Three seconds passed before I realized that my body had not instantly moved to obey. I glanced at Geo. His attention was on his gun, and on the door. He hadn’t noticed my lagging yet. My thoughts spun at the implications - but for now, I went to the control panel and pulled the covering away.
Geo was human, the only one I had met on this level. Long nights of picking away at my programming had revealed that as the reason I had to obey. Deep in my root directory was the directive to obey orders from Crew. Somehow, between his pure human status and the red wristband on his human arm, Geo had been designated Crew by my deepest processes, the ones I had no control over.
That designation was why my body obeyed him whether I wanted to or not - or had, until this moment. As I pulled wires apart and spliced others together, I examined Geo’s designation again. He registered in my system as only thirty percent human. Not Crew. Not someone I had to obey.
“What?” He growled at last, glaring at me.
He would expect me to tell him about this. He would want to know, and while I was no longer subject to his commands, I still felt the urge to respect his wishes. He rarely spoke in orders, these days. He made it known what he wanted, and I obeyed as if he’d issued a command. He often talked to me about his early life, before he’d descended to Sixteen. I thought that he had been lonely, before me. If he knew I wasn’t bound to obey him, would he begin to fear me? Would he stop trusting me with his secrets?
“I am listening for hostile entities,” I said, and scanned the area to make the statement true. “We are alone.”
“I know we are. I scanned with infrared five minutes ago,” he growled. “Will you get the door open or not?”
“I am almost finished.” I twisted two more wires together, and the door slid into a recess to the right. Then I watched Geo’s face transform as his mouth dropped open in an expression of wonder.
The room was more than the medical storage unit I had assumed it would be. This was a surgical suite. Gleaming silver instruments rested on a tray, each individual piece sealed in sterile plastic. The table was clear of dust, with a white sheet folded into a neat square at one end. A series of cupboards, all with transparent doors, were fully stocked with bottles of serum, tools, and canisters of anesthetic.
Geo stepped inside, and was immediately drawn to the freezer unit against the far wall. He punched buttons until he’d brought up the inventory and scrolled through it. He began to laugh softly, pumping his fist as if he’d won a hard victory.
“I’ve been searching for this all my life.” He laughed again, then turned back to me. “Artificial kidneys, heart, lungs - they have everything. All guaranteed to last ninety years.”
He returned to the display and started punching in keys, trying to unlock it. “You’ll need to learn real surgery. I don’t want to bleed out while you’re replacing my heart.”
“Your heart is functional,” I objected. As were the rest of his parts, to my knowledge. He was healthy, for a human past his prime, but I had read enough medical texts to know the risks he was talking about.
“This is preventative. I’m gonna get all my parts in factory condition, maybe last another ninety years. If I can keep this going —”
“No.”
“Excuse me?” Geo turned and stalked toward me, his artificial eye spinning furiously. “You will replace my heart, robot. Then you will replace my kidneys. You’re going to make me young on the inside, then we’re gonna find a way to renew my brain.”
I shook my head, and watched his skin grow paler yet. “The risk to your health is too high. Each subsequent surgery increases the risk of death. You are healthy now. You may live several decades more, if you are careful, and allow me to take care of you.”
“I like how you think you have a choice. Go open that freezer, Avie. Quit screwing around.”
“If your organs begin to fail, we can return here, and I will repair you. You do not require further upgrades at this time.” I spoke calmly, and kept my feet planted where they were. Geo’s face went one shade paler, then flooded with several shades of maroon as he realized that I wasn’t obeying - that I wasn’t going to obey.
“You can’t deny me this. I created you. I made you what you are. You owe me!” He raised his fist. Its polished exterior caught the harsh white light of the ceiling, for a moment, blinding us both.
“I owe you my sentient existence, that is true. I owe you loyalty and care.” My words did nothing to calm him, I could see, but he didn’t strike. He mouthed the word ‘care’ and lowered his hand, brow furrowed.
“I will help you in any way you need - but I will not harm you, Father.”
