The Complete Clockwork Chimera Saga

by Scott Baron

  A comedy, most likely.

  A few hours later, Daisy walked back to her quarters, still ruminating over her careless insult. She liked Tamara, at least when she wasn’t being gruff, which honestly wasn’t all that often. Bigoted? Prejudiced? Was she really those things? It’s just that those replacement parts aren’t natural, she rationalized. It’s perfectly normal to be creeped out a little, right? Even if true, she needed to keep her tongue in check and smooth things over with the multiple people she’d managed to insult.

  She entered her pod and sealed the heavy double doors behind her and took a seat on her bed.

  I hate this! I need to be able to turn off my brain. To find something to occupy my mind to help me unwind.

  She looked at the neuro-stim unit a moment, a brief flush of self-loathing rising like bile. For all her dislike of technologically altered people, she still relied on the neuro. She bent her own logic to justify its use, she knew, but it had proven far too useful to just put aside.

  It’s not the same as metal limbs, she rationalized, then began scanning its data stores for the one thing she thought might actually help.

  Gotcha.

  Daisy loaded the Tai Chi program into her already-overflowing feed queue, then began typing a rapid series of commands into the device. Several flashing lights and warning tones later, the neuro-stim was ready for her night’s sleep.

  It was only a couple more inhibitors, she rationalized. Still plenty of them left.

  Daisy placed the thin band on her head and activated the machine, then lay back onto her bed, looking forward to the new information she’d wake up with.

  Tai Chi, she mused as she drifted off to sleep. I’m going to know Tai Chi.

  Chapter Eight

  “What’s cookin’, Finn?” Gus called out as he strode through the airlock door. Despite Finnegan’s other duties, like maintaining the hydroponic systems, the mess hall was most certainly his culinary domain.

  “Come on, amigo, I’m starving!” Gustavo groused before swiping a piece of toast from the counter.

  “Hold your horses, I’m working on it,” the mad chef replied. “And, by the way, don’t you have a ship to be flying?”

  “Not my job,” Gus replied. “I’m the navigator, remember?”

  “Fine. A course to be plotting, then?”

  “Only my job if the AI goes on the fritz or needs extra manpower. Mal’s fine on her own at the moment.”

  “You’re killing me, man.” Finn laughed. “I’ll have something for ya in a couple of minutes. You want spicy?” His knife was a blur as it slapped out a staccato rhythm against the cutting board, Tamara’s bounty of vegetables quickly cut into tiny pieces. Taking big things and cutting them into smaller things seemed to be a task that most chefs had quite a proclivity for.

  “Spice is nice, my man, so yeah, kick it up a notch if you want. Hey, you got red peppers over there?” Gustavo asked as the quiet servos adjusted the focal ring on his cybernetic eye to get a better look across the room.

  “Yeah, Tamara just picked ’em today.”

  “Pretty handy, having all those gardening tool attachments she can swap out. She’s hands down got the most kickass upgrade on the ship. Beats the hell out of your weak-ass arm. Maybe you could talk to Mal and see if she’ll hook you up with a built-in knife, or a blender attachment or something.”

  “Ha-ha, funny guy. Now shut up and let me work.”

  The rhythmic sound of chopping started again, and the pile of sliced and diced vegetables quickly grew into a small mountain.

  The doors quietly slid open again.

  “Hey, Finn, what’s cooking?”

  “Jeez, Reggie, is everyone going to keep asking me that?”

  “Yup. Until we’re chowing down anyway,” he answered.

  “Go fly the ship, Reg.”

  “Captain’s shift,” the co-pilot said with a chuckle.

  “So you decided to come harass me.”

  “Yup.” He reached out and snatched a piece of chopped pepper from the cutting board. Finn took exception to the invasion of his work space and flicked his wrist, sending the knife darting toward Reggie’s polished-silver hand in a blur.

  Clang.

  “Dude, not cool! Just because it’s metal doesn’t mean you can just go beating on my hand, man.”

  “Fingers off my cutting board, then.”

