Black and White

by Mark Wandrey

  It turned out there were six small corridors running off from the entry area. They were both halfway down one of them looking at more tubes. As they entered one of the corridors, more subdued lights came on. “What did you find?” he asked.

  Katrina pointed to the line of tubes in the corridor. “Look at these,” she said.

  “Bunch of different fish,” he said. He leaned in closer to examine the one next to him. It was a little like a lobster, only much larger. Probably a meter long, it also had a tail that split at the end, and no obvious eyes. It looked like it could be alive; there was no sign of decay.

  “Not different,” Colin said and pointed to the one next to it.

  Terry moved over and examined it. Colin was confused, it was clearly a different species. Then he spotted all the similarities. The only thing different was that the ‘head’ now had eyestalks, and the second set of legs had tiny pincers. “Evolutionary samples?”

  “Keep looking,” Katrina said, so he moved to the next one.

  Two sets of the front legs now had pincers, and the pincers were segmented to provide articulation. The first set also had a fixed ‘thumb.’ The eyes were now mobile and compound, and the tail was smaller, tougher, and appeared to be able to curl up under the body. There was another down the line, and the theme continued, with both front sets of limbs showing thumbs and more detailed articulation. The progression was obvious.

  “Were they purposely modifying these lobster things?” he asked.

  “We think so,” Colin said. “It starts down there with a lobster creature half the size of the one you’re looking at, and ends over there.”

  Terry looked at the one Colin had indicated. It was again a little smaller than the largest, and its pincers were basically small three-fingered hands. He also saw unmistakable pinplants on the side of its head. “Hey, how are these here? Aren’t they 20,000 years old?”

  Katrina moved her foot through the millimeters-thick dust on the floor, just like the rest of the building. “Hard to say how old, but nobody’s been in here for a long time.”

  Terry looked for a display on the cylinders. There wasn’t one. There were nine tubes in the corridor, taking the lobster from a simple creature to one that would have been at home wandering through Karma. “Wait,” he said, “there’s a term for this.” He went into the personal files on his slate. He’d downloaded a ton of books and videos while aboard Teddy Roosevelt. He typed in a few search words, and up came a term.

  “Uplifting,” he said. “They call this uplifting. Taking a species from basically an animal all the way to full sentient beings. Doc talked about how they thought some races looked, well, designed.” He pointed at the final stage of the lobster-thing. “What are the others like?”

  They went to the next corridor. This creature looked like a sea snake he’d seen in an aquarium on Honolulu. Over the next five cylinders it became bigger, its eyes more forward focused, and it grew tentacles on either side of the head, which must be manipulative limbs. Unlike the lobster, it didn’t have a pinplant, and seemed to suddenly stop in mid-uplift. Failed project? he wondered.

  Three of the remaining corridors had progressive examples of different creatures. One reminded him of a sea urchin. There were only four examples; apparently it hadn’t worked out early on. The next was a sort of shark with armored plates on its body. This one had seven examples, the most of any, and ended with pinplants and six crab-like limbs—two with vicious pincers, the rest more like hands.

  The last was a dead ringer for a cuttlefish. Like the lobster, it hadn’t started out with eyes, but they’d quickly added them in. It had only made it to the fifth iteration, where it ended without pinplants.

  “I think the pinplants signify that they graduated,” Terry said.

  “God, I hope not,” Katrina said.

  “Why?” Colin wondered.

  “Because that means there are giant armored sharks out in the galaxy!”

  “At least they don’t have laser beams on their heads,” Terry said. She giggled. They’d both watched those movies a week earlier. It seemed like a million years now, as he remembered everyone was dead. He put it out of his mind.

  The last of the six corridors wasn’t a gallery of uplifted alien sea life. Instead, it led to another doorway. Terry opened this one himself. He wasn’t bothering with the gun anymore. It seemed there was nothing more dangerous here than long-dead alien science experiments and dust.

  This room seemed to be the remainder of the large dome, or about a quarter of the space along the back wall. It looked rather boring compared to the dozens of cylinders full of half-uplifted alien creatures.

