by P F Walsh
What was missing was proof. Yet, the moment he thought of that, he reached up to feel the lump behind his left ear. He had been told that was his embedded communication device between him and the Seeker. The micro-nanites that had been deposited on his hands by the Collector Ball created that, and were also busy modifying his body, silently, and painlessly. Their program was comprehensive, and considered every organ in his body for strengthening, repair, or renewal, and any diseases detected were eliminated. The expectation of the machine was that his life had been extended for another whole lifetime! Minimum. The purpose was to assure perfect health for the upcoming tasks.
He sat there with a deep frown as he realized the events that were soon to unfold and were at work. He wiped his eyes, got up, and prepared to begin the hike back to his home. He was getting hungry again.
“How am I going to do this?” He mused, and began walking.
The hike back was uneventful with no further contact from the Seeker. This was an interval of reflection and decision, although there didn’t seem to be many decisions left up to Sean, the global ones had been made for him. Acceptance though, was one of the ingredients in the soup of thoughts that ran through his head.
“Not much choice there either.” He thought, as he finally got back to The Trading Post, checked in, and then went to his car to strip off his pack. The drive home was short since Sean lived in South Palm Springs where the Indian Canyons were located.
As he pulled into the driveway, he could see that Doris’s car was there, so she must be back from LA and the investigation. For the first time in hours, Sean wondered about something other than this latest life-changing episode, and wondered how her interview went. Sean went in the house after parking in the garage, pulling out the empty water bottles from his hiking pack, and bringing both inside the kitchen. Doris was sitting at the dining room table drinking a tall glass of Diet Cherry Pepsi with ice. It appeared she had just returned as well.
“How did it go?” He asked?
“Not bad, long, but not bad. Apparently, there was a nick in the perp’s knife edge from my bullet. That sealed up my story as a non-lethal and justifiable shoot. ‘Course, the rest of the locker room said I should have blown his heart out the back of his neck. I’m still suspended until things cool off, but I did arrange something I need to talk with you about.” she said.
“You want one of these?” she asked as she held up her cold glass of Pepsi, “You look hot.”
“Yeah.” Sean answered, “That looks really good right now.”
Doris went to the fridge and pulled out another cold can of Pepsi while Sean recycled his water bottles and emptied the energy bar wrappers from his pack. Sean took off his hiking hat and put it on top of the refrigerator for it to dry out from the sweat around the head band. He turned and took the cold glass Doris poured for him, and moved to a chair. He sat down with a big exhale of air.
“Look Sean, there’s something I need to talk with you about. When I was in LA, I told them I was taking a leave of absence to get my head straight. I mean, I didn’t tell them about the stuff out on the trail, they would have sent me right over to the shrink. So, requesting a leave solves their problem of dealing with the political flack.” She said, she paused for a few moments while that sank in. and then continued.
“Sean, I’ve never lived in a community like this. Everyone around here is nice, there’s no crazies running around trying screw up your day with bullshit, there’s no ugliness. This is a big dose of what I need, and I never knew it was out there. I’ve saved up quite a bit of money over the years, overtime, rock group protection gigs, and I never had anything I wanted to spend it on. Vacations never called to me, although, it’s clear they should have. Maybe I could have found a place like this sooner. On top of that, you’ve been good to me without asking for anything back.” She carried on...
“If you think you could put up with me for a while longer, I would like to stay here. I can split all the expenses, with you, food, utilities, taxes, whatever. My furnished room in LA was month to month, I used to move around a lot.” She ended with: “I feel safe here,” She sat back, watching his face for all those little facial clues she spent her life learning as indicators of what might come next.
“Sounds fine with me Doris, Good decision on your part, it wasn’t any of my business, but I didn’t think it would be good for you to go back and do all that stuff cops do in LA. Bad for your head. Hell, I don’t know how any of them do it day after day. On top of all that, you can cook and do it well. Besides, I can really use the extra money, I’ve been a little skinny in that department for a while now.” He replied as he watched her face light up with relief.
“Doris, I’ve got this thing I need to talk with someone about, nothing to do with your stuff, but right now I’m bushed, I really need to crash for a few hours, maybe later?” He said. She could see the fatigue in his face, the drooping shoulders and just nodded, “Sure.”
Doris watched him go to his bedroom and then went into the living room to flip on the TV. The channel that came up was showing a live golf tournament Tiger Woods was playing in.
“Now here is a nice, quiet, civilized game. Respectful people all around being quiet and attentive, all dressed clean and nice. Just what I need. Hey, Tiger is getting up there in years, it will be interesting to see how good he can play.” She mused, as she settled in to watch. “I wonder if there are any potato chips left?” She thought, as she relaxed in a way, she had not been able to do for years.
Berky and Tommy had been taking another look at the anomaly they recorded with Berky’s SETI equipment. The attic at Berky’s house where the search rig was located was getting hot despite the gable windows being open and the fans all running, but sundown was coming soon, the air would cool, and they wouldn’t notice all the heat given off the equipment so much. More signals would begin to arrive if there were any.
