

  Luis stared over there for five seconds then back up to her. “There a HAZMAT suit I should be wearing? Why’s it so separated?”

  “The cube is bullet proof,” she replied, like it was obvious.

  “Bullet proof because...” He paused. She didn’t fill in the gap. “Because there’ll be random firefights by angry ghosts in the empty corridors?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “Because you’re not answering me?”

  She took his arm and marched him inside the protective cage. Half a dozen helio displays that imaged the black towers and various other parts of the station greeted him, floating above a bank of output grids. A single chair on wheels sat in front of the middle display. Clearly this was his designated imprisonment.