  “Quit bickering, you two,” Vince called out as he and Daisy stepped in through the airlock door. “I swear, y’all are like caffeinated toddlers around here.”

  “Look who’s talking, Mr. Half-hour Showers.”

  “At least I’m clean.”

  “In body if not mind,” Gustavo chimed in.

  “Oh, that’s most assuredly not clean,” Daisy added with a smirk.

  The co-pilot flashed them a look and shuddered.

  “Great. We drink that recycled water. Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot. There goes my appetite.”

  “Reggie, nothing kills your appetite.”

  “Funny you should say that, because today I’m making a special—”

  Finn’s piercing shriek startled them all, but not nearly as much as the blood spurting from his lone human hand, while his mechanical arm kept chopping, flailing dangerously, the knife held tight in its grip.

  “Shut it off!” Finn cried out, angling his body away from the runaway appendage.

  “Reggie, grab his wrist while I get to the access from behind!” Vince called out.

  “Dude’s waving a knife around, Vince! You grab it.”

  “Reggie, your hand’s metal, for fuck’s sake!” Gus shouted. “Hurry up and grab him!”

  “Dammit,” Reg grumbled as he cautiously closed in on the flailing arm. “Turn toward me, Finn, and if you have any control, don’t stab me!” His arm moved at human speed, but his mechanical hand flew true, metal fingers deftly wrapping around the injured chef’s wrist and pinning the arm to the cutting board.

  “Quick, get a towel!” Vince shouted as he darted behind Finn and started unbolting the access on the back of his arm. Daisy rushed to the rack and yanked the first clean towel she could find, tossing it to Gustavo, who tightly wrapped Finn’s hand.

  The material quickly blossomed crimson.

  “He’s still spurting!” Gus shouted.

  “I know! Just hang on a second longer, I’ve almost got it.” A metallic clang rang out as the access panel on Finn’s arm fell to the deck. “Daisy, your hands are smaller, reach in there and pull the connection.”

  She scurried to Vincent’s side and slid her fingers into the small opening in Finn’s arm. “Hang on… Got it!”

  Finnegan’s arm flopped limp, the knife dropped from its lifeless hand.

  “I received notification of an emergency situation. What is the status?” Barry stood just inside the doorway. In all the commotion, he had somehow arrived with no one even noticing. “An injury! Please, allow me to assist.”

  The cyborg picked up the injured man as easily as if he were a child and quickly rushed him through the double doors and down the passageway to the medical pod.

  “Mal, get Doc McClain to medical, and notify the captain that Finn has been injured,” Vince shouted.

  “I have notified them both, Vincent. I have also prepared an auto-sedation unit in medical should it be required.”

  “Wait!” Daisy called out. “His fingers!”

  Vince, never the squeamish one, didn’t hesitate. “I’ve got ’em,” he said as he snatched up the three bloody digits from the cutting board and took off to the med pod.

  The unexpected burst of adrenaline was a shock to her system, and Daisy found herself a little queasy as she looked at the pool of blood coating Finn’s work area.

  “Hey, you don’t look so hot. Go sit down and take a few deep breaths. We’ll clean this up,” Gustavo offered. Her legs a bit wobbly, Daisy decided that was a fantastic bit of advice.

  “What the hell was that?” Reggie asked. “I mean, did you see his arm, man? It was
going nuts, like it had a mind of its own.”

  Gustavo retrieved some gloves and cleaning supplies from the sanitation compartment flush-mounted next to the refuse disposal and compost repurposing unit.

  “Well, technically his arm does have a mind of its own, just not a very sophisticated one,” he answered. “My guess is they’ll have to do an AI wipe and reinstall once they run diagnostics.”

  Daisy’s ears perked up at that.

  “Wait, his arm is an actual AI?” she asked, stunned. “I thought it was just a mechanical enhancement.”

  “Well, not a full AI like Mal or Barry. What the more complex replacement limbs have is more like a basic task awareness unit to help the mechanical interface respond to the electric impulses sent from the host’s nervous system. There’s no real consciousness there. No complex thought. I suppose you could even call it a ‘dumb’ AI, if you wanted an apt descriptor for it. Basically, it just helps interpret what the wearer wants it to do.”

