The Bridge

by Simon Winstanley

  He quickly moved to look through the glass porthole. The teaching facility outside was similarly in darkness but, as his eyes adjusted, he saw a tiny red light on a nearby shelf; a recube that he hadn’t spotted when she’d led him in.

  “Clever bitch,” he muttered; she hadn’t trusted him for a second.

  He pressed his Biomag against the ID reader but then remembered that, of course, there was no ID for the panel to detect.

  He quickly returned to her body and began dragging it toward the door. If he could get the panel to read her ID, he might be able to get out. Awkwardly hauling her upright, he forced her up against the panel. No matter how he tried to position her, the panel made no sound of acknowledgement.

  The horrible logic began to dawn on him. From Fai’s limited perspective, their were no life-signs within the airlock; Trudy’s Biomag ID had been terminated as efficiently as the electrical power.

  Feeling a primitive sense of panic begin to rise, he dropped her and reached for his knife. In a frenzy of rapid motion, he stabbed at the toughened glass for all he was worth.

  The plastic blade, that was so excellent at avoiding Fai’s detection, suddenly snapped under the excessive force. He continued smashing at the porthole with the blunt handle but, other than depositing flecks of blood, it didn’t leave a scratch.

  Feeling his arm burn from the prolonged exertion, he stopped to drag in great lungfuls of air. He knew that the faster he breathed, the more carbon dioxide he’d pump back into the air, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  In desperation, he switched hands and resumed pummelling at the glass. After several minutes of pounding effort and alternating between hands, his blows became less and less powerful. In gasping exhaustion, he was forced to stop.

  In this tiny sealed space, he knew his own exhaled breaths would soon asphyxiate him.

  Dragging laboured breaths from the thin air, he stared out through the porthole. Beyond its resilient glass, the tiny red light of Trudy’s recube stared in at him.

  Anger flooding his veins, he bent and thrust his hands into the warm blood that surrounded Trudy’s corpse. Struggling to his feet, he used his fingers to start drawing Kohlner’s name on the glass.

  “Bloody…” he gasped, “exclusive…”

  His legs buckled under him and he collapsed to the floor.

  As the oxygen finally ran out, every rapid shallow breath brought him less relief than the last. Head now swimming, he could hear his loud pulse hammering frantically in his ears.

  In a whirl of sickening noise, the rapid pulsing sound suddenly stopped. Then darkness closed in and took his life.

  CONNECTION

  Lawrence had begun studying the many facets that made up Fai’s artificial intelligence long before he’d come aboard the Eridanus. Even now he could still remember the first time he’d heard her electronic voice through a shuttle’s cargo bay speaker. From that point on he’d been fascinated by Dr. Chen’s creation.

  “Thank you, Fai,” he said, “Exit diagnostic.”

  “Hello, Lawrence,” came the same voice, “My access logs indicate that you have conducted a primary level diagnostic. Can I ask why?”

  The deaths of Brightman and Dwight had prompted him to double-check Fai’s registry. As ever, he’d found no corruption. If anything, her only fault was that she couldn’t accurately perceive the vagaries of human intention. She could only report what her sensors told her, and they’d told her nothing.

  While he was still in thought, Fai’s voice returned.

  “Is it just humans being humans?” she asked.

  The colloquial question took him by surprise, but then he recognised it as a phrase he’d used before. It was perhaps more apt than she could know.

  “Yes, Fai,” he shook his head in dismay, “Why the hell do we behave this way?”

  The room became quiet for a moment, then Fai responded to his rhetorical question.

  “In terms of functionality, it is difficult to quantify the behaviour of the humans aboard the Eridanus. Their movements and actions are quasi-chaotic and inefficient, however they seem to share a common trait.”

  “Which is?”

  “Although their opinions differ, they all seek connection.”

  Lawrence thought this was a remarkably simple conclusion: in matters of love, hate, belief, physical similarity and countless other nuanced behaviours, desiring some form of verifiable connection was the uniting factor.

  “I think you might be right,” he said, “Maintaining a connection to those with a different point of view is important.”

  “It is a logical necessity,” Fai stated, “Experiencing unknown perspectives is critical to the acquisition of knowledge. It is a maxim that my own development is built upon.”

  Her statement sounded rather like the voice of experience.

  “Interesting,” he said, “Can you give me an example?”

  She appeared to think for a moment.

  “My remote Eri probes gathered large quantities of information. When I initiated a data bridge to them, it provided a perspective I had not experienced before. For an entity such as myself, that type of connection is a rare occurrence, and one that triggers an irrevocable instruction to repeat the process.”

  Lawrence thought he could see the emotion that Fai was unable to describe.

  “You experienced a desire for more knowledge?”

  “Yes, that is a suitable analogy.”

  Thinking of the emotions that would be running high over the next few days, Lawrence thought he should check Fai’s own perspective on the situation.

  “Fai,” he hesitated, “If the Bergstrom is successful, many people may desire to seek new experiences on the planet.”

  “I concur.”

  Trying to avoid a distinct human or A.I. bias, he could think of only one way to phrase his next question.

