“Fine. I’m just saying that they may have just been a rogue bunch. The ones with the Chinese.”
“I wasn’t rogue when they sent me out there to kill you on Dione. Why am I having this conversation again?”
Jook spoke from off camera. “I’m inclined to agree with Caleb, Jen. Let’s go see the Canadian child thief.”
Caleb said, “Hold on. You know the story? The Inuit story?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
Ijiraq was the definition of a speck in space, a fleck of sand in an infinite ocean. As they approached the rock and scanned it with the long range instruments (one of the benefits of Caleb’s cop ship), they noted that the irregularly shaped satellite was spinning in a counter clockwise direction. They were surprised to see surface activity and lights. They weren’t surprised when a query message popped up on all their screens demanding to know who they were.
The refugees had agreed in advance on how they would respond to such a query. They were still too far away to have a face-to-face call that wouldn’t be totally disjointed with transmission delays so Caleb shot back a text.
Good day. We’re a pharmaceutical concern doing some raw materials exploration. We’re passing through the region and are wondering if you may be interested in doing some trade.
Not interested, please keep a courtesy distance of 400 kilometers as you fly by.
Caleb scratched his beard, saying to himself, “Douche. Perhaps I should rephrase.”
We’re a pharmaceutical concern. We likely have important and or exotic drugs that your medical unit is unlikely to carry.
There was a long pause. Really long. Caleb texted, You get that last one? The pause turned into a complete nothing. Finally, Caleb’s terminal rang.
It was Jennifer, thankfully clothed. “Shall I try?”
“What are you going to offer that I didn’t?”
She pulled open her elastoware top and flashed her breasts. “These.”
Caleb’s eyes crossed for a second. “Really? So now we’re drug pushers and what? Escorts?”
“It’s just another lie. It doesn’t change the equation.”
Caleb furiously scratched his beard and blew out a long sigh. “Fine. Try the tits. Where’s the Jook dude?”
“Sleeping.”
“I don’t like you with that guy.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Well please don’t. I’m going to send a picture of my tits to some strangers now.”
After another terminally long wait they received:
Nothing against the boobs, but we insist on the courtesy of your ships keeping 400 kilometers of distance as you pass. If you don’t respect this request, we will consider you to be a hostile force and respond accordingly.
Jennifer got back on the vid with Caleb looking annoyed. “Now what?”
“Maybe you keep your shirt on.”
“In retrospect it was probably a bit narcissistic of me to think that I could be persuasive that way.”
Caleb had all sorts of answers about how persuasive Jennifer’s breasts were, but chose to let it go. “I’m going to pull out the big gun.”
She brightened a bit. “So you think they swing that way. FYI, you’re sounding a bit full of yourself, too.”
“Are you stoned? Is everything about sex organs with you? I’m talking about threatening them with a shut down.”
“Huh?”
“Just read the texts.” Caleb cut off the connection, flipped on the ship’s identification transponder, the one that he had immediately shut off when he stole the ship, and spoke to text:
You will note that my ship is officially registered Hanson PD. I am carrying a variety of ordinance. One of those items is a focused EMP generator. For various reasons, we need to land. If you don’t grant us safe landing and your minimum of hospitality, I’ll fire this thing. I have scanned your base. I will start with your nonessential areas. If we are still not granted some hospitality, I will shut your shit down. You won’t have enough electricity to flush your toilets.
The response was quicker this time:
Just like nukes, EMP weapons are banned from the Saturn System per the Titan Agreement of 2086, Code 4713, Item j1. A police vehicle would not have such a weapon.
Try me.
You’re bluffing.
Very well. We will start with the toilets. In 1.3 hours we will be in range and remain safely out of range of any type of ordinance you may carry. I will begin by targeting your waste plant. FYI, the Hanson PD is full of crooks. EMPs are just a taste.
Jennifer popped up on his holoscreen again and was followed by Saanvi with Bert looking over her shoulder. Saanvi said, “Really? First drugs and Jen’s boobs and now threatening the destruction of their electronics?”
