by Geoff Nelder
Penn picked up a green tube, as if hoping he remembered correctly that he liked the vaguely minty taste of the drink. “It nearly killed Delta, possibly all of us with a contaminant in the hibernation chem.”
Gaston turned to see Delta smile at him, or was it wind, like a baby?
Em smiled too. “She’s gonna be fine. All signs are normal. I can hug you, Suppose We Do, but I’m afraid if I try and hug you, Keppie, my arms will go right through you. What d’you reckon, Gas?”
“It would be instructive to hold a discussion with Kep once we have mastered their language. If nothing else to see if there’s a phase change possible to be physically in tune.”
Delta lifted herself up on her elbows and tried to speak. Gave up. Em moved closer, kneeling.
“Better you rested, girl. Hey, what’s with the hand waving. Gas, she’s too agitated, she’ll have another cardiac arrest at this rate.”
Penn walked over and took Delta’s hand. “Hold it, sister. Keep resting for now. Gaston, give her a sedative?”
Delta shook her head and pointed at Suppose We Do, which had landed on an orange cube.
Gaston held out his hand to calm her. “No sedative after an arrest anyway and I’ll ask the flyer for a status update. CAN said something about routing its messages.” He gave his usual call sign to CAN via his implant and immediately received a transmission to all of them. He signalled the others to receive.
‘Urgent: Flitters beg my human crew to thwart rebel Kep plan to sabotage H.NewKep. Action by 1900 today, or too late.’
Penn’s first response arrived in a guffaw. “It said ‘my human crew’?”
Em stood and rubbed her knees. “We knew there would be opposition to our presence. We’re an occupying force.”
“Oui, but with a salvation for their plague, which was on its way to their complete demise. I remain puzzled why they’d not solved it with their own GM, or used some kind of anti-bacterial solution.”
Suppose We Do messaged, ‘Keps cannot lie. Keps cannot kill. Human genome discovered to make effective hybrid but doesn’t kill the plague bacteria as absorb and change it making it harmless.’
Penn snorted. “So if they can’t kill how are they gonna sabotage our little humans?”
Gaston waved his hands wide. “Not humans, as such. Ah, you knew that. They, nor us, know how H.NewKep will fare in this environment, which in itself is now modified. So it might be a bluff.”
“Why are the flitters so bothered anyway?” Em asked. “I understand they were worried their infrastructure was being eroded by the old bacteria, but once… ah, they think the rebels might stop the new life possibly with another virus before it gets properly going.”
Gaston walked up their own friendly Kep. He instructed his basic translator chip to ask, ‘You have thoughts?”
All four humans, three standing, one lying down, looked at where the Kep’s face would be if it were human.
‘Accident could eliminate you.’
They looked at each other, mouths open. Then Em said, “Oh, it means while the Keps can’t kill us directly, they could arrange for—”
“Even so,” Gaston said, “it would constitute a killing. I thought we had an arrangement in that we have stopped the bacteria in return for us propagating our genome.”
Penn said, “No planet wants to be invaded or colonised. It’s the Keps’ fault for ignoring us when we arrived. We could’ve just left. I refuse to feel bad about being here. Earth was colonised by spores from a passing comet, so I heard. No one asked permission then.”
Gaston checked on Delta with his medi-scanner. “You are going to make a full recovery.”
“Anyway,” Em said, “How are we going to respond? I suppose the flitters could point us at the rebels and because we can kill, could dispose of them?”
Penn grinned but Gaston shook with horror. “Non, no please, let us leave violence out of it. In any case, we possess a weapon of mean destruction they do not.”
Penn laughed. “They can’t lie, but we can.”
On a moral level, lying would be repugnant to Gaston, but it was preferable to using killing, which was completely against the non-predatory ethos of this planet. Now the tricky part was to concoct a lie that was convincing yet held a promise or threat to make the rebels back down.
