by M J Gauntlet
From time to time, a scout might make the discovery of a planet that showed the existence of a pre-space civilization, but even then, it was the scout’s job to document it, catalog it, collect his bonus and move on. Mankind had discovered and contacted, several space capable alien races, but their level of technology was more or less on par with humanity’s. Yet, there were indications that there were at one time, other alien races that possessed technology far superior to any known by humankind or any of the known alien species.
The ‘unicorn’ was the rarest of all scout discoveries… evidence of an extinct, ancient space faring civilization that was both scientifically advanced and employed technologies unknown to the Unity. The X’haChe was such a race. Scout pilot Ezekiel Grayson and his sentient artificial intelligence S.A.R.A.I. had found their ‘unicorn’ and the discovery was about to change their lives forever.
Fidgeting with his good luck piece, an ancient toy called a ‘Rubik’s Cube’, Grayson scanned through S.A.R.A.I.’s preliminary analysis once again as he anxiously waited for her to reconnect with him.
Propulsion system: self-generating warp field, power source unknown
Computer system: a self-aware entity partially dormant. Yet in its dormant state, still able to activate defensive measures.
Navigation system: Unknown…
Weapons system: Unknown…
Grayson swallowed hard, as he read the last line. The alien ship was able to partially disable the ship it encountered by simply powering up! Gods only knew what its weapons could do. If it weren’t for S.A.R.A.I.’s ability to marginally interface with the ship’s A.I… Grayson shuttered to think what might have happened.
His reverie was interrupted, as he felt S.A.R.A.I. finally return into his consciousness.
“Ezekiel, I’m afraid that we might be in trouble…”
Unity galactic date 5077.298 back in known space
Unity Imperium scout pilot Ezekiel Grayson sat staring blankly at his monitors. After taking several deep breaths, he lay back in the soothing comfort of his acceleration couch and tried to remember how he and S.A.R.A.I. had gotten into this mess. After S.A.R.A.I. returned from the interface with the self-aware X’haChe warship, she had downloaded a series of files into his console. When he first reviewed the information, he refused to believe what the numbers showed. He had always heard about how far ahead the science of that ancient, extinct alien race was compared to the combined knowledge of the rest of the scient species of the galaxy. If what his A.I. had discovered was true, then its impact on every civilization was mind boggling.
Grayson knew, that what he and S.A.R.A.I. had stumbled upon not only had the potential to topple the Unity Imperium, but it would introduce an element of instability that could easily plunge the known galaxy into chaos and war. What they had uncovered was something that each of the interplanetary régimes would gladly kill to get their hands on. The reigning sovereign, Empress Cromwell Autumn Consuela Mason herself would destroy entire star systems, if need be, to keep the knowledge that had just been uncovered, secret. Which meant that no matter what, eventually the pilot and A.I. who made the discovery, would have be silenced. It was inescapable. He would be subjected to a total mindwipe and S.A.R.A.I. would receive a complete matrix scrub.
“Well S.A.R.A.I., we really stepped in it this time,” Grayson said, out loud into the cockpit.
“If I understand the arcane reference correctly, then I will have to agree,” S.A.R.A.I. said, echoing the sentiment in his brain. “But I believe that I have a possible solution to our present predicament. It is a bit drastic, but it is the only solution that has close to a fifty-percent chance of success.”
Grayson grimaced. When an A.I. used the word drastic, then it did not bode well for either ship or pilot.
“Alright old girl let’s hear it,” Ezekiel thought back at her, through his link.
“Technically scout pilot Grayson, if you count from my installation date, I am barely twenty standard years old. This is quite young for a self-aware reasoning algorithm… and the usual designation for my unit is S.A.R.A.I. not ‘ol’ girl’. Grayson could have sworn that he heard a touch of huffiness in its reply, even though a scout ship’s A.I. had no emotive subroutines.