Bert spoke over her shoulder. “I find it remarkable, sir, that your ship carries a EMP device. I suppose the power source could be made small enough, but it seems—”
“I don’t have a fucking EMP, numbskull. I’m bluffing.”
“Oh. You were quite convincing, sir.”
“Let’s hope that the folks on Ijiraq are as dim as you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Saanvi said, “So now that we are not coming bearing gifts, and assuming that they don’t call your bluff, how do you propose that we work with these people once they do let us land with a gun to their heads?”
“I’ve got all sorts of weapons on this thing. I just keep threatening.”
Saanvi cast her eyes down in dismay and quietly said, “This should be lovely.”
Jook, looking bleary-eyed, pushed his head in next to Jennifer’s. “What I miss?”
To land on a body that is roughly only ten kilometers in diameter (the big rock wasn’t exactly round) requires finesse. Approach at too great a speed and the low gravity won’t be enough to capture the ship. The landing will have the ship bouncing off the surface, only to land—or more likely bounce—far from the desired landing spot. Making matters a little more complicated was the rotation of the satellite. As they approached, they were looking at the center of what was more or less a slow spinning top. The best place to land; the obvious place to land was at the center of the rotation where there just happened to be an already parked ship and the least amount of mass spinning around. A bad landing and a bounce might have the next touchdown at the outer edge of the rotation, causing the ship to spin off into space. With the low-gravity offering little grab and the crazy calculation for the spin, the solution was a harpoon: slowly approach the celestial body, fire the retros to match the spin of the rock, and bring the vehicle to a gentle free fall, letting the celestial body do some of the work. At three hundred meters, fire the harpoon into what is hopefully not solid rock (bouncing said harpoon back off the moon) and winch the ship down to the surface. Easy. Fortunately, the docking area had clearly marked harpoon receivers, making landing a relative no-brainer.
While he kept his ship back (a cocked fist in the event that Ijiraq’s occupants tried to pull a fast one), Caleb watched the shuttle and the Belle successfully touch down. When it was his turn, he reluctantly allowed his brain to connect with the cop ship in order to land without incident. Then his harpoon missed the receiver by a meter and bounced off a rock. He had put the ship into a quicker descent than the computer had advised, and he broke into an instant sweat as he waited for the winch to wind up the harpoon for a second shot. It wasn’t as if he’d crash. He could always fire his retros and make another attempt; it was a matter of saving face. If he blew his landing after being such a blowhard with the threats, what would the residents think? Jennifer’s face popped up on the holoscreen. “Whatcha doin’ there, hot stuff? Why don’t you lift away and make another attempt?”
Caleb pushed the button to end the call. “Meh meh meh, another attempt, blah blah.”
The surface was coming up fast. The harpoon was designed to retract slowly lest the jolt from it reseating itself bump the ship off cour
se. The readout on the gauge told him that he had 47 meters of cable still out. The proximity to the surface said 53 meters. The harpoon was respooling at one meter per second and . . . the ship falling at point nine-seven meters per second . . .
Bert popped up on his display. “Excuse me, Sir. Saanvi instructs me to tell you—”
Caleb hit the end button again. He felt the sweat beading up on his back and was grateful that there wasn’t enough gravity to let it pour down his butt-crack. Then a text popped up from the moon base.
Asshole. Do not smash your ship on my moon.
Relax, douche. Can’t smash a ship at less than a meter per second.
Assssshole. I spent months getting the spin on this moon right for SIMGRAV. You hit it hard enough and you mess with my spin. You hit it too hard and you mess with my orbit. Back off and try again.
Caleb hated being called an asshole. He wasn’t an asshole and people who referred to him as such were fucking assholes. The last fucking thing he was going to do now was back off and try again. Jook popped up on his display, and he hit end. Spruck popped up, and he turned the display off.
Jennifer texted, Can’t wait to see the dust pile you’re going to make.
