Launch Pad

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Launch Pad Page 11

by Shelly Bryant


  It took him a moment to locate Rhea, looking pale as it did against the glow of Saturn and its rings. In the distance, Phoebe moved in retrograde orbit around the planet, going against the flow of the rest of the satellites that circled the gas giant.

  I wonder what sort of droid will evolve from your surface, Adi thought, looking at the glow of the moon, tiny in the distance. What surprises do you have in store for me?

  His musings were interrupted by a knock from inside the ship, the all-clear from Ping. He reached for the handle of the hatch, casting one last glance in the direction of Saturn and its satellites.

  “Abhilasha is itching to get your mission under way,” Ping said.

  “Ship’s always top priority,” Adi replied. “You two won’t survive long without it, and my mission stops here too, if I can’t fly anymore.”

  “That might not be so bad,” Ping replied. “It’s one of the prettier moons we’ve been on, isn’t it?”

  Adi looked around, then just offered the obligatory, “Mm-hm.” It had been a week since their previous space walk and, though Saturn was just as spectacular from here, he had personally been fonder of the view from Earth’s moon. It felt like home.

  “Too bad your short lifespan will prevent you from seeing this place terraformed,” Adi said as he slid under the ship with the full-sized scanner. Though he couldn’t see Ping from here, he could guess what the human was doing right now. He must be trying to scratch his right hip through his space suit. The synthetic fabrics of the suit and gloves would make it impossible to get any relief from the action— he was much too well insulated to feel it at all. Still, the act seemed to bring him comfort of a different sort. He always scratched that same spot on his hip when he was thinking or waiting. Adi was sure he was doing both now. Ping’s habits were as familiar to the droid as his own programming was, as familiar as every inch of the surface of this ship…

  “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Got it.”

  “What did you find?” Ping asked, leaning over and peering under the ship.

  Adi turned the beam of his torchlight to the spot. “See that?”

  Ping leaned in closer. “What is it?”

  “Just a little scrape, really. There are several of them all right here together. Looks like we ran into something while we were flying between Jupiter and here.”

  “I didn’t see anything, and the monitors didn’t give any warning.”

  “Looks like it was tiny. These are just narrow scrapes, and none is more than a couple of centimetres long.”

  “Can we fix it?”

  “Sure. We can polish the scrapes right out. I’ve got materials onboard that will work.”

  “Do you think we might find something we could use here on Phoebe? I’d rather keep our stock, in case we need it in the middle of a flight at some point.”

  “I’ll look when I’m out with Abhilasha. It might be something useful for droid-building anyway, so it’s not outside the brief for my mission.”

  “Okay. Then I won’t do anything to it until you see if there are any in situ resources we can use.”

  “I’ll finish up the checks on the rest of the body, then, just to be sure,” Adi said.

  Ping walked around the spacecraft to the hatch, leaving the droid alone outside to finish his work. When Adi finished his circuit around the ship, he made his way back to the hatch. He heard Ping and Abhilasha talking inside the ship. Though he wasn’t programmed to eavesdrop, he stopped for a moment and looked towards the horizon, listening to the exchange. He always enjoyed the contrast between the sharp, staccato beat of Ping’s speech and the rolling, melodious flow of Abhilasha’s.

  “You’re going to like it here,” Ping was saying. “It’s pretty.”

  “I doubt I’ll have time to notice,” Abhilasha replied. “I’ve been running tests on the initial scans of the atmosphere and soil samples I’ve collected here around the ship. Look at this.”

  “Wah seh!” Ping exclaimed. “That’s got to be the richest sample we’ve ever found at our touchdown site.”

  “It is,” Abhilasha said. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up about what we’ll find when we move further afield. We might have just hit an especially rich pocket here.”

  Ping’s reply was muffled. When Adi moved to the entrance of the ship, preparing to join the conversation, he realised why he could not detect Ping’s reply clearly. The pair was embracing, Ping’s words directed towards Abhilasha’s ear.

  The droid stepped back. He had not seen such behaviour before, but had been programmed to understand—even mimic—certain forms of human intimacy. The alarms were going off in his emotive centre now. He didn’t fully understand the moment he had just witnessed, but he knew that the humans must consider it private.

  Not wanting to embarrass Ping and Abhilasha, Adi retreated several metres then, when he reached a point that would give them sufficient time to recover, he approached the entrance again, calling, “Finished here, Ping. The rest of the hull is all clear.”

  By the time he stepped back into their line of sight, the two humans were seated on opposite sides of the table. There was no evidence of their former close contact. Adi was satisfied, seeing he had timed it just right to avoid causing Abhilasha and Ping any awkwardness.

  “Any idea what materials we’ll need to polish her up?” Ping asked.

  “What I have is carbon-based. I’m not sure we’ll find the exact compound here, but it won’t be difficult to find some substitute. Most planets and moons should have something strong enough. The real question is how heavy it is, and how much additional power the added weight will end up requiring.”