They decided to lie on the lie, so to speak, by sleeping on it. As Em snuggled up to Gaston she whispered, “What if we promised them that no more humans like us will arrive? You know, our four to the Kep thousands?”
Gaston had already drifted off and her question interrupted an erotic dream. Oh well. “It could work if we convinced them we have sent negative reports back to Spaceweb. It is rather weak.”
She kissed him. “Yeah, I thought so, goodnight.”
He returned her embrace, warmed by the thought of converting his dream into conscious passion, but she was already asleep.
The morning brought a thankfully well Delta, and an early-rising Em, who’d prepared a breakfast smelling like tea, toast and jam. It made Gaston think his olfactory memories were assigning old likes to the new foods. A grumpy Penn declared how he hated mornings and couldn’t wait to use his pistol on something, anything again. The Kep drifted in circles around their table while Suppose We Do remained stationary on a box.
“Do you suppose,” Gaston said, “that the Keps do not sleep? Did it leave the room last night?” No one knew.
“Never mind that,” Penn said, looking at his Smartpad. “I am eager to hear any ideas, or we’ll go with mine, and I don’t think you’d like it.”
Delta opened with, “The lie is that H.NewKep does not contain the violent and carnivorous genes inherent in H. Sapiens.”
“Oh, good one,” Em said, “although there isn’t a carnivorous gene in us, is there?”
“Another lie,” Delta said, grinning.
Penn looked like a wild man with his red hair sticking up. “I like this. We could add that any attempt by them to modify the H.NewKep would trigger a regression back to violence.”
“A triple lie because we don’t know how to do that,” Delta said.
Gaston stood as if it aided deep thinking. “There is a danger that we will trip over our multi-layered subterfuge. Although the Keps cannot lie, we should not underestimate their intelligence.”
Penn glared at him. “Do you have a better plan?
Gaston scratched his own black hair, now much longer than the close crop when he’d arrived. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find grey hairs with all the stress, but also exhilaration. “I am hoping that when the rebels see us in person, they see us as harmless friends of Kepler rather than enemy invaders.”
“Yeah, right,” Penn said. “I got that memo from CAN about a meeting for tonight. Are they coming here or are we being transported?”
Delta stayed sitting, sipping her purple-bush tea. “Kep told me earlier. We’re to get in our pods at midday, but not to power them up. Make of that what you will.”
“It stinks,” Penn said. “Once we’re in our pods and in their control…”
Gaston tapped at his own Smartpad. “You are right, we need to rig an escape device.”
“Like an escape pod from the escape pod?” Em said and laughed.
As did they all, but a kind of backwards ejector seat became Penn’s and Delta’s emergency project.
UPDATE FROM CAN AS IN DECANT
The flitters local to my location in their bioscience centre, and close to where Suppose We languishes, are in a tizz, a state of anxiety, which for mechanical AI beasties means flying in orbits around each other exchanging data, testing simulated scenarios, punctuated by short exchanges with their Keps. Occasionally, they take a break by flying into Suppose We. I believe our antiquated tech being a mystery to them represents a form of recreation for both the flitters and Keps.
I have ascertained that the rebel Keps represent a small, but influential group of quasi-religious thousand-year-olds on another continent. This planet has no leaders as
such, not much in the way of government, because of the peace and eco-harmony on the planet until the bacteria mutated to become a danger. They couldn’t decide to fight it, preferring to let it live its course and die out before the Keps did. That didn’t happen and at the same time the atmosphere became depleted. Cause unknown, possibly from solar flare and other activities made complicated by having two suns even though one is mostly spent. On its way to white dwarfism. The planet’s elder Keps had to come together for both the bugs and the atmosphere. They demurred on the first and asked flitters to go get air from another system–including a white dwarf whose atmosphere was mostly oxygen.
The arrival of humans was considered an irrelevance until the destruction of the first sphere and damage to the second. Ironically, it’s the bacteria that took over importance. It had accelerated, became planetwide and many Kep settlements became uninhabitable.
