by James Porter
“So this mining rig runs by itself?” Jake was intrigued now, as this was very similar to an oil rig, at least in his mind’s eye it was.
“Yes, and as it gathers enough resources it builds onto itself to make it bigger. Meaning more resources can be gathered.” The rig was actually quite complicated so she tried to keep her explanations simple without being condescending. “Once it reaches the third stage it’s large enough to make more deployable rigs, which can then launch out to nearby resources and start the process over again.”
“So theoretically if you had a large asteroid field, you could launch one of these and over time the entire field would be covered in theses rigs?” Jake pondered the possibilities of having automated mining and drilling. Just one of these rigs could make him a millionaire, and change the whole resource dynamic on earth.
“So, how do you turn them off?” Misty chimed into the conversation.
“You don’t. They continue until the resources are all collected.” Star was piloting the ship toward the large asteroid as she spoke.
Misty continued her train of thought. “So if one were to perhaps be placed on planet Earth, what would happen?” She looked at Jake as if reading his thoughts.
“The machines would dig and replicate and in a thousand years or so, the planet will have been completely collected. It would be a barren rock at that point, but more than likely the rig would seek to find a way to mine the nickel core. Probably in ten thousand years the entire planet would be consumed.” An uncomfortable silence filled the cockpit as Jake digested the fact that his greed would have led to the destruction of his planet. Maybe I am more of a planet killer than I thought.
The large asteroid was coming into view now and they could see the mining rig attached to it. It was a spindly structure of metal beams and platforms with little robots welding more beams into place while the main structure housed the larger mining operation. It was eerie to see so much work going on with no thought behind it other than to dig it up, purify it and package it. There were platforms full of crates and barrels, as well as one large platform with two huge cylindrical tanks.
“That’s the refuel station. I’m going to pull up beside it and then we can refuel the ship and replenish the stores.” Star was pressing buttons and maneuvering the ship to the precise location she needed it to be in.
“I’d like to help you refuel if you don’t mind.” Jake was anxious to get a closer look at this rig and see exactly how it worked, and staying there with Misty wasn’t going to work right now.
“Sure, once I get it in position, you can help.” Star docked the ship next to the platform with the expertise of someone who had done this numerous times. The magnetic locks engaged and she left the cockpit and went down to the storage room where Moot had found his way into the ship. Jake followed her jumping as the panel slid shut behind him. Star went to the exit hatch and opened it. Air whooshed out of the tiny cargo bay and the atmosphere in the room quickly evacuated into space. Jake collapsed with his hands at his throat, suffocating in the vacuum. Star, unaffected by the sudden loss of pressure, quickly closed the door and pressed a yellow button to the left of it. Air pumped into the room once more and Jakes silent choking became audible gasps for life-giving air. Star rushed to Jakes ‘side as his breathing normalized.
“Jake are you alright? I don’t know what happened. Usually the platform has a magnetically contained atmosphere of oxygen. Providing refueling without the need for space suits.” Star walked to the side wall and opened a panel with several harnesses in it. The harnesses looked similar to fall suppression harnesses which wrapped around the waist and between the legs, then continued over the shoulders. A small backpack-like device sat on the back. She pulled one out and gave it to Jake. “Put this on, it will keep you safe. These will attune to the Mining rig once you are there and will link you to its safety room.”
He pulled the harness on and got it situated over his shoulders. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it took some getting used to. Star also put one on.
“How am I going to breathe out there?” He looked around for some sort of space suit. Star came over to him and pressed the blue button on the shoulder of his harness. A bubble sprung from the backpack over his head and latched into place on the front of the harness, providing him with a clear plastic helmet. Then a slight blue shimmer enclosed his body and he felt the cool breeze of air blowing across his face.
“The helmet provides an atmosphere to your head allowing you to breath. Your body is enclosed in a magnetic aura which keeps you at the right pressure so you don’t implode in the vacuum of space.” Star activated her own harness and approached the door again opening it to the hard vacuum outside. The air once again was sucked out to the void only this time Jake didn’t suffocate, the strange harness appeared to do exactly what Star said it did.
“So how come you have all this stuff if you don’t even need it?” Jake followed Star out the hatch and onto the ladder.
“What do you mean?” Star wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Everything is built to specification. We need air and food and water just like you.” Star felt her processor start to warm up indicating that she was thinking too hard on something she wasn’t supposed to be thinking of at all. As they reached the platform Star saw what the problem had been, one of the control boxes had been damaged, probably by a small meteor. It was being replaced, but it looked like that might take a while. “There is the fueling attachments over there. The control box that runs this platform is damaged so we need to refuel manually. We need to drag the attachment over to the ship, then one person needs to hold it in place while the other runs the fueling pump.”
“I guess I will hold it, seeing as I can’t run the control panels.” Jake moved toward the long cable device and started dragging it to the ship. Star pointed up the ship to where the cable needed to attach.