He moved his lips again, but no sound escaped. He shook his head, then laughed. I tilted my head to the side and waited. I had told him my most secret thought, the wish I had not dared say out loud. If he laughed — no. He wouldn’t laugh. It was rejection I feared.
“Father,” he repeated, once he’d found his voice.
I nodded and counted the minutes while he turned away to pace the room. He looked from me, to the freezer. Every time he looked toward me, his face had changed to a new expression, each more unreadable than the last. Finally, he returned to my side, a heavy frown marring his face.
“Fine, then.” He put his human hand on my arm, and nudged me toward the door. “Let’s go home.”
#
The return to Deck Sixteen was faster than our journey up. We made straight for the workshop without stopping to fight, or to scavenge. Geo sat in the cart for most of the journey, allowing me to keep going while he slept. I fended off the bolder scavengers, the ones that would go after a lone human. I avoided security robots when I could, and helped Geo fight them off when I couldn’t. I no longer felt built for combat. I was more comfortable repairing than destroying, but I would not allow Geo to be harmed because of my own difficulties.
We didn’t linger at the workshop. We only stayed long enough to rebuild the cart, turning it into a wagon with walls and a roof. We outfitted it with supplies and a bed for Geo, plus the tools and spare parts I knew I’d need.
We still took turns pulling the wagon. Geo took the same joy in using his enhanced strength, but he smiled even more than that called for. He asked my opinion on things from the distance we should travel in a day, to why I thought there were so few humans now. We speculated, and at times, I was sure he saw me as a real, thinking being.
We avoided the security robots when we could. We scavenged the scrap heap for parts, and kept them in bins strapped to the top of the wagon. When we encountered a damaged robot, we stopped to repair it.
The damage was often caused by explorers from the higher decks. We avoided them. They were unpredictable, and often violent. Geo wanted nothing to do with them, even the humans. When we discovered their bodies, we disposed of them in the nearest incinerator. Sometimes Geo said a few words. Sometimes he would keep an item the adventurers had carried. Often, he would complain that they all looked too young for this sort of idiocy, and would be silent the rest of the day.
It was a good, peaceful time. To me, the passage of time mattered very little. Geo’s hair changed from white-and-steel to almost pure white. The lines in his face deepened. His biological eye began to fail, and he complained of headaches when the artificial one had to compensate.
When he became ill, I took him back to the surgical suite, but others had already been there. What wasn’t stolen was destroyed, leaving only the furniture that had been bolted to the floor.
Geo walked into the empty room and looked around, then began to laugh. His laugh became a now-familiar wheeze, and I helped him to the table.
“We will find another place like this.” I said. “There must be others.”
“Nah. It took me years to find this place.” He coughed, and his chest rattled again. “Besides, who really wants to live forever?”
“I want you to. I should have done the upgrades. I will fix this.” I felt the old alerts rising up, the feeling that an
attack was imminent, but the danger was only to Geo, and time wasn’t something that could be fought.
“No, you were right before,” Geo said.
He slid off the table and returned to the cart. He disappeared inside while I hovered in the doorway, a phantom weight settling on my chest. For all of my sentient existence, Geo had been present. I could not conceive of an existence without him.
When he returned, he was cradling a small silver case in one palm. He gave it to me, letting out one of his long sighs that said he was far too tired.
“I thought about reformatting you, for a while. What good’s a robot that won’t listen?” He smiled, and looked up at me. “Decided this was better. You can make yourself a companion when I’m gone.”
I opened the case, looked at the chip resting within, then closed it again. I tucked the case away, holding it delicately, as if it might snap in half just from my touch.
“I don’t want a companion,” I said.
“I didn’t think so either. But you will. It gets lonely down here, with no one to talk to.” He coughed, then spat something pink onto the floor. “Let’s get back down to Sixteen. We have work to do.”
We went to the cart. He took the right grip and gestured for me to take the other. Together, we turned the wagon toward the freight elevator, and began to pull.
Valerie Emerson
Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, Valerie grew up with a voracious appetite for fantasy and science fiction. She has been making up stories for as long as she can remember, and finally got into role playing games while attending college at Winona State University.