  Daisy looked at Reggie’s hand a little uncomfortably.

  “Hang on, so does that mean his hand could go haywire at any time?”

  “Nah. Reggie’s hand is far less complicated than a whole arm replacement. I’d wager it only has the tiniest of boosters right about at the seam where they joined the reinforced flesh to the metal, but nothing like what Finn has, and certainly nowhere near Tamara’s.”

  “I guess with all those different attachments she can swap out, her arm would have to be a bit more… what should I call it? Robust?” Reggie pondered.

  “Seems like a bit of overkill for a gardener,” Daisy said.

  “Ooh, don’t let her hear you call her that. Best to stick with botanist if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Oh, I’m already on her shit list,” Daisy lamented. “Doubt I could do much to make it any worse. And now Finn’s out of action for a while.”

  “Yeah, did you see that? I wonder what the hell happened,” Gus said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was watching some contraband porn and got a virus,” Daisy said with a dark, gallows humor chuckle.

  A look of concern flashed across Gustavo and Reggie’s faces.

  “Not a virus!” Gus blurted. “What are you talking about? The ship is totally firewalled, and besides, out here in the middle of nowhere, there’s nowhere for a virus to even come from!” A hint of red colored his cheeks.

  “Okay, okay, take it easy. It was just a joke. Don’t worry, you guys aren’t going to suddenly go haywire. I get it,” she conceded. “Anyway, thanks for cleaning up, I’m going to head to my work pod. I think I need a little quiet time.”

  Deep down in the belly of the ship, Daisy sat silently amongst her beloved tools, surrounded by a daunting mountain of assorted gadgets that needed repairing. She had thought giving her hands something to do would help take her mind off Finn’s screaming and all that blood, but, unfortunately, the devices strewn around her were providing more frustration than relief.

  This stuff isn’t even part of my normal duty assignment, she lamented. I don’t see why we don’t just wait until we reach Dark Side and let the techs there handle it. I know the captain wants them fixed, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s wrong with these. And why do we have so many old environmental probes and med scanners?

  While Daisy and Sarah were the two tech experts on board, neither had been trained in portable electronics repair, with all their miniaturized parts. They’d been prepped to handle only the larger systems that kept the Váli up and running. She had added some additional repair protocols to her neuro feed when Mal asked her if she wouldn’t mind seeing about working on them, but at the rate she was learning the new information, it was a bust so far.

  It takes years to properly absorb that stuff. I’d be just as well-off wearing a blindfold and going by instinct, she thought.

  Her body still felt on-edge. Abuzz. The adrenaline surge from Finn’s accident had left her discombobulated, a state of being she was entirely unfond of. Okay, work isn’t going to cut it. What the hell, I’m going to take a few minutes of ‘me’ time.

  Daisy pushed the medical scanner and mountain of components crowding her worktable back a bit to give herself a little more room and took a seat in her chair. Then she focused on something she did every moment of her life but never really paid much attention to.

  She focused on breathing.

  Slow and steady, deep but not over-oxygenating herself to the point of hyperventilation, that was the ticket, and gradually, she felt her body start to settle down and her mind release its panic-grip on the bloody scene she’d witnessed. Everything was becoming less intense as the harshness slowly trickled away, but still, she couldn’t make it over that final hump.

  Whatever the block was, it didn’t seem to want to go anywhere no matter what she did, so rather than focus on it and get all wound-up and frustrated again, Daisy decided to give her brain something to do. She chose to run through her newly-upgraded Tai Chi lessons, but given the clutter of her workspace, she did so in her mind.

  The first forty movements came to her easily, as they typically would when she wasn’t distracted. The motions that came after, however, were where she always had problems.

  Today was different.

  Perhaps it was because she had “primed the pump” by meditating before beginning, maybe it was the adrenaline still in her system, or perhaps it was the simple act of taking out the physical body-awareness aspect. Whatever the cause, Daisy whipped through the entire series in her mind with perfect ease. When she repeated the feat a second time just as easily, a little smile grew on her face.