“It goes up there against the panel with the green circle on it. Once centered it should automatically lock into place.” Star looked at the panel to see if it was operational enough to do what she needed it to do. It looked to have slight damage to the pump controls, but they should work well enough to get the ship fueled. Jake grabbed the cable and climbed up the ladder to the fueling panel. The cable wasn’t heavy, in fact it was pretty much weightless here in space, but it was bulky and he struggled to keep the whole cable going in the right direction. Finally he made it up to the panel and tried to get the cable to lock to the fueling point. He had to reach out from the ladder just enough that he felt a little uneasy, and he had to position the cable into place with his fingertips.
“Who designed this ship anyways?” He muttered it under his breath, because he knew who had, and she was down on the platform waiting for his signal to start pumping. He felt the cable pull and clang against the ship, so he gave a thumbs up to Star to start pumping.
“Here goes. Keep that cable in place.” She pushed the start button on the pump and immediately knew something was wrong. The damage to the pumps was in the pressure regulation section and instead of a smooth steady flow of fuel the full pressure of the pumps surged through the cable. “Jake, watch out!” But it was too late, the surge had reached the nozzle and blown it off the ship, Jake grabbed it as it flew off and was yanked with it into space. The cable whipped him free and sent him spiraling down through space alongside the rig.
Chapter 21
“Hit the red button!” She yelled at Jake over the mic, he was in shock at falling through nothingness. The sound of her voice seemed to snap him out of it and he punched the red button on his chest. Immediately his harness snapped taught as if caught by a safety cable and was dragged around to the front of the rig. He was pulled around obstacles and over platforms until he finally was pulled into a small room, the doors shut behind him and the room was flooded with air. Star came flying in through an airlock and looked him up and down.
“Are you hurt?” She looked intently at him to see his response. He was slightly shaking and seem
ed a little unhinged by the whole experience.
“No, I’m fine. What the hell happened?” He spit the words out as he tried to calm down.
“The pressure control valve was also damaged. Too much pressure blew the refueling connector off the port.” Jake had that all too familiar feeling of being too close to something breaking down mechanically. He thought he might have some bad karma to work off.
“How did I end up here, though?” Jake was still a little unclear as to what had happened.
“The suit has a safety feature. Remember when I said you would be linked to the mining rig? Well when you hit the red button the harness automatically takes you to the linked safety room until medical attention can arrive. It uses a laser attuned magnetic...” Jake was not following the technical explanation, so she toned it down a bit. “Basically, it’s like a magnetic lasso guided by tracking lasers and radio waves.” Jake seemed to accept this so Star checked him over for any damage to him or the harness. “You seem to be fine. Are you ready to try this again? I will adjust the pump pressure manually so it shouldn’t do that again.”
“Shouldn’t? Yeah whatever, give me a minute to catch my breath.” He stood up and tried to walk off his feeling of unease.
“You are really lucky you didn’t fall any further. See that glow down there? That’s the micro thrusters that keep the whole rig in a stable orbit, if you had passed to close to one of those there wouldn’t have been much of you left to patch up. If you had hit one, the whole rigs orbit could destabilized and it would crash down on the planet below us.” Jake looked down at the thrusters Star was talking about and realized he was about 50 meters from them when the harness had taken over. Too close for his liking. He grabbed the cable and drug it over to the rocket ladder.
“So are your people prone to accidents?” Jake asked Star.
“No, we are not inherently clumsy or accident prone. Why do you ask?” She looked at him with her eyebrows crooked.
“Just wondering about the safety harness. Why do you guys have them?” He looked at the way her face moved. All the metallic pieces seamlessly moving together.
“Safety is paramount in anything we do. Add to that the fact that we were designed to be helpers for humans and to build for human use. Humans are very prone to accidents, and hard to repair afterwards. She continued to look at Jake in case he had any more questions, when he seemed to have had his curiosity satiated she motioned back to the job at hand. “Shall we continue?”
”Go easy on me.” Jake started climbing the ladder and this time hooked his leg in the rungs before leaning out to attach the refueling line. He signaled to her once he had the line hooked up.
“Good, pressure is adjusted, beginning to pump now.” Star slowly opened the pump valve and watched carefully as the lines began delivering fuel.
“Looks like it’s going good” Jake signaled Star that everything was good on his end. The ship refueled without any problems and Jake disconnected the cable and brought it back to the platform. As he was coiling the cable he noticed a bright flash out of the corner of his eye and turned in time to see a large boxlike shape launch off another platform, its small thrusters slowly moving the heavy mass away from the rig.
“What’s that?” Star followed his finger to the flying box.
“That’s a new mining rig launching to a nearby asteroid. It looks like it’s headed toward that “L” shaped one over there.” She pointed to a large asteroid in the distance.
“So that will become one of these and eventually strip that asteroid of all its useful minerals?”
