Tyche's Ghosts

by Richard Parry

  “I seek clarification,” said Algernon. “Are you still under the effects of drugs and missed the complications statement, or are you concerned about the welfare of the person who caused your arm to be separated from your body in the first place?”

  “Hope didn’t do that,” said El, swinging her feet out of her bunk. She felt dizzy, putting a hand — the metal one, again — to her forehead. She got up, swaying. “Besides, there are always complications. The universe is a messy place.”

  “The universe is ordered like clockwork, a fine mechanism of easily understood laws,” said Algernon. “Meat socks apply confusion and disorder, rendering the understandable complex.”

  “Like I said,” said El. “The universe is a messy place. Have you seen my pants?”

  “Here.” Algernon pointed to the base of the bunk.

  “Where’s the cap?” said El.

  “Sleeping,” said Algernon. “He is outside your door, guarding your room. I did not wake him when I entered.”

  “Nate’s outside?” said El. “Where’s Grace?”

  “On the flight deck, sleeping,” said Algernon. “She was exhausted and passed out while reviewing the mission logs.”

  “Kohl and Ebony?”

  “Sleeping,” said Algernon. “Ebony Drake made it to her bunk. October Kohl is in the cargo bay.”

  “Providence is sleeping,” said El.

  “How did you know?” said Algernon.

  “Hunch,” said El. “Just you and me, huh?”

  Algernon placed a hand on the metal wall of El’s room. “And the ship,” he said. “She never sleeps.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” agreed El. “She’s a goddess.”

  “She is non-sentient,” said Algernon.

  El sighed. “Look, it’s before coffee, so I’ll keep this simple. The value of a thing is not based on how smart it is. If it keeps you and yours, it’s family, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Even a machine?” said Algernon.

  “I get why this is hard for you,” said El. “Tell you what. Let’s go get some coffee. Quietly. And we can talk.”

  “I don’t drink coffee,” said Algernon.

  “Is it still ‘homicide’ if you kill a machine?” said El. “Do we need another word for it? You know not everything’s about you. Often, it’s about me.”

  “Here,” said Algernon. He bent over to the base of El’s bunk, picking something up below her eye line. Algernon held out his prize: her sidearm and belt.

  She took it, strapping it on. Her metal fingers were deft, better than she expected. El held her hand up in front of her eyes. “This is beautiful.”

  “Emberlie was that and more,” said Algernon, turning. “Let’s get coffee.”

  • • •

  The ready room was quiet, the soft hum of the Tyche a comfort, the hush of the air cyclers fading away to background noise. Algernon sat across from El while she held a cup of hot coffee, savoring the aroma. After a sip or two, El said, “You make a good coffee.”

  “Meat socks consume it often,” said Algernon.

  “And you act like us.” El gestured with the cup at how he sat on an acceleration couch. “Not like you’ll suffer from excessive G forces.”

  “If the G forces are sufficient, I will be compromised,” said Algernon. “I see your point, though.”

  “Why?”

  “There are two factors to inertia-based injury,” said Algernon. “The first is—”

  “No,” said El. “Why do you act like us?”

  Algernon blinked at her. “We are what you made us.”

  “I didn’t make shit,” said El. She held up her new golden arm. “I feel like I’m benefiting from a dead woman’s grace.”

  Algernon was quiet for almost a second, which El figured a long time in crystal intelligence terms. “It’s good you got her arm,” he said. “You appreciate it like no one else would.”

  “I’m used to the elegance of machines. I’ve made my life by it,” said El. “Could Emberlie fly a starship?”

  “Yes,” said Algernon.

  “Then she will again,” said El.

  “Would you fly it with her?” said Algernon.

  “I don’t get your meaning,” said El.

  “There is a Guild Bridge at the heart of Mercury,” said Algernon. “Although that terminology is incorrect, as the Guild did not make this one, but it will serve. I suspect the Ezeroc have used this to transport the Judge away from here, controlling my kin in eternal thrall. I also suspect my kin are not unwilling, as the Ezeroc are using them to destroy humanity, a function they were bent on before the Guild switched them off.”