  “There’s not as much solar power available out here,” Ping said, “but there’s lots of radiation of various sorts. I’ll run some simulations with the samples Abhilasha has gathered so far while you two are out on your mission.”

  “Do you want her to bring back more samples for the ship too?” Abhilasha asked. Neither human seemed to notice the shift of gendered pronouns they had used to refer to the droid. They had long ago settled their dispute over its gender by each deciding to use the terminology with which they felt most comfortable. The word registered on Adi’s sensors, as did every word the droid ever heard, but being used to the shifting terminology, s/ he felt no confusion.

  “Yes, he and I already discussed it. It will be best if it’s something the two of you can also use for your droid-building. The hull’s got enough materials from different places now, so it won’t matter too much. As long as we can form a solid bond, it will be fine.”

  “Adi,” Abhilasha said, turning to the droid, “I was just telling Ping that I picked up some really rich samples from the landing site while the two of you were working on the ship. I think there’s a good chance this will be our fastest mission yet. This droid will be easy to build with in situ resources, and the programme is really fine-tuned now. We’re getting excellent reports from Sinope.”

  “Jamy reported?”

  “Yes, while you were in sleep mode during the journey. The first batch of bacteria samples we left have taken well to the soil on Sinope. Jamy thinks she picked up some readings of oxygen in the air above the site already. She has started searching for caves to release the crickets in, once she reverses the cryos.”

  “How long does she expect all that to take, given the current estimates?”

  “Two or three decades. We might start to see a light atmosphere forming there about a century from now.”

  “He might,” Ping said, pointing to Adi, “and Jamy too. But we won’t. We’ll be long gone by then.”

  Abhilasha smiled. “Maybe our children, then. Or grandchildren.”

  Ping looked at her, but said nothing. Adi looked from one face to the other, uncertain what to make of the expressions she read there.

  “It reminds me of my childhood,” Abhilasha said, looking around at the arid landscape.

  “You must have been adorable when you were little,” Adi said.

&nbs
p; “I was, but probably not in the way you think,” Abhilasha replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not like I was all frills and frocks. I was very much a tomboy when I was small, always playing with my robotics set instead of with girly toys.”

  “Does that make a child less adorable?” Adi asked. “I’m afraid my grasp of such things is very…mechanical.”

  “Not at all,” Abhilasha said. “Your tastes are individual, not mechanical. You always know what you like, regardless of convention.”

  “Probably because my likes and dislikes are just a by-product of my main programme—I wasn’t really made to like and dislike things.”

  “Who’s to say humans are any different?”

  Adi looked at her companion, examining her face for signs of teasing. It appeared Abhilasha was not having her on, this time.

  “You think humans are programmed?”

  “Only to a degree. But then, your programming isn’t all that made you who you are either, is it? Look at how much you’ve changed just since Ping and I joined you before arriving at Elara.”

  “I don’t think Ping would agree with you, would he? He doesn’t see me as anything other than a typical droid.”

  Abhilasha laughed. “He also always refers to you as male.”

  Adi asked, “Is that so funny?”

  “No,” Abhilasha said, loading another soil sample into a vial. “Not funny in a ha-ha way, I guess. Just that he doesn’t see how we giggle and get on about things.”

  “I don’t exactly giggle,” Adi replied. “I don’t have a giggle app.”

  “You may not have the voice for it, but you’ve had your share of giggles—usually at my expense.”

  Adi’s mind whirred, trying to process the words. “Does that bother you?”

  Abhilasha looked at her. “Are you kidding? It’s what I love about you. I think I’d go crazy if I didn’t have you.”

  Though Adi’s face did not reflect it, she smiled at this.

  “Why do you think Ping can’t see it?”

  “He’s a guy.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Absorbed in obtaining the next sample, Abhilasha did not reply. Lifting the vial overhead, she examined it in the light reflected off Saturn’s surface. Satisfied, she sealed the vial and inserted it into a small rear compartment on Adi’s torso. As the droid continued collecting a similar sample, to be stored in the compartment on her front, she felt Abhilasha tap the other vial into place.

  She tried again. “Why do you think Ping can’t see me as anything other than a typical droid? I doubt he’d even notice if you replaced me. And don’t say it’s because he’s a guy.”

  Abhilasha shrugged, pulling another empty vial from her pack as they paced another ten metres. “To tell the truth, I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit. He doesn’t see you as a typical droid so much as he sees you as one of the guys.”

  “One of the guys? But, there’s only one guy…”

  “Exactly. And he sees you as a friend—a male friend to take the place of the guys whose companionship he misses. He needs male friendship.”

  “Is male friendship any different from female friendship?”

  “You tell me. You’re in the best position to judge.”

  “What do you me— Wait. Are you saying you treat me as a surrogate female friend?”

  Abhilasha frowned. “Don’t say surrogate. It makes it seem false. I just take you as a friend—and yes, I think of you as a girlfriend.”

  “Would you have seen me that way if there were other female crew members?” Adi asked, softly.

  “I don’t want to lie to you,” Abhilasha said. “Maybe not. I can’t say how I would’ve seen you in that situation.”