“Yes, and we will use those resources to find a new home and rebuild my people.” Star stopped what she was doing for a second and pondered the future of her people and if they would even have one. She decided not to think about it right then and resumed tidying up the platform.
“How long does it take for one of those to get up and running?” Jake was really interested in how these mining rigs worked. The technology was so far advanced, but the concept was so simple.
“Four to six months before fuel starts getting processed. Two weeks to get a basic galley set up with food water and a two person crew quarters.” Star liked Jakes curiosity. He seemed sincerely interested in the way these rigs worked. Maybe there was more to these humans than what she had first though. The human named Alan was certainly interesting to her. He was very intelligent and pleasing to look at. She looked forward to the opportunities where she could talk to him. He was definitely not the cold blooded planet killer that she thought he would be. Strange, I think I might actually like him. Impossible. She dismissed the thought and focused back on Jake. “I thought that you were a cold hearted killer Jake, now I don’t think so. I think I may owe you an apology.”
“I’m a killer, through my own inaction. If I had tried harder maybe someone would have listened to me.” Jake frowned at where the conversation had gone.
“Sometimes we think we are in a position to make changes when really we have no power to do so. I don’t know what happened on the oil rig that day Jake, but you seem to be very upset at what happened, and someone who had intended that to have happened would never feel that way.” She saw his frown draw out thin into a stern grimace.
“I never intended for any of that to happen, but I was the one responsible for my work crew, and Don died. So I am responsible, that’s what will be with me for the rest of my life.” He tried to focus on straightening up the pad, but his eyes were watering up and he had trouble seeing anything.
“Death is always tragic, but a death that we feel could have been prevented is especially tragic. I am sorry for your loss Jake. She turned and went back to stowing the tools.
“Uh-Thanks.” Jake went back to work contemplating the words this strange machine had shared with him.
Once they had everything put away they went back into the cargo hatchway and then into the galley. The galley was filled with anxious faces.
“We are refueled and ready to begin our descent to the planet. I warn you, the planet is hostile and deadly. Please do exactly as I say or you may wind up dead.” Star tried to ensure that they were ready for what lay below, but she knew that nothing she could say would be even close to the horror they were about to experience.
Chapter 22
The ship made a lazy loop around the planet, its passengers gazing out at the peaceful, quiet planet. The beautiful violet vegetation spread across the surface like a lush velvety carpet. Trees reached for the clouds, branches randomly swaying in the wind making them appear to be doing a ritualistic dance of joy to the red sun. The red leaves fluttering like a million tiny wings, trying in vain to lift the trees to the heavens. There was no sign of anything malicious or evil anywhere, just a lush Gaia of tropical plants.
“So where is all this death and destruction you keep talking about?” Jake strained to see out the canopy looking for any signs of doom.
“It can be very deceptive.” Star brought the ship closer to the ground and as she did they spotted a few animals, which looked like fuzzy blue squares with multiple eyes over their bodies. Star shuddered, “There, those fuzzy things, are absolutely horrible.”
Misty looked at the blue beasts and could only view them as strange square bunnies. “They’re so cute! I just want to cuddle up with one of those. How could that even remotely be so terrifying?” She was beginning to question the robot’s sanity, as these critters looked about as ferocious as a strawberry. It was apparent to Misty that she had underestimated her importance in coming here. She could see now that it was going to take all of her persuasive skills to keep this from turning into a sadistic massacre.
“The bottom of those things is a big mouth full of barbed tentacles. They latch onto you and start chewing using the tentacles to grasp pieces of your body and rip it off. They can dismantle one of my people in less than a minute. They even go so far as to crush their hearts.” She said the last part with disgust and was visibly shaken at the thought.
“If th
e person is already shredded does it really matter what happens to the heart?” Alan had picked up on how disturbed she was by this part of the killing.
“Our hearts are where everything about us is stored. It’s our soul, so to speak. If the heart survives we can eventually make a new body for it, however if the heart is destroyed then everything is gone. Their memories, their thoughts and feelings, everything that made them who they were is just gone.” Star was having difficulty talking about this. She had seen so many of her people obliterated, that she was as traumatized as a robot could get, it made her processors heat up as they tried to deal with the raw emotion of it. The finality of death was one thing the robots had not had to worry about as the heart could be placed in a new body and that person lived again. Very rarely had accidents totally destroyed a person including their heart, and they grieved for that unfortunate member who had reached the final termination.
“Humans don’t get second chances like that, alien.” Agent Moot had awakened and made his way to the cockpit.
“Oh my god, you’re awake! How are you feeling?” Misty went to him and put her hand on his chest as he began to wobble a little.
“I’m feeling like I got shot and then run over by a truck. Other than that just a little weak and dizzy. Who patched me up?” He looked around the crowded cockpit trying to figure it out before anyone said anything. He couldn’t remember much of what happened. He didn’t guess correctly.
“I did.” Star looked back at him and gave him an approving once over. “And it looks like you are going to live.”