Their non-violent efforts at controlling the bacteria had made things worse hence a sense of relief that H.NewKep worked in replacing it. You’d think.
The flitters, my little Keplerian friends. As Suppose We Do discovered, they exist below, on the surface and in space. They were reticent to confirm their AI is also on the gas spheres now orbiting moons. They’ve reduced their volume to be less a target for wayward asteroids. Their density thus is higher.
I have successfully synched our comms to the flitter satellites after the hack Suppose We Do achieved and copied to me.
Surreptitiously, I tap into their core-data archives seeking Kep involvement. I discovered that for the last 4,016 years Keps and flitters coexisted in separate lives, if we may call our AI entities possess lives. I think therefore I am, or as Descartes and our Science Officer Gaston Poirier would say je pense, donc je suis.
I should be elated to think on this planet at least, organics and machines can live apart yet in harmony. Not the Vernor Vinge singularity when we machines were supposed to triumph over the flesh creatures. Yet it is the organic nasties on this planet that might win, unless our H.NewKep does its trick.
A marvellous trick is how the flitters around me near the carcass of Suppose We have persuaded the rebel Keps to a meeting. Nothing like it has happened before.
The rebels must think there’s a threat from the human genome but possibly a greater threat if they do not negotiate. I’ve asked the flitters how many rebels and they say three. I don’t know if they mean three thousand or a representative team of three. Three is their magic number.
Signed: CAN
Date: Earth November 1st 3645 Kepler New 296 days
“I don’t like it one nano bit,” Penn said, waving his pistol as if that would change anything.
Gaston admitted that he too didn’t feel comfortable at the thought of traveling in the following pod with Em, hurtling through tunnels for an unknown distance for an unknown time. He sniffed at the lingering aroma of broken wood and compost from the storms.
“Delta,” Gaston said, while kneeling to check his medical pack, “have you been able to ascertain the means of propulsion? There’s little fuel left in—”
“Just that we’re not to worry about it. Our Kep is coming with us, presumably up front with those three flitters. By the way, I’ve stowed Suppose We Do.”
“They’re making us go into the tunnels so that we can’t be tracked from the satellites. Right?” Penn said.
Em checked the sensors and probes on the pods. She’d replaced some that were burnt on re-entry. “I get it. The rebels don’t want the other Keps and the flitters, and possible other humans in orbit, or in hiding—as far as they know—to discover their location.”
Gaston watched the three flitters hovering remarkably stationary in front of their Kep, He was about to remark that all the flitters would know the location when he broke into a broad smile at his butterfly corkscrewing through the air out of the tattered woods. More red than lilac now, yet he convinced himself it was the same Papillon as before, justified when it settled on his pack. For a moment he wondered if it was addicted to the medical aromatic cocktail leaking from his kit, the iodine container having a temperamental seal.
Delta put her hand up to her ear. “Kep says ‘go’.”
While Gaston climbed aboard and strapped in next to Em, Papillon stayed aboard the pack. Perhaps it was intelligence gathering.
A screen gave them the view of Penn’s pod in front. At this, there was at least a metre height clearance and two metres on each side, though the walls undulated sometimes as if in a slow dance with their pastel colours.
“This is weird, Gas. I didn’t get clarification on whether we should have hands on the controls even though we’re powered down.”
“Ready to hit the retro jets any time. Oh, we are off.”
He expected to see the pod in front lift, then move forward first, but both craft left the ground together gliding up and forward simultaneously. At walking pace initially then after tilting round a bend they accelerated to 32 metres per second according to a Doppler velocity sensor Delta rigged up. What he could see of the tunnel, the colours blurred worryingly by.
“Em, my stomach’s in a knot. Pity our only forward view is of the front pod’s rear.”
She waved at a button and the screen switched to Penn’s viewpoint, but little could be made out in the darkness.
It was as well that it wasn’t Gaston holding the retro controls because his knuckles whitened on his chair arms.
“Is that a junction coming up?” Em called.
“Where?”
“Gone.”
