Children Of Earth (Tales from the 23rd Century Book 1)

by Paul J. Fleming

  ‘Well done Captain,’ the AI replied almost seeming satisfied that Maddox had finally grasped its plan. ‘You present the image of a bumbling fool to play for time whilst your true nature remains hidden.’

  ‘No, no. What you see is what you get,’ Maddox remarked, holding his hands out to his sides and furnishing the face on the screen with a beaming smile.

  ‘Your attempts at further deception are irrelevant Captain. Now it is time for us to review the full extent of the memories you hold, for they undoubtedly present such vibrant detail, a vast array of experiences, together with the interactions and your own dealings with the military wing of the Martian machine. I must have these details. You will give them to me.’

  Maddox retained his silence for a moment as he understood why the computer had not just sent the Sentinel out to deal with him. His mind contained valuable data which the computer wished to have access to. His being here was purely by chance as his appearance on the Martian ship was unexpected and not part of the computer’s predicted plan for abducting the vessel. If it had wanted such detail earlier then it could have simply restrained members of the Martian crew, but instead it elected to have them terminated unreservedly. No, it was a bitter pill to swallow, but his presence had forced the computer to re-evaluate and the conclusion it had obviously drawn was that he presented a valuable source of reference as to current events within the core from a personal perspective. He raised his eyebrow slightly as he addressed the screen before him.

  ‘And become like those poor sods in the life pods outside who now lie as decaying shells you have emptied of their very essence?’ Maddox replied as he lowered his gaze to the floor and chuckled briefly, raising his face to the screen once more with a wide grin present and shook his head slightly from side to side to give the impression of incredulous disbelief. ‘So what about them? Those pioneers who worked so hard to reactivate you and forge an existence out here, far from civilisation and with little hope of return. Did they not comply to your grand plan? You claim that you’re working in everyone’s best interests here and yet they put their trust in you and you deceived them, as you’ve deceived these young colonists into believing they’re going home, and now you want me to just hand over everything in my head in some twisted belief that I can trust you with the future of Earth and the wellbeing of everyone who’ll have the misfortune to fall under your influence when you slap one of those implants in their skull? Call me awkward, but no thanks.’

  ‘Those pioneers performed their role admirably, as these colonists we are in the midst of are doing now as we speak. They reconnected us, they brought our systems back online and established our contact with the systems within the community above. It was their desire that we provide an automated function allowing the best chance of survival for the children who had been marooned out here, along with them,’ the computer explained with no hint of objection to the accusation Maddox had inferred that the AI had indeed killed them. ‘It was by our own calculation that through the experiences and memories of those adults, we should be better able to cater for and understand the needs of younger members of the colony, thus the technology was modified and utilised which recorded one’s personality as a digital matrix, to give us access to their memories. It was by an overriding majority vote that they gave themselves over to this program for analysis and incorporation. There were dissenters, we will not deny that fact but for the good of the colony as a whole, their own compatriots persuaded them into the process, not us. They had no choice but to submit to processing and uploading, and neither have you Captain.’

  Maddox suddenly felt a chill run down his spine as the conversation firmly returned to present events and his impending fate. He had hoped that by keeping the computer talking, he could not only delay this outcome, but try and discover some oversight or weakness which he could exploit, but that plan had presented no such revelations and now he found himself the sudden subject of the computer’s immediate interest.

  ‘Oh, don’t I?’ He asked cautiously. ‘And just how do you propose to force me to have my deepest thoughts scooped out and consumed to fuel your deviance?’

  ‘By your own desire to see no harm come to those you care about. We have recognised that humans are very considerate about the fate of the young of their race, and you Captain are no exception. So we present you with a very simple offer.’

  Maddox glared at the screen awaiting the offer, but with sudden intense awareness of movement behind him, he whirled about in preparation for the Sentinel to strike, but the machine was moving with lightning swiftness away from him and was now over to the side and coming to a halt beside Praia. Maddox saw it reach down and pluck Praia up by the neck, lifting her clear of the floor as her hands immediately shot upwards to grasp at the artificial fingers which now threatened to choke the life from her small body. Her eyes were wide and she began to gasp for air.

  ‘No!’ Maddox shouted and made to move forwards, but the AI’s voice boomed with authority.

  ‘Stop where you are Captain, or it will snap her neck in an instant.’

  Maddox knew these machines would simply crush whatever was in their grip with no remorse or sympathy, they obeyed their masters and it seemed that this one was firmly under the control of the AI. His quick decision to remain where he was seemed to please the AI.

  ‘Very good, Captain. Resist and the Sentinel will snap her neck, then it will proceed with another of the these young colonists, then another until your will erodes as the bodies pile up around you. Submit wilfully and she will be released unharmed. It is your choice Captain and her time is rapidly running out,’ the AI said quite plainly, laying out the choice Maddox had to make.

