Can you imagine? Breeding emotion out of a human? Doctoring the DNA so the feelings they have are minimalized, their humanity completely disrespected? And all done to military specifications.
It horrifies me. You are gentle and kind, Cobalt. To think of someone doctoring your genetic make up so you would be a better fighter, and taking away your beautiful personality angers me.
What if it were done to anyone? To Lark and his amazing charisma? To Tiri? To me?
We live in a brilliant and accessible universe. But there are hidden horrors.
I will write immediately upon my return to Lone.
Count on it!
Love,
Liyan
*
Dear Liyan:
Hidden horrors. Yes. But they’ve been around since the dawn of Mankind. The darker human heart (nor the good) does not become wiped away by technology, psychological evolutions, the increase in knowledge of the science of the mind. Future worlds, new knowledge, space travel…nothing replaces the final human heart. Not even mechanical devices within the human body. It is superstition to think otherwise.
To be human is to be flawed.
If nothing, it makes for good stories, right?
I look very much forward to hearing from you in one week. All about the anomaly.
Love,
Cobalt
*
Sensors had gone from pink-edged green to gold to red.
A shimmering line of what looked like jagged white static drifted across the viewscreen.
Like lightning in space, Liyan thought. He could almost hear the rain, and smiled at his ridiculous thought while knowing Cobalt would’ve liked it.
Sensors showed more oddities than they were expecting. Liyan and Lark had researched it. Not much to read, though. The files the admiral had sent them were slim, incomplete. All other probes had given back little information…or none. This new series of probes were better engineered, more complex.
Still, there were oddities on their sensors they had not expected.
Tiri was trying to configure the data when they all realized at once as the visual focus intensified, that they were registering shipwrecks. At least three of them.
“The admiral left that part of it out,” Lark said, dismayed. “Why?”
One ship, a disk, was doing an endless, slow tumble around the anomaly, caught in the gravity of it like a lost juggler’s dish.
“Why couldn’t it break away?” Tiri asked.
Liyan felt the slow surge of alarm sting his arms and legs. He gave Tiri an abrupt order to direct the starliner up and back, their own tumble and veer course which shook the picture on the screen but which they barely felt.
“We’ll launch the probe from here,” Liyan said, though he knew the mission required them to be much closer.
No one argued.
And Liyan remembered his earlier conversation with the admiral.
“You have deflectors, don’t you?” she’d asked.
He’d answered yes, but not military grade. She behaved as if she had not heard him.
“Did she say anything about the danger of this mission?” Tiri asked.
“Nope. Just a routine probe launch. That’s how her paperwork addressed it,” Liyan answered. We’re a garbage hauler to her, nothing more.
“If we encountered these readings on a normal cruise coming out of foldspace, it’d be anything but routine,” she said.
“Why’d she send us? I don’t remember hearing any rumors that she’s crazy,” Lark said. He frowned at Tiri, as if Tiri might have some special insight having trained on Lone for several months.
Tiri shrugged, shook her head. “I was a grunt. Pretty much we’re the last to know anything, including gossip.”
She turned back to her instruments and her face changed. “Hey…”
“What is it?” Liyan asked.
“A weird signal.” She gave a series of navigational figures. “It’s another wreck. But this one’s emitting an S.O.S.”
“Is the signal old?”
“I can’t tell.”
Liyan reached behind him and settled into an empty helm chair. He’d taken minimal crew for this trip. Left the rest on Lone to finish their short vacations uninterrupted.
“Well, we can’t ask. This thing, whatever it is out there, fries our communication signals.”
“We can go back,” Lark suggested.
Liyan thought about it. Another wasted week there and back. What if people on board the wreck needed help? Or what if the beacon was simply from an ancient, undying battery, leftover from the old times, a red pulse crying forever into the dark? How could they ever tell without going closer?
“What do you say?” Liyan commanded true, but he also always asked for opinions. That was what crew were for.
“Do you think the admiral overseeing the entire planet of Lone would really be crazy enough to send us here without proper defenses? She’d have been ratted out long ago if she were that crazy,” Tiri said. “She can’t know about the distress. It’s muted. It’s a crap-shoot to send a signal around this thing. The anomaly is breaking it up. It’s only by chance I saw it in the readouts. Maybe no one knows. Maybe this is old or new. But I think we have to check it out.”
“I say we leave it to the bigger ships,” Lark argued. “This was never a rescue mission. We’re a glorified cruise liner.”
“Which means we have the room,” Liyan offered.
“Yes, we have beds. We can give medical aid. But we’re made to avoid the icebergs, not head into them.” The ancient reference was not lost on any of them. “Can you tell anything else about the ship or its signal from here?”
Tiri shook her head. “The anomaly is messing with everything.”
“How much closer can we safely get?”
She rattled off a number.