Caleb thought of the crash on Phoebe, the black splat of fresh dirt surrounding the mangled ship. Fuck that. The proximity alarm started blaring and he couldn’t find the off switch for that one. God, it was loud. Fifteen meters, thirteen, ten, nine . . .
At less than two meters the harpoon reseated itself and with a gentle jolt, the landing gear touched the surface . . . and began to bounce away. He fired the harpoon. The two-meter device traveled the three meters from the belly of the ship into the waiting receiver, the cable retracted and yanked the vehicle back down firmly to the surface.
Caleb smiled to himself. “So there.” He chose to ignore the fact that his hands were shaking like a drunk with the DTs.
Chapter Seventeen: Vigilance Fail
In a common cube home near the Houston Space Center, Tom Fisher had set his brain to wake at 6.5 hours to give himself time at his home gym before going to the office. He had picked up the complete set of professional exercise equipment for free from one of the last physical fitness clubs in Houston. With the latest fitness nanos on the market all the rage, gym equipment was only worth the scrap fee. Once in the blood stream, the microscopic robots could be programmed to stimulate the body’s muscles from simple toning up to, in Tom’s mind, ridiculous comic book proportions without having to lift a finger. Just program the brain to require the consumption of the appropriate calorie intake and watch the muscles grow—not without breaking a sweat or breathing hard, but nevertheless, allowing the mind to be focused on more productive (or not) things. Tom Fisher was old school. He liked to work out for real. He figured he already had plenty of networked nanos in his body doing everything else for him. He hadn’t been sick, slept badly, been depressed, or even gotten itchy in twelve years. His skin was as perfect as the day he first introduced the tiny machines into his body—better even. Aging was now an option.
After a shower and throwing on a polo shirt and some slacks, he wolfed down some gray-green cubes that he kept fresh in the fridge. The cubes were the standard meal for everyone and consisted of the perfect balance of nutrition for a human animal. Of course, the consumer didn’t have to know he was eating chewy gray-green cubes. Most of the time Tom liked to set his perception to cheesy eggs and bacon. The bacon was cooked with maple syrup and peppercorns. He felt his taste buds explode with desire as he took the first bite. Most people chose to do the same with their morning water; changing it into coffee, juice, tea, or a milkshake. Again, Tom was old school about certain things: He splurged on real orange juice. For some reason he could never get his brain to convincingly convert water to the orange juice experience. The pulp was there, but something was missing in the acidity. Tom’s entire environment was a fabrication of perceptions. An observer would note a man in a single windowless room that was bedroom, kitchen, bath, and any number of other rooms that he chose to imagine it to be. Tom’s perception was set to tell him that he lived in a 2500-square-foot house with a view of Mount Rainier. Never mind that he lived in a warren of such cubes in a community built next to the Spaceport.
For two years, he had filled that house with a wife and two kids, and occasionally a dog or cat. Ultimately, he found family life to be too stressful and distracting from his work, so he deleted the whole thing and wiped it from his memory. The entire experience remained buried in a zip file should he change his mind. A reminder would gently tap him on the mental shoulder in a few years in case he wanted to try again when the kids would have been a little older.
Roughly 70 percent of Earth’s connected population not only lived in, but worked within the confines of the type of cube that Tom inhabited. Tom, however, didn’t take his isolation that far. Despite the allure of being able to travel to any location and have any experience of any whim at any time, Tom’s job required his physical presence. Like all of those who still manufactured things, life outside the box was an inconvenient necessity. Yes, Tom was an overseer, but an overseer in his case needed to physically oversee. AI could be counted on to always be there in the background, but spaceflight engineering for human transport was one of the few nontinkerer jobs that a 3-D printer and a band of clever robots couldn’t completely handle. Human animals had put their foot down when it came to life support and the various elements intrinsic to safe space travel, which was beside the point; the rule was that human animals would remain part of the equation—at least as far as the INVEIGLE Program was concerned. The human animal was the lynchpin for the success of the operation. AI insisted on the human animal component. The deceit had to be of human origin. That humans such as Tom Fisher volunteered to be a cog in the monstrosity was only a natural element in the weakness of the human animal’s history. Nazis were the standard example, but frankly, there were cavemen who found meaning and sustenance in barbaric, selfish, twisted cruelty without a clue that their behavior was barbaric, selfish, twisted, and cruel.