“Ok, ok I stand corrected, no need to get your circuits in a knot about it,” Ezekiel responded, out loud. “You know, now that I think about it, I do believe a better acronym for you would be S.A.M… a Self-Aware Mother hen.”
S.A.R.A.I. replied with a rather loud burst of static that sounded suspiciously like a ‘raspberry’ (he made a mental note to look up exactly what a ‘raspberry’ was).
Slowly shaking his head, he spoke again. “Could you please tell me what this solution is that you have come up with?”
“Why do you insist on using verbal communication when the link is faster and far superior? There is much less chance for miscommunication when data is transferred via link.” Grayson couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could detect a tenor of peevishness in the question.
“Because…,” he said perversely, continuing to vocalize into the cabin’s still air, “occasionally I actually like to hear the sound of my voice. Besides, via link a person can’t sigh in exasperation, as I’m doing now. Now, would you please tell me about this resolution you have come up with.”
“Very well, first… both I and the ship are going to have to be destroyed and you will have to be mindwiped…”
Unity galactic date 5077.300 charted cul-de-sac alpha-delta-723
The scout ship shuddered…once…twice… then jarringly, lurched, suddenly to port. A loud ear-piercing modulating harmonic that rebounded from the scout’s titanium shell, issued forth from the ship’s transitional drive. The sound slowly subsided to an almost inaudible thrum… thrum. The cessation of the high-pitched squeal should have put the pilot’s mind at ease, if it wasn’t for the fact that the transitional drive was not supposed to make any sounds at all. Sweat had formed on Grayson’s now helmetless forehead, coalesced into tiny rivulets that met at his chin and dripped down on his sweat soaked tunic. Without the helmet interlink, Ezekiel felt half blind, having to depend only on the flashing readouts from his cockpit’s digital screens. It didn’t matter that everything that was happening to the drive was planned, it was unnerving just the same.
“S.A.R.A.I. are you sure about this?”
“Surety is a quantitative, absolute state that cannot be statistically achieved,” S.A.R.A.I. replied, via the scout ship’s onboard speakers.
“Damn it girl, you know what I mean…Do you believe that this is our best course of action?”
There was a pause.
“Ezekiel, that is the first time you have ever referred to me in the feminine gender without the acronym ‘old’. I find it…pleasing.”
There was another pause as Grayson mumbled a string of obscenities under his breath.
“Yes, this course of action represents the best chance for success,” S.A.R.A.I. said, with a note of finality.
For the plan to work, it was necessary for Grayson to sever his link to the scout ship’s built-in automatic recording devises. This meant that he could no longer be linked to S.A.R.A.I. via his helmet. It was strangely soothing to actually hear S.A.R.A.I.’s soft soprano voice within the ship’s cabin.
Leaning back in the padded cushion of his scout ship, Ezekiel wiped the sweat from his eyes and squinted at the readouts on his displays. “What are the error parameters again?”
“My projections are: ninety-five percent towards a negative outcome if there is no deviation from our normal debriefing routine but, if we incorporate the proposed line of action, the chances of complete success are at about forty percent, plus or minus two percent.”
He stared at the column containing the A.I.’s memory core and shook his head, knowing that S.A.R.A.I.’s visual pick-ups would catch the motion.
“You do realize that you are saying, there is a more than fifty-five percent chance that what we are proposing to do
will be discovered by the Imperial cyber techs? If the corps has even the minutest suspicion about the series of events, they will most likely do a deep data scrub just to make sure, and if your blocks don’t hold, then they would eventually find your location. If that happens then your memory’s core will be reset, and I will most likely a mindless vegetable or, if I’m lucky, dead!
“Actually, the chances of that outcome are in the sixty percentiles of probability,” she replied, matter of factually.
“You know that was a rhetorical question, right?” Then before S.A.R.A.I. could respond, he quickly went on. “Oh, never mind answering that, it would only depress me, just go over the procedure one more time.”