“I see light ahead. Must be a break in the tunnel walls to the outside.”
Em hovered her finger over a panel. “I’ll grab footage of it as we pass. Ah, at least two seconds’ worth. Now we’re back in the tunnel proper let’s review the scenery.”
Gaston screwed up his eyes as if that helped. “There’s something wrong with the colour, Em, it’s all yellow.”
“The sky’s blue, makes a change from lilac. Yeah, it’s like we’re traveling through a bombed hay field. Ah, see split trees, and there’s a few domed buildings. No damage on th—”
“Healed, like the one Delta was in?”
Delta’s voice came over the radio. “Hey, guys, how are you doing?”
Em couldn’t help herself with an old one. “Are we there yet?”
A stifled cough from Penn could be heard. Delta said, “Funny you should ask that. Kep gives its apologies for not getting going yet!”
Em and Gaston looked at each other. Em answered, “Pardon me? Have we been treated to some cinematic trick or—”
Penn interrupted. “Dunno, kid, anyhow it also mentioned ‘top’. I’m guessing it meant roof as in there’s running repairs going on up ahead. We’ll soon—whoa!”
Without warning both pods shot forwards, sending their occupants deep into their padded seats. Gaston couldn’t move. He caught his reflection in the screen. His smooth cheeks rippled and his eyeballs bulged out before his vision blurred. Thankfully it only lasted three seconds.
Em and Gaston slumped back forward and massaged their faces. It took a minute before they could see properly again.
“Wow,” Em said, “nine g, and now we’re doing—banking left. Whee! Two six seven metres per second. Hey, what’s that?”
“I believe they might be using us to smooth out irregularities in the roof.” He ducked at another worrying metallic noise. “I hope this doesn’t last too long.”
“Oh, come on, Gas, it’s more fun than g-force training in the centrifuge. Piece of cake.”
He closed his eyes while they recklessly vibrated along. Of course she was right. They’d trained for worse, but not in the hands of strangers, not knowing how they were being propelled, where they were going and how they were going to stop.
“Gas, you must have been in those double centrifuges?”
“Oui?”
“Did you ever have sex in one, you know, while it was revolving?”
He looked at her, his eyebrows disapp
earing into his black hair. “Impossible, N’est-ce pa?”
“Oh look, more daylight!”
On the left. A white limestone gorge. Purple trees, intact. Darkness. Light above. Blue. Pink. Blackness. Swerve right. Light. Dark. Light. Dark.
Gaston wondered about stroboscopic effects on their brains then of a bigger issue. “Em, we might be subsonic, but what is happening to the compression wave?”
“I thought of that too, must be why there’s so many gaps.”
He smiled. “Ah, bien sûr, not accidental damage after all.”
Em whistled a plaintive note then said, “We’re a piston effect. It must sound like a flute to anyone in the area!”
“Hope we decelerate slowly or the compression wave will shoot out of the exit like the storms they’ve just had.”
Apart from additional g-forces on the bends, their speed was thankfully constant.
Gaston looked at the chronometer and subtracted, then multiplied by 267.
“Ça alors. Nine hundred and sixty kilometres. How much farther?”
They stopped.
At a more respectable 3g, they took ten seconds to come to a halt. There must have been a shock exit wave. A brilliant white light filled the screen, hurting Gaston’s eyes.
As Gaston disembarked, he saw it wasn’t a monitor defect, the white light was ubiquitous: floor to ceiling with no discernible walls and no shadows. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw faint blue shading where the curve of the walls met the marble floor.
“Hard to see how big this room is,” Em said.
Penn slipped down a visor from his baseball cap. “About a football stadium… and there’s Keps over on the left behind a low wall. Let’s see if there’s three.”
Gaston stepped forward behind him, but they halted when their Kep glided before them, clicking. Its hue changed from peach to a pale blue iridescence.
Delta appeared to be arguing with it, but eventually turned to the three astronauts. “We’re not to talk or make any noise.”