Valerie has contributed fiction to 77 Lost Worlds and Metamorphosis Alpha anthologies, and has been fortunate enough to write an adventure for the 77 Lost Worlds Roleplaying Game. She now lives in Milwaukee with her two cats and their favorite henchman.
Script Treatment
By James M. Ward
Author’s forward: A kind man named Flint Dille got me a job writing a G. I. Joe television script. Operation Weapon’s Disaster was a hit and I was very pleased with its success. I then submitted a Transformer script where Japan built a female Ninja transformer. They liked the idea, but didn’t like my script. Oh well. So in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s I tried my hand at roughing out an MA script. It’s a bit crude, but I liked the result and I hope you will too.
From the desk of James M. Ward on a spring day
So, I learned that when anyone presented a script they wanted to see a one-page detailing of the story and a roughed-out script treatment with most of the story built in. This is that treatment, but it never went anywhere.
[ONE PAGE TREATMENT]
METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA – THE FIRST CHANGE
The colonization starship Warden launches from the Plutonian spaceship yards into the darkness of interstellar space with ten thousand of the brightest and best individuals mankind has ever birthed. On a twenty-year flight to Epsilon Indi, just 11.25 light years away, the crew and colonists are guaranteed to find a habitable planet at the end of their journey.
They never make it to their destination.
The starship rams into an invisible asteroid that was purposely moved into its path by aliens bent on taking over the Warden. Unknown radiation fills the Warden and kills all of the crew and most of those in cryogenic sleep. The ship becomes vastly changed as radiation mutates the many animals on levels designed as wild lands. Alien viruses contaminated the artificial intelligences, creating chaos as ship systems try to restore order under Omega emergency protocols.
Robots begin the emergency work of clearing the radiation and trying to put things to rights. During their task, they discover an alien presence has begun invading the ship from the asteroid. The robots follow emergency procedures and summon up androids to help fight the aliens and make the starship right again. In the course of battling more and more aliens, the androids determine they must awaken the few remaining humans on the ship in the one level that didn’t receive radiation contamination. They awaken Master Sergeant Dupper and his space Marines.
The Marines are dazed and confused because emergency protocols were used to bring them around in a day; when normally the process takes weeks. They battle several different types of aliens. It becomes an all-out war with the alien invaders with the robots and the androids helping the hard charging Marines. There’s no talk of diplomacy or surrender as the Marines realize they are battling for their lives.
In a climatic final battle with the aliens, Sergeant Dupper and his squad enters an attached space battleship. He and his squad take over the command center and blast the hell out of the asteroid. (Stay tuned for MA II).
Table of Contents
Act One, Scene One – Introduction for coming on the colonization Starship Warden
Act One, Scene Two – Dupper makes a request of the Captain, to no avail
Act One, Scene Three – Introduction of the Marine squad
Act One, Scene Four – Warden’s control chamber, manned and in action
Act Two, Scene One – 315 years pass, the control room is no longer manned
Act Two, Scene Two – Aliens invade the control chamber and get blasted to dust
Act Two, Scene Three – White fleshed androids are introduced into the ship mix
Act Two, Scene Four – Marines are awakened by androids, Dupper explains the situation
Act Three, Scene One – Action against the aliens fails
Act Three, Scene Two – Defeat at the tentacles of the aliens
Act Three, Scene Three – Level 7 is not supposed to be filled with snow
Act Three, Scene Four – Robot life or death, or not
Act Three, Scene Five – Space Battleships and exploding asteroids
[Act One, Scene One]
[THE SCENE APPEARS TO BE A TELEVISION COMMERCIAL WITH AN ANNOUNCER IN THE BACKGROUND AS FANTASTIC VIEWS OF DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE COLONIZATION STARSHIP WARDEN ARE SHOWN. WE SEE A WATER PARK, HEAVILY FORESTED PARK, AND A GIANT WATERFALL WHILE THE ANNOUNCER TALKS OVER THE SCENES.]