  “Does the thought of their departure concern you?”

  “No,” she immediately replied, “During our voyage I have learnt much from studying the behaviour of the humans within the Eridanus. In combination with my own interpretations, the data has been invaluable.”

  “Invaluable?”

  “Yes, it should be enough for me to compensate for any reduction in the size of the original sample set.”

  Lawrence didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended at Fai’s apparent lack of emotion. It did however, trigger an emotion of his own.

  He knew he’d be able to interact with Fai at countless other terminals over the next few days but, having to leave the quiet calm of her control centre, it felt like he was saying goodbye to her now. He doubted that she’d view his departure from the room in the same way, but felt he needed to say something before he closed down the terminal.

  “Fai, I have to tell you something,” he said.

  “Ready.”

  “If Eri is habitable,” he said, “then I’m afraid I’ll be leaving the Eridanus too.”

  Fai fell silent for a few seconds.

  “Your exclusion from the remaining sample set is suboptimal to my internal processing, but I comprehend your choice. Seeking to connect with others of your archetype is important.”

  “Yes, Fai,” he nodded, “it is.”

  There was a short pause.

  “I will make the appropriate adjustments.”

  MECHANISM

  In the privacy of his small office, Devon stared at the news feed on the silenced screen. The library photos of Toby Dwight and Trudy Brightman. The images of the bloody airlock. The rerun of the Helix Station debacle.

  At various times, both of them had been useful to him: Toby, the blunt instrument for crushing things, and Trudy, the cheery mouthpiece for spreading rumour.

  He’d given up too much control. He could see that now. He could feel the approach of underlying disorder. An uncomfortable feeling that he knew he’d have to address.

  Leaning forward on his desk, he placed his palms against his temples and listened to the quiet ticking of his
wristwatch.

  He focused on the regularity of its sound.

  Its consistent pace.

  Its order.

  Order that emerged from its hidden complexity.

  Still listening to the calm ticking, he looked at the screen and allowed his mind to absorb the facts.

  Toby’s ID-free Biomag would undoubtedly have been discovered, but the technology couldn’t be linked to the company.

  Trudy’s recube had been found at the scene. Although it had apparently recorded the event, the news feed hadn’t featured any clips of himself and Toby in conversation at New Houston. If anything had been found, it would have been broadcast by now.

  On those fronts, it appeared he was in the clear.

  Which just left the troubling matter of Toby’s treachery.

  The footage on screen at the moment, showed Toby drawing a bloody ‘K’ and partial ‘o’ on the porthole before collapsing out of view.

  No doubt the intention had been to spell ‘Kohlner’. Devon knew that the unclear letters weren’t remotely enough to convict him, but they might be enough to disrupt his otherwise comfortable life.

  He pressed his wristwatch closer to his ear.

  The screen repeated the Helix Station event; Trudy stepping back as Toby punched the hapless man into an embarrassing heap on the floor.

  The news footage froze before beginning another repeat. For a fraction of a second, within one frame, he saw three people; a perfect mechanism of interlocking parts that might be able to deflect attention from him.

  The rumour would be easy to initiate.

  An injured man, humiliated by continual reruns of his own beating, had taken revenge on the two people who’d caused him so much public embarrassment. He’d sealed Trudy and Toby in an airlock and let a camera record it. The rumour would spread that Toby’s dying act had been an attempt to name their assailant; the indistinct, bloody surname that he’d failed to complete was the hapless ‘Kavanagh’.

  Not Kohlner.

  The facts wouldn’t support each other, but Devon knew it didn’t actually matter.

  The story just had to loosely connect the three individuals and generate speculation for a few days. After that, the tragic news about the Bergstrom should hopefully arrive, and he could put this trivial little episode behind him.

  BRIDGE

  Marcus was no longer listening to Nathan’s technical discussions. Occasionally, he’d hear words like ‘condensate’ and ‘Planck scale’, but most of his attention was directed toward the shoreline and the sea beyond it.

  He could see the young woman talking with the Britannia crew as they reached land. When he looked at her, he could see echoes of Sabine’s features; subtle rearrangements of proportion that had created a new person and life story.

  From his perspective, he’d left the ARC a day ago, having made peace with the idea that he’d never see Sabine again. In that single day, he’d learnt that two million years had passed and he’d inherited descendants.

  Hardly able to understand his own feelings, he’d been unable to contemplate bridging the gap to his only living relative. It shamed him to think that he might now be simply avoiding her.

  “Back me up, Marcus,” Nathan’s voice dragged him back into the conversation, “You said you saw redshift through the forward window.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus thought back, “It passed through Vaz’s detection web.”

  “As far as I can tell,” Nathan continued, “we arrived in the exact position that the Bergstrom detonated.”

  “No,” Vasily dismissed the idea, “We would’ve picked up background radiation. Chernobyl-high radiation. But there wasn’t even a click.”

  “Exactly,” Nathan returned, “The energy had to go somewhere. I think it might have gone into opening an Einstein-Rosen bridge.”