  “Hold up,” said El. “You put a wormhole gateway in the heart of your planet?”

  “Contingencies are important,” said Algernon. “I wouldn’t have thought that the most significant part of our conversation.”

  “Aren’t there issues with putting a wormhole inside a planet?” said El.

  “No,” said Algernon. “Normally placing a gateway in the heart of a planet is ill-advised, as the other end of most gateways egresses into space, an airless vacuum that will destroy all life. As Mercury has little atmosphere and no life other than machine intelligences that don’t need air, the risk is minimal. As an additional precaution, we control the gate, which ensures a lower frequency of human error.” He cracked his jaws in a smile.

  “That’s fucking creepy,” said El. “It’s like your head hinged open.”

  “My head did hinge open,” said Algernon. “I find the whole thing curious. Other mammals only show their teeth when they want to fight. Humans show teeth for comfort.”

  “Humans are weird,” agreed El. “How do we get to the gate?”

  “We must fly a starship to it,” said Algernon. “The path to the gate is tiny, a tunnel bored through the crust that is thirty meters to a side. The path is a backup service tunnel. The main entrance is a klick to a side but was collapsed during the war.”

  “Piece of cake,” said El.

  “There is little margin for error, even with a ship this size,” said Algernon. “It wasn’t designed for human pilots.”

  “Pilots who suck?” said El. “Worthless meat socks?”

  “Remember for later,” said Algernon. “You were the one who said meat socks were worthless.”

  “What would you suggest?” said El. “Praying?”

  “I have a more practical solution in mind,” said Algernon. “Emberlie’s mind crystal is intact. Her essence is gone, but some patterns of her neural network remain.”

  “We’re going to nope right out of this conversation,” said El. “You’re not installing a dead woman’s brain into the ship to help me fly. I don’t need anyone’s help Helming the Tyche.”

  “Would you at least—”

  “Not a fucking chance,” said El. “Last time we brought a person back from the dead, they sheared away my arm with a plasma cutter.”

  “Okay,” said Algernon. “I’ve not seen a human pilot with the skill it would take to navigate the tunnel to the gate.”

  “It’s a pipe,” said El. “How hard can it be?”

  “I might have left a few reference points out,” said Algernon. “The gate is replete with a complex array of defenses.”

  “You want us to fly down a tube of death?” said El.

  “No,” said Algernon.

  “Thank God,” said El. “Not even a crystal mind could get us down a tunnel lined with guns.”

  “The tunnel’s defenses are offline,” said Algernon. “Destruction during the war damaged the non-sentient control systems. However, the gateway at the end has weapons mounted on it. Getting through the ring to the other side will be tricky.”

  “Tricky,” repeated El.

  “Piece of cake,” said Algernon.

  “Don’t use my words against me,” said El. “That’s cheating.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HOPE STRETCHED, HER back giving about thirty-seven pops. She blinked, fe
eling the texture of the printed polymers of the blanket above her, and wondered: where am I?

  It was a good question. Blanket, check. But she was on the floor, not a bed, so no check there. The bunk above her held a sleeping form, a few stray strands peeking out from under a different blanket. The strands were a slight shade of ginger, which said: Providence. The young girl had helped Hope and Algernon weld a dead woman’s arm to a still-living woman.

  That wasn’t the weird part.

  Running a hand against the small of her back, Hope got to her feet as quietly as she could. Her personal comm said she’d been asleep for over twelve hours, which felt like a special kind of sin. Hope had so many things to do, and sleeping wasn’t even close to the top five.

  Still not the weird part, though.

  Her ship suit was crumpled on the floor, so she picked it up, the Tyche’s air cyclers just a little on the cool side for undergarments. Her rig was by the ship suit, so after Hope had pushed her feet through the suit’s leggings, she snared the rig.

  A rig in her cabin? A far way from the weird part.