  The combination of breathing and focus also made her feel something new. She felt a ball of warmth in her belly, flowing through her body in a cycle from crown to tailbone. It was Qi Gong breathing and energy work, one of the first things Sarah had taught her, and suddenly, it all made sense.

  Meditation, Qi Gong, and Tai Chi were an open book, she realized. Whether it was entirely due to the inhibitor-lessened neuro feed, or just her own nascent understanding, Daisy felt the beginning of a new awareness tugging at the edges of her consciousness. Everything she’d been drip feeding was beginning to color the storage regions of her mind, awakening areas of knowledge she hadn’t thought she was absorbing at all.

  I get it, she thought. The inhibitors weren’t just in the neuro stim. I had blocks hindering me in my brain too.

  Daisy opened her eyes but maintained a soft gaze, taking in the space around her with a calm, heightened perception. Breathing steadily, basking in the feeling of positive progress and healthy energy in her body, Daisy didn’t even notice her hands instinctively moving in front of her as her mind began to unlock its tightly held secrets.

  An hour later, she gently pulled herself out of the near-trance state, relaxed and calm, but also knowing she really should get back to work.

  Then she noticed the medical scanner in front of her. That and the entirely new device sitting beside it.

  What the hell?

  While not plugged in to a power source, the scanner was back together in one piece, a small pile of ruined components off to one side, where she had apparently placed them as she effected the repairs without even realizing she was doing it.

  Somehow she knew the machine would work now. All those repair protocol drip-loads were there, she had just never known how to access them.

  Until now.

  The other device was something entirely different, she realized. It was a manifestation of one of the crazy ideas she’d had but never thought to actually even try to build. A plasma modulator that would internally merge a series of cascading energy fields until they build up a greater level of energy potential than their individual parts.

  It was a tiny unit, easily able to fit in both hands, but if her theory was correct, the deceptively small device could amplify power fields far more than anyone would expect. Looking at her creation with curious eyes, she wondered if she could actually make it funct
ional.

  Tuning out and letting her mind flow free from the tangle of her conscious thoughts was apparently the key, she realized. And not just the key to Tai Chi, it seemed.

  Huh, so that’s how it works, she mused, excited by the discovery. I wonder what other things I can do.

  Chapter Nine

  “I told you, Doc, I’m fine. I just got a little light headed is all. It was a lot of adrenaline, that’s it. I mean, it’s not every day someone chops off their fingers in front of you.”

  Doctor McClain studied Daisy with a practiced gaze. As not only the ship’s doctor, but also psychologist, her raison d’être was to ensure the crew didn’t go mad (or worse) during their voyage. The austere woman tapped her pen against her leg unconsciously as she assessed her patient. Little did she know, the faint metallic clinking sound put Daisy even more on edge.

  Replacement parts.

  It seemed everyone on board had them, everyone but Daisy, Vince, and Sarah. The flesh-and-blood musketeers.

  “Daisy, are you listening?”

  “Sorry, what? I spaced out for a minute.”

  “I was saying I want you to take it easy today.”

  “Doc, I already had a really productive bit of downtime. I’m good, my spirits are high, and my batteries are charged. Figuratively, that is.”

  “Even so, I know you haven’t been sleeping well these last few months, and it concerns me. You know, Daisy, proper REM sleep is how the brain deals with events and problems you’ve encountered during the day. If you are unable to get good, deep sleep, your mind will remain exhausted.”

  “My sleep has actually been a bit better lately. Sarah showed me some meditation techniques, and I’ve finally got my neuro-stim dialed in just right.”

  “Mal and I have both warned you about tinkering with that, Daisy. The technology is far beyond your training.”

  “I know, but it just seemed so, I don’t know, intuitive, ya know? Like I had this idea how to make it better and it actually worked. Who knows, when we get back to Earth, maybe I’ll even transition into a new job. ‘Enter the exciting field of neuro stimulation devices! Sign up now!’”