  There were a pair of workstations like the ones in the entry area, one to either side of the door. Further back toward the wall sat a series of a dozen blocky structures set into the floor. The curve of the back wall was interrupted halfway down from the curved ceiling, and came straight down, suggesting there was something behind it out of view.

  The only thing that seemed out of place was an empty cylindrical clear tank mounted on treads with several manipulator arms attached. Terry moved closer to examine it, and found the glass covered in a light residue, as if whatever liquid had once been in it had evaporated, leaving a dried scum on the sides. In the bottom were a couple of inlets and outlets that had probably purified the water, a couple of pieces of corroded electronics that might have been pinplants, and what looked to him like a bird’s beak.

  “What is this place?” Katrina asked aloud. She was looking at one of the blocky structures, which showed no response to her presence.

  “Maybe a lab?” Colin suggested. He looked at the tracked tube Terry was examining. “This was an experiment when they all started shooting each other?”

  Terry went to a workstation and used his slate again once it came alive, like the others in the entry area.

  “Project Suspended—Standing By”

  “Analysis Available.”

  He stared at the options for a moment. Other items in the display noted available quantities on hand of things called biofilm, gene silencers, mutagens, and phages. None of the terms made sense to him, though his translator recognized them. At least as many others were untranslated. ‘Analysis Available’ was highlighted, so he reached into the Tri-V and touched it. The entire display flashed blue, and another much larger Tri-V came alive.

  “What did you just do?” Katrina asked, accusation in her voice.

  “It’s just a lab,” he replied and shrugged. “What can it do?” She opened her mouth to tell him when the new display resolved into an obvious representation of the structures within the dome. He held up his slate, which translated more of the buildings. Habitation, Life Support, Thermal Tap, Backup Fusion Power, Stores 1, Stores 2, Armory, Labs, and Pool. Then a series of white spots appeared. A dozen or so in the pool, and three in the lab.

  “That’s us,” Colin pointed at the lab.

  “Which means those are the cetaceans,” Terry said and pointed at the pool. As they watched, the simple spots of white grew into perfectly rendered Tri-V dolphins and orcas. Curious and emboldened by his success at bringing the view up, he reached out and touched the pool area. It expanded to take up the entire viewing area.

  Like any alien-made Tri-V, the image was true-to-life in full detail. He recognized Moloko with her calf Pōkole, Maka, Kray, and the other orcas, along with numerous bottlenoses. One by one, the representations of each cetacean was taken apart layer by layer, completely deconstructed down to their skeleton, and then popping back into existence.

  “Woah,” Katrina said, “that’s freaky. What’s it doing?”

  “Scanning them,” Terry said. He touched the display and moved his hand sideways until the lab and their three shapes were visible. It was more than a little disconcerting to watch themselves live from above, all their actions perfectly copied. Colin looked up at the ceiling, and his miniature did the same thing.

  “That’s even more freaky,” Katrina said. Then th
e miniature Katrina’s clothes disappeared. She squealed and her hands went to her privates. Her skin was gone, then muscles, and so on.

  Terry had been momentarily titillated, then blanched as she was stripped to the bones, just like the cetaceans, only to pop back to normal. He was next, and it all happened too fast for his belated attempt at modesty to work any better than Katrina’s had. Colin looked from them to the display just in time to be looking at his own naked miniature.

  “What the heck?” he barked as his skin disappeared. He glared at Terry.

  “Not like I can control it,” Terry said. Katrina looked at them both peevishly, her cheeks flushed bright red.

  Terry turned to look at the workstation display. “All Analysis Complete,” was displayed.