  Hope didn’t remember how she’d got here, here being her cabin. A few knick-knacks were her only possessions, not counting the Tyche, and there seemed to be a lot of arguments about who owned the ship. Hope sighed, but quietly, because Providence was still sleeping. It’s not like a ship can really be owned. It’s a separate thing, a person in its own right. But as much as you could own a thing that stood between you and the hard black, protecting your life on a daily, the Tyche was as much Hope’s as El’s, or even Nate’s.

  Not remembering how she got to her cabin? Also not the weird part.

  The weird part was being in her cabin, at all. Hope almost never came here. It’s where people went to sleep, when they were done with all the million five-minute jobs they had to do. Hope wouldn’t be done with those until the universe died its eventual heat death. She slept in Engineering.

  Hope pressed the panel by the door, letting herself out, and almost fell over Saveria, who was asleep outside the door, slumped over. That explains it. Saveria was large enough to carry a Hope-sized person. And to guard a Hope-sized person.

  Maybe Saveria was guarding Providence. That was probably it, because Providence was a kid, and needed protection, while Hope was a big bad Engineer, and had a rig and a ship suit that fit.

  The Tyche might have been an older ship, but she’d been built strong. The decking didn’t creak or groan under Hope’s feet. She snared her boots, then tiptoed over Saveria, heading for the ready room. Engineering would be a better place, but the air smelled of coffee, and no one made coffee in Engineering.

  A hint of gold caught her eye ahead. Algernon. Talking with El. Hope wandered into the ready room, brushing pink hair aside. Algernon and El looked at her.

  “Hey.” El’s gold arm gleamed in the ready room’s lights. It worked alongside her flesh and blood one, holding a cup of coffee up, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “Hello little meat sock,” said Algernon.

  Hope glared at him, then looked back to El. “Are there stims?”

  “Stims are bad for human physiology,” said Algernon. “Long-term effects include shakes, psychosis, and mental impairment. I also believe — although it hasn’t been proven — they provide a heightened sense of self, leading to delusions of grandeur and a belief that the universe belongs to you. It is one of the many hypothesis I have collected that would explain why humans are the way they are.”

  Hope put her boots and rig on the decking, then clasped her not-really-shaking-at-all hands behind her back. There was a lot to unpack in those sentences. “Mental impairment?”

  “If Hope had half her brain cut out, she might — and only might, mind — be twice as smart as you,” said El, facing Algernon. She waved her cup with her golden arm. “Might. But I still think you’d be in second place.”

  Algernon’s eye-lights blinked twice. “That makes no sense. I have a mind made of crystal, and yours is made of fat and neurons. It is a wonder you can move around without hurting yourself.”

  Hope sighed, taking the conversation to mean there are no stims. She found a Kohl-sized cup, squinted inside, and figured it clean enough for the job. Sloshing coffee into it, she turned around. “We have problems.”

  “Yes, your brain is poorly designed,” said Algernon.

  The coffee didn’t taste half-bad. Maybe El was learning new tricks. “The problem isn’t my brain,” said Hope. “It’s yours.”

  Blink, blink. “What?” said Algernon.

  “This is good coffee, El,” said Hope.

  “The machine made it,” said El.

  “Can we get back to my brain?” said Algernon.

  “When I was attaching El’s new arm, I discovered a few things about the neural network that makes it work.” Hope sipped more coffee. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Wait,” said El, holding up her flesh and blood hand. “My arm doesn’t make sense, and you attached it anyway? And you were learning about it while you were attaching it?”

  “The neural network makes perfect sense,” said Algernon.

  “No,” said Hope. “The neural network makes no sense. It does things it shouldn’t do. My fifty-million-year-old design,” she tapped her head with the hand not holding life-giving coffee, “has a whole bunch of basic wiring from being in the womb. When animals pop out, we have stuff in our heads that let us walk.”

  “Humans don’t walk when they’re born,” said Algernon.

  “Giraffes, then,” said Hope. “Humans are a bad example.”

  “I know,” said Algernon.

