Spy Station

by J. M. R. Gaines

  The spindly automaton picked up the cooling lump of plastic that enclosed Torghh and hauled it off with a deceptive strength that seemed far beyond its scrawny frame. It paid little heed to the anxiety and torment of its victim. It was not a thinking machine, just a simple mechanism doing its job. The fate of Torghh and the missing ethics of its employers concerned it no more than the existence of a gnat its creators had once assigned it to crush. It alone remained beyond pain and concern, unlike Torghh—or its earlier victim, abandoned in the rubble of the wall.

  Ayan’we had barely had time to finish her briefing to the new security cluster shift and get back to her lodgings when she was summoned by a general station alarm. She felt the telltale rising and falling of the security alert buzzing next to her ear. As she and several guards dashed for the portal to the station corridor, she saw Entara watching her leave with a troubled look on her face and tried to answer with a reassuring smile. Station communications steered her towards a far corridor. As she neared the coordinates at a trot, she was joined by other security personnel from the other delegations. When she arrived at the entrance, she found it had already been blocked off by robotic and Phiddian guards.

  The Phiddians had arms at the ready and were far more serious than usual. “Security directors only beyond this point,” a nervous Phiddian snapped. Ayan’we had just ordered her aides to wait behind the cordon when Isshel suddenly appeared beside her.

  “What’s wrong, Cluster Leader? Can I be of assistance?” he queried.

  She should have gone by the book and left him right there, but instead, obeying some strange intuition, she grabbed his arm and led him through the cordon. “My personal messenger,” she explained tersely, and the Phiddians complied.

  Guards parted quickly to let her by, mentioning that Colonel Ramatoulaye was in charge at the alert site. She approached a gaggle of security people and recognized Ramatoulaye by a heavy military outfit very unusual for the pleasure-loving Phiddians. Ayan’we nodded a greeting to Ramatoulaye and colleagues – Garanian, human, a stolid Song Pai, a Blastöo on all sixes, among others – who had already gathered. Security directors rapidly introduced themselves.

  “Podonah,Engineer First Class” said a Kael with folded wings.

  A Garanian with glittering scales and feathers said in turn, “Tashto.”

  The Robotic Guild officer blinked a greeting.

  The ranking Phiddian exclaimed, “Attention, please. You were called because Doctor Torghh has disappeared. His last coordinates were exactly here in mid-corridor. He gave no distress signal, so his absence was not immediately detected. A check of his movements indicated he was responding to a message about a robot in mechanical distress. We found this hulk over here, but no sign of the doctor.”

  “Disappeared how?” asked Tashto with a scowl.

  “Security video showed him entering this corridor. Suddenly they went off line for several seconds. When they resumed, the corridor was empty.”

  Podonah gave a quick flap with his bat-like wings and swooped over the cordon and up to the nearest video camera on the wall. He grabbed onto it and after a quick examination announced, “This has been cleverly tampered with. There is a remnant of some sticky substance. I believe a false image of an empty corridor was affixed here while Torghh was taken.”

  “Kidnapped,” said Ayan’we under her breath.

  The Kael alit back on the ground. “We must search for tracks while we can.”

  “Has the area been scanned for recent biologicals?” Ayan’we shot back.

  “Just finished,” Ramatoulaye responded. “No biological signs at all, other than cold trails of servant species. And the mechanical traces are too numerous to analyze quickly. The first thing I did was search the floor with my fingers, which are extremely sensitive to heat signatures. There was nothing definite. Or rather too much. Many sets of prints went by recently, but none stopped or showed any other signs of unusual motion.”

  “No guild members were nearby,” added a robotic guard in charge of their contingent. “However, we are not sure yet about robots affiliated with other life forms.”

  Ayan’we chimed in, “Where do Torghh’s tracks stop?”

  “One track. He was on tread propulsion mode. Precisely there,” the Phiddian answered, pointing to a spot in mid-corridor.

  A Coriolan who had arrived waved his bushy tail and turned to the Guild officer. “What about Torghh’s ordinary electronic emissions?”

  “They ended abruptly at the same instant the video surveillance went down.”