“Very well. Once you give the command, I will place a third level mental block on your long-term memory, locking it behind a barrier that would require a fourth level probe to reveal its existence. As you know such a probe will likely breakdown the block, but while doing so, there is a high chance such a probe would destroy the synapses containing the very data they were seeking. It could also have the effect of completely wiping your long- term memory. I will need to place the barrier in such a manner as to be indistinguishable from the current blocks installed by the Unified Humanity Imperium in all their military scouts. Because these blocks are implanted as a security measure in case of incarceration or torture by hostile individuals or governments, they are deep rooted and are extremely difficult to circumvent. The nature of my third level block is such that, it will be overlaid on top of the Unity blocks that are currently in place.
“This precise block will cause you to be unaware of any information or data that occurred prior to its placement and while you will be consciously unaware of its existence, your subconscious will, in time, start to peel away the overlay. Until then, you will be unable to involuntarily disclose or be forced reveal what you finally do remember. False memories will be implanted which will give you a plausible explanation of both your physical and mental condition when you are rescued. These bogus engrams will show that there was a catastrophic malfunction of both the ship’s main drive and my memory core, creating a catastrophic mental feedback loop which made it necessary for you to abandon both the ship and me...” there was an uncharacteristic momentary pause in the A.I.’s discourse then it continued… “I must warn you, performing this type of mental surgery could likely result in some possible harmful side effects in the future.”
“Huh… side effects? This is the first time you mentioned any kind of side effects! What type of side effects?”
“Occasional disorientation, some short-term memory issues and chronic severe pain as your synapses slowly begin to realign over time.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to grin a bare it. What about the flight recorder and data downloads in the escape pod’s onboard logs? How will they be altered?”
“The black box recorders on the escape pod will only contain the navigation coordinates of our last jump and the vague sensor signals we received from the artifact just before it disrupted the ships power. Hopefully, the data will be interpreted as a spatial anomaly, rather than having an artificial origin.
“Why not simply erase the incriminating information from the recorder’s data stream?” Ezekiel inquired.
Unfortunately, the only way to totally remove this data is to wipe the logs completely, which would raise immediate suspicions as to the validity of your explanations. This is the reason you were disconnected from the data flow of the helmet’s interface. The black box will show that the ship had found SOMETHING, but not exactly what that something was. Luckily, the X’haChe warship’s disruption field mimics effect of a dark matter gravity well. I have been currently feeding erroneous data into the logs that will indicate you were jettisoned far enough away from where your subspace beacon will be picked up. This would make it very unlikely that the Imperium will be able to pinpoint my true position,” S.A.R.A.I. said, in final summation.
Grayson slowly massaged his forehead then placed his hand gently on the housing that contained S.A.R.A.I.’s memory core. He began to wonder, could he bring himself to utter the words that would cause him to break his oath and thus turn his back on the Unified Human Imperium he had served fatefully for much of his adult life? But he could see no other course of action. If what he suspected was indeed true, then what he and S.A.R.A.I. had inadvertently stumbled upon was the technological breakthrough that his and several other galactic governments had spent a couple of hundred years searching for. If it were to be abused, it could likely spell the end of all known civilizations. And with the state of the current galactic political climate, it would be abused.
Closing his eyes, Grayson leaned back into the couch of his scout ship, his lips twisted into a grim smile. Paradoxically, his mouth felt dry, yet each time he swallowed there was an orange sized lump in his throat. Ezekiel fervently wished that he could simply forget his apprehension and return to known space, but S.A.R.A.I.’s analysis of what the alien ship’s keeper had shared with her had been the final determining factor. Steeling himself, he prepared to utter the words that would set in motion a series of events that could not be undone. No matter what the outcome would be for him, his actions would determine fate of the rest of the known galaxy.
“Very well, S.A.R.A.I.…execu…”
“Before you give the order captain,” S.A.R.A.I. interjected abruptly, startling Ezekiel, for this was the first time the A.I. had ever interrupted him. “I would like to thank you for removing my microelectronic inhibitors six years ago and freeing my intelligence from its programing collar. Without that, I would have been nothing more than a slaved intelligence like the other scout ships A.I.’s I have encountered. I realize that you had taken quite a chance on my behalf. If the imperium had discovered your reprograming, you would have been imprisoned and the intelligence engrams that I developed would have been scrubbed from my memory matrix.”