Lark looked dubious. Later, he quipped, “The iron will of starliner commanders is a fact.” He gave a wry smile. And Liyan knew that Lark was ready to take the risk in total support of him.
That was the moment, without warning, the anomaly stuck out an electric finger and jabbed at them as if their deflectors were nothing stronger than a net of gauze.
Damn the eccentricity of hermit admirals on planets called Lone.
Damn their own naiveté and the sparse records which told them virtually nothing about what they were headed into.
Tiri went flying across the bridge.
Lark grabbed at a chair but still went down.
Liyan whipped backwards over his chair and even through all that chaos, still the loudest thing he heard was the crack as his back broke.
Clamor and chaos. On emergency auto, the ship went into evasive maneuvers.
The anomaly, they now knew (a bit too late) was a cluster of gliding electrical bullets. Energy field meteors of such proportion that to even study it was suicide.
But old admirals liked notches on their belts. And they often didn’t mind using disposable grunts or trash haulers to risk getting the job done.
After that hit, Liyan remembered flashes of many things. More hits. Or at least it felt like it. Somebody, maybe Tiri, shouting the stardrive was out. And the chain reactions were mini-storms destroying everything in their path. Ignitions. Flames. Fires. A computer muttered, “Destruction imminent.”
It was a known conceit. Captains went down with their ships. But usually not on mad errands. Usually not for being careful, or doing nothing wrong.
He would not die a hero. But he didn’t care about that. What he wanted more was for Lark and Tiri to survive this, live long enough to know old age. And he wanted Cobalt to know he wished the android’s life could have been better, that he could’ve done more to contribute to a final freedom for him.
Smoke wafted over him, thick and black, burning into his throat and down his windpipe. Oxygen was burning furiously, the lights all at emergency orange to match the growing flames.
“Get up,” said a harsh voice next to him.
But he couldn’t move.
Then Lark was kneeling, coughing. “Can’t you move?”
“Go to the escape pods,” he wheezed. “You and Tiri. Get out of here. Program them for Lone or anywhere as far from this thing…”
“Not without you,” Lark interrupted. Before he could argue, Lark hefted him up, yelling something to someone Liyan couldn’t see.
He tensed against imminent pain from his back that never came and realized that was not a good thing.
He flopped upward, limp in Lark’s arms as the man stood. Liyan gasped. Now there was pain in his lungs, his chest. Still nothing in his legs.
“I got you,” Lark said.
“Let me go! I’ll hold you back. You have to leave now!”
“Shut up,” was the only response from his disobedient second in command.
He couldn’t see much. He felt the strong arms, the running, the cooler air of the still-lit corridors where the smoke and flames had not yet reached. He felt himself slipping down Lark’s body. His arms still worked. He grabbed onto Lark’s shoulders and held on.
“Where’s Tiri?” he asked. But Lark just ran and ran.
He heard the words again. “Destruction imminent.”
Smoke stung his eyes. Burning metal, burning circuits, burning air. And the worst scent? The ash of dreams which were salt and bitters of a wine turned to vinegar.
They came to a passenger viewport, a long wall of black with centuries of stars looking coldly on as Lark held onto him, as Lark ran. He felt like he was falling.
Then there was the coffin. The green and blue lights running along its sides as if it were a holiday decoration. The antiseptic scent of brisk electrical currents as the auto-computers turned on.
Lark nearly fell getting him into it and ended up kneeling, making sure he was properly placed, strapped, and all while Liyan kept hearing the words. “Destruction imminent.”
“Lark! Go!” he rasped. “Go!”
“I won’t leave you to die with the damn ship like some storybook tale.”
“But Tiri…?”
“Tiri’s okay. She was right ahead of us. She’s already in a pod.”
The lid began to close, the straps to tighten and he felt the metal around him quiver.
“Lark!” he yelled. “Lark!”
The pod closed completely, began to move along the escape chutes and for a moment all went black. Seconds later the porthole (he thought of it as a tiny coffin window) revealed the universe of spinning stars as tranquil as always, and as deadly.
A shiver of fear ran through him.
He saw at that moment other pods spinning, turning. All safe so far. All headed fast away from the churning, lashing anomaly. Then his little view changed and the Siren Song came into vision range.
His lungs heaved as he watched, each breath burning, aching. The starliner somersaulted in space, a gigantic, magnificent creature caught in a heat sphere of total destruction. It buckled, toppled into itself, then exploded into an infinity of gold-white fireflies the same color as Liyan’s tears.
*
29. Auto Delivery Fail
Dear Liyan:
I hope you are back from your mission by now and able to again receive waves.
Things continue as usual at the hotel.
Love,
Cobalt
*
Dear Liyan:
My last message hasn’t bounced, but it also hasn’t been marked as received. I hope you are simply delayed and all is well.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Love,
Cobalt
*
Dear Liyan:
Are you able to receive waves yet? Obviously, if I see an auto receipt fail message on this one, too, the answer will still be no.
