Lunar 3097

by Gary Timbrell

  LUNAR 3097

  I was fortunate enough to be one of the early readers of Lunar 3097. I received a few chapters at a time as Gary was writing them! I (and others!) couldn’t wait for the next few chapters as they came off his pen. Timbrell is a master of the Sci-Fi genre and has produced a true page turner in Lunar 3097.

  –Billy N.

  Gary’s book has an exciting plot with many twists and turns! You won’t want to put it down until you reach the last page. Definitely a must read!! I can’t wait for his next Sci-Fi adventure.

  –Suzie B.

  Gary Timbrell takes you on an incredible journey into the mind and capabilities of artificial intelligence in his Sci-Fi thriller.

  –Kelly T.

  LUNAR 3097

  BK 1 THE AI CHRONICLES

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2018 Gary Timbrell

  v4.0

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Outskirts Press, Inc.

  http://www.outskirtspress.com

  Cover Photo © 2018 www.gettyimages.com. All rights reserved - used with permission.

  Interior Images by Ultimate Plus

  Outskirts Press and the “OP” logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank everyone that contributed to this book, without your help and encouragement it would never have been completed.

  A special thanks to:

  Billy Nixon and Suzie Brooks for your help with the rough drafts.

  Rob Scott, for his help with the story line.

  My family:

  Abbey, Alex, Angelina and Ariana

  A special thanks to Kelly, my wife,

  who has been my biggest fan throughout this Project.

  CHAPTER 1

  Lunar 3097: Orbiting moon of Kelstar in the Abbella solar system

  “This is RAIDA2.” (Roving Artificial Intelligence Data Acquisition) “I have located a small area of the target mineral; sending data.”

  ISA Headquarters (International Space Agency)

  Flight Control

  “We are not receiving anything, RAIDA. Could you check your data pack sending unit and resend?”

  “This is getting worse by the day,” said Alex.

  “You can’t complain too much,” said Abbey. “We’ve run seven years longer than the mission called for.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less frustrating. RAIDA, are you receiving me? Damn! Abbey, try Delta Two channel.”

  “Let’s wait for the next orbit cycle. Maybe the vector angle was at its limit,” said Abbey.

  Alex turned slowly on his stool and looked at her. She was trying to avoid making eye contact. “I know that you have some sort of strange affection for RAIDA2, but we have to start facing reality. The problems are far outweighing the positives. We haven’t found anything on that rock. It’s as barren as it looks. I’m not sure what the probe turned up that made Lunar 3097 look promising, but we can’t find anything of value.”

  Abbey’s shoulders sank, her head dropped, and her face flushed. For a moment, it looked like she would burst into tears. She caught herself. Her chest heaved, and she pulled her shoulders back, then looked up at the monitors, still avoiding Alex’s stare. Her left hand moved quickly to clear away a small tear that had formed in the corner of her eye, hoping he didn’t notice.

  Alex acted as if he was oblivious to her actions, but he saw everything. Not much got past him.

  “Okay, let’s shut down comms. The next vector is in seven hours. Let’s get some rest and be ready for it,” he said. He slowly rose from his stool and stretched. Abbey heard his joints click back into place from her seat. “Do you want to get lunch, dinner, or breakfast? What time is it anyway?”

  She stood and pointed to the far right monitor on the south wall, still not looking in his direction. “You can read, right?” she said, as she let the door to the control room close behind her.

  Alex, hearing the hiss of the door, said loudly, “I’ll take that as a no to lunch,” then in a lower tone, he said, “Dinner, breakfast, whatever it might be!”

  Kelly Stryker, the Lunar 3097/RAIDA project manager, walked behind Alex’s station and said in a low, authoritative voice, “You can be a dick sometimes, Alex.”

  He turned and looked up at Stryker and said in a sickly sweet voice, “Oh, sorry. Did I hurt somebody’s feelings?” Stryker just kept walking through the same door as Abbey. “Seems all the women in my life are walking out on me today.” The comment fell on deaf ears. There was no one left in the control room to hear him.

  ISA Headquarters

  ISA Control: Conference Room

  Stryker stood at the head of the table and flipped a pen around her fingers, trying to relieve some inner pressure she knew was going to come from the subject matter of this meeting. She tapped the pen on the table, and the attendees went silent and turned their collective attention to her.

  “I know that you all understand that this mission can’t go on forever, and the end is near. We all have poured our hearts and souls into this mission. It’s become a part of our very existence, but we now have to make a hard choice.” Kelly hesitated.

  “Sounds to me like the choice has already been made,” said Alex.

