The Circuit, Book 1

by Rhett C. Bruno

  The sudden change in pressure made her ears feel like they were going to burst and almost knocked her off her feet as she landed atop the Ceiling. There was no time to waste. Twelve seconds. She switched the bomb to her artificial hand and hurled it with all of her might, aiming away from the tightest cluster of skyscrapers toward where the least damage would be done. The amputated arm of the Ceresian soared through the air until it escaped the artificial gravity field which made New Terrene feel like Earth. Quickly, she slipped down through the opening, but as she went to close the latch, the bomb went off in a dazzling blast of purple and blue. The shockwave wasn’t enough to shatter the Ceiling’s glass but it was enough to launch her as the port closed behind her.

  Air rushed by as she plummeted, making it almost impossible to draw any much-needed breath into her lungs. Tumbling, she reached out with her artificial arm, desperately hoping the Spirit of the Earth had a miracle in store for her.

  As her vision began to go blurry, her hand slammed into the top of a small airborne craft. Her body came to a jerking stop, the muscles in her shoulder beginning to tear. The pain was unbearable. Her metal fingers dug in so hard that they caved in the roof as it began to plunge toward the streets of New Terrene. She hung on for her life, and the last thing she saw before everything went black was the fading, affectionate smile of a man she could barely remember.

  CHAPTER EIGHT—CASSIUS VALE

  Genesis

  After making sure that Sage would survive her injuries, Cassius quietly departed Mars. A week and a half later, the White Hand touched down within the hangar at his clandestine base on a tiny asteroid named Ennomos. He headed to the cargo bay and stepped out of his ship, surprised to find that he had arrived before ADIM. Worried that something might have happened, he thought about switching on the com-link in his ear to contact the android, just to make sure. But after remembering how superior the engines of his ship were in comparison to a common Tribunal Freighter, he decided that the incident on Mars was merely fuddling his judgment. ADIM may have looked the same as he did the day he was powered on, but he was older than Cassius sometimes realized. Even out in the void of space, he knew his Creation was safer than most people in the Circuit.

  He strode down Ennomos’ lofty hangar, running his hand along the smooth hull of the White Hand. He rarely took the time to marvel at the ship. At first, it was a gift upon his inauguration into the Tribunal Council, before the other Tribunes grew fond of their mammoth New Earth Cruisers.

  It had the appearance of a pelican from ancient Earth. The long, flat barrel of a rail gun ran through the ridged top between the wings and stopped just short of the sharply curved translucency. The exterior was clad in a pearlescent, silver coat, indicative of Tribunal nobility, with the edges of each of the ship’s plates trimmed with bright white accents. The engines were built into the center of the thick, “L”-shaped wings, able to rotate almost three-hundred and sixty degrees. The rest of the design was so sleek that it was almost impossible to tell where its weaponry and other systems were nestled. It was, however, extremely well-armed.

  Cassius had spent his early years as a Tribune tinkering with the ship. On the outside, it appeared the same as it had originally, but upgrades to its engines made it faster than any ship its size in the Circuit. It was also outfitted with state-of-the-art Plasma Shield defenses and had stealth systems which made it almost impossible to locate on any typical NET scanners. But the addition Cassius was most proud of was Gaia. She, though primitive when compared to ADIM, was an intricate program which allowed him to run the ship without a crew. Such technology was considered blasphemous by the Tribune, but he always had an affinity for making things work beyond their expectations.

  He breathed in the sight of the ship in its entirety as he came around the front, remembering fondly the first time he had asked Gaia to power on the engines without even needing to flick his finger. His foray into the realm of virtual intelligence and robotics began with her, and it ended with ADIM.