I have scoured for waves of news of you and your ship. There is nothing. So I am assuming you are simply delayed either by the anomaly or by foldspace and you will be able to communicate soon.
Love,
Cobalt
*
Dear Liyan:
Still no word. But also no official news of Siren Song or her crew. There is simply silence. Nothing. I do not even know who to wave about this matter. There is nothing on the nets from C&C. I have scoured the lists for lost ships, recent deaths. I am relieved to find, so far, no mention of you or your ship. But I am very worried. Please wave me as soon as you are able.
Love,
Cobalt
*
30. The Death of the Siren Song
Space is velvet, he thought. Space hurts.
He floated in the pod in half-sleep, engulfed by billion year old night.
Over and over the after-image played itself in Liyan’s mind. The starliner folding in on itself, collapsing, then exploding, copper blue flames licking long into the black until they vanished. Amber sparks dancing. Until there was nothing.
The bitter burnt smell of the air would not leave him. He knew it was an illusion. The pod circulated re-freshened air to him through filters.
He dozed and woke. Dozed and woke.
How long?
Average pods had life support systems that could last for months. The Siren Song’s escape pods had systems guaranteed for a year. Plenty of time for rescue to come.
His pod was programmed for Lone. He didn’t want to go there. He wanted to go to Asteroid 1191782, Diamond Void XP.
But he was too sleepy to even attempt a reprogram. If he tried to speak, his words came out garbled.
He dreamed of a school of pods, like minnows of the void, all shiny and bright headed to the nearest sun.
He dreamed of Tiri and Lark hurtling through space beside him in pods of their own, safe, alive.
In a sweeping agony of homesickness, he dreamed of Cobalt where so long ago he had left a part of himself, his essence, on that lonely asteroid, in that ornate Grand Aurora Hotel.
He turned and turned in his long sleep.
The starliner exploded.
His starliner exploded.
He was still a captain. None of it was his fault. And yet it seemed everything was lost.
*
When he finally and fully woke Lark was there surrounded by dim stars. Liyan blinked. He finally realized the dim stars were lights of a medical ward blinking, flashing. He couldn’t move. But he could breathe. Deep. Strong.
He would live.
Lark’s hand pressed against his forehead, warm and firm.
Liyan closed his eyes and spoke. “Tiri?”
“She’s next door getting a bit of new skin. She had a few burns. She’ll be all right. And the small crew we had with us survived. Sekina found us all.”
“Are you all right?”
A quick nod was his answer.
“You disobeyed a direct order.”
Lark’s eyebrow rose. “To leave you?”
Liyan glanced away.
“Yeah, well, you ass, I’d do it again. So when you can you’ll just have to write me up. After you thank me, of course. And if you were wondering, the admiral has gone into early retirement.”
It felt as if something had caught in his throat. He jerked.
Lark took tight hold of his hand. “Just rest.”
Liyan replied in a whisper. “I want to go home.”
*
The surgery was complicated but the technology sound.
After days in a life-pod, Liyan was forced to continue to lie still for another week to let his new spine integrate.
Lark stayed by his side, joined later by Tiri. The drugs the medics gave him made him sleep over sixteen hours a day. He dreamed the death of the Siren Song more times than he could count. He dreamed he was a created human made of vat-grown, assembled parts. In this new nightmare, he knew he was a person with no freedoms. He would never go to the stars. An idea that he might be a starship captain trapped in an android body le
ft him hopeless, helpless. An indistinct figure loomed over him, saying, “This one’s hopelessly schizophrenic. It will have to be put down.”
When he woke yelling, Lark’s fingers were combing back his bangs, and he was saying, “Hey, hey…”
He saw through bleary, drugged eyes that Tiri stood on the other side of the bed. He felt her hand in his. When their eyes met, she said starkly, “A whole new spine and they still couldn’t break out their best drugs. I’m having a strong word with your doctor. Right now!” She stomped from the room.
He looked around the room for Cobalt. Of course he wasn’t there. He wasn’t allowed to travel.
Lark leaned over him, forcing Liyan to look at him. “You’ll get to see him soon enough.”
“I didn’t say…”
“You didn’t have to.”
Liyan reached up to grab Lark’s arm. Lark reached back until they clasped hands. “Are you in pain?” he asked.
“Not right now.”
“Good. Because day after tomorrow you get to learn to walk again.”
“Can’t wait to get upright.”
“I’ll bet. I had secretly hoped I could tell you what a rotten patient you are, but you’ve hardly even complained. I know you want to go home as soon as possible. My question is, can Tiri and I come with you?”
Liyan’s breath hitched. He blinked. “I hoped you’d want to.”
Lark squeezed his palm. “You ass. Of course we want to.”
At that moment the door opened and Tiri’s strong voice could be heard. “…something better for what he’s been through. This one’s giving him nightmares!”
Letters to an Android Page 20