  “Marine Mammal—Fully Actionable / Non-Resident—Analysis Results: Size Class 6 / Biome Type 3 / Tech Index 1 / Combat Index 9—Sapient Stage 5—Candidate Stage 8”

  “Marine Mammal—Fully Actionable / Non-Resident—Analysis Results: Size Class 3 / Biome Type 3 / Tech Index 9 / Combat Index 3—Sapient Stage 6—Candidate Stage 10—Special Alert—Multi-Level Nav Candidate”

  “Land Mammal—Partly Actionable / Non-Resident—Analysis Results: Size Class 2 / Biome type 2/4—Potential 3/5/6 / Tech Index 7 / Combat Index 10—Sapient Stage 9—Candidate Stage 10”

  “Is the last one us?” Katrina asked.

  “I think it is,” Terry said. “The first must be the orcas, the second the bottlenoses. It looks like the system’s evaluated them for uplifting.”

  “And us, too,” Colin pointed out. “Sapient stage 9? I guess it thinks we aren’t quite as far from monkeys as we think we are.” They all laughed. Katrina made a chimpanzee sound, and they laughed again.

  “How’s it getting all this?” she asked. “The best scanners we have on Earth are huge and take minutes to get even a fraction of the kind of data they’ve gotten in seconds. It must have scanned our DNA.”

  “Those panels,” Terry said, snapping his fingers. “They reminded me of something. The walls of the Tri-V theater on the Behemoth have similar panels. They’re sensors, really, really good ones.”

  “I guess,” Katrina said. “Did you see...”

  “Nope,” Terry said, hoping he wasn’t blushing. He moved the big Tri-V display to the armory building and touched it. Once again it zoomed in, and data began to scroll.

  “Manufactory Standing By—Available; 500 Class 1 Type 2/3/4 Configurable Beam Weapons. Available, 100 Class 2 Type 2/3/4 Configurable Projectile Weapons. Available, 400 Units Configurable Armor.” It continued to list more items but didn’t translate them. He was pretty sure he understood some of it, which made sense from what they’d seen in the armory; there were a lot of guns.

  He tapped at the displays of weapons, but it just flashed at him. After the third time, a line of text appeared. “Configure To Match Candidate”

  “You better stop before you break something,” Colin said.

  “This thing is 20,000 years old,” Terry scoffed. He glanced at his watch and saw that Dan had been gone over three hours. He was about to use the radio relay through the base comms when Dan’s voice came over loud and full of panic.

  “They’re here!” he yelled. “The crabs snuck into the sub! They’re coming in—” The transmission cut off suddenly.

  “Dan?” Terry said into the radio. “Get out of there, go, leave! Get everyone through to here!” No response came back. The three friends stood in shock, staring at each other, none of them knowing what to say or do.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 15

  Kahraman Base, Planet Hoarfrost, Lupasha System, Coro Region, Tolo Arm

  May 14th, 2038

  “What do we do?” Katrina asked.

  “We have to do something,” Colin agreed.

  Terry stared at the armory display. Hundreds of guns, they just needed to be made usable. Could he and his two friends take on all the alien mercs? The answer was almost certainly no. With advanced weaponry, maybe they could kill a whole bunch of them. Everyone else was probably dead. They were it.

  He glanced at his two friends, who were having an animated argument about what to do, momentarily forgetting Terry was there as well. He leaned over and tapped the armory display. It pulsed blue.

  “Configure To Match Candidate”

  He touched the beam weapons, then reached over and touched land mammals. Both pulsed yellow.

  “Define Combat Environment—2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 ”

  He stared at the highlighted 3, 5 and 6. It had said the land mammals, he and his friends, were potentially for those biomes. He knew biome likely meant environment, and as the cetaceans were biome 3, that must be water. Humans were already good for 2 and 4. What did those mean? Air and...something else. He needed guns that worked underwater, or anywhere else. He clicked 2, 3 and 4.

  “Candidate Biome Adaptation Required—Proceed | Artificial Adaptation”

  Biome adaptation made him nervous. However, artificial didn’t sound bad. He clicked it.

  “Candidate Interface Necessary—Proceed”

  There wasn’t a second option on this one, so he clicked.

  “Initiate | Additional Action.”

  His eyes moved to the cetaceans. Without thinking it through, he clicked additional action, then all three categories, and clicked on the cetaceans. The options were more varied there. He took all the highest actions he could and accepted as fast as possible.