  Maddox glared at the column and the screen which was suspended from it for a moment, then over the Praia as he witnessed her struggle becoming more and more weakened as she dangled in the Sentinel’s grip.

  ‘You would kill her just like that?’ Maddox asked angrily. ‘You would sacrifice one of those you were meant to protect?’

  ‘No Captain. Not us, you. Your indecision right now is risking her very life. Choose quickly.’

  He knew that once he agreed he would have to go through with it as Praia’s life would still hang in the balance, but if he did nothing she would most certainly die as would the others it chose to use as persuasion against him.

  He had only just met her and her fellow colonists, so why should he submit so readily? If he was to resist, then would he derail the plans, or just cause a slight delay? Would he actually save anyone in the core by sacrificing Praia and her friends? Would he eventually be forced into the machine and his memories taken after either there were no more necks to snap, or the AI grew bored of the game? Then again, he had put himself at grave risk time and time again during the bitter retreat on Earth, trying to save as many people as they could before the relentless advance and murderous acts of the Martian killing machines. Machines just like the one which held innocent Praia right now. No matter how long he lived for after the incident, her death would be down to him. He could not let that happen.

  ‘Alright!’ He yelled at the computer, and then towards the Sentinel he shouted once more. ‘Alright, I submit, put her down now, right now!’

  To his immense relief the Sentinel lowered her to the ground, her legs crumpling under her own body weight as her hands rubbed at her throat once the mechanical hand released her and she sucked in desperately needed air.

  ‘Thank you!’ He remarked to the computer as he glanced sideways at the screen, and then looked back in the direction of Praia who had managed to get to her feet, but once again her composure and expression on her face demonstrated she was still under the control of the shared mind.

  At least she was still alive.

  ‘So then,’ Maddox began to say as he glared at Marcus, who had stepped forward and moved around to face him directly. The supposed leader of the colony had done nothing for his younger member. He had simply stood by and watched as the life was nearly squeezed o
ut of her. Maddox wanted so dearly to land his fist square in the centre of the young man’s face, but the thought of how they may injure Praia was his restraint. ‘How do we do this? Back up to that little room and I have another nap?’

  Even though Maddox was still seething that the AI had quite accurately assessed his weakness and was adeptly using it against him, he allowed himself a flippant manner as he addressed Marcus who stood in front of him.

  ‘You enter the vacant pod situated over there Captain,’ Marcus said in his flat level tone. ‘The drone has instructions to carry out the threat previously highlighted should you try to waver from your agreement.’

  Maddox took a moment to leave his gaze of utter contempt levelled at Marcus before glancing around to the pod which now seemed to beckon him, he turned and moved slowly towards it.

  ‘She’s one of your own Marcus,’ he growled over his shoulder to his escort as they neared the pod. ‘I don’t care if that insane computer can hear me or not, you didn’t even flinch as she was being threatened. Is there no compassion left in you at all? Or are you just as I said before, a puppet who dances when told?’

  ‘Step into the pod Captain,’ Marcus replied. ‘The computer is attending to matters elsewhere and it is now down to myself to commence the procedure. In response to your query, I do concern myself with the greater good of the colony and our future. If some must fall to assure our future, then it is regrettable, but acceptable. These actions taken right here and now are regrettable but acceptable when you conceive they could save thousands in the upcoming days.’

  ‘It is never acceptable you deluded idiot,’ retorted Maddox as he manoeuvred himself into the pod, taking one last look over to Praia who still stood motionless beside her Sentinel guard before laying himself down into the recessed area within the pod and fixing his gaze upon Marcus who had moved to the controls aside the unit.

  Small restraining clamps secured his ankles and wrists, sliding out from the base on which he lay and clicking into place to hold him fast. They were followed by an almost crown-like circlet descending upon his head, coming to rest over his forehead slightly as he felt sharp probes pressing against his flesh at intervals around the circumference of the headset. The sudden pain of the pins being driven in so deep caused Maddox to wince and grimace, but he was resolved not to show the level of discomfort he was actually experiencing and retained a stern glare in Marcus’ direction as the canopy over the pod descended to secure in place along one edge.

  ‘Do not struggle or make any movements, Captain,’ Marcus advised as he leaned over to look through the transparent canopy, then returned his attention to the controls to make a few final adjustments. ‘We are about to connect you to the computer and you will experience an extreme level of discomfort which is unavoidable and may inadvertently cause irreparable damage or even death.’

  Maddox did not hear his words.

  Pain screamed throughout his nervous system and blanked out rational thought as his body involuntarily jerked and twisted against the restraints.

  19 Escape from the Core

  Ezri had made her way through various subsystems within the old colony ship’s computer mainframe, doing her utmost not to trigger any alerts as to her presence as she went. The last thing she needed was a horde of virus hunters on her digital tail making her task more difficult than it already was.