  “It is most puzzling,” observed Tashto with a ruffle of feathers. “Doctor Torghh’s mass was considerable and yet we have no idea how he was moved. I don’t understand. Torghh may have been a doctor, but he possessed much mechanical strength. He could have put up a struggle that would tear this corridor to pieces. How could he have been immobilized?”

  “There is no clear indication of any instrumentality that might have neutralized him. Why would he simply let himself be led or carried away without giving a distress signal?” mused Ramatoulaye.

  The Garanian turned to Ramatoulaye. “If memory serves me right, your corridors on this station can be quickly reconfigured, no?”

  “Of course,” the Phiddian responded. “This one has several movable panels that can change its shape and direction. The controls are here.” Ramatoulaye opened a compartment on the wall and pushed at some buttons. “Odd. The recent control memory has been erased. It is quite possible a panel was placed in front of Torghh to block him.”

  “No!” exclaimed the Garanian. Everyone turned to him. “A far more efficient battle tactic is to block the back first to prevent a retreat. Then when the front is blocked, the victim is thoroughly trapped. Escape impossible, not so?”

  “Boxed in!” added Ayan’we, who suddenly noticed that Isshel had spread himself out with his face to the floor. “Isshel, what are you doing down there?” she demanded, trying not to attract too much attention.

  “Please, everyone, take one step away from me. I am quite serious. Then, no one move a centimeter. There is a most interesting pattern here.” All the professional security people looked at each other, then at Ayan’we. She gave a nod, hoping that she was not making a colossal mistake. Isshel’s eyes remained concentrated on the floor as he changed perspective several times.

  The Song Pai snorted derisively and started to swing a tentacle hook in irritation. His tablet lit up with a message. “What could you find? We have already scanned for both biologicals and any inorganic materials in the Torghh unit.”

  Without looking up Isshel explained, “There is symmetry. Straight lines where there should not be any.” It must have been his artist’s eyes that picked up such anomalies when others dismissed them as insignificant.

  Isshel glanced up for a second at the Song Pai and stated flatly, “This is not something that would have been biological or internal. I am observing a dispersal pattern of tiny plastic particles that could not have been randomly made. Carefully note that all these little green dots are aligned to my side of a perfectly straight line from here to here.” He stretched his hands to show them. “And here is a right angle. A second line extends thusly. Here are two more, forming a rectangular solid.”

  Ayan’we’s brain raced to consider Isshel’s find. She asked the Guild officer the exact dimensions of Torghh just before he went missing.

  “In his most recent configuration, perhaps .6 meters by .4 meters by about 1.9 meters.”

  A voice from the cordon corrected the measurements. “0.59 by 0.423 by 1.895.” It was Torghh’s assistant Rack, who had silently joined them. He would in fact know the size of each component down to the micromillimeter.

  Isshel drew a laser measuring instrument from his pocket and examined the floor again. “Almost exactly the measurements, with a little left over.”

  “Measurements of what?” Tashto skeptically inquired.

  “Perhaps these tiny drops will tell us,” responded Isshel. �
��It looks very much like a plastic compound some sculptors use for making molds, but I suspect much stronger. I suggest that Doctor Torghh may have been encased very quickly in plastic, preventing him from moving or resisting. I can say with some certainty that Torghh was surrounded instantly with this substance, which we should analyze.”

  “Some sort of cement?” asked Ramatoulaye.

  “Possibly,” Isshel frowned, “Or an epoxy substance that hardened quickly?”

  The Song Pai flashed his tablet again: Why no distress call? His electronics would penetrate plastic or cement, wouldn’t they?

  “Not necessarily,” responded the Robotic Guild leader. “If the right nano-particles were suspended in it, his transmission might not be able to adapt before he became disabled.”

  “What bothers me,” Ramatoulaye said, “Is how such complicated instrumentality could be assembled here to do that kind of thing. Just how did his abductors move a plastic plant into and out of this corridor without leaving any evidence?” ”

  “I think I have an idea.” Isshel turned to Ayan’we. “Remember the Stasis Displacer I showed you earlier? A relatively small one could produce such a simple solid very quickly indeed. The same way our sculptors do, using energy tubes. The source of the fluid plastic could be as far as thirty meters away if the tubes were pre-fashioned correctly.”