  Again, he glanced up at the sealed entrance of the hangar hoping to see an approaching ship but he found none. It was the longest time he and ADIM had ever been physically apart. So, Cassius took a seat on a container beside his ship to wait. After a few minutes, the soft purr of the station’s many systems began to sooth him, allowing his mind to wander back to the day, almost four years ago, when he brought ADIM into existence…

  Ex-Tribune Cassius Vale stood at the edge of a three-dimensional map of the Circuit in his clandestine lab on Titan. His icy glare moved decisively along the projections of slowly rotating planets, his always staunch eyes narrowing as they fell upon that of Earth. A small HOLO-Projector, in the shape of a sphere, with fluted rifts of radiant, blue lights lining its circumference, rested in his upturned palm. Without looking, he twisted his thumb, shifting one of the offset planes on the device so that a splaying beam of pixelated light shot upward. The particles began to rearrange, the dusky likeness of a human head taking form.

  His heart skipped a beat. His hands began to tremble. He tried to steady his breathing, but all of his swollen emotions were only serving to drench his brow with sweat. It was the same as the year before, and the years before that, when the fateful anniversary of his son’s death would inevitably arrive to bring with it irrepressible pangs of grief and rage.

  Once the projection was fully configured, the face of Caleb Vale was rendered with such realism that only a closely discerning eye would be able to notice the space between each floating fragment of light. But the image was frozen, the tip of Cassius’ finger hovering over the blinking sliver on the device that would set the recording to replay for what seemed like the thousandth time. The image had no background. It was as if the young man portrayed was present with the ex-Tribune, a living bust joining him at the map.

  Cassius could usually fight back the tears, but on that day the sight made his eyes well. It was all he could manage to urge himself to switch the message on, cuing the lips of the hologram to begin speaking.

  “Happy Birthday, Dad!” Caleb wished cheerfully, with only a hint of the vocal dilution inherent in a typical recording. The ex-Tribune’s inventions were far from typical. “I bet you thought I’d forget.”

  Cassius released a pitiful sound, more a grief-stricken snivel than the reminiscent laugh he had thought would slip through his quivering lips. That face was so familiar to him and yet stranger with each passing day.

  “I can’t believe how fast another year has gone,” Caleb said. His expression dropped to a grimace.

  “Look, Dad, I know you’re worried about me, but I’ll be fine. You see, we did it. We finally did it.” The hologram rearranged, zooming out to trace Caleb’s full body. The floor of his environment was rendered, illuminating beneath his feet as he walked over to run the back of his hand along the surface of a glass chamber. At first glance, it appeared to be filled only with water, but swaying beneath the ripples was the straggly form of an aquatic plant. Its stem was wiry, almost pathetic looking, but Cassius remembered the shiver up his spine the first time he saw it.

  “We moved it here from the lake,” Caleb continued. “It’s growing under the surface! A real, earthborn plant. For the first time in decades, the purification process is taking a step forward. I…I—” the excitement in his voice was palpable, bringing a twisted smile to Cassius’ lips as his son tripped over his own words. “I know it doesn’t seem like much, but life on Earth after centuries…Dad, it’s…it’s a miracle.” Caleb gathered his breath and then chuckled to himself weakly. “You probably don’t care, but it’s everything to me.”

  Everything to me, Cassius thought to himself, his hand nearly slipping from the burnished sill he‘d been leaning on.

  “Well, we’re about to head out for supplies. And don’t worry, I’ll be safe. Earth isn’t as vengeful as you recall. Anyway, you know I’ll be thinking about you. We’ll see each other soon, I prom—” Caleb was cut off as a powerful tremor knocked him off of his feet. A wo
man’s voice shouted frantically in the background before he scrambled across the floor and reached out. Then the recording froze.

  Bye.

  Tears ran from Cassius’ eyes in streams as he ran his thumb over the HOLO-Projector, replaying those last words over and over until he unraveled. The device slipped through his perspiring fingers, its impact drowned out by his angst-ridden groans. He hunched over the table, his insides curdling; his throat clenching as if he were being choked to death.

  When his stomach finally settled, he turned and mustered his most regal stride. He followed the rolling device across the floor until it bumped against the foot of a console and began to play again. He bent over to pause the message just as his son’s face was fully formed. He went to deactivate it but instead set it down on a table so that his son’s holographic face was overlooking the laboratory.