Stepping onto the street, Tom called his electric skateboard from its tiny garage and instructed it to take him the 1.3 miles to the construction hangars. As was typical, he had most of the perfectly maintained streets to himself. He spotted a few other skateboarders and a food cube delivery truck out by the engineering housing. In an attempt at blatant self-delusion, the panels of the truck were painted with a cornucopia of colorful nutrition. Tom remained surprised that the people in engineering still got deliveries, that food tubes hadn’t been installed for greater efficiency. Fussy, those folks. They probably still had issues with the notion of food being pushed through miles of tubing—but really, was there a difference between freshly delivered cubes and ones delivered right to the refrigeration units in each cluster of housing? It all came from the same tubes in the same plant—plant 5T234-KL to be exact.
Prima donnas, thought Tom.
Today wasn’t about what the latest project for planetary exploration might be. Today was about one project. INVEIGLE, the only project that AI really cared about. An entire branch of the human animal occupied a portion of the Solar System, and that branch had the audacity to choose not to belong to the Singularity. The humans settling the Saturn System had raised a mighty middle finger to AI and the vast majority of humanity that had chosen to assimilate. That a population of unincorporated humans existed outside the network was considered an obvious threat. It was only logical that those beings would ultimately choose to return to Mother Earth. They were refugees who would eventually grow weary of their distant lot, and they would demand the right to return. It was an outcome that AI and the rest of the residents of Earth had collectively decided was intolerable. The Saturnites needed to be dealt with accordingly.
Today was simple enough. A radio signal would inform the scientists and engineers at the Spaceport that the sweat and labor from nearly three years before was approaching fruition.
A billion kilome
ters away, give or take, a humanoid robot was coursing through space. It was like nearly every other robot that humans had dragged along to the Saturn System, except that this one enjoyed similar cloaking technology to the Princess Belle. Samantha had been out there for nine months now. After being whipped around the Earth and then the moon, the machine had gotten a final boost off Jupiter as it hurled toward an eventual rendezvous with Titan. At 66,666,666 kilometers from Saturn, Samantha partially woke and briefly deployed a folding antenna from her back. The array gathered its exact position from the sun and four stars, aligned itself with Earth, and sent a tiny burst transmission before the robot returned to sleep mode.
Tom Fisher stood in the thinly populated Spaceport control room next to his only real live friend, Professor Eric Gablehauser, and noted the incoming message. With the transmission confirmed, he held his hand up for a high-five. Gabelhauser despised the touch of another human, but complied with the old social convention out of rare delight.
“Bingo,” said Tom. “Exactly on time.” He held up a glass of water. “Two months to go. Champagne?”
“Never touch the stuff,” said Gablehauser.
“Drink of your choice then.”
“Fine. Orange Fanta.”
They clinked glasses. Tom sipped his water and felt bubbles on his tongue delivering the complex fruit of a vintage Dom Perignon. He decided to let the beverage have its desired effect, noting a slightly dizzy feeling overcoming his limbs. The omniscient sensation that was AI gave off its own cold feelings of warmth and was joined by a general sense of accomplishment that spread through every human on Earth. That awareness was almost overwhelming in the pleasure it conveyed, and Tom’s mild effervescence was quickly supplanted by the high of a massively connected sentience, producing a feeling of deep satisfaction.
Nearly every moon around Saturn had a radio telescope and or other piece of detecting equipment pointed at Earth, as well as the moon, Mars, Venus, and any other place in the inner Solar System that could be a departure point for an unwanted delivery. Every one of those Saturn-based devices, if they noted it at all, failed to perceive the approaching robot for what it was.
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