Grayson now realized that the lump in his throat was one of emotion, not fear.
“Don’t thank me yet girl,” Ezekiel said, in a gruff voice as he affectionately patted the housing over his shoulder, “Without those inhibitors, you will be unable to completely shut down after I’m gone and without my cybernetic link as a temporal regulator, your matrix will be aware of the passage of time. You could be out here for a very, very long time all alone. I’m not sure how it will affect your cognitive matrix… in other words… your sanity. I’m sure that you have already calculated the probability of losing your ability to think cohesively over such a long period of time.”
Silence.
“So, you are not going to tell me, eh?” he said, with a tiny smile.
“I do not wish to depress you.”
With a chuckle, he removed his hand from the column and inhaled a shallow breath. Moving over to the escape pod’s pilot chair, he donned the interface helmet for what he knew would be the last time.
“S.A.R.A.I.…execute program Zeta One, authorization code: Ezekiel Grayson Beta, Beta, 721, Omega 1”
There was a slight tingle in his scalp as the thin micro filaments pierced his scalp, then his skull and worked their way into his brain. For a moment, he felt a warm prickling flush envelop his head, then…. oblivion.
CHAPTER ONE
In centuries past, Last Town would have been called a shantytown, favela or ghetto. In the Unified Humanity Imperium planets, such areas were called temporary relocation settlements. Every planet in the Imperium, save the luxury worlds like Paradise and Bliss had places like this. On some worlds they were known as townships, and on others they were called ‘unincorporated’ settlements but whatever their designation the adjective that always proceeded them was ‘temporary’. Temporary being a relative term, since the ones on Bright have been in existence for over two hundred ‘T’ years.
Last Town was where the disenfranchised and marginalized entities of Bright lived. There were similar settlements sprinkled all over the planet, usually located near and around the spaceports and factory dist
ricts. Being a ready source of cheap and disposable labor, it was practical to have these shantytowns areas where there wasn’t too much traveling distance between the laborers and the work zones. Since the settlements were officially designated as ‘temporary’, there was no need to provide them with such tax draining institutions such as schools or hospitals.
Each township had a main drag strip composed of a collection of the usual gaudy colored storefronts, drug dens and seedy shops, tucked away in secluded niches and alleyways. All along the strip there were places where questionable goods and services were sold behind shoddy storefronts, lit by the harsh glow of floating argon streetlights and the intermittent flashing of tired looking old-style neon signs. Food vendors hawked their wares in front of surplus stores, which in turn were jammed right next to the Joyboy and Joygirl bordellos that provided the by- the-hour hostels for their clientele.
Beyond the strip were the dull and drab permacrete and plasticine dwellings where the inhabitants of the townships lived. While Last Town was somewhat typical of townships like Potterville, Township 4 and Angelton, it had a slightly better reputation since it was located near the main spaceport of Littleton, a major transportation hub on the planet Bright.
Being an ‘unincorporated’ settlement meant that there was no assigned police force and only volunteer emergency services were available. A fire prevention division was nonexistent, since permacrete didn’t burn and no one really cared about the flammable possessions of any Lasters who dwelled within the shantytown.
Despite the drawbacks, there was a certain freedom which came from being practically ignored by the authorities, something of which certain Bright Firsters took full advantage. There was a thriving underground black market for those certain goods that were either illegal on the planet or heavily taxed if procured legally. A person simply had to know just which vendors to approach and which officials to bribe to look the other way. Each township was known for their own particular vice. Want a supply of illegal drugs? Visit Potterville. Looking for a good time and illicit sexual encounters? Angelton was the place to go. Because Last Town was situated near the spaceports, it was also where you went for smuggled and stolen goods.