  “You’ll want to see this, Caleb,” he whispered as he moved in front of an array of HOLO-Screens hovering over a console. Each of the bluish-green blades set to compute and configure data was blank until he keyed in a command, which prompted the security protocol. He placed his eye against a retinal scanner and then typed in the password, 2AL3B82LE. Not too difficult for an outsider to figure out, but he always tried to maintain the guise that he held no information worth concealing.

  The display hummed to life, hundreds of lines of diagnostics wrapping around the front of him. Among all of the images surveying the status of his world—the moon called Titan—and other data. There was one which depicted a not quite human figure. He pressed a key on his bracer, causing the information to be transmitted to another screen. He turned from the station and set it to begin recording.

  “Recordi…” Cassius sniveled and wiped his cheeks one last time as to appear more his typically unflappable self. “Recording 243. March 15th, 514 Kepler Circuit. My birthday,” he began as he strode toward a pulsating, red aura on the other side of the dimly illuminated laboratory. “This will be my last entry regarding the first Automated Dynamic Intelligence Mech: codename, ADIM. What began in anguish as a project without intention, has become so much more to me. It has been four years, but now, I, Cassius Vale, am on the verge of the greatest breakthrough in human history since the discovery of Gravitum deep within the Earth’s mantle.”

  He stopped before a magnetically induced chamber where a small reactor floated at chest height. It seethed like magma, the light stifled as sharp fins spiraled around the volatile core of the complex sphere. His eyes unfolded over the device, in marvel of his work. The rapid whoosh of the churning blades matched the beating of his own heart as he grew close enough to feel the heat emanating even through its protective field.

  “The fate which befell our beloved Homeworld was tragic, but we remain strong. Earth is forever in our DNA, it may define us and where we came from, but even a master craftsman does not go back to alter his first masterpiece. We left our mark on that fading planet, and in its dying gasp reaped the secrets to evolve beyond it. We have not fallen to ashes alongside the frail life with which we shared her, but instead have ascended to greet all the vastness of the universe. I was counted amongst the fools who lost sight of what is out there for us to claim, but I have been enlightened. Here is the first step toward a new future, a brighter future for mankind.

  “We don’t need the battered husk of Earth any longer. There is no spirit wallowing deep within her core. The Tribune will call me a heretic, but with ADIM I will pave a new foundation for man. It was once believed by the Ancients that some divine being—some god—created man in his image. I believe today that we have assumed that role.”

  Cassius typed a command into the panel on his arm and a table tilted upright beside the reactor’s chamber. Lying on it was the figure of ADIM. He was bathed in darkness, his outline painted red by the oscillating light. His silhouette was so manlike in height and scale that in the shadows the difference was almost indiscernible.

  “Just like the son I once helped bear to life, here is another to be guided by my will. An artificial copy, which will not perish as easily as…” Cassius’ lower lip began to tremble before he closed his eyes and breathed to calm himself. “He is the first of his kind, an artificial conception able to adapt and evolve as we do. Not a virtual intelligence restricted to a console on a ship like Gaia. Not one of the mindless drones bent on the pursuit of a singular task which the Tribune sought to wipe off the Circuit. No, ADIM is a freely existing synthetic being ruled by the devotion inherent in any son eager to learn from a worthy father.”

  The table came upright, positioning ADIM’s gaping chest at the same height as the smoldering reactor. Cassius’ finger froze over the command to initiate.

  This was it. As easy as turning on the lights. He glanced over his shoulder to see the face of his true son, frozen and lifeless. Four years of suffering and this was his gift to himself—a progeny of metal and fission. When he turned again, his eyes were brimming with conviction. He was ready.

  He set the process to proceed and the whine of an alarm blared out. The field protecting the cylindrical chamber powered down. Then a mechanical arm with a delicate claw-like apparatus on the end rose up from the platform below the sphere. Fashioned specially for grasping the potentially hazardous reactor, it moved with purpose.