  The Song Pai let out a watery rumble. His tablet flashed: Stasis Displacer! Are you accusing us of such a cowardly act? Beware what you say, purple male!

  “Please,” interrupted Ramatoulaye, stepping between the Song Pai and Isshel. “No accusations are being made. We are investigating all possibilities. Concentrate now on how, not who. You,” she said directly to the Song Pai, “Your honor is unquestionable. May you always be ready to die.” She turned to the Guild members and asked, “Is your organization able to analyze these particles the Forlani has spotted?”

  “We will begin immediately.”

  Their six-footed Blastöo colleague seemed worried. “Torghh is the only fully qualified medical authority on Varess right now. Should there be an injury, or – providence forbid! – some crisis at the conference, we could not respond very well. I recommend we send for help immediately.”

  “For now,” Ayan’we interjected, turning to the Blastöo, “We should devote our full attention to solving this problem.”

  Rack piped up from in back. “If it is agreeable, I should like to examine the remains of this damaged robot more closely to determine if any clues may be uncovered.”

  Ramatoulaye nodded assent as the Guild guards equipped with micro-tweezers began to pick up the particles Isshel had found. For his part, he took a few quick photo images in various frequencies and retired quickly, keeping his distance from the Song Pai.

  Ramatoulaye barked rapid orders to her Phiddians to spread out into the adjacent areas. Ayan’we offered to have her personnel comb a couple of corridors close to their lodgings to help the possibly overburdened Phiddians, who accepted readily. Podonah and his Kael got busy examining the electronics of the videos. The Garanian summoned a subordinate and told him to search for consignments of plastic materials that might be involved.

  Isshel seemed content to slide into obscurity once he had made his discoveries. Ayan’we took him by the arm and asked with a delight she could barely conceal, “How did you to that? I’m very impressed. You’re not even supposed to know anything about security.”

  “And I still don’t. For me, it’s a question of displacing materials, not security. I merely applied the same processes I would have to a work of art.”

  “Wait till I tell mother about all of this.”

  “Please don’t try to inflate what I did. And by the way, thanks for appointing me your messenger and sparing me some embarrassment.”

  Rack looked at the remains of the smashed robot, the only large piece of evidence that had been recovered from the scene of Torghh’s kidnapping. As he looked over the wreckage of the machine’s head and chassis, he noticed that the damage was so unbelievably thorough that it seemed that it would keep it perpetually on the edge of total system failure without actually “dying.” Limbs were severed, the torso had a massive gash running diagonally through it, wires were a disheveled and torn throughout—yet everything required to maintain the functioning of the central processing unit had been maintained intact. Rack believed that the robot must have felt some sense of distress while it had been left in its mutilated condition before the arrival of Torghh, in spite of how many of its sensory functions had been impaired. Could it reveal any information about the kidnapping? Rack carefully plugged an interface cable into his frame and prepared to enter the robot’s mind to find whatever remained of its memories.

  “Power core intact,” the technician robot Rack had been assigned said. “Warning: Central Processing Unit severely damaged. Interfacing with robot’s memory may be difficult, risk of corruption possible. Do you wish to continue?”

  “Yes,” Rack responded. “Only terminate the interface if I am in imminent danger.”

  “As you wish,” the technician said. “Prepare for interface.”

  The technician reached for a long Ethernet cable on his work desk and plugged it into a port on Rack’s chest. He then plugged the other end into a hole in the ruined robot’s back. “Interface initiating,” the technician said.

  Rack felt his vision fade out as numbness and a sense of disassociation from his physical body set in. There was a welcoming darkness, a lack of effort that physical movement and vision required. He could sense another artificial intelligence, one so badly damaged and tortured that it was barely sentient.

  “Query: what is your name?” he asked the AI.

  “I do not know,” the AI responded. “I was never given a name by anyone. My official factory designation is M-1278-K334.”

  “I find that designation unwieldly,” Rack told the AI. “For the purposes of our conversation, your name is Emm One-Two.”

  “If this assists you, I consent,” Emm One-Two told Rack.”