  “What are you doing?” Katrina asked, finally realizing Terry was doing something.

  “Getting even,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “you don’t...”

  “Initiate | Additional Action”

  “Terry!” Colin yelled. Terry pushed initiate.

  Immediately the back wall of the building began to come alive. Hidden panels opened and began to configure into all manner of tables and supports. The blocky structures he’d thought were fixed to the floor fairly exploded into mobile machines sporting all manner of arms. One grabbed Katrina, who screamed in alarm.

  “Hey,” Terry said, fear making him jump away from the workstation and back away.

  Katrina struggled and got an arm free. Instantly a robotic tentacle shot in and jabbed her in the arm. She screamed and began to go limp.

  “Stop it,” Terry said and drew his laser pistol. “I just said give us guns!” But another robot had grabbed him, and several arms secured his arms and legs, while another snatched the pistol away. “Colin, run!” But his friend stood in stunned surprise as he, too, was snatched by still another robot. Suddenly half the wall split open, and several of the columns/robots came out of the opening, which, Terry realized, was only a few meters from the water.

  Spider robots were everywhere, climbing up his legs and swarming into the building. Outside, still more were skittering toward the water. He could see one of the bottlenoses standing on its tail, looking in his direction. He opened his mouth to scream a warning and felt an icy sting in his arm.

  Terry, to his horror, never lost consciousness. Not even when he was placed on a table, and he felt a machine begin to drill into his skull. He could only think of the dead creatures in the dormitory and silently scream in pain. There were no words for the feeling, as something entered his skull.

  What followed was a short eternity of unintelligible feelings, emotions, and sensations as the alien machines inserted probes into his cerebellum. For a moment, he was sure he had an extra arm, then he could smell colors, and then taste numerical formula. He wanted to scream but was beyond the ability to use his own body in the way he wanted to.

  Eventually he was carried by a big, blocky robot and stood against a wall facing the open side of the room. He expected to simply fall over and smash his face on the floor, but instead found himself standing perfectly still and balanced. He couldn’t even move his eyes.

  An army of spider robots arrived carrying first one, then more bottlenoses. He couldn’t control his body, yet tears rolled down his chee
ks as he watched the robots place them in shallow pools that hadn’t been there before, and the blocky robots began to insert needles into the dolphins’ bodies. Like him, they were still awake, their eyes open as probes were inserted into their skulls.

  Other robots removed the helmets that held the rebreathers that allowed them to stay underwater for weeks at a time. The equipment was discarded in a pile, like so much junk. Then incisions were made in their sides, and pieces of technology were inserted. Terry couldn’t see what, only that the incisions didn’t seem to bleed.

  The bottlenoses were moved through quickly, operated on, then taken away several at a time. Eventually, as far as Terry could tell, all of them were moved through. Then the first orca was moved in. Despite the despair he was feeling, he was also amazed that the alien robots had created carefully constructed harnesses to avoid injuring the huge cetaceans, who had never been meant to be unsupported on land, even in Hoarfrost’s lower gravity.

  Where the bottlenoses were worked on three at a time, the orcas were individual jobs, requiring a vast number of spider robots, as well as all of the big blocky robots. Terry tried to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. Like the bottlenoses, their rebreather helmets were removed, and bloodless surgery used to insert equipment into their bodies. He was forced to watch as each of the nine adult orcas were brought in for surgery, then removed back to the moon pool. At last, Pōkole was brought in.

  Please no, he mentally screamed, but to no avail. The orca calf was subjected to the same procedure as the adults, though he needed much less of the robot’s assistance or time. Then it was all over. The pools and equipment used to support the cetaceans were reabsorbed by the building, the wall went away, and the blocky robots went back to being columns attached to the floor. Not a single drop of blood remained. It was as if nothing had happened.

  * * *

  Terry must have slept, though he had no memory of it. He went from having no control of his body, standing in the corner of the operating room of horrors, watching the robots cutting up his friends, to lying on the floor and blinking up at the dim lighting.