  “Together, we will reset the course of humankind. We shall assume the destiny we inherited when we survived the death of our homeworld. Together, we will rise beyond any of our wildest aspirations and take our place as mighty titans of this system and all others! This is the future I promise to you, humans of the Circuit,” Cassius proclaimed with the vigor of someone delivering a speech before a thunderous crowd.

  The only response was the alarm stopping, then the soft, undulant humming of the reactor as it was lifted by the mechanical arm. Cassius watched without blinking as the source of power was conveyed into the android’s hollow torso. Once in place, the inner workings of ADIM coiled to greet it…the wires and circuits traced the metal frame like our own veins. When that was complete, a series of ribbed panels closed to form a chest. The fiery glow of the core slipped through the narrow slits between each armored plate.

  The table glided across the room and stopped directly before Cassius. It rotated to a vertical position so that ADIM’s two-pronged feet landed softly on the floor.

  Cassius powered down the screen on his arm and circled his creation in admiration. He followed the thick, reinforced circuits running between the plates of ADIM’s neck as they pulsed with energy. Then tiny blue lights switched on, lining the outer rim of each piece of the dark-tinged, super-alloyed shell covering the android entire body.

  It was one of the most beautiful things Cassius had ever seen. For the first time in exactly four years, a tear dribbled from the corner of his eye. The first tear that wasn’t drawn out by memories of his son. Perfection, he thought to himself as he ran the back of his index finger over the ridged, blank surface where ADIM’s mouth would be located if he were human.

  Two eyes nested deep in the crescent-shaped blackness between the two plates of armor which comprised ADIM’s face came on with a snap-hiss. The blazing, red orbs were surrounded by a tight circle of smaller lights which slowly rotated around them like planets in orbit around a star. Cassius stepped back to observe the android’s face, which he only then realized retained a markedly inquisitive demeanor. Then the magnetized table switched off and ADIM wobbled forward, innocent as a child learning to walk for the first time. But he was a quick learner. After only a few faulty steps, he found his footing and stood upright, so that both he and his creator rose to the exact same height.

  “ADIM, can you hear me?” Cassius asked. He leaned in until his noise almost touched ADIM’s neck.

  “Processing commands.” The smaller lights around ADIM’s eyes began to revolve faster as his cognitive and optical functions worked in concert to access and comprehend his surroundings. “Are you referring to this unit?”

  It was hard for Cassius to infer the st
atement as a question from ADIM’s cold, apathetic voice, but he was able to detect the subtle inflection. He did create him after all. “Yes, I am.”

  The android looked down at himself, turning his hand over to inspect the back. His limbs and joints moved with such fluidity that there wasn’t a single noise emitted during motion as was typical in most robots, or even some humans.

  “And you are the Creator?” ADIM asked. He reached out and let the back of his long, sharp index finger graze gently against Cassius’s cheek.

  The ex-Tribune sniveled. His hand quaked as it wrapped around his creation’s smooth forearm. The surface was cool, but beneath it he could feel a surging warmth desperate to escape its metal sheathing. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  “Does this unit upset you?” ADIM asked. “This unit can assume a more familiar appearance if you desire.” The small blue lights circulating ADIM’s plating flashed, emitting holographic pixels that converged to envelop him in the exact image of his creator.

  Cassius was made to look upon his likeness. As close as he was he still could barely perceive the red eyes of the machine beneath the projection. “No,” he said as he shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed at the hollow effigy of his son, looking on with the blithe grin Cassius so adored. “You are perfect…”

  Cassius glanced up with heavy eyelids. The spherical HOLO-Recording device sat in his upturned palm, glowing blue as it always did. He placed it back into his pocket with a yawn when he realized that there was still no ship approaching. He wasn’t worried that ADIM might be in trouble, but he brought his hand to his ear to switch on the com-link anyway. There was no reason to deny it with nobody watching…he missed the android, almost as much as he missed his own son.