  Stryker stared at him. “If the decision were made, we wouldn’t be sitting in this room. It’s not easy making this call. Most of the people here are somewhat attached to our AI friends. It’s hard to let go.”

  “What’s hard is knowing that we are condemning them to an eternal condition of being aware but not being able to act on it—a living hell,” said Abbey.

  “You’re such a bleeding heart!” said Alex, causing everyone in the room to squirm in their seats.

  “When we planned this mission no thought was given to this possibility,” said Abbey. “We just assumed that the AIs would eventually stop, and the systems shut down, but that’s not the case, is it?”

  She was trembling. She clenched her hands so tightly her knuckles turned white, realizing that everyone around the table had now turned to look at her as she spoke, she felt small beads of sweat start to ru
n from her forehead down her scarlet cheeks.

  “This is an impossible situation,” she said, folding her arms and lowering her eyes to her lap, hoping someone would take the floor and relieve the pressure from her.

  “We still didn’t find a way to shut them down all the way, am I right?” said Stryker.

  “That’s right, and I’m not sure what all the fuss is about,” said a short, balding man in a plaid shirt and striped tie. “We have shut down 1 and 3 successfully without any problems, so why is there is a problem with 2?”

  Abbey exploded from her chair. “How would you like it if you were totally paralyzed but aware of everything around you for an entire day? Now, think about that and the fact that these AIs will be that way for eternity.”

  “It’s just a damn machine, for God’s sake; it has no feelings,” replied the balding man.

  “Are you sure about that?” she said, transfixing the man with a stare, her dark brown eyes burning into him like a laser.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” said Stryker. “I want a show of hands from those that think this project has anything else to give.”

  Only one solitary hand waved in the air. Abbey’s.

  ISA Flight Control

  Stryker stood at her control center, an elevated section of the control room, giving her a clear view over the entire room. “Contact RAIDA2 and initialize shutdown protocol Tango Alpha 2,” she said loudly.

  “Initializing Tango Alpha 2,” came echoing back across the room from support.

  Alex looked over at Abbey’s station, but the seat was empty. He looked around. She wasn’t in the room.

  Abbey stood in the hallway looking apprehensive. Slowly, she removed her passkey from her pocket and slid it through the keypad of the door to the RAIDA project mainframe. The keypad LED turned from red to green, then let out a shrill beep that seemed to resonate through the entire building, startling her, sending a sharp pain through her chest and a sinking feeling in her stomach. She didn’t remember the audible sound being that loud before, but then again, the other times she entered this room, she didn’t have nefarious intents.

  She quickly pushed the door open and stepped inside, feeling the chilled air hit her lungs. She was breathing heavily, almost panting. The unmistakable smell of electronics hit her. She realized that all of her senses were at a heightened level, so to calm herself, she started taking deep breaths through her nose and slowly exhaling through her mouth.

  “Calm down, calm down,” she said softly, as she walked down the aisles of racks of computers looking for the server in question. She knew the number by heart; after all, it had been her life for more than eight years now. Her hands were shaking, and although it was 55 degrees in the room, she was sweating profusely. She pulled a thumb drive from inside her shirt and opened it. She hesitated for a moment, her head starting to swim. Her emotions were getting the best of her. Her eyes glazed over as she thought of the ramifications of this next action; then she snapped out of it and looked around quickly to see if anyone had entered the room while she had spaced out. She turned and pushed the thumb drive into place and watched the red LED flash as it started its clandestine mission.

  “Tango Alpha 2 complete,” said Alex. “We are now officially at the end of the mission.” All of the techs in the room seemed to relax and mold into their seats as if a load had been lifted from their shoulders.

  Alex glanced over to see Abbey had, at some stage, returned to her console without him seeing her. She was flushed and perspiring.

  She looked up and caught Alex staring at her, so she quickly looked the other way and pretended not to have noticed him. She closed down the console on her desk and began to remove folders and other related materials connected to the RAIDA project and stowed them away in a file folder box that had been left on her desk … Normal protocol for the end of any mission.

  After she had filled the boxes, she taped them closed and wrote in large letters: “RAIDA PROJECT/END OF MISSION.”

  CHAPTER 2

  ISA Control Flight

  “We should celebrate!” said Alex loudly. Other voices in the room sounded off in agreement.

  “What are you going to celebrate? You know what we just did. I don’t think so!” said Abbey.

  “What the hell is your problem, Abbey? I thought this was just a stepping-stone for you. You told me at the beginning of this project that you were going to move on from here to the SFC (space flight corp.), that you wanted to become a space pioneer and search for the truth among the stars!” He continued ranting, flailing his arms about melodramatically.