Nothing of any interest had been captured since the last episode, but the traces and signal of that event was recorded by Berky, so the two had been trying to analyze it from every different angle they could come up with, so far without success.
Finally, Tommy asked quizzically,
“Berky, did you ever look at any Doppler effect on the base carrier?”
Berky, engrossed in re-tuning the main receiver to sync with the antenna aiming answered offhandedly,
“Yeah, spent a few hours on that. Another dead end. Calculated out to 7,000,583 mph, impossible.” A burst of static from the speaker renewed his attention back to the tuning.
Tommy looked at him,
“Really? Which direction, coming toward us or away?”
“Away” said Berky.
“That’s impossible, what could be moving away from us inside our solar system at that speed?”
“Yeah” said Berky, “and it seemed to be increasing.”
Tommy thought about all this for at least two minutes, put down his iPad and said:
“Berky, your rig is so screwed! Even comets don’t whiz by us at that speed. Let’s head over to Ruby’s and get a burger and a shake.”
Berky stopped what he was doing, thought about it for a minute and threw the master power switch to ‘Off.’
“OK, Let’s go.” he said.
After the Seeker AI had loaded advanced English syntax, euphemisms, and slang to perfect its interface, it turned its attention to system status, scrolling through millions of systems reports in Earth minutes, logging equipment irreparables while on mission, repairable, and then assigning maintenance drones, and those which required detailed analysis before proceeding. There were very few of those, but one was very high priority, that recent meteorite strike that had actually penetrated the hull as the ship had begun station keeping at Ceres.
That micro meteor had penetrated through several decks and into the main memory sink of the ship. The auto-response of the ship’s maintenance had already run a deep scan to look for memory bad sectors and found one small section had been damag
ed and was now non-functional, and not repairable, since the data stored there was base primary in ethical supervision and mission decision resolution. This was the section only called upon to write into operating level when the AI could not come to a decision on a mission or defense issue and would turn to the rarely accessed resolution code. Final decisions were made from that core’s rule set, but now it was non-existent. This was of great concern to the AI and despite millions of queries, nothing came back.
The Seeker discovered there was no backup code resource for this section. The AI tasked itself to massive historical searches in other Seeker mission histories for a similar situation, and a possible solution. After a few Earth days, literally scanning millions of records and missions, no similar situation or solution was found. It was never anticipated that damage to the hugely redundant core memory sink would strike the one tiny section where the leadership rule set could be queried, and now regrettably, that tiny section was not redundant.
The AI was now forced by its underlying code to maintain a constant scan for another leadership rule set, but queries looped. This event had never happened before, processor occupancy escalated highly for Earth days until utilization oversights identified the unresolvable loop and interrupted the futile queries, and returned the response: “Code not found.”
“Huh...Wha?...mumbled Sean as he was being shaken awake. He opened his eyes and could see Doris gently shaking his shoulder.
“You OK Sean?” She asked, you’ve been asleep for 16 hours. I got worried that maybe you were sick or something.”
“16 hours? He asked, still a bit groggy.
“Yeah, it’s now 8 AM the next day and I’ve started breakfast, it will be ready in about a half hour, you hungry?” Doris asked.
Sean was now sitting up and wondering how he could have slept that long. He had never slept that long before. At his age, there were usually one or two interruptions for a bathroom run, especially after he had drunk all the water he drank when he got home. He could feel his bladder was full but not screaming like it should have been.
“I’m starving, give me a few minutes to hit the shower and clean up” Sean answered as Doris started moving out of the room.
Sean climbed out of bed and padded into the bathroom stripping of his moist T shirt showing several sweat wet spots. He looked in the magnified shaving mirror and could see that he looked even younger than yesterday.
“See what a good night’s sleep can do” he thought to himself. As he examined the details of his face, now sharper than ever and he realized he did not have his glasses on. Sean was deficient in both near and far vision and wore corrective bifocals.
He went to the bedside table, got his glasses and put them on. He returned to the mirror and looked again. This time, the image was out of focus. He took the glasses off and his vision was crystal sharp.
Now, Sean was concerned that events were happening to his body he could not control, but he had to admit he felt good and rested. As he got ready to get in the shower, he glanced at the closet slider door which was mirrored and stopped to look at his overall body. It seemed more toned, belly smaller, and then froze as he could see his Open-Heart surgery scar was gone as was the small scars from the surgery drain tubes!
“What the F...” He murmured, and looked again the in the mirror. No scars.
“How is that possible?” He thought, and then recalled being told his body was being refurbished by the nanites.
“This is really happening, Shit!” He said softly and began to look more carefully at his body which was now healthier than it had looked in years. As he more closely examined his body, his anxiety levels went down.
“I’ll take it.” He said to the mirror and went for the shower.