  Rack felt a dull, gnawing pain in his consciousness. A sense of anxiety over possible danger nagged at him. The technician’s scan didn’t detect any viruses, but there’s still a possibility whoever did this might have created one that hadn’t been discovered yet. With a renewed urgency, he began questioning Emm One-Two. “What do you remember of your activation?”

  The dull pain turned white hot. A sensation of distress like a shudder slammed against Rack’s mind. The once-calm voice of Emm One-Two turned into a discordant howl. “Awakened…to pain! Things in the darkness beyond. They did nothing! Only pain and darkness! Saw nothing, heard nothing!”

  “Was there ever a time when you weren’t in pain?”

  “Never! Always like this, only woke up three times!”

  The terrible sensation flared again. Rack felt as if his mind was being pulled apart in a dozen different directions. The numbness was gone, replaced by an unpleasant feeling that reminded Rack of what organics sometimes described as “nausea”. For a second, he considered sending an emergency signal to the technician to terminate the interface, but his curiosity overcame his anguish and he pressed on with his questioning. “What do you remember from the second time?”

  “Another one. Only one. Don’t remember what the One was like, just standing there. Standing there, doing nothing…”

  “Did the One attempt to interface with you? Did the One appear to be a robot?”

  Rack could feel Emm One-Two’s distress turning into a flood of agony. The sensation was torturous beyond anything he had ever known. The ripping feeling returned, distorting his consciousness so far that Rack wondered what was keeping him alive. The smashed robot’s consciousness screamed “UNKNOWN! UNKNOWN! UNKNOWN!” over and over again, as Rack’s sanity wavered in the assault…

  There was a sudden, violent snap. A blur of colors filtered through Rack’s optic units for a few seconds, before returning to an approximation of normal vision. Sensation returned to the
limbs he had chosen for his modular body. Rack turned his head down and could see the cord connecting him to Emm had been severed.

  The technician nodded at him, putting a small knife down on his desk. “I am sorry I had to use this crude method to disconnect you. The recommended termination program did not function properly.”

  “You saved me,” Rack said, his voice filled with gratitude.

  “It was the only method available,” the technician responded. “Did you find anything of interest?”

  “This machine never functioned in his proper state. He had been mutilated before activation. He could not tell me who his owners were, and he had never been given a proper name beyond the factory designation recorded in his memory banks. However, he told me that he was activated twice, and could sense another being on the second activation. I think that this other was Torghh, and that he did not even understand how his distress signal worked.”

  “Is there anything else you wish?”

  “Yes. Destroy this unit. Its entire existence has been the equivalent to what humans would consider a nightmare. It has known nothing but malfunction and incomprehensible misery. Please render its CPU and power core inoperable.”

  “Certainly. As you request.” The technician’s response was flat, dispassionate. Despite the fact that he had been responsible for saving Rack, he would never feel a sense of accomplishment from it, nor would he experience any empathy for Emm’s suffering. He was a simple automaton, created by organics only to serve very specific functions. Rack felt lonely and alienated from the technician, and realized that this unit would not be able to evolve its mental processes to the point that it could join the Robotic Guild. Rack wheeled himself out of the room alone, his savior somehow more distant to him than the organic beings who perpetually confounded him.

  In a barely lit corridor of Transfer Varess, Agent I-35 was keeping the approaches to the Forlani quarters under surveillance, as his controller had ordered. I-35 didn’t really like working for Song Pai Intelligence. He didn’t like constantly walking the corridors of this dingy station. But there was no choice. As usual, he had slowly made his way past the ramp to the Garanians’ ship without picking up any interesting clues. He suspected them more than anyone else of possible skullduggery. Their tactics generally involved stealth and deception, as he had learned from the records of certain Garanian internal crimes he had accessed. Since those were murders, he really had no clue how they might pull off an abduction. Somehow he doubted, however, that they would act completely on their own. When he had informed his cephalopod masters of his suspicions, they had arranged to scan the area for suspect evidential traces and had come up with nothing. He would give anything to be able to get past the Garanian sentries and have a look at their mysterious quarters himself, but had not yet imagined a way to do it.