  “Shut up! That’s not what I said,” she retorted, turning to face her mocking coworker. “You just made it sound like one of those old reruns from the 1900s.”

  Alex laughed, a smug look on his face. “Sometimes, I wonder if you’re not from those times, what with your archaic thoughts when it comes to artificial life. I bet if we could have brought that AI back to earth, you would have taken it home to care for it the rest of your life!” he said, picking up the file box he had filled from his desk and walking out the sliding door with a look of disdain in his eyes.

  Striker walked by Abbey’s desk on her way out, carrying her own file box. “If I didn’t know better, I would say he has a thing for you.”

  Abbey was alone at her desk, and the room was empty. She so wanted to turn on her console and initiate Protocol 7, but she dare not do that here. She must wait until she’s in the safety of her own apartment.

  She picked up the file boxes and left the room and headed for the mission records department to classify and store the files. Stryker was leaving as she entered.

  “You look like you could use a vacation. These last two months have taken a toll on all of us, but you have taken it hard with this mission.” She paused. “Why don’t you take two weeks off? We have time before our next mission starts.”

  “I’m fine. I wish everybody would just let me be me! I’m emotional. I get upset when I think someone is insensitive—it’s just who I am!” With that, Abbey handed her file boxes to Stryker and walked away.

  Abbey stood in line for a skipper. Skippers came in three sizes: four seats, two seats, and one seat. They got their name because they skip across any terrain, even water. This was good because ISA Headquarters was on an island off the mainland. She was next in line for a single seat skipper when the canopy of a two-seater opened as it went by.

  “Would you like a lift?” She turned to see who was talking to her, and as she did, she realized it was Alex. She slipped into the skipper that had just pulled up next to his, closed the canopy, and sped off across the black water, leaving a wake of glistening mist flowing from the rear of her machine.

  Skippers were autonomous, but if you were so inclined, you could take control and drive with more of an aggressive nature. Abbey always drove herself. She found it relaxing to be in control. That’s why she took the RAIDA project position. She was in control of certain outcomes on a moon half a light-year away from Earth. Or at least she “was.”

  All things must come to an end, she thought. Or do they?

  A wry smile flashed across her face as she set the skipper back to auto so it would park itself and save her the hassle.

  The canopy opened. Abbey stepped out onto the service platform at her building, a 300-story tower of mirrors, or what looked like mirrors. They were actually photo dielectric cells, “solar panels” that produced the power for the building. You could change their density with an electronic control in each living pod to adjust how much light entered the pod.

  It was dark, so she set the control to translucent so she could see the city lights. The adjacent towers were lit with LEDs and changed color through the night in patterns that complemented the next building. It was a continuous light show.

  She slipped into her sleep attire and entered the electronics room at the end of her living space. There were no windows in this room, so lights came up slowly to reveal a vast array of electronic equipme
nt, much more than an average person would have in their home … But then, Abbey wasn’t average.

  She slid into a large, high-backed padded black chair and crossed her legs. Reaching to the side of the desk, she turned on the electronics in the room with one switch. A loud thump followed, and the screens around her lit up, throwing a blue hue over the room and turning her face a strange shade of grey. Her red lip gloss looked black.

  Rubbing her hands together, she flexed and stretched her neck, all signs of nervousness. What she was about to do could—and probably would—have a massive effect on her life, her career—and could ultimately land her in prison. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, moving as if typing the input code. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Is this really where I make a stand? she thought to herself. Then speaking in a loud, authoritative voice, said, “Mark Twain once said, ‘The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.’

  “This is my day.”

  With that, she started typing code, tapping the keyboard at an alarming rate. The screens burst into life with numbers too long to comprehend. They were moving too fast for the human brain to read. After fifteen minutes, the numbers calmed down, and the screens turned blue. A timer bar was slowly counting up from zero to one hundred percent. “Still time to change your mind!” said Abbey out loud. Fifty percent, seventy-five percent, eighty percent, one hundred percent. Download complete was flashing on the screens. Open download now flashed on the screen.

  She sat chewing her knuckle and staring at the screen. Then with a cold, deliberate motion, tapped the ENTER bar. The screen sprang to life. All manner of sequenced codes flashed by, too fast to read, except for pieces caught by her mind if it stayed more than a millisecond on the screen, only to be pushed out by the next. Then it slowed down and eventually came to a stop.

  She was staring at the screen with great expectations, seemingly unable to move, then, from out of the silence came the familiar melodious voice of an old friend.

  “RAIDA2, ready to receive.”