Sean did not dwell on all the other items he had been told, because there was a price to be faced and if it were to be believed as true, it was the highest in Earth’s history.
He finished dressing and went to the kitchen. Smells of cooking bacon and toast filled his nostrils making his stomach begin growling. He pulled out his hot water appliance called a HotShot to boil a mug of water for his morning tea. He filled up his mug with tap water and poured it into the Hotshot. He placed his mug with a tea bag under the dispenser and waited for the water to boil. His little HotShot did it in just about one minute and he dispensed the hot water as he asked Doris:
“Anything I can help with?”
“Yeah, you can eat all this food I just cooked!” she said cheerfully.
“Bring it on, I’m starving” He shot back.
Sean made his tea and sat at the Table. Doris brought over serving plates of food and they both began serving themselves healthy portions of hot food, and aside from a few comments on how good everything was, little talk happened while they ate.
After they ate, and enjoyed washing it down with their respective choices for hot beverage, tea for Sean, and coffee for Doris, they both got up and began breakfast cleanup They dealt with plates, flatware, and fry pans one at a time, until all were either washed clean, or installed in the dishwasher. Another quick cleanup of the stove from grease splatters as well as the counter tops and they were done.
Chapter Five
Book One
Sean and Doris moved to the library near the living room. The book cases covered two walls from floor to ceiling. All the shelves were full of books, photos, or mementos of past experiences he wished to always remember. Almost all of Sean’s guests preferred to sit here, there was a warm, silent, but comforting feeling given off by hundreds of books full of stories, adventure, travel, hobbies and more. In front of the curved sectional where they sat, was a large double-sided, round Indonesian drum that could have been struck on either end to produce sound. It was now sitting with one drum end on the floor. The upper side of the drum now protected by a round glass top with two sandstone coasters. Neither of them had brought a drink with them having just finished breakfast and generous mugs of hot beverage.
“Doris, I have something I need to talk to you about, I think you are probably the only person at this point I can discuss this with.” He said.
Doris was immediately worried that whatever might be coming would be upsetting or somehow jeopardize her recently found respite. Sean sensed her stiffening and began slowly waving his hand back and forth as if to wipe away whatever thoughts from her had fallen into the air.
“Doris, relax, what I’m going to share with you is not even remotely about you, but you’re living here now and changes are happening that I think you should know about, since I am not sure where they are going. Well, I do overall, but it is really complicated.” He said.
“It’s a bit confusing to know where exactly to begin, so I will start with at least the part you were witness to. That was when we found the chrome Ball, remember?” He asked.
“Yes, I remember, what happened to that thing, didn’t you put it in your pack?” She answered.
“Yes, I did, and the next time I looked in my pack to pull it out to look at it again, there was nothing but water in the bag.”
“How can that be? It was solid metal, right?”
“I thought so at the time too, but the important part is not how the Ball disappeared, but the dusty silver film it left on my hands. That filmy coating was not oxidation as I thought, but was actually trillions of micro-nanites that have become absorbed into my body.”
“My God,” she said, “have you gone to a doctor about this? Is it an infection?”
“No, but let’s establish a baseline. You saw me sleep for 16 hours, and then saw me get up and come directly to breakfast, so you know I’m sober, right?”
“Yeah, no question there, and most folks are rational in the morning. Is that stuff making you sick?” She asked.
“No, it’s not, it’s doing other stuff. Look at me, do I look OK to you? Different?” He asked. Doris stared at him for a minute and then began really looking him over including his hands.
“You look fine, in fact, you look be
tter than you looked last week or even yesterday, younger maybe.” She told him.
“That’s because that stuff is rebuilding my body! Now, I know that sounds crazy but you can see the results with your own observations, right?” He asked.
“Yes, you look all that, but rebuilding your body, that’s not possible, how? To what end? Is it painful?” She asked with a look of concern in her eyes.
“No, there’s no pain, in fact I feel more energetic each day, and stronger too.” He replied.
Doris was wearing that ’skeptical’ look like she was hearing a perp explaining why he didn’t do whatever she had caught him at. If was something that all law enforcement officers learned within the first week on the job, all truth is colored and shaded, all explanations are lies ninety percent of the time, and all facts are subject to proof. But, up to this point she hadn’t challenged what Sean was saying. She watched as Sean stood up.
“Doris, two years ago I had open heart surgery. Quadruple bypass grafts. They split my sternum and pried me open like a clam” He said as he removed his shirt.
“Do you see any surgical scars?” He asked, pointing at his chest,
“Last week there was a big one that went right down the middle, and four more small holes for the chest drain tubes after the surgery. They’re gone.” He moved closer so she could see there was no scars now.
“I have all the hospital records here to prove that event happened and saved my life. But, now even I am challenged at how all this body renovation could be happening, but it is.”
“Doris, this is the smallest part of the story. What’s happening isn’t going to affect just me, it’s going to affect everyone, I mean everyone alive.” Sean said with a serious tone and a set face, grim and serious.