  “Maybe if it were an all-female crew, you would have seen me as—”

  “It wouldn’t ever be an all-female crew,” Abhilasha said, cutting her off. “Don’t you realise that?”

  Adi thought back over the previous crews. None had been with her for more than a few years—usually just two or three landings—so she had never bonded with them like she had with Ping and Abhilasha. She had assumed that was because her ability to bond had grown over the years, finally enabling her to connect more deeply with this pair of humans, but perhaps there was more to it.

  “Why is it always one male, one female in the crew?”

  Abhilasha stopped, half-filled vial in hand. She looked at the droid. “You haven’t figured that out?”

  “What?” Adi looked back at her.

  She sighed. “Adi, why do you think we are terraforming these moons and planets way out in this part of the solar system?”

  “Humans want to colonise them, eventually. Earth cannot continue to sustain the numbers that were growing up there before we launched this reclamation programme.”

  “Exactly… And what are you and I doing now?”

  “Searching for in situ materials to build a droid.”

  “A droid that will…”

  “Remain here on Phoebe and continue terraforming work while we travel to our next destination to build the next droid.”

  “Do you know what is in the package we leave with the droid when we go?”

  “Of course. Bacteria for breaking down the minerals here. A few types of single-celled organisms, and cryogenically preserved crickets, since they are the cornerstone species of underground ecosystems all over the Earth, surviving in very harsh, oxygen-deprived environments.”

  “Right. And all of this is with the goal of letting an atmosphere grow up in each place after we leave, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So that…?”

  “So that humans can eventually live there—didn’t I just say that?”

  “Yes.” Abhilasha shook her head. “Okay, then. Tell me this—how can a new colony of humans grow up if we don’t put both male and female humans there to reproduce? We can’t just take people straight from Earth to these new environments. They need to adapt, grow up with their respective planets.”

  Adi’s head snapped around. She stared at Abhilasha.

  “What?” her human partner asked.

  “Do you mean to tell me you’re breeding stock? You, Ping…all the previous crews I’ve worked with? You’re just additional samples the ship and I are carrying?”

  “Don’t be crass,” Abhilasha said, sniffing.

  “I wouldn’t know how to be crass, Abhi.”

  The human sighed. “Yeah, I know. But seriously, girl, where did you think all the other crews went when they left you?”

  “Back to the space station orbiting Mars, like they said.”

  “Didn’t you notice anything different about the females when they left?”

  “No. I didn’t know any of them very well.”

  Abhilasha shook her head again.

  “Was something wrong with them?” Adi finally asked.

  “Nothing. They were pregnant.”

  The next morning while the humans were finishing their breakfast, Adi noticed how happy they seemed, and the glances they exchanged more frequently than they usually did. The droid wondered how it had missed these signs before. It was aware of the details of human reproduction, just as it was of the practices of every other known species. It should have realised that its months of slumber during the voyage provided the privacy humans valued in their rituals related to procreation. How could it have overlooked this? After all, its knowledge of the subject of human mating rituals was as vast as the knowledge it held of the requirements of its own mission, which was, it suddenly realised, also a form of reproduction—robotic reproduction.

  But that was all just knowledge. Understanding was a completely different matter. It had been programmed with an awareness that reproduction was for many species a process that went beyond the act of insemination (or its equivalent), and that it often had an emotional level for humans. Adi had learned, in the decades of its own work, how the unknown aspect of one’s offspring—of ho
w it would develop in the future, of what it would ultimately become—could bring certain anxieties and anticipation. It was, the droid realised, a product of the vast potential opened up by the process of reproduction, the endless possibilities of what could be created through a particular combination of physical resources and life experience.

  “Let’s go,” Abhilasha said to Adi. “We’d better set out now if we want to get back at a decent hour. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  They said goodbye to Ping and left the ship, hiking at a quick pace to the east, to the place where they had left off on the previous evening.

  “Abhi, are you pregnant?” Adi asked.

  The woman kept silent for twenty-eight seconds, according to the droid’s internal timer. Finally she said, “I am. The medbot confirmed it this morning.”

  “So you’ll be leaving soon? You and Ping?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a new crew will come.”

  “Yes. We’ll make the exchange while you’re in sleep mode on the voyage. When you wake up, it will be to a new crew.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you two were mates?”

  “I assumed you knew. Up until yesterday, I mean. It’s not like you haven’t been through this before.”

  “True. But my programming was so raw and under-developed before. I never bonded with anyone, not before you and Ping.”

  Abhilasha smiled. “I’m sorry to leave you, Adi. But I have to admit, I’m glad the feelings we have for you are mutual. We count you as a friend.”

  “Thank you.”

  Abhilasha poked her companion with an elbow. “You going to be all right when we leave?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never experienced this…feeling before.”

  “You’re resilient. You’ll manage.”

  “I hope so.”

  They walked along in silence for several minutes, then the droid asked, “Why do you have to have a mate? Why can’t you just travel with specimens to be uploaded when you are ready to produce offspring, like I do?”

 

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