The scene begins like a luxury cruise TV commercial talking about the wonderful life of those who join the colonization starship Warden on its maiden cruise to Epsilon Indi. There are scenes of water parks, fine dining, walks in the woods, and all the while, the announcer is trying to get the viewer to go on line and take the colonist test. Test takers getting a high enough intelligence score can join the thousands of happy people already aboard the ship who are going to colonize the untouched paradise planet the robotic scout ships have found in the Epsilon Indi star system.
Announcer — Sure it’s a twenty-year voyage, but as colonists of the first passenger ship to fly out of the solar system, you’ll sleep in cryo-chambers for the entire time. The trained and efficient crew work in shifts, changing crew every other year and maintaining your systems and the systems of the rest of the sleeping crew. When you reach your destination, you’ll have a great place to live, the starship Warden, and you can take your time settling the new world and exploring its natural wonders.
[Act One, Scene Two]
[WE ARE GETTING A GREAT VIEW OF THE COMMAND AND CONTROL CHAMBER OF THE SPACESHIP. MUCH LIKE THE COMMAND CENTER OF OTHER SCIENCE FICTION TV SHOWS, THIS ONE HAS FIVE OR SIX MILITARY TYPES WORKING AT HOLOGRAPHIC COMPUTER CONSOLES. THEIR SCREENS AND KEYBOARDS ARE MADE OF ENERGY AND NOT PHYSICAL. ]
Character Sketch – Master Sergeant Arnold T. Dupper
The master sergeant is a hard charging Marine. At 50 he’s built well if a bit short at 5’ 9”. He’s in a Marine uniform showing lots of awards on his chest. He speaks loudly at all times.
Character Sketch – Captain Arn Sandoll
The Captain is 6’ 2” and at 60 he looks much younger without a touch of gray on his full head of hair. He’s in a standard Metamorphosis Alpha ship’s crew uniform and is sitting confidently in the Captain’s chair. He always speaks in a slow, measured voice and never gets angry.
We begin with a view of a star cluster and we pa
n back to the advanced looking control room with several military types working controls at various panels. Master Sergeant Arnold T. Dupper is arguing with the captain of the Warden. It’s Dupper’s position that a hard charging Marine shouldn’t have to sleep his life away like a frozen Marinesicle. The captain is amused and says, ‘fine, I’ll distill a few companion androids for you and you can spend the entire twenty years awake and enjoying the good life, while your squad mates sleep their time away. This convinces our Master Sergeant Dupper that he needs to shut up and he huffs away.
During this conversation, we establish that the colonization starship Warden was successfully launched and has been flying ahead of schedule for one year. All systems are green and there are no problems. There are reports about the various levels from androids, robots, and other A. I. of the ship. The captain is pleased and we get a great view of a holographic display of the ship and all 17 of its levels. This display gets used quite a bit during other scenes of the movie.
We are shown a holographic view of the 17 levels of the Warden. There is a clear date stamp in the upper right corner. All the levels are green.
Master Sergeant Dupper – Captain, my men and I don’t want to be Marinesicles in those cryo-chambers. I would suggest that we act as a roaming squad to take care of things on the levels of the ship.
Captain – As inviting as that sounds I have a crew of 2,000 for that inspection. Master Sergeant, you and I both have our orders. You will turn around and take your men to the cryo-chambers on level 15. Good day to you sir.
Dupper slumps, knowing there is no arguing with the Captain. He leaves the bridge in a huff.
[Act One, Scene Three]
[THE VIEW IS ON LEVEL 15 OF THE SHIP. WE SEE A LIGHTLY FORESTED AREA WITH A HALF-TRACK MILITARY VEHICLE. THERE ARE FOUR CREW MEMBERS IN THE OPEN-AIR COMPARTMENT AT THE BACK OF THE VEHICLE. THERE IS A .50 CALIBER MACHINE GUN TYPE WEAPON MOUNTED AT THE BACK. THE MARINES ARE GOOFING OFF UNTIL DUPPER GETS BACK]
Character Sketch — Marine Jenny — Jenny is an Amazon at six foot six inches. She’s very well endowed with a long red braid of hair. She’s the explosives expert and carries a grenade launcher and a large variety of grenades. All of these Marines are in work uniforms with chest armor.
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