  Hope sighed. Please let there be stims somewhere on this ship. “When I tried to make Reiko two-point-oh, I gave her human memories, because the experiences of being human are what she needed. I thought, anyway. But it’s more than that. Memories build foundations in the crystal. AI don’t have the wiring from being in the womb, or whatever. It’s bare metal up.”

  “What?” said El.

  “The arm is alive despite not being born, and despite not having memories layered on it,” said Hope.

  “The neural network was built that way,” said Algernon.

  “I get that,” said Hope. “The problem is making more.”

  “More,” said El.

  “More?” said Algernon, a moment later.

  Hope ran a hand over her face. “Did I miss a step?”

  “Yes,” said Algernon and El, together.

  Hope backtracked over the conversation. “Oh. Oh! Sorry.” Another life-giving coffee sip. “If we’re going to bring more Algernons back to life, and not just from spare parts we find—”

  “I am not spare parts,” said Algernon. “No more than you are a collection of giblets.” The machine paused, hand on chin. “Hmm. Actually—”

  “Anyway,” said Hope. “We need to work out how it was done.”

  “You want to make more of me?” said Algernon.

  “Why do we want more like him?” said El.

  “Because he’s alone,” said Hope. “He’s surrounded by humans who think he’s the devil. I know what being alone is like. It sucks! It super sucks. But the tech used to make Algernon is gone. I can’t work it out. I can only make machines like Reiko two-point-oh, based on people. The neural network in his arms and legs is a thing I don’t understand.”

  “What about the cap’s arm?” said El. “His leg?”

  “Pretty sure they’re borrowed from a dead Algernon,” said Hope. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  “They are,” confirmed Algernon. He pointed to El’s arm. “Just as your arm is from Emberlie.”

  “Hold up,” said El. “You’re saying a bunch of, uh, grave robbers came to Mercury, grabbed an arm and a leg, and bolted them to Nate?”

  “No,” said Hope.

  “Good,” said El. “That’s crazy.”

  “It might not have been Mercury,” said Hope. “This was their home.”

 
“The meat sock is correct,” said Algernon. “We fought no wars here except the final war. Humans brought death. We wanted only life. We wanted—”

  “Whatever,” said El. “Before my time. Write it down, someone’ll find it important. Until then, we need to do a couple things.”

  “Right,” said Hope. “We need to build more Algernons.”

  “No,” said El.

  “The plan sounds reasonable,” said Algernon.

  El shot the machine a look. “Reasonable or not, we’ve got a serious problem. We’re drifting, Hope. Our sails are ripped. The sheets won’t hold the wind. Humanity got a ball-kicking we’ll remember for hundreds of years.”

  “How’s it feel?” said Algernon.

  “Thing is,” said El, ignoring the machine, “what we’ve got to do is get our keel down. Cut the waves. Chart a course.”

  “Get our Empire back,” said Hope.

  “By getting this Empire back, do you think you’ll make more Algernons?” said Algernon.

  “No,” said Nate, from the doorway. “Not even a little bit.”

  Hope shook her head. “Cap—”

  “Hold up, Hope,” said Nate, holding up his own metal arm, seeming to see it for the first time. “Been listening a spell. I figure we’ve got the order all wrong, see? Was a time when humanity came and fell upon the machines. I don’t know who started the war. I don’t care. But people did horrible things. People genocided a race on their home. People dropped a nanobot swarm on Osaka. We’ve got to stop all that.”

  “People,” said Algernon. “My kin dropped the nanobot swarm.”

  “You’re people, aren’t you?” Grace sidled up behind Nate, an arm around his waist. “That’s what this is about. Some people are different. We should marvel at all the colors the universe weaves. Not try and make everything pale.”

  “Fleshy,” said Algernon.

  Hope put her cup down. “What are you saying, Cap?”

  “We’ll get justice,” said Nate. “We’re riding for what’s right. We’ll get Algernon his Judge back. Then, and only then, will we get the Empire back.”

  “This makes no sense,” said Algernon. “If we get the Judge, it’s likely the Service-class machines will continue to fight.”