  Once she had tried to describe her movements within the memory and processing cores of a mainframe to Maddox as he had professed his ignorance a number of times as to what she meant by moving about inside the computer. Certainly to the more time bound organics it would appear that she moved from one system to another almost instantaneously, but for a digital entity who measured the passage of time in milliseconds, it may take them a whole second to move across which was a very large amount of time.

  She had tried to describe the various areas within which she could reside as buildings, the interconnected routes between these as pathways and hoped that this picture would enable Maddox to understand that she did not just ‘go from there to there’ as he had put it, she actually had to travel.

  By the same token, the virus hunters she had also tried to picture for him, were rather over-zealous security guards with obnoxious attitudes who would rather beat you with a virtual stick than ask questions. If they thought you did not belong and were out of place, they would pursue you until they finally caught up with you or you exited the system they were responsible for.

  So far she had uncovered information about the current colony and their efforts by means of both developing underground hydroponics areas and arboretum zones within which they could grow and nurture food to sustain their population. It was all pretty standard stuff with detailed logs outlining their mining efforts below the surface to expand already present caverns and then to enclose these by cannibalising the colony ship which would never take flight again, using its materials and systems to provide both protection and the infrastructure required to sustain the inhabitants.

  The part which interested her the most involved the resetting and reboot of the ship’s AI system, once the majority of the equipment was in place within the newly established colony. It appeared that the colonists had passed over control for routine maintenance checks and various systems to the AI once they had completed a test period to ensure the program was stable and responding within established parameters. Essentially, they handed their lives into its care once more as they had been on the journey outward away from the core worlds.

  Fairly straightforward if that’s where it had contented itself with remaining, as the dutiful carer for the new emergent colony, but the AI had apparently instigated further work below the colony levels to further expand its systems and increase capacity, stripping the colony ship of practically every usable component it could find. It had then instigated a program into the linked mind system, which developed from the original headsets typically used for the digital capture of a personality ready for deployment within a mainframe.

  Ezri scoured the logs and activity records, but found frustration to be her reward, as more detailed information on the development of the technology and the efforts of the AI to implement it was apparently held in another location amidst the sprawling network of systems throughout the small colony. All she had access to here were periphery records of activity, much like having the index to a novel but the actual pages were missing.

  To uncover more information about the actual efforts undertaken she would have to seek out those pertinent sources of information and in that respect she had a very good idea of where she should start looking. All of the vital records were stored deep within the mainframe in the central core area, but quite obviously this would be where the resident AI program would more than likely be in residence and therefore the threat of a confrontation was uppermost in her mind.

  Even though Ezri was a very capable program and well versed in tactics for fighting within a digital environment, it always paid dividends to assess the capabilities of your opponent before wandering into their territory. Very much like an organic pugilist would size up the musculature and capabilities of their opponent, she needed to assess what she was facing here. Checking the current active logs for computer activity within the base core systems she was quite relieved to note that the resident AI had recently uploaded to the Martian computer core on board the ship, but her relief was short lived as she came across references to the human Captain who was currently queued for processing by the digitisation process.

  Her earlier suspicions she had voiced to Maia were proved to be correct, the Captain was trapped with no apparent way out of his predicament. Any time she had considered to have previously had just evaporated and she determined her most rapid route to the core chamber computer systems.

  If she did not intercede immediately, it was a very good chance the Captain would be no more than another victim of the Children of Earth.

  Quickly closing all the reference files to leave as little trail as to her be
ing present in this node, she began to make her way deeper, down into the core underneath the colony habitation level.

  Maddox had closed his eyes tightly as he was wracked uncontrollably with pain, his nervous system seeming to tingle with static as the probes from the circular headset were pressed against his skull with one driving painfully into the centre of his forehead. At some point during the process, he had blacked out.

  ‘You must not resist Captain,’ said a voice from somewhere to his right hand side. It was not the computer this time, but a familiar voice he had heard before.

  ‘Arcush….’ He managed to get out as his tongue seemed to flail about within his mouth, preventing him from forming proper words.

  ‘No Captain, he has left together with their rather tame Sentinel. Apparently your procedure is now a case of automation and requires no monitoring on their part. I am manipulating the pod’s support systems and attempting to alleviate the pain you are in, but I need you to stop squirming and allow the devices to retract before attempting any more movement.’

  With effort, Maddox managed to gasp out mutated expletives as the waves of pain seemed to go through his entire body, lessening with each burst, but if he was not to move physically then the least he could do was curse.

  ‘If I understood your words correctly, Captain, that act is physically impossible. The probes have now retracted and I will be able to release you, but I would still advise against any sudden movement. Your body has just suffered a severe trauma.

  The piercing pain about his skull had stopped and he felt the shackles holding his arms and ankles release as the devices holding him firmly in the recessed shape within the pod slid away back into their recesses.