  “Wait,” said Dixon “You’re saying the anomaly that surrounded us -”

  “Was one end of a bridge that brought us here,” Nathan completed.

  “Bit of a problem,” Vasily disagreed, “Cause and Effect are the wrong way round.”

  “What d’you mean?” Dixon frowned.

  Vasily shrugged, “Our anomaly happened a few million years before the Bergstrom exploded and released the energy.”

  “Look,” said Nathan, “A few hours ago I was convinced we were still on Earth. I took what I saw, and made it fit what I knew. I don’t think we can reason like that anymore.”

  “So,” Vasily looked at him askew, “position and time are just matters of perspective?”

  Nathan winced slightly and scratched his head.

  “OK,” he said, “think of a ‘c’ shape, but with the gap pinched together. It might take two million years to go around the outside, but jumping the gap would be instant. Within the bridge’s gap, cause and effect are simultaneous. But outside it, eons have gone by.”

  “Alright,” Vasily seemed hesitant, “but wouldn’t the bridge need an entangled link between the start and end points?”

  “Yep,” Nathan conceded, “but right now, I don’t know where to start looking.”

  Marcus looked at his granddaughter.

  His own entangled link to the past.

  Without explanation to the others, he began walking toward the shoreline. He may not be ready yet, but perhaps time was just a matter of perspective.

  As he got closer, she was the first to speak.

  “Hi,” her smile was as broad as when they’d first met.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been…” he awkwardly searched for the word, “busy.”

  She gave the faintest flicker of a frown; as though the idea of him apologising for anything at all was completely unnecessary.

  “Of course,” she nodded then saw that no-one was with him, “Do you have a few minutes?”

  Marcus took a deep breath.

  “All the time in the world.”

  On impulse, he opened his arms wide.

  A gap of two million years closed in the space of a single second. Exchanging no words, they simply hugged each other. For the first time in his life, he knew he was exactly where he needed to be.

  Over the following hours, he told her things that she didn’t know about her grandmother, and Raven told him about the tablet simulation of him; notably how much greyer he was in real life. He learnt about the extraordinary technological advances that had been made. He listened with quiet rage as Raven described the horrific situation caused by Kohlner and Dwight. After dark thoughts of revenge had subsided, he realised that there might be a way to help her.

  Returning with Raven to the Bergstrom’s ejected central compartment, he took a seat next to Lana, Nathan and several others.

  “Ivan,” Marcus tried to recall various pieces of information he’d been hearing, “The original probes… those manufacture-bots, you sent from the Eridanus, are they still in orbit?”

  “They should be,” he said, “They were building a basic satellite network, ahead of any colonisation.”

  “So,” said Marcus, “if we could get a signal to it…?”

  “The Eridanus would know we made it to the surface,” said Raven.

  “Unfortunately,” Lana looked around the compartment, “this survival unit doesn’t have a transmitter powerful enough to clear the atmosphere.”

  He looked at Nathan, who seemed to be thinking the same thing. Picking up a radio handset, Nathan clicked the button on the side.

  “Rachel, come in.”

  “Everything OK?” her reply came from the Britannia.

  “Fine, listen, could you pull up our spec for the lunar shard deflector system?”

  “Yep, hold on.”

  Lana looked at him with utter incredulity, “You built a system to deflect shards?”

  “Just a small one,” he smiled.

  “OK, I’ve got it,” Rachel came back, “What do you need?”

  “If we were to strip it down,” Nathan replied, “lose the fragmentation subsystems, instrumentation and give it a transmitter beacon, cou
ld we get the missile part into orbit?”

  There was a short pause.

  “Any particular place in orbit?”

  Redirecting Rachel’s question, Nathan looked at Ivan.

  “Er, no,” Ivan raised his voice for the handset, “The fabricators were designed to absorb and relay data back to the Eridanus.”

  A longer pause followed.

  “I’ll get back to you, Nate,” the radio clicked off.

  “The message,” said Lana, “We’d want Fai to give it high priority, so ideally it should be coded to look like it came from the Bergstrom.”

  “Coding shouldn’t be a problem,” Marcus thought of a small blue inhaler aboard the Britannia, “I have a little experience in that area.”

  Nathan smirked and turned to Lana.

  “You said the Eridanus is heading away from us at the minute.”

  “Yes, they stayed in solar orbit.”

  “Assuming that we can get a message to them, how long will it be until they’re back here?”

  “Seven Earth years.”

  Megan whistled, “There was me thinking I might have time for a bath and a book. I’d have time to read a whole bloody library.”

  Ivan turned in his seat and patted at the central cylinder that dominated the interior of the compartment.

  “We lost the Bergstrom’s forward reactor,” he bowed his head, “But the Field generator and central power core are both intact. With a bit of adjustment we might be able to compress that time to a few days.”

  Nathan shook his head, “The Britannia doesn’t have one of these marvellous devices, and my crew couldn’t fit into here. We’d still have a seven-year wait.”

  Raven rubbed at her forehead and let out a low growl of frustration.

  “Sending the message is great,” she said, “but all this other stuff… it’s trying to solve the wrong problem.”